Every dog will have his day????

Question

what does this shakespeare quote mean?? i think i know some of it but could anyone intelligent explain any "hidden" details???? THNX!!

Answer 1

I think it means everyone will get what they deserve, if a dog bites people, it may be shot, if a dog is faithful and loyal, and has abusive owners, it may someday be taken away and placed into a loving home, we all get what we have coming to us in the end.

Answer 2

It means roughly what the others have said: no matter who one is, in the natural order, just as cats mew, everyone will have a moment of triumph.

Hamlet addresses this remark to Laertes. In doing so he associates Laertes with a dog and himself with Hercules: "Let Hercules himself do what he may, / The act will mew and dog will have his day." In anger (he is fighting over Ophelia with her brother), Hamlet is thus insulting Laertes, an act for which, before the duel, he will apologize. He is also calling himself a hero, an indication of his development and new heroic self-confidence. Much earlier in the play, in his first soliloquy, Hamlet denies himself just this identification: "no more like my father / Than I to Hercules" (I, 2, 152-3).

Answer 3

A dog is considered by most people a pretty low life form.  Even people who are great dog lovers have to admit that when most people think of the generic image of a dog, they think of a sort of dumb animal that is dirty, will eat practically anything, and has to obey his master's every command.   A dog is usually seen as humble or lowly.

From this view of dogs come many expressions.  When you get in trouble, you're "in the doghouse."  When you do something particularly dirty or evil, you've "gone to lie with the dogs."

Along those lines, Shakespeare uses "every dog will have his day" to mean that even the lowliest, humblest of people will have something truly good happen to them.  They'll have their day - a time when everything seems to be going right in their lives, or they'll be right about something important.  It's much like the expression that someone's ship will come in.

Answer 4

It's actually has an optimistic spin:

To paraphrase Andy Warhol -- everyone will get their "15 minutes" of recognition.

Good luck!

Answer 5

most dogs have a good life, sleeping ans relaxing. No work no nagging wives. But even a dog can have a bad day

Answer 6

The most common interpretation of this expression is that any given person's moment of glory is inevitable.

This proverb was used in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (Act 5, Scene 1)

HAMLET:

Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew and dog will have his day."

In "Wise Words and Wives' Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New" by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993), the history of this proverb is traced to the medieval Dutch scholar Erasmus.

Erasmus said that in 405 B.C. Euripides, a Greek playwright, was mauled and killed by a pack of dogs loosed upon him by a rival. So the saying is usually taken as "even the most lowly person will at some time get revenge on his oppressor, no matter how powerful the man may be."

Plutarch, a Greek biographer, recorded the proverb for the first time in 'Moralia' (A.D. 95): 'Even a dog gets his revenge'.

Richard Taverner includes the phrase in 'Proverbes' or Adages' (1539) as the first English version: 'A dogge hath a day'.

In John Ray's 'A collection of English Proverbs' (1670) it was further modified almost to what it is now: 'Every dog hath his day'."

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