Meaning:
The pleasant route through life, of pleasure and dissipation.
Background:
This phrase was coined by Shakespeare, in Hamlet, 1602. It is evidently a
simple allusion to a path strewn with flowers.
Ophelia:
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
Ophelia is warning her brother take his own advice and not reject the
difficult and arduous path of righteousness that leads to Heaven in favour of
the easy path of sin.
Shakespeare later used `the primrose way', which has the same meaning, in
Macbeth. This variant is hardly ever used now.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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"See the guys out there?" I looked to my right and pointed my chin toward the
three squat thickset Mexicans smoking and shooting the breeze as we pulled out
of the Home Depot parking lot. "Rain or shine, they have to come here to sell
their labor for, if they are lucky, 50 bucks a day. Whereas you've been living
the life of Riley. How thankful should you be!"
"Sure I'm thankful but I've not been treading a primrose path. I'd bet they
don't have to burn the candle at both ends cramming for Calculus AP. They look
happy, by the way," the heartless teenager observed.
