Fool’s Paradise

Unlawful pleasure, illicit love, vain hopes. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse says to Romeo, “If ye should lead her [Juliet] into a fool’s paradise, it were a gross … . behaviour.” The old schoolmen said there were three places where persons not good enough for paradise were admitted: (1) The limbus patrum, for those good men who had died before the death of the Redeemer; (2) The limbus infantum or paradise of unbaptised infants; and (3) The limbus fatuoʹrum or paradise of idiots and others who were non compos mentis. (See Limbo.)