Meaning & Analysis
Growing older and being married are said to lead a man to a state of domesticity, weariness, or quiet retirement—symbolized by putting on a nightcap.
Insights
Domestic Restraint
The proverb metaphorically suggests that age and marriage both curb male impulsiveness or wildness, leading to a more settled, subdued life marked by routine and rest.
Loss of Youthful Freedom
It implies that the combination of aging and marital obligations leads to a decline in vigor, liberty, or adventurousness—confining the once-free man to the boundaries of home and bed.
Softened Masculinity
Symbolically, the nightcap represents a transition from the virile, outward-facing man to a more passive, domesticated figure, reshaped by time and relational commitments.
Gendered Commentary on Marriage
This proverb reflects early modern attitudes toward marriage as a taming force, particularly on men. It participates in a long tradition of portraying wedlock as both desirable and burdensome—a social contract that brings stability but also diminishment.
Nightcap as Symbol of Resignation
The nightcap, a humble household item, becomes a metonym for the life of quiet routine and diminished public ambition—an image of domestic retirement, physical decline, or even symbolic castration.
Comic Melancholy of Middle Age
Humor and wistfulness coexist here: the saying humorously captures the path from virility to docility, but with an undertone of regret, acknowledging the slow trade-off of liberty for companionship and age.
Cultural Ideal of Taming Through Love
Implicitly, the proverb celebrates the civilizing influence of long-term commitment—suggesting that while age and wedlock diminish certain freedoms, they also foster responsibility and restraint.
Rhetorical Devices
Synecdoche
The ‘nightcap’ stands in for an entire lifestyle of domestic quiet and aged routine, lending vivid specificity to an abstract transformation.
Metaphor
The entire proverb operates as a metaphor, equating personal maturation and marital transition with the act of putting on a nightcap—symbolizing the end of the day, and metaphorically, the end of youthful striving.
Allusion
The proverb echoes popular dramatic and cultural references (e.g., *Taming of the Shrew*), embedding itself in the comic tradition of masculine ‘taming’ via marriage.
Transcription
Quotations
For forward wedlocke as the prouerbe sayes, Hath brought him to his nightcap long ago.
How now Lawrence, what has thy wedlock brought thee already to thy night-cap?
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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