ABSTRACT
In a world so busy as this it is well that even Shakespearian controversies should be rapidly superseded by other interests, and that so important a contention as Mr. Bernard Shaw’s that he can and does write, when he likes, as good poetic drama as Shakespeare, or better, should have ceased, in four short months, to occupy the public mind. Hitherto it has been thought difficult, but that is no reason why it should be impossible, and at the present time the need of some such superiority is pressing among the dramatists who have almost driven Shakespeare from the stage. Shakespeare probably did not know it when he was writing what is Shakespeare, but he was fully aware when he was writing what is not Shakespeare. In his poor, seventeenth-century sort, Shakespeare could make out a case, and his case should not be invalidated by the foolish fanaticism of his worshippers, who would see no defect in him.
