Meaning & Analysis
The proverb humorously describes a night with favorable weather—especially clear moonlight—as ideal for elopement or romantic escape, particularly in illicit contexts.
Insights
Opportunity for Transgression
The phrase captures how certain circumstances—quiet night, clear skies—are seen as facilitating daring, secretive, or morally questionable acts, especially romantic or sexual.
Desire and Risk
Conveys the thrill of forbidden love, suggesting that passion often seeks—and finds—its moment under the cloak of night, where danger enhances allure.
Romantic Rebellion
Alludes to romantic defiance of social or marital boundaries, where lovers elude societal expectations under cover of darkness—night becomes both accomplice and symbol of subversion.
Fate and Timing
Suggests that some nights feel 'meant' for bold, fateful decisions—underscoring the human tendency to romanticize external conditions as signs for action.
Moonlight as Eros and Mischief
The emphasis on moonshine reflects classical associations of the moon with eroticism, madness, and enchantment—making it the fitting backdrop for irrational, illicit behavior.
Folk Irony and Comic Subversion
The proverb uses exaggerated irony: a beautiful night, which might typically be praised for serenity, becomes the ideal setting for scandal. The humor lies in the mischievous reframing of beauty as temptation.
Gender and Possession
Phrases like 'another man's wife' and 'steal away a fair lady' reveal historical views of women as possessions, and elopement as both theft and conquest—a perspective both romanticized and critiqued in literature.
Theatrical and Literary Convention
Echoes a familiar trope in Renaissance and Restoration drama where lovers escape by night—especially with moonlight aiding both romance and disguise—aligning the proverb with theatrical convention and popular narratives of amorous elopement.
Rhetorical Devices
Hyperbole
Exaggerates the implications of good weather by turning it into an invitation for elopement—creating a comedic, dramatic effect through overstatement.
Irony
The romantic idealization of a moonlit night is undercut by its association with scandalous or illicit behavior, giving the phrase a witty and transgressive edge.
Euphemism
‘Run away with another man's wife’ functions as a cheeky euphemism for adultery or romantic escape, softening the seriousness of the act through playful phrasing.
Transcription
Quotations
It were euen a fine night to runne awaye with another mans wife in.
Didest thou euer see better weather to runne away with another mans wife.
Here were a night to chuse to run away with another mans Wife, and do the feat.
They say a moonshine night is good to run away with another man’s wife; but I am sure a dark night is best to steal away my father’s daughter.
A fit night to steal away a fair Lady.
O!’twas a delicate night to run away with another man’s wife.
Annotations
- A cleer Moon-shine.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.