Meaning & Analysis
Love, like a shadow or certain elusive things such as a woman, honor, a crocodile, or death, tends to flee when pursued directly but follows when one withdraws or flees.
Insights
Elusiveness of Desire
The proverb captures the paradoxical nature of desire and attraction—direct pursuit often repels, while withdrawal or indifference can provoke pursuit and interest.
Psychology of Pursuit
Reflects the human tendency to value what is scarce or unattainable; the chase itself fuels desire, and apparent rejection intensifies attraction.
Instability of Affection
Suggests that love and honor are unstable, fleeting phenomena, difficult to grasp through forceful efforts and better approached through subtlety or restraint.
Renaissance Social Commentary
Widely cited by writers such as Marston, Jonson, and Deloney, the proverb reflects early modern attitudes toward gender relations, courtship, and social honor, often highlighting the paradoxes of human behavior.
Shakespearean Echo
Shakespeare’s *The Taming of the Shrew* famously adapts this idea, using it to dramatize love’s capriciousness and the interplay of pursuit and avoidance in romantic dynamics.
Cross-Domain Metaphor
By likening love, honor, and even death to shadows or crocodiles, the proverb draws on vivid, contrasting images to express the universal experience of chasing what resists capture.
Psychological Ambivalence
This proverb anticipates modern understandings of attachment styles and interpersonal dynamics, where push-pull behaviors generate tension, attraction, and emotional complexity.
Rhetorical Devices
Simile
Comparing love and related concepts to shadows, crocodiles, and death employs vivid similes that heighten the proverb’s evocative power.
Paradox
The contradictory movement of fleeing and pursuing creates a striking paradox that captures the elusive, unstable nature of affection and desire.
Personification
Love, honor, and death are given volition and agency, acting as pursuers or fugitives, which dramatizes their unpredictable behavior.
Transcription
Quotations
There is nothing more like unto death, then a woman, because (like death) she pursues those that flie from her, and flies from those, that call upon her.
They [women] are like Cocodrills, They weepe to winne, and wonne they cause to dye, Follow men flying and men following flye.
Women are like shaddowes, for the more a man follows them, the faster they run away; but let a man turn his course, and then they will presently follow him.
It [honor] is likened to a mans shadow, which the more hee runneth after, the more it flieth away; and when he flieth from his shadow, it followeth him againe.
This honour is like a woman, or a crocodile (choose you whether) it flies them that follow it and follows them that fly it.
Nicer love's a shade—It follows fled, pursued flies as afraid.
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly it, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you.
Seeing this crocodile [a woman] pursues me flying, Flies you pursuing; we'll catch her by a trick.
And then sheel love you like your shadow; Fly thou, sheel follow; follow thou, sheel fly.
Shakespeare Citations
‘Love like a shadow flies, when substance love pursues, Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.’
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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