In these early days Shakespeare wrote a long narrative poem, which helps us to know him. It is dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton, his patron, and is called “Venus and Adonis”; a typical example of the pseudo-classical romantic rubbish which the cultured world of that time called “art.” Nature has provided for the mixing and distributing of the qualities of living creatures by a system of sex exchanges. Throughout the higher forms of life, and with men and women in their primitive, natural condition, the act of sex fertilization occupies less than the entire time of the creature. But now a leisure-class arises, parasitic upon its fellows; and the members of this class seek to divert their idle time by the endless elaboration of the sex function. “Venus and Adonis” tells the story of an effort of the goddess of love to secure the sexual attentions of a reluctant youth. The striking thing about the poem is the extent to which the Greek ideal of the goddess of fecundity has been debased--I will not say to the animal level, because the animals are decent and sensible in their sex affairs; I say to the level of the high-priced brothel, where the jaded rich are beguiled. Venus in this poem has no idea of making herself spiritually or intellectually attractive to the youth; she does not know how to be sublime and goddess-like, she does not know how to be wise, or even to be witty and gay. She only knows how to force her unwanted flesh more and more persistently upon the youth, to wallow upon his body, disgusting both the youth and the reader. The fact that “Venus and Adonis” is full of verbal splendor, like everything else that Shakespeare wrote, makes it more and not less offensive to an intelligent person. By means of our intelligence we have invented the microscope, and thereby we know that decay is not less decay because it happens to be phosphorescent. We can surely say that there was decay in the fashionable world of Shakespeare’s time, when twelve editions of “Venus and Adonis” were called for, while for a mighty tragedy like “Othello” there was not demand enough to secure its printing until six years after its author was dead! CHAPTER XXXV THE GOOD MAN THEORY When I was young the orthodox critics of Shakespeare taught, and everybody accepted the idea, that there was no poet who had been more aloof from his own work, and that it was impossible to tell anything about him from the characters he portrayed. But now comes Frank Harris with his book, “The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life-Story.” Harris contends that no poet has revealed himself more continuously than Shakespeare; the character speaking out of the plays is that of a man tormented all his life by sensuality, and fighting in pain and bewilderment to save a brilliant intellect from ruin by excess.