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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: is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes
a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear
was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where
thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,
Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning
such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris
relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers.
If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of
the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays
and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of
adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that
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