He is punctiliously careful to set down the fact, whatever
it may be, and explain it, even when it troubles the flow of his story;
but as soon as the fact comes into conflict with his respect for
dignitaries, he loses his nice conscience. He tells us of Agincourt
without ever mentioning the fact that the English bowmen won the battle;
he had the truth before him; the chronicler from whom he took the story
vouched for the fact; but Shakespeare preferred to ascribe the victory
to Henry and his lords. Shakespeare loved a lord with a passionate
admiration, and when he paints himself it is usually as a duke or
prince.
Holding these truths in our mind, Shakespeare's intense sensitiveness
and sensuality, and his almost inconceivable snobbishness, we may now
take up the sonnets.
The first thing that strikes one in the sonnets is the fact that, though
a hundred and twenty-five of them are devoted to a young man, and
Shakespeare's affection for him, and only twenty-six to the woman, every
one of those to the woman is characterized by a terrible veracity of
passion, whereas those addressed to the youth are rather conventional
than convincing.
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