And Shakespeare, with his aristocratic sympathies
and charming sweetness of nature, must have made friends with the
greatest ease. Chettle's apology proves that early in his career he had
the art or luck to win distinguished patrons who spoke well of him.
While still new to town he came to know Lord Southampton, to whom he
dedicated "Venus and Adonis"; the fulsome dedication of "Lucrece" to the
same nobleman two years later shows that deference had rapidly ripened
into affectionate devotion; no wonder Rowe noticed the "too great
sweetness in his manners." Thinking of his intimacy with Southampton on
the one hand and Bardolph on the other, one is constrained to say of
Shakespeare what Apemantus says of Timon:
"The middle of humanity thou never knewest,
But the extremity of both ends."
In the extremes characters show themselves more clearly than they do in
the middle classes; at both ends of society speech and deed are
unrestrained. Falstaff and Bardolph and the rest were free of convention
by being below it, just as Bassanio and Mercutio were free because they
were above it, and made the rules.
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