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

[Dave Monroe]

On 4/13/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.
>
> 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:
>
> from bartleby.com
>
> "Thus every dog at last will have his day—"
>
> Peter Pindar: Odes of Condolence.
>
> AUTHOR: William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
> QUOTATION: Let Hercules himself do what he may,
> The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

Thanks!