special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it may
deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb instrument,
while English is positively poorer than it was in the time of
Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle class.
Divorced from reality, with its activities all fettered in baby-linen,
our literature has atrophied and dwindled into a babble of nursery
rhymes, tragedies of Little Marys, tales of Babes in a Wood. The example
of Shakespeare may yet teach us the value of free speech; he could say
what he liked as he liked: he was not afraid of the naked truth and the
naked word, and through his greatness a Low Dutch dialect has become the
chiefest instrument of civilization, the world-speech of humanity at
large.

FRANK HARRIS.

LONDON, 1909.




BOOK I


SHAKESPEARE PAINTED BY HIMSELF




CHAPTER I