"Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them"
About this Quote
A sharp elbow in the ribs of populism: Shakespeare has a character remind us that the crowd is easy to court, hard to care for, and even harder to actually love. The line turns on a wicked asymmetry. “Flattered” is an action, a tactic; “loved” is a condition, an interior truth. Plenty of “great men” can perform devotion to “the people” while feeling only contempt, boredom, or calculation underneath. Shakespeare’s point isn’t merely that hypocrisy exists, but that it can be an engine of public greatness.
The address to “Faith” matters. It reads like an oath and a shrug at once, as if the speaker is saying: trust me, we’ve seen this show before. The archaic cadence (“there hath been”) gives the observation the weight of precedent, turning political cynicism into something like folk wisdom. Shakespeare is fond of exposing how power works when it’s not posing for portraits: leaders don’t always rise by virtue; they rise by reading the audience.
Contextually, this belongs to the playwright’s recurring obsession with the volatility of the multitude and the theatricality of authority. In the histories and Roman plays especially, the public is treated less as a stable moral agent than as a weather system: stirred by rhetoric, soothed by spectacle, redirected by fear. The subtext is uncomfortable because it implicates everyone. The flatterer is guilty, sure, but the flattered have made flattery profitable. Shakespeare isn’t warning that demagogues might arrive; he’s noting they already have, and they’ve learned to speak in our applause.
The address to “Faith” matters. It reads like an oath and a shrug at once, as if the speaker is saying: trust me, we’ve seen this show before. The archaic cadence (“there hath been”) gives the observation the weight of precedent, turning political cynicism into something like folk wisdom. Shakespeare is fond of exposing how power works when it’s not posing for portraits: leaders don’t always rise by virtue; they rise by reading the audience.
Contextually, this belongs to the playwright’s recurring obsession with the volatility of the multitude and the theatricality of authority. In the histories and Roman plays especially, the public is treated less as a stable moral agent than as a weather system: stirred by rhetoric, soothed by spectacle, redirected by fear. The subtext is uncomfortable because it implicates everyone. The flatterer is guilty, sure, but the flattered have made flattery profitable. Shakespeare isn’t warning that demagogues might arrive; he’s noting they already have, and they’ve learned to speak in our applause.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fake Friends |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
