MDMD2: The Learned English Dog (will have his day)

[Mark Kohut]

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.
   
  Hamlet to Laertes: .........."Hear you, sir,
  What is the reason that you use me thus?
  I loved you ever. But it is no matter.
  Let Hercules himself do what he may,
  The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
   
  My Norton Shakespeare glosses this way:
  Despite Laertes Herculean ranting, my day will come. 
   
  A 1992 book called The Masks of Hamlet----it is in Google books---
  says that this meaning was already current in Shakespeare's time.
   
  A variant text, discredited, read "every dog will have his bay"....!
   
  I guess we need an OED or a deeply annotated Hamlet to see if
  historians have located the usage earlier. 

Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
  Dave Monroe wrote:

> ... meanwhile, I saw something recently attributing that "Every dog
> must have its day" (trans. as provided, cf. Vineland) or somesuch to
> Voltaire, but without a specific text cited. I can neither confirm
> nor deny, at least not via Google. Help!
>

from bartleby.com
"Thus every dog at last will have his day—
He who this morning smiled, at night may sorrow;
The grub to-day's a butterfly to-morrow."
Peter Pindar: Odes of Condolence.

Pindar lived after Voltaire, though...but Shakespeare came first
(though the sense isn't exactly the same)

AUTHOR: William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
QUOTATION: Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.



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