The Lady, or the Tiger? The Lady, or the Tiger? "The Lady, or the Tiger?" is a much-anthologized short story written by Frank R. Stockton for publication in the magazine "The Century" in 1882. "The Lady, or the Tiger?" has entered the English language as an allegorical expression, a shorthand indication or signifier, for a problem that is unsolvable. The short story takes place in a land ruled by a semi-barbaric king. Some of the king's ideas are progressive, but others cause people to suffer. One of the king's innovations is the use of a public trial by ordeal as an agent of poetic justice,
The Crow and the Snake Croxall the story served as a warning against covetousness and for Thomas Bewick it illustrated the danger of being ruled by brute appetite. The latter interpretation had earlier been preferred by Guillaume La Perrière in his emblem book "Le theatre des bons engins" (1544). There the greedy crow is poisoned internally after swallowing the snake, “thinking it tasted good as sugar or venison”. The Crow and the Snake The Crow or Raven and the Snake or Serpent is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 128 in the Perry Index. Alternative Greek versions exist and two of these were adopted during