Pembroke, we know from Clarendon, was "immoderately
given to women." Four maids of honour, we learn, were
enceintesto Essex at the same time. Shakespeare was hardly as dissolute as his
noble patrons. The truth was they could not understand his genius; they
had no measure wherewith to measure it, for no one can see above his own
head; and so they treated him with much the same condescending
familiarity that nobles nowadays show to a tenor or a ballet dancer. In
March, 1604, after he had written "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," Shakespeare
and some other actors walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in
the procession which accompanied King James on his formal entry into
London. Each of the actors received four and a half yards of scarlet
cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion. The scarlet cloak to
Shakespeare must have been a sort of Nessus' shirt, or crown of
thorns--the livery of derision.
Shakespeare, who measured both enemies and friends fairly, measured
himself fairly, too. He usually praises his impersonations: Hamlet is "a
noble heart," Brutus "the noblest Roman of them all"; and speaking
directly he said of himself in a sonnet:
"I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
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