mother. In weak moments one almost wishes he had.



Shakespear's Social Standing

On the vexed question of Shakespear's social standing Mr Harris says
that Shakespear "had not had the advantage of a middle-class
training." I suggest that Shakespear missed this questionable
advantage, not because he was socially too low to have attained to it,
but because he conceived himself as belonging to the upper class from
which our public school boys are now drawn. Let Mr Harris survey for
a moment the field of contemporary journalism. He will see there some
men who have the very characteristics from which he infers that
Shakespear was at a social disadvantage through his lack of
middle-class training. They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive,
mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in
that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and
insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to
make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a
slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they
see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism but an uproariously jolly
rag, although they are by no means without genuine literary ability, a
love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find
not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of
it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and
enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr Harris himself
notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his
incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service
of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that