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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous
result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all
(with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving
Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves. For though
it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or
not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he
made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an
unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of
the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has
had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear. Mr
Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in
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