The National Shakespeare Memorial Committee,it is announced, is about to producea new play by Mr. Bernard Shaw entitled“The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.” Fourteenyears ago, provoked by the nonsense Mr.Shaw was then writing about Shakespearein The Saturday Review, I wrote some articleson Shakespeare in the same paper, in whichI showed in especial that Hamlet was a goodportrait of Shakespeare, for the master hadunconsciously pictured Hamlet over again asMacbeth and Jaques, Angelo, Orsino, Lear,Posthumus, Prospero and other heroes.With admirable quickness Mr. Bernard Shawproceeded to annex as much of this theory ofmine as he thought important; in preface afterpreface to his plays, notably in the preface tovi“Man and Superman,” he took my discoveryand used it as if it were his. For instance, hewrote:—

“He (Shakespeare) must be judged by thosecharacters into which he puts what he knowsof himself, his Hamlets and Macbeths andLears and Prosperos.”

And again:—

“All Shakespeare’s projections of thedeepest humanity he knew have the samedefect”—and so forth and so on.

In the preface to “Three Plays for Puritans”Mr. Shaw gave me a casual mention, justsufficient to afford him a fig-leaf, so tospeak, of covering if the charge of plagiarismwere brought against him: “His (Shakespeare’s)genuine critics,” he wrote, “fromBen Jonson to Mr. Frank Harris, have alwayskept as far on this side idolatry as I.”

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