Bed of roses

This has become a figurative expression for a life of ease and luxury. The original was coined by Christopher Marlowe c.1589 in The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. “And I will make thee beds of roses and a thousand fragrant posies.” Somewhat mysteriously, a few years later c. 1600, Shakespeare borrows it for Merry Wives of Windsor Act III, Scene I, where Sir Hugh Evans sings, “There we will make our peds of roses, and thousand fragrant posies”. Perhaps Marlowe’s words had become a popular song by then but why Shakespeare chose to write peds instead of beds, no one knows. Ped is an old word for a wicker basket from which the word pedlar is derived i.e. one who sells goods carried in a ped.