As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
All these might be taken as the traditional inheritance of the aristocrat, whether real or imagined. In Shakespeare’s day, as in almost any age before the 20th century, there was a widespread belief that upper class people were naturally better in every respect and that genetic excellence was theirs by inheritance.  Aristos  is the Greek word for ‘best’, from which the word  ‘aristocracy’  is derived, meaning ‘rule by the best’. These  best  people were of course by definition the upper classes.  This belief is still alive today, but more subject to questioning by modern scientific investigation.
Sonnet 37