Did William Shakespeare say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"?

Q: Did William Shakespeare say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"?

No. The thought — and very nearly the words — are genuinely Congreve's, from his 1697 tragedy The Mourning Bride, where the captive queen Zara declares: "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd." The familiar one-liner is a later compression: it drops the first line, and the archaic "hath" (which Congreve never wrote — he wrote "has") is what makes so many people mistake it for Shakespeare.

Who really said it

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

A paraphrase of William Congreve William Congreve 1670–1729 · English Restoration playwright

Disputed Free to reuse

The thought — and very nearly the words — are genuinely Congreve’s, from his 1697 tragedy The Mourning Bride, where the captive queen Zara declares: “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” The familiar one-liner is a later compression: it drops the first line, and the archaic “hath” (which Congreve never wrote — he wrote “has”) is what makes so many people mistake it for Shakespeare.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” Paraphrased from William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), Act III — original: "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd."

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In context

Evoking the world of William Congreve — English Restoration dramatist & poet. Theme: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The real line

Work: The Mourning Bride: A Tragedy
First performed: 1697, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London
Spoken by: Zara, a captive queen, in Act III
Congreve’s words: “Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d” (not “hath”)

Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.

The couplet as printed in 1697 — the popular saying keeps only the second line and swaps Congreve’s “has” for the archaic “hath.”

The Mourning Bride on Wikisource

How the paraphrase took hold

Congreve’s original couplet appears in Act III, spoken by Zara, in the 1697 text on Wikisource ↗.
Wikipedia’s entry on the play ↗ confirms the wording, the speaker Zara, and that the line is now usually paraphrased as “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
The compressed form “Hell has no Fury like a Woman scorn’d” is documented circulating as a saying by 1726 in Nicholas Amhurst’s Terræ-Filius, per Word Histories ↗.

Public domain

The line comes from The Mourning Bride, first performed and printed in 1697 — centuries before the 1931 U.S. copyright cutoff — so Congreve’s text is firmly in the public domain. The familiar paraphrase is an anonymous proverb of the same public-domain lineage.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

Almost everyone quotes this line slightly wrong, and many credit the wrong author entirely.

William Shakespeare Wrong author

The archaic “hath” makes it sound Shakespearean, and it is routinely attributed to him — but Shakespeare died in 1616, over 80 years before Congreve wrote the play. The word doesn’t even appear in Congreve’s text; it crept in as the saying spread, as Word Histories documents ↗.

The exact wording Misquotation

Congreve wrote “has,” not “hath,” and his line is one half of a two-line couplet beginning “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d.” The stand-alone proverb is a paraphrase, per Wikipedia ↗.

Colley Cibber Earlier echo

A very similar sentiment appeared a year earlier in Cibber’s comedy Love’s Last Shift (1696) — “no Fiend in Hell can match the fury of a disappointed Woman” — so Congreve was working a theme already in the air, as noted by Word Histories ↗.

The sentiment is genuinely Congreve’s, from The Mourning Bride (1697) — but he wrote a two-line couplet with “has,” and the snappy “hath” version is a later, anonymous paraphrase, not Shakespeare and not verbatim Congreve, per the primary text ↗.

Context

Why it stuck

Congreve’s only tragedy was a sensation in 1697, and its most memorable moment is Zara’s vow of revenge. The couplet distils a whole revenge-tragedy tradition into two balanced lines — heaven’s rage set against hell’s fury — and the second half proved so quotable that it detached from the play and became a stand-alone proverb within a generation.

As it spread by ear rather than by the page, the line got smoother and older-sounding: the couplet’s first line fell away, “has” hardened into the biblical-sounding “hath,” and the result now reads to most people as timeless folk wisdom — or as Shakespeare.

Congreve wrote “has.” The proverb we quote wrote itself.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Mourning Bride (full text)en.wikisource.org

The complete 1697 play text, where the original couplet appears in Act III.

The Mourning Brideen.wikipedia.org

Overview confirming the wording, the speaker Zara, and the line’s passage into proverb.

Origin of ‘hell hath no fury’wordhistories.net

Traces the paraphrase, the 1726 attestation, Cibber’s 1696 echo, and the Shakespeare mix-up.

Meaning & origin of the phrasephrases.org.uk

Phrase-history reference giving Congreve’s original line and the modern form.

The Mourning Bridebritannica.com

Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Congreve’s 1697 tragedy.

The true author

William Congreve

1670–1729 · English Restoration dramatist & poet

William Congreve was the leading comic playwright of the English Restoration, celebrated for Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700). His single tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697), was a huge stage success and is now remembered almost entirely for two lines it gave the language: this one and “Musick has Charms to soothe a savage Breast.” He largely gave up the theatre in his thirties and lived out his life on official sinecures and literary friendships.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Congreve, The Mourning Bride: A Tragedy (London: Jacob Tonson, 1697), act 3. Original: “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.”

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