ANARCHISM IN LITERATURE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1911, Page 19

ANARCHISM IN LITERATURE.

BERNARD SHAW INDICTED. Mr. Bernard Shaw was in considerable evidence in London last month, and in various Ways (records a contemporary). At a matinee in aid of the Shakespeafe Memorial Theatre, held at the Haymafket Theatre on 24th November, his new one-act play, entitled ','The Dark Lady of the Sonnets," proved the chief attraction of the afternoon. The inference of the title is, of course, to the still unknown fair immortalised in the wonderful series of sonnets, which at least show that whoever she was she had power to inspire the greatest of poets to incomparable neights of ordered rhapsody. Following tradition, Mr. Shaw discovers her in Mary Fitton, a fiery - tempered but apparently overwhelming attractive maid-of-honour to Queen Elizabeth, and one of the most humorous moments in the play is thafc wherein Mary enters to find. Shakespeare engaged in intimate converse with a veiled lady, whom she immediately knocks down, to discover to her horror that she has smacked the face of the Queen herself. More sustained diversion was in the fact that ! the characters (al' of them represented in Shakespeare's plays) utter from time to time golden phrases now become household words t>y reason of theit Shakespearian setting, and the immortal William himself is seen to have in constant use a set of tablets upon which ho jots down these apparently uhconsidered trifles of other people for Use in his next hew play. That characteristic Shavism is varied unusually ih his case, however, by many passages of lofty eloquence in pi'aisß of Shakespeare, and altogether the piece was received with enthusiasm. But it sdtin drew other and less pleasant attention) for Mr. Frank Harris, an eminent Shakespearian, immediately attacked Mr. Shaw furiously for direct plagiarism ; from a published pla\ of his own Wherein the same subject is treated, and many of the same incidents are to be found. And while that quatrel wa*» at its height, Ml\ E. Wake Cook published hi the Contemporary Review a tremendous indictment of Mr. Shaw and his school, entitled "Anarchism in Literature," which anarchism he asserts t-> be "poisoning the national thought, undermining religion and morality, overturning all ideals, and bringing chaos int6 Our language. . . . Faced as we are by; grim and portentous SpHinx-riddles, this is not the time for Mephistophelinn mirth and mockery or super-nonsense ; ' we heed clear-seeing, insight, foresight, and truth of statement. . . . Mr. Shaw poses as the intellectually Superior person. ... He calls Milton an idiot, Nelson a coward ; the gentleman *s a Hat and 'a monster' ; and he pours bitterest contempt upon all our national heroes. . . . His plays are often delightful, but his philosophy is sharp, shallow, and destructive, and he shows no real grip of any of the great problems on Which he dogmatises with such youth-like omniscience. ..." There is much more to the same effect, and Mr. Shaw may be conceived of as deep in manufacture of humorous sallies by way of reply to what is perhaps the most e'lfective statement of the case for the other side that has yet appeared.