Aging & Wisdom Quote by Thomas Dekker

Dekker’s line lands like a dagger slipped under courtly velvet: power can flirt with betrayal, but it rarely forgives the betrayer. The couplet’s snap comes from its cruel asymmetry. “Kings may love treason” suggests a ruler’s opportunism: treason is thrilling when it’s useful, when it topples rivals, when it proves the king’s magnetic gravity over loyalties. “But the traitor hate” exposes the real taboo. The act can be admired as a tactic; the person who performed it becomes radioactive.

The intent is less moral lesson than survival manual. In a world where patronage is oxygen and a monarch’s favor is weather, Dekker offers a principle “old” as in already known by anyone with scars. The phrase “true as fate” does heavy lifting: this isn’t a situational warning, it’s a law of political physics. You can’t negotiate with it; you can only avoid being crushed by it.

Subtextually, the couplet points to the king’s insecurity. A ruler who benefits from one betrayal has to imagine the next one. The traitor is hated not only for what he did, but for what he proves: loyalty is purchasable, and therefore fragile. That fear demands a scapegoat, and the scapegoat is always the instrument, not the hand that wielded it.

Context matters: Dekker wrote in the long shadow of Tudor and early Stuart paranoia, when plots were currency and executions were theater. The line plays to an audience fluent in the spectacle of “necessary” treason followed by ceremonial disgust. It’s cynicism with streetwise clarity: courts run on betrayal, then cleanse themselves by destroying the betrayer.