Meaning & Analysis
Poverty causes friends or companions to drift apart or end their association.
Insights
Strain of Hardship
The proverb symbolizes how financial hardship places strain on social bonds, testing the strength of friendship and often leading to isolation or abandonment.
Conditional Nature of Relationships
It highlights the idea that many friendships and alliances are contingent upon mutual benefit or comfort. When poverty intervenes, these relationships may dissolve, revealing their underlying fragility.
Social Exclusion
The saying can also be interpreted as a commentary on societal tendencies to exclude or distance the impoverished, demonstrating the alienating effects of poverty beyond mere material deprivation.
Historical Social Commentary
The proverb recurs throughout early English literature and folklore, reflecting widespread recognition that economic status directly influences one's social life and opportunities for fellowship. The sentiment echoes from medieval ballads to Shakespeare and beyond.
Psychological Dimension
Experiencing poverty often brings feelings of shame, inadequacy, or fear of judgment, which can contribute to self-isolation or strained relationships, compounding material hardship with emotional loneliness.
Moral and Ethical Reflection
Some quotations and proverbs question or complicate the adage, suggesting that true friendship persists regardless of fortune ('it makes beggars together go'). This invites reflection on the genuine nature of loyalty and the ethical responsibilities of companionship.
Cross-cultural Parallels
Analogous proverbs exist across cultures, such as 'when poverty comes in at the doors love leaps out at the windows,' and 'prosperity gets friends but adversity tries them,' reinforcing the universal human experience of social bonds under duress.
Rhetorical Devices
Metonymy
‘Poverty’ stands in for the broader effects of deprivation and misfortune, while ‘fellowship’ symbolizes all forms of human relationship, making the proverb both vivid and universally applicable.
Alliteration
The repeated ‘p’ sound in ‘poverty parts’ provides rhythm and memorability, helping the proverb linger in the mind.
Antithesis
Contrasts the warmth of 'fellowship' or 'good company' with the cold force of 'poverty,' underscoring the disruptive impact of hardship on community.
Transcription
Quotations
This wrat I oftyn, poverte partyth company.
Pouertee partth fellowship, thats not trewe euer, Pouertie in beggars partth fellowship neuer.
But pouertie in the end partes friends.
Pouertie pairtes good companie and is ane enemie to vertewe.
Want breakis amity.
If I were richer, then thou shouldst go with me, but pouerty partes company.
Pouerty parts fellowship not euer so; For it makes beggars together go.
(good company).
(friends).
(good company).
(friends).
(good fellowship).
The English say, Poverty parts good company.
[As in a.1598 Ferg. MS, no. 1138].
(friends [or fellowship]).
(good fellowship).
For friendship parts in poverty.
(the best Friends).
Poortha [poverty] parts Friends.
Shakespeare Citations
'Tis right!' quoth he, 'thus misery doth part The flux of company.'
Cross References
Annotations
- At least makes them very coldrife.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.