Meaning & Analysis
To grieve or express sorrow while indulging in expensive wines like sack (a fortified white wine) and claret (a red wine), a contradictory act.
Insights
Hypocritical Sorrow
To feign grief while secretly celebrating or enjoying oneself, particularly when one stands to gain from the situation causing the 'mourning,' such as an inheritance.
Indulgent Coping
To deal with genuine or supposed sadness by 'drowning one's sorrows' in luxury and excessive consumption, substituting true emotional processing with hedonistic distraction.
Performative Repentance
To make a show of repenting for one's misdeeds not with genuine austerity (like sackcloth and ashes) but with continued self-indulgence, rendering the apology meaningless.
Central Pun
The proverb's power derives from a clever pun on 'sack' (the wine) and 'sackcloth' (the traditional fabric of mourning). Shakespeare's citation makes this explicit, contrasting repentance 'not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.'
Social Critique
The expression satirizes the gap between the public performance of grief, a significant social ritual in early modern England, and private feelings of relief or opportunism, especially concerning funerals and inheritance.
Psychological Realism
The phrase captures the psychological complexity of feigning emotion for social or financial advantage. It reveals an astute understanding of human nature, where outward displays do not always match internal realities.
Rhetorical Devices
Pun
The wordplay on 'sack' (wine) versus 'sackcloth' (mourning attire) is the central rhetorical device, creating a witty and memorable image of insincerity.
Irony
The proverb is built on situational irony, combining the somber act of mourning with the celebratory act of drinking fine wine to expose hypocrisy.
Juxtaposition
The stark contrast between the expectation of grief (mourning) and the reality of indulgence (sack and claret) effectively highlights the theme of false appearances.
Transcription
Quotations
Away with silke, for I will mourne in sack, Martin is dead, our newe sect goes to wrack.
Come, wee'll mourne in sacke for him.
Sackcloth and Cinders they advise to vse, Sack, Cloues, and Sugar, thou wouldst haue to chuse.
You shall find us i' th' Tavern, Lamenting in Sack and Sugar for our losses.
I will follow you . . and will Repent in sack and prodigality, To your own heart's content.
To bemoan with the mouth, and rejoice with the heart, viz. to mourn, as the saying is, in sack and claret.
To weep at a Mother in Laws Funeral, viz. to know how to dissemble, to mourn in sack and claret.
To seem to mourn when a great estate hath been left one; to mourn in Sack and Claret, say the English.
Shakespeare Citations
I have check'd him for it, and the young lion repents—marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.
Cross References
- F248 To cry (look up) with one eye and laugh (down) with the other
- IO2a To laugh and cry at once (like rain in sunshine)
- O67 To weep (It may serve) with an onion.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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