Shakespeare and His Love: A Play in Four Acts and an Epilogue - Frank Harris

LONDON:

FRANK PALMER,

RED LION COURT, E.C.

First published November, 1910.

Copyrighted in the United States of America

INTRODUCTION

The National Shakespeare Memorial Committee, it is announced, is about to produce a new play by Mr. Bernard Shaw entitled “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.” Fourteen years ago, provoked by the nonsense Mr. Shaw was then writing about Shakespeare in The Saturday Review, I wrote some articles on Shakespeare in the same paper, in which I showed in especial that Hamlet was a good portrait of Shakespeare, for the master had unconsciously pictured Hamlet over again as Macbeth and Jaques, Angelo, Orsino, Lear, Posthumus, Prospero and other heroes. With admirable quickness Mr. Bernard Shaw proceeded to annex as much of this theory of mine as he thought important; in preface after preface to his plays, notably in the preface to “Man and Superman,” he took my discovery and used it as if it were his. For instance, he wrote:—