hopes for better fate, And not content, his cawlinge doth despise, Maie vainlie clime, but likelie still to fall, And live at lengthe with losse of maine and all. Others also treated the subject of being content with what one already has in an emblematic way. They include Latin versions of the fable by Gabriele Faerno, whose De Canis & Caro warns not to prefer the uncertain to the sure (Ne incerta certis anteponantur); Hieronymus Osius, with his comment that the more some folk have, the more they want (Sunt, qui possideant cum plurima, plura requirunt); and Arnold Freitag, who points out the stupidity of changing the sure for the uncertain (Stulta certi per incertum commutatio). At a later date the financial implications of "throwing good money after bad" for uncertain gain were to be summed up in the English phrase "It was the story of the dog and the shadow". The fable was also capable of political applications as well. John Matthews adapted the fable into an attack on "the brain-sick Demagogues" of the French Revolution in pursuit of the illusion of freedom. In a British context, during the agitation running up to the 1832 Reform Act, a pseudonymous 'Peter Pilpay' wrote a set of Fables from ancient authors, or old saws with modern instances in which appeared a topical retelling of "The Dog and the Shadow". Dedicated "to those who have something", it turned the fable's moral into a conservative appeal to stick to the old ways. And in the following decade, a member of parliament who had given up his place in order to stand unsuccessfully for a more prestigious constituency was lampooned in the press as "most appropriately represented as the dog in the fable who, snatching at the shadow, lost the substance". More recently, the fable has been used to teach a psychological lesson by the Korean choreographer Hong Sung-yup. In his ballet "The Dog and the Shadow" (2013) the lost meat represents the accumulated memories which shape the personality. That same year, the fable figured as the third movement of five in the young Australian composer Alice Chance's "Aesop’s Fables Suite" for viola da gamba. References External links 15th-20th century illustrations from books 17th-20th century French Prints Aesop's Fables La Fontaine's Fables Jataka tales Fictional dogs Animals in Buddhism Indian folklore Indian literature Indian fairy tales