ABSTRACT
Pestilence lurked always in the slums of the big towns, and at intervals swept abroad, the Black Death in the fourteenth century destroying half the population of Europe. Within Shakespeare’s half-century an outbreak in Rome took 100,000 people, and one in Constantinople 200,000. Among the many interpreters of Shakespeare—for whom he is not to blame, from whom he has no defence—one critic stands out, unique, with a coherent story. And yet, unlike Sir Sydney Lee, Mr. Harris has made an indelible impression. He has shown Shakespeare alive, not as a god, but as a man. He prepared the way for “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” by George Bernard Shaw, for “Will Shakespeare,” by Clemence Dane, and “William Shakespeare,” by Bax and Rubenstein. The lyric is Pembroke’s beyond all question, most of it too indecent for publication, written to assuage the wounded feelings of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, sore after Shakespeare’s comment on her looks.
