Meaning & Analysis
Truth is inherently fair and worthy (‘a good face’) yet often appears in plain, shabby, or unfashionable dress (‘ill clothes’), lacking ornament or worldly attractiveness.
Insights
Intrinsic worth
Truth’s essence is beautiful and sound, but its outward presentation may be unappealing; value does not depend on fashionable packaging.
Plain style ethics
The proverb favors simple, unadorned speech over ornate rhetoric: truth prefers coarse homespun to courtly finery, and asks to be loved for candor, not costume.
Low-status messengers
Those who bear truth may be poor or unfavored; social signals—torn quoifs, ‘base weeds’—can hide excellence behind humble appearance.
Suspicion of polish
Smooth dress and flattering style can conceal falsehood; ‘ill clothes’ imply that lack of gloss is no argument against veracity.
Endurance over allure
Truth’s ‘good face’ endures while clothes change with fashion; lasting integrity outlives transient styles and reputations.
Allegory of attire
Early modern writers personify Truth as a woman in plain dress (cf. ‘naked truth’): clothing stands for rhetorical ornament. A ‘good face’ signals moral beauty; ‘ill clothes’ reduce appeal, warning audiences not to mistake simplicity for falsehood.
Plain vs. ornate rhetoric
The line sides with the ‘plain style’—biblical homiletics and Protestant prose that distrusted euphuistic flourishes. Fuller’s phrasing makes the contrast explicit: Truth often has ‘bad clothes’ yet remains the fairest presence in the room.
Class and credibility
Material signs (fabric, fit, fashion) bias judgment. The proverb resists class-coded credibility: even when truth comes in coarse garments, it deserves audience over velveted falsehood.
Counterpoint to flattery
Set against maxims that ‘flattery wins love,’ this saying argues that genuine truth seldom arrives perfumed. It prepares hearers to prize substance above charm.
Companion proverb
Nearby sayings—‘Truth has a scratched face,’ ‘The truth shows best being naked’—form a cluster: truth bears wounds, shuns finery, and still outshines pretence. Together they map a cultural ethic of austere integrity.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Balances ‘good face’ against ‘ill clothes’ to dramatize essence versus appearance in a compact, memorable contrast.
Personification
Truth is given a body and wardrobe, turning an abstraction into a recognizable figure we can judge—and misjudge—by sight.
Metonymy
‘Clothes’ stands for rhetorical style and social status; the garment is the medium through which audiences often (wrongly) assess value.
Epigrammatic brevity
The terse, balanced clause reads like a verdict, aiding portability and proverbial force.
Irony
What should commend truth—its ‘good face’—is overshadowed by shabby dress, exposing the folly of judging by surface.
Transcription
Quotations
Virtue often times is hid, vnderneath a base weede.
Truth most de-lights, when shee goes meanest clad.
Strange that any should fall in love with that profession, whose professours were so miserable! But truth hath alwayes a good face, though often but bad clothes.
(bad clothes).
(bad Clothes).
(a good Face, tho the Quoif be torn).
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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