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Might then have made renowned and glorious.
Let me confide a secret to your ear:
Three tragedies I've written in a style
Never attempted by another poet,
Original in matter as in form,
And full of great sensational effects,
Which, were they once produced upon the stage,
Would rank me even with the Bard of Avon.
You smile, sir! but I mean just what I say,
In fact I know not if I'm not too modest,
And should not claim a higher place than Shakespeare:
For what says Bernard Shaw?—"Excepting Homer,
There is no famous writer I despise
So much as I despise the vaunted Shakespeare,
When I compare my intellect with his:"
(And that is just what I should say of Shaw,
Were I—but modesty restrains my speech.)
Buchanan too (I mean the famous Robert,
The author of—hang it! I've clean forgotten
Their names—of countless poems, plays, and novels,)
He also thinks that Shakespeare's overrated,—
See! here's his "Open Letter," where he shows
That the absurd idolatry of Shakespeare
Is but a superstition of the mob,
Who worship him for his faults and not his merits;
(Robert, you see, is candid and allows
That Shakespeare has some merits): Listen now—
"Shakespeare, of course, writing in barbarous times,
Wrote like a savage: he could do naught else!
But what is most amazing in his most
Amazing genius is the thorough-going
Consistency with which he ever seizes
The brutal and the barbarous side of things,
Be it the Trojan War or Jack Cade's rising,
Let me confide a secret to your ear:
Three tragedies I've written in a style
Never attempted by another poet,
Original in matter as in form,
And full of great sensational effects,
Which, were they once produced upon the stage,
Would rank me even with the Bard of Avon.
You smile, sir! but I mean just what I say,
In fact I know not if I'm not too modest,
And should not claim a higher place than Shakespeare:
For what says Bernard Shaw?—"Excepting Homer,
There is no famous writer I despise
So much as I despise the vaunted Shakespeare,
When I compare my intellect with his:"
(And that is just what I should say of Shaw,
Were I—but modesty restrains my speech.)
Buchanan too (I mean the famous Robert,
The author of—hang it! I've clean forgotten
Their names—of countless poems, plays, and novels,)
He also thinks that Shakespeare's overrated,—
See! here's his "Open Letter," where he shows
That the absurd idolatry of Shakespeare
Is but a superstition of the mob,
Who worship him for his faults and not his merits;
(Robert, you see, is candid and allows
That Shakespeare has some merits): Listen now—
"Shakespeare, of course, writing in barbarous times,
Wrote like a savage: he could do naught else!
But what is most amazing in his most
Amazing genius is the thorough-going
Consistency with which he ever seizes
The brutal and the barbarous side of things,
Be it the Trojan War or Jack Cade's rising,
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