In the course of the play (not the play within the play), Henry's own deliberately constructed carapace against emotion cracks apart.
Much in the same way as it's almost impossible to see the Mona Lisa as anything but a parody of itself, or hear Satie's Trois Gymnopedies without the feeling that someone's trying to sell you something – a bar of chocolate perhaps – it's initially hard to get close to the sonnets, locked as they are in the carapace of their own proverbialism.
Also, your old carapace looked great on you.
Noses in particular are carapaces with lives of their own.
Several decorator crabs use portions of the model for concealment by picking up algae and sponges and placing them on the carapace (upper shell) to cover their own coloration; the algae and sponges continue to live as if in their normal habitat.
Who can forget the symbolic tennis match between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, which ends with Mary's carapace of a dress standing on its own after her execution?
The idea of the nation as an inclusive community of all citizens, one that allows each individual to shelter under the constitutional carapace and to pursue his or her own ideas of happiness, free from the stipulations of others, is being tossed aside in the name of a higher patriotic duty to an officially sanctioned version of nationalism.
The heroine, Vivian Bearing, Ph.D. (Cynthia Nixon), lives behind a carapace of erudition, an armor of intellect that protects her from the world and from her own fragility.
The heroine of "Wit" (being revived for the first time, at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman), Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., lives behind a carapace of erudition, an armor of intellect that protects her from the world and from her own fragility.
He comes close to overwhelming his characters with his own inimitable, trivia-dense voice, but ultimately he creates a tender vision of modern life, one in which preoccupations with popular culture are an imperfect carapace for the vulnerable hearts underneath.
