Prince Rupert's Drop - Literary References

Literary References

Because of their use as a party piece, Prince Rupert’s Drops became widely known in the late seventeenth century — far more than today. It can be seen that educated people (or those in “society”) were expected to be familiar with them, from their use in the literature of the day. Samuel Butler used them as a metaphor in his poem Hudibras in 1663, and Pepys refers to them in his diary.

The drops were immortalized in a verse of the Ballad of Gresham College (1663):

And that which makes their Fame ring louder,

With much adoe they shew'd the King

To make glasse Buttons turn to powder,

If off the their tayles you doe but wring.

How this was donne by soe small Force

Did cost the Colledg a Month's discourse.

Peter Carey devotes a chapter to the drops in his 1988 novel, Oscar and Lucinda.