Definitive Footnote
i) O the laboriously "long wrangle over Caesar and Cleopatra Bernard Shaw added a definitive footnote recently. In a startlingly brief letter (273 words) to The Times he explained that he wrote the play (in 1900) because Shakespeare "made a mess of Caesar under the influence of Plutarch," leaving the field open for a play with Caesar as a hero. "It happened just then that we had a classical actor of the first rank working with an actress of extraordinary witchery-Forbes Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. It was the moment for my play, and I seized it accordingly. But it was not yet the moment for me as a classic author. Mrs. Campbell made fun of the play and lost an opportunity .... A playwright has to consider the talent at his disposal as well as the other limitations of the stage. He does not write a part for an Indian
god with seven or eight arms and legs, however interesting it might be dramatically. Without Forbes Robertson at hand I might not have written Caesar and Cleopatra just then; that is ‘all."
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 20
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184Definitive Footnote New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 20
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