“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 Othello. That’s a real man. Desdemona was a fool. It’s not wonderful that Othello 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, Othello 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 nigger,” 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.” Nobody 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.