The Telegram. — 1901-02-12 (Weymouth, Dorset, England)

SHAW AND SHAKSPERE.  Mr. George Bernard Shaw, whose delight it has been to criticise Shakspere, offers some explanation in his three Plays for Puritans:  It does not follow that the right to criticise Shakspere involves the power of writing better pleys. And in fact—do not be surprised at my modesty—l do not profess to write better plays. The writing of practicable stage plays does not present an infinite scope to human talent; and the dramatists who magnify its difficulties are humbug. The summit of their art has been attained again and again. No man will ever write a better tragedy than "Lear," a better comedy than "Le Festin de Pierre" or "Peer Gvnt," a better opera than "Don Giovanni," a better music drama than "The Niblung's Ring," or, for the matter of that, better fashionable plays and melodramas than are now being turned out by writers whom nobody dreams of mocking with the word immortal. It is the philosophy, the outlook on life, that changes, not the craft of the playwright. A generation that is thoroughly moralised and pariotised, that conceives virtuous indignation as spiritually nutritious, that murders the murderer and robs the thief, that grovels before all sorts ot ideals, social, military, ecclesiastical, royal and divine, may be, from my point of view, steeped in error; it need not want for as good plays as the hand of man can produce. Only, those plays will be neither written nor relished by men in whose philosophy guilt and innocenoe,and consequently revenge and idolatry, have no meaning. Such men must re-write all the old plays in terms of their own philosophy; and that is why, is Mr. Stuart-bilennie has pointed out, there can be no new drama without a new philosophy. What is the use of writing plays or painting frescoes if you have nothing more to say or shew than was said and shewn by Shakspere, Michael Angelo, and Raphael? If these had not seen things differently,for better or worse, from the dramatic poets of the Townley mysteries. or from Giotto, they could not have produced their works; no, not though their skill of pen and hand had been double what it was. After them there was no need (and need alone nerves men to face the persecution in the teeth of which new art is brought to birth) to re-do the already done, until in due time, when their philosophy wore itself out, a new race of nineteenth-century poets and critics, from Byron to William Morris, began first to speak coldly of Shakspere and Raphael, and then to re-discover, in the medieval art which these Renascence masters had superseded, certain forgotten elements which Were gennl• lasting again for the new harvest.  It is a pleasing sign of the times that at several oi the memorial services bele in parish churches in this district Nonconformist ministers took part. This wee the c ise at Weymouth, where the Hey. W. Tanner Hughes, Congregational 11111.11Fatti, read the lesson; at Dorchester, where the Hey J. Howard, Wesleyan minister, the Mayor's chaplain, performed a similar duty; and also at Sout Petherton and Shepton Mallet.  Lady Cork, the wife of the LordLieutenant of Somerset, has sent to tile Wcatern Daily Press a short poem, " RequiescaL We append the closiog staszAs : Wrapped in dear relics of the past,. In folded hands CMS, On breast— Symbol of Faith her soul held fast That long nroved soul bath gained its rest. Of many land, the Rulers come To watch, with homage justly due, Her pa.eing to the Silent Home, 'Mil throng of loyal heart, sal true. Yet through all grieve,pompo afhsufatiag daughters nhteilia H weep, Cief con fort in this thought way find, God givech His beloved sleep. • The Queen was buried in her bridal veil, wearing the tinge given her by her husband, and holding in both hands a silver cross.