John Osbourne on why Shakespeare is better than Shaw.

Theatre  I'm having a bit of a round to it day, and that includes clearing through the piles of papers on my desk which for some reason includes a printout of this rather marvellous letter to The Guardian from John Osbourne in 1977:

"Michael Billington cannot have read the plays of George Bernard Shaw since his Oxford days. To call him "the greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare' is close to having a critical brainstorm, as well as perpetuating an exam-crazy classroom myth. Having recently seen Saint Joan in London and Caesar and Cleopatra in Sydney, it is clearer to me than ever that Shaw is the most fraudulent, inept writer of Victorian melodramas ever to gull a timid critic or fool a dull public."

Yes, it's the literary equivalent of Sega vs Nintendo.