Note 123 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
One day at a reception at the Playgoers' Club, in London, Mr. Osmon Edwards delivered an address on “The superiority of Shaw to Shakespeare.” He showed that Shakespeare was a bad dramatist, because he was a great poet; he asserted that his humour was vulgar and his tragedy puerile; and he endeavoured to prove that Shaw was far superior to Shakespeare in his realism, in his critical sense of life, in the depth of his thought, in his stage technique.
At this point, Shaw himself, who was among the audience, rose to his feet and begged to say a few words in favour of his famous rival. What a delicious situation—and one not unworthy of Bernard Shaw!
Compare The English Stage of To-Day, by Mario Borsa, pp. 152-3. John Lane, London and New York, 1908.