Meaning & Analysis
To side with both the prey (the hare) and the pursuer (the hound) at once—i.e., to try to be on two opposing sides simultaneously.
Insights
Duplicity for Gain
Depicts the double-dealer who flatters each camp to harvest benefits from both, masking self-interest under a show of universal friendship.
Cowardly Neutrality
Names a refusal to commit when stakes are high; the speaker avoids offense by echoing whichever side is present, sacrificing integrity for safety.
Political Opportunism
Diagnoses the turncoat who shifts allegiance with the wind, reading polls rather than principles and treating conviction as a negotiable asset.
Conflict Management
In a softer key, can rationalize pragmatic brokerage—staying ‘in’ with both sides to keep channels open—though the tactic courts mistrust.
Moral Incoherence
Highlights the impossibility of mutually exclusive loyalties; trying to please everyone collapses into betraying someone—often everyone.
Hunting Theatre
In coursing, hare and hound embody irreconcilable roles. The proverb borrows this stark ecology to expose the absurdity—and danger—of divided allegiance.
Early Modern Usage
Writers gloss it as ‘to be on both sides’ or ‘to temporize and dissemble,’ capturing a period anxiety about faction and the social penalties of hedging.
Realpolitik Variant
Some collections even advise that it is ‘wisdom sometimes’ to do so—acknowledging a cynical survival art—yet the dominant tone remains censorious, warning that such craft erodes trust capital.
Social Credit and Trust
Reputation functions as a commons: two-faced dealing spends it fast. Communities remember who stood firm when choices cut, and the proverb polices that memory.
Cross-Proverb Chorus
Kin to ‘Jack-on-both-sides’ and to stool-sitting maxims (‘falling between two stools’), the saying participates in a wide moral tradition that prizes coherence over convenience.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Sets the prey (‘hare’) against the predator (‘hound’), crystallizing a moral contradiction as a vivid, kinetic opposition.
Parallelism/Isocolon
Balanced halves (‘hold/run with the hare’ // ‘run/hold/hunt with the hound’) create a tight seesaw rhythm that dramatizes double motion.
Alliteration
‘Hare’/‘hound’ supplies a catchy h-initial pair, giving the line phonetic snap and proverbial memorability.
Extended Metaphor
Maps political and ethical allegiance onto a hunt, turning abstract duplicity into a scene anyone can picture.
Paradox
Pretends a single agent can accompany both hunter and hunted, highlighting the impracticality and moral absurdity of divided loyalties.
Transcription
Quotations
(Holde with).
I meane not to runne with the Hare and holde with the Hounde.
He runs with the hound and holds with the hair.
What should I do, but as the proverb saith, Run with the hare and hunt with the hound.
(Some hold).
(He houldes and runnes).
(Neither hold and nor run).
(In all differences be vpright and equall, for it is a grand folly to hold with).
(He will hold).
'Tis wiscdom sometimes to run with the Hare, and hold with Hound.
To temporize and dissemble; the English say, To run with the Hare, and hold with the Hound.
*To be on both sides.
(I can hold).
*To keep fair with both Parties at once.
Better hold with the Hound, as run with the Hare. *Better be able to grapple with a Difficulty, than to have a Probability to escape it.
(with the Hounds).
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.