Meaning & Analysis
Entering marriage too quickly leads to a long period of regret afterward.
Insights
Irreversible commitment
Warns against precipitate entry into bonds—contracts, careers, creeds—whose exit costs are high; once yoked, the consequences linger far beyond the moment of choice.
Time asymmetry
The seconds saved by rushing are repaid in years of consequence. The proverb teaches that decision tempo and consequence duration are often inversely related.
Clouded judgment
Passion and social pressure can mimic certainty; the saying urges cooling-off periods so desire or fear does not impersonate discernment.
Due diligence ethic
Advocates investigation—character, compatibility, conditions—before commitment. Thorough vetting prevents downstream remorse and conflict.
Public to private fallout
A public, celebratory act (wedding) can conceal private strain (repentance). The proverb exposes the gap between spectacle and sustainability.
Early modern household stakes
Marriage once braided labor, lineage, property, and reputation; a rash match imperiled not just feelings but dowries, inheritances, and alliances—hence the culture-wide caution.
Shakespearean resonance
Elizabethan drama repeatedly echoes the warning—‘Hasty marriage seldom proveth well’—treating speed in courtship as a dramaturgic fuse that burns into tragedy or bitter comedy.
Psychology of regret
Regret thrives where alternatives were available and haste silenced them. After the rush, counterfactuals (“if only I had waited”) proliferate, prolonging mental accounting.
Generalizable maxim
Though framed in marriage, it’s a template for any binding decision: the more durable the tie, the more deliberative the path should be—a portable rule of prudence.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithetical parallelism
Pairs ‘marry in haste’ with ‘repent at leisure,’ balancing clauses to dramatize the reversal from swift joy to lingering sorrow.
Temporal contrast
The juxtaposition of ‘haste’ and ‘leisure’ turns time itself into the lesson—compressed beginnings versus dilated aftermaths.
Alliteration and assonance
The m/r and h/l sounds knit the phrase (‘marry’/‘haste’/‘repent’/‘leisure’), giving it mnemonic snap suited to oral tradition.
Aphoristic brevity
Compact, proverbial form functions as a pre-commitment check—easy to recall at the threshold of rash decisions.
Transcription
Quotations
Declaringe thereby, that being ones well matched, great heede ought to be taken, how to chose the nexte, leaste in making hastie choise, leasure for repentaunce should folow.
Bargains made in speed are commonly repented at leisure.
She that loueth in hast oftimes, nay alwaies repenteth at leisure.
Intangle not thy selfe with present fancies: least louing in hast thou repent thee at leasure.
Some yeelding (in hast) repent (at leisure;) or, some agreements prooue agreeuances.
He that marieth in haste, shall repent at leasure.
Marry too soon, and you'll repent too late.
He that's marryed in hast, shall repent at leasure.
*Ital.
Marry'd in haste, we may repent at leisure.
Shakespeare Citations
Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.
A mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen, Who woo'd in haste and means to wed at leisure.
Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty.. the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure.. and then comes Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.
Cross References
Annotations
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.