George Bernard Shaw vs. William Shakespeare

I once read the following from a book about George Bernard Shaw (GBS),

“When Einstein said that Shaw’s words were like Mozart’s notes: ‘everyone of them meant something and was exactly in its proper place,’ Shaw was flattered for the first time in his life, and delightedly boasted of the compliment, though comparisons to Shakespeare left him cold.”

This tells how Shaw valued himself as a music critic, but it surprised me that he didn’t want to be compared with Shakespeare.  He once said, “I pity the man who can not enjoy Shakespeare.  He has outlasted thousands of able thinkers, and will outlast a thousand more.”  Few, if any one, whose work can be printed side by side with Shakespeare’s.  I came across a book that has both Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

The photo (credit to a book called Bernard Shaw through the Camera) was taken when GBS was writing his Caesar and Cleopatra.

Shaw may be the only one whose arrogance can be treated as a virtue.