s
patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own
actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his
patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly
what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his
patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of
sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespear, we are told, was "a
very civil gentleman." This must mean that his desire to please
people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their
feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were
not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the
fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a
vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance,
making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of
Cassio that

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had stomach for them all,

we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the
earlier and more coldblooded sonnets.

Shakespear and Democracy

Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of
democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed
by Mr Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr Harris emphasizes the
passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small
master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose
breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved
Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good
words" from him

He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring.

But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an
abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political
sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John
Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars.
Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and
Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody,
including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken,
foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to
the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the
plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley
admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal
suffrage was out of the question.