“The Making of Strange Bedfellows”. A Shakespeare Quotation and Its Propagation of New Proverbs
Starting as a literary quotation, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” from William Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest (1611) reached somewhat of a proverbial status over time but certainly never became a generally employed folk proverb. That was left to its shortened rephrasing “Misery m...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/lexis, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
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Lexis
2024
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| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | Starting as a literary quotation, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” from William Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest (1611) reached somewhat of a proverbial status over time but certainly never became a generally employed folk proverb. That was left to its shortened rephrasing “Misery makes strange bedfellows” and its subsequent proverbial variants “Misfortune makes strange bedfellows”, “Necessity makes strange bedfellows”, “Adversity makes strange bedfellows”, “Poverty makes strange bedfellows”, and the somewhat newer “Business makes strange bedfellows.” They all have become proverbs in their own right, and yet, “Politics makes strange bedfellows” wins the prize as far as its general currency and high frequency in oral and written communications since the late eighteenth century to the present time is concerned. As numerous historical references show, Shakespeare’s original text resulted in the fascinating propagation of several proverbs following the structure of “X makes strange bedfellows.” As such they have become so popular that anti-proverbs and mere allusions are based on them, easily recalling the underlying proverbs. It might well be that even more modern proverbs will be coined on this well-established pattern in due time. With ever more textual databases becoming available, earlier historical references might well be found, but the present case study has left no proverbial stone unturned for now. |
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