If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of
the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays
and mine.  Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of
adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that
scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands.

Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with
innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him
as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul.  Hamlet's
experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber.  A poor man
is useful on the stage only as a blind man is:  to excite sympathy.
The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great
effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford
to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been
as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort
that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that
lay in Shakespear's power.  When poverty is abolished, and leisure and
grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch
which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be
those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want
of money or wretched drudgery.  Our plays of poverty and squalor, now
the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men,
will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read
only by historical students of social pathology.

Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen!  Would even
John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered?  Surely a more
mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage.  The
very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that
hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently
killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of
divinity.  I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's
Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in
general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side.  I could
even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his
lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism.  He had of course
no prevision of democratic Collectivism.  He was, except in the
commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through.
Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public
business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of
appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention
quite in the vein of the Fabian Society.  He was concerned about
drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial
system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from
idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not
merely despair of human nature.  His first and last word on parliament
was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see
the thing thou dost not."  He had no notion of the feeling with which
the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to
the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome.  The explanation is, not a
general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day
what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation,
and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig
principles of individual liberty.




Shakespear and the British Public

I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted
of "the pangs of love despised."  I have given my reasons for
believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity
which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop.  But Mr
Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a
very serious one.  He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and
been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public
was another matter.  The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by
no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was
excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views.

He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry
VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the
originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the
common people.  But Shakespear was not satisfied with this.  What is
the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any
notions but those of Autolycus?  Shakespear did not see the world as
Autolycus did:  he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not
quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of
penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror
of its cruelty and uncleanliness.

Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to
impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce
popular work.  Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance!  Their earlier
works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they
were not popular when they were written.  The alternative of doing
popular work was never really open to them:  had they stooped they
would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's
heads.  But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this
way.  They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap
up the measure.  They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it
for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces;
but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound
magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art.  When Shakespear was
forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it
mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About
Nothing."  All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two
genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our
theatres.  Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled
Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to
express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue
to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good
deal.  The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history
of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes
Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have
said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried"
was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all
speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's
Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how
much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so
forth.  And the plays which were written without great and predominant
parts, such as Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and
Measure for Measure, have dropped on our stage as dead as the second
part of Goethe's Faust or Ibsen's Emperor or Galilean.

Here, then, Shakespear had a real grievance; and though it is a
sentimental exaggeration to describe him as a broken-hearted man in
the face of the passages of reckless jollity and serenely happy poetry
in his latest plays, yet the discovery that his most serious work
could reach success only when carried on the back of a very
fascinating actor who was enormously overcharging his part, and that
the serious plays which did not contain parts big enough to hold the
overcharge were left on the shelf, amply accounts for the evident fact
that Shakespear did not end his life in a glow of enthusiastic
satisfaction with mankind and with the theatre, which is all that Mr
Harris can allege in support of his broken-heart theory.  But even if
Shakespear had had no failures, it was not possible for a man of his
powers to observe the political and moral conduct of his
contemporaries without perceiving that they were incapable of dealing
with the problems raised by their own civilization, and that their
attempts to carry out the codes of law and to practise the religions
offered to them by great prophets and law-givers were and still are so
foolish that we now call for The Superman, virtually a new species, to
rescue the world from mismanagement.  This is the real sorrow of great
men; and in the face of it the notion that when a great man speaks
bitterly or looks melancholy he must be troubled by a disappointment
in love seems to me sentimental trifling.

If I have carried the reader with me thus far, he will find that
trivial as this little play of mine is, its sketch of Shakespear is
more complete than its levity suggests.  Alas! its appeal for a
National Theatre as a monument to Shakespear failed to touch the very
stupid people who cannot see that a National Theatre is worth having
for the sake of the National Soul.  I had unfortunately represented
Shakespear as treasuring and using (as I do myself) the jewels of
unconsciously musical speech which common people utter and throw away
every day; and this was taken as a disparagement of Shakespear's
"originality."  Why was I born with such contemporaries?  Why is
Shakespear made ridiculous by such a posterity?



_The Dark Lady of The Sonnets was first performed at the Haymarket
Theatre, on the afternoon of Thursday, the 24th November 1910, by Mona
Limerick as the Dark Lady, Suzanne Sheldon as Queen Elizabeth,
Granville Barker as Shakespear, and Hugh Tabberer as the Warder._




THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS

_Fin de siecle 15-1600.  Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace
at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames.  The Palace clock chimes four
quarters and strikes eleven._

_A Beefeater on guard.  A Cloaked Man approaches._

THE BEEFEATER.  Stand.  Who goes there?  Give the word.

THE MAN.  Marry!  I cannot.  I have clean forgotten it.

THE BEEFEATER.  Then cannot you pass here.  What is your business?
Who are you?  Are you a true man?

THE MAN.  Far from it, Master Warder.  I am not the same man two days
together:  sometimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost.

THE BEEFEATER.  _[recoiling]_  A ghost!  Angels and ministers of grace
defend us!

THE MAN.  Well said, Master Warder.  With your leave I will set that
down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for
remembrance.  _[He takes out his tablets and writes]._  Methinks this
is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like
a ghost in the moonlight.  Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what
I say.  I keep tryst here to-night with a dark lady.  She promised to
bribe the warder.  I gave her the wherewithal:  four tickets for the
Globe Theatre.

THE BEEFEATER.  Plague on her!  She gave me two only.

THE MAN.  _[detaching a tablet]_  My friend:  present this tablet, and
you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespear are
in hand.  Bring your wife.  Bring your friends.  Bring the whole
garrison.  There is ever plenty of room.

THE BEEFEATER.  I care not for these new-fangled plays.  No man can
understand a word of them.  They are all talk.  Will you not give me a
pass for The Spanish Tragedy?

THE MAN.  To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend.  Here are
the means.  _[He gives him a piece of gold]._

THE BEEFEATER.  _[overwhelmed]_  Gold!  Oh, sir, you are a better
paymaster than your dark lady.

THE MAN.  Women are thrifty, my friend.

THE BEEFEATER.  Tis so, sir.  And you have to consider that the most
open handed of us must een cheapen that which we buy every day.  This
lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life.

THE MAN.  _[turning pale]_  I'll not believe it.

THE BEEFEATER.  Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an
adventure like this twice in the year.

THE MAN.  Villain:  wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done
thus before? that she maketh occasions to meet other men?

THE BEEFEATER.  Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think
you are the only pretty man in the world?  A merry lady, sir:  a warm
bit of stuff.  Go to:  I'll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman
that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled.

THE MAN.  Master Warder:  is it not a strange thing that we, knowing
that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular
drab no better than the rest?

THE BEEFEATER.  Not all, sir.  Decent bodies, many of them.

THE MAN.  _[intolerantly]_  No.  All false.  All.  If thou deny it,
thou liest.

THE BEEFEATER.  You judge too much by the Court, sir.  There, indeed,
you may say of frailty that its name is woman.

THE MAN.  _[pulling out his tablets again]_  Prithee say that again:
that about frailty:  the strain of music.

THE BEEFEATER.  What strain of music, sir?  I'm no musician, God
knows.

THE MAN.  There is music in your soul:  many of your degree have it
very notably.  _[Writing]_  "Frailty:  thy name is woman!"
_[Repeating it affectionately]_  "Thy name is woman."

THE BEEFEATER.  Well, sir, it is but four words.  Are you a snapper-up
of such unconsidered trifles?

THE MAN.  _[eagerly]_  Snapper-up of--_[he gasps]_  Oh!  Immortal
phrase!  _[He writes it down]._  This man is a greater than I.

THE BEEFEATER.  You have my lord Pembroke's trick, sir.

THE MAN.  Like enough:  he is my near friend.  But what call you his
trick?

THE BEEFEATER.  Making sonnets by moonlight.  And to the same lady
too.

THE MAN.  No!

THE BEEFEATER.  Last night he stood here on your errand, and in your
shoes.

THE MAN.  Thou, too, Brutus!  And I called him friend!

THE BEEFEATER.  Tis ever so, sir.

THE MAN.  Tis ever so.  Twas ever so.  _[He turns away, overcome]._
Two Gentlemen of Verona!  Judas!  Judas!!

THE BEEFEATER.  Is he so bad as that, sir?

THE MAN.  _[recovering his charity and self-possession]_  Bad?  Oh no.
Human, Master Warder, human.  We call one another names when we are
offended, as children do.  That is all.

THE BEEFEATER.  Ay, sir:  words, words, words.  Mere wind, sir.  We
fill our bellies with the east wind, sir, as the Scripture hath it.
You cannot feed capons so.

THE MAN.  A good cadence.  By your leave _[He makes a note of it]._

THE BEEFEATER.  What manner of thing is a cadence, sir?  I have not
heard of it.

THE MAN.  A thing to rule the world with, friend.

THE BEEFEATER.  You speak strangely, sir:  no offence.  But, an't like
you, you are a very civil gentleman; and a poor man feels drawn to
you, you being, as twere, willing to share your thought with him.

THE MAN.  Tis my trade.  But alas! the world for the most part will
none of my thoughts.

_Lamplight streams from the palace door as it opens from within._

THE BEEFEATER.  Here comes your lady, sir.  I'll to t'other end of my
ward.  You may een take your time about your business:  I shall not
return too suddenly unless my sergeant comes prowling round.  Tis a
fell sergeant, sir:  strict in his arrest.  Go'd'en, sir; and good
luck!  _[He goes]._

THE MAN.  "Strict in his arrest"!  "Fell sergeant"!  _[As if tasting a
ripe plum]_  O-o-o-h!  _[He makes a note of them]._

_A Cloaked Lady gropes her way from the palace and wanders along the
terrace, walking in her sleep._

THE LADY.  _[rubbing her hands as if washing them]_  Out, damned spot.
You will mar all with these cosmetics.  God made you one face; and you
make yourself another.  Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being
beautified.  All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor
hand.

THE MAN.  "All the perfumes of Arabia"!  "Beautified"!  "Beautified"!
a poem in a single word.  Can this be my Mary?  _[To the Lady]_  Why
do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time?
Are you ailing?  You walk like the dead.  Mary!  Mary!

THE LADY.  _[echoing him]_  Mary!  Mary!  Who would have thought that
woman to have had so much blood in her!  Is it my fault that my
counsellors put deeds of blood on me?  Fie!  If you were women you
would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully.  Hold not up
her head so:  the hair is false.  I tell you yet again, Mary's buried:
she cannot come out of her grave.  I fear her not:  these cats that
dare jump into thrones though they be fit only for men's laps must be
put away.  Whats done cannot be undone.  Out, I say.  Fie! a queen,
and freckled!

THE MAN.  _[shaking her arm]_  Mary, I say:  art asleep?

_The Lady wakes; starts; and nearly faints.  He catches her on his
arm._

THE LADY.  Where am I?  What art thou?

THE MAN.  I cry your mercy.  I have mistook your person all this
while.  Methought you were my Mary:  my mistress.

THE LADY.  _[outraged]_  Profane fellow:  how do you dare?

THE MAN.  Be not wroth with me, lady.  My mistress is a marvellous
proper woman.  But she does not speak so well as you.  "All the
perfumes of Arabia"!  That was well said:  spoken with good accent and
excellent discretion.

THE LADY.  Have I been in speech with you here?

THE MAN.  Why, yes, fair lady.  Have you forgot it?

THE LADY.  I have walked in my sleep.

THE MAN.  Walk ever in your sleep, fair one; for then your words drop
like honey.

THE LADY.  _[with cold majesty]_  Know you to whom you speak, sir,
that you dare express yourself so saucily?

THE MAN.  _[unabashed]_  Not I, not care neither.  You are some lady
of the Court, belike.  To me there are but two sorts of women:  those
with excellent voices, sweet and low, and cackling hens that cannot
make me dream.  Your voice has all manner of loveliness in it.  Grudge
me not a short hour of its music.

THE LADY.  Sir:  you are overbold.  Season your admiration for a while
with--

THE MAN.  _[holding up his hand to stop her]_  "Season your admiration
for a while--"

THE LADY.  Fellow:  do you dare mimic me to my face?

THE MAN.  Tis music.  Can you not hear?  When a good musician sings a
song, do you not sing it and sing it again till you have caught and
fixed its perfect melody?  "Season your admiration for a while":  God!
the history of man's heart is in that one word admiration.
Admiration!  _[Taking up his tablets]_  What was it?  "Suspend your
admiration for a space--"

THE LADY.  A very vile jingle of esses.  I said "Season your--"

THE MAN.  _[hastily]_  Season:  ay, season, season, season.  Plague on
my memory, my wretched memory!  I must een write it down.  _[He begins
to write, but stops, his memory failing him]._  Yet tell me which was
the vile jingle?  You said very justly:  mine own ear caught it even
as my false tongue said it.

THE LADY.  You said "for a space."  I said "for a while."

THE MAN.  "For a while" _[he corrects it]._  Good!  _[Ardently]_  And
now be mine neither for a space nor a while, but for ever.

THE LADY.  Odds my life!  Are you by chance making love to me, knave?

THE MAN.  Nay:  tis you who have made the love:  I but pour it out at
your feet.  I cannot but love a lass that sets such store by an apt
word.  Therefore vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman--no:  I have
said that before somewhere; and the wordy garment of my love for you
must be fire-new--

THE LADY.  You talk too much, sir.  Let me warn you:  I am more
accustomed to be listened to than preached at.

THE MAN.  The most are like that that do talk well.  But though you
spake with the tongues of angels, as indeed you do, yet know that I am
the king of words--

THE LADY.  A king, ha!

THE MAN.  No less.  We are poor things, we men and women--

THE LADY.  Dare you call me woman?

THE MAN.  What nobler name can I tender you?  How else can I love you?
Yet you may well shrink from the name:  have I not said we are but
poor things?  Yet there is a power that can redeem us.

THE LADY.  Gramercy for your sermon, sir.  I hope I know my duty.

THE MAN.  This is no sermon, but the living truth.  The power I speak
of is the power of immortal poesy.  For know that vile as this world
is, and worms as we are, you have but to invest all this vileness with
a magical garment of words to transfigure us and uplift our souls til
earth flowers into a million heavens.

THE LADY.  You spoil your heaven with your million.  You are
extravagant.  Observe some measure in your speech.

THE MAN.  You speak now as Ben does.

THE LADY.  And who, pray, is Ben?

THE MAN.  A learned bricklayer who thinks that the sky is at the top
of his ladder, and so takes it on him to rebuke me for flying.  I tell
you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is
extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can
reveal.  It is heresy to deny it:  have you not been taught that in
the beginning was the Word? that the Word was with God? nay, that the
Word was God?

THE LADY.  Beware, fellow, how you presume to speak of holy things.
The Queen is the head of the Church.

THE MAN.  You are the head of my Church when you speak as you did at
first.  "All the perfumes of Arabia"!  Can the Queen speak thus?  They
say she playeth well upon the virginals.  Let her play so to me; and
I'll kiss her hands.  But until then, you are my Queen; and I'll kiss
those lips that have dropt music on my heart.  _[He puts his arms
about her]._

THE LADY.  Unmeasured impudence!  On your life, take your hands from
me.

_The Dark Lady comes stooping along the terrace behind them like a
running thrush.  When she sees how they are employed, she rises
angrily to her full height, and listens jealously._

THE MAN.  _[unaware of the Dark Lady]_  Then cease to make my hands
tremble with the streams of life you pour through them.  You hold me
as the lodestar holds the iron:  I cannot but cling to you.  We are
lost, you and I:  nothing can separate us now.

THE DARK LADY.  We shall see that, false lying hound, you and your
filthy trull.  _[With two vigorous cuffs, she knocks the pair asunder,
sending the man, who is unlucky enough to receive a righthanded blow,
sprawling an the flags]._  Take that, both of you!

THE CLOAKED LADY.  _[in towering wrath, throwing off her cloak and
turning in outraged majesty on her assailant]_  High treason!

THE DARK LADY.  _[recognizing her and falling on her knees in abject
terror]_  Will:  I am lost:  I have struck the Queen.

THE MAN.  _[sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture
allows]_  Woman:  you have struck WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.  _[stupent]_  Marry, come up!!!  Struck William
Shakespear quotha!  And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and
light-o'-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may
William Shakespear be?

THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  he is but a player.  Oh, I could have my hand
cut off--

QUEEN ELIZABETH.  Belike you will, mistress.  Have you bethought you
that I am like to have your head cut off as well?

THE DARK LADY.  Will:  save me.  Oh, save me.

ELIZABETH.  Save you!  A likely savior, on my royal word!  I had
thought this fellow at least an esquire; for I had hoped that even the
vilest of my ladies would not have dishonored my Court by wantoning
with a baseborn servant.

SHAKESPEAR.  _[indignantly scrambling to his feet]_  Base-born!  I, a
Shakespear of Stratford!  I, whose mother was an Arden! baseborn!  You
forget yourself, madam.

ELIZABETH.  _[furious]_  S'blood! do I so?  I will teach you--

THE DARK LADY.  _[rising from her knees and throwing herself between
them]_  Will:  in God's name anger her no further.  It is death.
Madam:  do not listen to him.

SHAKESPEAR.  Not were it een to save your life, Mary, not to mention
mine own, will I flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my
family.  I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor
bankrupt; but twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for
trade.  Never did he disown his debts.  Tis true he paid them not; but
it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and twas those
bills, in the hands of base hucksters, that were his undoing.

ELIZABETH.  _[grimly]_  The son of your father shall learn his place
in the presence of the daughter of Harry the Eighth.

SHAKESPEAR.  _[swelling with intolerant importance]_  Name not that
inordinate man in the same breath with Stratford's worthiest alderman.
John Shakespear wedded but once:  Harry Tudor was married six times.
You should blush to utter his name.

THE DARK LADY. |    Will:  for pity's sake--      | _crying out_

               |                                  | _together_

ELIZABETH.     |    Insolent dog--                |

SHAKESPEAR.  _[cutting them short]_  How know you that King Harry was
indeed your father?

ELIZABETH.     |    Zounds!  Now by--

               |    _[she stops to grind her teeth with rage]._

THE DARK LADY. |    She will have me whipped through

               |    the streets.  Oh God!  Oh God!

SHAKESPEAR.  Learn to know yourself better, madam.  I am an honest
gentleman of unquestioned parentage, and have already sent in my
demand for the coat-of-arms that is lawfully mine.  Can you say as
much for yourself?

ELIZABETH.  _[almost beside herself]_  Another word; and I begin with
mine own hands the work the hangman shall finish.

SHAKESPEAR.  You are no true Tudor:  this baggage here has as good a
right to your royal seat as you.  What maintains you on the throne of
England?  Is it your renowned wit? your wisdom that sets at naught the
craftiest statesmen of the Christian world?  No.  Tis the mere chance
that might have happened to any milkmaid, the caprice of Nature that
made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen.
_[Elizabeth's raised fists, on the point of striking him, fall to her
side]._  That is what hath brought all men to your feet, and founded
your throne on the impregnable rock of your proud heart, a stony
island in a sea of desire.  There, madam, is some wholesome blunt
honest speaking for you.  Now do your worst.

ELIZABETH.  _[with dignity]_  Master Shakespear:  it is well for you
that I am a merciful prince.  I make allowance for your rustic
ignorance.  But remember that there are things which be true, and are
yet not seemly to be said (I will not say to a queen; for you will
have it that I am none) but to a virgin.

SHAKESPEAR.  _[bluntly]_  It is no fault of mine that you are a
virgin, madam, albeit tis my misfortune.

THE DARK LADY.  _[terrified again]_  In mercy, madam, hold no further
discourse with him.  He hath ever some lewd jest on his tongue.  You
hear how he useth me! calling me baggage and the like to your
Majesty's face.

ELIZABETH.  As for you, mistress, I have yet to demand what your
business is at this hour in this place, and how you come to be so
concerned with a player that you strike blindly at your sovereign in
your jealousy of him.

THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  as I live and hope for salvation--

SHAKESPEAR.  _[sardonically]_  Ha!

THE DARK LADY.  _[angrily]_--ay, I'm as like to be saved as thou
that believest naught save some black magic of words and verses--I
say, madam, as I am a living woman I came here to break with him for
ever.  Oh, madam, if you would know what misery is, listen to this man
that is more than man and less at the same time.  He will tie you down
to anatomize your very soul:  he will wring tears of blood from your
humiliation; and then he will heal the wound with flatteries that no
woman can resist.

SHAKESPEAR.  Flatteries!  _[Kneeling]_  Oh, madam, I put my case at
your royal feet.  I confess to much.  I have a rude tongue:  I am
unmannerly:  I blaspheme against the holiness of anointed royalty; but
oh, my royal mistress, AM I a flatterer?

ELIZABETH.  I absolve you as to that.  You are far too plain a dealer
to please me.  _[He rises gratefully]._

THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  he is flattering you even as he speaks.

ELIZABETH.  _[a terrible flash in her eye]_  Ha!  Is it so?

SHAKESPEAR.  Madam:  she is jealous; and, heaven help me! not without
reason.  Oh, you say you are a merciful prince; but that was cruel of
you, that hiding of your royal dignity when you found me here.  For
how can I ever be content with this black-haired, black-eyed,
black-avised devil again now that I have looked upon real beauty and
real majesty?

THE DARK LADY.  _[wounded and desperate]_  He hath swore to me ten
times over that the day shall come in England when black women, for
all their foulness, shall be more thought on than fair ones.  _[To
Shakespear, scolding at him]_  Deny it if thou canst.  Oh, he is
compact of lies and scorns.  I am tired of being tossed up to heaven
and dragged down to hell at every whim that takes him.  I am ashamed
to my very soul that I have abased myself to love one that my father
would not have deemed fit to hold my stirrup--one that will talk to
all the world about me--that will put my love and my shame into his
plays and make me blush for myself there--that will write sonnets
about me that no man of gentle strain would put his hand to.  I am all
disordered:  I know not what I am saying to your Majesty:  I am of all
ladies most deject and wretched--

SHAKESPEAR.  Ha!  At last sorrow hath struck a note of music out of
thee.  "Of all ladies most deject and wretched."  _[He makes a note of
it]._

THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  I implore you give me leave to go.  I am
distracted with grief and shame.  I--

ELIZABETH.  Go _[The Dark Lady tries to kiss her hand]._  No more.
Go.  _[The Dark Lady goes, convulsed]._  You have been cruel to that
poor fond wretch, Master Shakespear.

SHAKESPEAR.  I am not cruel, madam; but you know the fable of Jupiter
and Semele.  I could not help my lightnings scorching her.

ELIZABETH.  You have an overweening conceit of yourself, sir, that
displeases your Queen.

SHAKESPEAR.  Oh, madam, can I go about with the modest cough of a
minor poet, belittling my inspiration and making the mightiest wonder
of your reign a thing of nought?  I have said that "not marble nor the
gilded monuments of princes shall outlive" the words with which I make
the world glorious or foolish at my will.  Besides, I would have you
think me great enough to grant me a boon.

ELIZABETH.  I hope it is a boon that may be asked of a virgin Queen
without offence, sir.  I mistrust your forwardness; and I bid you
remember that I do not suffer persons of your degree (if I may say so
without offence to your father the alderman) to presume too far.

SHAKESPEAR.  Oh, madam, I shall not forget myself again; though by my
life, could I make you a serving wench, neither a queen nor a virgin
should you be for so much longer as a flash of lightning might take to
cross the river to the Bankside.  But since you are a queen and will
none of me, nor of Philip of Spain, nor of any other mortal man, I
must een contain myself as best I may, and ask you only for a boon of
State.

ELIZABETH.  A boon of State already!  You are becoming a courtier like
the rest of them.  You lack advancement.

SHAKESPEAR.  "Lack advancement."  By your Majesty's leave:  a queenly
phrase.  _[He is about to write it down]._

ELIZABETH.  _[striking the tablets from his hand]_  Your tables begin
to anger me, sir.  I am not here to write your plays for you.

SHAKESPEAR.  You are here to inspire them, madam.  For this, among the
rest, were you ordained.  But the boon I crave is that you do endow a
great playhouse, or, if I may make bold to coin a scholarly name for
it, a National Theatre, for the better instruction and gracing of your
Majesty's subjects.

ELIZABETH.  Why, sir, are there not theatres enow on the Bankside and
in Blackfriars?

SHAKESPEAR.  Madam:  these are the adventures of needy and desperate
men that must, to save themselves from perishing of want, give the
sillier sort of people what they best like; and what they best like,
God knows, is not their own betterment and instruction, as we well see
by the example of the churches, which must needs compel men to
frequent them, though they be open to all without charge.  Only when
there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in
petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay
the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit
to boot.  To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble
and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high
nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is:  the one a
skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works.  I have
also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable
foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man's
attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the
groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of
the same kidney sheweth her wit by saying endless naughtinesses to a
gentleman as lewd as herself.  I have writ these to save my friends
from penury, yet shewing my scorn for such follies and for them that
praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not
as _I_ like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is.
And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the
stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all,
she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town.  Wherefore I
humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of
the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no
merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the
worse than with the better.  Thereby you shall also encourage other
men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave
it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm.
For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the
minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done
in show on the stage, they will presently be doing in earnest in the
world, which is but a larger stage.  Of late, as you know, the Church
taught the people by means of plays; but the people flocked only to
such as were full of superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and
so the Church, which also was just then brought into straits by the
policy of your royal father, did abandon and discountenance the art of
playing; and thus it fell into the hands of poor players and greedy
merchants that had their pockets to look to and not the greatness of
this your kingdom.  Therefore now must your Majesty take up that good
work that your Church hath abandoned, and restore the art of playing
to its former use and dignity.

ELIZABETH.  Master Shakespear:  I will speak of this matter to the
Lord Treasurer.

SHAKESPEAR.  Then am I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord
Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the
necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for
his own nephew.

ELIZABETH.  Master Shakespear:  you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any
wise mend it.  I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd
a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand
things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have
its penny from the general purse.  I tell thee, Master Will, it will
be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man
cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the
mouth of those whom God inspires.  By that time you and I will be dust
beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then,
and men be still riding instead of flying.  Now it may be that by then
your works will be dust also.

SHAKESPEAR.  They will stand, madam:  fear nor for that.

ELIZABETH.  It may prove so.  But of this I am certain (for I know my
countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world,
even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have
its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure.  And
she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in
the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody
else doing.  In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can
by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most
damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear
are the best you have ever done.  But this I will say, that if I could
speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend
them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said
that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that
maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and
interludes.  _[The clock chimes the first quarter.  The warder returns
on his round]._  And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better
beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the
naughtiest of her subjects.  Ho there!  Who keeps ward on the queen's
lodgings tonight?

THE WARDER.  I do, an't please your majesty.

ELIZABETH.  See that you keep it better in future.  You have let pass
a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber.
Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I
shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace gates are between us.

SHAKESPEAR.  _[kissing her hand]_  My body goes through the gate into
the darkness, madam; but my thoughts follow you.

ELIZABETH.  How! to my bed!

SHAKESPEAR.  No, madam, to your prayers, in which I beg you to
remember my theatre.

ELIZABETH.  That is my prayer to posterity.  Forget not your own to
God; and so goodnight, Master Will.

SHAKESPEAR.  Goodnight, great Elizabeth.  God save the Queen!

ELIZABETH.  Amen.

_Exeunt severally:  she to her chamber:  he, in custody of the warder,
to the gate nearest Blackfriars._


AYOT, ST. LAWRENCE, _20th June_ 1910.


Notes on the editing:  Italicized text is delimited with underlines.
Punctuation and spelling retained as in the printed text.
Shaw intentionally spelled many words according to a non-standard
system.  For example, "don't" is given as "dont" (without apostrophe),
"Dr." is given as "Dr" (without a period at the end), and
"Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear" (no "e" at the end).  Where
several characters in the play are speaking at once, I have indicated
it with vertical bars ("|").  The pound (currency) symbol has been
replaced by the word "pounds".