In the merely personal and private sphere we are often 
reminded of how changes of tone and attitude are demanded 
of different times and seasons in order to keep situations in 
hand. British clubmen, for the sake of companionship and 
amiability, have long excluded the hot topics of religion and 
politics from mention inside the highly participational club. In 
the same vein, W. H. Auden wrote, “. . . this season the man of 
goodwill will wear his heart up his sleeve, not on it. . . . the 
honest manly style is today suited only to Iago” (Introduction 
to John Betjeman’s Slick But Not Streamlined ). In the 
Renaissance, as print technology hotted up the social milieu  to 
a very high point, the gentleman and the courtier (Hamlet-
Mercutio style) adopted, in contrast, the casual and cool 
nonchalance of the playful and superior being. The Iago allusion 
of Auden reminds us that Iago was the alter ego  and assistant 
of the intensely earnest and very non-nonchalant General