M. Faubourg, a little embarra.s.sed, said that a creative artist made a character out of many originals.

Then, seeing that n.o.body was saying a word to his neighbour, he turned round and asked him if he had been to the Academy.

"Yes," answered the stranger; "it gets worse every year doesn't it?"

"But Mr. Corporal's pictures are always worth seeing," said Faubourg.

"I think he paints men better than women," said the stranger; "he doesn't flatter people, but of course his pictures are very clever."

At this moment the attention of the whole table was monopolised by Osmond Hall, who began to discuss the scenario of a new play he was writing. "My play," he began, "is going to be called 'The King of the North Pole.' I have never been to the North Pole, and I don't mean to go there. It's not necessary to have first-hand knowledge of technical subjects in order to write a play. People say that Shakespeare must have studied the law, because his allusions to the law are frequent and accurate. That does not prove that he knew law any more than the fact that he put a sea in Bohemia proves that he did not know geography.

It proves he was a dramatist. He wanted a sea in Bohemia. He wanted lawyer's 'shop.' I should do just the same thing myself. I wrote a play about doctors, knowing nothing about medicine: I asked a friend to give me the necessary information. Shakespeare, I expect, asked his friends to give him the legal information he required."

Every allusion to Shakespeare was a stab to Mrs. Bergmann.

"Shakespeare's knowledge of the law is very thorough," broke in Lockton.

"Not so thorough as the knowledge of medicine which is revealed in my play," said Hall.

"Shakespeare knew law by intuition," murmured Willmott, "but he did not guess what the modern stage would make of his plays."

"Let us hope not," said Giles.

"Shakespeare," said Faubourg, "was a psychologue; he had the power, I cannot say it in English, de deviner ce qu'il ne savait pas en puisant dans le fond et le trefond de son ame."

"Gammon!" said Hall; "he had the power of asking his friends for the information he required."

"Do you really think," asked Giles, "that before he wrote 'Time delves the parallel on beauty's brow,' he consulted his lawyer as to a legal metaphor suitable for a sonnet?"

"And do you think," asked Mrs. Duncan, "that he asked his female relations what it would feel like to be jealous of Octavia if one happened to be Cleopatra?"

"Shakespeare was a married man," said Hall, "and if his wife found the MSS. of his sonnets lying about he must have known a jealous woman."

"Shakespeare evidently didn't trouble his friends for information on natural history, not for a playwright," said Hall. "I myself should not mind what liberty I took with the cuckoo, the bee, or even the basilisk.

I should not trouble you for accurate information on the subject; I should not even mind saying the cuckoo lays eggs in its own nest if it suited the dramatic situation."

The whole of this conversation was torture to Mrs. Bergmann.

"Shakespeare," said Lady Hyacinth, "had a universal nature; one can't help thinking he was almost like G.o.d."

"That's what people will say of me a hundred years hence," said Hall; "only it is to be hoped they'll leave out the 'almost.'"

"Shakespeare understood love," said Lady Herman, in a loud voice; "he knew how a man makes love to a woman. If Richard III. had made love to me as Shakespeare describes him doing it, I'm not sure that I could have resisted him. But the finest of all Shakespeare's men is Oth.e.l.lo. That's a real man. Desdemona was a fool. It's not wonderful that Oth.e.l.lo didn't see through Iago; but Desdemona ought to have seen through him. The stupidest woman can see through a clever man like him; but, of course, Oth.e.l.lo was a fool too."

"Yes," broke in Mrs. Lockton, "if Napoleon had married Desdemona he would have made Iago marry one of his sisters."

"I think Desdemona is the most pathetic of Shakespeare's heroines," said Lady Hyacinth; "don't you think so, Mr. Hall?"

"It's easy enough to make a figure pathetic, who is strangled by a n.i.g.g.e.r," answered Hall. "Now if Desdemona had been a negress Shakespeare would have started fair."

"If only Shakespeare had lived later," sighed Willmott, "and understood the condition of the modern stage, he would have written quite differently."

"If Shakespeare had lived now he would have written novels," said Faubourg.

"Yes," said Mrs. Baldwin, "I feel sure you are right there."

"If Shakespeare had lived now," said Sciarra to Mrs. Bergmann, "we shouldn't notice his existence; he would be just un monsieur comme tout le monde--like that monsieur sitting next to Faubourg," he added in a low voice.

"The problem about Shakespeare," broke in Hall, "is not how he wrote his plays. I could teach a poodle to do that in half an hour. But the problem is--What made him leave off writing just when he was beginning to know how to do it? It is as if I had left off writing plays ten years ago."

"Perhaps," said the stranger, hesitatingly and modestly, "he had made enough money by writing plays to retire on his earnings and live in the country."

n.o.body took any notice of this remark.

"If Bacon was really the playwright," said Lockton, "the problem is a very different one."

"If Bacon had written Shakespeare's plays," said Silvester, "they wouldn't have been so bad."

"There seems to me to be only one argument," said Professor Morgan, "in favour of the Bacon theory, and that is that the range of mind displayed in Shakespeare's plays is so great that it would have been child's play for the man who wrote Shakespeare's plays to have written the works of Bacon."

"Yes," said Hall, "but because it would be child's play for the man who wrote my plays to have written your works and those of Professor Newcastle--which it would--it doesn't prove that you wrote my plays."

"Bacon was a philosopher," said Willmott, "and Shakespeare was a poet--a dramatic poet; but Shakespeare was also an actor, an actor-manager, and only an actor-manager could have written the plays."

"What do you think of the Bacon theory?" asked Faubourg of the stranger.

"I think," said the stranger, "that we shall soon have to say eggs and Shakespeare instead of eggs and Bacon."

This remark caused a slight shudder to pa.s.s through all the guests, and Mrs. Bergmann felt sorry that she had not taken decisive measures to prevent the stranger's intrusion.

"Shakespeare wrote his own plays," said Sciarra, "and I don't know if he knew law, but he knew _le coeur de la femme_. Cleopatra bids her slave find out the colour of Octavia's hair; that is just what my wife, my Angelica, would do if I were to marry some one in London while she was at Rome."

"Mr. Gladstone used to say," broke in Lockton, "that Dante was inferior to Shakespeare, because he was too great an optimist."

"Dante was not an optimist," said Sciarra, "about the future life of politicians. But I think they were both of them pessimists about man and both optimists about G.o.d."

"Shakespeare," began Blenheim; but he was interrupted by Mrs. Duncan who cried out:--

"I wish he were alive now and would write me a part, a real woman's part. The women have so little to do in Shakespeare's plays. There's Juliet; but one can't play Juliet till one's forty, and then one's too old to look fourteen. There's Lady Macbeth; but she's got nothing to do except walk in her sleep and say, 'Out, d.a.m.ned spot!' There were not actresses in his days, and of course it was no use writing a woman's part for a boy."

"You should have been born in France," said Faubourg, "Racine's women are created for you to play."

"Ah! you've got Sarah," said Mrs. Duncan, "you don't want anyone else."

"I think Racine's boring," said Mrs. Lockton, "he's so artificial."

"Oh! don't say that," said Giles, "Racine is the most exquisite of poets, so sensitive, so acute, and so harmonious."

"I like Rostand better," said Mrs. Lockton.