id 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: