Meaning & Analysis
He can pass from laughing to crying (or display both) in the span of a single breath—i.e., almost instantly.
Insights
Emotional Volatility
Portrays a temperament so mercurial that feelings flip without transition, making responses unpredictable and unstable.
Performative Affect
Suggests an ability to stage emotions on cue—tears and mirth as theatrical effects rather than sincere states, useful for persuasion or deceit.
Two-faced Posture
Frames a person who can comfort and wound, flatter and reproach, in the same breath; duplicity hides behind quick shifts in tone.
Paradox of Passion
Hints at experiences (love, grief) that genuinely mix contrary affects, where laughter and weeping are neighbors rather than opposites.
Breath as Time-unit
‘Breath’ metonymizes an instant and the instrument of speech; to change ‘in a breath’ ties emotional swing to verbal performance—words carry the pivot.
Dissimulation Thread
Early collections gloss the feat as difficult yet attributed to dissemblers: those skilled at masking can summon tears or mirth to suit advantage, a social weapon in courts and markets.
Shakespearean Resonance
Poets note states that ‘laugh and weep … with a breath,’ capturing love’s ambivalence and the human capacity to host contrary affects without contradiction.
Psychological Read
Maps to rapid affect shifts—whether strategic impression management or labile mood—reminding that outward displays can be both sincere and instrumental.
Manners and Morals
As praise, it marks lively responsiveness; as censure, it marks untrustworthiness. The proverb is a diagnostic: speed of switch raises questions about depth.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Pairs ‘laugh’ and ‘cry’ to dramatize extremes of affect, sharpening the shock of their proximity.
Paradox
Asserts simultaneous or instantaneous opposites, creating a memorable tension that mirrors the human mix of feelings.
Metonymy
‘Breath’ stands for a moment and for speech, linking temporal brevity and rhetorical agility.
Isocolon
Balanced halves around ‘laugh’ / ‘cry’ give the line a neat, chant-like symmetry that aids recall.
Hyperbole
Compresses a complex emotional turn into a single breath to emphasize speed and theatrical control.
Transcription
Quotations
He doeth laugh and weepe with one breath.
(It is a hard thing to laugh).
'Tis hard to laugh and cry both in a breath.
(and both in a wind).
She can laugh and cry, both in a Wind.
Shakespeare Citations
For I have heard it [love] is a life in death, That laughs, and weeps, and all but with a breath.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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