The Lady or the Tiger

About The Lady or the Tiger

Stockton gives an extravagant institution the apparent clarity of a simple rule, then makes human motive disturb that clarity. Love and jealousy cannot be weighed as neatly as the king's theatrical system pretends. The narrator draws the reader into judgment, making uncertainty about the princess a central part of the experience.

Reading focus

Consider a provocative dilemma in which love, jealousy, and a theatrical system of justice resist a comfortable prediction.

This reading edition contains 2,701 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: Frank R Stockton. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of…

Read the complete opening section

Reading & download help

Edition details and corrections.