Shannen Bux

* It’s actually not his saying. The usual form is “Make hay while the sun shines.”

• It began as practical farming advice: hay has to be cut and dried in fair weather, or rain will spoil it. (Phrase Finder; Word Histories)
• The earliest written English version is in John Heywood’s 1546 collection of proverbs, A Dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe tongue: “Whan the sunne shinth make hay,” which he explains as “Take time when time cometh, lest time steal away.” (Phrase Finder; Word Histories)
• Shakespeare later alluded to it in Henry VI, Part 3 (First Folio, 1623): “The Sunne shines hot, and if we vse delay, Cold biting Winter marres our hop’d-for Hay.” (Word Histories)
• By the 1600s people were already using it in everyday life, not just on the farm. Phrase Finder records a figurative use as early as 1673, in Richard Head’s The Canting Academy.