Fool’s paradise

This expression frequently used to describe temporary happiness or security based on false hopes is often ascribed to Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (1592) Act II, Scene IV but Shakespeare’s version goes, “First let me tell ye, if you should lead her into a fool’s paradise, as they say.” The telling phrase is ‘as they say’, which would seem to indicate there was an earlier source, and so there is, The Paston Letters (1462), “I would not be in a folis paradyce.”