Loan proverbs ("Che sera sera")

[Charles Doyle]

I wonder where Doris Day's songwriter got the saying? (I used to hate that song!)

Many of us remember "che sera sera" from the first scene of Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_:

"What doctrine call you this? _Che sera, sera_: / What will be, shall be."

(The "bad quarto" of the play appeared in 1604; it was written in the 1590s.) The Doctor was showing off his learning (for the monolingual audience of the play). We might wonder whether he was even INVENTING an expression, making it sound Italian or Spanish or French--then translating it into English.

However, the expression also appeared in George Whetstone's _Mirror of Treue Honour . . ._ (1585):

"To show he bilt his acttions of the Lord,
Not as the most, on fortunes smiling cheare:
He chose _Che sera, sera_, for his word.
Gods will shal be, in heauen aboue and heare." (sig. C1r)

And in Gervase Markham's _Discource on Horsmanshippe_ (1593):

"& so bequeath him and your selfe to God, and good fortune. _Chè sera sera_" (sig. L4v).

--Charlie
____________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:27:35 -0500
>From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Re: Loan proverbs
>
>Doris Day, back in the '50's, had a million-seller with a song entitled _Che Sera Sera_, which helped to spread that saying around the English-speaking world.
>
>-Wilson


>> At 12:40 AM +0000 2/15/07, Chris F Waigl wrote:
>> >
Is "Che sera sera" really a loan? Maybe in the same sense as German "Handy" (mobile phone) and a whole slew of French words -- which are loaned from no particular foreign language though kind of look like English.

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