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Show SHAW 15 ACCUSED CF STEALING DOPE The charge of plagiarism which Frank Harris has brought against George Dernard Sh:.w has treated quite a sensation, and interest In the controversy which haa been hotly waged over the matter surpasses that shown over any similar case In recent years. Mr. Shaw has been accused of many things, but this Is tho tlrst time he has been cited as a crlbber, and the fact that Harris and G. P. S. were tho ii.ost intimate friends for many years makes the offense all tho more heinous If line. Harris, who Is odo of our foremost Shakespearean scholars, claims that Hiaw In writing his "D.irk Lady of the bonnets' had deliberately amiroprl i-ted material concerning the life and love affair f Shakespeare with Mary Fltton. which he (Harris) originally discovered and imparted to Shaw in confidence and Liter used us tho basis of his new play, "Shakespeare and His Love." I'p to date O. It. S. has Ignored the charges of his old friend nnd has not deigned to make any re- i-iy. "I assert," fays Harris, 'that Shaw has cribbed his Mary Fltton from me. 1 b:.ve shown that what Tyler took to be n mere episode la Shakespeare's life was in fact the maMor passion of II; that Shakespeare's love for Mary Fltton lasted not the sonnet tlmo merely, but throughout his maturity; that It turned blm from a writer of comedies and histories Into the author of the greatest tragedies which have ever been conceived, and that Jusi as re painted himself again and again as tho hero of twenty plays so he painted his love as tbo heroine of play after play for a dozen yours "Ry proving that he was passionate-j passionate-j ly devoted to Mary Fl'tou for over a I dozen years I have cleared him from scandalous Imputation and given him to the love nnd admiration of men In his rounncrs as he lhed. It Is unduly modest of mo to say that I have done more lor Shakespeare, for the true knowledge of the mun and his character, charac-ter, and for Mary Fltton, too, thau a i hundred Tylers. "Now to prove Mr. Shaw's cribbing. His Mary Fltton enters as a Jealous woman, raging with anger; she strikes the queen and Shakespeare and tdangn them both. When she finds out It Is the queen she has struck she begs pardon humbly. Mr. Shaw says that this Mary Fltton of his Is "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.' Where did he get her? Froru my picture of her drawn from the plays chiefly, but cot wholly from her portrait as Cleopatra; there Shakespeare painted hlB love superbly, as 1 have shown, thero he poses her ns Jealous and arms her with quick temper, quid; tongue, and quick hands (she strikes the servant and hales blm about Uy the hair). Will Mr. Shaw In face of this double proof still asKert that his 'dark lady' was taken from tho sonnets when she was manifestly taken from me. cribbed from my work? "One word on Mr. Shaw's Shakespeare. Shakes-peare. I was the first to picture Shakespeare as verbose and snobbish; Mr. Shaw has cribbed both these trait. But he presents Shakespeare as going about with tablets making notes of all tho great phrases and musical mu-sical cadences he hears. The greatest lord of language of whom time has any record stealing words; the greatest great-est of pol cribbing the 'dying fall' of eome pathetic phrase that Is Mr. Shaw's own Idea, bU original contribution contri-bution to our knowledge!" New York Review. |