k' 
 
 %^ 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
 The Man and The Mask 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD BURTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
 1.0 [oy^ 
 

 Copyright, 1016, 
 
 BT 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANT 
 Published November, 1916 
 
 f/0 
 
 NOV "IB 1916 
 
 THE QUINN 4 BODEN CO. PRESS 
 
 RAHWAV, N. J. 
 
 CLA445648 
 
 ^' 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages attempt to give within 
 limits somewhat sharply drawn a definite idea of 
 the personality, the work, and the meaning of a 
 dramatist of our day who has gained distinction, 
 invited abuse, and secured in excess the dubious 
 compliment of misrepresentation. So far as the 
 book can claim to be a contribution to the subject, 
 it may base it on the succinctness of the presenta- 
 tion; the analyses of the plays in chronologic 
 sequence, technic as well as teaching and literary 
 quality in mind; and upon the chapters in which 
 respectively Shaw's craft as an artist of the thea- 
 tre and his intellectual significance as publicist 
 and philosopher are studied. 
 
 No one can write a book on Bernard Shaw with- 
 out acknowledging the inevitable obligation to Dr. 
 Archibald Henderson, the authoritative biographer 
 of the playwright, and the man best fitted to de- 
 cide any question pertaining to him. The present 
 writer renders grateful thanks to Dr. Henderson 
 for his quick and generous giving of information 
 not otherwise to be secured : a debt as pleasant as 
 it is imperative to pay in this preface. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB 
 
 
 FAGK 
 
 I. 
 
 A Preliminary View .... 
 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 The Man 
 
 15 
 
 III. 
 
 The Evidence of the Plays 
 
 34 
 
 
 " Widowers' Houses "... 
 
 39 
 
 
 " The Philanderer " . 
 
 45 
 
 
 ^* Mrs. Warren's Profession" . 
 
 49 
 
 
 " Arms and the Man "... 
 
 58 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Evidence of the Plays, Con- 
 
 
 
 tinued: 
 
 66 
 
 
 vj "Candida" 
 
 66 
 
 
 " How He Lied to Her Husband " . 
 
 74 
 
 
 " You Never Can Tell "... 
 
 76 
 
 
 " The Man of Destiny " . 
 
 82 
 
 
 il^The Devil's Disciple" . 
 
 89 
 
 
 '•^■" Caesar and Cleopatra " . 
 
 95 
 
 
 " Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 
 
 100 
 
 
 " The Admirable Bashville " . 
 
 106 
 
 V. 
 
 The Evidence of the Plays, Con- 
 
 
 
 tinued: 
 
 108 
 
 
 " Man and Superman "... 
 
 108 
 
 
 "John Bull's Other Island" . 
 
 114 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBB PAOB 
 
 "Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction" 119 
 
 " Major Barbara "... 
 " The Doctor's Dilemma " 
 " The Interlude at The Playhouse ' 
 " Getting Married " . 
 
 VI. The Evidence of the Plays, Con 
 
 eluded: 
 
 " The Showing-up of Blanco Pos 
 
 net " 
 
 "Press Cuttings" . 
 " Misalliance " . .^ . 
 " The Dark Lady of the Sonnets " 
 ^*^ Fanny's First Play " . 
 /i Androcles and the Lion " 
 " Overruled " . . . . 
 " Pygmalion " . . . . 
 "Great Catherine" . 
 " The Music Cure " . 
 
 VII. The Social Thinker ... 
 VIII. The Poet and Mystic 
 IX. The Theatre Craftsman . 
 X. Shaw's Place in Modern Drama 
 Bibliography .... 
 
 120 
 129 
 139 
 140 
 
 147 
 
 147 
 153 
 157 
 160 
 162 
 167 
 173 
 176 
 183 
 185 
 
 189 
 211 
 238 
 271 
 295 
 
 Index 297 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
 THE MAN AND THE MASK 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A PRELIMINARY VIEW 
 
 It might be said that to declare Shaw a man 
 behind a mask is only a way of calling him a hu- 
 man being. We are all masks, as the very ety- 
 mology of person implies. Behind our words 
 and deeds and personalities hides the real ego 
 known only to itself and its maker; indeed, 
 lucky if in an occasional crisis it be known to 
 itself. George Eliot says somewhere that we 
 are always either overestimating or underesti- 
 mating our fellows; it is only God who sees us as 
 we are. The gnomic saying of the Greeks, 
 " Know thyself," takes a deeper meaning as its 
 full modern implications are realized. 
 
 Nevertheless, the title of this book is justified 
 in that Shaw has seen fit to adopt a method and 
 has fostered a popular idea of him which ob- 
 
S BERNARD SHAW 
 
 scure his true personality and the meaning of 
 his work. He has, by his own confession, put on 
 the garb of the mountebank and attracted wide 
 public attention thereby; his purpose in so do- 
 ing is not self-advertisement, though the reverse 
 is often assumed; but rather, the more general 
 hearing thus secured for his views. 
 
 As a result, and quite naturally, he is among 
 the best known and least known of men. His 
 vogue as a dramatist is very great, he is both 
 notorious and famous in this phase of his activ- 
 ity; yet little understood, even yet, in the true 
 sense. Shaw first suffered from the darkness of 
 obscurity; now he suffers from that excess of 
 light offered by newspapers: which is darkness 
 visible. Of old, misunderstood and neglected, it 
 is his paradoxical fate, — with a certain fitness 
 for the dealer in paradox, — when lauded and run 
 after, to be still misunderstood. If the mounte- 
 bank hides the man, he himself must divide the 
 blame with the public; since it is by his own 
 preference that he has put an antic disposition 
 on. 
 
 The present volume essays to find, and to 
 delineate within moderate limits, the man behind 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW S 
 
 the mask; and showing him in his work, to ex- 
 hibit the true lineaments of a forceful and seri- 
 ous satiric thinker whose skill in dramaturgy 
 places him with the ablest playwrights of his 
 time. It seeks to avoid alike the shallow misap- 
 preciations of the more common estimate arid the 
 super-laudation of Shaw idolaters. It is based 
 upon hearty, but, I trust, clear-eyed admiration, 
 and expresses the belief that, rightly seen, Ber- 
 nard Shaw is a fine artist of the theatre and a 
 worthy leader in the twentieth century eclaire- 
 cissement of the English-speaking people. 
 
 The contrast between Shaw today and Shaw 
 when he began to write plays is in itself a drama. 
 During the theatre season of 1914-5, no less than 
 seven of his plays were shown in New York City 
 alone. In Germany and France, in Russia and 
 Scandinavia, no dramatic author of English 
 speech, save possibly Shakspere, equals him in 
 popularity. A Frenchman, M. Hamon, has writ- 
 ten a critical book, the sub-title of which, " The 
 Moliere of the Twentieth Century," is its own 
 comment. Here is a man in danger of being 
 what is called a classic before he dies: still 
 another paradox. And for nine years during 
 
4 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 his novitiate in London, his earnings by his pen 
 amounted to six pounds. 
 
 Nevertheless, as I have implied, not only with 
 the general public, who get their caricature of 
 any person of public import through gossip, 
 printed or spoken, by hearsay and haphazard; 
 but also with numerous intelligent playgoers 
 and play-readers, he is still little more than an 
 amusing, irresponsible fellow, a phrase maker 
 and iconoclast of conventions, whose forte is the 
 detached jibe, the conscienceless though scintil- 
 lant epigram, whose sole purpose is to shock and 
 overturn. These impute a kind of merit to him 
 in that he has popularized the thesis drama; but 
 stop there. To not a few who go a little further 
 in acceptance, he remains an intellectual cock- 
 tail, not so much mental food as a stimulant of 
 questionable peptonic worth. 
 
 All such fail to see that while the shock in 
 Shaw is doubtless there, there is a hope behind 
 it: the hope to shock an inert mass into thinking 
 about sundry vital latter-day social matters ; a 
 galvanic process brought about by the driving 
 power of a wit backed by an alert, serious 
 mind. 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW 5 
 
 It were foolish to deny that the huportance of 
 Shaw's subject-matter as well as his seriousness 
 of intention are easily lost sight of in his some- 
 what startling manner of presentation. He is 
 his own worst enemy in this respect. Not only 
 has he adopted the methods of the showman — 
 " the cart and the trumpet for me," he cries — 
 but it would 'appear at times that he takes a wil- 
 ful pleasure in puzzling journeyman brains. He 
 would agree with Carlyle as to the proportion of 
 fools in the British Isles (subtracting the Celts), 
 but would raise the percentage. And he has the 
 mischievous habit — there is a touch of the enfant 
 terrible in this complex personality — of stating 
 his thought in terms of whimsical exaggeration. 
 We must simply accept this as a part of the 
 technic of his dialectics, and make the expected 
 allowance. The literalist has a hard time with 
 Bernard Shaw, while the latter looks on with a 
 malicious grin, though the most amiable of 
 men. 
 
 Moreover, of all writers and thinkers, he is the 
 most dangerous to listen to in garbled form or 
 to trust in sentences disrupted from their setting. 
 And as the newspapers exist, among other 
 
6 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 worthier objects, for the purpose of headlining 
 human utterances, and this is another name for 
 distortion, he suffers peculiarly. 
 
 To illustrate: in his parliamentary report on 
 the censorship of plays, he says : " I am not an 
 ordinary playwright in general practice. I am 
 a specialist in immoral and heretical plays." 
 Those who read to run away, want no more than 
 this. Shaw stands self-condemned before them. 
 But if this sufficiently challenging remark be 
 taken in its connection, and the whole screed 
 read (which perhaps two or three will do of the 
 hundred who will hear or read the plays), it will 
 be evident that Shaw means that he writes plays 
 that run counter to what he deems the pseudo- 
 morality of our day ; " immoral " turns out to 
 be " moral," in his Shavian sense. Had he said 
 this in the usual unpiquant way, he had not been 
 Bernard Shaw, nor have arrested the jaded at- 
 tention. Thus, his brilliancy as a writer gets in 
 the way of his thought, and we blame his man- 
 ner rather than our haste or unwillingness to 
 read him to the end. 
 
 A free use of sweeping generalizations, vio- 
 lently juxtaposed contradictions, and a very de- 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW 7 
 
 bauch of superlatives further complicate mat- 
 ters. He makes his points effective, sets them 
 forth in a high light, in this fashion. One might 
 be tempted to call it a linguistic, not a mental 
 habit, were it not for the obvious fact that it is 
 all temperamental, too; Shaw's cool, reflective, 
 analytic type of mind when once it gets tangled 
 with words in the expression of thought, acquires 
 a heat which is the result of a characteristic 
 state of his emotions. He feels keenly, and his 
 feelings, when he is warmed to his topic, color all 
 his conclusions. Striving to be objective, he 
 really becomes a superb example of impression- 
 ism, and is all the more effective as a pleader be- 
 cause of it. The word pleader, or advocate, is 
 apt; Shaw is a great pleader, often a special 
 pleader, as were Carlyle and Ruskin, and his 
 eloquence, like theirs, will last even if in due time 
 his views, like theirs, are discredited. The im- 
 pact of his feeling has behind it a tremendously 
 impelling moral force. The blend of these two 
 qualities, expressional gift and moral suasion, 
 makes him the reformer he is. 
 
 With the eccentricities of thought and expres- 
 sion conceded, it is much the easiest way to caU 
 
8 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Shaw a crack-brained enthusiast or a smart 
 notoriety hunter, (as one might describe a Ger- 
 trude Stein), and so dismiss him. This is very 
 much what the many do. Cryptic sayings and 
 intellectual somersaults are not for the lovers 
 of the trite and the obvious. These may be re- 
 minded that writers exist — to mention names 
 were invidious — who supply their needs. Why 
 lug in Shaw.? — to paraphrase Whistler. 
 
 It is a pity to confuse the sound estimate of 
 such a man in his representative work with 
 merely temporary prejudices. Just now, Shaw 
 is persona non grata because of his diatribe on 
 the war. Whether this deliverance be wise or 
 foolish, it is a query which does not affect his 
 place as a writer of drama by one jot or tittle. 
 Such questions loom large for the moment, but in 
 the end are seen to be foolishly ephemeral. Only 
 the things of the mind remain in the long run; 
 they will be present and important after war and 
 the rumors of war have died away. One heard, a 
 few months ago, that, owing to public feeling, 
 and in high dudgeon on account of it, Shaw had 
 declared he would write no more plays. Yet, re- 
 cently, his latest drama, to wit, " O'Flaherty, 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW 9 
 
 V. C.j" is announced in Dublin. One may, if one so 
 wishes, assume with Mr. Wells that the playwright 
 is demolished; or one may receive from the pious 
 hands of Mr. John Palmer the epitaph of the 
 once popular maker of intellectual drama. It 
 were the part of saner criticism to reflect that 
 these little flurries never affect the lasting repu- 
 tation of authors who really matter, which this 
 one indubitably does. Even when questions of 
 character and conduct are involved — which, so 
 far as morality is concerned, is not the case here, 
 — nothing is surer than that in the end every 
 writer is judged by his best work and by nothing 
 else. The regrettable acts of our Byrons, Vil- 
 lous, Poes, Verlaines, Rousseaus, and Wildes do 
 not alter by a hair's breadth the final favorable 
 verdict upon their writings. The tranquil desic- 
 cation of dust takes care of all that. Shaw's 
 attitude toward the war is not a popular one; 
 it took courage to state his opinion, a quality he 
 has never lacked. His view may be foolish, 
 hasty, ill-judged, in bad taste; that it is un- 
 patriotic is debatable, and depends upon your 
 definition of patriotism. But, aside from all this, 
 the main point is that Shaw is still the author of 
 
10 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 " Candida," " Man and Superman," " Mrs. War- 
 ren's Profession," and sundry other plays — with 
 their Prefaces; and the value whereof is just 
 what it was before the war and will remain of 
 exactly the same importance when, war being 
 over, the people settle down to the long agony of 
 paying the bills and mourning their dead. The 
 war, as part of its general myopic mist, has had 
 a tendency to obscure straight seeing and 
 straight judging. Shaw will survive it, like the 
 rest of us, (unless we are killed), and although 
 apparently damaged, will eventually suffer less 
 than most of the participants. 
 
 The mind simply balks at the picture of Ber- 
 nard Shaw quitting before he is sixty, because of 
 public execration begotten of his exercise of com- 
 mon sense (as he calls it) concerning the present 
 struggle. 
 
 To peruse patiently, assimilatively, so volumi- 
 nous a writer of fiction, essay and drama, by 
 which process alone the earnest social thinker 
 and fine craftsman of the theatre can be found, 
 is more than a May-day pastime. Yet by no 
 other road can the true Bernard Shaw be met. 
 He has deliberately chosen the theatre as the 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW 11 
 
 best mode through which to get a hearing, be- 
 lieving it to be " the most seductive form of the 
 fine arts " ; and hence the best medium for 
 propaganda. Accept this serious aim, concede a 
 method that is the only one possible for his per- 
 sonality, assume that he not only talks brilliantly 
 but has something worth while to say, and the 
 good that is in him will become ours. The as- 
 sumption of seriousness is the fundamental pre- 
 requisite to an understanding. Above all, must 
 the silly and peculiarly Anglo-Saxon mistake be 
 avoided of supposing that a wit-thinker is a con- 
 tradiction in terms, that fun and philosophy 
 cannot keep house together. The French have 
 Rabelais and know better, the Germans have 
 Heine and Richter ; perhaps some day the Ameri- 
 cans will recall Mark Twain, the British, Shaw, 
 and both nations have learned the lesson. At 
 present, to be deep and not dull, weighty and not 
 heavy, is to be a mental suspect. 
 
 In the critical treatment of Shaw up to the 
 present time, emphasis has been laid, upon the 
 whole, too much upon Shaw the thinker, at the 
 expense of Shaw the artist. Important as an 
 intellectual arouser he certainly is, but equally 
 
12 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 true is it that he is a fine artist of the theatre 
 and the tendency to minimize or deny his 
 skill and overlook his significance in the modern 
 development of the playhouse on its technical 
 side is to be deplored. Too often in dealing with 
 Shaw, has it been assumed that he has won his 
 way to a foremost position in the contemporary 
 theatre through sheer power of thought and 
 originality of manner, breaking the rules and suc- 
 ceeding in spite of a lack of craftsmanship, as 
 Brieux in France has done with late dramas like 
 " Maternity " and " Damaged Goods." Nothing 
 is further from the truth. Shaw has not been 
 careless or unaware of his metier. He has broad- 
 ened the rules, as the creative artist seeking a 
 freer self-expression always must, and the study 
 of his methods, if accompanied with some ac- 
 quaintance with^ramatic technic in general, will 
 convince the student of this fact. 
 
 In chapters three to six, in which I have ex- 
 amined all the Shaw pieces in chronologic order, 
 attention has been directed in each case to 
 the way in which results have been obtained by 
 the extension of sound dramaturgic principles as 
 applied to a new purpose, and a consequent un- 
 
A PRELIMINARY VIEW 13 
 
 usualness which to the superficial scrutiny may 
 appear to mean an inexpert hand. I believe it is 
 within the bounds of modesty to claim that the 
 technical elements of this writer's work have not 
 hitherto been so definitely pointed out. The view 
 thus presented should be for this reason a more 
 balanced, rounded one. This attention to the 
 technic of the individual plays is further ampli- 
 fied in chapter nine, wherein, synthetically, the 
 work is studied in its technical aspects. In 
 the chapters which sum up the main aspects of the 
 dramatist's work, specific points made in the 
 analysis of the jAsljs are again used, intention- 
 ally. I make no apology for this, believing it to 
 be helpful. 
 
 A writer is to be found in his work and esti- 
 mated by his work. But a knowledge of a man's 
 personality in his deeds and days, in his relation 
 to family, city, and state, helps to interpret him 
 when we seek to understand his meaning as an 
 author. Particularly is this true of Bernard 
 Shaw, who has proved so baffling to many as play 
 writer and social thinker. Therefore, it is worth 
 while to look at the man and citizen before we 
 take up the dramatic works which reflect — or, as 
 
14 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 some would say, distort, — ^his position toward 
 life and human society. 
 
 But this thought may well be retained as a 
 background to any personal consideration of 
 Shaw's thought; a consideration that desires to 
 pass over and beyond the personal as far as is 
 possible, and see the truth about him objectively, 
 and as it is. It may be that the loss of per- 
 spective denied to a critic who tries to see a con- 
 temporary for his real significance, is in a meas- 
 ure made up for by that warmth of contact which 
 is not always to be regarded as a misleading de- 
 flection. Any judgment which lacks the ruddy 
 verdict of the heart is as much astray as that 
 which allows itself to be swept away by that emo- 
 tion. A certain value in Shaw can already be 
 seen, although his ultimate place must be later 
 decided. He has stimulated men broadly into 
 the earnest consideration of important social 
 questions. He is a wise physician who performs 
 upon the body of our time the surgical operation 
 of making us think; and who, by the use of 
 the anesthesia of art, has made the process 
 pleasurable. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 The salient facts of Shaw's personal career 
 with its background of ancestry, family, early 
 environment, education, and subsequent develop- 
 ment are so well known that one can be succinct. 
 Refraining from too great particularity, I shall 
 give main stress to certain significant happen- 
 ings for their value in throwing light upon his 
 character and views. Doctor Henderson, Mr. 
 McCabe, and other biographers have spread out 
 the general story for our scrutiny. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw, or Bernard Shaw as 
 the world has come to call him, is a man of sixty 
 years, in the full prime of his intellectual powers, 
 although likely to grow in mental stature during 
 the coming decade. His family can be described 
 as belonging to the upper middle class of Prot- 
 estant Irish, small gentry whose orientation 
 about a baronet of distant kin has furnished 
 satiric references for the member of the family 
 whose democracy has always been of a sort to 
 
 15 
 
16 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 get the irony in such spectacles. The family tree 
 shows that to call the Shaws Celts is to use the 
 word in the usual loose way, since they are of an 
 English and Scotch strain which settled in Ire- 
 land in the seventeenth century; as Mr. McCabe 
 puts it, " they were Orange aliens in Catholic 
 Ireland." Celt is a generic name to include the 
 Irish, Scotch, and Welsh, and in this sense the 
 Shaws were dominantly Celtic. Irish they were 
 not in the deepest, fullest significance of the 
 word. Of his father, first a small government of- 
 ficial, then an unsuccessful corn merchant, we 
 get an uncomplimentary picture from the son; 
 the former seems to have been an example of a 
 somewhat ineffective, rather helpless specimen of 
 the lesser gentry. It is from the mother that 
 Shaw derives, sa far as he is to be explained by 
 his immediate parentage. She was evidently a 
 woman of parts and strong character ; a fine musi- 
 cian from whom he got his knowledge of and taste 
 in that art; and modern in the way in which, 
 when the family fortunes were at ebb tide, she 
 was able to go out into the world and by her tal- 
 ents and will-power support those dependent 
 upon her; as well as later, tide over her gifted 
 
THE MAN 17 
 
 son in his harsh struggle in London to get on 
 his feet as a writer and thinker. Shaw would ap- 
 parently have foundered during those Grub 
 Street days had it not been for this maternal 
 backing; and he has handsomely made acknowl- 
 edgment of the fact in print. He reports that 
 as a lad he was not supposed to play with the 
 children of tradespeople; which sheds light upon 
 his family, and was regarded by the embryo 
 rebel and democrat as an education in snobbery. 
 We get a picture of him as an imaginative, prob- 
 ing, restless fellow, who disdained dreary chapel 
 going, and found his consolation in the compan- 
 ionship of his mother with her music. School 
 found him sceptic and left him contemptuous. 
 With characteristic energy he said of it : " It was 
 the most completely wasted and mischievous 
 part of my life." But he read books worth 
 while in an eclectic fashion ; at fifteen his educa- 
 tion in the formal sense ceased. But music at 
 home, the National Gallery in Dublin, and his 
 private commerce with literature did much to 
 develop his taste and powers. It is interesting to 
 know that letters at this time attracted him less 
 than painting and music. 
 
18 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Next, we see him in the office of a land agent; 
 or rather, he is there, but hard to see, for Shaw 
 as a business man — or boj — arouses incredulity. 
 Yet, to make the smile ironic, he showed excel- 
 lent capacity in such work, then and always, and 
 those who deal with him today are aware of it. 
 He is that unusual combination, a literary man 
 of genius and shrewd man-of-affairs, with a 
 practical gift for the details of committee meet- 
 ings and public social work. Here is one of his 
 many contradictions. When Mrs. Shaw removed 
 to London to prosecute her career in music, 
 Bernard and his father lived in Dublin lodgings 
 for several years. It seems to have been an irk- 
 some period for the son, who, as solace, was read- 
 ing the scientists and formulating his political, 
 social, and philosophic views; a witness to this 
 was his letter in Public Opinion in which his dis- 
 gust at the methods of the American evangelists. 
 Moody and Sankey, was expressed with such 
 characteristic vigor as to lay him open to the 
 charge of atheist. At the age of twenty, feeling 
 that self-preservation demanded a wider horizon, 
 he went to London himself (1876), and for nine 
 years followed letters on a little oatmeal; with 
 
THE MAN 19^ 
 
 results sardonically described by the would-be 
 author, who states that the entire takings of his 
 pen were six pounds, and five of them for a medi- 
 cal advertisement ! He was a very shabby genteel 
 figure during these years; which nevertheless 
 meant fruitful growth, enlarging experience. He 
 appeared now and then in minor publications and 
 produced his first piece of fiction, concerning 
 which Shaw remarks that the edition, having no 
 sale, had been stored away and partially ealen by 
 mice ; " but even they have been unable to finish 
 it." 
 
 He was in the way of meeting persons of in- 
 tellectual and esthetic tastes and accomplish- 
 ments ; he lectured briefly for the Edison Tele- 
 phone Company, assimiliated Spencer, Darwin, 
 and Huxley, joined the Zeletical Society, an or- 
 ganization whose chief business in the eighteen- 
 eighties was to attack the Christian doctrines ; 
 frequented all sorts of radical hole-and-corner 
 meetings, where his own sort naturally foregath- 
 ered; and was always by report a shabby, 
 piquant, arresting figure, eagerly earnest to dis- 
 cuss the universe, and gradually training himself 
 by these practices to be one of the most effective 
 
20 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 platform men of his day in England. One gets 
 a clear vision of G. B. S. in these days, harangu- 
 ing a Sunday morning mob from the tail end of 
 a cart in Hyde Park. He heard Henry George 
 lecture one night, and the American gave him a 
 definite impulse towards social problems in con- 
 trast with the theoretic and intellectual prob- 
 lems which philosophical socialism is wont to 
 thresh out. Shaw declares that George was a 
 turning point in his career; though the single 
 tax panacea did not entirely satisfy him later. 
 He allied himself with the Land Reform Union 
 and became acquainted with thinkers like Edward 
 Carpenter, Henry Salt, Sidney Olivier, Sidney 
 Webb, and J. L. Joyne ; also he settled into those 
 ascetic habits of life which today offer us the 
 spectacle of one whose own writings are taken to 
 plead for seemingly lawless irregularities, leading 
 a life of well-nigh monastic regimen and absten- 
 tion. Vegetarianism was adopted and has been 
 consistently followed ; a habit " the ravages of 
 which his robust constitution," says McCabe, 
 " has admirably resisted for years," a somewhat 
 naive remark, hardly doing justice to the proba- 
 bility that this dietary predilection, along with an 
 
THE MAN 21 
 
 avoidance of tobacco and all liquors, plays an 
 appreciable part in the peculiar powers of Shaw. 
 To say that the writer whose course of life is of 
 this character is exactly the one to handle sex 
 matters with the Biblical directness and boldness 
 familiar to us in Shaw, is doubtless to expose 
 oneself to ridicule ; nevertheless, I believe the sug- 
 gestion has much to support it. If Shaw is the 
 plainest spoken of dramatists and the frankest 
 in choice of themes, he is at the same time the 
 purest minded. And to deny that this bears no 
 relation to his unusual purity of life (using the 
 word purity in no silly, restricted sense) seems to 
 me absurd. 
 
 It is both difficult and unnecessar}^ to bring 
 the Shaw of these earlier days under the re- 
 straint of a category or school. He was an 
 independent and eclectic thinker, particularly in- 
 terested by nature in social theories of reform. 
 An essentially sympathetic nature at bottom, de- 
 spite all contrary appearances, he had an hon- 
 esty and openness of mind which led him to object 
 as much to the stern application of the doctrine 
 of the survival of the fittest as to the convention- 
 alities and prettinesses of the Christian society 
 
22 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 which surrounded him. To be en rapport with 
 the scientific notions of his day, as a modern 
 realistic thinker, he must have accepted in its full 
 implications the evolutionary doctrine. But the 
 ethical bias and the odd idealism in him worked 
 together to modify or oppose this view, as will 
 be further seen later in this study, when we come 
 to consider his religious and philosophic position. 
 His special involvement in socialism was but 
 the natural flowering out of his general rebellious 
 attitude towards privilege, capital, and things- 
 as-they-are. He passed from George to the Ger- 
 man Marx, with his theory of rent, took part in 
 the debates of the Social Democratic Federation, 
 and for a time Marx's theory of surplus value took 
 the place with him before occupied by George's 
 single tax as an open sesame of reform. He 
 sloughed off earlier views as he lived and thought, 
 with the courage of the strong man aware that 
 consistency, in the sense of dogged re1:ention of 
 opinion, is emphatically not a jewel. ; In 1884, 
 the Fabian Society, the name itself suggestive of 
 the policy of making haste slowly, was formed. 
 Shaw became one of its leading members, and has 
 been influential in the organization ever since; 
 
THE MAN 28 
 
 his best essays on economic subjects have ap- 
 peared in the society's publications. His tracts 
 for the times have done much to make the 
 Fabians known to a wider public than would 
 otherwise be secured. In its original purpose, 
 The Fabian Society was an emancipated, middle- 
 class attempt to improve social conditions by 
 wiser legislation. Mr. McCabe gives the follow- 
 ing propositions as illustrative of the Fabian 
 creed, in Shavian form: 
 
 " That a life interest in the Land and Capi- 
 tal of the nation is the birthright of every in- 
 dividual ; 
 
 " That the state should compete with private 
 individuals, especially with parents — in providing 
 happy homes for children, so that every child 
 may have a refuge from the tyranny or neglect 
 of its natural custodians; 
 
 " That the established government has no more 
 right to call itself the State than the smoke of 
 London has to call itself the weather." 
 
 As one studies this phase of Shaw's develop- 
 ment and belief, and quite irrespective of one's 
 acceptance of his views, the impression of the 
 vast amount of laborious, technical writing he has 
 
24 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 done in this special field comes as a needed cor- 
 rective to the still prevalent notion, which sees 
 him as a sort of mental butterfly spreading epi- 
 grams along the social parterres. It may be 
 added that a course in the Fabian Essays, sup- 
 plemented by a reading of his fiction, especially 
 " The Unsocial Socialist " and " The Irrational 
 Knot," will give a good idea of a side of Shaw 
 very likely to be overlooked by those who confine 
 themselves to the plays, — and probably to a few 
 of them only. It is not the younger Shaw alone 
 we discover, feeling his way to a formulation of 
 his opinions, but a man fiercely in earnest and 
 proving it by the kind of thankless work he does. 
 As vestryman and borough councilor later in his 
 career he has shown his eager willingness to do 
 his share in obscure social service. He refused 
 to stand for Parliament and in his letter of decli- 
 nation declared that he was too poor a man to 
 meet the expenses involved — a novel reason which 
 had behind it a keen sense of social obligation. 
 
 The year 1885 was of moment in his career, 
 because he then made the acquaintance of Wil- 
 liam Archer, and that accomplished critic of the 
 drama, then a fellow socialist, induced him to 
 
THE MAN 25 
 
 leave novel writing, disastrous in the practical 
 results, and turn to criticism. For several years 
 thereafter he was doing those pungent little 
 papers for The Saturday Review on music, art, 
 and, later, drama, which made him recognized 
 as a brilliant iconoclast of the pen. Particularly 
 was the meeting and its result of significance 
 because it associated him with dramatic criticism, 
 and prepared him for play-writing. It is il- 
 luminating to see how often the future play- 
 wright is conducted to his metier by this path. 
 Those criticisms of Shaw, now to be enjoyed 
 in two portly volumes, are proof enough of his 
 solid grounding in the basic principles of the 
 craft. And they are plainly to be seen now as 
 the most original, pioneer work of the time in 
 this department of letters. 
 
 It was Archer, moreover, who directly insti- 
 gated the play-writing. He suggested a play in 
 collaboration, a free treatment of the Rhinegold 
 motive. Wagner was to be used for purposes 
 of socialistic application. Two acts were written 
 and laid aside. Finall}^, Shaw, who at the time 
 was writing of art and was giving more attention 
 to the stage because of his dramatic reviewing, 
 
26 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 was pricked anew into an attempt to dress up the 
 abandoned socialistic play by his interest in 
 Grein's Independent Theatre movement, at that 
 time sorely in need of material from English 
 hands. The result was " Widowers' Houses," the 
 first of the plays dubbed by him " pleasant and 
 unpleasant ; " and whatever its defects, a plain 
 notification that a man to reckon with had 
 stepped into the English theatre. It was the first 
 gun in the long warfare in which, as he put it, he 
 fought the drama with plays ; in other words, op- 
 posed current trash with that which appealed to 
 brains, taste, and conscience, the intellectual 
 theatre for which he, above all others in England, 
 was to stand. This play-writing was to have a 
 period of obscurity both as book literature and 
 still more as stage product, as we have seen in 
 the opening chapter. The Independent Theatre 
 appealed but to the cognoscenti, who were then 
 fewer even than they are now; the performances 
 at this pioneer venture in the theatre of intelli- 
 gence were at the best only a succes d'estime. 
 " Widowers' Houses " will be examined along 
 with the other pieces at the proper place; here 
 it is sufficient to register the interesting way in 
 
THE MAN 27 
 
 which Shaw was deflected from criticism and fic- 
 tion to the stage. The Preface to the play tells 
 the circumstances as he alone can. 
 
 The personal history of Bernard Shaw from 
 the inception of play-writing in 1892 to the pres- 
 ent day — a period of well-nigh a quarter cen- 
 tury — becomes in the main an account of his 
 early rejection by contemporary judgment; 
 the slow, grudging acceptance as his work forced 
 itself into critical and, later, general, attention; 
 with the change to a vogue eager, even avid, be- 
 ginning with the success of " Candida " in 1903 ; 
 a vogue carrying with it obvious dangers of 
 wrong emphasis, hasty generalization, and misap- 
 preciation. In a sense, Shaw is just the author 
 to suffer in the house of his seeming friends. But 
 it is accurate to say that for about fifteen years 
 he has steadily gained not only in notoriety but 
 in fame in the more solid meaning of the word; 
 his dramas are more frequently played in various 
 lands, their financial value has been enhanced, 
 and a new piece by this author is an event of mo- 
 ment in stage art, whether the city be Berlin, 
 London, or New York. Abroad, no man save 
 Shakspere is more frequently in the repertory of 
 
28 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 serious playhouses. Decidedly, strikingly, he has 
 arrived in the worldly recognition of his talents. 
 Fame and fortune are his, and the bizarre early 
 figure, lean and unconventionally picturesque, be- 
 gins to look a la mode. It is the period of test, 
 lest peradventure the rebel paradoxer wax sleek 
 and debonair. But no such result is appar- 
 ent at the present time. If Shaw now seem con- 
 servative, it must be the change in latter-day 
 opinion, rather than in him. He is still the 
 writer who earlier startled us with his social re- 
 bellion. Indeed, a study of his work in its evo- 
 lution will bear out the statement that he is at 
 fifty-five to sixty more progressive, more radical, 
 than in earlier teaching. No more advanced 
 thinking can be found in the entire range of his 
 writings than the Preface to " Getting Married," 
 and that to " Androcles and the Lion." 
 
 But for the proper perspective, as we con- 
 front the somewhat formidable spectacle of Ber- 
 nard Shaw, still wearing the mask perhaps, but 
 at least having conquered the Philistine who kept 
 him out of the Promised Land of success, it is 
 highly necessary to continue to see the man of 
 the eighties: obscure fictionist, debater, social 
 
THE MAN 29 
 
 worker, vestryman, and borough councilor, shabby 
 publicist, and grubber in municipal details both 
 dull and unimportant to the many who laugh 
 over his dramatic scintillations. 
 
 When he was ill and out at elbows, he married 
 Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, and 
 his own account of it is so richly humorous that 
 it were a sin not to reproduce it here: 
 
 " I was very ill when I was married, altogether 
 a wreck on crutches and in an old jacket which 
 the crutch had worn to rags. I had asked my 
 friends, Mr. Graham Wallas, of the London 
 School Board, and Mr. Henry Salt, the biog- 
 rapher of Shelley and De Quincey, to act as wit- 
 nesses, and of course, in honor of the occasion 
 they were dressed in their best clothes. The 
 register never imagined I could possibly be the 
 bridegroom; they took me for the inevitable beg- 
 gar who completes all wedding processions. 
 Wallas, who is considerably over six feet high, 
 seemed to him to be the hero of the occasion and 
 he was proceeding calmlj^ to marry him to my 
 betrothed, when Wallas, thinking the formula 
 rather strong for a mere witness, hesitated at 
 the last moment and left the prize to me." 
 
30 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 That nothing is known or mooted of Shaw's 
 family life, in the case of a man who is the 
 natural prey of the newsmongers, is the best com- 
 ment upon its character, and a final compliment; 
 no more concerning it is called for. 
 
 It would seem as if Bernard Shaw at sixty had 
 some of his best years ahead of him as dramatist, 
 thinker, social influence. He is much in demand 
 at gatherings where vital topics of the day are 
 discussed, and the very fact that he is a man of 
 place and property gives him a better chance 
 perhaps to cope with the Philistine ; the latter 
 is more likely to listen to one who is no longer 
 the shabby buffoon, but the favored social figure. 
 He does not strike one as of the type which 
 shoots its shaft early, or is likely to be spoiled 
 by worldly favor. Were he through as a writer 
 today, the plays, some thirty of them, are his 
 testament. But one imagines that the coming 
 years, let us say the decade from sixty to sev- 
 enty, will bring some highly characteristic con- 
 tributions from his study in Adelphi Terrace or 
 his country place at Ayot St. Lawrence. There 
 is something peculiarly stimulating in the 
 thought of Bernard Shaw passing from elderly 
 
THE MAN 31 
 
 to old; I believe age will help him to be taken 
 seriously, not because he will be more serious, but 
 because even the light-minded may then perceive, 
 aided by such marginal notes as Time adds, the 
 essential quality of the man. And it will be said 
 of him then, as it can be said now, though it is 
 less likely to be, that he offers the spectacle of a 
 good citizen, trying to leave a better social con- 
 dition than he found; and in this like unto Car- 
 lyle, Ruskin, William Morris. He has said that 
 he deemed his life belonged to the community, and 
 he has lived up to that pronunciamento. In re- 
 fusing a newspaper interview, George Meredith 
 declared that the public had no right to his pri- 
 vate affairs, except that he " be reputedly a good 
 citizen." This has also been Shaw's attitude, 
 however much his career, superficially regarded, 
 may appear to differ from the Box Hill magician. 
 Privately, he has preserved the obscurity of good 
 taste: publicly, he has done all in his power to 
 exploit himself for the sake of his message. The 
 Fabian essayist as such, could never win a gen- 
 eral audience : the author of "Candida," " Fanny's 
 First Play," and the Prefaces could! 
 
 The Shaw of the early essays, the fiction and 
 
32 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the novels, he of Hyde Park meetings and radi- 
 cal society debatings, is not quite the Shaw of 
 1916; there would inevitably be some change in 
 the growth of a mind worth talking about. But 
 while there has been a redistribution of emphasis 
 upon some of his convictions, a sloughing off of 
 some of his first espousals of theory, and from 
 time to time, these later years, a definite willing- 
 ness to indulge a mood of irresponsible sportive- 
 ness, on the whole we are presented today with 
 the same G. B. S., save that the central social 
 interest is deepened, and the articles of his credo 
 are more clearly correlated, so as to produce an 
 effect of unified social vision. Emphatically, this 
 is not a thinker who, with the advance to full in- 
 tellectual maturity, has either wearied of well 
 doing, or, disappointed with his work and its re- 
 ception, like Ibsen in " When We Dead Awaken," 
 fallen back upon sad autobiography and no 
 longer strives militantly to preach his gospel. 
 Militant is just the word to use in describing 
 Shaw as person and as social power; he is flam- 
 ingly militant and never more so than now, albeit 
 he has attained to an age and reached a position 
 of influence which, broadly speaking, have a 
 
THE MAN SS 
 
 marked tendency to quench individualism, — so 
 often an uncomfortable kicker against the pricks. 
 And so Shaw's life offers us another of the 
 paradoxes which make up his portrait for the 
 world: a man who has come to the conservatism 
 of years and success, but remains hotly a radical ; 
 a man who seems obstreperously forward in self- 
 exploitation, and yet is in private life modestly a 
 gentleman shrinking from any undue obtruding 
 of his personal history. Shaw's name will to the 
 end of the chapter be provocative of irritation to 
 many; it will beget opposition and dislike, as a 
 matter of course. But it is perfectly safe to say 
 that no one who takes the trouble to see his life 
 as it is, and to read his writings sufficiently to 
 get the coordination of his teaching, will ever 
 make the mistake of denying to this austere 
 Puritan in disguise of playmaker a character far 
 above unworthy ambition, insincerity, or any 
 taint of violating the dictates of conscience for 
 the sake of worldly gain. The man behind the 
 mask is a very real and honest and high-aiming 
 man, if once the mask be removed. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 
 
 *• WIDOWERS' HOUSES" TO **ARMS 
 AND THE MAN" 
 
 It will be an aid to the proper understanding 
 of Shaw, if from the first we distinguish between 
 his matter and his manner. The proof of his 
 genuineness as thinker and writer lies in an open- 
 minded examination of his works, approaching 
 them with a fortifying comprehension of his per- 
 sonality and private history; also, as especially 
 important, with a clear-eyed realization of cer- 
 tain peculiarities in his way of conveying his 
 message. These^ idiosyncrasies involve method 
 and style, and must be accepted as the condition 
 of a right relation between him and us. 
 
 The danger, at least in Anglo-Saxon lands, of 
 mixing fun and philosophy has been already re- 
 ferred to: as well try to blend oil and water. 
 Yet has Bernard Shaw boldly chosen, and at his 
 peril, to jest while serious, to be serious, al- 
 
 84 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 35 
 
 though jesting. That he has confused, pained, 
 dazzled not a few by such a procedure, cannot be 
 doubted; the proofs are all about us. 
 
 And as part of this danger, Shaw elected to 
 use a form, the play, traditionally associated 
 with entertainment, dedicate to frivolous themes 
 and moods. When a man seizes upon the drama 
 as a vehicle for instruction, while he is only re- 
 verting to first principles of English drama, and 
 indeed, of all drama, the trouble may be trusted 
 to begin. The majority is sure to chant in 
 plaintive chorus : " We don't want to be taught, 
 to be made to think in the playhouse: we want 
 to be amused. There is thinking enough, and un- 
 pleasantness enough in life," a wail that rivals 
 in hoary antiquity that other pathetic protest of 
 the Philistine, " I know what I like ! " Shaw be- 
 gan play-writing confronted by the historical 
 attitude which declares that the playhouse is a 
 secular indulgence; it belongs to a Saturday 
 afternoon, and Sunday is just ahead when we can 
 put on sober clothes of repentance, purge, leave 
 sack, and live cleanly. And he met it by suf- 
 ficiently hiding his seriousness within a frame- 
 work of interesting fable and then so spicing his 
 
36 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 sermon with condiments of wit and satire and 
 comic scene and character, that the pleasure of 
 the playhouse was preserved even for the light- 
 minded, and the mourners became like unto those 
 who rejoice. It has been a happy spectacle, this 
 bouleversement of theatre-goers, and has added 
 to the gaiety of nations. 
 
 But the distinction between matter and man- 
 ner goes deeper. Let a suggestion already made 
 be here expanded. One must agree to accept the 
 underlying sanity of a writer who steadily, per- 
 sistently, it would almost seem, perversely, uses 
 the method of exaggeration to make his points 
 stick out; and who, once under way and exacer- 
 bated before the images of crass stupidity whom 
 as men of straw he sets up for attack, cannot 
 for the life of him refrain from anger; a surface 
 irritation growing on occasion into a thorough- 
 going indignation that seizes the whole man. It 
 is a generous, a noble rage, this of Bernard 
 Shaw, against the social folly of his time, 
 against the makers thereof and all their works. 
 So forthright and sincere is it, that we must 
 grant such a mind its way of warfare, and know 
 that the positive degree of conviction begets the 
 
THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 37 
 
 superlative of expression. This habit of ham- 
 mering hard at the thing just in front of him 
 makes Shaw of all men the one most dangerously 
 liable to misrepresentation when detached from 
 the particular application of his words and not 
 squared by the general tenor of his teaching. 
 In choosing his method, he runs the risk of this. 
 His thought looks to totality of impression and 
 asks on our part sufficient patience and compre- 
 hension of his ideas as a whole to act as correc- 
 tive. And this is just what few readers, and 
 above all few theatre-goers, are willing or able 
 to give; all such prefer the isolated smart saying 
 to the textual meaning. Sometimes, a similar 
 mistake has been made with Oscar Wilde, when 
 critics have said that the sole value of " Lady 
 Windermere's Fan," and " A Woman of No Im- 
 portance," lay in their clever aphorisms and epi- 
 grams, and so overlooked the constructive dra- 
 matic virtues of those skilful and charming 
 pieces. 
 
 Shaw's method also involves that use of gen- 
 eralization that is effective in the degree that it 
 is dangerous, if one interpret literally. This is 
 more than manner, of course, for it includes 
 
38 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 mental processes, but is also rhetorical, a way 
 of securing an effect. Almost any page of 
 Shaw's illustrates the tendency. It is a very 
 delicate question whether an element of wilfulness 
 enters into this method of overstatement. Does 
 Shaw, recognizing that he is rated as a chartered 
 jester, take advantage of that license to use a 
 manner likely to mislead those whom an unkind 
 fate has deprived of a sense of humor? I think 
 his habit of putting the case so much the 
 stronger by the omission of qualifiers, is con- 
 genital ; but is also accepted by him on the theory 
 that you must strike hard if you would dint num- 
 skulls. It is a way of making yourself heard of 
 those who are hard of hearing. Perhaps the 
 author did not fully realize it is also a way of 
 producing puzzle in many minds. The compara- 
 tive few will make the proper concessions and al- 
 lowances. The essayist can take up his subject, 
 turn it about, let its many facets flash in succes- 
 sion before us, and in leisured fashion turn it in- 
 side out for reflection and analysis. The phi- 
 losopher can balance and concede, strive for a 
 judicial tone, and leave you in a broad-minded un- 
 certainty as to the conclusion. But the orator 
 
*' WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 39 
 
 and dramatist both, the latter being an orator in 
 this respect, must be partizan, special pleaders; 
 must strike while the iron is hot; they substitute 
 heat for light. And Shaw in his dialectics is es- 
 sentially the orator, the rhetorician (as to 
 method) passionately pleading, seeing but the 
 one thing at the moment, and moving heaven 
 and earth to attain his end, which is, convic- 
 tion on the part of the hearer. This is the 
 technic of conviction, as we might call it. What 
 we have a right to demand of the orator is elo- 
 quence and honesty; and Shaw has them in full 
 measure. 
 
 With this precautionary word, we may take 
 up the evidence of the plays themselves, beginning 
 with 
 
 Widowers^ Houses 
 
 Several Shavian qualities are exhibited in this 
 interesting if tentative piece. It can easily be 
 understood that in 1892 it would not succeed. 
 Its date of production, December 9, 1892, at 
 The Independent Theatre, London, must be quali- 
 fied by the knowledge that it was begun (as de- 
 scribed) seven years earlier, in 1885. If it was 
 
40 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 in advance of the day in 1892, it was still more 
 ahead of the time when conceived. Reduced to 
 a brutally condensed statement, the play tells 
 how a young man, loving a girl and winning her, 
 is then repelled by the fact that her father's 
 money is gained by iniquitous landlordism ; at first 
 he refuses to have her, but finally, through sex- 
 charm and also because he finds his own money 
 is involved in these questionable investments, re- 
 turns to her: a sufficiently cynical conclusion. 
 The ending is " pleasant " only for those who do 
 not think and prefer to have the curtain go down 
 on a marriage of whatever quality. In reality, 
 there is a sardonic ring to it; the author's at- 
 titude, we feel, would be cynical, except that he 
 does not so much blame Trench, the young lover, 
 in his acceptance under pressure of a lower 
 standard, as he blames us all, society in general. 
 It is society, Shaw shows, that builds up a ma- 
 chine which makes possible such complications. 
 The criticism is not so much of human nature as 
 of the social complex in the meshes of which our 
 weak humanity has become entangled. 
 
 The play, compared with more mature work, 
 seems young in definite particulars; the comic 
 
"WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 41 
 
 characters are sketchy and exaggerated when 
 set beside such a masterpiece, for example, as 
 William the waiter in " You Never Can Tell." 
 The sociological fervor is obtruded too obviously, 
 and there is an effect of rounding out the plot 
 to a desired conclusion, the reconciliation of the 
 lovers at the expense of logic of characteriza- 
 tion; although, as I have noted, it is possible to 
 argue that an average well-meaning fellow like 
 Trench, sensitive to the good but unable under 
 temptation to live up to his ideals, might do 
 exactly what he does: compromise. Technically, 
 the handling testifies in some ways to the date of 
 composition, since it shows conventions since out- 
 grown; both soliloquy and aside are used, though 
 not freely. 
 
 But in many respects this drama has the 
 author's earmarks, and announces a new man in 
 the British theatre. We have the device of 
 elaborate stage directions and character delinea- 
 tions, addressed not only to the reader, but, with 
 Shaw, to the intelligent actor, or stage manager, 
 as well; no others need apply! We have the 
 Preface, in its less expanded form, which was to 
 become in the works in general such a weapon, 
 
42 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and such a delightful and illuminating addition 
 to the text itself. We have a keen sense of 
 scene as such, vivid characterization with a feel- 
 ing for contrasts, and a dialogue which, looking 
 to Ibsen for a realistic model, is in no respects 
 behind him for verisimilitude, vigor, and variety. 
 It is safe to say that no such dialogue had ap- 
 peared in the English theatre since Congreve. 
 For its earnest, satiric purpose, with the relief 
 of scintillant wit and atmospheric humor, it is 
 unsurpassed. The frequent statement that all 
 Shaw's stage folk talk Shavian language is flatly 
 contradicted by a delightful comic personage 
 like Lickcheese, whose name, by the way, sug- 
 gests that when the author began dramatic writ- 
 ing, he was willing to do what later he would 
 have eschewed: place descriptive type names 
 upon his stage creatures. On the side of struc- 
 ture, it is worth observing that, like Ibsen, Shaw 
 avoids mere curtain effects, yet has the instinct 
 of the true dramatist for heightened and sus- 
 pensive moments ; the end of the second act is an 
 illustration. This is the French feeling for 
 coups de theatre, with an added ease and natural- 
 ness in reproducing life. There is also genuine 
 
"WIDOWERS' HOUSES" 43 
 
 progress to a climax, whether the piece be re- 
 garded as a love story or social thesis. In the 
 former case, the diagram reads : Act I, engage- 
 ment; Act II, engagement broken; Act III, mak- 
 ing it up. On the other supposition, we have: 
 Act I, a young man innocent of social rottenness ; 
 Act II, disillusion; Act III, acceptance of lower 
 standards. 
 
 The outstanding feature of " Widowers' 
 Houses," however, is its theme, its note of social 
 protest. It is story and character study for the 
 sake of drawing attention to the evils of slum 
 landlordism and to the fact that we are all im- 
 plicated in it: caught in the social web, albeit un- 
 wittingly, and our brother's keeper, whether we 
 will or no. If the details of story are trimmed 
 to the thesis, it is not easy to see wherein the 
 general picture is not in drawing. Many re- 
 spectable folk do have investments in insanitary, 
 ramshackle tenements, and are sometimes loath 
 to tear them down in favor of" better buildings, 
 when so doing means an assault upon income. 
 Or what is more probable, such seemly people 
 are content to leave the dirty work to those em- 
 ployed for the purpose, without inquiring too 
 
44 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 curiously into the minutiae of the proceedings; 
 their consciences thus being preserved from con- 
 viction of sin. And there would seem to be noth- 
 ing improbable in the spectacle of a young man 
 who has reformatory instincts become worldly- 
 wise when not only his pocket is tapped but the 
 loss of his girl is threatened. It is all one of 
 life's little ironies, familiar enough to the ob- 
 serving mind. 
 
 The treatment of love in the play and the con- 
 ception of woman embodied in Blanche are also 
 definitely Shavian. Shaw cannot abide the usual 
 sentimental depiction of the passion of love. He 
 attacks it on all occasions. I do not recall a 
 seriously tender love scene in the conventional 
 sense in all his dramas. It may be remarked 
 parenthetically, that this affords a striking 
 proof of his power as a dramatist, since the love 
 motive is the central appeal of stage stories, as 
 it is of fiction in general. The Shavian idea is 
 that the life-force for its own biologic purposes 
 provides a sex glamour which hides the facts and 
 in making " love matches " by the million, also 
 makes trouble for the twain and for society at 
 large. He would have men and women realize 
 
"THE PHILANDERER" 45 
 
 what they really are, in order to come together 
 in mutual respect and affection as comrades who 
 shall build homes and conserve the interests of 
 the state. In " Man and Superman," as we shall 
 see, he laughs at his own counsel of perfection; 
 as Ibsen in "The Wild Duck" laughs at his 
 own idealism wrongly applied or embodied. 
 Blanche is a rather unlovely exemplar of the life- 
 force ; she gets her man and ethical principles 
 can go hang. She is her father's daughter. It 
 would be quite unfair to name Blanche as a typi- 
 cal Shavian woman. She is simply one aspect, 
 and not a pleasing one, of what he conceives as 
 the truth concerning the sexes. 
 
 Altogether, then, " Widowers' Houses " fur- 
 nished proof of a new talent in the British 
 theatre, and contained some of the distinctive 
 characteristics of the writer, while not without 
 signs of being journeyman work. 
 
 The Philanderer 
 
 In " The Wild Duck," as stated, Ibsen 
 satirizes the misuse of his own idealism. In 
 " The Philanderer," Shaw's next play, written 
 
46 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 in 1893, and like its predecessor for The Inde- 
 pendent Theatre, but not produced until Febru- 
 ary 5, 1907, at the Court Theatre, London, 
 Shaw satirizes the situation when fools and fad- 
 dists get hold of the Norwegian's ideas and pro- 
 cede to juggle with them in relation to their own 
 lives. This drama has never been one of the pro- 
 nounced Shaw successes, although it was by no 
 means a failure when seen in New York and Chi- 
 cago. The less popular early pieces of Shaw, 
 given now as an intelligent theatre audience is 
 fast being, prepared by various influences at 
 work, play far better than they did at the time of 
 their first appearance. Still, there is a quality 
 in this play which makes against wide accept- 
 ance, and it has definite defects. Primarily, it 
 seems a satire on Ibsen, and this had more 
 pertinence twenty-odd years ago than at present. 
 But it also satirizes certain other social fal- 
 lacies, which are favorite objects of attack with 
 Shaw: doctors and their profession in general (to 
 be amplified in "The Doctor's Dilemma"), vivi- 
 section in particular, and the current laws and 
 conventions of marriage (also to be extended in 
 treatment in "Getting Married"). Because of 
 
"THE PHILANDERER" 47 
 
 these imperfect and foolish laws, Shaw is of the 
 opinion that a type such as the philanderer, 
 Charteris, becomes a frequent phenomenon. We 
 notice here the author's sturdy and oft reiterated 
 faith in the efficacy of legislation to improve 
 upon human nature as it acts and reacts in so- 
 ciety and the state. 
 
 Regarded as architecture, this dispersedness 
 of attack tends to lessen the effect of unity in 
 the play ; as a story, the love affairs of Charteris, 
 though amusing enough, are not of sufficient 
 strength, especially in view of his somewhat un- 
 sympathetic character, to justify that side of 
 the appeal. The piece carries largely by reason 
 of its incidental fun, and its cleverness of scene 
 and dialogue. The seriousness of purpose is in- 
 jured by a levity of tone which has an effect of 
 being for its own sake. Yet a playwright of ex- 
 traordinary ability is plainly indicated in such a 
 handling of situation as that which closes the 
 first act, or in much of the dialogue, illustrated 
 by this speech of Charteris's: 
 
 Charteris. I tell you seriously, I'm the 
 matter. Julia wants to marry me: I want 
 to marry Grace. Enter Julia. Alarums 
 
48 BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 and excursions. Exit Grace. Enter you 
 and Craven. Subterfuges and excuses. 
 Exeunt Craven and Julia. And here we 
 are. That's the whole story. Sleep over 
 it. Good night. {He leaves). 
 
 CuTHBERTSON {staving after him). Well, 
 I'll be — {tlie act drop descends). 
 As a tour de force, this sends one back to the 
 fifth act unraveling in " Cymbeline." 
 
 The feeling born, rather than made, for theatre 
 effects can be detected throughout this early 
 piece of a man, all of whose work proves the gift. 
 Witness the entrance of Julia in act one, which 
 is but one of several instances. The conduct- 
 ment of the Ibsen talk is in the highest degree 
 an example of keen satiric comedy, with sparkle 
 and palpable hits in every line. For 1916, per- 
 haps the mostjnteresting thing in the play is the 
 contrasted feminine portraiture: we get the 
 woman who grabs her man — an earlier Ann — 
 the womanly woman who waits for him, and, 
 God save the mark, the masculine woman who is 
 neither the clinging vine nor the truculent ama- 
 zon of the opposite extreme. You can respect 
 the woman who clings as the exponent of a 
 
" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 49 
 
 pleasant tradition ; and the woman who conquers, 
 for she helps the race to exist. But the woman 
 who wobbles, being neither Venus nor Lucina, she 
 is an unpalatable joke. So far as he shows any 
 bias, Shaw's sympathy is apparently with Grace, 
 the womanly woman. 
 
 Mrs. Warren^s Profession 
 
 The next play was the first one to make its 
 author a popular issue. It was written the lat- 
 ter part of 1893, for The Independent Theatre, 
 but was first seen at The New Lyric Club in 
 London, January 5, 1902, nearly a decade later; 
 proof of the slow winning of favor by Shaw at 
 this time. It was forbidden by the Censor in 
 1893, and only privately given in London at the 
 later date; was stopped by the police both in 
 New Haven and New York, when it was 
 produced in America, though afterwards per- 
 mitted in the metropolis. The date at the 
 Garrick Theatre, New York, was October 30, 
 1905. It has always been a storm center 
 with Shaw, as has " Ghosts " with Ibsen. To 
 understand it, is to understand the former in 
 
50 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 much of his central faith and impulse of 
 work. 
 
 The objections to it might be summed up as 
 plain speaking, repellent theme, and a lack of 
 " sentiment " as usually understood, especially in 
 the heroine, Vivie; together with a general hard 
 rationalism in the treatment of sex love and the 
 family relations. Some, too, are offended by the 
 facetiousness and fun introduced in connection 
 with Frank and Praed. Even so doughty a 
 Shavian as biographer Henderson thinks the 
 tone of the play injured in this respect. The 
 only excuse to be offered would be that in a 
 drama so grim and drastic in theme, the allevia- 
 tion of humor is necessary: something that Ibsen 
 chose to ignore, no doubt to the loss of many fol- 
 lowers. It is an artistic question: the question 
 whether the composition is tonally harmed by 
 " the laugh mistimed in tragic presences." 
 
 As to the strictures mentioned, short shrift 
 may be made of the first, the frank handling of 
 a disagreeable subject. Modern art has pretty 
 well decided to accept the extension of subject 
 in the interests of a broader study of life and to 
 base judgment upon the question of how the 
 
" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 51 
 
 thing is done. The treatment of sex with Shaw 
 is at once frank and high-minded; if we object 
 to it, we will have none of him. No piece in the 
 Shavian repertory is further removed from any 
 concession to the " pleasant." Distinctly, this 
 is one of the " unpleasant " plays, perhaps the 
 most " unpleasant " of his career. And, it may 
 be to the winning of a better hearing for his 
 views, in his later work he modified the uncom- 
 promising, grim austerity of the treatment here. 
 
 The situation posited is this: a mother who 
 has made herself wealthy by maintaining houses 
 of ill-fame has kept her daughter in complete 
 ignorance of the fact, given her a college educa- 
 tion, reared her as a lady. The daughter dis- 
 covers the truth, recoils from her mother in dis- 
 gust, and leaves her forever. The tragedy and 
 pathos of this is found in the mother's sincere 
 love for the daughter; and the suspensive inter- 
 est (which every good play must have) centers 
 in the question: what will the daughter do.^^ 
 
 In the handling of this obviously tremendous 
 situation, there are technical faults. Coincidence 
 is stretched in the meeting of Gardiner and Mrs. 
 Warren ; the falling together of Frank and Vivie, 
 
52 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 lovers yet bound by kin ties, might be criticised 
 in the same way, as well as on the ground of 
 taste; and the melodrama of the rifle incident in 
 act third is possibly incongruous in such a play; 
 to which, however, the author might reply that 
 he was making a stage play, and had to bear in 
 mind the intellectually overtaxed. 
 
 But all such objections, technical or esthetic, 
 are as naught in the face of the vital value of a 
 drama which remains one of the most original 
 and powerful of the day. It has a fine theme, 
 brilliantly written, effectively presented. A 
 daughter brought up in ignorance of her mother's 
 shameful occupation, learns the truth and re- 
 jects the mother; there, in more condensed state- 
 ment than I gave it before, is the argument; its 
 bullet-like brevity shows how dramatic is the 
 play's central idea. There is no better test of a 
 real play than the readiness with which it lends 
 itself to a succinct, clear statement like this. In- 
 cidental, it would seem, to the central treatment, 
 the daughter also rejects her lover and goes in 
 for a lifetime of spinster independent work. 
 But this is germane, after all, to Shaw's thesis: 
 that society, not Mrs. Warren, is responsible for 
 
" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 53 
 
 the harlot, and that woman's economic independ- 
 ence, once won, will be the deathblow to that 
 most reverend of all female professions. 
 
 The way in which, as a whole, this superb 
 subject-matter is handled cannot but awaken ad- 
 miration, in all who know technic when they 
 see it. 
 
 In the first-act curtain speech, we get a hint 
 of what is to come; in act second the mother is 
 half revealed to her child; in act third the full 
 revelation comes; and the final act shows us the 
 sequent separation. Here is skilfully graduated 
 growth with an organic texture that is close- 
 knit and congruous. The technic is basically 
 that which accepts the formula of Ibsen and 
 adapts it to particular needs and personal feel- 
 ing. There are but six characters, and the ex- 
 position is worked into the body of the play. 
 Yet to use four acts with a number of scene 
 changes savors of twenty years ago. As to char- 
 acterization, whatever may be thought of Frank 
 and his father, the other three persons are splen- 
 did examples of dramatic representation: Mrs. 
 Warren, creature of a vicious system, likable in 
 her way, even admirable at moments in her hon- 
 
54 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 est, unrealizing Philistinism, a pathetic, tragic, 
 ironic human figure; a very great piece of por- 
 trait drawing; Vivie, intensely the new type of 
 our day, shrinking in every fiber from her 
 mother yet valiantly desirous of doing her jus- 
 tice; hardly inferior to the other two, Praed, an 
 unforgettable picture of the elderly sensualist. 
 The great scene where the mother and daughter 
 clash and part, is on the whole Shaw's most un- 
 questionable chef d'ceuvre in the manipulation 
 of climax, and one of the very few great serious 
 scenes in English-speaking drama of our genera- 
 tion ; paralleled only by Galsworthy's " Justice," 
 Pinero's " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," and 
 possibly one or two more ; and superior to any 
 other for sheer originality. The dialogue in the 
 climactic moments of the action has an idiomatic 
 concision and happy inevitability of phrasing 
 that are above praise. Nothing in the English 
 theatre is better, for its purpose. Memorable 
 lines are frequent, like the terrible one spoken by 
 Mrs. Warren as she tries to convince her daugh- 
 ter : " Every woman has to get some man to be 
 good to her." There is woman's social saga 
 epitomized in one short, simple sentence. 
 
" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 55 
 
 One feels that had Shaw continued to write 
 plays of the caliber of this, he would have been 
 a greater dramatist but might not so success- 
 fully have insinuated his teachings. 
 
 Certainly in this play the economic and social 
 thinker unslings all his guns in an attack never 
 quite equaled since for bitter insistence and 
 stark presentation. It looks as if he recognized 
 he had been extreme in method here, and decided 
 to mitigate the message hereafter. In any event, 
 the idea of the drama is well worth attention. 
 Shaw believes that poverty is the cardinal social 
 crime: a notion developed more fully in "Major 
 Barbara." Make possible a comfortable living 
 wage for women, recognize maternity at its true 
 value to the state, and you throttle prostitution. 
 If there be fallacy in this, it is to be found in 
 overlooking two classes of women: those who 
 prefer vice for its own sake; and those incapable 
 of earning an honest wage. 
 
 In Bernard Shaw's schemes for social better- 
 ment in general, there is always the faith in the 
 natural good of human beings: the assumption 
 that if given a chance, they will rise to it. One 
 honors the thinker's generous interpretation, 
 
56 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 even if doubtfully querying whether he do not 
 place human nature too high. It is a curious 
 thing that one who seems always declaiming in 
 the spirit of the scoffer against some moral or 
 social backsliding, like a Daniel come to judg- 
 ment, bases his whole philosophy upon a 
 thoroughly optimistic conception of the ability 
 of human beings to do right when favorably en- 
 vironed to do so. I sincerely believe that this 
 archenemy to all sentimentality becomes ro- 
 mantically sentimental in this favorable opinion 
 of his fellows ; and surely he is all the more lova- 
 ble because of it. 
 
 But the main contention that, in such measure 
 as we remove the economic necessity of sin, we 
 tend to lessen the social evil, is sound; and 
 Shaw's drama assuming this, finds its justifica- 
 tion, whatever of exaggeration there may be in 
 driving the idea home. 
 
 If " Mrs. Warren's Profession " be bad art 
 because its theme is non-esthetic, we must, to be 
 consistent, give up along with it, " Oedipus the 
 King," several of Shakspere's most powerful 
 tragedies, and representative works by Ibsen and 
 Brieux. The condemnation cuts off more heads 
 
" MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION " 57 
 
 than one, and heads that have a kingly look. As 
 a matter of fact, and cause for congratulation, 
 we are hearing less and less of such foolish re- 
 strictions upon serious art. The thesis is pat to 
 our day, and worth while, since it deals with one 
 of the permanently important problems of civili- 
 zation. It is cleanly, strongly, and skilfully han- 
 dled and the drama containing it is an intel- 
 lectual stimulant and a social document of great 
 significance. The late William James declared 
 that in this piece Shaw made us see, (as only the 
 stage can make us), the difference between con- 
 vention and conscience, and showed that you can 
 tell the truth, if you only do it benignantly. 
 Disagreement there will always be as to its place 
 in Shaw's repertory; some would put it at the 
 top. More often, the praise awarded it is 
 timid on the ground of its unpleasantness. To 
 my mind, having stage value, skill, dramatic 
 clinch, and literary execution in view, it belongs 
 with the few masterpieces, if the first position is 
 not to be given it. 
 
58 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Arms and the Man 
 
 Shaw was now steadily and vigorously pur- 
 suing the vocation of dramatist, although with 
 small encouragement as yet. Both " The Phi- 
 landerer " and " Mrs. Warren's Profession," as 
 we have seen, were written for The Independent 
 Theatre, but not produced there. His next 
 piece, written in the early months of the follow- 
 ing year, 1894, and to prove one of his 
 permanently successful stage plays, was " Arms 
 and the Man," first seen at The Avenue Theatre, 
 London, April 21, where it was played until 
 July 7, an eleven weeks' run and the first indica- 
 tion that his work could make anything like a 
 popular appeal. It was produced by Richard 
 Mansfield at The Herald Square Theatre, New 
 York, September 17, 1894, but its reception 
 was but lukewarm, though the few recog- 
 nized its merit, and it afforded Mansfield one 
 of the most sympathetic roles of his career. 
 December of the same year it was given at 
 the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, under the title 
 Helden. These facts are a plain proof that 
 the tide had turned and Shaw had become a 
 
" ARMS AND THE MAN '* 59 
 
 man to reckon with in the practical play- 
 house. 
 
 " Arms and the Man " is a brilliant satirical 
 comedy belonging with the group of " pleasant " 
 plays of his own description. It is essentially a 
 drama, an amusing story told within the frame- 
 work of a conventional plot, but novel in char- 
 acter, treatment and lebensanschauung, behind 
 the fun. It was received by some critics as an at- 
 tack upon the military ideal, and no doubt that 
 is involved; Shaw, generally speaking, protests 
 against war, and often satirizes it. But the 
 reader who puts himself to the trouble to har- 
 monize the opinion expressed in a special play 
 with the author's view in general, will see that 
 Sergius is satirized primarily as a pseudo ideal- 
 ist and that Raina, the woman of his choice, is 
 obsessed with the same notions. Here, as al- 
 ways, Shaw is aiming at the false social ideals 
 which injure human life. In this case, he laughs 
 at the conventional picture of the " hero," who 
 in his spick-and-span uniform exposes himself in 
 front of a tree instead of hiding behind it that 
 he may live to fight another day: Bluntschli's 
 way. In short, Bluntschli is the true soldier. 
 
60 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 muddj-booted mercenary though he be, because 
 he strips war of its specious decorative colors 
 and shows it for the grim business it is. He 
 works for wage, does his duty, and wears unbe- 
 coming clothes. And Raina, when the scales 
 drop from her eyes, turns from the man-doll 
 Sergius to the real fighter. Incidentally, there 
 is a good deal of irony against family preten- 
 sions, pure-blooded nationality, and idealism at 
 large; all of which broadens the appeal of the 
 drama as amusement. And it should be observed 
 that, unlike the preceding plays, the satire is not 
 bitter and savage, but genial and hence all the 
 more effective. The idealists reform, the author 
 seems to be enjoying things himself. The change 
 of tone is noticeable, and no doubt an element in 
 its success. Whether Shaw, struggling play- 
 wright, resolv€d to court a quicker success by 
 conforming to the public desire for theatre en- 
 tertainment, while just as earnest as ever to pre- 
 sent his views, may be left to individual opinion. 
 The important point is, that his principles are 
 not sacrificed; method not view is altered. 
 
 " Arms and the Man " is above all a good 
 play. The character drawing is clear, interest- 
 
" ARMS AND THE MAN " 61 
 
 ing, arresting, well-contrasted. Many of the 
 best bits of dialogue are mots de caractere, 
 their wit derived from character and scene, not 
 from the author outside the drama. Not only 
 are the principals, Sergius, Bluntschli, and 
 Raina, firmly limned and delightful, but sec- 
 ondary folk like Petkoff and Catherine are quite 
 as successful in their due place. Shaw does a 
 new thing in the penetrating psychology of the 
 serving class in the persons of Nicola and Louka. 
 The drama is also conspicuous as stage specta- 
 cle and effect. How clever is the first act, and 
 how novel in its use of material that might so 
 easily be made suggestively unpleasant if coarsely 
 handled. Shaw, as noted, is the most daring man 
 of the English theatre in his use of subject- 
 matter and plain speech; but at the same time 
 the freest from offense; this Puritan playwright 
 writes with clean hands and a pure heart, and the 
 most ascetic priest could not be further removed 
 from sensualistic taint. The first act is a capital 
 start to catch the unthinking in a play in which 
 the remaining acts constitute a comedy of char- 
 acter and dialogue rather than action in the 
 usual external sense. Allowing for the difference 
 
62 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 between comedy and comi-tragedy, this opening 
 act might be compared with the similar act of 
 Ibsen's " Little Eyolf." The construction, 
 judged conventionally, is peculiar, a good exam- 
 ple of the way Shaw blazes trails and broadens 
 stage technic by his freedom of handling. Most 
 often in a three-act drama, good building calls 
 for act one to be longest of the three, and the 
 last the shortest. Acts one, two, and three thus 
 move in a descending scale of time. But in this 
 specimen, act one is by far the briefest; the sec- 
 ond act very much the longest, while the final act 
 is less than half the second in length, yet much 
 longer than the first. Compared with the act 
 divisions that are customary, the proportions 
 seem all awry. The reason, of course, lies in the 
 nature of the piece, and the playwright's pur- 
 pose. Instead of choosing in act first, after the 
 usual fashion, to get his story well underway 
 and to develop characters, he puts an incident 
 before the audience upon which the whole story 
 hangs, and does his main character unfolding in 
 subsequent acts; much what Ibsen does in "Lit- 
 tle Eyolf." 
 
 In other words, act one is almost like a pro- 
 
" ARMS AND THE MAN '* 63 
 
 logue, in place of the regular exposition which 
 characterizes the piece bien fait, the well-made 
 play of the French. Nevertheless, the few things 
 necessary to know, Sergius's relation to Raina, 
 for instance, are clearly revealed. How natural 
 that device of the photograph to bring this re- 
 sult. Looking to popularity, this method of 
 opening a play is sure to be better liked than 
 the subtler Ibsenian way. 
 
 Having, then, got the situation before us in an 
 effective prologue, Shaw lets the story work out 
 logically, with the purpose to show the disillu- 
 sionment of Raina of her lover and her turning 
 to Bluntschli. And since he desires to prepare 
 the stage for the skilful complications of act 
 third, where obviously the scene a faire is to be 
 shown, he takes plenty of time in act second. I 
 would particularly draw attention to the treat- 
 ment of the situation in the last act, because it 
 is a notable example of his dramaturgy, and one 
 of the most effective bits of craftsmanship in 
 modern comedy; to appreciate it to the full, is 
 to testify to one's knowledge of play-making. 
 
 Occasionally, Shaw allows his fun to interfere 
 with psychology: as in Raina's remark about the 
 
64 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 washing of one's hands, which is certainly rather 
 startling, and hardly to be expected from a 
 woman of her breeding. And the mating of 
 Sergius and Louka verges on farce, only to be 
 excused by the delicious reductio ad ahsurdum of 
 the Sergian motto, " I never withdraw." 
 
 To the thoughtful, " Arms and the Man " is 
 Shavian through and through, and happily so, 
 because surcharged with stimulating suggestion. 
 How remorselessly does he strip war of all its 
 romance, all his work indeed being one battle 
 against the " romance " which to his mind so 
 viciously misleads humanity: and how keen his 
 analysis of so-called bravery, a description that 
 Crane's " Red Badge of Courage " verifies. 
 Bluntschli's purely nervous start when Raina 
 throws away the box of candy is illuminatingly 
 discriminating, and we may admire the superb 
 common sense of the distinction made between 
 physical and moral courage. The proper 
 emphasis is put upon the latter. 
 
 The democratic note is strong in the play, as 
 in the passage where " position and worldly 
 goods " are excoriated. As a minor but amusing 
 element in the drama, we may perhaps see a 
 
" ARMS AND THE MAN " 65 
 
 satiric comment on the grandiloquent air assumed 
 by a small, unimportant principality: the little 
 town in the Balkans takes itself so very seriously ! 
 
 By writing "Arms and the Man," Shaw 
 made himself known, — at least to those best fitted 
 to judge, — as a playwright who could produce a 
 clever light comedy not without farcical tend- 
 encies, of genuine stage quality and acting value, 
 which yet contained food for thought and be- 
 longs in that advanced modern theatre where 
 civilized entertainment is offered to the public 
 desiring it; at that time, and still, a rare com- 
 bination. 
 
 In passing it may be worth noting that " Arms 
 and the Man " is the only play of Shaw's so far 
 to be remade into an opera libretto ; perhaps it 
 is known to more people as Oscar Strauss's " The 
 Chocolate Soldier " than in its original form. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 
 
 "CANDIDA" TO "THE ADMIRABLE 
 BASHVILLE " 
 
 Candida 
 
 As the drama just described was in popularity 
 and adaptability to theatre needs a step in ad- 
 vance of what went before, so the next play 
 marked a still greater forward movement of the 
 fast-gaining playwright. " Candida," certainly 
 one of his happiest, best, and most representative 
 dramas, to some critics deserving of the place of 
 honor, was written later in the year 1894, which 
 registers " Arms and the Man." It was taken 
 on tour by The Independent Theatre Company, 
 after a premiere in Aberdeen, during the spring 
 of 1897, again in 1898, and had its first London 
 production on April 6, 1904. Dresden witnessed 
 it November 19, 1903, at the Konigliches Schau- 
 spielhaus; and it was done in New York at The 
 Princess Theatre, December 9, 1903. Shaw's 
 
 66 
 
" CANDIDA " 67 
 
 first appearance in French was in this piece, the 
 place and time being February 7, 1907, at the 
 Theatre Royal du Pare in Brussels. The Parisian 
 production dates May 7, 1908. It will be noticed 
 that " Candida " was given in this country be- 
 fore it was in London. And it may be added that 
 the performance of this drama by Arnold Daly 
 in New York was the first popular success in 
 this land secured by any Shaw play. Mans- 
 field's venture had been no more than a critical 
 success. 
 
 The remarkable thing about " Candida," — or 
 one remarkable thing where there are many, — is 
 that it established itself as a genuine theatre 
 piece at once and is hugely liked of the general 
 theatre-going public; yet is in reality, touching 
 suggestion and meaning, a subtle and difficult 
 drama, many readings of which do not altogether 
 quiet guess and theory. When it was read to Sir 
 Charles Wyndham, that actor manager declared 
 it to be twenty years ahead of its time; Shaw 
 waited for the time to catch up with him, and it 
 did so in much less than the allotted twenty 
 years ! But " Candida " and its history are in- 
 structive, because they testify loudly to the 
 
6s BERNARD SHAW 
 
 author's ability to make the double appeal: to in- 
 terest the general and particular. Again it is a 
 case of new wine in old bottles, and the many are 
 so enamored of the bottles that they do not 
 mind the heady quality of the drink. 
 
 Viewed casually, we see this play as a satire on 
 the French triangle of husband, wife, and lover, 
 with the positions deranged; the sensation is se- 
 cured, not by the fleeing of the wife with the 
 lover, which has been staled into the common- 
 place by reiteration, but by the wife's cleaving 
 to the husband, which has all the merit of 
 novelty. The comic characters are so funny: 
 Candida's father, the inimitable Prossy, another 
 ten-strike of low comedy, and Marchbanks, who 
 is not so much comic as comi-tragic ; and the cen- 
 tral scene is so dramatic, that quite apart from 
 the main problem of the piece, there is plenty to 
 amuse and enchain attention. 
 
 But altogether aside from its wholesome and 
 enjoyable satire upon an unhealthy sort of play 
 much in vogue at the time and not entirely dead 
 yet, and also setting aside its ample provision in 
 characters, dialogue, and situation for theatre 
 entertainment, what does the dram.a mea,n.? The 
 
"CANDIDA" 69 
 
 critics are inclined to propose various theories; 
 there is considerable disagreement concerning 
 the author's intention in writing it, and the par- 
 ticular significance he imputes to the clergyman, 
 to Candida herself and to the young poet, 
 Marchbanks ; especially to the last two. What 
 just is Candida as wife and woman? And what 
 is Marchbanks, as a type in himself and in rela- 
 tion to the married woman whom he fancies him- 
 self in love with? Our decision on one of these 
 queries affects the decision on the other. As to 
 the heroine, to call her such, the author proffers 
 us some help, although it is not altogether satis- 
 factory. Whimsically he declares Candida to be 
 outrageous, highly " improper." Dare we trust 
 him here? I take him to mean that she so ap- 
 pears to the conventions, being a life-force woman 
 who in justifying her instincts, her love for her 
 man, is doing that which is above all so-called 
 moral law. In this sense only is she " unprinci- 
 pled." Far nearer to what Shaw intended in this 
 portraiture is the note, which I quote in Chapter 
 VIII, where the author's general poetic signifi- 
 cance is summarized. 
 
 When in sportive moments we find him attack- 
 
70 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 ing Candida or another we must understand it 
 as an indulgence which he allows himself at the 
 expense of the obtuse. Of course he regards 
 Candida as a completely trustworthy person, and 
 has a real penchant for her. 
 
 This granted, you have a cue for Marchbanks. 
 Candida is not a self-indulgent woman who en- 
 joys having an interesting pseudo-Shelley in love 
 with her. Nor in the fine final scene is she auc- 
 tioning herself off, so to say, to the highest bid- 
 der. She never has had a thought of leaving her 
 husband. She simply wishes to teach March- 
 banks something of the deeper values of woman- 
 hood. And Marchbanks, young and immature 
 and, if you will, silly as he is, is a true poet, and 
 no mistake about it. Secure in her own love for 
 her husband, she can be and is the other's real 
 friend by teaching him the truth about women. 
 She teaches him a nobler conception of woman 
 than his stained-glass idealism; nobler, because 
 based on the truth about human nature; but he, 
 after the manner of the young idealist, will have 
 none of it and leaves what he deems the " greasy 
 Paradise " of a bona fide home for the great 
 outer world of dream, where he may pursue the 
 
" CANDIDA " 71 
 
 " eternal feminine " which draws him on. No 
 hausfrau for him. He goes forth with a new 
 note in his voice, according to the stage direc- 
 tion : " a man's voice, no longer a boy's." But he 
 is the picture of the true idealist in this respect; 
 he sees he must chase perfection as he conceives 
 it, give up the attempt at personal happiness be- 
 cause " life is nobler than that." This is the 
 serious and worthy side of Marchbanks, over- 
 looked by most critics, plainly indicated in the 
 valuable light-throwing words above quoted. 
 That the author is making scornful fun of 
 Marchbanks, and nothing else, is flatly contra- 
 dicted by the fact that he places in his mouth 
 some of the most searching and beautiful sayings 
 about poetry to be found anywhere. As where 
 he cries, " All the love in the world is longing to 
 speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, 
 shy. That is the world's tragedy." And again: 
 when Prossy, with her superb Philistinism, mis- 
 understanding all he says, advises him to go 
 talk to himself, and he replies : " That is what 
 all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; 
 and the world overhears them. But it's horribly 
 lonely not to hear some one else talk sometimes." 
 
72 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 If Shaw did not wish Marchbanks to be sym- 
 pathetic at all for us, but to appear only as a 
 febrile esthete, he should never have given him 
 such utterances as these: any more than Shak- 
 spere, with the purpose of making Shylock repel- 
 lent, should have written sundry magnificent 
 speeches which make him forever a deeply pa- 
 thetic, appealing figure. The critics who, at the 
 time of the first presentation of this comedy in 
 America, declared that the poet went out from 
 the Morell house to commit suicide, were cer- 
 tainly, in Shaw's descriptive phrase, " mentally 
 overtaxed." 
 
 So much for the characterization. The satiric 
 fun, so sparkling and satisfying, inheres in the 
 situation while it is logical with the characters. 
 Prossy is deliciously consistent in her British im- 
 perviousness to. aught but the practical; a lim- 
 ited, honest soul. The clergyman assistant is 
 natural in his weakness and strength. The 
 vulgar father. Burgess, may be a bit overdone 
 after the way of Dickens, but is a highly amus- 
 ing figure in his offensively genial self-approval ; 
 inevitably he begets eugenistic questionings as to 
 how a Candida could have come from his loins, 
 
" CANDIDA " 73 
 
 the best answer being that we do not know her 
 mother; or that Bernard Shaw is not averse 
 from poking a little satire at the eugenists, in- 
 cluding himself. Morell might have been, in the 
 cheap handling which tries for obvious contrasts, 
 an unsympathetic clerical; instead, he is a 
 thoroughly likable showing of the modern so- 
 cialist parson, a later Kingsley. His trouble is, 
 that, a good man, he cheats himself as many 
 good men do, with catchwords and theories. If 
 he would just be good naturally, being built that 
 way, and enjoy it, Shaw would quite approve of 
 him. Candida's straightforwardness in relation 
 to him, her delightful feminine seeing-through 
 his supposed strength to his very real weakness 
 and hence need of her, is a master stroke. Here 
 one is reminded of Barrie's heroine in " What 
 Every Woman Knows." Candida's unsubtlety 
 it is that makes her elusive. 
 
 Technically, this play is admirable; its con- 
 struction exhibits organic growth with steadily 
 increasing tension to one of the best climactic 
 scenes in modern drama, in the final act where 
 Candida makes her choice between the two men; 
 an obligatory scene projected so far forward as 
 
74 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 to fall at the very end of the piece. The 
 elaborate description with which the play opens 
 is the best example, so far in the list, of Shaw's 
 attempt to do for the reader what scenery does 
 for the spectator. The curtains, though unob- 
 trusive, are excellent. High comedy, with layers 
 of farce, melodrama, and tragedy, is what Shaw 
 has dared and done in " Candida," without wrest- 
 ing it from its genre in that unpleasant way 
 which makes a confusion in the spectator's mind 
 that injures enjoyment. And this, in spite of 
 plenty of puzzlement, both for the wayfaring 
 man and the elect. Truly, it is but by being 
 bold that such breath-taking things can be 
 achieved ! 
 
 How He Lied to Her Husband 
 
 Since the jeu d'esprit called " How He Lied 
 to Her Husband " is a pendant to the preceding 
 play, I will violate chronology and discuss it 
 here. Written in 1904, it was produced with 
 " The Man of Destiny " at The Berkeley Lyceum 
 Theatre in New York, September 26 of that 
 year, the two one-act pieces being necessary to 
 
" HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND " 75 
 
 fill out the evening bill. In explaining the cir- 
 cumstances leading him to make this little ex- 
 travaganza, the author plainly implies that the 
 root of the matter may be found in the dialogue 
 between the two principals (pages 139-40, 
 Brentano's edition), where the wife's romantic 
 intention of elopement is squelched by the very 
 mention of Candida; the play is humorously 
 charged by this would-be Candida as the 
 cause of her own foolish notions, her roman- 
 ticizing of irregularity. The author laughs 
 at those who are not able to catch its real 
 drift. 
 
 The domestic triangle is again used, and ro- 
 mantic obsessions are satirized in a framework 
 of knockabout farce, as Dr. Henderson well 
 calls it ; the admirers of " Candida " are warned 
 not to be too serious in thesis-seeking in this, or 
 any other, drama. Those folk who take " Can- 
 dida " in a too esoteric way are good-humoredly 
 joked about it and advised that they are " men- 
 tally overtaxed " once more. A woman is shown 
 loving her husband, as if it were the natural 
 thing to do — ^however unexpected. The particu- 
 lar fun comes, it should be noticed, from the way 
 
76 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the husband takes the lie and the truth: he re- 
 sents the truth and wants the lie, and Shaw 
 laughs at us because we all do. The lie is the 
 illusion that makes living attractive. This is 
 definitely Shavian, and the amusing skit must 
 be taken in this way and not be regarded as 
 a key to the major play, which it certainly is 
 not. This conceded, it has its minor place among 
 the lighter and brighter stage moods of a many- 
 minded and often elusive man. 
 
 You Never Can Tell 
 
 This is one of the cleverest farces, or farce 
 comedies, Shaw has written; possibly the best of 
 them. Norman Hapgood goes so far as to call 
 it the best farce in the tongue. " You Never 
 Can Tell " was begun in 1895, the year after 
 " Candida " was started, and worked on inter- 
 mittently during that year and later; to be first 
 produced by The London Stage Society on No- 
 vember 24, 1899, the first play of the author to 
 be done by that important organization. Shaw 
 had Cyril Maude in mind in writing it, and it 
 was put in rehearsal by that actor in 1897, but 
 
" YOU NEVER CAN TELL " 77 
 
 withdrawn. Mr. Maude has given an amusing 
 account of this, as has the playwright himself; 
 for which the Preface to the play and the Hen- 
 derson life may be consulted. In 1900, at The 
 Strand Theatre, it was acted with success, which 
 is also true of its New York reception, beginning 
 at The Garden Theatre in 1905. Prosperity 
 has always followed this piece, which is indubita- 
 bly a favorite judged by box office standards. 
 After the strain and stress of his earlier " un- 
 pleasant plays," Shaw seems to have relieved 
 himself, while by no means abandoning his 
 satiric purpose, by making a series of humorous 
 dramas in which the satire, if present, is most 
 unbitterly conveyed and the touch that of a true 
 stage raconteur. 
 
 Regarded as a work of art, this play ranges 
 with the choicest of the Shavian repertory. It 
 seems a light bit of fooling, yet is technically so 
 excellent and so characteristic in its viewpoint 
 and handling as to be idiosyncratic ; above all, 
 it is steadily diverting. It ranks with " Can- 
 dida," " Captain Brassbound's Conversion," and 
 " The Man of Destiny," as examples of the right 
 handling of stage material so that amusement re- 
 
78 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 mains paramount, whatever the underlying sig- 
 nificance of the thought. 
 
 Within another conventional framework of 
 story, he has placed characters and opinions that 
 vivify and arouse. No theme seems outstanding, 
 which is one way of saying that no thesis is 
 starkly apparent. Yet many of the serious con- 
 victions of the writer are embedded in the drama: 
 William the waiter suggests social cleavages; 
 Gloria, anticipating Ann, the New Woman in con- 
 flict with the eternal sex pull; Valentine, an 
 earlier Tanner, is pushed against his will or 
 judgment into matrimony. The dominant 
 thought, I take it, is, that " handsome is as 
 handsome does." While the underplot has to do 
 with the love affairs of Valentine and Gloria, the 
 main tangle involves the events by which Clan- 
 don, a husband who has long since turned his 
 back upon his family, returns to them, and re- 
 ceives at their hands a very frosty reception. 
 If you want the perquisites of fatherhood, is 
 Shaw's implicit idea, you must, unlike Clandon, 
 play the part worthily. Why should a husband 
 and father such as this come back and expect 
 flowers and affection to greet the prodigal .^^ As 
 
" YOU NEVER CAN TELL " 79 
 
 a matter of fact, his wife is estranged and his 
 children, who have grown up during his absence, 
 remember him unpleasantly, dimly, if at all. 
 Shaw has his fling here at the romantic assump- 
 tion, " once a father always a father," and 
 denies that the home is sacred unless you treat 
 it sacredly. The genial tone and the corrective 
 of constant laughter carry this off effec- 
 tively. 
 
 A good example of the author's daring realism 
 of detail and setting is seen in his placing of the 
 opening act in the dentist's office; surely, a cur- 
 tain on a tooth-pulling is a new climax in the 
 English theatre ! In technic, the piece is a good 
 answer to those who imagine that Shaw lacks 
 craft in the playhouse; observe the careful 
 preparation of act one for its climax; how wise 
 it was not to draw that tooth. How brilliant 
 too is the curtain of act four! In contrast with 
 acts one and four in this respect, acts two and 
 three have psychological curtains, effective in 
 their way, but less obvious. The love story 
 furnished for those who want it, is tucked into 
 these acts, reserving for truly Shavian interests 
 the final act, to match the first. 
 
80 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 The dialogue is a veritable fusillade of wit and 
 one laughs constantly with one's brain, if one has 
 followed the dramatist's injunction and brought 
 it with him! humor, too, of character, situation, 
 and word is plentiful. What could be better, for 
 instance, than Valentine, earning his first fee for 
 six months, and then being invited out to dinner! 
 Or, unable to go to the masked ball, because he 
 hasn't the price. The pairing off of the part- 
 ners in act four is a fine blend of the humor 
 that inheres in both character and situa- 
 tion. 
 
 Like " Candida," the piece shows Shaw's in- 
 sistence upon plasticity of handling at the ex- 
 pense of " regularity." The time values seem 
 awry again to the superficial glance: act one is 
 not the longest nor the last act the shortest. 
 But reflection indicates that the business of act 
 second is briefly to separate the lovers; and the 
 last act, containing the scene a faire, needs more 
 time. In other words, the playwright refuses 
 once more to be stretched upon the iron bed of 
 conventions. His divergences from the usual are 
 no violation of essential laws. The careful artist 
 is behind them. The characterization of the 
 
"YOU NEVER CAN TELL" 81 
 
 wise William, surely a masterpiece, is brilliant, 
 yet such a person leads to debate. Are such fig- 
 ures true, or mere Shavian types? I do not hesi- 
 tate to attribute verisimilitude to the wonderful 
 waiter, nor does Crampton bother me. The 
 women differ; Gloria is perfectly true, her sister 
 is not without exaggeration, and the same may 
 be said of her brother; together they make a 
 most relishable duo of stage figures, if leaning 
 toward farce. 
 
 The mother is sound, too. But Valentine ap- 
 pears to be more dubious ; he has the earmarks 
 that suggest Shaw himself, as has Tanner later: 
 apparent light-mindedness, intellectual shame- 
 lessness, incorrigible levity; he exhibits the un- 
 emotional brain with the soft heart, the usual 
 Shavian clash. We are not aware of having met 
 him. Yet does he stand for a truth; perhaps he 
 will become familiar when the pseudo-romantic 
 shall have passed away and we are able to see 
 not through a glass darkly, but face to face. 
 Let us call such a creation a step toward super- 
 man. At present, he is an eccentric, an enjoya- 
 ble droll, and — a convenient mouthpiece. There 
 is an autobiographic smack to Valentine, as in 
 
82 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 much of this drama, which but adds to its in- 
 terest. For one, I am quite willing to believe 
 that the author sees him as verity. 
 
 The Man of Destiny 
 
 This extremely amusing and boldly novel one- 
 act piece, written in the autumn of 1895, and 
 produced for copyright purposes at Croydon in 
 1897, was, as has been stated, given with " How 
 He Lied to Her Husband " at The Berkeley 
 Lyceum Theatre, New York. It was aimed 
 originally at Richard Mansfield and Ellen Terry, 
 but these players, perhaps because of the mild re- 
 ception accorded " Arms and the Man " and 
 " The Devil's Disciple," did not see fit to pro- 
 duce it. Before the joint appearance with " How 
 He Lied to Her Husband," in 1904, this play 
 had been independently given by The American 
 Academy of Dramatic Arts at The Empire 
 Theatre, New York, February 16, 1899. The 
 London premiere was at The Court Theatre, 
 June 4, 1907, suspiciously later. Berlin did bet- 
 ter, for it was seen there at the Neues Theater, 
 February 10, 1904. It may be stated that this 
 
" THE MAN OF DESTINY " 83 
 
 drama and " Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 
 are dramatic compositions in which Shaw did 
 not feel his wings clipped by writing for specific 
 interpreters. Occasionally he seems to have felt 
 that a sharper definition might be given to his 
 meaning if it were placed in the hands of able ex- 
 ponents whom he had in mind from the begin- 
 ning. Maude, Tree, Irving, Mansfield, and Terry 
 are distinguished players for whom he shaped his 
 material from time to time. His attitude does 
 not appear to argue for those dramatists who 
 protest that to write for anybody in particular 
 (despite the example of Shakspere) is to prosti- 
 tute their art. No doubt it is best to choose the 
 interpreters, however, for then the impulse is 
 from within, an artistic one. It is temperate to 
 say that, broadly speaking, drama cut to fit per- 
 sonality can be looked upon with suspicion. But 
 to make a play and in the process discover that 
 some actor would well embody the main character, 
 or to have that actor in mind from the begin- 
 ning, is quite another thing; and it may be taken 
 for granted that this has happened to our play- 
 wright in several instances. 
 
 As so often with Shaw's lighter and slighter 
 
84 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 pieces, " The Man of Destiny " is immensely char- 
 acteristic; Shavian all through, in conception 
 and details of execution. We may call it but a 
 skit, if we choose, and plainly it stands for a less 
 sober mood; yet it may be that such a mood is 
 the ideal one for literary creation. For amuse- 
 ment primarily, as it seems, such a thing has the 
 function to make us think, nevertheless, and per- 
 forms it none the less surely because there is 
 pleasure in its dialogue, characters, and scene 
 and the union of them. It is one of several 
 dramas of which " Cassar and Cleopatra," " An- 
 drocles and the Lion," and " Great Catherine " 
 are other titles, where the author blithely pro- 
 poses to rewrite history and substitute for 
 stock figures out of which the breath of life has 
 passed, flesh-and-blood creatures of reality. He 
 endeavors to psychologize the events which made 
 them genuine personalities, not schoolboy names. 
 It is a realist's attempt to get nearer to the 
 truth of the Past. 
 
 His own feeling about it is happily and hu- 
 morously summed as follows : " A reputation is a 
 mask which a man has to wear just as he has to 
 wear a coat and trousers: it is a disguise we in- 
 
"THE MAN OF DESTINY" 85 
 
 sist on as a point of decency. The result is we 
 have hardly any portraits of men and women. 
 Nobody knows what Dickens was like or what 
 Queen Victoria was like, though their wardrobes 
 are on record." The conventional picture of 
 Napoleon is familiar; instead, we are here shown 
 not an historic dummy but a human being 
 motivated after the facts of known human reac- 
 tion to life. Really to exhibit a humanized Bona- 
 parte, in his habit as he lived, would be a service 
 rendered to the Natural History of Man, and 
 let it be recalled that it is Shaw's general object 
 to write that history, by his own statement. In 
 this little sketch we see Napoleon as a strong, 
 unscrupulous, selfish man, with a distinct dash of 
 the histrionic, which makes him play to the gal- 
 lery in order to secure an effect of the noble, al- 
 truistic, patriotic. He thus stands out as a fig- 
 ure to illustrate one of Shaw's favorite doctrines : 
 human nature's inclination to mask ruthless 
 strength and egoistic singleness of purpose be- 
 hind a fine face of Duty. He rather likes Na- 
 poleon, since he always likes strength, except 
 when the man of politics and war poses as hero. 
 This desire of the dramatist that we should have 
 
86 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the courage and honesty to call things by their 
 right names and not drape our expression of the 
 will-to-live with moral tags, outcrops continually 
 throughout the plays. The often heard criticism 
 that there is no unity or consistency in Shaw's 
 writings is exactly the reverse of what may 
 truthfully be said: namely, that the author goes 
 to the other extreme and too steadily harps upon 
 his favorite views, however disguised by fable and 
 the manipulation thereof. He is above all things 
 coherent and organic in his attitude toward life. 
 Novelty in the surface matters of story and set- 
 ting have deceived many as to this essential 
 unity of thought. 
 
 The acting value of " The Man of Destiny " 
 is proved in the playing, but can be detected 
 without that test. The tangle of story is ingeni- 
 ous, the characters attract, and the climactic 
 moment, most cleverly approached, is very effec- 
 tive. A definite talent for pictorial and theatric 
 details the piece exhibits. The pungent, peculiar 
 humor that we savor as of Shaw is abundantly 
 in evidence. The significance of the play as a 
 vehicle for Shaw's thought may be found in that 
 speech of Napoleon almost at the end which de- 
 
" THE MAN OF DESTINY " 87 
 
 picts the Englishman from a European vantage 
 point : 
 
 " There is nothing so bad or so good that 
 you will not find Englishmen doing it; but 
 you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. 
 He does everything on principle. He fights you 
 on patriotic principles; he robs you on business 
 principles ; he enslaves you on imperial princi- 
 ples ; he bullies you on manly principles ; he sup- 
 ports his king on loyal principles, and cuts oif 
 his king's head on republican principles. His 
 watchword is always duty; and he never forgets 
 that the nation which lets its duty get on the 
 opposite side to its interest is lost." 
 
 The present European struggle might be used 
 to embroider the theory set forth in the long 
 speech of which I quote the concluding sentences. 
 The effectiveness of it comes largely from its 
 superb avoidance of qualifiers and extenuations. 
 
 The story used is simple but of strong interest 
 in the handling. Valuable letters have been lost 
 through the carelessness of one of the officers; 
 they have fallen into the hands of a woman ; they 
 must be secured. How? The interweaving is SO 
 skilful that the tension is happily maintained to 
 
88 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the very final curtain fall. Sex relations get 
 fresh treatment in the attitude of Napoleon to 
 the female spy; their scene quivers with psycho- 
 logical subtleties. The woman off stage, the 
 General's wife, in her contrast with the woman 
 who is seen, is in her influence almost as potent; 
 together the two give us Shaw's antithetical 
 types. The subsidiary persons of the play are 
 also capital : the asinine lieutenant, and Giuseppe, 
 the delicious innkeeper. Many of Shaw's ten- 
 strikes are to be found in these thumbnail 
 sketches of characters, generally mere foils or 
 fillers of time and space. Some of his best hu- 
 mor, too, comes from their mouths. 
 
 The piece, slight though it be, bristles with 
 technical virtues : the whole closing portion of 
 the piece after the entrance of the lieutenant is 
 an admirable coup de theatre, with a brio that is 
 irresistible. The relations of the four dramatis 
 personcB are shifted so cunningly that the inter- 
 est never flags. 
 
 The fact that " The Man of Destiny " is more 
 than twice the length of " How He Lied to Her 
 Husband," suggests the plasticity of the one-act 
 form, which can in fifteen minutes, twenty, half 
 
" THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 89 
 
 an hour, catch a poignant moment of life and 
 with a condensation that is in itself an advantage 
 give a cross section of the human show which, 
 expanded into an evening, might be less compel- 
 ling. 
 
 The Devil's Disciple 
 
 This drama, laid in New England during the 
 Revolution, is one of the most typical examples 
 of Shaw's genius. It is the first of the three 
 " Plays for Puritans," as described by the author. 
 It was begun in 1896, completed the next year, 
 and produced in early May, at The Bijou Thea- 
 tre, Hammersmith; in Bleecker Hall, Albany, in 
 October of the same year, Richard Mansfield first 
 showed it to the American public. Its London 
 production dates September 26, 1899, at The 
 Princess of Wales Theatre and under the name of 
 " Teufelskerl,'' it was given November 25, 1904, 
 at the Berliner Theater in Berlin. 
 
 The Preface conveys a clear idea of the piece, 
 which can be regarded as a story, a character 
 study, and an interpretation of life. As story 
 it is interesting melodrama, psychologized into 
 
90 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 something rich and strange. Externally, the 
 plot especially involves three central persons, a 
 husband and wife, and a young man, who, given 
 the chance to pass himself oif as the husband and 
 so save the other's life, does so, and is about to 
 be hung in consequence, when the husband ex- 
 plains, and in this way frees him; afterwards be- 
 ing pardoned himself, so that a play which might 
 have been a tragedy turns out melodramatic 
 comedy, and " ends well " for the groundlings. 
 
 The intellectual value of this lies in the 
 peculiar motive of the young man in substituting 
 for the husband and in his attitude towards the 
 wife. As Shaw says, the drama is old-fashioned, 
 in that the familiar triangle is again used; in 
 the use of a device like the disguise (so much af- 
 fected by Shakspere, and recurrent ever since) ; 
 and in the obvious situation of the final rescue 
 of Dudgeon. 
 
 But as character study and idea it is highly 
 original. Dick, the devil's disciple, is set in high 
 relief against a background of eighteenth century 
 Puritans, who illustrate repressive religion; wit- 
 ness their treatment of the child Essie and her 
 natural reaction to Dick, who is kind to her. 
 
*' THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 91 
 
 Dick stands for practical, healthy goodness, the 
 goodness that does things and enters into red- 
 blooded human relations ; his apparent impiety is 
 only a sound, honest nature's protest against 
 cant, hypocrisy, formal show, and sham. And he 
 is capable of the greatest self-sacrifice when a 
 test comes. 
 
 Thus he exactly fits in with Shaw's general 
 teaching and his ideal of character. Shaw is 
 not attacking Puritanism but its abuse, as seen 
 in certain unlovely manifestations which exhibit it 
 as harsh, cold, negative, external, — husks rather 
 than the sweet kernel of truth. In opposition to 
 this, Dick Dudgeon is a creature who follows his 
 instincts (which are good, notice) and so con- 
 nects with the life-force. Conventionally, su- 
 perficially viewed, it appears an attack upon 
 religion ; it is in reality an attack upon the im- 
 moral masking behind a quasi morality. The 
 handling of the mother-son relation in its impli- 
 cation that this bond must be lived up to if it 
 shall be beautiful, sends us back to " You Never 
 Can Tell." 
 
 As for its thesis, this play says in effect : " Do 
 good, not for reward, whether the Puritan's 
 
92 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 heaven or another man's wife, but for its own 
 sake, because it is the highest impulse and law 
 of your nature." Thus we see it to be a con- 
 sistent part of the general Shavian view. It may 
 be doubted if any large section of mankind would 
 act commendably if all selfish emoluments were 
 withheld; but here is one man who prefers action 
 based upon less crass and worldly reasons. Hu- 
 man beings at large may need the golden bait ; not 
 so Dudgeon. That is his distinction, that is why 
 he is worthily the protagonist in an unusual play. 
 Shaw has himself stated that the main persons 
 in plays ought not to be average folk but 
 geniuses. 
 
 The fun of the thing, and this drama is very 
 funny indeed in the situation thus arranged, is to 
 be found in the wife and her attitude towards 
 Dick. A young and pretty woman, she cannot 
 conceive that Dick could have saved her husband 
 except for love of her; the bait being illegitimate 
 in this case. And the scene in which Dick coolly 
 informs her that he does not love her at all, but 
 did a good act just to be decent, to gratify an 
 impulse of his being in a sudden stress, is a bril- 
 liantly novel and amusing theatre stroke; the ob- 
 
" THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE " 93 
 
 ligatory scene of a play which in its final trial 
 scene has further proof of the author's power in 
 stage situation. There is in fact much to admire 
 in the drama's technic. Despite its oddity, it 
 is full of acting values. The part of Dudgeon 
 is so original, so contrary to the tradition of 
 hero and lover, that when the drama was given 
 in London, the impersonator of the role actually 
 kissed a tress of the wife's hair at a certain mo- 
 ment, that the audience might not be cheated out 
 of its time-honored enjoyment; thus, of course, 
 coolly ignoring the whole meaning of the play 
 and the dramatist's intention as implied in its 
 every word. The play is another example of 
 new wine in old bottles. It shows us a Nietzschean 
 transvaluation of conventional notions of sex 
 relations. Daring unusualness of idea and char- 
 acters is so manipulated as to please the general 
 and particular. Act one, which is a capital illus- 
 tration of unconventionality of craftsmanship, 
 has for its object to create atmosphere and make 
 such a personage as Dudgeon credible ; and this is 
 finely done. The action is delayed, for this rea- 
 son. When you have so novel a character it be- 
 comes unusually important to make it live, give it 
 
94 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 verisimilitude. As a result of this necessity, the 
 story is started later than is usual with most 
 plays. It is a mark of finer, more original 
 technic to do this ; the playwright is cutting his 
 cloth to suit his coat. The technician will note 
 the stage value of Dudgeon's first entrance; the 
 eff ectivism of the exit, with Judith left in a swoon ; 
 the return of the husband; and the handling of 
 the court scene: all examples of skilled conduct- 
 ment and knowledge of stage resource. The 
 conventions are disobeyed in the introduction in 
 the last act of a new set of characters; some- 
 thing dared by that other disturber of conven- 
 tions, Brieux, in the final act of " Maternity." 
 In Shaw's case, there is far more justification be- 
 cause of the historical nature of the scene, and 
 the result is a triumph of theatre effect. 
 
 Not infrequently in Shaw, as we have seen, 
 some speech is crucial. This is true of the 
 speech (page 59, Brentano's edition) where Dick 
 tells Judith why he saved her husband; it was a 
 law of his nature to do the unselfish act. 
 
 In the treatment of Burgoyne we note the 
 tendency, already seen, to reconstruct historical 
 personages. The instinct is to look below the 
 
" CiESAR AND CLEOPATRA " 95 
 
 surface, below superficial denotements to essen- 
 tials, to real psychic facts; in short, to human- 
 ize them. Shaw in his Preface declares that the 
 drama's novelty lies in the voicing of the new 
 thought which is part of the spirit of the Time; 
 he implies that it is not his thought in opposition 
 to the general view, but he merely reports what 
 is in the air, clairvoyantly. His plays as a 
 whole may be said to owe part (though by no 
 means all) of their significance to this fact; yet 
 he is as far as possible from being an echo. His 
 voice is his own, but it is enriched with overtones 
 that sound the cry of the Zeitgeist, 
 
 CcBsar and Cleopatra 
 
 Another drama which displays the author's 
 liking for historical rehabilitation, and one of his 
 most enjoyable creations, is " Csesar and Cleo- 
 patra," which, written in 1898, was produced for 
 copyright purposes at The Theatre Royal, New- 
 castle-upon-Tyne, May 15, 1899. Its American 
 initial appearance was at The New Amsterdam 
 Theatre, New York, October 30, 1906. More 
 than a year later, at The Savoy, London, on No- 
 
96 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 vember 25, 1907, occurred the English premiere. 
 The piece was played originally by Sir Johnston 
 Forbes Robertson and his wife, Gertrude Elliot, 
 and has been a successful number of their reper- 
 tory, wherever it has been seen. 
 
 At a first reading of this play, and in com- 
 parison with close-knit work like " Candida," 
 " Arms and the Man," and " The Devil's Disci- 
 ple," it seems a straggling, inorganic composi- 
 tion, whatever its merits of detail, and they are 
 numerous. To see it acted, modifies the impres- 
 sion; the general scenic value, the attraction of 
 particular scenes, and the fact that the genre of 
 the piece is that of chronicle history, which from 
 its nature calls for picturesque, varied, and slow- 
 moving treatment, all combine to change the 
 judgment. The drama is seen to be an admira- 
 ble example of dramaturgy in its kind. Its cen- 
 tral significance is that of a character sketch 
 wherein a reconstructed personality becomes a 
 typical Shavian protagonist, a man after Shaw's 
 ideal; presented with humor, satire, and deep 
 fetches of philosophy, and, within the envelope of 
 story, resulting in a veritable contribution to let- 
 ters. Whether we get nearer to the real Caesar, 
 
" C^SAR AND CLEOPATRA " 97 
 
 we certainly are helped to get nearer to the life 
 view of Bernard Shaw, which is quite as much 
 worth while. To be offered Csesar as he was, is 
 not, strictly speaking, a gift coming most natur- 
 ally and gracefully from the maker of literature: 
 we look to the historian for that. 
 
 The conception of this mighty captain of the 
 ancient world is beautifully in harmony with the 
 author's general interpretation of life and men. 
 Caesar is known of the world as primarily war- 
 rior; this, despite a sad knowledge of him as a 
 writer by schoolboys. But Shaw does not ad- 
 mire war as settling the claims of human great- 
 ness and therefore insists that one of the few 
 great men of all time must have been great out- 
 side that test and consequently so represents him : 
 brave, magnanimous, possessing innate rightness, 
 rather than conventional morality, which means 
 the outward observance of a code. He is kind, 
 unsensual, tolerant, since it is his nature so to 
 be. But he is amiably humanized by weakness; 
 which is amusingly shown in his attitude towards 
 his fifty-two years. Disliking the mere sensual- 
 istic picture of his relation to Cleopatra, Shaw 
 throws the cold water of his satiric logic on it 
 
98 BERNARD SHAW ' 
 
 by reminding us of the disparity of their ages; 
 and thus pricks the bubble of Shakspere's ro- 
 mantic treatment. In Shaw's famous attack on 
 the Elizabethan poet, it should be noted that it 
 is neither Shakspere's matchless gift for expres- 
 sion nor his indubitable cunning as a maker of 
 plays which awakens his ire. It is rather his 
 limitation of ideas, bound by the limitations of 
 his time; and he makes the point that a mod- 
 ern dramatist, himself, to illustrate, can be 
 " greater " than the earlier man because he has 
 the advantage of living at a period when 
 thought has advanced and so can begin where 
 the sixteenth century left off. In short, a care- 
 ful examination will disclose that here as else- 
 where it is the intentionally arresting, paradoxi- 
 cal, audacious manner of the thought, not the 
 thought itself, which is offensive, if any offence 
 there be. 
 
 It is altogether possible that the altered Caesar 
 of Shaw's brush may be no nearer the truth than 
 the Caesar commonly offered; the main thing is 
 that Cffisar is vitalized, and is the cause of stimu- 
 lating suggestion about human nature. The 
 view of Walkley and others that the author is 
 
" C^SAR AND CLEOPATRA " 99 
 
 incapable of emotionalism hardly bears the test 
 of the mystic speech which introduces the leader 
 to the Sphinx; this question in its relation to his 
 work as a whole, is treated in a later chapter. 
 
 Being a comedy of character in a setting of 
 chronicle history, enlivened by episodes and much 
 pictorial appeal, we find the play falls into the 
 older five-act division; has frequent shifts of 
 scene, many persons, massed effects; the familiar 
 denotements of suchlike drama. The incidental 
 satire is rich and varied; it embraces thrusts at 
 war, the military obsession, conventional duty, 
 and English art ideals, with a special compliment 
 to art for art's sake and the ugliness of com- 
 mercialism. The author's position is also pun- 
 gently revealed touching revenge and forgiveness. 
 There is plenty of the expected humor of the dif- 
 ferent sorts suited to the stage. For sheer felic- 
 ity of phrase and startling brilliance of thought 
 this play is with the few from Shaw's reper- 
 tory. 
 
 " But when I return to Rome," says Caesar to 
 Cleopatra at one juncture, " I will make laws 
 against these extravagances. I will even get the 
 laws carried out." And as one smiles with keen 
 
100 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 appreciation, one recognizes the thorough stu- 
 dent of modern governmental methods. It is a 
 great temptation to quote when quotation is 
 once begun; but the reader is recommended to 
 turn to the really great speech (page 194), the 
 deliverance on vengeance, with its thesis that war 
 breeds war, as having a particularly pertinent 
 application at the present time. 
 
 The drama, among other things, for its mean- 
 ings are as varied as is its form, might be taken 
 as a study of the aging man in relation to 
 women; his half-humorous, half-bitter conscious- 
 ness that his attraction for them, aside from pub- 
 lic reputation, is passing, or past. 
 
 Captain Brassbound's Conversion 
 
 This drama, another proof of versatility, was 
 written during 1898' and 1899, after correspond- 
 ence with Ellen Terry in 1897. It was produced 
 by The London Stage Society, Strand Theatre, 
 December 16, 1900, and four days later at The 
 Criterion Theatre, London, December 20; its 
 New York production dates January 28, 1907, 
 at The Empire Theatre. Miss Terry had the 
 
'' CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION " 101 
 
 leading part in the last two productions. Nota- 
 ble revivals were made in New York, in 1915 by 
 Gertrude Kingston, in 1916 by Grace George. 
 Here is a piece of excellent acting valu^ de- 
 vised it would appear primarily for amusement, 
 yet containing much of the Shavian philosophy 
 we are accustomed to look for. Once more a con- 
 ventional framework of melodrama is used, but 
 within it we are made by means of dialogue and 
 character treatment to reflect upon some of the 
 fundamental issues of life; that, for example, of 
 the relation of kinsfolk, and (recurrent after 
 " Caesar and Cleopatra ") the foolishness of re- 
 venge. It is not hard to see why the play is good 
 stage material. Laid in Morocco, it has scenic 
 attraction, much contrast of characters, its in- 
 dividual scenes are of the liveliest description, 
 and the aspects of life it depicts have the charm 
 of exotic unusualness. Moreover, it has a splen- 
 did part for the leading player, as Miss Terry 
 amply bore witness when she gave it. Nor is the 
 leading male part far behind, although it is more 
 difficult to envisage its peculiarities. Also, the 
 drama has an unquestionable central scene, the 
 tense culmination of all that goes before, — that 
 
102 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 in which Captain Brassbound puts all to the test, 
 and reveals his love to Lady Cicely. 
 
 Shaw makes keen but not cruel fun in the 
 story of that phase of the conventional romantic 
 which awards sainthood to a dead mother, irre- 
 spective of the facts, and builds up an attitude 
 against others upon the basis of this wrong no- 
 tion. In the conductment of the fable he may 
 abuse coincidence, but this is unimportant in a 
 play of the kind; the shell is fantastic, and it is 
 the revolutionary power of the ideas which gives 
 it value in any serious sense. The captain has 
 taken the traditional view of law and of mother- 
 hood; hence he has made his uncle a villain, and 
 has deified his mother ; revenge is his ideal motive, 
 to it he has dedicated his life, and because of 
 it become an outlaw. Contact with Lady Cicely 
 teaches him better. The charm of this character 
 is beyond dispute; nor is it to be confused with 
 the personal appeal of the distinguished player, 
 Ellen Terry, who, at fifty-eight, created the 
 role, and was a figure of provocative and elu- 
 sive delight. But she is quite as truly the 
 embodiment of Shavian notions of life and person- 
 ality. It is interesting to observe that this fem- 
 
" CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION " 103 
 
 inine character, perhaps the most salient and at- 
 tractive in his whole gallery of portraits, is at 
 the same time distinctively a type stamped with 
 the author's hallmark. With Lady Cicely we see 
 will flowering in instinctive acts which are whole- 
 some and good because of the sound and sweet 
 nature behind them. She is Shaw's answer to 
 those critics who declare he is all head : " no, mes- 
 sieurs the enemy," we hear him reply ; " not head, 
 but will, which involves the emotive nature, and 
 the intuitions and impulses, as well." It will be 
 instructive to compare this woman with the 
 heroines in Mackaye's " Mater," and in several 
 Barrie plays, of which one is " What Every 
 Woman Knows." They belong to the same 
 category, with whatever differences : the woman 
 possessing that peculiar feminine charm with wis- 
 dom which has in it a sort of whimsical apparent 
 disregard of law and order and tradition, which 
 refuses to kow-tow to proprieties solemnly 
 evolved by man for the protection of society; 
 yet who can be safely trusted, in all the vital 
 moments of action. And, above all, who is con- 
 stantly winsome, doing good without being goody- 
 goody. 
 
104 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Technically, the drama is especially interesting 
 for the way it handles masses and marshals 
 events so as to make the characters stand out in 
 grateful relief; for note that it is the sort of 
 play which tends to draw attention away from 
 characterization and fix it upon story. The 
 handling of the respective acts is also worth 
 study. The first is a good example of exposi- 
 tion, the subsidiary persons used for the purpose 
 being in themselves enjoyable, and not mere lay 
 figures ; the opening conversation of Drinkwater 
 and Rankin illustrates a characteristic which 
 separates Shaw from all but the best dramatists: 
 I mean his ability to make minor figures distinc- 
 tive and of value in their own persons. One such 
 character as the inimitable little cockney gutter- 
 snipe, Drinkwater, would give a play distinction. 
 He clings to the mind in much the same way as 
 does Silver in Stevenson's " Treasure Island," 
 — rascals both, drawn with that tolerant under- 
 standing sympathy in which the brain cooper- 
 ates with the heart. Act second furnishes the 
 external exciting cause, leaving act third for the 
 true psychological situation, that is, the conver- 
 sion of Brassbound through Lady Cicely's influ- 
 
" CAPT. BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION" 105 
 
 ence: which is what Shaw^ is after. The second- 
 act kidnapping material is divertissement, and 
 makes this an amusing stage play for the general. 
 The gist of the argument may be found in read- 
 ing from page 301 to the end of the play; one 
 again detects the author's philosophy plainly an- 
 nounced in the Captain's words to Lady Cicely, 
 as he tries to explain how it was with him before 
 she came: 
 
 " I don't say I was happy in it ; but I wasn't 
 unhappy, because I wasn't drifting. I was 
 steering a course and had work in hand. Give a 
 man health and a course to steer; and he'll never 
 stop to trouble about whether he's happy or 
 not." The one intolerable thing to Shaw is drift- 
 ing; the wastrel type he cannot abide, not be- 
 cause it is " wicked," but because it is aimless. 
 
 Sprinkled through the drama is much of the 
 incidental wdt, and satire, and the flashlights 
 upon Life, which signalize the better efforts of the 
 author; the play surely is among his happily 
 creative productions. 
 
106 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 The Admirable Bashville: Or Constancy 
 Unrewarded 
 
 This trifle, written in 1902-3, was produced on 
 June 7 and 8, by The London Stage Society, at 
 The Imperial Theatre, London. Not to be taken 
 seriously as drama, it is interesting because it 
 was done to escape from the legal technicality 
 of stage copyright, a matter but little under- 
 stood. The Preface is both amusing and il- 
 luminating in giving us the situation. As the 
 title states, it is a three-act blank verse render- 
 ing of the author's novel, " Cashel Byron's Pro- 
 fession," fiction which has proved the nearest to 
 popularity of any he has written. He tells us 
 frankly he did it to protect his dramatic rights 
 in his fiction, since, by the iniquitous English 
 copyright laws, anyone could make a stage play 
 of the book, unless the author did so first. In 
 fact, a dramatization of " Cashel Byron's Pro- 
 fession," under that title, was given at Daly's 
 Theatre, New York, with James J. Corbett as 
 the prizefighter. Shaw in his most characteristic 
 style adds that he likes to experiment in blank 
 verse, and since he had but a week to do the 
 
"THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE '* 107 
 
 drama in, he threw it into that form as so much 
 easier than prose! 
 
 Then follow several pages of criticism of the 
 Elizabethan dramatists which display Shaw, the 
 critic, at his most dazzling of iconoclasm; 
 
 At every word a reputation dies. 
 
 And when the smoke clears away, one comes 
 to, and realizes that, as usual, truth lurks behind 
 Gargantuan exaggeration. 
 
 This little experiment is not to be taken too 
 seriously. The picture of a prizefighter spout- 
 ing blank verse, and using the stilted thous and 
 thees of the elder literature is fun in its way; 
 but it is sensible to assume a utilitarian origin 
 for the piece and to conclude that it is likely to 
 take the boards only as a curiosity. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 
 
 "MAN AND SUPERMAN" TO "GETTING 
 MARRIED " 
 
 Man and Superman 
 
 " Man and Superman " has always been reck- 
 oned as one of the important plays of Ber- 
 nard Shaw, and to some it stands first on the 
 list. There is no question that it contains his 
 cardinal teaching; moreover, it is one of his 
 really brilliant theatre successes, and demon- 
 strated his stage gift early in his career. Dr. 
 Henderson says it was written during 1903-4, 
 but Shaw declares he worked upon it a year or 
 so earlier than this. In any case, its first per- 
 formance was by The London Stage Society, 
 May 21, 1905; and its American production 
 dates September 4, of the same year, at The 
 Hudson Theatre, New York. This thoroughly 
 typical piece, as earnest an exposition of his 
 
 108 
 
" MAN AND SUPERMAN " 109 
 
 views as he has given the world and only less 
 drastic than " Mrs. Warren's Profession," be- 
 cause of the nature of its subject and treatment, 
 might be baffling if it were the first approach to 
 Shaw; read without some previous acquaintance 
 with his thought, it would offer many obstacles. 
 But those who have followed me in the develop- 
 ment of the writer and thinker, will find it beau- 
 tifully consistent with the general attitude and 
 meaning. 
 
 The main play, omitting the long philosophi- 
 cal scene in the third act, which is not given in 
 the stage presentation, deals with the way in 
 which John Tanner (Shaw under a thin disguise) 
 strives to elude Ann, the woman who loves him 
 and intends to get him, and does. His flight to 
 Europe is useless, and in his heart he recognizes 
 he is a fated victim of matrimony, an estate he 
 intellectually despises, but as mere man, hankers 
 for. In this manipulation of story, the author 
 explodes wittily the pretty theory that woman 
 is the hunted one, man the hunter. Regarded as 
 an organic treatment of plot, the first act, in it- 
 self of exceeding interest and great acting value, 
 may be criticised as a deflection from the main 
 
110 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 story; it concerns Violet's apparent violation of 
 social conventions and affords Shaw an oppor- 
 tunity to let Tanner declaim against what he 
 considers the prim negations which fail to see 
 that sincere love which results in presenting the 
 community with healthy children has much in its 
 favor. The justification for the act dramati- 
 cally is to be found in the reflection that it is an 
 added illustration of the general subject of sex 
 relations, a sort of overtone to the central theme 
 of the problem of Ann and John. Its cohesion is 
 that of thesis: it has intellectual unity with the 
 remainder of the play. Violet is another exam- 
 ple of the action of the life-force. 
 
 Philosophically, the omitted scene of the 
 third act is most important, though dramati- 
 cally it is nil. In a long argument is expanded 
 the idea that, projecting the influence of Ro- 
 mance beyond tlie grave, heaven is the good 
 place because the place where reality is attained; 
 hell the bad place, albeit attractive, because the 
 place where people are still fed upon romantic 
 lies, old age, sickness, gross physical facts in 
 general, — being removed. Thus, the act is a 
 logical extension of his views on Romance, mean- 
 
"MAN AND SUPERMAN" 111 
 
 ing the falsities which obscure the relations of 
 the sexes; here presented, as it were, in terms of 
 the eternal. The Preface, to saj nothing of the 
 appended Revolutionist's Handbook, must be 
 read to get the full handling of the idea. Don 
 Juan is Shaw, in viewpoint; while in earlier rep- 
 resentations he is a sensualistic cynic, in Shaw's 
 hands he is an intellectual one; as the Don Juan 
 of Moliere, Byron, Mozart, sees through women 
 and so plays with them physically, so Shaw- 
 Tanner sees through them in a higher sense and 
 satirizes them, although — and this is the humor 
 of it, — he yields to their age-old charm, be- 
 cause the life-force sweeps him off his feet. It is 
 a tribute to Shaw the dramatist to realize that 
 this play is of such acceptance in the theatre. 
 Here is a composition which is an intellectual 
 document beyond cavil, gets its true significance 
 from that fact ; but which, after omitting nearly 
 a whole act of the written drama, rather an un- 
 usual thing to do in contemporary dramaturgy, 
 yet remains an acting vehicle at which the care- 
 less theatre audience laughs heartily and con- 
 stantly. Those who have witnessed it must con- 
 cede that in the field of satiric comedy " Man 
 
112 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and Superman " furnishes as en joy ably stimulat- 
 ing an evening as the latter-day stage can offer. 
 Few dramas in stage history create so electrical 
 an atmosphere of alert mental exercise. And 
 the laughs which ripple over the house are of two 
 kinds; the gallery guffaw is there, but also the 
 subdued cachinnation of the brain. Straker 
 arouses the one, where Tanner arouses the other. 
 Whatever unconventionality the drama may be 
 said to display, it achieves the two main things 
 in the playhouse: it pleases, it makes you think. 
 In dialogue, characterization, situation, it is 
 masterly. To say it has no " action," is puerile, 
 since action in the psychological sense of showing 
 us character development through human clash 
 and crisis it fairly teems with. This is the sort 
 of action desirable in the thoughtful theatre 
 of civilization. Ann, Ramsden, Violet, Tavy, 
 Straker, Tanner himself, — there is no more strik- 
 ing and successful group in modern serious 
 comedy. Surely part of the essence of good 
 drama which we agree depends so much upon 
 clash and crisis in the characters of the play, is 
 also dependent upon the dramatist's ability to 
 present picturesque and salient contrasts of char- 
 
"MAN AND SUPERMAN" 113 
 
 acter; and in this respect, Shaw's plays are con- 
 spicuous ; moreover, here is one hardly to be sur- 
 passed in his repertory. Ann is the conventional, 
 proper woman as exponent of the life-force ; Vio- 
 let, the unconventional woman (so she appears at 
 least) who also expresses the call of the life-force ; 
 they are "sisters under the skin," after all. As a 
 corrective of the traditional attitude towards the 
 " lost " woman, this is a healthy antidote. 
 
 The climax of the second act may be pointed 
 to as one of those curtain effects which Shaw 
 can command when he chooses to use traditional 
 means to such results ; the start of Tanner and 
 his chauffeur in the motor in a wild attempt to 
 escape Ann, is very funny and as effective as it 
 is funny; more original a dozen or more years 
 ago than it seems now; for imitators are ever on 
 the watch and they have been active since. 
 
 In respect of the argument that woman is 
 really the hunter, not man, it may be said to con- 
 tain a half truth, at least, with curious justifi- 
 cations in biological and anthropological his- 
 tory. The dominance of the woman in family 
 and tribe in primitive times ; the analogy of the 
 bee; the new exhibition of public power dis- 
 
114 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 played by women today, with the more hidden 
 fact of their power behind the throne in all so- 
 cial epochs, — these and other considerations can 
 be brought to bear upon the dramatist's witty 
 use of his idea. His underlying suggestion to 
 man, with respect to woman, might be expressed 
 as follows: — 
 
 " My dear Sir, you do not know her ; make her 
 acquaintance, try to see her as she really is — 
 for the good of both." 
 
 John BulVs Other Island 
 
 Written in 1904, this piece was seen at The 
 Court Theatre, in London, on November 1, the 
 same year, this following its rejection by The 
 Irish Literary Theatre for reasons both financial 
 and intellectual. It was produced at The Gar- 
 rick Theatre, New York, October 10, 1905; and 
 was revived at The Kingston Theatre, London, in 
 February, 1913. Al! its first appearance it won 
 success, artistic and social, and a performance 
 was commanded by the king. The political situa- 
 tion was such at the time as to make it pertinent. 
 In " John Bull's Other Island," Shaw shows as 
 
"JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND" 115 
 
 plainly as he ever did that he stands for the 
 theatre of ideas; for he most evidently turns his 
 back on story, and studies types and national 
 questions; such drama as there is we must find 
 in their contrasts and clashes. 
 
 The framework is of the simplest, and there is 
 little real complication. Two friends, an Irish- 
 man and an Englishman, go to Ireland; the Eng- 
 lishman wins in politics and war against the 
 Irishman. Why? Because, says Shaw in effect, 
 of the very dunderheaded blunders and genial 
 misconceptions which make him English. The 
 Irish Larry fails, for the very reason that he 
 knows too much, sees through things, is disillu- 
 sioned. 
 
 Thus the play stakes its claim to our regard 
 fairly and squarely upon its intellectual appeal: 
 on characterization, setting, and idea. In these 
 respects it is an extremely interesting, suggestive 
 example of special pleading; nor should its 
 scenic attraction be overlooked, nor its un- 
 doubted merits of situation; the capital scene 
 with Haffigan in act one, the Nora-Broadbent 
 scene at the Tower in act two, the climax in 
 which the pig figures as protagonist in act third, 
 
116 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and the opening scene of act four, are all good 
 drama in their varied ways. But of drama of 
 the traditional sort, that which gives us plot 
 tangle and progression to the cutting of the knot, 
 it is innocent. One's interest does not lie in how 
 it is coming out, save as one cares to see a fur- 
 ther revelation of the persons involved. In 
 sharply contrasted and highly enjoyable figures 
 the drama must be placed among the leading 
 works of the author. The buoyant, optimistic, 
 credulous, and conventional, yet very lovable 
 Broadbent; the cool, irritable, clear-witted, disil- 
 lusioned Larry; the range of other Irishmen 
 from the caddish, bibulous Haffigan, up to the 
 superb mystic, Keegan ; Nora, with her faded rus- 
 tic gentility, an aroma about her like that of a 
 hardy spring flower, so unlike the usual delinea- 
 tion of the Irish maiden that we gasp before her ; 
 the several varieties of laborers, down to Patsy, 
 child of the soil and superstition ; all of them are 
 the work of one with a remarkable gift for 
 limning human beings who have a knack of get- 
 ting themselves seen and remembered. 
 
 As philosophy, the drama is one of the impor- 
 tant documents in the case of Shaw vs, his time. 
 
"JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND" 117 
 
 Here is his definite opinion of the Irish question, 
 one of the vital and most complex problems of 
 the day. We Americans are necessarily a little 
 at arm's length on this ; its natural difficulties 
 are not bettered by having the sundering seas be- 
 tween us, nor is light thrown helpfully by the 
 Irish-American, as we see him. But by reading 
 the play and the little book which is dubbed, " A 
 Preface for Politicians," we may at least get a 
 clear notion of what Shaw thinks. He believes 
 Ireland can only be satisfied by Home Rule be- 
 cause it is a natural right, rather than because 
 its establishment will of necessity work out a bet- 
 ter state of things. He holds that Ireland has 
 gone wrong because she has substituted dreams 
 for the truth. And obviously, here we get the 
 steady Shavian attitude applied to a particular 
 theme. The Englishman indulges in bursts of 
 ideality, romanticism, but always as an agreeable 
 aside, not for a moment to be taken seriously nor 
 allowed to interfere with his real business. There 
 is the difference, the reason he wins. 
 
 As usual in the plays at large, various other 
 representative notions are vented: his view of the 
 treatment of animals, for example; Keegan has 
 
118 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 a St. Francis tenderness towards the ass and the 
 grasshopper; he pays his compliments to militar- 
 ism ; and, returning to the mood of " The Man of 
 Destiny," Shaw draws for us with a pen dipped 
 in gall his idea of the typical Britisher. (I refer 
 to the Preface, pp. 38-9.) The reason that 
 Shaw is anything but a pessimist is, that he al- 
 ways believes things will be meliorated, and more- 
 over offers a modus operandi, namely, socialism; 
 we may take it or leave it, as we will; there it 
 is, all explained, his way out of the woods. 
 Those who are fond of calling him pessimist, are 
 deafened by his continual vociferation about the 
 things that are wrong; and so do not hear the 
 constructive part of his message. 
 
 That part of the Preface devoted to a descrip- 
 tion and arraignment of the Denshawai Horror, 
 as a piece of satiric invective deserves to stand 
 beside Stevenson's " Letter to Father Damien." 
 It is a wonderfully eloquent bit of English prose. 
 We also have beautifully expressed, at the play's 
 end, Shaw's political, or politico-religious ideal 
 in the mystic speech of Father Keegan. It is a 
 clear example of the spiritual conception of so- 
 ciety which Shaw treasures. 
 
" PASSION, POISON, PETRIFACTION " I19 
 
 Passioriy Poison, and Petrifaction 
 
 Or, to give it the full title, " Passion, Poison, 
 and Petrifaction, or The Fatal Gazogene, An 
 Extravaganza." This bit of burlesque nonsense 
 in the author's most rollicking mood of high 
 jinks was written in 1905, and produced on 
 July 14 of that year, in a booth in Hyde Park, 
 London, by Cyril Maude, for whom it was done; 
 the occasion being a fair for the benefit of the 
 Actors' Orphanage. It may be read with joy for 
 what it is : a piece of fooling by a man whose 
 serious moods are sufficiently frequent and who 
 believes that the Roman writer was right in say- 
 ing that it is wise to be silly at the fitting time. 
 Nothing is funnier about this production, which 
 is not likely to be put into his final and definitive 
 works, than the fact of its origin in a true 
 story told by the author to the children of Wil- 
 liam Archer. It concerned a cat who by mis- 
 take lapped up a saucer of plaster of paris in- 
 stead of milk, and thereupon became petrified, 
 and was used to prop against a recalcitrant 
 door! It is a comment on the vogue of Shaw to 
 know that even this trifle-of-occasion has been 
 
120 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 produced with praise and taken seriously in 
 Vienna ! 
 
 Major Barbara 
 
 Also in 1905 was written and produced 
 another of the abler and more distinctive plays : 
 "Major Barbara," which had its first night at 
 The Court Theatre, London, November 28. For 
 some years it was not ranked among the prac- 
 tically successful dramas of Shaw, but the first 
 American production of the play by Miss Grace 
 George at The Playhouse, New York, during the 
 season of 1915-6, justifies the opinion that it will 
 eventually take its place with real stage favor- 
 ites, as it certainly will as a brilliant example of 
 the Shavian style, skill, and interpretation. Its 
 failure to make an immediate strong appeal can 
 be explained. The play has been called " a dis- 
 cussion in three acts," and this criticism gives 
 the reason. In a later chapter I take up the 
 general question of the place of dialogue drama, 
 and its legitimacy; let it suffice here to say that 
 in " Major Barbara " plot is not the main thing, 
 idea being paramount, and characters as ex- 
 pository of idea. If the play be static, it is so 
 
"MAJOR BARBARA" 121 
 
 only in the sense of story progression; em- 
 phatically, it develops as to characters and 
 theme. In that sense, it is truly progressive, 
 and has what might be called the logic of con- 
 struction. It possesses the highest unity of all, 
 the unity of idea; not material order so much, as 
 what M. Hamon calls " ordonnance intellectuel." 
 Thus, it is not " dramatic," as that word is 
 usually understood. And it is probable that for 
 some time to come most Anglo-Saxons will sit 
 puzzled, uneasy, if not repelled before a play 
 where the clash of ideas furnishes the struggle 
 instead of some trick of complication. 
 
 As to story, the play is centrally concerned 
 with the changed attitude brought about in 
 Major Barbara, of the Salvation Army, by the 
 acts and arguments of her father, Mr. Under- 
 shaft, millionaire maker of destructive weapons 
 of war; she is made to see that this great re- 
 ligious movement, which preaches poverty as a 
 virtue, cannot exist without money, and that 
 poverty is the prime social sin. She is converted 
 to her father's factory and will marry her lover, 
 as she frankly tells him, because he consents to 
 enter the works and help make explosives; 
 
122 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 thereby carrying the logic of destruction to its 
 extreme, helping to exterminate war in the end. 
 The interest here, or main interest, ignoring the 
 side plot of the relation of Barbara's sister 
 Sarah and Lomax, is in watching how her father's 
 daughter comes to see his point of view, and in- 
 cidentally to secure a husband ; and the second is 
 entirely subordinate to the first. 
 
 What does the drama aim to do? This is a 
 question it is always well to ask before deciding 
 what it does. Does it purpose primarily to give 
 a picture of a people's religion, and show its 
 wrong attitude towards poverty and the place of 
 money in this world? The depiction of Salva- 
 tionism, be it noted, is not hostile, nor unfair; 
 full justice is done to the splendid work for the 
 submerged tenth wrought by the organization. 
 But it looks ^s if Shaw were looking more 
 broadly beyond this specific activity or using it 
 in order to discuss and ventilate the tremendous 
 problems of poverty and crime, in their relation 
 to capitalism and all that word implies. The un- 
 employed, the proletariat, and the rich by so- 
 called tainted money, are in the purview. To 
 make a drama out of such material these large 
 
"MAJOR BARBARA" 123 
 
 issues must be connected in some way with a nar- 
 rower personal complication ; Barbara's person- 
 ality and fate offer this to some extent, but per- 
 haps not sufficiently to make the chief interest. 
 Plot, in other words, is less to the fore than in 
 such plays as " Candida," " Arms and the Man," 
 and " The Devil's Disciple." Concede this, and 
 strong claims to a popular appeal may be made 
 for the piece. Its acting value is surprising. 
 
 We are shown a family in its interrelations: 
 two daughters engaged to be married; a wife 
 estranged from her husband; one daughter at 
 outs with her father; a son who is recalcitrant. 
 But the tangle does not center in the readjust- 
 ment of any of these relations. On the contrary, 
 these relations are used to show their respective 
 points of view, and to compare three of them: 
 the Barbara view, the Undershaft view, and the 
 view of society. The major conflict is between 
 Barbara and her father. But which view wins.'' 
 This is important, for, according to the estab- 
 lished superiority of one of them, is the inten- 
 tion of the author revealed, his argument il- 
 lustrated. Frankly, the answer is not so easy. 
 Barbara's view can hardly be called victorious, 
 
124 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 for she shifts her position through the influence 
 of her father; she comes to see that the Salva- 
 tion Army must use capitalist money, and not 
 talk nonsense about poverty as a virtue. The 
 mother, representing society, is not victor, be- 
 cause she is only partially reconciled with her 
 husband. If any one's logic of life is established, 
 it is Undershaf t's ; although he modifies his atti- 
 tude sufficiently to convince his family, he con- 
 quers, after all, for the rest practically accept 
 his position: his wife in her liking of the gun- 
 works, when she visits them, and in her yielding 
 her children to his employment; Barbara, be- 
 cause she adapts her work spiritually to what 
 her father has taught her. Undershaft wins, 
 money talks, the man who invents killing ma- 
 chines is cock of the walk. The conflict between 
 Barbara and Undershaft as types, or embodi- 
 ments of view, — that is the play in essence, its 
 deepest dramatic cause for being. But granting 
 this idea, in the light of the writer's teaching in 
 general there is puzzle. As usual, we find Shaw 
 facing facts, as they seem to him, whether pleas- 
 ant or not. The Salvation Army must take 
 " tainted " money, since, if traced to its source. 
 
"MAJOR BARBARA" 125 
 
 most money will be found to be " tainted." The 
 Undershaft type of man in modern society is re- 
 spected, prized, awarded the prizes. He is of the 
 race of the Gatlings, Colts, Krupps, Nobels. It 
 were hypocrisy to deny this. 
 
 And what of money, Shakspere's " saint seduc- 
 ing gold " ? Is it the root of all evil ? Shaw 
 would reverse the idea, declaring it the root of 
 all good and the state resulting from its absence, 
 poverty, t6 be the arch social sin, as I have said. 
 Socially, and that is always the touchstone for 
 Shaw, this might be accepted without qualifica- 
 tion. Money, regarded as stored-up labor, is 
 indeed the prime requisite for progress and a ra- 
 tional social life. Why, then, does one have an 
 uneasy feeling that there is something wrong in 
 the argument of Major Barbara? Something 
 seemingly at variance with Shaw's recognized 
 position on war and sympathy with the under 
 dog in the social struggle? Possibly because 
 there is such a strong smack of the Nietzschean 
 overman about Undershaft. One rebels at his 
 denial of kindness, love, and the rest of the 
 Christian virtues, knowing how often they are ex- 
 ercised and commended by Shaw. Nor is it quite 
 
12(5 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 an escape from the difficulty if we say that 
 Undershaft is not Shaw, but a dramatically ob- 
 jectified viewpoint. Again, we know our Shaw 
 too well. The trouble arises, I believe, in the 
 mixture of two views: the social and the in- 
 dividual, a blend also to be found in " Man and 
 Superman." To put it more plainly, when Ber- 
 nard Shaw is offering a social panacea, his angle 
 of vision is different from what it is when he is 
 studying a character. He might not, for in- 
 stance, approve of the application of Under- 
 shaft's convictions to society at large; but he 
 cannot for the life of him keep from liking the 
 maker of explosives as a man; since he is strong, 
 sincere, looks facts in the face, states them 
 courageously, though they run counter to the ac- 
 cepted polite ideas, and is economically a boon to 
 the community iji his model business organism ; 
 one who believes and illustrates that intelligently 
 organized industry is at the bottom of social 
 progress. All this is heartily harmonious with 
 the Shavian doctrine. 
 
 But if this explanation be entirely correct, it 
 still remains likely that the drama as a whole 
 will in some respects baffle even the thoughtful 
 
" MAJOR BARBARA " 127 
 
 follower, and still more the impatient public 
 which takes its theatre on the run. At times, 
 there is an effect of making a point strongly at 
 the expense of other points. But as to that, it 
 is Shaw's way. 
 
 Technically, the play has exceptional scenic 
 values. The first act alone strikingly supports 
 this statement. For characterization flowering 
 in fit and happy dialogue, it is also notable; m 
 the latter particular, the author has hardly ex- 
 celled it in any other piece from his pen. The 
 opening exposition with its so-rapid tempo, the 
 curtain effect of the off-stage music in act one, 
 and the tension secured by the powder shed in 
 act third will interest all who are watchful for 
 technical achievements in the playhouse. If 
 Lady Cicely be Shaw's most winsome heroine, 
 Barbara is, I verily believe, his finest. In her we 
 see a noble specimen of the author's ideal of 
 womanly possibilities in the modern social set- 
 ting; she evokes Wordsworth's description: 
 
 " / saw her upon nearer view 
 A Spirit, yet a Woman too. 
 
128 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort and command; 
 And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel-light.^^ 
 
 Barbara has depth, breadth, and height; she 
 thinks strongly, feels sensitively, and hitches 
 her wagon to a star. But she has the fourth di- 
 mension too, — charm. Her femininity is not 
 lost in strength, practicality, or professional 
 moral purpose. She is real, yet an ideal; can 
 character creation further go? Barbara is a 
 very solid and fine achievement in dramatic 
 realization. The climax of her teaching is to do 
 right for its own sake, without bribes ; and her 
 high words come forth from her woman's mouth 
 with a thrilling insistence: 
 
 " I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have 
 got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work 
 be done for its own sake; the work he had to 
 create us to do because it cannot be done except 
 by living men and women." 
 
 One feels instinctively that Emerson would 
 have liked that. 
 
"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 129 
 
 The Doctor's Dilemma 
 
 This powerful and in many ways debatable 
 drama was penned in the summer and autumn of 
 1906, produced at The Court Theatre, London, 
 November 20 of the same year, at the Deutsches 
 Theater, Berlin, in 1908, and not seen in the 
 United States until the season of 1914-5, the 
 date being March 29, and the place Wallack's 
 Theatre., Granville Barker making the play a 
 leading feature of his successful New York sea- 
 son. From the first the drama was sharply 
 criticized, its supposed attack upon or showing 
 up of the medical profession naturally awaken- 
 ing indignant protest and opposition. 
 
 It was attacked both as art and life. As art, 
 because it was said to be undramatic in texture 
 and fantastically improbable in subject-matter; 
 as life because, so its opponents declared, it was 
 an unwarranted and absurd onslaught upon the 
 healing clan. 
 
 It is illuminating to know that the theme of 
 the piece was suggested by an incident observed 
 by the author; the doctor's dilemma was taken 
 direct from life, since a physician actually had 
 
ISO BERNARD SHAW 
 
 to make a choice between giving a hospital bed 
 to a gifted but morally contemptible person or 
 to another who, of excellent character, was not 
 a genius. To frame this stimulating query, 
 which is really a casuistical question, Shaw 
 shows us the menage Dubedat: the lovely wife 
 devoted to her erring, fascinating husband, be- 
 lieving in him blindly; the artist himself, deb- 
 onair, living by the esthetic ideal, and quite im- 
 pervious to the common notions of marital and 
 financial honor ; and the doctor who must choose 
 whether to save this brilliant rascal at the ex- 
 pense of his worthy but commonplace doctor 
 friend; the problem being further very much 
 complicated through the additional fact that 
 said physician loves Dubedat's spouse, and so 
 has a selfish reason for wishing him removed. 
 
 As a conception, it may be seen this is first- 
 class dramatic material. But does the nature of 
 the subject debar it from artistic handling? 
 And more, does the particular way in which 
 Shaw handles it result in bad art.? To hear this 
 drama played is to realize that it contains some 
 of the finest things in all his play-making: yet, 
 also, to be baffled by details of treatment and 
 
"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 131 
 
 perhaps offended by them. Shaw breaks conven- 
 tional rules here, but in doing so is as far as pos- 
 sible from being dull or mal-expert. As a stage 
 story, " The Doctor's Dilemma " is much su- 
 perior to " John Bull's Other Island " and 
 " Major Barbara." Growth, suspense, climax, 
 are all supplied and cleverly manipulated. The 
 characterization of the group of doctors is re- 
 markable for differentiation into types, each dis- 
 tinct as he is amusing and suggestive. In com- 
 plete contrast is the study of the esthete hus- 
 band, whose credo is UArt pour VArt; he alone 
 would remove the play from the category of the 
 commonplace. He is a wonderful picture of a 
 kind of human being whom we must recognize as 
 existing and to be reckoned with. Shaw's por- 
 trait is as true and penetrating as anything in 
 print concerning the irresponsible Bohemian and 
 nowhere does the dramatist show himself more 
 the artist than in drawing him ; for he abhors the 
 type represented by Louis, all his instincts and 
 habits being against it ; yet as a dramatist he so 
 objectifies the treatment as to create in the 
 death scene a deep sympathy for the artist who 
 dies true to his ideals as he sees them. A plucky 
 
132 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Pagan gets justice from a reformatory Puritan! 
 This scene, it seems to me, is the one to point to 
 when it is claimed that Shaw's figures are always 
 Shaw. There is no more striking proof of his 
 power and of its unusual quality. 
 
 Hardly less fine for portraiture is the wife in 
 her adoring trust, her blindness to Louis's true 
 nature. How superb the irony of her idealiza- 
 tion of him after his death. She is an exquisitely 
 right piece of drawing; there is a suggestion at 
 the end that she hits closest to the truth about 
 her husband, after all. The psychology of these 
 two is profound and moving. We get from it 
 a sense of the complex nature of human beings 
 and the difficulty of deciding in questions of 
 character; and with it, the suggestion that it is 
 creation's way to take imperfect vessels and use 
 them for high purposes, the common water of 
 humanity is poured into the Holy Grail of the 
 spirit, and so converted into mystic wine. 
 
 Dramatically, intellectually, we have Bernard 
 Shaw at his best: wit, humor, satire, pathos, 
 philosophy, are embodied in a dramatic coil. 
 The ending has been objected to as an unsatis- 
 factorily flippant way to close the treatment; 
 
"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 133 
 
 the tag line, " then it was disinterested murder," 
 being too obviously a theatre trick. But it 
 seems to me this is more than a coup; it is 
 not only a clever line coming out of the situa- 
 tion, but also one natural to Dr. Ridgeon, who 
 speaks it, while it throws light on the plot. 
 Ridgeon, being in love with Louis's wife, allowed 
 this to obscure for him the ethical issue. The 
 moment the wife reveals to him that she has mar- 
 ried again, her " my husband ! " makes the 
 spiritual test clear to him, and his declaration of 
 " disinterested murder " is a flashlight on his 
 mental processes, justifying him to himself. It 
 is theatre effectivism used in the cause of sound 
 psychology and a high purpose. 
 
 But what of the main intention, the showing 
 up of the medical profession? To begin with, 
 we must concede that the way of doing it is the 
 now familiar Shavian method of overemphasis 
 for the sake of making the point. Hit the nail, 
 hit it hard and ringingly, and never mind the 
 surrounding wood! To get his meaning, we 
 must, as we have seen, grant this method to 
 Shaw. It is a concession to a temperament — call 
 it Celtic, if that helps, — which believes too in- 
 
134 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 tensely not to get heated by its own move- 
 ment. 
 
 With this understood, there is much of truth 
 in the picture. To put it scholastically, if there 
 be suppressio veri here, there is no expressio falsi; 
 and the unconscious suppression of truth, though 
 misleading, is not vicious. More than half a cen- 
 tury ago in America, a physician who also hap- 
 pened to have the writing gift. Dr. Holmes, 
 pointed out the chicanery and pretense of that 
 calling; Shaw does it later and is no whit harder 
 on the craft than was " The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table." One has only to read the 
 Preface to see that he respects and appreciates 
 the noble men who serve man's body; he simply 
 draws attention to the profession's dangers as 
 now conducted; and suggests state control as a 
 remedy, as one might expect the socialist to do. 
 Since the play appeared, municipal doctors have 
 become a fact in London. The idea is, that to 
 make a man's selfish interests unrestrainedly co- 
 incide with an easy line of conduct is subjecting 
 him to a strain too great to be advisable. A 
 physician's view of the argument should not be 
 taken exclusively, any more than a soldier's view 
 
"THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA'' 135 
 
 of war; both are too much concerned in the re- 
 sult, it is hard for them to be dispassionate. No 
 profession fails to find perfectly honest argu- 
 ments in its own favor. If you doubt it, talk with 
 a brewer. The notion that the state or city 
 should regulate medicine is part of the enlight- 
 ened thought of our day; it is suggestively 
 touched upon in Herrick's novel, " The Healer." 
 Shaw admires the individual doctor immensely, 
 but feels that no profession should be sub- 
 jected to such temptation; it is the system 
 that is arraigned. We hear the publicist 
 speaking. 
 
 The absurdities of materia medica have shifted 
 since Dr. Holmes held forth at their expense, al- 
 though the solemn pretense of Latin prescrip- 
 tions is still with us ; Shaw attacks what is cur- 
 rent, and with ungloved fists. Most of us have 
 become more or less disillusioned at the mistakes 
 which go under the name of science; yet most of 
 us also cling to the fact that the trained physi- 
 cian is a man of science where we are laymen, and 
 a very helpful one in time of trouble. But 
 Shaw has his fun at the mistakes. The modern 
 medic sniiFs at blood-letting but perhaps makes a 
 
136 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 fetish of blood pressure; he urges the once for- 
 bidden fresh air upon pneumonia patients. 
 Cereals are a fad in one decade to be described 
 as only fit for animals in the next. The diagnosis 
 of one specialist is absolutely denied by another. 
 Half of our friends are alive because they went 
 about their business and thrived after the doom- 
 promising prognosis of some high-priced leech. 
 It is small wonder that Christian Science has 
 flourished. There is ground enough in these 
 things to enable a satirist to walk with a firm 
 tread. Yet it would seem as if Shaw went alto- 
 gether too far when he scorns vaccination and 
 all its works. His mystic streak certainly be- 
 comes tyrannously prominent when he will have 
 none of the germ theory of disease. His most 
 definite condemnation of vivisection is contained 
 in this drama and its illuminating introduction. 
 Here, the matter is more debatable, of course. 
 The writer's passionate hatred of the taking of 
 brute life and his vegetarian habit come into 
 the reckoning. The fine moral ring of the atti- 
 tude, whether right or wrong, wins respect. 
 Ethically, it is hard to rebut the argument that 
 it is a wrong way to eliminate disease, (conceding 
 
''THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA" 137 
 
 that vivisection produces that result, which Shaw 
 denies), to behave dishonorably toward our fel- 
 low creatures, the animals. With the rapid ad- 
 vance of modern thought it is becoming a some- 
 what rococo use of the intellect to declare that 
 since the brutes have no souls and no future, we 
 have a right to torture them in the alleged inter- 
 ests of science. 
 
 There seems to be at times an almost mediasval 
 rejection of the achievements of modern science 
 in Shaw, a fairly astonishing thing, coming from 
 one who in some ways is so hardheadedly con- 
 temporaneous. But looking aside from the 
 mystic strain referred to, it may also be said that 
 we get here not so much the rejection of science 
 as a protest against the absurdly hasty claims 
 to scientific accurac}^ and finality in an empirical 
 field, where too often pseudo-science goes strut- 
 ting as final truth. The induction in this vast 
 and changing field of knowledge is still incom- 
 plete. Nor is this to deny the marvelous ad- 
 vances, especially in the domain of surgery. 
 Nevertheless, it may well be that just now we are 
 a little taken with Bacteria; if the B. B. way of 
 using opsonin seem farcical, it is only stage en- 
 
138 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 largement of the truth, like the relation of 
 caricature to the human face. 
 
 In this drama, then, improbable as to incident 
 and intrigue though it may be, there is impres- 
 sive psychological truth, and the verities of char- 
 acter are not tampered with. The curious scene 
 of the artist's death reveals the author in his 
 strength, but also in a weakness which is the de- 
 fect of his quality. He attempts what is well-nigh 
 impossible — in the playhouse. He treats a death 
 with the mingled pathos and sardonic humor 
 doubtless juxtaposed occasionally by the vast 
 indifference of Nature, since she is a lady who 
 manifests a total lack of the sense of humor her- 
 self. But that life does this, is no sure certificate 
 for art ; and wonderful as this scene is, it remains 
 questionable, because of its failure to be sen- 
 sitively aware that some things should not be 
 placed together. There is an element of resent- 
 ful pain when the gravity of death and the 
 levity of man are sharply set side by side; such 
 violent fellowship gives one an odd sense of un- 
 fitness. The continence of art is not quite con- 
 served, one feels. Perhaps this is why so original 
 a play, and one of decided acting value, has not 
 
" INTERLUDE AT THE PLAYHOUSE " 139 
 
 been liked so well as many others. It should be 
 borne in mind that the death was inserted on a 
 challenge from Mr. A. B. Walkley, who meant it 
 as a charge of limitation; he believed Shaw's art 
 wavered before a fundamental crisis of life. In 
 short, the scene was written as a vindication and 
 partakes of the nature of a tour de force. Yet 
 when all is said, it remains, in its strange, half- 
 fascinating, half-repellent way, one of the most 
 powerful and compelling pieces of dramatic writ- 
 ing in a generation. The fact that the story is 
 hardly started in the first act is no fault in 
 " The Doctor's Dilemma," since the object is to 
 give a full-length series of portraits and create 
 the proper atmosphere in which the story is later 
 to breathe and have its being. We have seen 
 the same first-act treatment in " The Devil's 
 Disciple." 
 
 The Interlude at The Playhouse 
 
 This was written for Cyril Maude at the 
 opening of his new theatre, The Playhouse, 
 January 28, 1907, and was published in The 
 Daily Mail of London the next day. It served 
 
140 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 as Prologue to introduce the main piece, " Tod- 
 dles," and showed the wife of a manager pleading 
 to the audience in behalf of her husband who is 
 embarrassed at having to make a speech. It is 
 a sparkling bit and not without its point in hint- 
 ing the differentiating advantages of sex. 
 
 Getting Married 
 
 Whatever its appeal as play, " Getting Mar- 
 ried " is one of the more important items in 
 Shaw's catalogue judged for its intellectual sig- 
 nificance. It was written in 1908, and first pro- 
 duced at The Hajmarket, London, May 12, 
 1908. The drama is preceded by a long Preface, 
 one of the most elaborate he has sent forth, and 
 a thoroughly characteristic effort for keenness, 
 wit, and whimsical indulgence in paradox and 
 overstatement. The play itself is a discussion in 
 one scene and a continuous performance (with 
 the author's consent, it was performed with two 
 intermissions) of a social problem of vital im- 
 port. The form chosen is of interest in view of 
 the author's reference to it as an experimental 
 extended use of the one-act drama. The fact 
 
" GETTING MARRIED " 141 
 
 that Shaw selected such a mould indicates the 
 nature of the play; a single situation presented 
 without conventional plot development, for the 
 sake of exhibiting the reactions of character in 
 a crisis which illustrates an argument. The 
 writer desires to show the confused and to him 
 ridiculous condition of the present marriage laws 
 and ideals; and to that end, marshals a number 
 of couples who stand for the main varieties of 
 the workings of such: a young pair who are go- 
 ing into marriage without realizing its limita- 
 tions and are checked at the threshold by one of 
 its many absurdities ; a high-class old maid and 
 uxorious bachelor; a typical menage a trois in 
 Leo, Regy, and Hotchkiss ; a typical celibate, 
 Soames; an example in the bishop and his spouse 
 of a couple well along in life who have weathered 
 the storms, and incline to take things as they 
 are ; a much married man, Collins ; and, most 
 original of all this piquant assemblage of the 
 matrimonially entangled, Mrs. George, the May- 
 oress, who with Hotchkiss seems to suggest 
 the frequent irregularities which exist beneath 
 the apparent smug respectability of the usual 
 union. 
 
142 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 By bringing together this group, so remark- 
 able for contrast and saliency, and by brilhant 
 dialogue and arresting scene, Shaw keeps us in- 
 terested and amused while he rams home his 
 views. There is a central interest in the ques- 
 tion whether Edith and her man will or will 
 not get themselves married; the play has its 
 dramatic validity just there. And an effect of 
 climax is secured when they finally take the mat- 
 ter into their own hands and have, not the pub- 
 lic ceremony that all had planned, but a pri- 
 vate one. It is not a fair statement to say that 
 the play lacks entirely in growth and story at- 
 traction. A juster way to put it would be to say 
 that its thesis is plainly exposed and its method 
 that of character caught in a crucial situation, 
 rather than carried along by plot. Given its 
 purpose, the technic is sound; that it will never 
 be as popular as other dramas from this hand 
 is pretty safe to guess; the nature of both 
 theme and handling forbids it. With an unusual 
 aim, the dramatist chose an unusual method to 
 put his ideas before an audience; there was no 
 lack of skill about it; wilfully Shaw adopted his 
 procedure here. The play contains plenty of 
 
" GETTING MARRIED " US 
 
 proof of craftsmanship. Observe, for one little 
 instance, the careful manner in which the final 
 appearance of Mrs. George is prepared for, 
 " planted " as the phrase goes, by Collins' talk 
 about her on the first page. This preparation is 
 one of the sure tests of a genuine dramatist and 
 the tyro constantly overlooks it. 
 
 But the idea and argument claim attention. 
 The play stands or falls by its intellectual inter- 
 est. It is a play of ideas, or it is nothing. 
 
 However elaborate the development of the 
 thought, the author's position is clear. To him, 
 the present marriage laws are bad, and the solu- 
 tion is easy divorce: there it is, stated in a sin- 
 gle sentence, and as a thought sufficiently shock- 
 ing to many. Some think we shall get rid of 
 marriage entirely, projecting their dream far 
 ahead in time. Not so Shaw. By precept and 
 example, he shows we must practically, and for 
 the present, preserve the institution; that the 
 thing to do is to improve, not abolish it. All 
 statements that his aim is to destroy rather than 
 modify, are based on a failure to read and under- 
 stand his words. 
 
 But there remain several reasons why the play 
 
144 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 may awaken opposition. First, the levity of the 
 prevailing tone; this, of course, being typical of 
 the writer. The composition becomes the more 
 amusing by this lightness of touch and hence bet- 
 ter drama; but in so serious a matter, the fun 
 may get in the way of the underlying earnest in- 
 tention, always a likely happening with our 
 author. 
 
 Then, there is the unpleasantness of the plain 
 speaking. If we are to avoid the unpleasant in 
 a dramatist who declares he can and should no 
 more dodge giving pain than a dentist, then adieu 
 Shaw. Another probable drawback is the de- 
 tachment of the argument from sentiment: the 
 sentiment which naturally and properly gathers 
 about the union of two people who love each 
 other. There are times when our sensibilities are 
 jarred so that we wince. It is the old conflict: a 
 warm-hearted, sentimentally inclined man trying 
 to separate head and heart, because he believes it 
 the only way to see clear on a vital question. 
 And we must be willing to be made uncomfortable 
 with him. 
 
 But is his contention true? The query pierces 
 to the root of the matter. Allowing for the 
 
" GETTING MARRIED " 145 
 
 Shavian method of perfervid rhetoric, overstate- 
 ment for vividness' sake, the picture of the 
 wrongs now existing in the marriage relation is 
 not unfairly drawn. Logically, too, the remedy 
 suggested, that of easy divorce, upon the com- 
 plaint of either party to the contract for what- 
 ever cause, is plausible. The defect in the reason- 
 ing lies in the assumption of human nature as 
 commonly trustworthy in the premises. 
 
 It would work beautifully with Shaw and his 
 kind of normal, right-minded folk, who have the 
 high ideals of matrimony which are based upon 
 the sound belief that love alone justifies such 
 union. But how would it work, by and large? 
 
 For example: suppose a man and woman 
 could get a divorce for the asking. If one of 
 them were a light person, he or she would in re- 
 sponse to a whim or because of a penchant for 
 somebody else, secure liberty. Follow that per- 
 son and see what happens. It is a little difficult 
 to imagine a wise conservation of the interests 
 of the child in such cases. The idea of the open 
 door removing the feeling of prison is sound. 
 And, let it be repeated, the fundamental thought 
 of a right union is nothing but admirable. If 
 
146 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 only poor human nature could be relied upon to 
 live up to it ! An ideal, properly viewed, is 
 something not yet attained, but conceivably at- 
 tainable; perhaps Shaw's idea (an idea is an 
 ideal that has arrived) would work as well as, 
 even better than, the present chaotic fumbling 
 towards readjustment. So far, there is not so 
 much a plan as a welter. With existent preju- 
 dices, the Shaw plan is not likely to be tried. 
 Meanwhile, we can respect a theory which aims 
 so high, and has such a conception of humanity. 
 There are passages in this drama which reveal 
 Shaw in some of his most effective and character- 
 istic phases. His sense of poetry is finely 
 brought out in the clairvoyant speech of Mrs. 
 George. And the argument in the Preface that 
 woman's political enfranchisement would materi- 
 ally assist her in the married relation, not only 
 affords a clear idea of his feeling about suffrage 
 (fortified later in "Press Cuttings"), but offers 
 a suggestion to the workers in that cause which 
 is distinctly valuable. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLAYS 
 
 "THE SHOWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET " 
 TO "THE MUSIC CURE" 
 
 The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet 
 
 Written in 1909, and finished in March of 
 that year, " The Showing-up of Blanco Pos- 
 net," another of the author's characteristic 
 pieces, was produced at The Abbey Theatre in 
 Dublin, August 25, 1909, and was played by the 
 Irish Players in America, during the season of 
 1911-2, as well as later. It was given by The 
 Stage Society in London after its Dublin pre- 
 miere, technically outside the law, for it had 
 been censored by the Lord Chamberlain; it was 
 afterwards licensed by that dignitary on condi- 
 tions so absurd as to preclude the possibility of 
 performance, as may be read at the close of the 
 Preface to the printed play. 
 
 This moving drama, which is likely to be reck- 
 147 
 
148 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 oned with steadily as one of the books thoroughly 
 expressive of the author's thought, is interesting 
 in both form and substance. It is in that one- 
 act mould which is so often used in the later 
 work of Shaw as to suggest that he finds it con- 
 veniently plastic to his mature purposes. It is 
 also unique among his works in having the United 
 States for locale, although early America was 
 used in "The Devil's Disciple." So little does 
 the author apparently care for that superficial 
 accuracy which is the end of unimaginative 
 " realists," that he has been anything but actual 
 in his picture of Bret Harte types in their west- 
 ern habitat. Surely, if Shaw had sought an ef- 
 fect of " truth " in the external sense, he would 
 not have had his cowboys address each other as 
 " old son " ; and would have set his scene right in 
 various other particulars of speech or furniture. 
 It almost seems as if he purposely exhibited in- 
 difference in such details, in order to remind the 
 reader, or auditor, that the higher truth is there ; 
 drawing attention to what he is after. For it is 
 there, beyond debate; he has never done human 
 beings with more convincing psychology, and 
 never has spiritual truth shone more flamingly 
 
" BLANCO POSNET " 149 
 
 through the supposedly opaque medium of west- 
 ern " bad men." 
 
 Yet this superficial " untruth " is such as to 
 repel some critics ; Professor Edward Everett 
 Hale, for one. It might be argued that, in a work 
 of art, to dispel the illusion by inartistic details, 
 which destroy verisimilitude, is a sin against that 
 spirit of truth which must lie behind the desired 
 result of conviction. " Conviction of sin " is 
 what Shaw is after in this piece. Be that as it 
 may, an irresistible breath of spiritual reality, I 
 feel, blows out from this rough and ready depic- 
 tion of primitive folk. The spirit of good which 
 is in common man was never brought out by 
 Shaw more forcefully and touchingly. 
 
 With the true instinct of a dramatist aware 
 that a one-act piece must center on the obli- 
 gatory scene which is at the heart of any good 
 play, Shaw presents his story in terms of the 
 tense trial picture which is the climax of all that 
 has gone before; here his method is that of Ib- 
 sen. The characterization is clear, varied, con- 
 vincing; pictorially, there is great value in the 
 court room with its fringe of eager toughs sur- 
 rounding Blanco and the jury, broken in upon 
 
150 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 by the women who change the complexion of the 
 case. The " boys " constitute a sort of crude 
 Greek chorus, and the individualized figures of 
 the sheriff, the Elder, Feemy, Blanco himself, 
 stand out in high relief. The exposition, though 
 very direct, is plausible and skilful. The general 
 atmosphere of a primitive community ruled by 
 the fundamenal principles that make human in- 
 tercourse possible under any conditions, — " re- 
 venge is a wild kind of justice," says Bacon, — is 
 capitally caught. For stage effectiveness, the 
 piece must be placed high up in the Shaw reper- 
 tory; the Irish Players were not altogether 
 suited to it, and full justice awaits it in the 
 hands of a skilful American company. No exam- 
 ple of his craft affords a better chance to study 
 growth and increase of tension; note how the 
 seeming climax is put off by the arrival of later 
 witnesses, to make the final effect the greater. 
 In external form, it is frank melodrama, with the 
 traditional good ending: Shaw again pouring new 
 wine into the old bottles. But melodrama as it 
 is, it is also a psychologic study of which the 
 theme is the dealings of God with a human soul. 
 The conception of religion and of God here 
 
"BLANCO POSNET" 151 
 
 makes one think of Bunyan, and the Salvation 
 Army! Blanco wants to be wicked, finds he can- 
 not; he prefers the company of bad people, and 
 is afraid to be alone, because a good person, 
 God, will get at him. He has a vision, like Saul 
 of Tarsus. The play is a clear justification of 
 Chesterton's remark that Shaw is a Puritan; 
 not only in his desire to deal with moral prob- 
 lems and reform his fellow-men, but in his con- 
 ception of the relation of deity to dust. The 
 play is a close companion to " The Devil's Disci- 
 ple," in its insistence on doing good for its own 
 sake, without ulterior motive or reward. Poor 
 Blanco, in fact, is puzzled by the kind of heav- 
 enly trick which has been plaj^ed upon him; in 
 sharp contrast with him, doing right in spite of 
 himself and for mystic, unworldly reasons, is set 
 the elder, with his " other worldliness," as George 
 Eliot has acutely called it. It is the idea of man 
 caught in Stevenson's phrase, " we are doomed to 
 some nobility " ; Blanco does not wish to be no- 
 ble, but is obscurely pushed in that direction by 
 a power greater than himself, dumbly trusted by 
 this western " tough." 
 
 The picture of Blanco realizing that there 
 
152 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 are two games being played by him (and by all 
 of us), the devil's game and God's, to use the 
 old-fashioned theologic nomenclature, is painted 
 with broad, effective strokes, in a way to make 
 the final scene with his culminating speech as fine 
 a thing as the author has ever given us, and cer- 
 tainly one of the moments in his dramatic writ- 
 ing when we come very close to the essential 
 thinker and teacher. If he is ever serious, it is 
 here; if there is a passage anywhere in his works 
 in which Shaw's social sympathy and his ideal- 
 istic faith in the life-force is plainly stated, it 
 is when Blanco Posnet harangues those rough 
 miners who are somewhat dazed to find the man 
 they are about to acquit of a death penalty sud- 
 denly turning their judge and bringing them to 
 the court, not of Judge Lynch, but of eternal 
 justice. The drsunatic value of his words at 
 such a moment in such a setting, needs only to 
 be heard to be felt. It is one of a half dozen 
 pronunciamentos of the author wherein we get 
 close to his inmost thought, and conviction and 
 hear the very heart-beats of his meaning. The 
 passage appears later in this book. 
 
 The play has added importance because of the 
 
*' PRESS CUTTINGS" 153 
 
 acute analysis in the Preface of the censorship, 
 with all its weakness and opportunity for work- 
 ing harm. Shaw gives us a fine plea for liberty in 
 Art ; it belongs to the lineage of Milton's " Areop- 
 ag-itica." The writer shows himself a democrat 
 in his willingness to trust the judgment of the 
 people rather than that of any official: a posi- 
 tion which may easily be turned against him 
 if we come to consider his belief in Socialism 
 with its inevitable use of the same officialism. 
 But in its setting here, it is full of an eloquent 
 cogency; the grotesque spectacle of plays like 
 " Mrs. Warren's Profession " and " The Showing- 
 up of Blanco Posnet," to say nothing of " Press 
 Cuttings," being debarred from licensed hearing 
 in a land that smiles complacently over the un- 
 draped vulgarity and indecency of the average 
 burlesque and musical comedy, offers full oppor- 
 tunity for the satirist, and the chance is taken. 
 
 Press Cuttings 
 
 This scintillant example of Shaw's lighter 
 touch and mood was presented by The Civic and 
 Dramatic Guild at the Royal Court Theatre, 
 
154. BERNARD SHAW 
 
 London, July 9, 1909, having been composed 
 during March and April of that year. It was 
 stopped because of political references, and given 
 with slight changes September 27, at Man- 
 chester. It shows the author at his best in the 
 one-act form, which lends itself especially to topi- 
 cal treatment with the desired point and brevity. 
 It is wide of the mark to describe it (it has been 
 so described) as an anti-suffragist screed; it does 
 not give the impression of /or, or against. Not 
 a polemic, but a work of art, it makes unbitter, 
 non-partisan fun of vulnerable points in the 
 armor of either movement as it exposes itself to 
 the satirist. It would certainly be very difficult 
 to detect a bias in Shaw in his depiction of Mrs. 
 Banger and Lady Corinthia, antis ; in making 
 sport of them, he indirectly might be said to 
 praise their opponents. With a wider vision, he 
 looks beyond either party to find his amusement 
 in human nature, as such. He refuses to let us 
 catch him napping. At the end, we find him on 
 the side lines, amiably looking on at the battle 
 and enjoying all the fruits of neutrality. He 
 has had his dig at masculine women, at women 
 who use the sex-pull for political purposes, at 
 
"PRESS CUTTINGS" 155 
 
 men who flatter themselves they rule, when woman 
 is really the power behind their potherings ; and 
 back of these satiric flings, the larger questions 
 of war and peace, militarism, and the economic 
 and political relations of the individual to gov- 
 ernment, are hit off in a way to make jocoseria 
 carry an aftertaste of thought. Mrs. Farrell 
 (another minor character looming large) is as 
 masterly as she is womanly, to be placed for suc- 
 cess, given the lesser scale, beside William in 
 " You Never Can Tell." Her humorsome com- 
 parison between killing men in war and making 
 them again in childbed, with woman paying the 
 damages, is unforgettable. 
 
 For sheer good-hearted fun, for sparkling dia- 
 logue from the mouths of immensely enjoyable 
 persons, Shaw has never been happier. " Press 
 Cuttings " is a success in its kind. It sets up 
 as an avowed aim to secure merriment out of 
 the comic possibilities of current events and 
 personages : leaders like Asquith and Kitchener, 
 the thin disguise of whose names cheats nobody 
 out of the pleasure of recognition. It hardly 
 needs be said that the genial use for literary 
 purposes of a distinguished figure like the late 
 
156 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Earl Kitchener must be related to the fact that 
 the play was written some years before his death. 
 It is thoughtful burlesque, which seems a new 
 genre, and the thought is there. There is much 
 of the Shavian in Mitchener's final remark to 
 Balsquith : 
 
 " The moral for you is, you've got to give up 
 treating women as angels." We at once find the 
 author expressing a general attitude. It may be 
 emphasized that there is a pairing off of the cou- 
 ples in conclusion, as in " Man and Superman " ; 
 again, Shaw is frankly conceding the great pur- 
 poses of Nature, let him (or another) scoff or 
 carp as he will. 
 
 Shaw's sense of stage effects is shown in 
 Balsquith's entrance disguised as a woman; noth- 
 ing could be better theatrically ; and the tele- 
 phone talk of Mrs. Farrell with her daughter is 
 so good as to condone the use of that overworked 
 instrument. Seven years ago, when the play was 
 written, the advantages of the telephone as first 
 aid to the dramatist had not been so freely ex- 
 ploited. So true is it that this admirable little 
 piece is not a suffragist manifesto nor in any 
 sense a propagandist effort, that it might better 
 
"MISALLIANCE" 157 
 
 be described as a satire on politics in relation to 
 the military question, the woman question natur- 
 ally coming into the discussion. Give the army 
 civil rights and the women votes, says the orderly, 
 which appears to be very much the author's no- 
 tion also. It should not be overlooked that the 
 title with its implied origin of the play in the 
 dail}'^ press is a part of the satire of this keen 
 and brilliant presentation of current social issues. 
 
 Misalliance 
 
 In the contention that Shaw's plays are not 
 plays at all (meaning that some of them lack the 
 familiar play physiognomy), this one-act piece 
 might be used as a test case. Strictly, it isn't 
 drama as that word is traditionally used; for it 
 lacks story, direction toward climax, growth, 
 climax itself, and conclusion. And yet, reading 
 it, we are confronted with the paradox that it is 
 intensely interesting. Why? Here again one is 
 puzzled by the question whether anything on the 
 stage in the form of scene, dialogue, and action 
 by human beings, that holds the amused atten- 
 tion of an audience, is not properly to be defined 
 as a play. 
 
158 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 " Misalliance " was written during 1909-10, and 
 produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, 
 February 23 of the latter year. It has not up 
 to the present writing been done professionally 
 in America. The author calls it " a debate in 
 one sitting," and a facetious chronicler at the 
 time of its debut declared that the debating so- 
 ciety is found in a lunatic asylum where, without 
 motion or chairman, the members argue aim- 
 lessly and during this irresponsible talk the 
 Shavian tenets respecting love, marriage, and 
 the duty of parents and children, especially the 
 former, are electrically set forth. It is true 
 enough that the people gathered together at 
 the country residence of John Tarleton, rich 
 manufacturer of Tarleton Underwear, are not 
 ordinary folk; one fairly gasps at their utter- 
 ances, so far are they away from the convention- 
 alized patter of the stage: the obvious replies to 
 obvious questions proponed by obvious types of 
 human beings. The elder Tarleton himself, his 
 son Johnny, Lord Summerhays, distinguished ad- 
 ministrator just home from India; his son, the 
 delightful Bentley, whose pet name of Bunny is 
 a revelation of his personality; Hypatia, Tarle- 
 
" MISALLIANCE " 159 
 
 ton's daughter, engaged to Bentley; her mother, 
 old-fashioned and shrewd, and the ancillary char- 
 acters who surround these central persons and 
 help to solve the main business of mating the 
 girl of the house, — such as these are not met 
 every day, in the theatre or in life. One asks if 
 they exist, outside the fertile brain of their 
 creator, very much as one asked it of the char- 
 acters of Charles Dickens. This can never be 
 decided as a question of science can be; the per- 
 sonal equation will settle it at the last. Why 
 be too greatly concerned as to whether the Tarle- 
 ton menage can be duplicated from life? They 
 are monstrously amusing, these folk, the words 
 they speak are as mentally arousing as can be 
 found in any stage dialogue of our time; and in- 
 cidentally, Shaw is enabled to vent many ideas on 
 domestic life and the education of and in the 
 home, which are seriously held by him ; a fact the 
 farcical method of the piece should not for a mo- 
 ment blind us to. 
 
 But does a definite thesis emerge from all this 
 brilliancy of epigram and thrust of whimsical 
 argument? Hardly, in the way of dramatic con- 
 cision and steady cleaving to one thing. But, 
 
160 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 plainly enough, I think, the notion that the life- 
 force, sadly interfered with by the silly conven- 
 tions of domestic upbringing, will seek its own, is 
 stated and illustrated in Hypatia's turning from 
 the little Bunny, with brains and no physique, to 
 the athletic Percival, who biologically is so much 
 more her suitable mate. We hear Shaw again 
 saying, as in " Man and Superman," that argue 
 and refine as we may. Nature will act and over- 
 throw our plans. I believe this to be after all 
 the sufficiently centralizing theme or purpose of 
 a play which should not so much be described as 
 wanting a story as not choosing to make the 
 usual dramatic use of story that is there. How- 
 ever such a drama may act, it is a highly enjoya- 
 ble bit of literature, and when a thoughtful 
 theatre audience is homogeneously ready for it, 
 likely to be welcome in the repertory. 
 
 The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 
 
 Written in the same year with the foregoing, 
 1910, it was also produced at The Haymarket 
 Theatre, London, on November 24, 1910, Gran- 
 ville Barker playing Shakspere. The subject was 
 
*'THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS" l6l 
 
 eminently fitting, inasmuch as it was done on 
 the occasion of a benefit for the proposed Shak- 
 spere National Memorial Theatre. It therefore 
 aims to show the master dramatist as the crier- 
 up of this project. We get a characterization 
 of the poet as novel as it is amusing, and in 
 agreement with Shaw's well-known critical re- 
 marks about the elder playwright. It is a study 
 of the literary type which recognizes alike its 
 weakness and strength; we observe the note-book 
 method of getting good lines and valuable hints 
 from wayfaring folk the bard may meet; the 
 putting of letters before life ; the quick sus- 
 ceptibility of the artist to the call of sex; the 
 bold matching of his power as a king of words 
 against Elizabeth as queen of men; and under- 
 neath all the badinage, an earnest desire to 
 make the sovereign realize the educational value 
 and significance of the playhouse. To declare 
 that this is taking unwarrantable liberty with the 
 stock ideas of the poet is nonsense; what do we 
 really know of this Elizabethan Englishman? 
 The imputed qualities bring us nearer to the 
 man, which is enough. The scene shows the poet 
 keeping an appointment by night with the dark 
 
162 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 lady on a terrace at Whitehall, and meeting the 
 Queen instead, with whom he boldly talks. 
 
 The language of the period is cleverly caught, 
 and there is special piquancy in the thoroughly 
 modern view couched in such words as these: 
 " For this writing of plays is a great matter, 
 forming as it does the minds and affections of 
 men in such sort that whatsoever they see done 
 in show on the stage, they will presently be do- 
 ing in earnest in the world, which is but a larger 
 stage." 
 
 The scenic effectiveness and the crisp handling 
 of the conclusion add much to the general acting 
 value of this excellent example of Shaw's lighter 
 manner. It may without hesitation be set down 
 among his successes. 
 
 Fanny'' s First Play 
 
 At a time when it was beginning to be said 
 that Shaw had lost his vogue, this drama rein- 
 stated the dramatist in the favor of average 
 playgoers. Moreover, he proved his power to in- 
 terest the light-minded public by the intrinsic 
 appeal of his work rather than by the at- 
 
"FANNY'S FIRST PLAY" 163 
 
 traction of his name, for this play, written 
 in 1910-11, appeared anonymously at The Cri- 
 terion Theatre, London, April 18, 1911, and 
 ran for nearly a year, when it was transferred 
 to The Little Theatre, then to The Kingsway, 
 for a further run; and on being given at The 
 Comedy Theatre, New York, September 16, 1912, 
 held the stage there for a season. In the face of 
 these facts, it would seem untenable to argue 
 that Shaw has become less effective as dramatist 
 as he has matured as thinker. His most popular 
 drama did not have the advantage of his reputa- 
 tion to start it; and this play is also one of his 
 latest. It hits nearer the truth to say that while 
 by no means all of Shaw's plays succeed in the 
 popular sense (who is the dramatist able to 
 make such a boast?), yet at any period of his 
 career he is capable of a stage success ; his more 
 serious thinking, if it can be called such, has not 
 dulled his cleverness, has indeed but lent body to 
 increased expertness. The external history of 
 his dramatic development is all against the as- 
 sumption that like Tolstoy, for example, ethics 
 and intellect have injured art. In fact, again 
 and again, Shaw has turned from some serious 
 
164. BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and strenuous dramatic debate to furnish the 
 contemporary stage with capital light entertain- 
 ment: as in the play under consideration, or the 
 later " Androcles and the Lion." 
 
 Certainly " Fanny's First Play " is not one of 
 the author's most important, most intellectual 
 dramas, but it does not fail to offer an underly- 
 ing satirico-social idea and the stimulation to the 
 brain that is derived from an examination of 
 modern theories. 
 
 To make the thing more arresting and original, 
 there is an induction and epilogue, after the 
 elder fashion; a young girl is to have her piece 
 performed and we are allowed to witness the pri- 
 vate showing; and afterwards to hear the critical 
 comment upon it; leading critics, Walkley, 
 Archer, and others, appear on the stage and dis- 
 cuss the play's "merits, which affords the author 
 a chance to poke fun at critical vagaries, and 
 contains the suggestion that as there is no agree- 
 ment, the principle of non disputandum holding 
 here as elsewhere, there can be nothing authorita- 
 tive or final in such judgments. 
 
 The story itself veils a satiric attack on smug, 
 middle-class Philistine morality. Partners in 
 
" FANNY'S FIRST PLAY " 165 
 
 business whose families are in close friendship 
 have respectively a son and daughter whom they 
 intend to make a match of it. But both disap- 
 pear, go off on a lark, escape from their cell like 
 the monk of Siberia. Margaret, the girl (played 
 in London by Lillah McCarthy), fired with an in- 
 nocent desire to see life, visits a Salvation Army 
 hall, goes to the promenade of a theatre, and 
 then to a dance, and falls in with a young 
 Frenchman who steers her around to see the 
 sights. Their larkishness lands her in jail. 
 Bobby, the son, associates himself with an in- 
 souciant young female of the name of Dora, and 
 her influence lands him in prison, too. The fun 
 consists in seeing them come home to shock their 
 families; and to hear them confess to each other, 
 each supposing the fault to have been exclusive. 
 When they discover they do not love, they very 
 happily pair off, Margaret with the stately but- 
 ler whom she secretly admires and who turns out 
 to be a duke ; and Bobby with " darling Dora," 
 with whom he finds himself perfectly congenial. 
 Again, it would appear, the life-force disturbing 
 human plans! Regarded as fact, a realistic 
 treatment of life, this play obviously runs into 
 
166 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 extravaganza, which no doubt is one reason for 
 its success: the two marriages, for instance, are 
 improbable, if not impossible. But as usual, the 
 underlying seriousness is to be found in the study 
 of middle-class ideas of propriety, the failure to 
 realize what the younger generation are and need. 
 Both Bobby and Margaret suffer from suppressed 
 natural instincts. Their comparatively innocent 
 and harmless night-off would in real life result, 
 the author would say to us, in tragic happenings. 
 In other words, here is drama to be enjoyed for 
 the sheer fun of the thing, yet which observes the 
 Shavian principle in that it is, unobtrusively in 
 this case, a drama of idea. 
 
 The characterization is full of flavor and car- 
 ried through with an unflagging zest: the re- 
 ligious Mrs. Knox, the self-satisfied, placid Mrs. 
 Gibney; the butler-earl, whose manners as the 
 former justify his being the latter; the French- 
 man, humorously introduced for the sake of of- 
 fering an outside coign of vantage from which to 
 comment upon this group of Britishers; Dora, 
 with her wayward charm and the good that 
 is in her in the way of affection, and hon- 
 est comradeship; the fathers of the family, too, 
 
"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 167 
 
 alike in the hidebound respectability which is 
 their fetish; to say nothing of the princi- 
 pals themselves, especially Margaret, whom 
 you feel to be an excellent example of the 
 type of young person who in this milieu is likely 
 to be misunderstood. It is all sound psychology. 
 That is Shaw's way: solid truth about human 
 beings within a more or less fanciful framework 
 of story. The framework is to catch gulls 
 withal; the character drawing is for the honora- 
 ble minority. He elects as his business the in- 
 ner truth of psychology instead of the outer 
 truth of plot. 
 
 Androcles and the Lion 
 
 The year 1912 seems to have been one of un- 
 usual literary activity with Mr. Shaw, for three 
 plays are dated from it in the latest volume to 
 appear in the American edition of his works. 
 The first in order is " Androcles and the Lion," 
 which was translated into German by the Viennese 
 journalist, Siegfried Trebitsch, played in Berlin 
 before it was in English, and produced in Lon- 
 don by Granville Barker and Lillah McCarthy, 
 
168 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 at The St. James Theatre, September 1, 1913, 
 and in America by Mr. Barker, at Wallack's, on 
 January 22, 1915. It has already proved itself 
 to be one of the genuinely effective Shaw dramas 
 in the theatre. This is probably because, while 
 not without many of the author's more serious 
 earmarks in the way of satiric idea and scenic 
 investiture, it is or has the eifect of being a story 
 play, to be enjoyed by the majority of theatre- 
 goers in whatever country. Its novelty of form 
 and subject-matter also conduces to this result. 
 In the Preface to the printed play, one of Shaw's 
 most extended and carefully wrought argumenta- 
 tive brochures, and sufficiently daring to arouse 
 attention and contention, the writer shows more 
 plainly than did his drama (a common thing with 
 him, and stamping him as so much the better 
 playwright) how much there is behind the piece 
 in his thought. The essay of well over a hun- 
 dred close-packed pages sets forth Shaw's thesis 
 that no modern nation has as yet accepted and 
 put into practice the social doctrines of Jesus, 
 which, he believes, would, if accepted, give hap- 
 pier results than have been attained from any 
 other theory of society and state. It is a de- 
 
"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 169 
 
 fense of the teachings of the founder of Christian- 
 ity from a quarter least to be expected by those 
 who think of the writer as a destructive force 
 flaring out against conventional religion. I 
 doubt if a piece of writing ever came from Mr. 
 Shaw's pen to surpass this Preface and the lit- 
 tle postscript at the play's end, in sheer literary 
 force; it is extraordinary for crisp concision 
 and a kind of inevitability of felicitous phrasing. 
 The clinch of such a sentence as this, coming in 
 its cumulative place after what goes before, can- 
 not fail to be noted by any one sensitive to the 
 uses of English : " From which I conclude that 
 a popular pulpit may be as perilous to a man's 
 soul as an imperial throne." 
 
 The author makes plain in his Preface, if it 
 were needed to do so, that his drama, a curious 
 mixture of fable, chronicle history, and extrava- 
 ganza, is not a study of the early Christians and 
 Roman civilization, but of the martyr type and 
 the persecutor type as such, wherever found; 
 these particular types being illustratively made 
 use of. No depiction of the subject was ever 
 more removed from bias or parti pris. Grant 
 that Shaw gets fun out of both Christian and 
 
170 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Pagan, he has no purpose to ridicule either, save 
 as all humanity is laughable, as well as pathetic, 
 tragic, and inspiring, when viewed by a true 
 satirist. He shows us that a Caesar is very much 
 what his environment makes him, for good or 
 bad; that not all are Christians in the deeper 
 sense who so call themselves, witness a Ferrovius, 
 a Lavinia, and a Spintho, — of a truth, religion 
 m^kes strange bedfellows, — and that the famous 
 cruelties of Rome at this juncture were simply 
 the regular reaction of the conventionalist to ec- 
 centric persons at large. Thus, in a drama 
 fairly uproarious in its opportunities for amuse- 
 ment, there is, for those willing to look beneath 
 the laugh, some of the cogent thinking which it 
 is the writer's sly way to pass to us when we are 
 off guard, along with the more obvious merriment 
 of which he is prodigal. 
 
 " Androcles and the Lion " coruscates with 
 palpable theatre effects of the most alluring sort. 
 The opening scene in which by way of prologue, 
 and embroidering the old tale, the man tames 
 the beast, is as convulsing an example of Shaw's 
 broad humor as can be named. The arena 
 scenes are brilliantly of stage value; and that 
 
"ANDROCLES AND THE LION" 171 
 
 in which the imperial monarch, mere man now 
 in his terror, is chased by the lion, is even 
 more overcoming to the risibles than the initial 
 appearance of the brute. The characterization 
 is as varied and salient as could be wished: 
 a striking study in contrasts and yet brought 
 under the common denominator of human nature. 
 I am sorry for any one who does not see a deep 
 pathos in the seemingly weak, henpecked hus- 
 band of the shrewish Megaera, who, by the way, 
 is packed full of irradiating meanings upon fam- 
 ily life and its relations. Androcles, with his 
 gentle sweetness, his rather dazed desire for the 
 use of loving-kindness, is, seen to the center of 
 him, a very touching portraiture, and Shaw at 
 his best. The final exit of Tommy the lion and 
 his friend, a man whose loving-kindness is not 
 arbitrarily limited by the line between brute and 
 human, contains the lines spoken by Androcles: 
 
 " Whilst we stand together, no cage for 
 you ; no slavery for me." 
 
 It is an idealist reminding us that liberty is 
 one, and if it be a principle worth applying, it 
 cannot be for sporadic application. 
 
172 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 A plot in the strict sense may be denied to this 
 favorable specimen of the author's maturer art. 
 Androcles, along with a number of Christian 
 martyrs, is in the Roman arena awaiting his turn 
 to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. He is saved 
 by the lion from whose foot he has extracted the 
 thorn. Such complications as arise are due to 
 the different ways in which the Christians take 
 their fate, the interactions of prisoners and cap- 
 tors, and, above all, to the disturbing presence 
 of the king of beasts. There is an excellent 
 climax in the rescue of Androcles by his supposed 
 destroyer, suddenly changed to friend for a rea- 
 son cannily understood by the theatre audience, 
 after the prologue's preparation, but highly mys- 
 tifying to the persons of the play, — a truly 
 right handling of story for theatre purposes. 
 The story is quite sufficient for the style of play 
 in which it is used, and the leisurely movement 
 and full pausing for individual effects of scene 
 and character exposition are deliberately adopted 
 by the playwright, rather than a tenser handling 
 of material in a drama of skilful tangle and 
 emphasis upon suspense. Again we get thought- 
 ful burlesque, extravaganza, farce, or all of them, 
 
" OVERRULED " 173 
 
 as j'ou will. Farce, it can hardly be called, when 
 so much care and serious intention are put into 
 character portrayal. 
 
 The form into which " Androcles and the 
 Lion " is thrown offers still another example of 
 Shaw's free hand in moulding his material. The 
 prologue is followed by two acts only, the act- 
 ing time as a result falling under the conven- 
 tional demands of a full evening's entertainment, 
 so that a forepiece is properly given with it. 
 But this did not prevent the dramatist from say- 
 ing all he had to say within more prescribed 
 limits and stopping when he was through, — one 
 of the eternal difficulties of literature! 
 
 Overruled 
 
 This one-act piece was written in 1912, and 
 produced at The Duke of York's Theatre, in 
 London, October 14, of that year, in a triple bill 
 in which the other two plays were contributed by 
 Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero. Shaw 
 describes it as " a comedy of manners," also as 
 " a clinical study." Often in his plays there is 
 the suggestion that existent social views reflect 
 
174 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 back upon married folk and make trouble. Here 
 he exhibits a complication arising from such 
 pseudo-ideals, treating the situation in a vein of 
 light satire. The result is a bit of enjoyable 
 fooling, though by no means the writer at his 
 best. The note struck is that of " The Philan- 
 derer," without that play's more serious tone and 
 elaborate handling. 
 
 Two married pairs are shown, and the wife in 
 each case talks over her situation with the hus- 
 band of the other woman. None of the four is a 
 philanderer in the sense that any one of them is 
 willing to disturb the peace of a friend's house- 
 hold. Yet none of them is true to individual 
 duty in the married bond. That is, they respect 
 the convention, but do not respect the personal 
 faith in the home which is the basis of right do- 
 ing. One couple says : " I like this, though I 
 oughtn't." In contrast, the second couple says: 
 " I want to like this, but I don't, particularly." 
 
 By interesting character relief and contrast 
 and through witty, keen dialogue, Shaw satirizes 
 the conventional view of such a social contre- 
 temps. He shows us plainly his conviction that 
 the usual assumptions in the premises are untrue, 
 
" OVERRULED " 175 
 
 because they do not square with the facts about 
 human nature. The two men, and the two 
 women as well, are constantly saying what they 
 consider proper, according to the social opinion 
 that prevails, while they are steadily acting 
 otherwise; whether or not they obey the conven- 
 tion, the point Shaw makes is, that they set it 
 up as right to obey. The treatment is in perfect 
 harmony with the author's general view: accept 
 human nature for what it is, in planning and con- 
 ducting the marriage system, which, being human, 
 is necessarily imperfect; do not pretend that hu- 
 manity is something other than it is. " I like any 
 one to love me," says one of the women. " Of 
 course, we all do. Can't we admit that we're hu- 
 man, and have done with it? " says Mrs. Juno. 
 
 " Marriage is all very well, but it isn't ro- 
 mance," remarks Juno ; which I take to be Shaw 
 whimsically suggesting that the mistake is to 
 think romance is better. The humor of the 
 situation, where each man goes out to dinner 
 with the other's wife, depends upon this cheerful, 
 open-eyed acceptance of human nature : the frank 
 liking by criss-cross, with the removal of sur- 
 reptitious guilt, deceit, and the like ; so that it be- 
 
176 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 comes simply a frank, open pleasure in the so- 
 ciety of human beings other than within the 
 home; flirting ceases, the relation is innocently 
 sexual, but not animal. The flaw here, as else- 
 where with Shaw, is to be found in the notion 
 that so highly inflammable material as human 
 beings would in all cases escape the flames of il- 
 licit love. With Shaw, it seems an attitude of 
 mind, this theory, rather than a workable thing; 
 but as theory, admirable, with a great deal of 
 truth in it. 
 
 The title of the play may be taken in the 
 technical legal sense : " Overruled, to set aside 
 the authority of a decision as a precedent, by 
 maintaining a different doctrine in a later case." 
 
 Pygmalion 
 
 Like " Androcles and the Lion," this play 
 was first done in Germany, the translation also 
 by Herr Trebitsch, being produced at the Les- 
 sing Theater, Berlin, in November, 1913. Sir 
 Herbert Tree produced it at Her Majesty's 
 Theatre, in London, April 18, 1914, and it was 
 also first done in New York in German in the sea- 
 
" PYGMALION " 177 
 
 son of 1913-14, and in the same season by Mrs. 
 Patrick Campbell, October 12, at The Park 
 Theatre. 
 
 Like " Fanny's First Play," it was a re- 
 assurance that Shaw in his prime could pro- 
 duce drama of practical stage appeal and story 
 interest. Its popularity in several lands has 
 been decided. The theme in itself, the general so- 
 cial elevation secured to a woman of the people 
 by her careful training in speech, under the in- 
 fluence of a philologist, whose personal power 
 over her is of a kind to suggest love, is not so 
 searching or universal as many of the other 
 plays. Indeed, to some the idea may appear to 
 be far-fetched. The thing to recognize, however, 
 is that a first-rate acting drama is the result, the 
 whimsical motive proving full of possibilities in 
 the hands of Shaw; and moreover, the additional 
 fact that the piece does not fail to give us the 
 usual overtones: shrewd, penetrating observa- 
 tions upon society, and the men and women who 
 make it up, in their sex meanings, together with 
 sundry scattering reflections which are immedi- 
 ately caught as familiar and representative. At 
 the center is the satire directed against the pre- 
 
178 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 tensions and conventions of class. The speech 
 of Eliza, the flower girl, at first objectionably 
 like her kind and later that of a fine lady, be- 
 comes in Shaw's hands a symbol of all the ex- 
 ternal, acquired touchstones by which people as- 
 sume superiority and grade social distinction. 
 The dramatist, with his keenly observant eye, 
 sees that it is in the main some superficial ac- 
 quisition, — dress, language, deportment, habit of 
 life, — that gives a person the social place proudly 
 taken as a right ; and he laughs at this, as demo- 
 crat and socialist, much as Moliere laughed at 
 this or that one of the learned professions. 
 
 Regarded as story, the interest heads up in the 
 relation of Eliza to the professor who has made 
 her socially, by his ingenious instruction in the 
 proper use of the mother tongue. The situation 
 is decidedly piquant; one feels that she is greatly 
 interested in him, influenced by him, and there is 
 a natural question in one's mind: will they 
 marry? Somewhat tantalizingly Shaw writes a 
 last scene leaving the query in mid-air; the issue 
 is ambiguous, for while the action implies that 
 Eliza will defiantly go to work for Higgins's rival, 
 and she snaps her fingers at her former mas- 
 
"PYGMALION" 179 
 
 ter, yet there is that in the two characters, and 
 in the girl's very tempestuousness of repudiation, 
 which breeds the suspicion that at bottom Hig- 
 gins is the man she wants, and, after the fashion 
 of Ann's grab game, wdll get. Characteristically, 
 the author adds to this scene in the printed play 
 an explanation from which we learn that this de- 
 duction is incorrect; that she marries Freddy, 
 the young gentleman who, in the crass idiom of 
 today, fell for her from the first. And she makes 
 this decision, the author goes on to tell us, not 
 that she did not care for the professor, but be- 
 cause she instinctively felt that he would not 
 make a good husband, was not of the Benedick 
 brand, because — a reason truly Shavian in its un- 
 expectedness — she had a rival in Higgins's mother, 
 to whom this middle-aged, forceful, and woman- 
 attracting bachelor was so devoted. The pages 
 wherein this theory is propounded and the anxious 
 auditor of the play set right, will add much to 
 the pleasure from the play, and are rich in social 
 suggestion. 
 
 In this drama, Shaw reverts to the old-fash- 
 ioned five-act form which we have come to expect 
 in modern dramaturgy only in pla3'S of romantic 
 
180 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and historical character, where the model would 
 traditionally favor it. To give a modern real- 
 istic comedy such form seems almost like bravado. 
 Probably the best reason to give is that the 
 drama worked out that waj^ when it was plotted 
 and scene-divided. It is really a four-act play 
 with a prologue: for such act one, which shows 
 the flower girl in her estate before the meta- 
 morphosis under Higgins began, can be seen to 
 be. In this opening act, the main characters, 
 especially Higgins and the flower girl, are 
 limned, and then act second starts the phoneti- 
 cal reform, act third shows it triumphant, act 
 fourth presents the climax of Eliza's reaction 
 and revolt from the cold-hearted experiment 
 which has lifted her to the duchess height, only 
 to let her fall back into the street ; leaving a final 
 act of high tension to clear up the relations of 
 the two — and without doing it! Both to the 
 lover of story for story's sake and the student of 
 human nature, the final situation of. these two 
 strangely contrasted folk ofl'ers fascinating 
 queries: will they, should they, could they.? And 
 the author tantalizes us with a curtain which 
 leaves an interrogation mark. The fourth act 
 
"PYGMALION" 181 
 
 scene of the turn of Eliza upon the man whose 
 power she feels yet resents, is very fine drama in- 
 deed. Had Shaw been a " romantic," he would, 
 of course, have closed the affair by throwing 
 the two into each other's arms. But not with 
 so consistent an enemy of the customary treat- 
 ment of love. Higgins is a Frankenstein who, to 
 his astonishment, finds that his own creation, the 
 street girl, is likely to turn and rend him. In his 
 scientific interest in her as a phonetic problem, 
 and his intellectual use of her to prove that 
 duchesses can be easily manufactured (ignor- 
 ing human interest), he has quite overlooked 
 the little matter of Eliza's having a soul. With 
 all the differences of subject, treatment, setting, 
 and tone, there is a reminder in this situation of 
 Ibsen's " When We Dead Awaken," with the 
 sculptor also refusing to treat his model as a hu- 
 man being and respond to her love. What a fan- 
 tastic proposition for a realist's play! To make 
 a duchess in six months by reforming the speech 
 and deportment of a malleable girl of the people, 
 with good looks and natural intelligence ! But 
 given the premises, how much of shrewdest so- 
 cial wisdom is in it, what a caustic picture of hu- 
 
182 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 man nature, enlivened by humor and penetrating 
 often to the very center of the truth. 
 
 Eliza is a remarkable creation, not needing a 
 Mrs. Patrick Campbell to show it, since one gets 
 her clearly in the reading. The two men of 
 science, Higgins and Pickering, might easily over- 
 lap, but yet are perfectly distinct. Higgins him- 
 self, though in certain respects he may seem to 
 reveal his creator hardly masked behind him, is 
 immensely alive, and a type standing squarely on 
 his own feet. His mother is delightful, and ac- 
 counts for her son's infatuation with her. Freddy, 
 as an amiable nobody, is a sketch, but a capital 
 one; the Eynsford-Hills, mother and daughter, 
 are an acute study of genteel poverty. As for 
 Doolittle, he deserves a chapter to himself! No 
 doubt he is farcical, or if you insist, impossible. 
 But how could we spare his inimitable talk about 
 the " deserving poor," the unction of his genial 
 blackguardism? As a married man, he is im- 
 mortally good fun. One goes back to Dickens for 
 his prototype, and does not quite find it, since 
 Doolittle is himself and no other. 
 
 In short, in this latest drama to be widely seen 
 and read, Shaw is so en joy ably the maker of 
 
" GREAT CATHERINE " 183 
 
 merriment and keen social satirist as to make it 
 temperate to say that his present estate as play- 
 wright shows him in his ripest ability. 
 
 Great Catherine 
 
 This is another of the sportive trifles in which 
 our author rewrites history. Its date is 1913, 
 the same year as " Pygmalion." It is frank 
 burlesque, extravaganza that yet contains the 
 smile of the mind. That Catherine of Russia was 
 anything like the representation of her in this 
 one-act piece, can never be settled, since it is ex- 
 actly a person behind the public scene of tradi- 
 tional report who is pictured. Nor have we the 
 interpretive benefit of the usual introduction. 
 But it would be a mistake to consider too curi- 
 ously in the case of a jeu d'esprit which the 
 author describes as " a harmless piece of tom- 
 foolery." It is one of those bits of stage fun 
 which this serious-minded writer permits himself, 
 now and again, perhaps primarily for his own 
 relief, and while its tendency to suggest the un- 
 conventional values and contours of historical 
 characters is undoubtedly an element in Shaw's 
 
184 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 purpose, it is safer criticism to center the scru- 
 tiny of this sportive piece of irresponsibility on 
 character, scene, and situation. In no other of 
 his plays has Shaw let himself go so far in the 
 way of horseplay and broad, some will say, 
 coarse comedy, with the single exception of " Pas- 
 sion, Poison, and Petrifaction." The thing is a 
 veritable riot of physical knockabout, and much 
 of its effectiveness is derived from the absurd in- 
 congruity of exhibiting personages of high im- 
 portance in the sleazy deshabille of truth; it 
 would be unpleasantly disillusioning, if we cared 
 more for those who are depicted. Catherine, 
 whose name comes to us as ominous, retires from 
 Shaw's hands as an attractive woman who, like 
 Elizabeth, cared for men; and through the 
 drunken buffoonery of her minister, Patiomkin, 
 emerge the battered outlines of an astute states- 
 man, after all. And the comparison between the 
 fact of such characters and their figureheads in 
 history is so drawn as to produce an amusement 
 not altogether unthoughtful. 
 
 The young English officer set bewildered in 
 this wild Russian behind-the-scenes farrago of 
 psychology, enables the writer to make some of 
 
"THE MUSIC CURE" 185 
 
 his usual hits at the British type, while plainly 
 showing it as quite able to take care of itself in 
 the imbroglio. " Great Catherine " may be set be- 
 side " Press Cuttings," for its ungloved, exuber- 
 ant handling of great names, and its tendency to 
 satirize the conventions of character portrayal. 
 It makes fun of court life of the past in much 
 the same spirit and with much the same intention 
 shown by Mark Twain, in his " Connecticut Yan- 
 kee at the Court of King Arthur." Its realism 
 of method and perhaps in part the nature of the 
 theme prevent it from being so marked a success 
 as the English satire on present history, more 
 commonly called politics. It will not, I imagine, 
 be ranked as on a level with " Press Cuttings," 
 nor take its place among the happiest achieve- 
 ments of the author in the drama of one-act 
 form. 
 
 The Music Cure 
 
 This is another topical skit after the manner 
 of " Press Cuttings," in one act, containing 
 much in the way of political allusions, including 
 the Marconi scandal. It was produced at The 
 
186 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 Little Theatre, London, January 28, 1914, as a 
 curtain raiser to Chesterton's " Magic," and has 
 not been published, so that a knowledge of it, un- 
 less one were so fortunate as to have heard the 
 piece, is based upon the newspaper reports. 
 Thus indirectly judged, it seems to be one of the 
 minor sketches for purposes of fooling primarily, 
 and offering relief (to those who seek it) for all 
 who find dramas like " Mrs. Warren's Profes- 
 sion " and " Man and Superman " too heroic in 
 their demands. We get an interior scene which 
 shows an Under-Secretary of State much ex- 
 hausted by the examination of the Macaroni 
 Committee, the Macaroni Company being one in 
 which he has invested heavily on hearing that the 
 Army is to go on a vegetarian diet. To help him 
 recover, his mother has engaged a woman pianist 
 to play to him; and the music cure, involving 
 both piano and concertina, works so well that the 
 lady captures the weary one, the curtain falling 
 on the rendition as a duet of " You Made Me 
 Love You: I Didn't Want to Do It," — a senti- 
 ment recognizably of Shaw, since it might be 
 the heraldic device of John Tanner. One can 
 understand that this slight framework of fun 
 
" THE MUSIC CURE " 187 
 
 may contain some genuinely Shavian material, 
 though the reviews do not favor this idea. 
 
 At the present writing, Shaw's latest drama, 
 by name " O'Flaherty, V. C," has been restrained 
 by the authorities in Ireland, where it was the 
 intention of The Abbey Theatre to produce it, 
 on the ground that it would not be looked on 
 with favor in the premises. The British censor 
 has no jurisdiction in Ireland, but the objection 
 comes from the military not civil authorities. 
 Whether this attitude will soon be slackened or 
 the conductor of The Abbey Theatre, Mr. 
 Ervine, may defy the warnings and let the play 
 be seen, is in the lap of the gods. So far, it has 
 not been published, save for practical stage and 
 copyright purposes; so that no examination of 
 the drama can be made for this volume. 
 
 This, then, completes the list of the dramatic 
 writings of Bernard Shaw, and the number, 
 thirty plays, makes his work generous in quan- 
 tity. But quantity, save as it implies a fecund 
 mind full of matter to give the world, would not 
 be significant, could we not add that in verve, 
 variety, literary skill and effect, and pungent 
 
188 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 stimulative appeal to thought, the work enchains 
 attention, rewards study, and affords the pleas- 
 ure that belongs to a genuine contribution to 
 letters. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE SOCIAL THINKER 
 
 After this detailed examination of the plays 
 in due chronologic order, we may synthesize the 
 main points of Shaw's social teaching, his opin- 
 ions with regard to men and women in society 
 today, and the evils which prevent the free and 
 fruitful development of the individual. 
 
 There is room for both the individualistic and 
 socialistic ideal in his view. On the one hand, he 
 regards it as the highest aim of the state to con- 
 serve and foster that deeply personal expression 
 of the will to live, and the will to function, which 
 shall result, as he believes, in the fullest expan- 
 sion of every man and woman. And on the other, 
 he conceives it as obligatory upon the state, 
 meaning the framework of government which 
 should exist alone for its helpfulness in the evolu- 
 tion of the individual, so to legislate as to assist 
 men and women in this interacting growth and self- 
 realization. In a word, the state exists for Man, 
 189 
 
190 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 it has no other reason for being. But, sharply 
 diverging from Ibsen at this point, he thinks the 
 state is a beneficent means to this end: largely 
 wrong, mismanaged, and in the way of progress, 
 to be sure; but to be improved, not destroyed. 
 Ibsen, both in his plays and in private letters, ex- 
 pressed scepticism with regard to the value of 
 the state, and was for a clean sweep of removal. 
 Shaw prefers to use the present machinery by 
 eliminating its defects. Like Mr. H. G. Wells, he 
 has faith in the collective mind of society, which 
 shall work this betterment, as it gradually (the 
 Fabian, we saw, gets his name from his tendency 
 to make haste slowly) comes to perceive what is 
 wrong in detail and rectifies it by improved laws. 
 And again like Wells, he finds that the collective 
 mind, which is the mind socialistically inclined, 
 must get expression in the few individual minds 
 of clear seeing and natural leadership; Wells, 
 his own, and suchlike thinkers. The word revolu- 
 tionist, in its usual alarming connotation, does 
 not belong to him at all. To be sure, in that 
 document known as " The Revolutionist's Hand- 
 book," one of the most brilliant pieces of polemic 
 writing in a generation, he appears with an 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 191 
 
 anarchic flourish calculated to mislead the sim- 
 ple. But it is only part of Bernard Shaw's little 
 joke with the English language. All you need to 
 do is to read him, instead of interpreting him by 
 headlines, and you ascertain that the " revolu- 
 tionist " in his meaning is " one who desires to 
 discard the existing social order and try 
 another " ; that the method of so doing may be 
 as mild and peaceful as a Fabian program; and 
 that, illustratively, a general election in England 
 is " revolutionary." In all his writing and think- 
 ing, Shaw uses speech as all first-class literary 
 persons do, to enforce his thought by an appeal 
 to its radical meanings. He differs from such a 
 master as Stevenson, for example, in that the lat- 
 ter gives us the root flavors of language for the 
 pleasure that comes from this fresh, picturesque 
 use; whereas Shaw does it primarily for the pur- 
 pose of mental shock, and stimulation of the in- 
 tellect into thinking. 
 
 When it comes to the particular stripe of so- 
 cialism consistently to be found in Shaw's dramas, 
 it must be understood in the first place that Ave 
 see a man frankly growing before our gaze, and 
 honest enough and large enough to make no 
 
192 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 bones about it. The only consistency which is a 
 jewel, as Shaw is well aware, is that which hon- 
 estly believes a thing at the moment it is said; 
 for there must be organic connection between a 
 series of apparently disparate opinions if they be 
 strung beadlike upon the cord of a genuine per- 
 sonality; beneath all seeming contradictions, is 
 the unity of a sincere nature in its course of de- 
 velopment. Shaw may begin with Henry George, 
 swear by Marx later, and eventually repudiate 
 the German and take up with the views of Eng- 
 lish economists like Sidney Webb, and yet exhibit 
 a beautiful coordination, if we will but accept 
 him as changing as he waxes mature, as all real 
 thinkers do. 
 
 Recognizing, then, that we begin with this 
 maker of many plays when he is a young thinker 
 in the formative period of the thirties and follow 
 him for over twenty years into the late fifties, 
 nor refusing to him, now in his intellectual prime, 
 the right to readjust his theories more than once 
 in the future, it may be said that Bernard Shaw, 
 as at present on view, believes in much more 
 state interference with the untutored collective 
 will, and with the vicious private will, than now 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 193 
 
 obtains. Certainly he would socialize the means 
 of production and exchange by municipal or 
 state control, instead of leaving it to private 
 initiative and capital. He would have mothers 
 pensioned by the state, for example, and doctors 
 salaried by the city, and eugenics enforced by 
 law, and marriage made more difficult and divorce 
 easier by governmental action. And he would 
 have men and women given an equal economic 
 chance before the law, the latter being recog- 
 nized as economic competitors, and wage-earners 
 who should receive an equivalent of their wage- 
 earning capacity when they elect the role of 
 child-bearing and child-rearing. He would have 
 the state reach out its long arm and punitively 
 seize the smug, respectable citizenry which at- 
 tends church regularly but derives an income 
 from insanitary slums and houses of ill repute of 
 various kinds. 
 
 All this, it will be observed, is state interfer- 
 ence with what is so proudly called, especially in 
 political campaigns, " the inalienable right of 
 the individual." It is a view we Americans are 
 somewhat shy of, although we adopt it with de- 
 lightful inconsistency here and there in our 
 
194 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 municipally conducted lighting plants, or pub- 
 lic libraries, or by whatever piece of machinery 
 we see fit to handle some great utility in the 
 interests of the public and without private gain 
 as an object. This is Shaw's socialism as we 
 find it scattered through his plays and applica- 
 ble to this or that aspect of social thought, which 
 aims in general to improve the present condi- 
 tions of living and bring into closer harmony 
 the members of the social organism. He has 
 declared that " the only fundamental socialism 
 is the socialization of the selective breeding of 
 man; in other terms, of human evolution. We 
 must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck 
 the commonwealth." Then, the inequitable mass- 
 ing of wealth in private hands, and the masked 
 slavery that is called free labor under present 
 conditions, would automatically be taken care of. 
 The policy of Fabianism, in his own description, 
 is one that is " peaceful, constitutional, moral, 
 economical," and needing nothing " for its blood- 
 less and benevolent realization but the approval 
 of the English people." 
 
 In this conception of the function of the state, 
 Shaw sees the family as necessarily central and 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 195 
 
 its integrity essential to the best results. He is 
 anything but destructive in his treatment of the 
 home as the natural integer of the state; his con- 
 clusions here are as conservative as those of a 
 typical Mid- Victorian ; only he waxes iconoclastic 
 when he considers the methods whereby the fam- 
 ily may be better constituted and regulated. A 
 short cut to his view, as we saw, may be found in 
 reading the Preface to " Getting Married," sup- 
 plemented, naturally, by the play itself! All the 
 half-baked talk as to the Shavian philosophy be- 
 ing subversive of the family and state is either 
 intentionally misrepresentative or blandly igno- 
 rant of his teaching, or, once again, using his 
 convenient phrase, " mentally overtaxed " in the 
 attempt to interpret it. Nothing is clearer than 
 his position here. He certainly regards the home, 
 as at present constituted, as ill-managed in the 
 interests of the child, — and the school likewise; 
 his underlying objection to both being the repres- 
 sive principle which maims and inhibits the free 
 personal reaction which alone is life. Even as he 
 believes in the selective principle of eugenics to 
 get the child born, so he believes in assisting the 
 child in its period of growth to self-realization. 
 
193 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 The introduction to " Misalliance," one of the 
 most elaborate he ever penned, gives us a clear 
 idea of his notions on the complex and vastly 
 misunderstood relations of parents and chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Shaw's championship of women consists in his 
 open-eyed recognition that they must be an or- 
 ganic part of the rightly conducted state, shar- 
 ing alike its duties and privileges, and not in the 
 present anomalous position with regard to its 
 government. He is not a suffragist, as a fixed 
 attitude, because he is so much more, and sees so 
 plainly that the ballot is but an incidental step, 
 though an important one, to full economic par- 
 ticipation in social life before the law. In this 
 respect, he closely affiliates with Ibsen, who, it 
 will be remembered, when asked for an express 
 indorsement of their movement by a Suffragist 
 club, declined a definite tying up to what in his 
 view was an incident in a larger and longer 
 struggle, a means to an end. But unquestiona- 
 bly, part of the Shavian social vision takes in 
 that coming type of woman who is glimpsed as a 
 glorified companion of man, joint worker with 
 man towards superman by means of the life* 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 197 
 
 force, instead of the pretty-doll type illustrated 
 by Nora. 
 
 Since Shaw believes that the only thing the 
 matter with the poor is poverty, he naturally de- 
 duces that the socialization of production and ex- 
 change would tend to make poor persons the 
 sporadic exception rather than a defined class; 
 all the misery, want, crime, and devastation 
 wrought by the numerousness of those who lack 
 the means of livelihood being thus mitigated, and, 
 logically, in the end removed. But not only is 
 poverty the matter with the poor; uselessness is 
 the matter with the rich; meaning, that if the 
 rich become useful, which, by the way, some of 
 them do, there is no objection to their being rich 
 unless that in so becoming they unfairly block 
 the rights of others, namely, the poor. And just 
 as truly as he cries up the worthy rich, his ob- 
 jection not being to money, which he lauds to 
 the skies in certain plays, notably " Major Bar- 
 bara," his attack being directed against the un- 
 fair sequestration of wealth at the expense of 
 others: so he is perfectly open-eyed in his vindi- 
 cation of the poor and the blame he puts upon 
 present social laws and conceptions for the 
 
198 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 sorry case of the proletariat, in recognizing that 
 derelicts and hopeless incompetents are inevita- 
 ble. This class of folk is made up of those who, 
 if made solvent today, would be insolvent tomor- 
 row by their own inability to adjust with their 
 environment. In his more whimsical mood of 
 raillery, Shaw would dispose of such waste ma- 
 terial by some drastic removal by force; more 
 seriously, he would take care of the wastrels and 
 wasters through some beneficial agency like pen- 
 sions, and enforced work. But continually, this 
 writer of plays who is also an earnest student of 
 social wrongs, disclaims the power to offer the 
 remedy. In closing a discussion of the socializa- 
 tion of eugenics, for example, he frankly says : 
 " It is idle for an individual writer to carry so 
 great a matter further in a pamphlet. A con- 
 ference on the subject is the next step needed." 
 In other words, Shaw's function is to suggest and 
 stimulate and prod on to action. This is why he 
 is not a philosopher in the full sense: he elects 
 another and perhaps more useful role. 
 
 Bernard Shaw has one powerful ally in his 
 views on social betterment and reform. I refer 
 to Time. Sundry of his ideas, that concerning 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 199 
 
 eugenics, or the pensioning of motherhood, for 
 instance, have been widely accepted in legal 
 enactment during the twenty or more years since 
 he first promulgated them. And looking at the 
 socialistic ideal at its broadest and best, as the 
 socialization of production and exchange, with 
 no illegitimate encroachment upon private prop- 
 erty and individual interests, there can be no 
 question that the principle has been accepted 
 and put into practice with increasing frequency. 
 With regard to our municipalities, in fact, the 
 socialistic trend has been marked. So true is 
 this, that in a recent address the United States 
 Commissioner of Immigration declared it was 
 now apparent that the city of tomorrow will 
 take over the public ownership of such utilities 
 as the street railway and lighting plant, as a 
 matter of course. The benefits accruing in those 
 cases where it has been tried are too obvious 
 not to act as object-lessons. Certain represen- 
 tative European cities have long since shown the 
 way; our own cities have begun to follow. Nor 
 can it be doubted that in a scheme of local 
 self-government like ours, a successfully estab- 
 lished system locally illustrating a general truth 
 
200 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 will be sure to influence state and federal action 
 in the end. Shaw merely suffers under the disad- 
 vantage of being a little ahead of his day; a dis- 
 advantage steadily lessened as he grows older. 
 Broadly speaking, if we will but separate his 
 whimsicality of mood and statement from the un- 
 derlying principles of his position, we shall be 
 able to discover him as both sane and sound in 
 the main contention. 
 
 It is probable that the feature of Shaw's 
 general social theory which awakens the greatest 
 opposition and breeds misunderstanding, is his 
 idea of sex relations, his conception of what is 
 called love, and the results of it in the life of the 
 family and society. This arouses more violent 
 prejudice than any advocacy of the socialization 
 of the means of production and distribution, for 
 the excellent reason that it is the person who 
 fears the expropriation of his private property, 
 in the main, who becomes alarmed at the word, 
 socialism; in other words, the capitalist, for the 
 galled jade winces, naturally. But when a man 
 cries it out from the housetops that so-called love 
 is dust in the eyes of truth, he hits the tender 
 spot, not of a class or a favored few, but of all 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 201 
 
 of us; we are all involved in an attack upon the 
 sacrosanct thing around which cluster our holi- 
 est memories and beneath which germinate our 
 deepest emotions. 
 
 But it has become evident in the examination 
 of the specific plays, and of Shaw's handling of 
 the English language in general, that he exhibits 
 himself as antisympathetic not to love as a 
 sentiment based upon mutual respect and clear- 
 seeing, but rather to that sort of passion in 
 which the contracting parties are viciously set- 
 ting up an imaginary idol, to be inevitably 
 smashed in the disillusionment to follow the post- 
 nuptial awakening. As usual, in order to shock 
 us into thinking, he gives his meaning the fillip 
 of interest which comes from an apparently con- 
 tradictory statement. The natural history of 
 man, which it is his object, as it was Balzac's, to 
 study and set down, is obscured by this romantic 
 mist which the wrong use of love throws in the 
 eyes of all concerned, and especially in those of 
 the two persons most concerned in the transac- 
 tion. The life-force can be relied upon to furnish 
 the attraction which shall draw a man and a 
 woman together in a way to lead to matrimony, 
 
202 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 or to its undesirable free-love equivalent. But 
 Shaw would ask the self-conscious reason, not op- 
 posing but cooperating with the life-force, to con- 
 trol the destiny of lovers, and hence of the race, 
 by the exercise of a common sense which refuses 
 to be fooled when the most important thing is 
 about to happen that can happen, not only to 
 the pair who are central but to all society of 
 which they are an inseparable part. He is so 
 bold as to ask man to give up the pretty legend 
 that Cupid is blind, and to look at the facts, as 
 he would look at them in other vital matters. 
 This request and attitude are, of course, ex- 
 tremely repellent to all who cling to the Cupid 
 tale, believing that if it be abandoned, romance 
 will fly forever from the face of the earth. Shaw 
 deems otherwise,^ and the preconception which in- 
 volves the opinion on the part of a man that a 
 woman is a goddess not to be otherwise en- 
 treated; or the opinion on the part of a woman 
 that a man is a hero incapable of human reac- 
 tions, he deems a piece of vicious traditionalism, 
 to be robustly exorcised, root and branch. And 
 to mitigate this somewhat austere faith, he hu- 
 morously recognizes the likelihood that, for a 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 203 
 
 long time to come, the God of Love will continue 
 to be pictured as blindfolded, and will shoot his 
 arrows at the bull's-eye of our credulity. 
 
 Upon analysis, then, and trying to see the gen- 
 eral drift and meaning of the social teachings or 
 implications of Bernard Shaw, as revealed in his 
 drama : and bringing them into harmony with his 
 more formal and sober theories as set forth in 
 his economic writings, one is likely to find that 
 here is a man whose views at bottom are per- 
 fectly consistent (his views detached from his 
 manner of presentation), and those of the pro- 
 gressive social thinkers in that field; the varia- 
 tions being such as not to invalidate the state- 
 ment. One realizes that here is a popularizer of 
 thought in a field given over to the specialist and 
 to dryasdust investigation; a writer of plays, 
 which means traditionally one who amuses the 
 masses ; who yet, while he frankly accepts the 
 limitation and first of all offers entertainment in 
 the playhouse, nevertheless has beneath this aim 
 and result a desire to spread the news and bring 
 the gospel to the multitude ; who, by his own con- 
 fession, is willing to foster the G. B. S. legend, 
 if only, because he is supposed to be piquantly 
 
204 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 naughty and destructively iconoclastic, he can 
 thereby attract such general attention as to make 
 matters like divorce, eugenics, and motherhood 
 pensions, food for public discussion and vitally 
 operative in the thought of the day. That some- 
 what of pleasure in his personal prominence and 
 profit in the practical results of his dramatic 
 labor may enter into this more impersonal and 
 laudable ambition, does not in the least qualify 
 the fact of his beneficent service. No man has 
 been franker in disclaiming unselfish aims ; Shaw 
 would be the last person to deny his enjoyment 
 in his prestige, and has that peculiar form of 
 modesty which consists in vociferously crying up 
 his own virtues ; a form not alone of modesty, by 
 the way, but of honesty as well. He is of all 
 men most foolish who thinks that when Bernard 
 Shaw gravely considers the question of his su- 
 periority to Shakspere, he is an egoist in the 
 ordinary meaning of the word. 
 
 The popularizer of anything is not of necessity 
 shallow or viciously subversive of the truth. It 
 may happen that, in the fullness of time, criticism 
 will have successfully sifted Shaw's essentials of 
 meaning from his apparently irresponsible con- 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 205 
 
 tradictions and whimsicality of manner, and find 
 him to be a stimulating social thinker, sound in 
 substance beneath the fantastic embroidery of 
 his speech and the criss-cross of his dialectic, tre- 
 mendously earnest in intention, and doing yeoman 
 work in making the general public aware of 
 problems that without him, or such as he, they 
 would certainly pass by on the other side. To 
 have made an inert mass quiver with interest 
 about an important social topic, instead of sleep- 
 ing supine in its presence, surely this is some- 
 thing; one who does it has done a community 
 service, and been, intellectually, a good citizen. 
 
 But his personal ideal goes further and is more 
 explicit than this. Let us hear his own state- 
 ment : 
 
 " The final ideal for civic life is that every man 
 and woman should set before themselves this 
 goal: that by the labor of their lifetime they 
 shall pay the debt of their rearing and education, 
 and also contribute sufficient for a handsome 
 maintenance during their old age. And more 
 than that. Why should not a man say: When I 
 die, my country shall be in my debt? Any man 
 who has any religious belief will have dreamed 
 
206 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the dream that it is not only possible to die with 
 his country in his debt, but with God in his debt 
 also." 
 
 This is a remarkable manifesto, and several 
 things in it may be noted. First, the acceptance 
 of the individual's duty to society; second, the 
 acknowledgment of the idealist's dream of bet- 
 terment, which connects Shaw with a radiant line 
 from Plato to William Morris; and third, the 
 distinct confession of faith in the linking of a re- 
 ligious obligation with social service; it is a 
 service which unites the individual not with 
 brother man alone, but with God; the aspirations 
 are twin aspirations, help for man and harmony 
 with God. And it would be ungenerous not to 
 add that Shaw's personal and private life are in 
 complete and honest accord with this faith that 
 is in him. 
 
 It is, be it observed, a this-world religion; 
 not the other-world religion that was earlier 
 dominant. In this respect, Shaw is thoroughly a 
 modern. His heaven is not a palace in the sky, 
 but a purified planet in the solar system. God 
 is a force among men that makes for righteous- 
 ness, not the " big blue man " of the child's con- 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 207 
 
 ception. That is what he means by the cryptic 
 epigram : " Beware of the man whose God is in 
 the skies." If his God is not operative in his 
 daily life here on earth, Shaw has no use for him. 
 He might be described not ineptly, in broad 
 terms, as a Positivist, if one were anxious to fit 
 a philosophic term upon him. Certainly he has 
 the ideal of that aspect of thought; and would 
 with George Eliot cry: 
 
 " 0, may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In minds made better by their presence" 
 
 This kind of living-again is quite sufficient for 
 Shaw, and keys him up to social service and per- 
 sonal salvation: the salvation he does not seek, 
 since his way of finding his life is to lose it in 
 that same service. 
 
 Bernard Shaw dreams forward to a socialized 
 democracy where through selective breeding the 
 citizenship shall be so improved as to make 
 supermen and superwomen an attained t^^pe, not 
 a sporadic phenemenon ; where the drone shall be 
 replaced by the worker under right conditions, 
 
208 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and the criminal no longer has any justification 
 because of inequitable laws or conventions ; where 
 the truths about life and society are recognized 
 and the highest in mankind is worshiped as that 
 empirical deity which alone will save the wor- 
 shiper ; a Positivist religion which sees the 
 divine in the human and sees God as an evolu- 
 tionary conception. It is a noble dream and has 
 been well expressed in the words put into the 
 mouth of Father Keegan in " John Bull's Other 
 Island " : it is a beautifully mystic statement 
 that is social-spiritual, made by one who is 
 spiritual in his social view and social in his 
 spirituality : 
 
 Broadbent. Once when I was a small 
 kid, I dreamt I was in heaven. . . . What 
 is it like in jyour dreams ? 
 
 Keegan. In my dreams it is a country 
 where the state is the Church and the Church 
 the people: three in one and one in three. 
 It is a commonwealth where work is play and 
 play is life: three in one and one in three. 
 It is a temple in which the priest is the wor- 
 shiper and the worshiper the worshiped: 
 three in one and one in three. It is a god- 
 
THE SOCIAL THINKER 209 
 
 head in which all life is human and all hu- 
 manity divine: three in one and one in three. 
 It is, in short, the dream of a madman. 
 This is intensely autobiographic; I doubt if 
 there be a passage in all Shaw's writings that is 
 more so, even including the half-mocking, yet 
 deeply pathetic word in which in the guise of the 
 Father who is not mad, but only the mistaken 
 idealist, he tells us that the world will not see the 
 truth, because of the truth-bringer. And the ut- 
 terance resolves itself naturally into a considera- 
 tion of the poetic and philosophic elements that 
 go to round out the full circle of his working 
 hypothesis about life. 
 
 For Shaw's service is not all embraced in what 
 are strictly his social views. There is another 
 and a vastly interesting aspect of his thought 
 and meaning which remains to be considered: his 
 philosophical and poetic implications. These 
 are the more important to consider in that they 
 are the very aspects of his thought and teaching 
 likely to be overlooked, or at least minimized in 
 the ordinary quick and shallow estimate of the 
 man. They represent the least obvious phase of 
 his complex personality; yet are they of deep 
 
210 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 significance when we come to the attempt to see 
 him in the round, and get a realization of the 
 relative emphasis to be put upon one who so 
 easily lends himself to newspaper caricature. 
 Bernard Shaw out of drawing suffers exactly as 
 any serious man suffers in that process ; and add 
 to this the fact that he is just the sort of figure 
 especially offering itself for misrepresentation, 
 and that he has aided and abetted, maliciously, 
 in the efforts to make a figurehead out of a real 
 human being, and one sees how necessary it is 
 to try for a proportionate picture. This most 
 difficult part of the delineation of Shaw must 
 now be essayed in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE POET AND MYSTIC 
 
 In a letter in the London Times, incidental to 
 his controversy with Mr. W. H. Mallock, Bernard 
 Shaw wrote : " They regard me as a cynic when 
 I tell them that even the cleverest man will be- 
 lieve anything he wishes to believe, in spite of all 
 the facts and text-books in the world." 
 
 One might well develop an elaborate argument 
 to the conclusion that all our vaunted use of 
 logic and pride in clear thinking are misleading, 
 inasmuch as beneath the ratiocinative processes 
 there is with human beings at their best and high- 
 est of evolution a deep undertow of emotion and 
 impulse which really floats the mind on to its 
 apparently deductive conclusions. The remark 
 of Arnold's that three-fourths of all self-con- 
 scious life is lived in the emotions is a profound 
 one. 
 
 And the thought may be applied to Shaw, tak- 
 ing his own words out of his mouth and good-na- 
 811 
 
212 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 turedly turning them against him. He is a vig- 
 orous thinker whose style is admirably clear and 
 cogent as an instrument to assist him to put forth 
 his meaning. But au fond, his is an impulsive 
 and intensely emotional nature which, swept 
 along by honest conviction, races to its goal of 
 conclusion, and in common with all men, uses the 
 data gathered from investigation to buttress a 
 belief that is not so much forced upon him by 
 analj^sis as immediately appealing to his intui- 
 tions, — the life-force at work in him. If one 
 doubts that predispositions settle the subsequent 
 deductions, even in the finest type of mind, one 
 has only to collate the opinions upon the pres- 
 ent war, and see how the matter of nationality 
 inevitably settles the attitude and arguments 
 of the thinker. ^ Each, with his particular ethnic 
 bias, can deduce with admirable logic results dia- 
 metrically opposed to another thinker whose 
 country happens to be on the other side of the 
 debate. The leading minds of Europe have been 
 on parade in this fashion, and proved conclu- 
 sively that logic will never be allowed to inter- 
 fere with feeling. 
 
 It is by the application of this principle, too 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 213 
 
 often overlooked, that help will be afforded the 
 student of Shaw when, as will frequently turn 
 out, he seems contradictory or inconsistent. He 
 feels his way to the truth and then demonstrates 
 it, at least to his own satisfaction, and often to 
 yours. And it is the feeling beneath the argu- 
 ment that gives it warmth and fascination. 
 
 It is this truth about certain of his modes of 
 thought and ways of expression, coupled with his 
 tendency to bend his mental processes to the de- 
 mand of his sense of right, his natural affiliations 
 and sympathies, that must not for a moment be 
 dropped from mind when we try to understand 
 and relate to his general interpretation of life 
 his fairly mystic explanation of man as spirit 
 and the universe as an experiment of the life-force. 
 
 Indeed, the side of Shaw's personality which is 
 hinted at in the title of this chapter, is somewhat 
 puzzlingly in evidence when we strive to get a 
 complete view of him and his work. It is inter- 
 woven more or less with his social teachings and 
 yet can be seen to be separate from them. The 
 previous remark that he is not a philosopher is 
 by no means meant to be interpreted that a cer- 
 tain philosophical attitude was not plainly to be 
 
214 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 detected in his thought; but only that a sys- 
 tematized and organic statement of it was not 
 vouchsafed us. The view runs through all his 
 thinking, and explains some of the seeming con- 
 tradictions and inconsistencies in his writing. 
 How, for instance, can it be reconciled that a 
 thinker whose general tendency is to show himself 
 a man of his day in his preference for scientific 
 conceptions and methods of thought, is yet the 
 man who boldly, and as it were, in the very teeth 
 of science, challenges the germ theory of disease 
 and fights against vaccination.? We must make 
 an attempt at least to show such an apparent 
 volte-face possible if we would see him as he is; 
 and the riddle is not solved until we take into 
 account a part of his nature which lies deeper 
 than intellectual processes and reminds us of his 
 own words : " the unconscious self is the real 
 genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment 
 your conscious self meddles with it." I believe it 
 to be this subliminal energized daimon of Shaw, 
 to borrow the Socratic name for it, which goes 
 far to explain him, — and moreover to give him 
 his value for the world. Here stands out in 
 sudden, startling relief a side of his nature 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 215 
 
 which may seem oddly at variance with the Shaw 
 who writes so clearly on municipal trading; a 
 side that compels us, nevertheless, to see and 
 say that he has deep-lying qualities of imagina- 
 tion and emotion hardly to be suspected by one 
 who generalizes from his more customary appear- 
 ance as a hard-headed social controversialist. 
 To expect an analytic pamphleteer and find a 
 poet mystic, is certainl}^ something of a shock; 
 another shock from the man whose business 
 seems to be to eject us violently from our com- 
 placent beds of easy, settled conviction about 
 things in general. 
 
 In so far as he seizes on the idea of superman, 
 and then endeavors to attain to the higher type 
 of development through the agency of the social- 
 ized state, Shaw looks to Nietzsche for certain 
 parts of his scheme of social amelioration. But 
 he separates from him squarely and forever in 
 the German's teaching of the duty of the strong 
 to override the weak and in his contempt for 
 slave (Christian) morality. In complete con- 
 trast with this view, which is the application to 
 human society of the stern biologic law of the 
 survival of the fittest, Shaw with his warm 
 
216 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 espousal of the cause of the poor, the weak, and 
 the suffering, would help brother man in the up- 
 ward path even if in so doing he held back the 
 quick coming of Overman. Tender consideration 
 for the derelicts and incompetents, — though they 
 irritate him extremely, and in a whimsical mood 
 which hides earnest purpose none the less, he ex- 
 coriates them and proposes speedy extermina- 
 tion, — is surely his general attitude. Here we 
 probably find a reason for his contemptuous 
 flings at the evolutionary doctrine and at the 
 deification of the laws of physical science as ap- 
 plied to human psychology and social better- 
 ment. He would with Huxley " oppose the cos- 
 mic process," wherever it interferes with the 
 higher law of altruistic consideration of brother 
 man. Indeed, his tenderness does not stop with 
 the arbitrary line set up between man and so- 
 called brute, for his vegetarianism is the out- 
 ward sign of a recognition of animal rights as 
 well, the view which Salt made so sympathetic 
 years ago. To Shaw it is repellent to eat " the 
 slaughtered carcasses " of his humbler brothers 
 of the field or air. And this is a moral repel- 
 lency as well as an esthetic objection. In the 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 217 
 
 same way, taking refuge in the dictates of 
 his spiritual nature, he rejects with scorn the 
 teachings which declare that we must arm our- 
 selves against contagious physical trouble by in- 
 oculation or other preventives. The idealist in 
 him resents the tyranny of the flesh implied in 
 these scientific conceptions and beliefs, and hence 
 he presents the odd spectacle of a thinker who 
 in many ways seems peculiarly the product of 
 the age of Darwin, Spencer, and Wallace, of 
 Haeckel, Lamarck, and Nietzsche, valorously 
 combating the very theories which are the ap- 
 plied logic of the scientist's faith. It is the poet, 
 the idealist, the mystic, at war with the shrewd 
 publicist and social student. 
 
 The same tendency in Shaw leads him to ac- 
 cept with warmth and preach with vigor the idea 
 of the life-force, another Nietzschean conception 
 which he adapts to his own purposes. What is 
 this power as he conceives it, and what its ap- 
 plication to man in the Shavian faith.? 
 
 The life-force is a modern representation of 
 God, not so much a Being, as a Becoming tend- 
 ency in the universe, an upward striving which, 
 working through countless aeons, has brought 
 
218 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 man far along in his toilsome journey towards 
 Overman. And it is Shaw's idea that if the in- 
 dividual will but cease from conventional inhibi- 
 tions and traditional negations, if he be not 
 dominated too much by a series of sacred Don'ts, 
 which shift with time and country and social 
 milieu; and the man be himself, join himself to, 
 and become a part of, the life-force, he will thus 
 be cooperative with the great creative purpose of 
 the scheme of things, and, as the theologian would 
 put it, be reconciled with God. It is this view 
 which gives its cogency to the following words of 
 this curious mixture of materialist and mystic: 
 
 "This is the true joy of life: the being used 
 for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty 
 one. Being a force of nature, instead of a 
 feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and griev- 
 ances, complaining that the world will not devote 
 itself to making you happy." 
 
 Bernard Shaw cries out, " Hitch yourself to 
 the life-force," very much with the same mean- 
 ing which led Emerson to cry, " Hitch your 
 wagon to a star," save that the older thinker was 
 for the moment thinking most of the individual, 
 while the younger is thinking of the social aim. 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 219 
 
 the racial result. Emerson is more purely an in- 
 dividualist than Shaw, whose individualism is 
 tempered by his socialism and his social yearn- 
 ing. The difference is not alone in the men, but 
 in their generation. 
 
 Again and again this faith in man as able to 
 connect himself with the celestial stream of things, 
 crops out in Shaw's dramas. It is strong and 
 clear as we saw in " The Showing-up of Blanco 
 Posnet," one of his most significant works with 
 this essential philosophy in mind. Blanco, much 
 distressed in mind to find himself neither a 
 straight bad man nor a good one, harangues the 
 "boys," present in the court room: 
 
 "What's this game that upsets our game? 
 For seems to me there's two games being played. 
 Our game is a rotten game that makes me feel 
 that I'm dirt and that you're all as rotten as me. 
 T'other game may be a silly game; but it ain't 
 rotten." And he expresses his faith in God in 
 this fashion: 
 
 " You bet He didn't make us for nothing ; and 
 He wouldn't have made us at all if He could 
 have done His work without us. By Gum, that 
 must be what we're for! He'd never have made 
 
220 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 us to be rotten drunken blackguards like me, and 
 good-for-nothing rips like Feemy. He made me 
 because He had a job for me. He let me run 
 loose till the j ob was ready ; and then I had to 
 come along and do it, hanging or no hanging. 
 And I tell you it didn't feel rotten: it felt bully, 
 just bully." 
 
 And when the pseudo-religionist. Elder Daniels, 
 gets off the usual cant : " Be of good cheer, 
 brothers. Fight on. Seek the path," Blanco 
 contemptuously turns upon him with, " No. 
 No more paths. No more broad and narrow. 
 No more good and bad. There's no good and 
 bad; but, by Jiminy, gents, there's a rotten 
 game and there's a great game. I played the 
 rotten game; but the great game was played on 
 me ; and now I'm for the great game every time. 
 Amen. Gentlenfen, let us adjourn to the saloon. 
 I stand the drinks." 
 
 Here is once more set forth picturesquely and 
 pathetically this sense of the overruling mystic 
 power which controls, perforce, the instincts of 
 rough-and-ready humanity, and compels it to 
 adopt the motto per aspera ad astra. 
 
 We saw in studying the two plays that, allow- 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 221 
 
 ing for the difference of setting and type, this is 
 exactly what we get from another of Shaw's 
 protagonists, again an American, Dick Dudgeon 
 in " The Devil's Disciple." 
 
 Surely, no one can question that this is a mys- 
 tic conception of man; it is the old theory of in- 
 spiration in a new garb of modernity; it is the 
 Delphic oracle under another name, the Christian 
 idea of God Immanent, and the " still, small 
 voice " of conscience bidding the sinner do right. 
 It does not at all change the concept to dress it 
 out with the terms of present-day physical 
 science; to call it the subliminal self working in 
 us and more powerful than any self-conscious 
 reasoning process. And Shaw is a hearty be- 
 liever (in the religious sense) in this wonderful 
 power that transcends man and gives him his 
 deepest significance. This, it may be clearly 
 seen, is a metaphysical notion, pure and simple, 
 a fine one, and one that appeals to that type of 
 modern mind, which, while accepting scientific 
 conceptions, yet is by nature religious, and needs 
 for its comfort and best expression an aim and 
 an authority beyond the domain of physical 
 tests and proofs. This faith in the supercon- 
 
222 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 science, or the subliminal operation of the Ego, 
 is implicit in much modern thinking. We get it 
 in Bergson when he says : " we wish to know the 
 reason why we have made up our mind, and we 
 find that we have decided without any reason, and 
 perhaps against every reason. But, in certain 
 cases, that is the best reason." 
 
 Shaw finds his " reason " in this evolutional 
 Higher Will, as we might call it, of man. He 
 believes in the will to live of Schopenhauer, the 
 will to power of Nietzsche, and the Wish of 
 Freud; his philosophy, like theirs, is a wilful one. 
 But he adds an altruistic aspiration in the serv- 
 ice of others which is absent from their teach- 
 ing, and thus gets the lift into all his work 
 which is always in the thinking of the sincere 
 idealist. 
 
 It is only through man that this will-to-aspire 
 can get itself into action and just here is man's 
 significance, justification, and glory. And man's 
 sense of thus being pricked on, so that the noble 
 in him must be ever uneasy unless he is cooperat- 
 ing with the life-force in this fashion, is the ever- 
 lasting gadfly that in the soul of man stings him 
 into worthy action. In " Man and Superman," 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 223 
 
 which is of all the plays that which contains the 
 heart of his doctrine, he makes Don Juan say: 
 " I tell you that as long as I can conceive some- 
 thing better than myself, I cannot be easy un- 
 less I am striving to bring it into existence or 
 clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. 
 That is the working within me of Life's incessant 
 aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, 
 intenser self-consciousness and clearer self-under- 
 standing." This need puzzled poor Blanco, but 
 he accepted its prompting, nevertheless, without 
 any hesitation. His " By gum, that must be 
 what we're for," is Shaw crystallized and a su- 
 preme affirmation of faith. It contains the whole 
 Shavian working hypothesis of life. 
 
 But this individual connecting himself with the 
 life-force might be mistaken for a sort of fatal- 
 ism; the individual becoming an automaton 
 pushed on to this mystic end by a power quite 
 outside his own volition. Such would be a mis- 
 representation of Shaw's full meaning. To join 
 the life-force is to be free: free to exercise your 
 long cramped unused spiritual muscles. Thus, 
 Margaret in " Fanny's First Play," after her 
 escapade in the dance hall, has a talk with her 
 
224 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 mother, in which she says : " I shall never speak 
 in the old way again. I've been set 'free from 
 this silly little hole of a house and all its pre- 
 tenses. I know now that I am stronger than 
 you and Papa. I haven't found that happiness 
 of yours that is within yourself; but I've found 
 strength. For good or evil, I am set free ; and 
 none of the things that used to hold me can 
 hold me now." And again she remarks to her 
 sufficiently horrified parent : " I was set free for 
 evil as well as for good," meaning that the price 
 of strength is freedom, which, of course, involves 
 choice, and therefore evil as something to whet 
 one's strength upon. 
 
 Extremely interesting, too, when we are en- 
 deavoring to come to close grip with this subtlest 
 aspect of Sliaw's belief and teaching, are the 
 highly mystic words put into the mouth of the 
 Mayoress in " Getting Married " ; words so star- 
 tlingly different from her usual self-controlled 
 utterance that the easy thing to do is to as- 
 sume that she is represented as having a " con- 
 trol " in the spiritualistic parlance, and so is 
 purely passive in the matter. But one who rec- 
 ognizes the general seriousness of the writer 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 225 
 
 must perforce find significance in these impas- 
 sioned sentences, in which there appears to be a 
 statement of the spiritual relations of man and 
 woman as mystically poetic as if they came from 
 a Swedenborg rather than a Bernard Shaw. 
 Mrs. George has a right to vatic words, because, 
 as she puts it, " I've been myself. I've not been 
 afraid of myself. And at last I have escaped 
 from myself, and am become a voice for them 
 that are afraid to speak, and a cry for the 
 hearts that break in silence." And then she tells 
 the bishop of a love which he seems to have in- 
 spired in her, a love that is to the earth loves 
 as the light of some solar luminary to so many 
 candle dips: 
 
 " When you loved me I gave you the whole 
 sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity 
 in the single moment, strength of the mountains 
 in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all 
 the seas in one impulse of your soul. A moment 
 only; but was it not enough? Were you not 
 paid then for all the rest of your struggle on 
 earth? Must I mend your clothes and sweep 
 your floors as well? Was it not enough? I 
 paid the price without bargaining; I bore the 
 
226 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 children without flinching; was that a reason for 
 heaping fresh burdens on me? I carried the 
 child in my arms; must I carry the father too? 
 When I opened the gates of paradise, were you 
 blind? Was it nothing to you? When all the 
 stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept 
 you into the heart of heaven, were you deaf? 
 Were you dull? Was I no more to you than a 
 bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent 
 eternity together; and you ask me for a little 
 lifetime more. We possessed all the universe 
 together; and you ask me to give you my scanty 
 wages as well. I have given you the greatest of 
 all things ; and you ask me to give you little 
 things. I gave you my own soul: you ask me for 
 my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? 
 Was it not enough?" 
 
 Enigmatic? If you will. But, of a verity, 
 splendidly, soaringly spiritual, and surcharged 
 with mystic implications. It is as if this mun- 
 dane Mrs. George of the play wished to remind 
 us, while the author through her also told us, 
 that the highest conception of human Love, a 
 thing so bandied about and cheapened and made 
 common and gross and of the earth earthy, 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 227 
 
 was in essence a supernal sentiment; that in 
 heaven they neither marry nor are given in 
 marriage, their amity being like that of the 
 angels. 
 
 And again, in " Caesar and Cleopatra," when 
 the greatest captain of Time, alone (as he 
 thinks) in the moon-blanched Egyptian desert, 
 whispers to the Sphinx the inner secrets of his 
 personality, we seem to get in him, as an impres- 
 sive mouthpiece, the thinker's conviction that 
 there is another life than that of high noon, of 
 ratiocination and of commonsense; and that the 
 solution of both personality and life, since all 
 men live in their dreams, is here: 
 
 " Hail, Sphinx : salutation from Julius Caesar ! 
 I have wandered in many lands seeking the lost 
 regions from which my birth into this world 
 exiled me, and the company of creatures such as 
 myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men 
 and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to 
 me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my 
 day's deed, and think my night's thought. In 
 the little world yonder. Sphinx, my place is as 
 high as yours in this great desert; only I wan- 
 der, and you sit still ; I conquer, and you endure ; 
 
228 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I 
 look up and am dazzled, look down and am dark- 
 ened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your 
 eyes never turn from looking out on the world — 
 to the lost region — the home from which we 
 strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the 
 race of men, are no strangers to one another; 
 have I not been conscious of you and of this 
 place since I was born? Rome is a madman's 
 dream; this is my reality. These starry lamps 
 of yours I have seen from afar in Gaul, in 
 Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, signaling great 
 secrets to some eternal sentinel below, whose post 
 I never could find. And here at last is their 
 sentinel, — an image of the constant and immortal 
 part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in 
 the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed 
 mountains at night to hear in the distance the 
 stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your 
 sands in forbidden play — our invisible children, 
 O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither 
 was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose 
 genius you are the symbol: part brute, part 
 woman, and part god, — nothing of the man in me 
 at all. Have I read your riddle. Sphinx.? " 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 229 
 
 Incidentally, it may be remarked that this is a 
 superb burst of poetry, a passage that our time 
 will not willingly let die out of the swelling 
 diapason of its imaginative expression. But it is 
 also fascinating for the philosophy it contains. 
 I, for one, sincerely believe that Shaw is saying 
 here what Emerson says in his great essay on 
 love; he directs our attention to it as a divine 
 principle far above and beyond our petty at- 
 tempt to catch it in man-made devices called 
 marriage; a principle which each pair of lovers 
 seizes fleetingly, but then, as Browning has it, 
 
 " Then the good minute goes; " 
 
 a principle and a passion by which the whole 
 creation moves, in which it has its being; Na- 
 ture's way, so Emerson points out, of leading 
 lovers through the illusion that it is an end in it- 
 self, on to that realization which culminates in 
 the recognition of it as cosmic, eternal, not of 
 this world, but of all the worlds that be. And 
 for Shaw, the way whereby this may be seized by 
 the individual is to see in himself a reflection of 
 God in will and power (when we join the life 
 
230 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 force, the elan vital of Bergson) and then work 
 with all one's might for the social bettering of 
 men and women. 
 
 There is a touch of this same mystic poetry in 
 the language of Marchbanks in " Candida," and 
 his final rejection of the Morell menage because 
 he sees that his destiny demands something bet- 
 ter and beyond, he having 
 
 " The desire of the moth for the star. 
 Of the night for the morrow. 
 The devotion to something afar 
 From the sphere of our sorrow,''^ 
 
 That is what Shaw, like the true idealist he is 
 in this recurrent mood, must be after; the dream 
 that is behind the reality, and always more de- 
 sirable. This is the secret of Marchbanks that 
 has so puzzled the critics, as was noted in the 
 analysis of " Candida." An American went 
 direct to the author himself in search of an ex- 
 planation of a rather enigmatical passage; which 
 had already been whimsically replied to by Mr. 
 Shaw, as one can see by consulting Dr. Hender- 
 son's biography. But this time, instead of hid- 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 231 
 
 ing behind his mask of levity, the writer gave an 
 answer which so far has not I believe been given 
 other publicity than its original appearance in 
 a western college paper, and is well worth quota- 
 tion here: 
 
 Adelphi Terrace, 
 London, W. C, 
 6 January, 1900. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 In Candida the poet begins by pursuing hap- 
 piness with a beloved woman as the object of his 
 life. When at last, under the stress of a most 
 moving situation, she paints for him a convincing 
 picture of what that happiness is, he sees at once 
 that such happiness could never fulfil his destiny. 
 " I no longer desire happiness — life is nobler 
 than that. Out, then, into the night with me." 
 That is, out of this stuffy little nest of happiness 
 and sentiment into the grandeur, the majesty, 
 the holiness that night means to me, the poet. 
 Candida and Morell do not understand this. 
 Neither did you, eh.'^ 
 
 G. Bernard Shaw. 
 
 The correspondence here with certain words of 
 Caesar in the passage quoted, will not escape the 
 
232 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 judicious. And surely the idealist is the same as 
 in the other excerpts. 
 
 And for a final reference: this mystic note, 
 this appeal to a test that is not of the workaday 
 world, sounds through the words of the weak and 
 erring artist, Dubedat, when he comes to die: the 
 scene in " The Doctor's Dilemma," where this 
 takes place being almost if not quite the most re- 
 markable single scene in all Shaw's plays: 
 
 " I know that in an accidental sort of way, 
 struggling through the unreal part of life, I 
 haven't always been able to live up to my ideal. 
 But in my own real world I have never done any- 
 thing wrong, never denied my faith, never been 
 untrue to myself. I've been threatened and 
 blackmailed and insulted and starved. But, I've 
 played the game. I've fought the good fight. 
 And now it's ;all over there's an indescribable 
 peace. I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, 
 and Rembrandt ; in the might of design, the mys- 
 tery of color, the redemption of all things by 
 Beauty everlasting, and the message of art that 
 has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen." 
 
 I should suppose that no member of the great 
 confederated band of artists could find it easy to 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC ^33 
 
 get through this scene dry-eyed. And it is of a 
 piece with the other passages collated for the 
 purpose of producing a clear, culminative effect 
 upon the reader; the effect of seeing a side of 
 Shaw easily overlooked perhaps, but of cardinal 
 importance in our view of him. With regard to 
 space occupied, this phase may seem minor, it 
 may be granted: but with regard to his true 
 orientation, I consider it to be central and il- 
 luminating to the extreme circumference of his 
 thought. 
 
 There is one rather obvious defect in this con- 
 ception of the working of human psychology. 
 It assumes too much of poor average human na- 
 ture. It would work better if all society were 
 made up of members so far along the path of 
 evolution in self-restraint, noble desire, and nor- 
 mal reaction to the right stimuli as is the pro- 
 pounder of the philosophy, Bernard Shaw. It is, 
 in other words, a counsel of perfection which is 
 for overmen rather than for the usual mundane 
 middle-class English folk who, after all, are the 
 people to put it into practice, if it is to be more 
 than a paper theory. As a way to attain Over- 
 man, it is not valid because it assumes Overman 
 
234 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 at the start. Shaw and those like him may be 
 safe to let themselves go, to connect themselves 
 with the life-force, to let themselves be carried 
 on and up by a sort of Dionysiac frenzy, a noble 
 Berserker rage. The trouble in following one's 
 subliminal self, so the average person might plain- 
 tively retort (that is, one's impulses and emotional 
 dictations), is that they are quite likely to land 
 one in jail. 
 
 Yet Shaw can neatly turn upon his objectors 
 and remark that while it is true enough the 
 average man will not respond in the most satis- 
 factory manner when he is asked to be himself in 
 the self-willed way, the need to ask him to try it 
 is illustrated by his very lack of its proper use. 
 We must make a beginning, and let the principle 
 be illustrated by the few natural leaders in order 
 that gradually, O, very gradually, men in gen- 
 eral may be taught to act with free, strong voli- 
 tion and be their best selves, not be crushed by 
 the hold-backs of caution and the timid negations 
 of conventions; thus exercising that trained Will 
 which alone can breed real character in place of 
 the duplication of flabby invertebrates. As a 
 principle, then, this new hitching one's wagon to 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC ^S5 
 
 a star or merging in the mystic life-force, has a 
 great deal in its favor. 
 
 That it is a genuinely high and beautiful con- 
 ception of life and of duty is beyond all question. 
 If the idea were a piece of mistaken idealism on 
 this thinker's part, it would remain a creed to 
 respect and admire. If the dream could never be 
 made flesh, it would still be a dream to arouse 
 the imagination and awake the sympathies, and 
 comfort the heart. I, for one, am not inclined 
 to turn cynic as to its legitimacy; especially as 
 it is firm-based upon an indisputable truth about 
 Man : that his emotions furnish the dynamo back 
 of all his most typical acts and deepest reactions. 
 Some of us, therefore, so far from objecting 
 to this Shaw of the mystic dream, as an unex- 
 pected and at first perhaps rather disturbing 
 deuteragonist to the protagonist of the Shaw 
 who talks of municipal trading and of eugenics, 
 and whose deepest concern seems to be an equita- 
 ble adjustment of the rates, welcome the poet 
 dreamer who catches a vision of the State Beau- 
 tiful, and believes in his soul that he is on the 
 side of the angels, although he no longer calls 
 them angels but Superfolk; whose heaven is 
 
^36 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 earth made just, and clean and honest, and 
 lovely. Respect and liking go out naturally, in- 
 stinctively, to a thinker with this faith, and with 
 the courage of his convictions; whose work and 
 words really tally, whose life might be called 
 austerely pure, were it not that it is tempered 
 with a smile, now kindly, now satiric, and human- 
 ized by a Celtic disposition to engage in a fair 
 fight: a fight of ringing blows, and no quarter; 
 a fight where, the affair once settled, the antago- 
 nists, wiping the sweat from their brows, shake 
 hands and mutually admire each other's good 
 qualities. It is noteworthy in all Shaw's battles 
 that he seems to hate the sin rather than the 
 sinner, and always produces the effect of a man 
 ready and willing to resume fraternal relations, 
 when the shindy is over. But while the encounter 
 is on, beware! ^o man can hit harder or more 
 viciously, no man is less likely to spare his op- 
 ponent. I fancy that all good argufiers have 
 said in their hearts : from such a debater, good 
 Lord, deliver us! 
 
 And so we begin with a contentious publicist 
 and end with a literary artist and poet: which 
 is only, after all, walking all the way round the 
 
THE POET AND MYSTIC 237 
 
 circumference of a complex modern personality. 
 We begin by thinking of him as a fantastic fel- 
 low, and end with an impression of underlying 
 good sense; agreeing with the author's own esti- 
 mate of himself, set down with his habitual 
 frankness : " It is the sensible schemes unfortu- 
 nately that are hopeless in England. Therefore 
 I have great hopes that my own views, though 
 fundamentally sensible, can be made to appear 
 fantastic enough to have a chance." What of 
 contradiction and paradox may be there, should 
 not obscure for us the main fact that the char- 
 acter is consistently one: rock-founded, steadily 
 orientated, and impressive in itself and because 
 it represents so much of our Time, which in it- 
 self in its turn is also complex, paradoxical, and 
 baffling; yet, again like Shaw, intensely interest- 
 ing for those very reasons ! 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 
 
 Stripped of much nonsense which has come to 
 be its connotation during the development of 
 critical nomenclature, the word technic, after all, 
 means a very simple thing. It refers to the most 
 workmanlike way of doing that which in litera- 
 ture has for its object the imparting of pleas- 
 ure. In the fine arts, whose aim it is to please, 
 technic is that manner of performing the task 
 which results in the greatest content of satisfac- 
 tion in the recipient. And perhaps it is not 
 fundamental but arbitrary to confine the process 
 to non-utilitarian labors. It may be that the 
 bootblack, as he polishes your boots, possesses 
 technic in so far as he takes pleasure in and gives 
 you pleasure from the perfect polish he lovingly 
 bestows. An artistic desire issuing in a beauti- 
 ful result, why is that not always an illustration 
 of true technic, albeit the thing done is practi- 
 cal, utilitarian, not associated with what are 
 238 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 239 
 
 called the arts? The utilitarian nature of the 
 work should not blind us to the artistic instinct 
 which is involved. 
 
 Be this as it may, a man has technic when he 
 has learned to conserve his artistic interests by 
 doing a given job in the most economical way for 
 him and the most pleasurable to the art patron. 
 Bernard Shaw has written some thirty dramas 
 and has made himself famous in so doing. Many 
 of his plays are solid theatre successes, not 
 merely plays that appeal to the select. The box 
 office has been so often his friend that he is a 
 moderately rich man from his dramatic work; to 
 be respected, therefore, by a practical, commer- 
 cial Broadway manager, as a playwright whose 
 wares have market value. And his plays in gen- 
 eral, whether commercially effective or not, are 
 taken seriously by the critics and enlightened 
 public followers of the theatre in many lands. 
 He has, then, been successful both in the critical 
 and practical sense of the word. 
 
 He began by violently disturbing the precon- 
 ceived notions of what a play is and how it 
 should be written. Indeed, he may be described 
 broadly as a professional overthrower of con- 
 
240 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 ventions ; he comes not to bring peace but a 
 sword. As to the drama, having a new thing to 
 say, he invented a way to say it in order to say 
 it effectively, or at all. At first, the novelty of 
 the new thing, in manner and matter, made it 
 unacceptable; later, it became an element in 
 Shaw's success. The critics were forced to do 
 what under compulsion they have always done, 
 given time enough : revise the assumed " laws," 
 in order to account for the strange new phe- 
 nomenon. Whether they liked it or not, here was 
 something which compelled attention, would draw 
 interest to itself: and seemed to reach the desired 
 result by an illegitimate bypath from the beaten 
 highroad. The history of criticism is ironically 
 amusing because it is the exposure of this critical 
 discomfiture iruihe face of the pioneers who have 
 made the history of the arts. We see it il- 
 lustrated with Wordsworth over a century ago 
 in England; with Whitman in America, half a 
 century since; with Wagner in Germany at 
 about the same time. Truly original creative 
 persons have a way of seeming to upset stand- 
 ards ; in the end, it is perceived that they are 
 only enlarging boundaries, and so advancing the 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 241 
 
 interests of art. And the professional critics, 
 prone to conservatism, suspicious of any depar- 
 ture from the usual, follow these leaders cau- 
 tiously from afar, grumbling and very loth; only 
 at last to turn on the poor guessing public with 
 a superbly inconsistent, " I told you so." Two 
 views are still tenable with regard to Shaw as 
 an artist of the theatre. One may say that his 
 plays are bad technically, but that the intellectual 
 stimulus he offers is so great, and his topics so 
 vital, and his gift of word and for character so 
 decided, that these dramas appeal in spite of poor 
 construction, inadequate dramatic motivation and 
 handling. One who inclines to this view is likely 
 to refer glibly to the " talk drama " of Shaw (as 
 if all drama that is drama in the full sense were 
 not talk drama), and to speak of his plays as 
 " dramatised conversation." 
 
 The other view, maintained by the present critic, 
 sees in the Shaw plays a skilful adaptation of 
 means to end. A typical Shavian play is a story 
 framework around an idea which the playwright 
 wishes to enforce ; and having the technical prob- 
 lem of telling the story within stage limitations 
 so as to make it interesting, more interesting than 
 
242 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 it would be in the form of narrated fiction, for 
 example, while bringing out the idea inherent in 
 the treatment. Given this object, which, be it 
 noted, is not always the object of a play, which 
 may contain no idea at all, nor have a desire to 
 bring home such an idea, — it is accomplished with 
 the sure hand which can only be attained by sound 
 workmanship. Technic has no meaning save as 
 it is related to a given form and purpose. Shaw's 
 drama — let me say it again — is the drama of 
 idea: intellectual drama, drama that is psycho- 
 logic in that its aim is to reveal character in the 
 cause of an idea, and therefore doctrinaire, in 
 that through dialogue, scene, and action it desires 
 to maintain, set forth, and bring home a theory. 
 Over and above this, to be good drama, there 
 must be entertainment in the way of a story, with 
 attractions along the way in wit, humor, charac- 
 terization, and the heightened moments called sit- 
 uations. These are to be found in Shaw. But, 
 evidently, in such drama, story becomes secondary, 
 character is important, and it is the underlying 
 idea which unifies all. 
 
 If this purpose and its legitimacy be accepted, 
 the careful student of Shaw cannot escape the 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 24S 
 
 conclusion that he is an able craftsman, conscious 
 of his material, knowing how to handle his tools, 
 and achieving results that are not accidental. His 
 dramas are by no means on a par of merit (as he 
 would be the first to say), either for interest, im- 
 portance of theme, or dramaturgic skill ; he him- 
 self calls " Fanny's First Play " a " potboiler," 
 and "Great Catherine" "tomfoolery." No 
 writer sees himself with clearer eyes. His product 
 is unequal, exactly as is that of all able artists, 
 beginning with Homer. He falls below his best 
 at times, since the definition of " best " demands---^ 
 and implies it. tut ^rtvailingly, &9d markedly 
 in eight or ten pieces,Hiie skilled shaping of the 
 material in order to get the essentials out of the 
 subject-matter and impart the satisfaction ger- 
 mane to the theatre is too definitely exhibited to 
 give the theory that Shaw's method of dramatic 
 writing is a haphazard dash at an art he does not 
 command, a leg to stand on. This is no for- 
 tuitous success. As Dr. Henderson puts it, " he 
 violates all the rules, yet turns the trick " ; and 
 the violation, be it added, is only seeming. Let 
 us put it in this way: he violates existing con- 
 ventions and makes some new rules, since a rule is 
 
244 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 but the formulation of a successful way of accom- 
 plishing a writer's purpose. It might further be 
 argued that in those cases where the technic of a 
 play seems most careless or furthest removed from 
 the proper method, it is to be explained not as 
 ignorance or carelessness, but from the nature of 
 the piece, the author possibly caring more about 
 making his thesis plain than he does to give his 
 play acting value. It should not be forgotten and 
 may be said again that by deliberate choice Shaw 
 elects to write the drama in which thesis is promi- 
 nent, not to say dominant. He has declared that 
 there is " no future now fpr a§y drama without 
 music except the drama of thought," and stated 
 his own " determination to accept problem as the 
 normal material of the drama." 
 
 It can readily be admitted that there are some 
 iplays of Shaw more dramatic than others, or plays 
 more unsuited to the stage than others : " Can- 
 dida," for example, being first-class stage mate- 
 rial, where " Getting Married " is far behind it 
 in this respect. Yet why assume that the latter 
 is an instance of malexpertness, while the former 
 accidentally happens to be good? It would appear 
 more rational to believe that the playwright, hav- 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 245 
 
 ing demonstrated, as he so often does, his ability 
 to make drama of acting quality, deliberately 
 chose in other cases to forfeit a certain amount 
 of stage effectivism, for the sake of dealing with 
 his subject in a way best to convey his ideas. In 
 fact, it is part of Shaw's originality that he has 
 dared to introduce unstagy matter into the thea- 
 tre and given it sufficient theatric appeal to keep 
 it there long enough to carry a message to folk 
 ready to receive it. It is perfectly safe to say 
 that the author himself never imagined the acting 
 value of " Getting Married " to equal that of 
 " Candida " or " Mrs. Warren's Profession." But 
 he wished to put a thorough discussion of mar- 
 riage upon the boards ; and gave it enough of viva- 
 cious life and novel interest to make it amusing 
 to a general audience. He threw it into one-act 
 form because he knew he did not have a story of 
 sufficient constructional value to justify the usual 
 form; a fact in itself illustrating his freedom 
 and skill in stage architecture. And his subject 
 being, as it was, intensely contemporary and his 
 characterization and dialogue as usual brilliant, 
 he was able to overcome, to a great extent at 
 least, the natural objection brought against this 
 
246 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 drama that it was " nothing but talk." The 
 point to be made here is, that Bernard Shaw in 
 his play-making is not to be placed with Mr. 
 Granville Barker in his " Madras House " or 
 Tchekov in his " Cherry Orchard," where the re- 
 sult is not a play at all; by a play I mean a 
 stage story coherently and progressively aiming 
 at a climax, the natural and inevitable target of 
 all good drama. And the talk in favor of this 
 amorphous play-making which neglects plot and 
 organic development for the sake of other and 
 better things, is effectually blocked by replying 
 that you can get all those other estimable things 
 more surely if you obey the laws of sound 
 dramaturgy at the same time. Delight is a great 
 digester of " truth to life," and to be dull and 
 dreary is to be " real " in no desirable sense. 
 And Shaw, much misunderstanding to the con- 
 trary, does not forget this fundamental demand 
 of the stage in his work. His drama may be un- 
 usual in form but it is not formless. 
 
 But the mistake about Shaw's technic goes 
 deeper. In the piece mentioned and in others, the 
 assumption that there is a story and no growth 
 or organic approach to a climax is quite aside 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 247 
 
 from the truth. The story is there, but the tell- 
 ing of it varies according to the sort of story it is, 
 and his purpose in treating it. And it is signifi- 
 cant and most helpful in understanding Shaw's 
 method, to see that the story looked at by itself 
 is not seldom far-fetched, farcical, improbable, 
 whereas the psychology of the characters is seri- 
 ously treated, and beneath the fantastic frame- 
 work of plot lurks an equally serious social 
 commentary. The dramatist seems to give his 
 seriousness the relief of this external foolery, thus 
 catching the attention of the light-minded, who 
 otherwise would go about their business and never 
 heed him at all. And it is the confusion begotten 
 by these two things, I believe, fable and message, 
 that land those simple souls in trouble who seek 
 hastily and half-heartedly to understand this 
 writer of stage plays who happens also to be 
 the sober writer of essays on political economy. 
 Nothing could be wilder in extravaganza than the 
 fable play, " Androcles and the Lion," as we have 
 noted. Yet, witnessing it, when one is already 
 famihar with this dramatist, one is inclined to 
 refrain from the guifaw aroused by the trick lion, 
 because of the constant underlying suggestions re- 
 
248 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 garding religion, specific and narrow, and universal 
 and fundamental. The beast epic in relation to 
 man, the law of kindness towards our elder and 
 humbler brothers, these are so much in the 
 thoughtful spectator's mind, that as the animal 
 walks off the stage with Androcles, and the un- 
 thinking have their laugh, the meditative minor- 
 ity to be found even in an American theatre may 
 find itself not far from the civilized tear. To hu- 
 manize frigid historical material is in itself an 
 achievement the value of which remains after the 
 laughter dies. 
 
 The statement hereinbefore made that the tell- 
 ing of the story varies with the manner of story 
 it is, technic being thus plastic to the shifting 
 demand, has been illustrated in my treatment of 
 " The Devil's Disciple," as well as in other in- 
 stances. 
 
 The point is, that the intention to halt what is 
 called " action " on the stage for the sake of 
 discussion, and thus to violate dramatic conven- 
 tions, is a very different thing from ignorantly 
 writing undramatic scenes. We may properly 
 enough debate whether Bernard Shaw be not un- 
 dramatic in certain plays or parts of plays; it 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 249 
 
 all depends upon what jou mean by undramatic. 
 But it is absurd to claim that he is missing fire 
 like an amateur. Right or wrong as to the re- 
 sults, he knows the rules of the game, consciously 
 alters or ignores them, chooses to do what he 
 does, and takes the risks. This, it will be con- 
 ceded, is quite other than to blunder along, and 
 sometimes hit upon success. For in spite of the 
 risks run and the unstagy things done, success 
 frequently follows; too frequently to be an acci- 
 dent. 
 
 We shall never get down to the root of the 
 matter until the fundamental question is faced: 
 What is " action " on the stage? Persons a-plenty 
 patronizingly drop a kind word for Shaw, because 
 of his general cleverness, but sapiently add : " Of 
 course, he has no action, you know ; but he's great 
 fun, isn't he? " a remark somewhat hard to bear. 
 " Action " to the Philistine means physical bus- 
 tle, and nothing else; unless two or more persons 
 demonstrate emotional arousement by jumping 
 about a stage, the drama is at once dubbed dull. 
 And the play becomes proportionately more 
 " dramatic " as more persons are added, until 
 the effect is that of a mob that shouts and surges 
 
250 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 and perhaps tears down a house, to the sound 
 of guns. But unfortunately for this primitive 
 view, a Norwegian by the name of Ibsen has taught 
 the theatre-going world that action may be a 
 state within as well as a row without ; that two 
 persons, Nora and Helmer, her husband, let us 
 say, standing quietly together and talking in 
 ordinary, every-day tones, may give us a sense 
 of stressed emotional values in human life such 
 as no frenzied mob at its highest howl can secure. 
 Action, we now know pretty well, since it is fully 
 illustrated by modern drama and gives that 
 drama its chief significance, is anything on the 
 stage that makes us to enter sympathetically into 
 the psychologic tension of the stage folk whose 
 fortunes engage us. And it is more and more 
 the habit of current play-making of the better 
 sort to show this " action '' with the quiet re- 
 straint which throws emphasis upon states of 
 mind and emotional crises, with a laudable desire 
 not to overstep their modesty of nature. Mod- 
 ern stage action, in a word, tends to become 
 psychologic, rather than physical and acrobatic. 
 Shaw, then, is full of action, if only there be 
 conceded to that much-abused word a connotation 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 251 
 
 which implies something besides door slamming 
 and dextrous gyrations of the body. There is no 
 true antithesis between talk and action; for the 
 right kind of talk on the stage is the most tre- 
 mendous action in the world to posit crisis, show 
 character, and create climax. 
 
 " Situation " is another favorite word with 
 those who fall into the conventional chatter about 
 the drama; without situation, no self-respecting 
 play is supposed to survive the arrows of out- 
 raged criticism. What is meant obviously by 
 such a demand is that a play to be a play must 
 at certain points commonly associated in modern 
 dramaturgy with the fall of a curtain give an 
 effect of increased tension, of arrived crisis ; that 
 sharpening of story which is in its staccato quality 
 peculiar to the stage in contrast with other forms 
 of narrative. 
 
 It is equally foolish to deny that in this re- 
 spect Shaw's plays are richly supplied with sit- 
 uations. One such, most original and effective, 
 is the scene in the third act of " The Devil's Dis- 
 ciple," where Dudgeon and the minister's wife 
 discuss his deed in saving her husband's life, and 
 to her bewildered astonishment he disclaims any 
 
252 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 love for her. And in the same play another of 
 first-class quality is the final trial scene. There 
 are few finer situations on the English stage than 
 that in " Candida," where the drame a trois cul- 
 minates in the wife's choice between lover and 
 husband; and greater still, as we saw, because of 
 the nature of the scene, is that terrible confronta- 
 tion in " Mrs. Warren's Profession " of mother 
 by daughter, with its tragic issue for the former. 
 Again, it is a situation of high value when, at the 
 end of " Captain Brassbound's Conversion," the 
 pseudo-pirate pleads for Lady Cicely's love; to 
 which we may add the final curtain of " Man and 
 Superman," the second act curtain of " Arms and 
 the Man," and the central and only scene of 
 "The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet." The 
 death of the artist in act third of " The Doctor's 
 Dilemma " is one of the most daringly novel and 
 theatrically effective scenes in the range of mod- 
 ern drama. The stage value of these and such 
 others as every Shaw student will easily add, is 
 so apparent as to make all the more strange the 
 reiteration of the stupid statement that Shaw 
 lacks action and instinct for stage effects. On 
 the contrary, he has the instinct carefully forti- 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 253 
 
 fied and fructified by much thought and labor both 
 as critic and playwright, so that the trained 
 hand and the cool craftsman's head cooperate 
 and result in the grasp of dramatic material 
 which means a capable theatre artist. In his best 
 plays, growth, clash, and crisis, ever denotements 
 of real drama, instead of the purely literary per- 
 formances of would-be dramatists, are present; 
 if we will but get rid of a too narrow understand- 
 ing of dramatic requirements. 
 
 The probable reason so many fail to see this 
 capability in Shaw's technic, the power to ar- 
 range story in appealing crescendo moments of in- 
 cident and character, so that, chemically united, 
 what is called climax is the result, is because this 
 playwright subordinates situation to his deeper 
 purposes of theme and characterization; subor- 
 dinates, let me repeat, but not eliminates. He is, 
 so to say, chary of it, only furnishing these popu- 
 lar effects as they may be necessary to make a 
 play which shall engage the attention of a gen- 
 eral audience to his subject in hand. Thus he 
 differs by the whole sky from dramatists like 
 Scribe or Bernstein, to whom such effects are the 
 principal aim, not an incident in a larger pur- 
 
254> BERNARD SHAW 
 
 pose. Like Ibsen before him, he rather shuns too 
 obvious " curtains," and prefers the illusion pro- 
 duced by giving the broken rhythm of life instead 
 of the too perfect symmetry of self-conscious 
 theatre art. 
 
 And it is interesting to realize that all the 
 more credit goes to Shaw, the technician, for so 
 often producing situations in the common mean- 
 ing of the word, in that he boldly and contemptu- 
 ously tramples on all the most sacred principles 
 of psychology involved traditionally in those sit- 
 uations. Thus, in the climax of " The DeviPs 
 Disciple," Dudgeon, who, by immemorial stage 
 law, should love the minister's fair spouse, and 
 so explain his gallant conduct, coolly repudiates 
 any such motive. And yet, this is as arresting 
 as if he had obeyed the rules of the French tri- 
 angle (of which the play makes fun), and drawn 
 the unresisting lady to his breast. In the same 
 fashion, Candida's choice is all the fresher and 
 more sensational, in other words, of more stage 
 value, because she chooses her husband in place 
 of her lover ; too original, in truth, for the boule- 
 vards. Shaw abandons all the tricks and char- 
 acter turns which were believed to be invincible 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 255 
 
 on the boards of a theatre, and makes the sup- 
 posedly tame reverse still more exciting. It is 
 hard not to admire such fortesse of handling. 
 
 As a summary, one may say that Shaw has the 
 genuine playwright's feeling for that one central 
 scene around which the whole dramatic structure 
 is built, towards which it naturally moves and 
 from which it recedes when the main purpose is 
 accomplished ; the obligatory scene, as Mr. Archer 
 paraphrases the French term, which every true 
 theatre artist knows he must give his audience to 
 satisfy it, can generally be found in the represen- 
 tative dramas of this writer ; and if absent, a rea- 
 son is not lacking. Nothing insures the undra- 
 matic quality of an alleged play more certainly 
 than to substitute indirect narration for the direct 
 showing of a thing important in the treatment. 
 On the stage, seeing is believing, and to exhibit 
 action instead of talking about it, is a funda- 
 mental principle of both experience and com- 
 mon sense. At first blush, it might appear that 
 Shaw is an arch-sinner in this respect ; but such is 
 not the case. In the first acts of " The Devil's 
 Disciple " and " The Doctor's Dilemma," studied 
 earlier, there is a deal of talk, we saw, preliminary 
 
256 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 to the start of the story ; dialogue for the sake of 
 " planting " character, to use the technical term, 
 and to create atmosphere. But with the story 
 under way, Shaw does not make the mistake ad- 
 verted to above. Regularly, he lets the interaction 
 of characters develop the plot; irregularly, he 
 uses indirect statement in place of direct presenta- 
 tion; but this when something is to be gained in 
 so doing. " Captain Brassbound's Conversion " 
 is a good play to study with this in mind. The 
 off-stage occurrences in this drama, such as the 
 presence of the United States ship in the harbor, 
 are pregnant with consequences to the action, 
 yet are twice as telling as if seen by the spectator. 
 Throughout his dramas, Shaw exhibits a nice and 
 well-nigh infallible appreciation of the differ- 
 ence between expositional and suggestive off-stage 
 material and that sort of narrative which means 
 fiction instead of a play. There is no subtler test 
 of technic than this. 
 
 Closely allied with this mistake about Shaw's 
 power in situation is that which denies him emo- 
 tional quality. One smiles instinctively at this 
 allegation, since emotionalism is so marked a trait 
 of this writer as almost to deserve first mention. 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 257 
 
 To be sure, he seems to be an intellect attacking 
 the false and foolish emotions of others; but no 
 one becomes more emotionally aroused or imparts 
 more of the heat and light of such a state than 
 this same writer. He is, above all, an incorrigible 
 romanticist, shy of himself. What is really 
 meant when, masking as a cold intellectualist, he 
 is charged with a lack of heart and its corollary, 
 too much head, is not that the emotion is absent 
 but that it is of the wrong kind or out of place. 
 There is, for example, immense emotional content 
 and effect in the central scene referred to in " Mrs. 
 Warren's Profession." It fairly quivers with feel- 
 ing, white-hot and poignant. But the trouble is 
 that this exhibition of mother and daughter at 
 grapple is a destructive attack upon the usual 
 sentimental depiction of this relation and this 
 seems to confirmed sentimentalists cold and ab- 
 horrent. In this sense, but in this sense only, the 
 scene might be called unsympathetic and Vivie 
 herself an intellectualized repellent character. 
 In other words, we must carefully explain what 
 emotion implies before deciding whether our 
 dramatist commands it. If the term be used 
 broadly enough to include aroused feeling with 
 
258 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 regard to vital human activities and relations, 
 then no writer for the stage, past or present, ex- 
 cels Shaw in the power of emotional evocation. 
 I spoke of the emotion being out of place, at 
 times. In a scene already referred to as perhaps 
 the most remarkable he ever conceived, that of 
 the death of the artist in " The Doctor's Di- 
 lemma," we get a good illustration. The words 
 of Dubedat, as he bids good-bye to his wife and 
 recites his wonderful credo, are a-pulse with pro- 
 found feeling which calls forth a like feeling in 
 the hearer. One recognizes that the dramatist is 
 stirred to his depths. Yet it may well be doubted 
 whether this scene, magnificent as it is for imagi- 
 native suggestion, rich in emotional content, will 
 ever be accepted as successful by a theatreful 
 of folk, for reasons I have explained. 
 
 One is Here reminded of Tolstoy's rebuke of 
 Shaw, when the latter made a joking reference to 
 a matter the Russian held sacred: it would per- 
 haps be putting it fairly to say that Shaw lacks 
 taste at times, both as an artist and man, in 
 the sense that he does not enough consider what 
 is a matter of reverence to others. He is deeply 
 reverential about that which he reverences, but I 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 259 
 
 think can be justly accused of riding roughshod 
 over the similar feelings of others. Remember, I 
 am considering the emotional quality of Shaw at 
 this moment simply as an element which enters 
 into the technical result and removes his work 
 from that dry display of the intellect out of 
 place in a playhouse. Technic must have emo- 
 tional material to use as a very condition of its 
 existence. 
 
 Broadly speaking, no doubt Shaw, like Ibsen, 
 uses the realistic method to tell his story and 
 convey his theme. The folk of his fancy talk and 
 act in the quiet key of external truth, whatever 
 may be said of the purport of what they utter, 
 or of the uniqueness of their psychology. Super- 
 ficially viewed, they are of all stage people the 
 most unromantic in the way they aim at the via 
 media of daily life. Shaw is ever striving to create 
 the illusion of reality. Critics would perhaps 
 agree that in the denotements of speech, dress, and 
 carriage he secures the desired effect in this fash- 
 ion ; but would clash when it comes to the deeper 
 truth of human character. To some, Shaw's char- 
 acters are simply projections of Shaw, the play- 
 wright himself talking behind a disguise more or 
 
260 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 less thin; sometimes, as we noted in the case of 
 Tanner, hardly a disguise at all. In the final at- 
 tempt to place Shaw in contemporary drama as 
 a literary force, I have attended to the question 
 whether this dramatist has the higher creative 
 power in characterization. Here, with technic in 
 mind, let it be noted that, given his aim, his Active 
 folk are skilfully done because they carry the 
 double role of exponents of his theory yet seem- 
 ingly real human beings. His so-called realism 
 as a method properly applies to his manipulation 
 of character and is a part of the technical use of 
 his art. His dramatis personce appear to do 
 things so odd, bizarre, or outrageous as to bring 
 up the grave question of psychologic accuracy. 
 Would Candida, we ask, turn to her husband when 
 she makes her choice? Would Ann pursue the 
 man of her selection with such unrelenting, all 
 but awful oneness of purpose? Would the 
 family in " You Never Can Tell " receive 
 the long-lost father upon his return in so 
 cold and critical a fashion? And would typi- 
 cal young women of the day substitute eugenical 
 considerations instead of the conventional emo- 
 tional response to wooing? If we reply. No, then 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 261 
 
 we must deny him the realism which is reality, 
 not merely photography and superficial appear- 
 ance. It may be conceded that at times Shaw, 
 looking ahead and picturing the desirable Future 
 rather than the faulty Present, uses the method 
 of allegory — as does Ibsen — and by so much de- 
 parts from the technic of pure realism. We 
 should not forget his whimsical statement that 
 he learned from Mozart to make all his characters 
 geniuses. But it is, I believe, undeniable that by 
 the most skilful painting of the physical sem- 
 blances of humanity on the stage, Shaw secures 
 for his puppets a credence, during the actual 
 presentation of his play, such as might not upon 
 analysis be accorded to m.en and women in life. 
 And this is an achievement in artistry. 
 
 The flexibility and experimental nature of 
 Shaw's technic may be seen among other illustra- 
 tions in his handling of the act division. He 
 throws his theme into one, three, four, or five acts, 
 as he pleases, according to the nature of the piece, 
 its demand in the particulars of growth and 
 pause and heightened effects. The texture and 
 intention of his material alike come into the de- 
 cision. " Getting Married," " The Showing-up 
 
262 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 of Blanco Posnet," "The Man of Destiny," 
 « How He Lied to Her Husband," " Press Cut- 
 tings," and " The Dark Lady of the Sonnets " 
 testify how often he has preferred the form that 
 means a continuous performance, with time values 
 varying from a half-hour to two hours, to the con- 
 ventional playing time of a full-length drama. 
 Several of his best plays are in the three-act 
 form now favored by the skilled artisans of the 
 stage. But " The Doctor's Dilemma " is in five 
 acts, a form supposed to be obsolete (at least for 
 realistic drama), and so are " Caesar and Cleo- 
 patra " and " Pygmalion " ; while into four acts 
 he has thrown several dramas, including " Man 
 and Superman," " You Never Can Tell," and 
 " Captain Brassbound's Conversion." Further 
 examples of free handling may be noted in 
 " Fanny's First Play," with its induction and 
 epilogue, and in " Androcles and the Lion," 
 where the material suggests chronicle history and 
 the form becomes correspondingly plastic. This 
 adaptation of form to substance indicates the 
 genuine dramatist who creates a formula but 
 does not allow it to bulldoze him into the slavish 
 following of a model. 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 263 
 
 Shaw is a pioneer in the one-act play, which 
 is an interesting and significant development of 
 modern drama, widening its possibilities, and af- 
 fording some of the ablest playwrights of the day, 
 — Barrie, Kennedy, Middleton, Sudermann, Zang- 
 will, Strindberg, — the list might be made formida- 
 ble, — to produce effects not so well secured in the 
 full-length play. The one-acter is now slowly 
 but, I imagine, surely gaining recognition in Eng- 
 land and America, and has been for a longer time 
 influential in Europe ; as where Strindberg, a mas- 
 ter in this genre, presented in his own theatre 
 in Stockholm many of the best examples of his 
 own work. The work of the Irish Players in 
 Dublin and on tour, and in America such com- 
 panies as that once at The Princess and The 
 Washington Square Players in New York, to- 
 gether with the various Little Theatres of the 
 country, have done much to bring vogue in Eng- 
 lish-speaking lands to this form of drama. Shaw's 
 influence in popularizing the play, long or short, 
 without act division, is certainly considerable. 
 That he appreciates the opportunity offered by 
 this simplification of form can be seen in his note 
 to " Getting Married." 
 
264, BERNARD SHAW 
 
 As it involves this morphological question be- 
 yond its application to the drama in hand, and 
 throws light upon the dramatist's view, it is 
 worth quoting here : " There is a point of some 
 technical interest in this play. The customary 
 division into acts has been disused, and a re- 
 turn made to unity of time and space, as ob- 
 served in the ancient Greek drama. In the fore- 
 going tragedy, ' The Doctor's Dilemma,' there 
 are five acts: the place is altered five times and 
 the time is spread over an undetermined period 
 of more than a year. No doubt the strain on the 
 attention of the audience and on the ingenuity 
 of the playwright is much less ; but I find in 
 practice that the Greek form is inevitable when 
 drama reaches a certain point in poetic and in- 
 tellectual evolution. Its adoption was not, on 
 my part, a deliberate display of virtuosity in 
 form, but simply the spontaneous falling of a 
 play of ideas into the form most suitable to it, 
 which turned out to be the classical form. ' Get- 
 ting Married,' in several acts, with the time 
 spread over a long period, would be impossible." 
 
 Here, it may be remarked, is the self-conscious 
 craftsman meditating upon the subtleties of his 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 265 
 
 craft, and doing nothing by accident. The defi- 
 nite simphfication of form which has marked the 
 changing drama of our day under Ibsen's influ- 
 ence is a move towards the closer fitting of form 
 to substance : given the emphasis upon psychology 
 which that drama chose to exercise, and fewer 
 acts, one scene, and fewer characters, were sure to 
 follow. And the one-act form would seem to be 
 logically the carrying out of this principle to its 
 natural limit. 
 
 Shaw has done more than anyone else to give 
 literary quality to that part of a play which is 
 outside the dialogue : the stage " business " and 
 the descriptions of character. Of old, this was 
 done in an hieroglyphic way, a species of linguistic 
 arithmetic. " So-and-so comes down right, takes 
 chair ; business of using handkerchief." This sort 
 of jargon is not conducive to a mood which would 
 like to regard a drama as a piece of literature, a 
 part of belles lettres. And it is a sad blow to the 
 illusion of story and picture. It is likely one of 
 the reasons why the reading of stage plays, when 
 printed, has not in the past been popular. Such 
 reading is now rapidly becoming a habit because, 
 among other reasons, the printed drama is not 
 
266 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 offering these laconic algebraic symbols in place 
 of the written-out speech which literature de- 
 mands. In this change, Shaw is a leader. In- 
 deed, nobody has done so much to improve the 
 situation. As a literary man, with a bias for fit 
 speech, he has made stage directions and charac- 
 ter delineations " literary," given them expres- 
 sional worth; and also added much to our under- 
 standing of the psychology of his dramatic chil- 
 dren. But in his zeal to remove technical and 
 unpleasant details from a play in book form, he 
 has allowed himself to fall into the danger of 
 obtruding his own personality into the text, so 
 that one receives the shock of hearing G. B. S. 
 speak in the first person just as one was coming 
 under the illusion of the scene and story. Still, 
 the balance of gain is undoubtedly in favor of the 
 reader; and the writer's influence in helping thus 
 to rehabilitate the play by associating it with the 
 reading habit and suggesting that it may be a 
 part of literature, and the current drama thus be- 
 come a recognized part of the great body of drama 
 of past times, is a thing to be unfeignedly thank- 
 ful for. 
 
 But are they not reading rather than acting 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 267 
 
 plays, after all, does some one ask? Shaw first 
 sought his audience through the publication of 
 his dramas, which could find no producer; did he 
 not shape his work for such appreciation, and fail 
 to fit it to the more practical tests of the stage? 
 To this inquiry the answer is obvious. If we were 
 obliged in honesty to say. Yes, Shaw's technic 
 would instantly be involved. This dramatist 
 would fall into the same class with Shelley, Ten- 
 nyson, Swinburne, and Stevenson; great writers, 
 but not strictly playwrights at all. 
 
 It happens, however, that the contemporary 
 world is finding out, with more or less naive sur- 
 prise, that Shaw meets the theatre test and in 
 fact is turning out to be one of the best acting 
 dramatists of the British theatre. He has nicely 
 fooled many of us in this way. Again and again, 
 the student of Shaw will have read some drama of 
 his before seeing it played, and made up his mind 
 that while delightful to read, it was not suited to 
 stage requirements ; only to ascertain that it was 
 one of the best acting plays of the day. I con- 
 fess to being misled by " You Never Can Tell," 
 a reading of which did not by any means reveal 
 the saliency of character and scene which makes 
 
268 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 this farce comedy such an unchallenged success. 
 No doubt others, if put into the confessional, 
 could bear similar testimony. 
 
 But does the fact that Shaw's dramas have a 
 thesis injure them as vehicles for the stage, where 
 technic in art and entertainment in aim unite to 
 make good dramaturgy? We have already made 
 the point that there is story so well as thesis 
 in these productions ; more in " Fanny's First 
 Play," certainly, and less in " Getting Married," 
 according to the purpose or mood of the play- 
 wright; nobody would find as much seriousness of 
 intention in " How He Lied to Her Husband " 
 and " Great Catherine " as in " Mrs. Warren's 
 Profession " and " Candida." But predominantly, 
 the didactics are mitigated by the genuine dra- 
 matic qualities of entertainment; and, the proof 
 of the pudding being in the eating, behold the box 
 office result ! Nothing is surer than the statement 
 that if Shaw were more preacher than dramatist, 
 his plays would steadily fail. To be sure, he ad- 
 dresses a special and happily fast-growing audi- 
 ence; an audience which would desire civilized 
 fun. He has dared to seek, and seeking has found, 
 a public ready, even eager, for plays that dealt 
 
THE THEATRE CRAFTSMAN 269 
 
 freshly, forcibly, honestly, and seriously with life ; 
 and to this rapidly crystallizing body of theatre 
 patrons his work is an intellectual tonic, and an 
 esthetic pleasure. But let it be repeated, that 
 over and above this audience naturally respond- 
 ing to such a genius of the serious theatre, there 
 are elements in Shaw's appeal which make him 
 agreeable to the lighter section of the theatre- 
 going public, which, while it mistakes his meaning 
 and has but a parody of the man in mind, does 
 buy seats for his " show " ! 
 
 Yes, Shaw cut the Gordian knot by remaining 
 intellectual without being dull. This is not to say 
 that some of his dramas are not comparative 
 failures. It is only to claim that for the most 
 part Shavian stage stories amuse people gener- 
 ally, and hold their place persistently as acting 
 drama. And there could be, I insist, no higher 
 tribute to Shaw as a craftsman in the playhouse. 
 This is the supreme and ultimate test; that 
 against heavy odds, and reversing an earlier opin- 
 ion, the plays by Bernard Shaw are increasingly 
 popular. Nothing but sound technic as a basis 
 for this result could lead to such a result. The 
 notion that Shaw succeeds in spite of defective 
 
270 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 workmanship may be allowed to pass into that 
 Walhalla where critical and other mistakes repent 
 them of their earthly errors. His plays bristle 
 with technical proof of stage knowledge; the 
 avoidance of the soliloquy and aside, the careful 
 motivation of all exits and entrances as part of 
 the aim to preserve the integrity of character 
 and plot; the sense of situation and climax; the 
 cunning control of light and shade, whereby 
 monotony of tone is escaped; and the wise free- 
 dom with which, as I have tried to show, the dra- 
 matic form has been modified to fit a fresh 
 purpose ; all this offers evidence to the trained ob- 
 server of a forthright technician and one of the 
 truly original artists of the modern stage. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 
 
 Every writer has a double significance. He 
 may be regarded for his worth abstracted from 
 any consideration of time and place, as we re- 
 gard the indisputable masters like Homer, Dante, 
 Shakspere. Or, confessedly perhaps of secondary 
 importance compared with these, he may yet bulk 
 large in the history of letters because of what 
 he accomplished in the evolution of the literary 
 form and movement of which he is a part. His 
 value for his time, in this way, can be so great 
 as to constitute him a major figure, whatever be 
 his final fate, after the winnowing of Time has 
 separated the wheat from the chaff. 
 
 Contemporary judgment can never be sure of 
 a writer's place and importance in himself apart 
 from these relations to school and period: the 
 story of literary criticism with its laughable mis- 
 takes, its ironic reversal of opinions, has demon- 
 strated that. But it is within the modest scope 
 271 
 
272 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 of the estimate that has not the advantage of 
 time's perspective, to recognize certain relative 
 values and catch the meaning of the individual 
 author, his service in literary evolution. 
 
 Shaw may be considered in this latter way, while 
 we waive the ultimate question of permanent 
 standing, a phrase, indeed, which is self-contra- 
 dictory, as truly when we have Shakespere in mind 
 as when we seek to indicate the rank of one still 
 living; how do we know in the year of grace 1916 
 that the greatest dramatist of them all will sur- 
 vive the shocks of Time so that we may speak of 
 his contribution as " permanent " ? We only 
 know that he has successfully weathered the 
 storms of three hundred years. 
 
 The practical question then is, what impress 
 has Bernard Shaw made upon the generation 
 which, under the leadership of Ibsen, has con- 
 tributed to the development of English-speaking 
 drama? Is his place distinctive, important, has 
 it significance? Has he contributed to make what 
 we call modern drama in such manner as to in- 
 fluence it in form and substance, in aim and accom- 
 plishment? For one, I believe the answer must be 
 an affirmative. 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 273 
 
 But what is modern drama, since we must de- 
 limit and define in order to see Shaw in his due 
 relation to the interesting movement of which he 
 is a part? 
 
 A generation is usually taken to include a 
 period of about thirty-five years. The drama that 
 has been produced between 1880 and the present 
 can be called distinctively modern and is the 
 drama made by Ibsen and his contemporaries and 
 followers, in Europe and the English-speaking 
 lands. This movement is definite and means, 
 broadly speaking, a more serious attempt to con- 
 sider life in the theatre, to make the drama 
 thoughtful; and to use a technic which is the 
 logical form for plays that draw nearer to life 
 and emphasize psychology as a central interest 
 for dramatist and audience alike. A type of play 
 has thus been evolved which, whatever its loss on 
 the side of poetry and the attraction deriving 
 from so-called literary excellence, has gained 
 greatly in reality and truth; has permanently 
 contributed to dramatic literature certain quali- 
 ties of force, insight, and democratic sympathy; 
 and at times has brought forth masterpieces whose 
 effect as works of art has been to communicate 
 
274. BERNARD SHAW 
 
 the illusion of truth in dealing with modern 
 life. 
 
 In this shaping of the play under modern con- 
 ditions and with modern aims, Ibsen beyond all 
 question is the leader; as significant for our time 
 as Shakspere was for his. He gave modern 
 technic its formula and made the playhouse a 
 place where the great social themes now natur- 
 ally engaging attention might be discussed. Nor 
 did he in so doing turn the stage into a pulpit; 
 for his dramas were essentially stories told with 
 the skill necessary to make them theatre material. 
 Stern as may be the view, and polemic as are some 
 of the theses, Ibsen did not show himself as first 
 the preacher and second the playwright, but in 
 the trained opinion of Europe, as above all else, 
 first, last, and all the time, a literary force, an 
 artist who usedthe stage form of story. 
 
 In the revolutionary nature of his technic, the 
 seriousness of his themes, and the seemingly de- 
 structive quality of his social criticism, Shaw is 
 the foremost follower of the Scandinavian on 
 English soil. The differences between them are 
 many and wide ; it would be utterly misleading to 
 say that the Irishman imitates Ibsen ; for no man 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 275 
 
 is more himself, keenly sensitive as he nevertheless 
 is to the social thought currents of our day. But 
 there is, when all reservations are made, a funda- 
 mental fellowship between the two : both are critics 
 of societ}^, realists in method, individualists in at- 
 titude and teaching, and technicians who boldly 
 adapt the stage traditions to their particular 
 kind of endeavor. 
 
 In this sense, and without the unfair generali- 
 zation which allows for no personal dissimilarity, 
 it is not amiss to describe Shaw as the English 
 Ibsen. And there can be no question, I believe, that 
 his position in the school which has grown up on 
 English ground is of like importance. He is not 
 only the most brilliant satiric dramatist who uses 
 English speech during the period under discussion, 
 but the most influential. He has been a pioneer, 
 I have suggested, in giving prominence to the 
 idea of the printed play as a part of letters ; and 
 his plays have been so printed as to make the 
 important distinction between a stage drama re- 
 produced, shorthand direction and all, in book 
 form, and the same play so printed as to be 
 pleasurable reading because intelligently aimed at 
 the reading public, and accompanied by prefaces 
 
276 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 that are in themselves worthy pieces of critical 
 literature about the stage and its children. 
 
 Shaw in his themes and his way of handling 
 those themes has also pointed out the path of 
 freedom to his contemporaries. At a moment 
 when it was daring to do so, and spelled defeat, 
 he introduced unpleasant and unpopular topics 
 upon the stage, and instead of allowing himself 
 to be discouraged by the cold reception, or lack 
 of reception at all, stalwartly stuck by his guns 
 and waited for an audience to grow up to him ; in 
 this respect, offering a sharp contrast with other 
 playmakers, including some very well-known ones, 
 who, beginning with ideas and the desire to do 
 worthy work, serious in intention and unusual in 
 character, found it to their advantage to aban- 
 don such an advanced position and preferred to 
 win immediate favor by catering to the mob. Shaw 
 from the very first had the courage of his con- 
 victions, and nearly starved before forcing his 
 day to give him a hearing. His services in mak- 
 ing free speech concerning vital topics possible 
 upon the English-speaking stage are so unique 
 that it is highly likely his significance in this re- 
 gard will be an increasing element in the lasting 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 277 
 
 place he will take in our dramatic evolution. No 
 better way to remove the absurdity of an in- 
 competent censor can be devised than to have him 
 forbid the presentation of such plays as " Mrs. 
 Warren's Profession " and " The Showing-up of 
 Blanco Posnet." Such action is its own worst 
 enemy. 
 
 This dramatist has also performed a definite 
 service in establishing the fact that our stage 
 can be serious in intent, so far as the nature of 
 the subject-matter and aim of the author are 
 concerned, without giving up the specific object 
 of the theatre to entertain its patrons. 
 
 It is Shaw's peculiar gift and therefore his 
 distinctive service, to use the playhouse for serious 
 discussion without being dull ; a fact amply illus- 
 trated in the previous discussions. It is not the 
 intellectuals alone who appreciate and applaud 
 him, but the general theatre public ; a public car- 
 ing little or nothing about his ideas or reforma- 
 tory purposes, but reacting gladly to his wit and 
 humor, his flair for character, his genius for story 
 and situation. He kills two birds with one stone 
 because of the ambidextrous way in which he thus 
 wins the approbation of gallery and dress circle 
 
278 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 alike. His plays, often spoken of by commercial 
 managers as if they were the temporary fad or 
 pose of the elect, are in reality popular in the 
 democratic use of the word. These facts rebut 
 the assertion that Shaw's dramas are not really 
 dramas at all, but stage discussions. If a stage 
 story be an interesting grouping of a number of 
 human beings around the centralizing magnet of 
 an idea, then our dramatist usually gives his pa- 
 trons a story; and to carry it, he furnishes out 
 of a very remarkable creative fecundity a large, 
 distinct, and enjoyable number of characters em- 
 bracing most of the types of English folk to be 
 observed in the length and breadth of modern 
 Great Britain. That these characters are salient, 
 vivid, and highly amusing and arresting can 
 hardly be denied. 
 
 It is important in the attempt to settle Shaw's 
 position in modern drama to answer the question : 
 Has he the power of genuine character creation 
 and projection? Here is a fundamental test of 
 any dramatist. For, if the answer be in the 
 affirmative, then he takes his place among the 
 playwrights who are something more ; masters of 
 life, interpreters of human beings to the masses 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 279 
 
 of mankind. Such artists wear the purple by 
 right; they are of the tribe of Shakspere and 
 Moliere and Ibsen. Is it not true both for novel- 
 ist and stage story-teller that this is the question 
 of questions : that it is their highest function to 
 make us see, know, and be deeply influenced by the 
 Active creatures of their imagination who yet pos- 
 sess more of verity for us than the flesh-and-blood 
 persons whom we daily meet in the dream called 
 Life? 
 
 In considering Shaw's rank, then, such a search- 
 ing matter must be grappled with, looking to his 
 final award. It is frequently asserted that Ber- 
 nard Shaw's stage figures are not human beings 
 at all, but merely projections of his own indi- 
 viduality; clothes-horses upon which to hang his 
 whimsies and crotchets ; brilliant, galvanized pup- 
 pets, not reproductions of the actualities of life 
 recognizable as " true to experience " : a phrase 
 which means — so far as it means anything — the 
 traits and actions which square with our more or 
 less limited observation and knowledge of the 
 world of men. This is a charge which has also 
 been made, and j>erhaps always will be made 
 against the fictive creatures of Charles Dickens; 
 
280 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 a charge somewhat puzzling to sustain, inasmuch 
 as that novelist, whether his men and women are 
 veritable or not, manages to make them of lasting 
 reality in the affectionate memories of mankind. 
 The most ardent adherent of our dramatist is 
 not likely to claim unreservedly that he stands 
 with the greatest in the portrayal of character. 
 But it is quite possible to concede this, without 
 the extreme of declaring that behind his men and 
 women in general, stalks G. B. S. in a more or 
 less thin disguise: the mask of sex, or social con- 
 dition or type. I do not think that there is 
 either perception of his quality or justice to his 
 achievements in such assertion. The writer who 
 has conceived and embodied William the waiter, 
 Mrs. Warren and Vivie, Dick Dudgeon, Candida, 
 Lady Cicely, Napoleon and Casar, Doyle, Drink- 
 water, Jack Tanner and Ann, Barbara, Blanco 
 Posnet, and Dubedat, — these a few, where the 
 number extended to meet personal variations of 
 preference might be indefinitely increased, — can- 
 not be accused of a failure to add to the Eng- 
 lish portrait gallery some distinctive and suc- 
 cessful figures. If they seem non-human at first 
 meeting, it may be well to ask ourselves if we have 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 281 
 
 not been made accustomed in the consulship of 
 Plancus to conventionalized patterns of men and 
 women rather than to very humanity. Perhaps 
 part of our debt to Shaw lies in the fact that he 
 has forced us to see and get wonted to stage per- 
 sons who, like their counterparts in life, are 
 a curious bundle of contradictions ; the dramatist 
 thus broadening the gamut of stage painting. 
 The allecration that Shaw's characters are unreal 
 I suspect to be as unsound as the allegation that 
 his plays are nothing but talk. At least, it will 
 be good physic for our ego to cherish the thought 
 that inability to recognize Shaw's stage creatures 
 may be due not to their being out of drawing but 
 to some defect in our vision. 
 
 To be more specific : this writer draws historical 
 personages like Napoleon and Csesar, and rudely 
 disturbs the conventional conception of these 
 worthies. Is this merely an attempt to wrest 
 amusement out of some of the stock material of 
 history, to the result of an effect of fresh han- 
 dling of somewhat shop-worn figures? It might 
 easily be so taken, and often is. But it were wiser 
 to see that such rehabilitation is in the service of a 
 perfectly sober theory on Shaw's part: namely, 
 
282 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 he is of the opinion that the usual representation 
 of a man like Caesar, world-conqueror and author 
 of the " Commentaries," quite hides the rather im- 
 portant fact that he was a human being: and in 
 the play which deals with him he endeavors to ex- 
 plain Csesar by humanizing him. The real man 
 had been lost in the Et tu Brute pose. Shaw tries 
 to motivate one whom we know through a few 
 unsatisfactory external incidents and acts. 
 Whether he brings us nearer to the real Caesar 
 is not primarily the question: the aim is worthy, 
 and the method, it would seem, sound: for with- 
 out consistent motivation, historical characters 
 sink into hopeless figureheads: become what 
 George Washington became to countless school 
 children, the man who could not tell a lie ; in other 
 words, an unbelievable spook. How it warms 
 Washington for us if we only hear some one say 
 that he could lie, but refused to do so! We be- 
 gin not only to believe in him, but to admire him. 
 Those who in declaring that the Father of his 
 Country could not tell a lie sought to do him a 
 service, overlooked the sufficiently patent fact that 
 it is exactly the way to kill all interest in his 
 character or even existence. Yet no less an his- 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 283 
 
 torian than Bancroft solemnly sets down the 
 statement that Washington could no more depart 
 from truth than a star from its orbit. One can 
 but wonder if the youngest schoolboy will swal- 
 low that. If he do, he must be profoundly dis- 
 couraged at the information. It really would 
 seem as if in the older treatment of the immortal 
 George, the function of history were to make 
 Americanism a myth and patriotism a nuisance. 
 
 At least, then, we must distinguish between 
 Shaw creating monstrosities, mere projections of 
 himself, and Shaw widening the range of stage 
 characters by refusing to be confined to the well- 
 worn categories : the " leads," " heavies," and 
 " juveniles " of tradition. 
 
 At bottom, it is a question of creation. If such 
 characters are shells into which personal theories 
 can be poured, and are made by their begetter 
 for that purpose, then they cannot ring true as 
 genuine characterization. We see them through 
 an historical glass, darkly. 
 
 And so in the dramatist's handling of hu- 
 manity, whether historical or fictive, we have to 
 ask ourselves if we are not confusing truth and 
 tradition. 
 
284 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 If this idea that Shaw's stage people are possi- 
 bly truer than the stage convention and nearer 
 life just because they seem oddly different be a 
 sound one, then logically his characters will gain 
 in credence and acceptability as time familiarizes 
 us with them and a broader, deeper conception of 
 what human beings really are creeps gradually 
 into art. At present, it is, I imagine, temperate 
 to say that Shaw has given the world many 
 salient, enjoyable studies of modern types and 
 made them live as veritable flesh-and-blood crea- 
 tures and not mere skeletons upon which to hang 
 the trappings of his Shavian notions. 
 
 It will, with less probable objection, be granted 
 that the dialogue through which these stage folk 
 are revealed is of high literary excellence: in in- 
 cisive attraction and the effect of truth, the veri- 
 similitude which produces the illusion of reality. 
 One reason why plays like " She Stoops to Con- 
 quer " and " The School for Scandal " hold the 
 boards today is because the language in which 
 they are written is of genuine worth: they are 
 not only good acting plays but pieces of literature, 
 as we say. And it is exactl}^ so with Shaw's : they 
 stand the test of reading and re-reading. How 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 285 
 
 many plays do? Bernard Shaw is a conspicuous 
 and important dramatist today for the very 
 good reason, though by no means the only one, 
 that he has style: his manner of writing is his 
 own, and possesses distinction and a happy idio- 
 matic freshness. He is, quite independent of be- 
 ing a dramatist, one of the few admirable and 
 sound writers of the day. 
 
 With characterization and dialogue to his credit, 
 we may add that he has a gift, over and above all 
 that industry can do to develop it, for the dra- 
 matic nexus of a story blossoming in scene and 
 situation: and we might define a situation as a 
 scene at its tensest moment of interest. All the 
 reiterated careless talk about Shaw's having no 
 theatre sense for curtains and climaxes is comi- 
 cally erroneous, as I trust the discussion of the 
 dramas in sequence has shown; it overlooks his 
 constant and brilliant control and manipulation 
 of the raw material of the theatre in such wise as 
 to give us scenes of all but unexampled power. 
 Even in a play like " Getting Married," which 
 might be named as the least dramatic of his reper- 
 tory, when we have listened straight through to 
 the vivid battledore and shuttlecock of an argu- 
 
286 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 merit which curiously neither tires nor bores, is 
 not the scene when the mayoress turns mystic 
 one that has very great stage value — allowing, of 
 course, for the genre of the piece, namely, satiric 
 high comedy? When the curtain rings up on the 
 first act of " You Never Can Tell " we saw that 
 the very use of the dentist's office furnishes proof 
 positive that here is a playwright, like the late 
 Clyde Fitch in this respect, with an instinctive 
 feeling for stage effectivism in the use of daringly 
 homely, fresh matter, hitherto dodged by the ex- 
 perts of the playhouse. 
 
 The common idea that a grave defect in Shaw's 
 equipment as playwright is to be found in his lack 
 of emotional quality is based on a narrow and 
 false traditional conception of the use of the hu- 
 man emotions in drama. When emotion is spoken 
 of in this view, what is meant is sex emotion of a 
 a sort, and that not the best. 
 
 With his fervently held faith in those relations 
 of sex based upon sympathies of the mind and 
 spirit rather than upon the appeal of the senses, 
 he has not in thirty plays for one moment striven 
 for attention or approval by so presenting men 
 and women under the influence of what is euphe- 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 287 
 
 mistically called " love " as to feed the appetite 
 for the suggestive, the sensualistic, or the pas- 
 sional. A dramatist who foregoes all the oppor- 
 tunities offered by this twiddling upon sex har- 
 monics can certainly be said to have the courage 
 of his convictions: he abandons instantly and 
 forever that motive of appeal and applause which 
 is infinitely the most telling with any general 
 audience. 
 
 But he also foregoes this chance in the higher 
 ranges of sex relations : scenes of tenderness, lofty 
 sentiment, and sublimated passion are equally ab- 
 sent from his work ; and that this abstention limits 
 his power and cripples his effect may be granted. 
 I would not for a moment wish to deny that some 
 of the finest exhibitions of human psychology are 
 lost to the d^^namics of the theatre by this instinct 
 and attitude of Shaw's; for it is both. He is so 
 seized with the idea that a pseudo-romantic con- 
 ception of each other has worked havoc with men 
 and women in the world, that his reaction from 
 the conventional treatment of sex leads him into 
 an extreme that is hardly natural to his tempera- 
 ment, which is obviously not cool a^d calculating 
 in such matters, but perfervid and^ — he will take 
 
288 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 it hard of me for saying it once more — sensitively 
 sentimental. The result is that he sternly ban- 
 ishes the soft and melting passages of the central 
 passion of mankind from his scenes. Nor is he 
 himself unaware of this weakness of his, as he 
 would, intellectually, regard it, for he makes 
 open fun of himself in the person of John Tanner. 
 Tanner is humorously clear-eyed as to his in- 
 fatuation for Ann, and while his judgment, his 
 reason, rebels that he should be made part of the 
 life-force in this humiliatingly traditional fash- 
 ion, his heart moves him to take her in his arms 
 and be happy. 
 
 If, however, for sex love in the usual sense we 
 substitute love in various of the broader meanings 
 of this exasperatingly protean word, we shall find 
 this dramatist emotionally powerful and be forced 
 to release him from the charge of being cold 
 and intellectual at the expense of the warmer ap- 
 peals of dramatic representation. The emotional 
 value, for instance, involved in and displayed by 
 the relations of Vivie and her mother is tremen- 
 dous. And we certainly miss the point if we fail 
 to see that the very fact of John Tanner's satiri- 
 cally humorous arraignment of Ann in " Man and 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 289 
 
 Superman " makes all the stronger the genuine 
 passion with which he succumbs to her at the end. 
 The whole relation, too, of Candida to March- 
 banks, a relation offering hitherto unexplored re- 
 gions to the playwright, is surcharged with emo- 
 tional connotations that make the play most ex- 
 citing to the perceptive auditor. No man so capa- 
 ble as Shaw of leviathan noble rages and loft}^ 
 enthusiasms could fail to put into his depictions of 
 humanity the swift-flowing red blood of belief and 
 protest and prayer. It would be far nearer the 
 truth to maintain the thesis that in his plays in 
 general he is too emotional for his own good; 
 meaning that he cares so much for the ideas back 
 of his fables that, unlike Moliere, it tinges his 
 treatment with a polemic bias that injures its 
 artistic quality. To this, the defender of Shaw 
 might well reply that even granting the assump- 
 tion, his representations have the story interest 
 and the dramatic clinch which hold the attention 
 and create pleasure: and that this result justi- 
 fies the means. 
 
 But in estimating the position of a writer, it 
 surely is not sufficient to credit him with excellence 
 in the handling of the form he chooses to cast 
 
290 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 his thought in, nor to acknowledge the pleas- 
 ure to be derived from his presentation. The 
 thought itself, as a personal reaction to life, 
 and in the end as a contribution, destructive or 
 constructive, to the slow shaping of human des- 
 tiny which works out through the machinery 
 we call society, must be at bottom of decisive 
 moment in the award Time shall give him. The 
 personality of Shaw is, as our scrutiny of his 
 work has made apparent, piquant and arresting; 
 and his manner of unfolding it in drama has added 
 to the joy of nations. But is his thought, when 
 we strive to detach it from the manner of presen- 
 tation, of such validity and vitality as to endure 
 the wear and tear of Time? That is a question 
 that goes deeper, and cannot be dodged by any 
 author who would claim serious consideration. 
 
 That Shaw is not a philosopher in the sense 
 that he has evolved a synthesized general view of 
 things, has been shown in former chapters, in the 
 course of the study of him as social thinker and 
 mystic poet. I have suggested that the literary 
 artist as such is never the philosopher, first and 
 foremost; for the moment he becomes a philoso- 
 pher first, he ceases to be a literary force. Con- 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 291 
 
 sider Tolstoy. Few, if any, writers have been 
 both. Either the philosopher has crowded out the 
 artist, or the reverse has happened. But the 
 artist can be full of philosophical suggestiveness, 
 and often is ; Goethe occurs to me as a noble ex- 
 ample. In the same way, Bernard Shaw, tingling 
 with his feeling for the intellectual currents of our 
 era, intensely alive to the trend of modern evo- 
 lution, has packed his work up to the gunwales 
 with seemingly unsafe and therefore contra- 
 band goods and as a sort of independent cruiser 
 upon modern seas made it lively for ships of the 
 regular lines. He has forced them to do some 
 quick sailing and perhaps lower the record of 
 ocean liners, which is a service. And I believe he 
 prefers this almost piratical sailing for the ad- 
 vantage it gives him of unrestraint and freedom. 
 And if it be correct to see Shaw primarily as 
 a literary force, doing all the better work because 
 he refuses to have the ponderous consistency of 
 the cut-and-dried philosopher, then the question 
 whether his thought is sound or not becomes sec- 
 ondary so far as awarding him his position is 
 concerned. This is always true. If a writer re- 
 flect important issues of his day with force, con- 
 
2p2 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 viction, and a personal attractiveness, he will 
 survive in all probability, whatever may be the 
 fate of his creed or theory. The belief, the style 
 that was its honest embodiment, will remain, 
 long after the views, judged as to their accepta- 
 bility, have been thrown to the junk heap. Mil- 
 ton's " Paradise Lost " is still the greatest Eng- 
 lish, epic, although we smile tolerantly at its 
 theology, which now appears not only jejune but 
 puerile. Shakspere himself is not valued three 
 hundred years after his death for his intellectual 
 attitudes or aspects, but is stronger than ever 
 as our first expressionist and painter of human 
 life. Shaw's own words, in his letter to his friend, 
 Mr. Walkley, may be turned on himself here: 
 " He who has nothing to assert has no style and 
 can have none: he who has something to assert 
 will go as far in power of style as its momentous- 
 ness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove 
 his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. 
 Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job 
 nor of Handel than Martin Luther destroyed the 
 style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved 
 sooner or later; and so we find the world full of 
 a magnificent debris of artistic fossils, with the 
 
SHAW'S PLACE IN MODERN DRAMA 293 
 
 matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of them, 
 but the form still splendid." 
 
 Wise words and true, and entirely applicable to 
 the man who wrote them. Nietzsche is not a con- 
 structive philosopher but a brilliant literary 
 power ; Ibsen is not a philosopher and by his own 
 statement did not wish so to be taken. Browning 
 is not a philosopher, pace the societies founded 
 in his name and assuming that his function was to 
 give us nuts to crack. Shaw gives us much to 
 think about, and is of great value to suggest, 
 stimulate, clarify, pique. And since he does these 
 things in a way to be highly enjoyable he takes 
 his place as a literary force, and now and in the 
 future is to be studied as such. The claim that 
 he is a later Moliere may be an excessive one ; but 
 certainly he performs for his day and generation 
 very much the same service which the greatest 
 dramatist of France performed for his; namely, 
 to correct morals with a smiling mouth, castigat 
 mores ridendo: and to say more than this, either 
 of Moliere or Shaw, were to set them in another 
 category than that occupied by the makers of 
 literature. A challenging, vital thinker, a keen 
 and fascinating wielder of words, a skilled shaper 
 
294 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 of story in dramatic mould, a modern critic with 
 a passion for social betterment, who lives up to 
 his belief, and is aspirational in his social dream, 
 it does not seem likely that when the dust of com- 
 bat clears away from around a figure whose nat- 
 ural place is the arena, we shall fail to see him, 
 still fighting, fighting ever on, though the cause 
 be long since lost and won ; an enheartening spec- 
 tacle, as the sight of an honest fighter for a thing 
 worth fighting for must always be. Later gen- 
 erations may even see Shaw plainer than do we: 
 such reversals are the commonplace of history. 
 But in any event, it is a little difficult at present 
 to imagine him as supine and still; one finds it 
 easier to hear him cry, with Browning: 
 
 " / was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 The best and the last I " 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The non-dramatic writings of Shaw are volu- 
 minous and no list of them need be given in con- 
 nection with this study of the playwright. They 
 include five pieces of fiction, two volumes of 
 dramatic criticism, and various books of essay 
 and criticism, of which " The Quintessence of 
 Ibsen " is noteworthy. Much of Shaw's best 
 thought in the field of economics and sociology is 
 to be found in his contributions to " The Fabian 
 Essays." The Prefaces to the plays contain a 
 large and valuable part of his opinions not alone 
 upon drama and the theatre, but concerning 
 things in general: they are his explicit critical 
 view which in the plays themselves is more or 
 less concealed in the story. 
 
 A full list of the dramas in the order of their 
 composition follows : 
 
 Widowers' Houses, 1885-92. 
 The Philanderer, 1893. 
 Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1893. 
 Arms and the Man, 1894. 
 Candida, 1894. 
 
 You Never Can Tell, 1895-6-7. 
 295 
 
296 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Man of Destiny, 1895. 
 The Devil's Disciple, 1896-7- 
 Caesar and Cleopatra, 1898. 
 Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 1898-9. 
 The Admirable Bashville, 1902-3. 
 Man and Superman, 1903-4. 
 John Bull's Other Island, 1904. 
 How He Lied to Her Husband, 1904. 
 Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction, 1905. 
 Major Barbara, 1905. 
 The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906. 
 The Interlude at The Playhouse, 1907. 
 Getting Married, 1908. 
 The Sho wing-up of Blanco Posnet, 1909- 
 Press Cuttings, 1909- 
 Misalliance, 1909-10. 
 The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 1910. 
 Fanny's First Play, 1910-11. 
 Androcles and the Lion, 1912. 
 Overruled, 1912. 
 Pygmalion, 1912. 
 Great Catherine, 1913. 
 The Music Cure, 1913. 
 
 O'Flaherty, V. C, 1915 (unproduced and unpub- 
 lished). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 147, 
 187 
 
 Aberdeen, 66 
 
 Actors' Orphanage, 119 
 
 Adelphi Terrace, 30, 231 
 
 "Admirable Bashville, The: 
 or Constancy Unre- 
 warded," 106-107 
 
 Albany, N. Y., 89 
 
 American Academy of Dra- 
 matic Arts, 82 
 
 " Androcles and the Lion," 
 28, 84., 164, 167-173, 176, 
 247, 262 
 
 Androcles, in " Androcles 
 and the Lion," 171, 172, 
 248 
 
 Ann, in "Man and Super- 
 man," 78, 109, 110, 112, 
 113, 179, 260, 280, 288 
 
 Archer, William, dramatic 
 critic, and Shaw, 24, 119, 
 164, 255 
 
 " Areopagitica, The," 153 
 
 "Arms and the Man," 58- 
 65, 66, 96, 123, 252 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 211 
 
 Art, liberty in, 153, 163 
 
 Asquith, Lord, in " Press 
 Cuttings," 155 
 
 " Autocrat of the Breakfast 
 Table, The," 134 
 
 Avenue Theatre, 58 
 
 Ayot St. Lawrence, 30 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, 150 
 Balsquith, in " Press Cut- 
 tings," 156 
 
 Balzac, 201 
 
 Bancroft, 283 
 
 Banger, Mrs., in " Press Cut- 
 tings," 154 
 
 Barbara in "Major Bar- 
 bara," 121, 122, 123, 124, 
 125, 127, 128, 280 
 
 Barker, Granville, 160, 167, 
 168, 246 
 
 Barrie, J. M., 72, 103, 173, 
 263 
 
 Bentley (Bunny), in "Mis- 
 alliance," 158, 159, 160 
 
 Bergson, 222, 230 
 
 Berkeley Lyceum, N. Y., 74, 
 82 
 
 Berlin, 58, 82, 89, 167, 176 
 
 Berliner Theater, 89 
 
 Bernstein, 253 
 
 Bijou Theatre, 89 
 
 Blanche, in " Widowers' 
 Houses," 44, 45 
 
 Blanco, in " The Showing-up 
 of Blanco Posnet," 149, 
 150, 151, 152, 219, 220, 223, 
 280 
 
 "Blanco Posnet, The Show- 
 ing-up of," 147-153, 219, 
 252, 261, 277 
 
 Bleecker Hall, Albany, 89 
 
 Bluntschli, in " Arms and 
 the Man," 59, 61, 63, 64 
 
 Bobby, in " Fanny's First 
 Play," 165, 166 
 
 Brassbound, Captain, 102, 
 104, 105 
 
 Bret Harte, 148 
 
 Brieux, Eugene, 12, 56, 94 
 
 297 
 
298 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Britisher, Shaw's typical, 87, 
 118 
 
 Broadbent, in " John Bull's 
 Other Island," 115, 116, 
 208 
 
 Browning, Robert, 229, 293, 
 294 
 
 Brussels, 67 
 
 Bunny (Bentley) in "Mis- 
 alliance," 158, 159, 160 
 
 Bunyan, 151 
 
 Burgess, in " Candida," 72 
 
 Burgoyne, General, in " The 
 Devil's Disciple," 94 
 
 Byron, 111 
 
 "Caesar and Cleopatra," 84, 
 95-100, 227, 262 
 
 Caesar, in "Caesar and Cleo- 
 patra," 96, 97, 98, 99, 227, 
 231, 280, 281, 282 
 
 Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 177, 
 182 
 
 Candida, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 
 75, 254, 260, 280, 289 
 
 "Candida," 9, 27, 31; ana- 
 lyzed, 66-74; 75, 76, 77, 
 80, 96, 123, 230, 231, 244, 
 245, 252, 268 
 
 " Captain Brassbound's Con- 
 version," 77, 82; 100-105, 
 252, 256, 262 ' 
 
 Carlyle, 5, 7, 31 
 
 Carpenter, Edward, 20 
 
 " Cashel Byron's Profes- 
 sion," 106 
 
 Catherine, in "Arms and 
 the Man," 61 
 
 Catherine of Russia, in 
 " Great Catherine," 183, 
 184 
 
 Celt, a generic term, 16 
 
 Censorship of plays, Shaw 
 on, 6; 147, 187, 277 
 
 Charteris, in "The Philan- 
 derer," 47 
 
 "Cherry Orchard," 246 
 
 Chesterton, on Shaw, 151; 
 186 
 
 Chicago, 46 
 
 " Chocolate Soldier, The," 
 65 
 
 Christian Science, 136 
 
 Christians, 169, 170, 172 
 
 Church, The, 208 
 
 Civic and Dramatic Guild, 
 The, 153 
 
 Clandon, in " You Never Can 
 Tell," 78 
 
 Cleopatra, in " Caesar and 
 Cleopatra," 97, 99 
 
 Collins, in "Getting Mar- 
 ried," 141, 143 
 
 Comedy Theatre, N. Y., 163 
 
 " Commentaries," Caesar's, 
 282 
 
 Congreve, 42 
 
 "Connecticut Yankee at the 
 Court of King Arthur," 
 185 
 
 Copyright Laws, English, 
 106 
 
 Corbett, James J., 106 
 
 Court Theatre, 46, 82, 114, 
 120, 129 
 
 Crampton, in " You Never 
 Can Tell," 81 
 
 Crane, Stephen, 64 
 
 Craven, in "The Philan- 
 derer," 48 
 
 Criterion Theatre, 100, 163 
 
 Critics, Dramatic, 164, 240,- 
 241, 259 
 
 Croydon, 82 
 
 Cuthbertson, in "The Phi- 
 landerer," 48 
 
 "Cymbeline," 48 
 
 Daily Mail, London, 139 
 Daly, Arnold, 67 
 Daly's Theatre, N. Y., 106 
 " Damaged Goods," 12 
 Daniels, Elder, in " Blanco 
 Posnet," 150, 220 
 
INDEX 
 
 299 
 
 Dante, 271 
 
 "Dark Lady of the Son- 
 nets, The," 160-162, 262 
 Darwin, 19, 217, 292 
 Denshawai Horror, The, 118 
 Deutsches Theater, Berlin, 
 
 58, 129 
 "Devil's Disciple, The," 89- 
 
 95; 96, 123, 139, 148, 151, 
 
 221, 248, 251, 254, 255 
 Dick, see Dudgeon 
 Dickons, 72, 85, 159, 182, 279 
 Divorce, Marriage and, 141- 
 
 146 
 "Doctor's Dilemma, The," 
 
 46, 129-139, 232, 252, 255, 
 
 258, 262, 264 
 Don Juan, in "Man and 
 
 Superman," 111, 223 
 Doolittle, in "Pygmalion," 
 
 182 
 Dora, in "Fanny's First 
 
 Play," 165, 166 
 Doyle, 280 
 Drama, the modern, Shaw 
 
 in, 271 
 Dresden, 66 
 Drinkwater, in " Capt. 
 
 Brassbound's Conversion," 
 
 104, 280 
 Dubedat, in "The Doctor's 
 
 Dilemma," 130, 232, 258, 
 
 280 
 Dublin, 8; Shaw's life in, 17- 
 
 18, 263 
 Dudgeon, Dick, in "The 
 • Devil's Disciple," 90-94, 
 
 221, 251, 254, 280 
 Duke of York's Theatre, 
 
 The, 173 
 
 Edison Telephone Company, 
 
 19 
 Edith, in " Getting Married," 
 
 142 
 Elder Daniels, see Daniels 
 Eliot, George, 1, 151, 207 
 
 Eliza, in "Pygmalion," 178 
 180, 181, 182 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 161, 162, 
 184 
 
 Elizabethan dramatists criti- 
 cised, 107 
 
 Elliot, Gertrude, 96 
 
 Emerson, 128, 218, 219, 229 
 
 Empire Theatre, N. Y., 82, 
 100 
 
 English art ideals, 99 
 
 English, see Britisher 
 
 Ervine, Mr., 187 
 
 Essie, in "The Devil's Dis- 
 ciple," 90 
 
 Eugenics, 72, 160, 193, 195, 
 198, 199, 235 
 
 Eugenists satirized, 73, 160 
 
 Evolution, Doctrine of, 216 
 
 Eynsford-Hills, Mrs., in 
 "Pygmalion," 182 
 
 Fabian creed, 23, 190; policy, 
 194 
 
 Fabian Essays, 24 
 
 Fabian Society, founded, 22 
 
 Family life, 171, 200 et seq. 
 
 "Fanny's First Play," 31, 
 162-167, 177, 223, 243, 262, 
 268 
 
 Farrell, Mrs., in " Press Cut- 
 tings," 155, 156 
 
 Feemv, in " The Showing-up 
 of * Blanco Posnet," 150, 
 220 
 
 Ferrovius, 170 
 
 Fitch, Clyde, 286 
 
 Forbes-Robertson, Sir John- 
 ston, 96 
 
 France, Shaw's vogue in, 3 
 
 Frank, in "Mrs. Warren's 
 Profession," 50, 51, 53 
 
 Frankenstein, 181 
 
 Freddy, in " Pygmalion," 
 179,^182 
 
 French triangle, 254 
 
 Freud, 222 
 
300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Galsworthy's "Justice," 54 
 Garden Theatre, N. Y., 77 
 Gardiner, in " Mrs. Warren's 
 
 Profession," 51 
 Garrick Theatre, N. Y., 49, 
 
 114 
 Gaul, 228 
 
 George, Grace, 101, 120 
 George, Henry, influence up- 
 on Shaw, 20, 22, 192 
 George, Mrs., in "Getting 
 
 Married," 141, 143, 146, 
 
 224-226, 286 
 Germany, Shaw's vogue in, 3 
 "Getting Married," 28, 46, 
 
 140-46, 195, 224, 244, 245, 
 
 261, 263, 268, 285 
 "Ghosts," 49 
 Gibney, Mrs., in " Fanny's 
 
 First Play," 166 
 Giotto, 292 
 Giuseppi, in "The Man of 
 
 Destiny," 88 
 Gloria, in " You Never Can 
 
 Tell," 78, 81 
 Goethe, 291 
 Grace, in " The Philanderer," 
 
 47, 49 
 "Great Catherine," 84, 183- 
 
 185, 243, 268 
 Greek drama, 264 
 Grein's Independent T'heatre 
 
 movement, 26 
 
 Haeckel, 217 
 
 HaflBgan, in "John Bull's 
 
 Other Island," 115, 116 
 Hale, Professor Edward 
 
 Everett, 149 
 Hammersmith, 89 
 Hammon's book on Shaw, 3, 
 
 121 
 Handel, 292 
 Hapgood, Norman, 76 
 Haymarket Theatre, 141, 
 
 158, 160 
 "Healer, The," 135 
 
 Heine, 11 
 
 Helden, 58 
 
 Helmer, in "A Doll's 
 House," 250 
 
 Henderson, Dr., Shavian 
 biographer, 15, 50, 75, 77, 
 108, 230, 243 
 
 Her Majesty's Theatre, 176 
 
 Herald Square Theatre, N. 
 Y., 58 
 
 Hero, The, satirized, 59-60, 
 202 
 
 Herrick's novel, 135 
 
 Higgins, in " Pygmalion," 
 178-182 
 
 Holmes, Dr. O. W., 134, 135 
 
 Home Rule, for Ireland, 117 
 
 Homer, 243, 271 
 
 Hotchkiss, in " Getting Mar- 
 ried," 141 
 
 " How He Lied to Her Hus- 
 band," 74-76, 82, 88, 262, 
 268 
 
 Hudson Theatre, N. Y., 108 
 
 Huxley, 19, 216 
 
 Hyde Park, 20, 32, 119 
 
 Hypatia, in " Misalliance," 
 158, 160 
 
 Ibsen, Shaw compared with, 
 32, 42, 50, 53, 5Q, 62, 149, 
 181, 190, 196, 250, 254, 
 259, 261, 265, 272-274, 279, 
 293 
 
 Imperial Theatre, 106 
 
 Independent Theatre, 39, 46, 
 49, 58, 66 
 
 India, 158 
 
 "Interlude at The Play- 
 house, The," 139-40 
 
 Ireland, Shaw ancestor in, 
 16, 187 
 
 Irish Literary Theatre, The, 
 114 
 
 Irish Players, The, 147, 150, 
 263 
 
 Irish question, in "John 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Bull's Other Island," 115- 
 116 
 
 "Irrational Knot, The," 24- 
 Irving, Henry, 83 
 
 James, William, 57 
 
 Jesus, Doctrines of, 168, 169 
 
 Job, 292 
 
 "John Bull's Other Island," 
 114-120, 131, 208 
 
 Johnny, in " Misalliance," 
 158 
 
 Joyne, J. L., 20 
 
 Judith, in " The Devil's Dis- 
 ciple," 94 
 
 Julia, in " The Philanderer," 
 47 
 
 Juno, Mrs., in "Overruled," 
 175 
 
 "Justice," Galsworthy's, 54 
 
 Keegan, Father, in " John 
 
 Bull's Other Island," 116- 
 
 118, 208 
 Kennedy, 263 
 Kingsley, Charles, 73 
 Kingston, Gertrude, 101 
 Kingston Theatre, 114 
 Kings way. The, 163 
 Kitchener, Lord, 155, 156 
 Knox, Mrs., in " Fanny's 
 
 First Play," 166 
 Konigliches Schauspielhaus, 
 
 66 
 
 Lady Cicely, in " Capt. 
 
 Brassbound's Conversion," 
 
 102-105, 127, 252, 280 
 Ladv Corinthia, in " Press 
 
 Cuttings," 154 
 "Lady Windermere's Fan," 
 
 37 
 Lamarck, 217 
 Land Reform Union, 20 
 Larry, in "John Bull's 
 
 Other Island," 115, 116 
 
 Lavinia, 170 
 
 Leo, in " Getting Married," 
 141 
 
 Lessing Theater, 176 
 
 "Letter to Father Damien," 
 118 
 
 Liberty, 171 
 
 Lickcheese, 42 
 
 "Little Eyolf," 62 
 
 Little Theatre, 163, 186 
 
 Lomax, in "Major Bar- 
 bara," 122 
 
 London, Shaw's struggles in, 
 4, 17 et seq.; 49, 66, 67, 
 82, 89, 93, 134 
 
 London School Board, 29 
 
 London Stage Society, The, 
 76, 100, 106, 108 
 
 Lord Chamberlain, censor- 
 ship of, 147 
 
 Lord Summerhays, in " Mis- 
 alliance," 158 
 
 Louis, in " The Doctor's Di- 
 lemma," 131-133 
 
 Louka, in " Arms and the 
 Man," 61, 64 
 
 Love, Shavian philosophy 
 anent, 44, 158, 226-229, 
 287-288 
 
 Luther, Martin, 292 
 
 McCabe, Shavian biographer, 
 
 15, 16, 20, 23 
 McCarthy, Lillah, 165, 167 
 Macaroni Committee and 
 
 Company, in " The Music 
 
 Cure," 186 
 Mackaye's "Mater," 103 
 "Madras House," 246 
 "Magic," 186 
 "Major Barbara," 120-128, 
 
 131 197 
 Mallock, W. H., 211 
 "Mnn and Superman," 9, 45, 
 
 108-114, 126, 156, 186, 252, 
 
 262, 288 
 Manchester, 154 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Man of Destiny, The," 74, 
 77, 82-89, 118, 262 
 
 Mansfield, Richard, 58, 67, 
 83, 89 
 
 Marchbanks, in "Candida," 
 68-72, 230, 289 
 
 Marconi scandal, 185 
 
 Margaret, in " Fanny's First 
 Play," 165, 166, 167, 223 
 
 Mark Twain, 185 
 
 Marriage, 46 ; in " Getting 
 Married," 141-146 ; in 
 "Misalliance," 158; in 
 "Overruled," 173-176; 245 
 
 Martyr type, 169, 172 
 
 Marx, 22, 192 
 
 "Mater," 103 
 
 "Maternity," 12, 94 
 
 Maude, Cyril, 76, 77, 83, 119, 
 139 
 
 Megaera, in " Androcles and 
 the Lion," 171 
 
 Meredith, George, and inter- 
 viewers, 31 
 
 Michael Angelo, 232 
 
 Middleton, 263 
 
 Milton, John, 153, 292 
 
 "Misalliance," 157-160, 196 
 
 Mitchener, in " Press Cut- 
 tings," 156 
 
 "Moliere of the Twentieth 
 Century, The," 3^^- 
 
 Moliere, the Don Juan of, 
 111; and the professions, 
 178; Shaw compared with, 
 279, 289, 293 
 
 Moody, American evangelist, 
 18 
 
 Morell, Rev. James, in 
 " Candida," 72, 73, 230, 231 
 
 Morocco, 101 
 
 Morris, William, 31, 206 
 
 Mozart, 111, 261 
 
 "Music Cure, The," 185-187 
 
 Napoleon, as delineated by 
 Shaw, 85, 86, 280, 281 
 
 Neues Theater, 82 
 
 New Amsterdam Theatre, 
 
 N Y., 95 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 95 
 New England, in " The 
 
 Devil's Disciple," 89 
 New Haven, 49 
 New Lyric Club, 49 
 New Woman, The, 78 
 New York City, Shaw plays 
 
 in, 3, 46, 49, 66, 67, 101, 
 
 176 
 Nicola, in " Arms and the 
 
 Man," 61 
 Nietzsche, 93, 125, 215, 217, 
 
 222, 293 
 Nora, in " A Doll's House," 
 
 197, 250 
 Nora, in " John Bull's Other 
 
 Island," 115, 116 
 
 "Oedipus the King," 56 
 " O'Flaherty, V. C," 8, 187 
 Olivier, Sidney, 20 
 Overman, Attaining, 216, 
 
 218, 233 
 "Overruled," 173-176 
 
 Palmer, John, 9 
 
 "Paradise Lost," 292 
 
 Park Theatre, 177 
 
 Parliament, and Shaw, 24 
 
 " Passion, Poison, and Petri- 
 faction," 119, 184 
 
 Patiomkin, in " Great Cath- 
 erine," 184 
 
 Patsv, in "John Bull's 
 Other Island," 116 
 
 Payne-Townshend, Miss 
 
 Charlotte Frances, Shaw 
 marries, 29 
 
 Percival, in " Misalliance," 
 160 
 
 PetkofF, in "Arms and the 
 Man," 61 
 
 " Philanderer, The," ana- 
 lyzed, 45-49, 58, 174 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Philistines satirized, 164, 
 249 
 
 Pickering, in "Pygmalion," 
 183 
 
 Pinero, Sir Arthur, 54, 173 
 
 Plancus, 281 
 
 Plato, 206 
 
 Play, the one-act, Shaw a 
 pioneer in, 263 
 
 Playhouse, The, of New 
 York, 120; in London, 139 
 
 Playhouse, value and signifi- 
 cance, 161 
 
 Play-writing, 162, 238 ; Greek 
 method, 264 
 
 Positivist, Shaw a, 207; re- 
 ligion, 208 
 
 Praed, in " Mrs. Warren's 
 Profession," 50, 54 
 
 " Preface for Politicians, 
 A," 117, 118 
 
 "Press Cuttings," 153-157, 
 185, 262 
 
 Princess of Wales Theatre, 
 The, 89 
 f Princess Theatre, N. Y., QQ, 
 263 
 
 Prossy, in " Candida," 68, 
 71, 72 
 
 Prostitution, 55 
 
 Public Opinion, Shaw's let- 
 ter in, 18 
 
 Puritans, Shaw's plays for, 
 89-91 
 
 "Pygmalion," 176-183, 262 
 
 Rabelais, 11 
 
 Raina, in "Arms and the 
 Man," 59, 60, 61, 63, 64 
 
 Ramsden, in " Man and 
 Superman," 112 
 
 Rankin, in " Capt. Brass- 
 bound's Conversion," 104 
 
 " Red Badge of Courage, 
 The," 64 
 
 Reginald, in "Getting Mar- 
 ried," 141 
 
 Religion, in " Blanco Pos- 
 net," 150; in " Androcles 
 and the Lion," 168 ; Shaw's, 
 205-209, 216-223 
 
 Rembrandt, 232 
 
 Revolution, The American, 
 89 
 
 Revolutionist, defined, 191 
 
 " Revolutionist's Handbook, 
 The," 111, 190 
 
 Richte, 11 
 
 Ridgeon, Dr., in "The Doc- 
 tor's Dilemma," 133 
 
 Romance, Shavian philoso- 
 phy anent, 110 
 
 Roman civilization, 169, 170 
 
 Rome, 228 
 
 Royal Court Theatre, The, 
 153 
 
 Ruskin, 7, 31 
 
 Russia, Shaw's vogue in, 3 
 
 St. James Theatre, 168 
 Salt, Henry, 20, 29, 216 
 Salvation Army, in "Major 
 
 Barbara," 121, 122, 124; 
 
 in "Fanny's First Play," 
 
 165 
 Sankey, American evange- 
 list, 18 
 Sarah, in " Major Barbara," 
 
 122 
 Saturday Review, 25 
 Saul of Tarsus, 151 
 Savoy Theatre, 95 
 Scandinavia, Shaw's vogue 
 
 in, 3 
 "School for Scandal, The," 
 
 284 
 Schopenhauer, 222 
 Scribe, 253 
 " Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 
 
 The," 54 
 Sergius, in "Arms and the 
 
 Man,'* 59, 60, 61, 63, 
 
 64 
 Sex problems, 50, 51, 55^ 68, 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 75, 88, 90, 174, 200-203, 
 286-288 
 
 Shakspere, compared with 
 Shaw, 3, 27, 56, 72, 83, 90, 
 271, 272, 274, 279, 292; 
 Shaw's criticism of, 125, 
 160, 161, 204 
 
 Shakspere National Memo- 
 rial Theatre, 161 
 
 Shavion principle, 44; in 
 "Misalliance," 158; in 
 " Man and Superman," 223 
 
 Shelley, 29, 70, 267 
 
 "She Stoops to Conquer," 284 
 
 " Showing-up of Blanco 
 Posnet, The," 147-153, 
 219, 252, 261, 277 
 
 Shvlock, 72 
 
 Siberia, Monk of, 165 
 
 Silver, in " Treasure Island," 
 104 
 
 Soames, in " Getting Mar- 
 ried," 141 
 
 Social teachings of Shaw, 189 
 et seq. 
 
 Socialism, Shaw and, 22, 153, 
 191 et seq. 
 
 Spain, 228 
 
 Spencer, 19, 217 
 
 Sphinx, The, 227-228 
 
 Spintho, 170 
 
 Stage Society, The,^147 
 
 Stein, Gertrude, 8 
 
 Stevenson, 104, 118, 151, 191, 
 267 
 
 Stockholm, 263 
 
 Straker, in " Man and Super- 
 man," 112 
 
 Strand Theatre, The, 77, 100 
 
 Strauss, Oscar, 65 
 
 Strindberg, 263 
 
 Sudermann, 263 
 
 Swedenborg, 225 
 
 Swinburne, 267 
 
 Tanner, John, in " Man and 
 Superman," 78, 81, 109, 
 
 110, 112, 113, 186, 260, 280, 
 288 
 
 Tarleton, John, in "Misal- 
 liance," 158 
 
 Tchekov, 246 
 
 Technic of play-writing, 238 
 
 Tennyson, 267 
 
 Terry, Ellen, 82, 83, 100, 101 
 
 Teufelskerl, 89 
 
 Theatre Royal, 95 
 
 Theatre Royal du Pare, 67 
 
 Theatre, the, Shavian defini- 
 tion of, 11; Shaw's deflec- 
 tion to, 25-28; his crafts- 
 manship, 238 
 
 Thessaly, 228 
 
 Times, the London, 211 
 
 "Toddles," 140 
 
 Tolstoy, 163, 258, 291 
 
 Tommy, in " Androcles and 
 the Lion," 171 
 
 Trebitsch, Siegfried, 167, 176 
 
 Tree, Sir Herbert, 83, 176 
 
 Trench, in " Widowers' 
 Houses," 40, 41 
 
 Twain, Mark, 11 
 
 Undershaft, in " Major Bar- 
 bara," 121, 123, 124, 125, 
 126 
 
 United States Commissioner 
 of Immigration, on public 
 ownership, 199 
 
 " Unsocial Socialist, The," 
 24 
 
 Vaccination, Shaw scorns, 
 136, 214, 217 
 
 Valentine, in " You Never 
 Can Tell," 78, 80, 81 
 
 Vegetarianism, Shaw adopts, 
 20; in "The Doctor's Di- 
 lemma," 136; in "The 
 Music Cure," 186, 216 
 
 Velasquez, 232 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 85 
 
 Vienna, 120 
 
INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 Violet, in " Man and Super- 
 man," 110, 113 
 
 Vivie, in " Mrs. Warren's 
 Profession," 50, 51, 54, 
 257, 280, 288 
 
 Vivisection, Shaw satirizes, 
 46, 136 
 
 Wagner, 25, 240 
 
 Walkley, A. B., 98, 139, 164, 
 292 
 
 Wallace, 217 
 
 Wallack's Theatre, N. Y., 
 129, 168 
 
 Wallas, Graham, 29 
 
 War, satirized in " Arms and 
 the Man," 59, 64; in 
 " Caesar and Cleopatra," 
 99, 100; in "Major Bar- 
 bara," 121 ; in " Press Cut- 
 tings," 155 
 
 War, the European, Shaw's 
 diatribe on, 8-10 
 
 Warren, Mrs., in "Mrs. 
 Warren's Profession," 51, 
 52, 53, 54, 280, 288 
 
 " Warren's Profession, Mrs,," 
 9; analyzed, 49-57, 58, 109, 
 153, 186, 245, 252, 257, 268, 
 277 
 
 Washington, George, 282, 283 
 
 Washington Square Players, 
 263 
 
 Webb, Sidney, 20, 192 
 
 Wells, H. G., 9, 190 
 
 " What Every Woman 
 
 Knows," 73, 103 
 "When We Dead Awaken," 
 
 Ibsen's, 32, 181 
 W^histler, 8 
 Whitehall, 162 
 Whitman, Walt, 240 
 "Widowers' Houses," 26; 
 
 analyzed, 39-45 
 " Wild Duck, The," 45 
 Wilde, Oscar, 37 
 William in " You Never Can 
 
 Tell," 41, 78, 80, 155, 280 
 " Woman of No Importance, 
 
 A," 37 
 Woman's social saga, 54 
 Woman suffrage, Shaw and, 
 
 146, 154, 156, 157, 196 
 Wordsworth, on woman, 127, 
 
 240 
 W5aidham, Sir Charles, on 
 
 "Candida," 67 
 
 " You Made Me Love You," 
 
 etc., 186 
 "You Never Can Tell," 41, 
 
 76-82, 91, 155, 260, 262, 
 
 267, 286 
 
 Zangwill, 263 
 
 Zeletical Society, Shaw joins, 
 19 
 
3i^77-l<-