evidence: William Shakespeare was, famously, a playwright and an actor. George Bernard Shaw was, famously, a playwright and a critic — and a particularly acerbic critic of Shakespeare, whose cult he insisted had mushroomed by the 20th century far beyond what the man’s dramaturgy merited, and whose characters he declared "have no religion, no politics, no conscience, no hope, no convictions of any sort." [...] Or mayhap not: Shaw was also famously a bombastic old curmudgeon (even in his youth), a genius gadfly given to making outrageous claims to get an audience’s attention, then using his peerless wit and erudition to make a watertight case for the more measured position he’d actually come to argue. (Or the opposite position: Shaw is forever giving equal time to the opponents of his own ideas.) [...] Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.