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diff --git a/old/68209-0.txt b/old/68209-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6402bc0..0000000 --- a/old/68209-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3566 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of George Bernard Shaw: His Plays, by -Henry L. Mencken - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: George Bernard Shaw: His Plays - -Author: Henry L. Mencken - -Release Date: May 30, 2022 [eBook #68209] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Emmanuel Ackerman, Charlie Howard, and the Online - Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This - file was produced from images generously made available by - The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS -PLAYS *** - - - - - - George Bernard Shaw - his plays - - BY - HENRY L. MENCKEN - - - [Illustration] - - - BOSTON AND LONDON - JOHN W. LUCE & CO. - 1905 - - - - - _Copyright, 1905, by_ - JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY - _Boston, Mass., U. S. A._ - - - _The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PREFACE. - - BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION. - - THE SHAW PLAYS: - - Mrs. Warren’s Profession. - - Arms and the Man. - - The Devil’s Disciple. - - Widowers’ Houses. - - The Philanderer. - - Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. - - Cæsar and Cleopatra. - - A Man of Destiny. - - The Admirable Bashville. - - Candida. - - How He Lied to Her Husband. - - You Never Can Tell. - - Man and Superman. - - John Bull’s Other Island. - - Major Barbara. - - THE NOVELS AND OTHER WRITINGS: - - The Irrational Knot, Love Among the Artists, Cashel Byron’s - Profession, An Unsocial Socialist, On Going to Church, The - Quintessence of Ibsenism, etc. - - BIOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL. - - SHAKESPEARE AND SHAW. - - - - -PREFACE - - -This is a little handbook for the reading tables of Americans -interested enough in the drama of the day to have some curiosity -regarding the plays of George Bernard Shaw, but too busy to give them -careful personal study or to read the vast mass of reviews, magazine -articles, letters to the editor, newspaper paragraphs and reports of -debates that deal with them. Every habitual writer now before the -public, from William Archer and James Huneker to “Vox Populi” and “An -Old Subscriber” has had his say about Shaw. In the pages following -there is no attempt to formulate a new theory of his purposes or a -novel interpretation of his philosophies. Instead, the object of this -modest book is to bring all of the Shaw commentators together upon the -common ground of admitted fact, to exhibit the Shaw plays as dramas -rather than as transcendental treatises, and to describe their plots, -characters, and general plans simply and calmly, and without reading -into them anything invisible to the naked eye. - -The order in which the plays are considered is not the chronological -one, and some readers may think that it is not the logical one. -Inasmuch as an exposition of the reasons that urged its adoption would -waste a great deal of space, the point will not be argued. The brief -biography of the dramatist is based upon the most accurate available -eulogies, denunciations, reminiscences, and manuscripts. So, too, the -historical data regarding the plays and other publications. - -The reputation of Mr. Shaw as a playwright has so far exceeded his -renown as a novelist, a socialist, a cart-tail orator, a journeyman -reformer, a vegetarian, and a critic of literature and the arts, -that his novels and other minor works have been noticed but briefly. -But this is not to be taken as evidence that they do not merit -acquaintance. Even the worst of Shaw is well worth study. - - - - -BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION - - What else is talent but a name for experience, practice, - appropriation, incorporation, from the times of our forefathers? - - --FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. - - -A century is a mere clock-tick in eternity, but measured by human -events it is a hundred long years. Napoleon Bonaparte, born in 1768, -became an officer of artillery and gravedigger for an epoch. Born in -1868, he might have become a journeyman genius of the boulevards, a -Franco-Yankee trust magnate, or the democratic boss of Kansas City. And -so, contrariwise, George Bernard Shaw, born in 1756 instead of 1856, -might have become a gold-stick-in-waiting at the Court of St. James or -Archbishop of Canterbury. The accident that made him what he is was one -of time. He saw the light after, instead of before Charles Darwin. - -Darwin is dead now, and the public that reads the newspapers remembers -him only as the person who first publicly noted the fact that men -look a great deal like monkeys. But his soul goes marching on. Thomas -Huxley and Herbert Spencer, like a new Ham and a new Shem, spent their -lives seeing to that. From him, through Huxley, we have appendicitis, -the seedless orange, and our affable indifference to hell. Through -Spencer, in like manner, we have Nietzsche, Sudermann, Hauptmann, -Ibsen, our annual carnivals of catechetical revision, the stampede for -church union, and the aforesaid George Bernard Shaw. Each and all of -these men and things, it is true, might have appeared if Darwin were -yet unborn. Ibsen might have written “A Doll’s House,” and a rash synod -or two might have turned impertinent search-lights upon the doctrine -of infant damnation. It is possible, certainly, but it is supremely, -colossally, and overwhelmingly improbable. - -Why? Simply because before Darwin gave the world “The Origin -of Species” the fight against orthodoxy, custom, and authority -was perennially and necessarily a losing one. On the side of -the defense were ignorance, antiquity, piety, organization, and -respectability--twelve-inch, wire-wound, rapid-fire guns, all of them. -In the hands of the scattered, half-hearted, unorganized attacking -parties there were but two weapons--the blowpipe of impious doubt and -the bludgeon of sacrilege. Neither, unsupported, was very effective. -Voltaire, who tried both, scared the defenders a bit and for a while -there was a great pother and scurrying about, but when the smoke -cleared away the walls were just as strong as before and the drawbridge -was still up. One had to believe or be damned. There was no compromise -and no middle ground. - -And so, when Darwin bobbed up, armed with a new-fangled dynamite gun -that hurled shells charged with a new shrapnel--facts--the defenders -laughed at the novel weapon and looked forward to slaying its bearer. -Spencer, because he ventured to question Genesis, lost his best friend. -Huxley, for an incautious utterance, was barred from the University -of Oxford. And then of a sudden, there was a deafening roar and a -blinding flash--and down went the walls. Ramparts of authority that -had resisted doubts fell like hedge-rows before facts, and there began -an intellectual reign of terror that swept like a whirlwind through -Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. For six thousand years it -had been necessary, in defending a doctrine, to show only that it was -respectable or sacred. Since 1859, it has been needful to prove its -truth. - -It will take the perspective of centuries to reveal to us the exact -metes and bounds of Darwin’s influence. He himself probably gave little -thought to it. His own business in life was the investigation of -biological phenomena and he was too busy at that to take an interest in -politics or ethics. But his new method of assailing tradition appealed -to men laboring in far distant vineyards, and soon there was in -progress a grand assault-at-arms that left orthodoxy and custom dying -on the field. Huxley led the physicians and Spencer the metaphysicians. -Every time the former overturned an old theory of matter, the latter -pricked an old maxim of ethics. And so the search for the ultimate -verities, which had been a pariah hiding in cellars, like anarchism or -polygamy, became the spirit of the times. Whenever custom or tradition -reared one of its hydra-heads, there was a champion ready to strike it -down. - -The practical result of this was that seekers after the truth, growing -bold with success, began attacking virtues as well as vices. And herein -you will find the fundamental difference between the philosophers -before Darwin and those after him. The _Spectator_, in the ’teens -of the eighteenth century, inveighed against marital infidelity--an -amusement counted among the scarlet sins since the days of Moses. -Ibsen, a century and a half later, asked if there might not be evil, -too, in unreasoning fidelity. If you pursue this little inquiry to its -close, you will observe that George Bernard Shaw, in nearly all of -his plays and novels, follows Ibsen rather than Addison. Sometimes he -lends his ear to one of the two classes of pioneers he mentions in “The -Quintessence of Ibsen,” and sometimes to the other, but it is always to -the pioneers. Either he is exhibiting a virtue as a vice in disguise, -or exhibiting a vice as a virtue in vice’s clothing. In this fact lies -the excuse for considering him a world-figure. He stands in a sense -as an embodiment of the _welt-geist_, which is a word invented by the -Germans to designate world-spirit or tendency of the times. - - -II - -Popular opinion and himself to the contrary notwithstanding, Shaw is -not a mere preacher. The function of the dramatist is not that of the -village pastor. He has no need to exhort, nor to call upon his hearers -to come to the mourners’ bench. All the world expects him to do is to -picture human life as he sees it, as accurately and effectively as he -can. Like the artist in color, form, or tone, his business is with -impressions. A man painting an Alpine scene endeavors to produce, not a -mere record of each rock and tree, but an impression upon the observer -like that he would experience were he to stand in the artist’s place -and look upon the snow-capped crags. In music it is the same. Beethoven -set out, with melody and harmony, to arouse the emotions that stir us -upon pondering the triumphs of a great conqueror. Hence the Eroica -Symphony. Likewise, with curves and color, Millet tried to awaken the -soft content that falls upon us when we gaze across the fields at -eventide and hear the distant vesper-bell--and we have “The Angelus.” - -The purpose of the dramatist is identical. If he shows us a drunken man -on the stage it is because he wants us to experience the disgust or -amusement or envy that wells up in us on contemplating such a person -in real life. He concerns himself, in brief, with things as he sees -them. The preacher deals with things as he thinks they ought to be. -Sometimes the line of demarcation between the two purposes may be but -dimly seen, but it is there all the same. If a play has what is known -as a moral, it is the audience and not the playwright that formulates -and voices it. A sermon without an obvious moral, well rubbed in, would -be no sermon at all. - -And so, if we divest ourselves of the idea that Shaw is trying to -preach some rock-ribbed doctrine in each of his plays, instead of -merely setting forth human events as he sees them, we may find his -dramas much easier of comprehension. True enough, in his prefaces -and stage directions, he delivers himself of many wise saws and -elaborate theories. But upon the stage, fortunately, prefaces and -stage directions are no longer read to audiences, as they were in -Shakespeare’s time, and so, if they are ever to discharge their natural -functions, the Shaw dramas must stand as simple plays. Some of them, -alackaday! bear this test rather badly. Others, such as “Mrs. Warren’s -Profession” and “Candida,” bear it supremely well. - -It is the dramatist’s business, then, to record the facts of life as -he sees them, that philosophers and moralists (by which is meant the -public in meditative mood) may deduce therefrom new rules of human -conduct, or observe and analyze old rules as they are exhibited in the -light of practice. That the average playwright does not always do so -with absolute accuracy is due to the fact that he is merely a human -being. No two men see the same thing in exactly the same way, and -there are no fixed standards whereby we may decide whether one or the -other or neither is right. - -Herein we find the element of individual color, which makes one man’s -play differ from another man’s, just as one artist’s picture of a -stretch of beach would differ from another’s. A romancist, essaying -to draw a soldier, gave the world Don Cesar de Bazan. George Bernard -Shaw, at the same task, produced Captain Bluntschli. Don Cesar is an -idealist and a hero; Bluntschli is a sort of refined day laborer, -bent upon earning his pay at the least possible expenditure of blood -and perspiration. Inasmuch as no mere man--not even the soldier under -analysis himself--could ever hope to pry into a fighting man’s mind -and define and label his innermost shadows of thought and motive with -absolute accuracy, there is no reason why we should hold Don Cesar -to be a more natural figure than Captain Bluntschli. All that we can -demand of a dramatist is that he make his creation consistent and -logical and, as far as he can see to it, true. If we examine Bluntschli -we will find that he answers these requirements. There may be a good -deal of Shaw in him, but there is also some of Kitchener and more of -Tommy Atkins. - -This is one of the chief things to remember in studying the characters -in the Shaw plays. Some of them are not obvious types, but a little -inspection will show that most of them are old friends, simply viewed -from a new angle. This personal angle is the possession that makes one -dramatist differ from all others. - - -III - -Sarcey, the great French critic, has shown us that the essence of -dramatic action is conflict. Every principal character in a play must -have a complement, or as it is commonly expressed, a foil. In the most -primitive type of melodrama, there is a villain to battle with the hero -and a comic servant to stand in contrast with the tearful heroine. As -we go up the scale, the types are less strongly marked, but in every -play that, in the true sense, is dramatic, there is this same balancing -of characters and action. Comic scenes are contrasted with serious ones -and for every Hamlet you will find a gravedigger. - -In the dramas of George Bernard Shaw, which deal almost wholly with the -current conflict between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, it is but natural -that the characters should fall broadly into two general classes--the -ordinary folks who represent the great majority, and the iconoclasts, -or idol-smashers. Darwin made this war between the faithful and the -scoffers the chief concern of the time, and the sham-smashing that is -now going on, in all the fields of human inquiry, might be compared to -the crusades that engrossed the world in the middle ages. Everyone, -consciously or unconsciously, is more or less directly engaged in it, -and so, when Shaw chooses conspicuous fighters in this war as the chief -characters of his plays, he is but demonstrating his comprehension of -human nature as it is manifested to-day. In “Man and Superman,” for -instance, he makes John Tanner, the chief personage of the drama, a -rabid adherent of certain very advanced theories in social philosophy, -and to accentuate these theories and contrast them strongly with the -more old-fashioned ideas of the majority of persons, he places Tanner -among men and women who belong to this majority. The effect of this is -that the old notions and the new--orthodoxy and heterodoxy--are brought -sharply face to face, and there is much opportunity for what theater -goers call “scenes”--_i. e._ clashes of purpose and will. - -In all of the Shaw plays--including even the farces, though here to -a less degree--this conflict between the worshipers of old idols and -the iconoclasts, or idol-smashers, is the author’s chief concern. In -“The Devil’s Disciple” he puts the scene back a century and a half -because he wants to exhibit his hero’s doings against a background of -particularly rigid and uncompromising orthodoxy, and the world has -moved so fast since Darwin’s time that such orthodoxy scarcely exists -to-day. Were it pictured as actually so existing the public would -think the picture false and the playwright would fail in the first -business of a maker of plays, which is to give an air of reality to -his creations. So Dick Dudgeon, in “The Devil’s Disciple” is made a -contemporary of George Washington, and the tradition against which he -struggles seems fairly real. - -In each of the Shaw plays you will find a sham-smasher like Dick. -In “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” there are three of them--Mrs. Warren -herself, her daughter Vivie and Frank Gardner. In “You Never Can Tell” -there are the Clandons; in “Arms and the Man” there is Bluntschli, and -in “Man and Superman” there are John Tanner and Mendoza, the brigand -chief, who appears in the Hell scene as the Devil. In “Candida” and -certain other of the plays it is somewhat difficult to label each -character distinctly, because there is less definition in the outlines -and the people of the play are first on one side and then on the other, -much after the fashion of people in real life. But in all of the Shaw -plays the necessary conflict is essentially one between old notions of -conduct and new ones. - -Dramatists of other days, before the world became engaged in its -crusade against error and sham, depicted battles of other sorts. In -“Hamlet” Shakespeare showed the prince in conflict with himself, and -in “The Merchant of Venice” he showed Shylock combatting Antonio, or, -in other words, the ideals of the Jew at strife with Christian ideals -of charity and mercy. Of late, the most important plays have much -resembled those of Shaw. Ibsen, except in his early poetical dramas, -deals chiefly with the war between new schemes of human happiness -and old rules of conduct. Nora Helmer fights the ancient idea that a -married woman should love, honor and obey her husband, no matter what -the provocation to do otherwise, just as Mrs. Warren defies the mandate -that a woman should preserve her virtue, no matter how much she may -suffer thereby. Sudermann, in “Magda,” shows his heroine in revolt -against the patriarchal German doctrine that a father’s authority over -his children is without limit, and Hauptmann, another German of rare -talents, depicts his chief characters in similar situations. Shaw is -frankly a disciple of Ibsen, but he is far more than a mere imitator. -In some things, indeed--such, for instance, as in fertility of wit and -invention--he very greatly exceeds the Norwegian. - - -IV - -As long as a dramatist is faithful to his task of depicting human life -as he sees it, it is of small consequence whether the victory, in the -dramatic conflict, goes to the one side or the other. In Pinero’s -play, “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,” the heroine loses her battle with -convention and her life pays the forfeit. In Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” the -contest ends with the destruction of all concerned; in Hauptmann’s -“Friedensfest” there is no conclusion at all, and in Sudermann’s -“Johnnisfeuer,” orthodox virtue triumphs. The dramatist, properly -speaking, is not concerned about the outcome of the struggle. All he is -required to do is to draw the two sides accurately and understandingly -and to show the conflict naturally. In other words, it is not his -business to decide the matter for his audience, but to make those who -see his play think it out for themselves. - -“Here,” he says, as it were, “I have set down certain human -transactions and depicted certain human beings brought face to face -with definite conditions, and I have tried to show them meeting these -conditions as persons of their sort would meet them in real life. -I have endeavored, in brief, to exhibit a scene from life as real -people live it. Doubtless, there are lessons to be learned from this -scene--lessons that may benefit real men and women if they are ever -confronted with the conditions I have described. It is for you, my -friends, to work out these lessons for yourselves, each according to -his ideas of right and wrong.” - -That Shaw makes such an invitation in each of his plays is very plain. -The proof lies in the fact that they have, as a matter of common -knowledge, caused the public to do more thinking than the dramas of -any other contemporary dramatist, with the sole exception of Ibsen. -Pick up any of the literary monthlies and you will find a disquisition -upon his technique, glance through the dramatic column of your favorite -newspaper and you will find some reference to his plays. Go to your -woman’s club, O gentle reader! and you will hear your neighbor, Mrs. -McGinnis, deliver her views upon “Candida.” Pass among any collection -of human beings accustomed to even rudimentary mental activity--and you -will hear some mention, direct or indirect, and some opinion, original -or cribbed, of or about the wild Irishman. All of this presupposes -thinking, somewhere and by somebody. Mrs. McGinnis’ analysis of -Candida’s soul may be plagiarized and in error, but it takes thinking -to make errors, and the existence of a plagiarist always proves the -existence of a plagiaree. Even the writers of reviews in the literary -monthlies, and the press agents who provide discourses upon “You Never -Can Tell” for the provincial dailies are thinkers, strange as the idea, -at first sight, may seem. And so we may take it for granted that Shaw -tries to make us think and that he succeeds. - - -V - -“My task,” said Joseph Conrad the other day, in discussing the aims of -the novelist, “is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, -to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you _see_. That--and no -more....” - -“All that I have composed,” said Hendrik Ibsen, in an address to -the Ladies’ Club of Christiania, “has not proceeded from a conscious -tendency. I have been more the poet and less the social philosopher -than has been believed.... Not alone those who write, but also those -who read, compose, and very often they are more full of poetry than the -poet himself....” - -“The poet,” said Schopenhauer, “brings pictures of life and human -character and situations before the imagination, sets everything in -motion and leaves it to everyone to think into these pictures as much -as his intellectual power will find for him therein.” - -Let us suppose, for instance, that “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” is given -a performance and that 2000 average citizens pay to see it. Of the 2000 -it is probable that 1900 will be persons who accept unquestioningly and -without even a passing doubt the legal and ecclesiastical maxim that -the Magdalen was a sinner, whom mercy might save from her punishment -but not from her sin. A thousand, perhaps, will sit through the -play without progressing any further; it will appeal to them merely -as an entertainment and those who are not vastly delighted by its -salaciousness, will condemn its immorality. But the 900, let us say, -will slowly awaken to the strange fact that there is something to be -said against as well as for the ancient maxim. Eight hundred of them, -perhaps, after debating the matter in their minds, will decide that the -arguments for it overwhelm those against it, and one hundred will leave -the playhouse convinced to the contrary or in more or less doubt. But -the eight hundred, though they have left harboring the same opinion -that was theirs before they came, will have made an infinite step -forward. Instead of being unthinking endorsers of a doctrine they have -never even examined, they will have become, in the true sense, original -thinkers. Thereafter, when they condemn the Magdalen, it will be, not -because a hundred popes did so before them, but because on hearing her -defense, they found it unconvincing. - -In this will be seen the truth of the statement purposely reiterated: -that Shaw is in no sense a preacher. His private opinions, very -naturally, greatly color his plays, but his true purpose, like that of -every dramatist worth while, is to give a more or less accurate and -unbiased picture of some phase of human life, that persons observing -it may be led to speculate and meditate upon it. In “Widowers’ Houses” -he attempts, by setting forth a series of transactions between a given -group of familiar Englishmen, to show that capitalism, as a social -force, is responsible for the oppression that slum landlords heap -upon their tenants, and that, in consequence, every other man of the -capitalistic class, no matter what his own particular investments -and activities may be, shares, to a greater or less extent, in the -landlords’ offense. A capitalist reading this play may conclude with -some justice that the merit of husbanding money--or, as Adam Smith -calls it, the virtue of abstinence--outweighs his portion of the -burden of this sin, or that it is, in a sense, inevitable and so not -properly a sin at all; but whatever his conclusion, if he has honestly -come to it after a consideration of the facts, he is a far better man -than when he accepted the maxims of the majority unquestioningly and -without analysis. - -A preacher necessarily endeavors to make all his hearers think exactly -as he does. A dramatist merely tries to make them think. The nature of -their conclusions is of minor consequence. - - -VI - -That Shaw will ever become a popular dramatist, in the sense that -Sardou and Pinero are popular, seems to be beyond all probability. -The vogue that his plays have had of late in the United States is -to be ascribed, in the main, to the yearning to appear “advanced” -and “intellectual” which afflicts Americans of a certain class. The -very fact that they do not understand him makes him seem worthy of -admiration to these virtuously ambitious folks. Were his aims and -methods obvious, they would probably vote him tiresome. As it is, a -performance of “Candida” delights them as much as an entertainment by -Henry Kellar, the magician, and for the same reason. - -But even among those who approach Shaw more honestly, there is little -likelihood that he will ever grow more popular, in the current sense, -than he is at present. In the first place, some of his plays are -wellnigh impossible of performance in a paying manner without elaborate -revision and expurgation. “Man and Superman,” for instance, would -require five hours if presented as it was written. And “Mrs. Warren’s -Profession,” because of its subject-matter, will be unsuitable for a -good many years to come. In the second place, Shaw’s extraordinary -dexterity as a wit, which got him his first hearing and keeps him -before the public almost constantly to-day, is a handicap of crushing -weight. As long as he exercises it, the great majority will continue to -think of him as a sort of glorified and magnificent buffoon. As soon as -he abandons it, he will cease to be Shaw. - -The reason of this lies in the fact that the average man clings fondly -to two ancient delusions: (_a_) that wisdom is always solemn, and (_b_) -that he himself is never ridiculous. Shaw outrages both of these ideas, -the first by placing his most searching and illuminating observations -in the mouths of such persons as Frank Gardner and Sidney Trefusis, -and the second by drawing characters such as Finch McComas and Roebuck -Ramsden. The average spectator laughs at Frank’s impertinences and -at Trefusis’ satire, and by gradual stages, comes to laugh at Frank -and Trefusis. Beginning as comedians, they become butts. And so, -conversely, McComas and Ramsden, as their opponents fall, rise -themselves. In the first act of “Man and Superman,” the battle seems to -be all in favor of John Tanner and so the unthinking reader concludes -that Tanner is Shaw’s personal spokesman and that the Tanner doctrines -constitute the Shavian creed. Later on, when Tanner falls before the -forces of inexorable law, this same reader is vastly puzzled and -perplexed, and in the end he is left wondering what it is all about. - -If he would but remember the reiterated axiom that a dramatist’s -purpose is to present a picture of life as he sees it, without -reference to any particular moral conclusions, he would better enjoy -and appreciate the play as a work of art. Playwrights of Shaw’s -calibre do not think it necessary to plainly label every character or -to reward their heroes and kill their villains in the last act. It is -utterly immaterial whether Tanner is dragged into a marriage with Ann -or escapes scot free. The important thing is that the battle between -the two be depicted naturally and plausibly and that it afford some -tangible material for reflection. - -The average citizen’s disinclination to see the ridiculous side of his -own pet doctrines and characteristics has been noted by Shaw in his -preface to Ibsen’s plays. Ibsen has drawn several characters intended -to satirize the typical self-satisfied business man and tax-payer--the -type greatly in the majority in the usual theater audience. These -characters, very naturally, have failed utterly to impress the said -gentlemen. One cannot expect a man, however keen his sense of humor, -to laugh at the things he considers eminently proper and honorable. -Shaw’s demand that he do so has greatly restricted the size of the -Shaw audience. To appreciate “The Devil’s Disciple,” for instance, a -religious man would have to lift himself bodily from his accustomed -rut of thought and look down upon himself from the same distance that -separates him in his meditations from the rest of humanity. This, it is -obvious, is possible only to man given to constant self-analysis and -introspection--the 999th man in the thousand. - -Even when the average spectator does not find himself the counterpart -of a definite type in a Shaw play, he is confused by the handling of -some of his ideals and ideas. No doubt the men who essayed to stone -the Magdalen were infinitely astounded when the Messiah called their -attention to the fact that they themselves were not guiltless. But it -is precisely this establishment of new view-points that makes Shaw -as an author worth the time and toil of study. In “Mrs. Warren’s -Profession,” the heroine’s picturesque fall from grace is shown in -literally a multitude of aspects. We have her own antipodal changes in -self-valuation and self-depreciation, we have her daughter’s varying -point of view, and we have the more constant judgments of Frank -Gardner, his father, Crofts, and the rest. It is kaleidoscopic and -puzzling, but it is not sermonizing. You pay your money and you take -your choice. - - -VII - -But even if Shaw’s plays were not performed at all, he would be a -world-figure in the modern drama, just as Ibsen is a world-figure and -Maeterlinck another. Very frequently it happens, in literature as well -as in other fields of metaphysical endeavor, that a master is unknown -to the majority except through his disciples. Until Huxley began -lecturing about it, no considerable number of laymen read “The Origin -of Species.” Fielding is not even a name to thousands who know and -love Thackeray. And Adam Smith--how many citizens of to-day read “The -Wealth of Nations”? Yet it is undeniable that the Scotch schoolmaster’s -conclusions have colored the statutes of the entire English-speaking -world and that they are dished up to us, with new sauces, in every -political campaign. - -And so it is with playwrights. Ibsen is far less popular than Clyde -Fitch, but Ibsen’s ideas are fast becoming universal. Persons who -would, under no consideration, pay $2 a seat to see “Ghosts,” pay -that sum willingly when “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray” or “The Climbers” -is the bill. From these plays, unknowingly, they absorb Ibsenism in -a palatable and diluted form, like children who take castor oil in -taffy. That either is a conscious imitation of any Ibsen drama I do not -intend to affirm. What I mean is that the Norwegian is that model of -practically every contemporary play-maker worth considering, just as -plainly as Molière was the model of Congreve, Wycherley, and Sheridan. -A commanding personality, in literature as well as in statecraft, -creates an atmosphere, and lesser men, breathing it, take on its -creator’s characteristics. - -Shaw himself, a follower of Ibsen, has shown variations sufficiently -marked to bring him followers of his own. In all the history of the -English stage, no man has exceeded him in technical resources nor in -nimbleness of wit. Some of his scenes are fairly irresistible, and -throughout his plays his avoidance of the old-fashioned machinery of -the drama gives even his wildest extravagances an air of reality. So -far but two men have exhibited skill in this regard at all measurable -with his. They are Israel Zangwill and James M. Barrie. Perhaps neither -of them consciously admires Shaw: but the fact is of small importance. -The essential thing is that “The Admirable Crichton” is of Shaw, -Shavian, and that “Agnes-Sit-By-The Fire,” in conception, development -and treatment, might be one of the “Plays Pleasant.” - -And now let us proceed to a consideration of the Shaw plays. - - - - -GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS PLAYS - - - - -“MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION.” - - -Mrs. “Kitty” Warren, the central character of Shaw’s most remarkable -play (and it is one of the most remarkable plays, in many ways, of -the time) is a successful practitioner of what Kipling calls the -oldest profession in the world. She is no betrayed milkmaid or cajoled -governess, this past mistress of the seventh unpardonable sin, but -a wide-awake and deliberate sinner, who has studied the problem -thoroughly and come to the conclusion, like Huckleberry Finn, that -it is better, by far, to sin and be damned than to remain virtuous -and suffer. The conflict in the play is between Mrs. Warren and her -daughter, and in developing it, Shaw exhibits his insight into the -undercurrents of human nature to a superlative degree. Mrs. Warren, -though she is a convention smasher, does not stand for heterodoxy. -In truth despite all her elaborate defense of herself and her bitter -arraignment of the social conditions that have made her what she is, -she is a worshiper of respectability and the only true believer, save -one, in the play. It is Vivie, her daughter, a virgin, who holds the -brief against orthodoxy. - -“If I had been you, mother,” says Vivie, in the last scene, when the -two part forever, “I might have done as you did; but I should not have -lived one life and believed another. You are a conventional woman at -heart. That is why I am leaving you now.” - -This complexity of character has puzzled a good many readers of the -play, but though there is a complexity, there is no real confusion. -Mrs. Warren, despite her ingenious reasoning, is a vulgar, ignorant -woman, little capable of analyzing her own motives. Vivie, on the other -hand, is a girl of quick intelligence and extraordinary education--a -Cambridge scholar, a mathematician and a student of the philosophies. -As the play opens Mrs. Warren seems to have all the best of it. She is -the rebel and Vivie is the slave. But in the course of the strangely -searching action, there is a readjustment. Convention overcomes the -mother and crushes her; her daughter, on the other hand, strikes off -her shackles and is free. - -At the beginning Vivie is home from Cambridge, where she has tied with -the third wrangler--for and in consideration of a purse of $250 offered -by Mrs. Warren. For years she has seen very little of her mother, and -now, on the eve of a reunion, she is curious and inquisitive. They set -up housekeeping in a small cottage in the country, near the parsonage -of the Rev. Samuel Gardner, “a pretentious, booming, noisy person,” -and the friend of Mrs. Warren. There come, too, Sir George Crofts, “a -gentlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city man, sporting -man and man-about-town,” and one Praed, a sort of Greek chorus to the -drama. The Rev. Mr. Gardner’s son, Frank, “an entirely good-for-nothing -young fellow,” is attracted to Vivie, and so when Crofts casts his eye -upon her, there begins the action of a drama. - -Vivie, beginning by wondering at her mother’s long absence from home, -ends by harboring a sickening sense of suspicion. The elder woman’s -unconscious vulgarities, her bizarre view-point, her championing of -Crofts--all add fuel to the flame of doubt. At first Mrs. Warren tries -browbeating, after the orthodox custom of parents, but to her horror -she finds that Vivie will not submit to such an exercise of authority. -And soon they are face to face in a mighty struggle and there is no -quarter on either side. - -Finally Vivie demands to know the name of her father. Mrs. Warren -blusters, threatens, begs, evades, lies--and ends by breaking down -and telling the truth. Vivie is disgusted, horrified, appalled; Mrs. -Warren, at first in tears, returns to her browbeating. - -“What right have you to set yourself above me like this?” she demands. -“You boast of what you are to me--to me who gave you the chance of -being what you are....” - -“You attack me with the conventional authority of a mother,” replies -Vivie calmly. “I defend myself with the conventional superiority of a -respectable woman....” - -But for the present, it is Mrs. Warren who triumphs. She has reasons, -arguments, causes, theories: Vivie’s shields are merely custom, -authority, the law. Mrs. Warren sees her advantage and hastens to -seize it. She tells Vivie all--of the squalor that she knew, of her -temptation, of the lure of comfort--“a lovely house, plenty of servants -and the choicest of eating and drinking”--and finally, of her strong -and resolute determination to yield and of the fruits of her yielding. - -“Do you think,” she says, “that I was such a fool as to let other -people trade in my good looks by employing me as a shopgirl, a barmaid -or a waitress, when I could trade in them myself and get all the -profits, instead of starvation wages...?” - -Vivie is visibly impressed, and herein Shaw shows his skill in laying -open the human animal. His iconoclasts sometimes go to mass and his -saints sometimes sin, exactly as saint and sinner sin and pray in real -life. Vivie, we learn in the end, is the real sham-smasher of the two, -but in this scene she seems to change places with her mother. Mrs. -Warren, alert to the slightest advantage, drives home her logic. It is -a scene that exhibits the play of mind upon mind as no other scene in a -contemporary play exhibits it, saving only that marvellous one between -Marikka and George in “Johnnisfeuer.” Mrs. Warren’s picture of the -forces that overcame her, her sturdy defense of her philosophy of life; -her contempt for those who fear to risk their all--it would take a girl -more than human to resist these things. - -But the season of sentiment and pathos is destined to be brief. -Crofts, who is Mrs. Warren’s partner in her chain of brothels, resumes -his siege of Vivie. Even Mrs. Warren grows nauseated and Vivie’s -own disgust is undisguised. Then, for a moment, Crofts becomes the -conventional villain and hurls the sins of the mother into the -daughter’s teeth. It is all melodrama here--Crofts grows “black with -rage,” and Frank, bobbing up, rifle in hand, proposes to shoot him. And -then comes the climax. - -“Allow me, Mister Frank,” says Crofts, “to introduce you to your -half-sister, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Samuel Gardner. Miss -Vivie: your half-brother. Good morning.” - -As he turns on his heel, Frank raises the rifle and takes aim at his -back. - -“You’ll testify before the coroner that it’s an accident?” he says to -Vivie. - -She “seizes the muzzle and pulls it round against her breast.” - -“Fire now,” she says. “You may.” - -After that the play goes downhill to its inevitable conclusion. Vivie, -admitting her mother’s justification, revolts against her effort to -distort it into a grotesque sort of respectability. So there is a -parting and the daughter goes off to London, to begin life anew as -a public accountant and conveyancer. Mrs. Warren, now sunk to the -wailing, snivelling stage, follows her. The final scene between mother -and daughter is strangely impressive. Mrs. Warren pleads and begs and -screams. At the end of her rope she turns, and like an animal at bay -shows her teeth. - -“From this time forth,” she shrieks, with the air of a tragedy queen, -“I’ll do wrong, and nothing but wrong! And I’ll prosper on it!” - -“Yes,” said Vivie philosophically, “it’s better to choose your line and -go through with it. If I had been you, mother, I might have done as you -did; but I should not have lived one life and believed another.... That -is why I am bidding you good-bye now....” - -And so ends the play of “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” Posing as a -smasher of shams, Mrs. Warren is the most abject devotee in the whole -synagogue. Fenced within her virtue, Vivie is a true iconoclast--with -seasons of backsliding, it is true (for she is supremely human), but -with no permanent slacking of her unfaith. - -William Archer, the translator of Ibsen, says that the play is -“intellectually and dramatically, one of the most remarkable of the -age,” and Cunninghame Graham calls it “the best that has been written -in English in our generation.” And yet James Huneker finds Mrs. Warren -“a bore” and Vivie “a chilly, waspish pig,” and Max Beerbohm, confused -by the fact that Vivie runs the whole gamut of passions, up and down -again, in the four acts, complains that the play exhibits no change in -the characters and that Vivie ends as she begins--“determined to go out -into the world to work.” Certainly it seems wellnigh incredible that a -man of Mr. Beerbohm’s discernment should be blind to the vast battles -that rage in the girl’s soul--her horror at the beginning, her yielding -to sentimentality and her declaration for sincerity and truth at the -close. Were the play ended with the extraordinary second act, his -objections would probably seem fatuous even to himself. - -“Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” as a bit of theatrical mechanics, is -unsurpassed. Its events proceed with the inevitable air that marks -the work of a thoroughly capable journeyman: not a scene is out of -place; not a line is without its meaning and purpose. The characters -are sketched in rapidly and vividly and before the first act is half -over we have each of them clearly in our eye--Mrs. Warren and her -ancient profession, her vulgarities and her string of “private hotels” -from Brussels to Buda Pesth; the Rev. Samuel Gardner and his shallow, -commonplace hypocrisy; Frank Gardner and his utter worthlessness and -blasphemy; Crofts and his mellow lewdness; Vivie and her progress -from undergraduate cynicism and spectacular cigar-smoking to real -individualism; and Praed and his soft chanting in the background. - -Taken as a play, the drama is wellnigh faultless. It might well serve, -indeed, as a model to all who aspire to place upon the stage plausible -records of human transactions. - - - - -“ARMS AND THE MAN” - - “Arms and the man I sing.” - - --_The Aeneid._ - - -Arms and the Man,” on its face, is a military satire, not unrelated to -“A Milk White Flag,” and Shaw himself hints that he tried to keep it -within the sphere of popular comprehension, but under the burlesque -and surface wit there lies an idea that the author later elaborated -in “Man and Superman.” This idea concerns the relationship of the -sexes and particularly the matter of mating. Ninety-nine men in every -hundred, when they go a-courting, fancy that they are the aggressors -in the ancient game and rather pride themselves upon their enterprise -and their daring. Hence we find Don Juan a popular hero. As a matter -of fact, says Shaw, it is the woman that ordinarily makes the first -advances and the woman that lures, forces, or drags the man on to the -climax of marriage. You will find this theory set forth in detail in -the preface of “Man and Superman” and elaborated in the play itself. In -“Arms and the Man” it is overshadowed by the satire, but even a casual -study of the drama will reveal its outlines. - -The scene of “Arms and the Man” is a small town in Bulgaria and the -time is the winter of the Balkan War, 1885–6. Captain Bluntschli, -the hero, is a Swiss soldier of fortune, who takes service with the -Servians because war is his trade and Servia happens to be nearer his -home than Bulgaria. A machine gun detachment under his command is -overwhelmed by a sudden and unscientific charge of blundering Bulgarian -horsemen, and he swiftly takes to the woods, being little desirous -of shedding his blood unnecessarily. He and his comrades are pursued -by Bulgarians bent upon finishing them, and, passing through a small -town at night at a gallop, he shins up a rainspout and takes refuge -in the bed-chamber of a young woman, Raina Petkoff, the daughter of a -Bulgarian officer. - -The ensuing scene between the two is a masterpiece of comedy and -Richard Mansfield’s performances of the play have made it familiar -to most American theater-goers. Bluntschli, as Shaw depicts him, is -a soldier entirely devoid of the heroics associated in the popular -imagination with men of war. He has no yearning to die for his country -or any other country, and, after bullying his unwilling hostess with an -unloaded revolver, he frankly confesses that he is hungry and sleepy, -and that, as a general proposition, he prefers a good dinner to a -forlorn hope. She is a young woman suffering from much romanticism -and undigested French fiction, and very naturally she is tremendously -astonished. Her heavy-eyed intruder, as a matter of fact, fairly -appals her. His common-sense seems idiocy and his callous realism -sacrilege. - -But, nevertheless, the theatricality of his appearance makes an -overwhelming appeal to her and she shelters him and conceals him from -his enemies--her countrymen--and when he goes away, she sends after him -a portrait of herself, just as any other romantic young woman might do. -To her the incident is epochal, but Bluntschli himself gives little -thought to it. As he says afterwards, a soldier soon forgets such -things: “He is always getting his life saved in all sorts of ways by -all sorts of people.” So he fights a bit, forages a bit, perspires a -bit, draws his pay, eats his meals, and waits, in patience, for the war -to end. - -But Raina does not forget. Even when peace comes at last and her -betrothed, Major Sergius Saranoff, comes home, she still remembers -her “chocolate-cream soldier.” Sergius was the blundering ass whose -reckless charge sent Bluntschli flying through the night into Raina’s -chamber. He is a queer mixture of romanticist and realist, of -aristocrat and blackguard, with the ideals alternately of a Cæsar and a -potman. One moment he revels in a Byronic ecstacy with Raina, the next -moment he is making Mulvaney-like advances to Louka, her maid. - -This Louka is one of Shaw’s peculiarly human characters--a sort -of refined and developed Regina, taken from “Ghosts” and given an -essentially Shavian cast. She has a soul above servility, though she -answers Raina’s bell, and when Saranoff, awakening to his own grotesque -hypocrisy, revolts against Raina’s idealization of his very tawdry -heroics, Louka is ready to enmesh him in her net. She will be a fine -lady, this superwoman in a maid’s cap, and like Raina she will go to -Belgrade for the opera and to Vienna for frocks and frills. - -Bluntschli, returning, helps to set the stage for her. Raina’s father -and Sergius, her betrothed, have met the Swiss and invited him to the -Petkoff home, not connecting him with the intruder who invaded Raina’s -bed-chamber. They want him to give them aid in the prosaic business -of putting up the shutters of war--to show them how to get their men -home and feed them on the way. This is his true forte and he comes -to the domicile of the Petkoffs--and again meets Raina. She is now -twenty-three, and the usual physiological revulsion against Byronic -sentiment is beginning to stir her. She sees that Sergius, with all his -gallant cavalry charges and play-acting, is rather a cheap sort after -all, and in the same light she sees that Bluntschli, despite his frank -running away and his fondness for chocolate-creams, is the more honest -of the two. The Swiss himself still gives little thought to her. His -business is to show old Petkoff how to bring his regiments home, and -after that, to return to Switzerland and take over the management of -his deceased father’s chain of Alpine hotels. - -But, as Shaw hints, the man in the case has little to do with the -ordering of such dramas. Raina and Louka, each with her prey in sight, -fall to the chase. Sergius wavers, holds himself together, essays a -flight, is dragged back, and capitulates. As Louka carries him into -camp, the innocent and romantic little Raina is left free to bag -Bluntschli. He walks into the net with eyes wide open and, as it were, -sword in hand. When he finds himself enmeshed he is surprised beyond -measure, but he is a good soldier, is Bluntschli, and this time it is -too late to run away. - -“Major Petkoff,” he says to the old man, “I beg to propose formally to -become a suitor for your daughter’s hand.” - -And that is the end of the drama. - -A detailed description would spoil the charm of the play’s exuberant -and boundless humor. As a comedy it is capital, from the scene of -Bluntschli’s entrance into Raina’s chamber to the last scene of all, -wherein the Petkoffs cross-examine him as to his finances. Bluntschli -is no mere burlesque. In him Shaw has tried to depict a real soldier -as opposed to a soldier of the grand opera or Ivanhoe type. He has -succeeded, in his way, as admirably as Cervantes, albeit a great -many persons--like Raina herself--whose idea of soldierly bearing -is expressed in St. Louis and of heroism in the charge of the Light -Brigade, have been vastly puzzled by Bluntschli. - -Raina is drawn boldly and with what artists call an open line, and -her revolt against romantic tomfoolery and humbug is shown with -excellent art. Sergius, with his surface civilization and complex -personality--“the half dozen Sergiuses who keep popping in and out -of this handsome figure of mine”--and his keen self-analysis, is -naturally a less obvious type, but even he is perfectly consistent in -his inconsistency. Louka is the female Don Juan--the Donna Anna of “Man -and Superman,”--to the life. Her deliberate ensnarement of Sergius, in -itself would make a drama well worth the writing. The Petkoffs, Raina’s -parents, are simple-minded barbarians, and Nicola, their man-servant, -who willingly resigns Louka to Sergius, is of a breed not peculiar to -Bulgaria. - -The play, despite its abounding humor and excellent characterizations, -is not to be numbered among Shaw’s best. The second act, which should -be the strongest, is the weakest, and the remarkable originality -and humor of the first scene rather detract from those that follow. -Shaw describes the play as his first attempt at writing a drama -comprehensible to the general public. With this object in view, he -lavished upon it a wealth of wit, but it is to be doubted if the real, -inner humor of the action has ever gone home. Mansfield still has -it in his repertory, but he seldom presents it. Persons who admire -“Beaucaire” and “Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde” are not apt to demand it. - - - - -“THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE” - - -In “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” we saw individuals battling against -the law and in “Arms and the Man” we observed romanticism in an -_opera-bouffe_ catch-as-catch-can struggle with realism. In “The -Devil’s Disciple” we have revealed religion bruising its fists upon the -hard head of impious doubt. Dick Dudgeon, the hero (and he is a hero of -the good old white-shirted, bare-necked, melodramatic sort) laughs at -the commandments and the beatitudes--and then puts the virtuous to rout -by an act of supreme nobility that few of them, with all their faith in -post-mortem reward, would dare to venture. - -It is a problem in human motives that looks formidable. Why does Dick, -the excommunicated, brave Hell to save another? Why does he face death, -dishonor, shame and damnation, with no hope of earthly recompense and -less of glory in the beyond? For the same reason, in truth, that moved -Huckleberry Finn to save the nigger Jim at the cost of his immortal -soul. “I had no motive,” says Dick, in an attempt at self-analysis, -“and no interest. All I can tell you is that when it came to the point -whether I would take my neck out of the noose and put another man’s -into it, I couldn’t do it.” You will find the psychology of this -worked out in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, the mad German. If -you think well of your belief in the good and the beautiful, don’t read -them. - -The scene of “The Devil’s Disciple” is a small town in New England -and the time is the first year of the Revolutionary War. Shaw set -the action back this far because he wanted to display Dick against -a background of peculiarly steadfast and rock-ribbed faith, and the -present, alackaday! has little of it that isn’t wobbly. Dick’s mother -is a Puritan of the Puritans--a fetich worshiper whose fetich is the -mortification of the flesh. She flays her body, her mind and her soul -and in the end essays to flay the souls of those about her. Against all -of this Dick revolts. He doesn’t know exactly why, for Darwin is unborn -and doubt is still indecent, but he revolts, nevertheless. And so he -becomes a disciple of the devil. - -King George’s red-coats are abroad in the land, on the hunt for rebels, -and Dick’s uncle, a blasphemer and sinner like himself, is nabbed by -them and hanged for treason. Dick sees the hanging and enjoys it as a -spectacle, but it fails to make him a tory, and he comes home as much -an enemy of church and king as ever. Then the soldiers come nearer and -the rumor spreads that they propose to hang Dick as horrible example -the second. Anthony Anderson, the village pastor, undertakes to warn -him, and incidentally to counsel him against his sacrilege and his -sins. Dick, in turn, warns Anderson. King George’s men, he says, will -not choose the village heretic the next time. The uselessness of -such a course has been shown in the case of his late and unlamented -uncle. When they come to hang again, he points out, they will select a -patriot whose taking off will leave a profound impression and something -approaching regret--to wit, Anderson himself. The pastor laughs at -this. He is a holy man and a truly good one. He fears no military but -the hosts of darkness. - -But Dick is right after all. One morning he goes to the Anderson home -and while he is there the pastor is called away to the bedside of his -(Dick’s) mother. Dick does not think it is worth while to go himself. -His mother has tortured and preached at him from birth and he frankly -hates her. During the pastor’s absence soldiers come to the door. They -have a warrant for the good dominie, charging him with treason. The -sergeant sees Dick, and-- - -“Anthony Anderson,” he says, “I arrest you in King George’s name as a -rebel.... Put on your coat and come along....” - -And so Dick faces his Calvary, with no faith to lead him on. By all the -books he should seek shelter behind the truth and leave self-sacrifice -to the godly. But he is a man, this devil’s disciple, and he doesn’t. - -“Yes,” he says, “I’ll come.” - -The whole drama is played in this first act of the play and the rest -of it is chiefly rather commonplace melodrama. Judith, the pastor’s -wife, finds her anchors of faith and virtue swept away by Dick’s -stupendous sacrifice. At the beginning it seems her duty to hate -him. She ends by loving him. But Shaw complains pathetically of the -stupidity which made an actor account for Dick’s heroism by exhibiting -him as in love with her in turn. “From the moment that this fatally -plausible explanation was launched,” he says, “my play ... was not -mine.... But, then, where is the motive? On the stage, it appears, -people do things for reasons. Off the stage they don’t.”... Herein the -dramatist reads his orders aright. It is his business to set the stage -and give the show. The solution of its problems and the pointing of -its morals--these things are the business of those who pay to see it. -Let each work it out for himself--with such incidental help as he may -obtain from the aforesaid Friedrich Nietzsche. - -Dick is by no means the only full-length figure in the drama. Anderson, -the parson, is, in many ways, a creation of equal subtlety and -interest. He is a true believer to the outward eye, and he plays his -part honestly and conscientiously, but when the supreme moment comes, -the man springs out from the cleric’s black coat and we have Captain -Anthony Anderson, of the Springtown Militia. The colonists, so far, -have fought the king’s red-coats with threats and curses. When Dick’s -sacrifice spurs him to hot endeavor, Anderson is found to be the -leader foreordained. Off come his sable trappings and out come his -pistols--and he leads his embattled farmers to Dick’s rescue and to -the war for freedom. It is a transformation supremely human, and in -addition, vociferously dramatic. A wary builder of scenes is this man -Shaw! A Sardou peeping from behind Ibsen’s whiskers! - -One of the minor characters is General Burgoyne, that strange mixture -of medieval romance and modern common-sense who met his doom at the -hands of the Yankee farm-hands at Saratoga. Shaw pictures him as a -sort of aristocratic and foppish Captain Bluntschli and devotes seven -pages of a remarkably interesting appendix to defending the consequent -battering of tradition. “He is not a conventional stage soldier,” says -Shaw, “but as faithful a portrait as it is in the nature of stage -portraits to be.” - -The same may be said of most of Shaw’s characters. Dick Dudgeon is -certainly not a conventional stage hero, despite his self-sacrifice, -his white shirt, his bare neck, and his melodramatic rescue in the nick -of time. But he is a living figure, for all that, because his humanity -is fundamental. As Shaw himself says, some enemy of the gods has always -been a popular hero, from the days of Prometheus. That such an enemy -may be truly heroic, and even godlike, is evident, but evident facts -are not always obvious ones, and it requires plays like “The Devil’s -Disciple” to remind us of them. - -“Dick Dudgeon,” says Shaw in his preface, “is a Puritan of the -Puritans. He is brought up in a household where the Puritan religion -has died and become, in its corruption, an excuse for his mother’s -master-passion of hatred in all its phases of cruelty and envy. In -such a home he finds himself starved of religion, which is the most -clamorous need of his nature. With all his mother’s indomitable -selfishness, but with pity instead of hatred as his master-passion, -he pities the devil, takes his side, and champions him, like a true -Covenanter, against the world. He thus becomes, like all genuinely -religious men, a reprobate and an outcast. Once this is understood, the -play becomes straightforwardly simple.” - - - - -“WIDOWERS’ HOUSES” - - -Just as Ibsen, when he set up shop as a dramatist, began by imitating -the great men of his time, so Shaw, when he abandoned novel-writing -for play-making, modeled his _opus_ upon the dramas then in fashion. -Ibsen’s first play was a one-act melodrama of the old school called -“Kiaempehöien” and it has been forgotten, happily, these fifty years. -Shaw’s bow was made in “Widowers’ Houses,” a three-act comedy. Begun in -1885, in collaboration with William Archer, the incompleted manuscript -was dusted, revamped and pushed to “finis” in 1892. It is not a -masterpiece, but its production by the Independent Theater Company -of London, served to introduce Shaw to the public, and thus it had a -respectable purpose. Admittedly modeled upon the early comedies of -Pinero and Jones, it shows plain evidences that it was produced during -the imitative stage of the author’s growth. It has scenes of orthodox -build, it has an “emotional” climax at the end and there are even -soliloquys--but the mark of Shaw is plainly upon every line of it. -The “grand” scene between the hero and the heroine might be from “Man -and Superman.” There is imitation in it, as there is in the earlier -works of most men of creative genius, but there is also a vast deal of -originality. - -At the time the play was begun Shaw was engrossed in the propaganda -of the Fabian Society and so it was not unnatural that, when he set -out to write a play he made a social problem the foundation stone of -it. Harry Trench, a young Englishman but twice removed from the lesser -aristocracy and with the traditional ideals and ideas of his caste, is -the tortured Prince of this little “Hamlet.” Happening in his travels -upon two fellow Britishers--father and daughter--he falls in love with -the latter and in due course makes his honorable proposals. The father, -scenting the excellent joys of familiar association with Harry’s titled -relatives, gives his paternal blessing, and the affair bobs along in a -manner eminently commonplace and refined. The clan Sartorius has money; -the clan Trench has blood. An alliance between Harry and the fair Miss -Sartorius is one obviously desirable. - -But before the wedding day is set, there comes trouble aplenty. By -accident Harry is led into an investigation of the manner in which -the Sartorius pounds, shillings and pence reach the wide pockets of -his _fiancée’s_ father. What he discovers fairly horrifies him. Papa -Sartorius wrings his thousands from the people of the gutter. Down in -the slums of St. Giles, of Marylebone and of Bethnal Green lie his -estates--rows upon rows of filthy, tumble-down tenements. The pound -saved on repairs kills a slum baby--and buys Blanche Sartorius a new -pair of gloves. The shillings dragged from reluctant costermongers and -washerwomen give Sartorius his excellent cigars. He is the worst slum -landlord in London--the most heartless, the most grasping, the most -murderous and the most prosperous. His millions pile up as his tenants -shuffle off to the potter’s field. - -Harry’s disgust is unspeakable. He will have nothing of the Sartorius -hoard. Rather starve upon his miserable $3500 a year! He will work--he -has a license to practise upon his fellow-men as physician and -surgeon--and he and Blanche will face the world bravely. But Blanche, -unfortunately, does not see it in that light. Harry’s income is regular -and safe, but seven hundred pounds is no revenue for the daughter and -son-in-law of a millionaire. And when she discovers the reason for -Harry’s singular self-sacrifice and modesty, her pride rages high. -After all, Sartorius is her father. He may squeeze his tenants for the -last farthing, but he has been good to her. His money has been hers, -and even when she fathoms the depths of his heartlessness, her shame -does not break her loyalty. So she sends Harry about his business and -seeks consolation in maidenly tears. Thus they remain for a space--he -sacrificing his love to his ideals of honesty and honor, and she -offering her virtuous affection upon the altar of filial allegiance and -pride. - -It is Sartorius who solves the problem. He is not shocked by Harry’s -revolt, by any means. The world, as he knows, is full of such silly -scruples and senseless ideas of altruism. And, at any rate, he is -willing to give his tenants as much as he can afford. He explains it -all to Blanche. - -“I have made up my mind,” he says, “to improve the property and get in -a new class of tenants.... I am only waiting for the consent of the -ground landlord, Lady Roxdale.” - -Lady Roxdale is Harry’s aristocratic aunt and Blanche’s face shows her -surprise. - -“Lady Roxdale!” she exclaims. - -“Yes,” replies her fond papa. “But I shall expect the mortgagee to take -his share of the risk.” - -“The mortgagee!” says Blanche. “Do you mean----” - -“Harry Trench,” says Sartorius blandly, finishing the sentence for her. - -And so the melancholy fact is laid bare that Harry’s safe and honorable -$3500 a year, upon which he proposed to Blanche that they board and -lodge in lieu of her father’s tainted thousands, is just as dirty, -penny for penny, as the latter. Sartorius puts it before Harry, too, -and very plainly. - -“When I,” he says, “to use your own words, screw and bully and drive -those people to pay what they have freely undertaken to pay me, I -cannot touch one penny of the money they give me until I have first -paid you your seven hundred pounds out of it....” - -Of course, that puts a new face upon the situation. Thinking over -it calmly, Harry comes to the conclusion that the oppression of slum -dwellers is a thing regrettable and deplorable, but, on the whole, -inevitable and necessary. As Sartorius shows him, they would not -appreciate generosity if it were accorded them. Ethically, they are to -be pitied; practically, pity would do them no good. In matters of money -a man must make some sacrifice of his ideals and look out for himself. -And so Harry and Blanche are united with benefit of clergy and the -Sartorius money and the Trench blood enters upon an honorable and--let -us hope--happy and permanent alliance. - -In incident and character-drawing the play is rather elemental. -Sartorius is the stock capitalist of drama--a figure as invariable as -the types in Jerome K. Jerome’s “Stageland.” And the other persons of -the play--Harry Trench, the altruist with reservations; William de -Burgh Cokane, his mentor in orthodox hypocrisy; Lickcheese, Sartorius’ -rent-collector and rival, and Blanche herself--all rather impress us as -beings we have met before. Nevertheless, an occasional flash reveals -the fine Italian hand of Shaw--a hand albeit, but yet half trained. -That Blanche is a true daughter to Sartorius, psychologically as well -as physically, is shown in a brief scene wherein she and a serving -maid are the only players. And the “grand” scene at the close of the -play, between Blanche and Harry, smells of the latter-day Shaw to high -heaven. Harry has come to her father’s house to discuss their joint -affairs and she goes at him savagely: - -“Well? So you have come back here. You have had the meanness to come -into this house again. (_He blushes and retreats a step._) What a -poor-spirited creature you must be! Why don’t you go? (_Red and -wincing, he starts huffily to get his hat from the table, but when he -turns to the door with it she deliberately gets in his way, so that he -has to stop._) _I_ don’t want you to stay. (_For a moment they stand -face to face, quite close to one another, she provocative, taunting, -half-defying, half-inviting him to advance, in a flush of undisguised -animal excitement. It suddenly flashes upon him that all this ferocity -is erotic--that she is making love to him. His eye lights up; a cunning -expression comes into the corner of his mouth; with a heavy assumption -of indifference he walks straight back to his chair and plants himself -in it with his arms folded. She comes down the room after him._)...” - -It is too late for poor Harry to beat a retreat. He is lost as -hopelessly as John Tanner in “Man and Superman” and in the same way. - -The scene savors strongly of Nietzsche, particularly in its frank -acceptance of the doctrine that, when all the poets have had their say, -plain physical desire is the chief basis of human mating. No doubt -Shaw’s interest in Marx and Schopenhauer led him to make a pretty -thorough acquaintance with all the German metaphysicians of the early -eighties. “Widowers’ Houses” was begun in 1885, four years before -Nietzsche was dragged off to an asylum. In 1892, when the play was -completed and the last scene written, the mad German’s theories of life -were just beginning to gain a firm foothold in England. - - - - -“THE PHILANDERER” - - -Shaw calls “The Philanderer” a topical comedy, which describes it -exactly. Written in 1893, at the height of the Ibsen craze, it served -a purpose like that of the excellent _revues_ which formerly adorned -the stage of the New York Casino. Frankly, a burlesque upon fads of the -moment, its interest now is chiefly archeological. For these many moons -we have ceased to regard Ibsen as a man of subterranean mystery--who -has heard any talk of “symbolic” plays for two years?--and have learned -to accept his dramas as dramas and his heroines as human beings. Those -Ibsenites of ’93 who haven’t grown civilized and cut their hair are now -buzzing about the head of Maeterlinck or D’Annunzio or some other new -god. To enjoy “A Doll’s House” is no longer a sign of extraordinary -intellectual muscularity. The stock companies of Peoria and Oil City -now present it as a matter of course, between “The Henrietta” and -“Camille.” - -But when Shaw wrote “The Philanderer” a wave of groping individualism -was sweeping over Europe, the United States and other more or less -Christian lands. Overeducated young women of the middle class, with -fires of discontent raging within them, descended upon Nora Helmer with -a whoop and became fearsome Ibsenites. They formed clubs, they pleaded -for freedom, for a wider area of development, for an equal chance; -they demanded that the word “obey” be removed from their lines in the -marriage comedy; they wrote letters to the newspapers; they patronized -solemn pale-green matinées: some of them even smoked cigarettes. -Poor old Nietzsche had something to do with this uprising. His ideas -regarding the orthodox virtues, mangled in the mills of his disciples, -appeared on every hand. Iconoclasts, amateur and professional, grew as -common as policemen. - -Very naturally, this series of phenomena vastly amused our friend from -Ireland. Himself a devoted student of Ibsen’s plays and a close friend -to William Archer, their translator, he saw the absurdity and pretense -in the popular excitement, and so set about making fun of it. - -In “The Philanderer” he shows a pack of individualists at war with the -godly. Grace Tranfield and Julia Craven, young women of the period, -agree that marriage is degrading and enslaving, and so join an Ibsen -club, spout stale German paradoxes and prepare to lead the intellectual -life. But before long both fall in love, and with the same man, and -thereafter, in plain American, there is the devil to pay. Julia tracks -the man--his name is Leonard Charteris--to Grace’s home and fairly -drags him out of her arms, at the same time, yelling, shouting, -weeping, howling and gnashing her teeth. Charteris, barricading himself -behind furniture, politely points out the inconsistency of her conduct. - -“As a woman of advanced views,” he says, “you determined to be free. -You regarded marriage as a degrading bargain, by which a woman sold -herself to a man for the social status of a wife and the right to be -supported and pensioned out of his income in her old age. That’s the -advanced view--our view....” - -“I am too miserable to argue--to think,” wails Julia. “I only know that -I love you....” - -And so a fine temple of philosophy, built of cards, comes fluttering -down. - -As the struggle for Charteris’ battle-scarred heart rages, other -personages are drawn into the trenches, unwillingly and greatly to -their astonishment. Grace’s papa, a dramatic critic of the old school, -and Julia’s fond parent, a retired military man, find themselves members -of the Ibsen club and participants in the siege of their daughters’ -reluctant Romeo. Percy Paramore, a highly respectable physician, -also becomes involved in the fray. In the end he serves the useful -peace-making purpose delegated to axmen and hangmen in the ancient -drama. Charteris, despairing of eluding the erotic Julia shunts her -off into Paramore’s arms. Then Grace, coming out of her dream, wisely -flings him the mitten and the curtain falls. - -It is frankly burlesque and in places it is Weberfieldian in its -extravagance. It was not presented in London in 1893 because no actors -able to understand it could be found. When it was published it made a -great many honest folk marvel that a man who admired Ibsen as warmly -as Shaw could write such a lampoon on the Ibsenites. This was the -foundation of Shaw’s present reputation as a most puzzling manufacturer -of paradoxes. The simple fact that the more a man understood and -admired Ibsen the more he would laugh at the grotesqueries of the -so-called Ibsenites did not occur to the majority, for the reason -that an obvious thing of that sort always strikes the majority as -unintellectual and childish and, in consequence, unthinkable. So Shaw -got fame as a paradoxical sleight-of-hand man, as Ibsen did with “The -Wild Duck” in 1884, and it has clung to him ever since. At present -every time he rises to utterances a section of the public quite frankly -takes it for granted that he means exactly the opposite of what he says. - -It is unlikely that “The Philanderer” will ever take the place of “East -Lynne” or “Charley’s Aunt” in the popular repertoire. In the first -place, as has been mentioned, it is archaic and, in the second place, -it is not a play at all, but a comic opera libretto in prose, savoring -much of “Patience” and “The Princess Ida.” In the whole drama there is -scarcely a scene even remotely possible. - -Every line is vastly amusing,--even including the sermonizing -of which Mr. Huneker complains,--but all remind one of the -“I-am-going-away-from-here” colloquy between “Willie” Collier and Miss -Louise Allen in a certain memorable entertainment of Messrs. Weber and -Fields. - - - - -“CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND’S CONVERSION” - - -Captain Brassbound’s Conversion” is a fantastic comedy, written with -no very ponderous ulterior purpose and without the undercurrents that -course through some of Shaw’s plays, but nevertheless, it is by no -means a bit of mere foolery. The play of character upon character is -shown with excellent skill, and if the drama has never attracted much -attention from aspiring comedians it is because the humor is fine-spun, -and not because it is weak. - -The scene is the coast of Morocco and the hero, Captain Brassbound, is -a sort of refined, latter-day pirate, who has a working arrangement -with the wild natives of the interior and prospers in many ventures. -To his field of endeavor come two jaded English tourists--Sir Howard -Hallam, a judge of the criminal bench, and Lady Cicely Waynflete, his -sister-in-law. Lady Cicely is a queer product of her sex’s unrest. She -has traveled often and afar; she has held converse with cannibal kings; -she has crossed Africa alone. Hearing that it is well-nigh suicidal -to venture into the Atlas Mountains, which rear their ancient peaks -from the eastern skyline, she is seized by a yearning to explore them. -Sir Howard expostulates, pleads, argues, and storms--and in the end -consents to go with her. - -It is here that Brassbound enters upon the scene--in the capacity of -guide and commander of the expedition. He is a strange being, this -gentleman pirate, a person of “olive complexion, dark southern eyes ... -grim mouth ... and face set to one tragic purpose....” A man of blood -and iron. A hero of scarlet romance, red-handed and in league with the -devil. - -And so the little caravan starts off--Sir Howard, Lady Cicely, -Brassbound and half a dozen of Brassbound’s thugs and thieves. They -have little adventures and big adventures and finally they reach an -ancient Moorish castle in the mountains, heavy with romance and an -ideal scene for a tragedy. And here Brassbound reveals his true colors. -Pirate no longer, he becomes traitor--and betrays his charges to a wild -Moroccan chieftain. - -But it is not gold that leads him into this crime, nor anything else so -prosaic or unworthy. Revenge is his motive--dark, red-handed revenge -of the sort that went out of fashion with shirts of mail. He has been -seeking a plan for Sir Howard’s destruction for years and years, and -now, at last, providence has delivered his enemy into his hands. - -To see the why and wherefore of all this, it is necessary to know -that Sir Howard, before reaching his present eminence, had a brother -who fared upon the sea to the West Indies and there acquired a sugar -estate and a yellow Brazilian wife. When he died the estate was seized -by his manager and his widow took to drink. With her little son she -proceeded to England, to seek Sir Howard’s aid in her fight for -justice. Disgusted by her ill-favored person and unladylike habits, -he turned her out of doors and she, having no philosophy, straightway -drank herself to death. And then, after many years, Sir Howard himself, -grown rich and influential, used his riches and his influence to -dispossess the aforesaid dishonest manager of his brother’s estate. -Of the bibulous widow’s son he knew nothing, but this son, growing -up, remembered. In the play he bobs into view again. He is Captain -Brassbound, pirate. - -Brassbound has cherished his elaborate scheme of vengeance for so -many years that it has become his other self. Awake and sleeping he -thinks of little else, and when, at last, the opportunity to execute -it arrives, he goes half mad with exultation. That such revenges have -come to seem ridiculous to civilized men, he does not know. His life -has been cast along barren coasts and among savages and outcasts, and -ethically he is a brother to the crusaders. His creed still puts the -strong arm above the law, and here is his chance to make it destroy one -of the law’s most eminent ornaments. Viewed from his standpoint the -stage is set for a stupendous and overpowering drama. - -But the saturnine captain reckons without the fair Lady Cicely. In all -his essentials, he is a half-savage hairy-armed knight of the early -thirteenth century. Lady Cicely, calm, determined and cool, is of the -late nineteenth. The conflict begins furiously and rages furiously to -the climax. When the end comes Brassbound feels his heroics grow wabbly -and pitiful; he sees himself mean and ridiculous. - -“Damn you!” he cries in a final burst of rage. “You have belittled my -whole life to me!” - -There is something pathetic in the figure of the pirate as his ideals -come crashing down about his head and he blindly gropes in the dark. - -“It was vulgar--vulgar,” he says. “I see that now; for you have opened -my eyes to the past; but what good is that for the future? What am I to -do? Where am I to go?” - -It is not enough that he undoes his treason and helps to save Sir -Howard. What he wants is some rule of life to take the place of the -smashed ideals of his wasted years. He gropes in vain and ends, like -many another man, by idealizing a woman. - -“You seem to be able to make me do pretty well what you like,” he says -to Lady Cicely, “but you cannot make me marry anybody but yourself.” - -“Do you really want a wife?” asks Cicely archly. - -“I want a commander,” replies the reformed Brassbound. “I am a good man -when I have a good leader.” - -He is not the first man that has fallen beneath the spell of her -dominating and masterful ego, to mistake his obedience for love, and -she bluntly tells him so. And thus they part--Brassbound to return to -his ship and his smuggling, and Cicely to go home to England. - -As will be observed, this is no ordinary farce, but a play of -considerable depth and beam. Shaw is a master of the art of depicting -such conflicts as that here outlined, and Brassbound and Cicely are by -no means the least of his creations. With all the extravagance of the -play, there is something real and human about each, and the same may -be said of the lesser characters--Sir Howard; the Rev. Leslie Rankin, -missionary and philosopher; Drinkwater, Brassbound’s recruit from the -slums of London; the Moorish chiefs; Captain Hamlin Kearney of the -U. S. S. _Santiago_, who comes to Sir Howard’s rescue, and the others. - -The chief fault of the play is the fact that the exposition, in the -first act, requires an immense amount of talk without action. The whole -act, in truth, might be played with all of the characters standing -still. Later on, there is plenty of movement, but the play as a whole -is decidedly inferior to the majority of the Shaw dramas. The dialogue -lacks the surface brilliancy of “You Never Can Tell” and “Candida” -and the humor, in places, is too delicate, almost, for the theme. -The piece, in fact, is a satirical melodrama disguised as a farce--a -melodrama of the true Shaw brand, in which the play of mind upon mind -overshadows the play of club upon skull. - - - - -“CÆSAR AND CLEOPATRA” - - -Because he put it forth as a rival to “Julius Cæsar” and “Anthony and -Cleopatra,” Shaw’s “Cæsar and Cleopatra” has been the football in an -immense number of sanguinary critical rushes. His preface to it is -headed “Better than Shakespeare?” and he frankly says that he thinks -it _is_ better. But that he means thereby to elbow himself into the -exalted position occupied by William of Avon for 300 years does not -follow. “In manner and art,” he said, in a recent letter to the London -_Daily News_, “nobody can write better than Shakespeare, because, -carelessness apart, he did the thing as well as it can be done within -the limits of human faculty.” Shaw, in other words, by no means lacks -a true appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius. What he endeavors to -maintain is simply the claim that, to modern audiences, _his_ Cæsar -and _his_ Cleopatra should seem more human and more logical than -Shakespeare’s. That this is a thesis susceptible of argument no one who -has read “Cæsar and Cleopatra” will deny. - -“The sun do move,” said the Rev. Mr. Jasper. Shaw says the same thing -of the world. In Shakespeare’s day knighthood was still in flower and -the popular ideals of military perfection were medieval. A hero was -esteemed in proportion as he approached Richard Cœur de Lion. Chivalry -was yet a very real thing and the masses of the people were still -influenced by the transcendentalism of the Crusades. And so, when -Shakespeare set out to draw a conqueror and hero of the first rank, he -evolved an incarnation of these far-fetched and rather grotesque ideals -and called it Julius Cæsar. - -To-day men have very different notions. In these piping times of -common-sense, were a Joan of Arc to arise, she would be packed off to a -home for feeble-minded children. People admire, not Chevalier Bayard, -but Lord Kitchener and U. S. Grant; not so much lofty purposes as -tangible achievements; not so much rhetoric as accomplishment. For a -man to occupy to-day the position held by Cæsar at the beginning of the -year 44 B.C. he would have to possess traits far different from those -Shakespeare gave his hero. Shaw endeavors to draw a Cæsar with just -such modern marks of heroism--to create a Roman with the attributes -that might exalt a man, in this prosaic twentieth century, to the -eminence attained by the immortal Julius 1900 years ago. In other -words, Shaw tries to reconstruct Shakespeare’s Cæsar (and incidentally, -of course, his Cleopatra) just as a latter-day stage manager must -reconstruct the scenes and language of Shakespeare to make them -understandable to-day. That his own Cæsar, in consequence, is a more -comprehensible, a more human and, on the whole, a more possible hero -than Shakespeare’s is the substance of his argument. - -The period of the play is the year 48 B.C., when Cleopatra was a girl -of sixteen and Cæsar an oldster of fifty-two, with a widening bald -spot beneath his laurel and a gradually lessening interest in the -romantic side of life. Shaw depicts the young queen as an adolescent -savage: ignorant, cruel, passionate, animal, impulsive, selfish and -blood-thirsty. She is monarch in name only and spends her time as -any child might. Egypt is torn by the feud that finally leads to the -Alexandrine war, and, Cleopatra, perforce, is the nominal head of -one of the two parties. But she knows little of the wire-pulling and -intriguing, and the death of her brother and rival, Ptolemy Dionysius, -interests her merely as an artistic example of murder. The health of -a sacred cat seems of far more consequence to her than the welfare of -Asia Minor. - -Cæsar comes to Alexandria to take a hand in the affairs of Egypt and, -incidentally, to collect certain moneys due him for past services as a -professional conqueror. Cleopatra fears him at first, as a most potent -and evil bogey-man, and is so vastly surprised when she finds him quite -human, and even commonplace, that she straightway falls in love with -him. Cæsar, in return, regards her with a mild and cynical interest. -“He is an important public man,” says Max Beerbohm, “who knows that a -little chit of a girl-queen has taken a fancy to him and is tickled -by the knowledge, and behaves very kindly to her and rather wishes -he were young enough to love her.” He needs 1600 talents in cash and -tries to collect the money. In truth, he has little time to waste -in listening to her sighs. Pothinus, of the palace--an early Roman -Polonius--is appalled. - -“Is it possible,” he gasps, “that Cæsar, the conqueror of the world, -has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?” - -“My friend,” replies Cæsar affably, “taxes are the chief business of a -conqueror of the world.” - -And so there comes fighting and the burning of the Alexandrine library -and the historic heaving of Cleopatra into the sea and other incidents -more or less familiar. Through it all the figure of Cæsar looms calm -and unromantic. To him this business of war has become a pretty dull -trade: he longs for the time when he may retire and nurse his weary -bones. He fishes Cleopatra out of the water--and complains of a touch -of rheumatism. He sits down to a gorgeous banquet of peacock’s brains -and nightingale’s tongues--and asks for oysters and barley water. Now -and then Cleopatra’s blandishments tire him. Again, her frank savagery -startles and enrages him. In the end, when his work is done and his fee -pocketed, when Cleopatra’s throne is safe, with Roman soldiers on guard -about it, he goes home. - -“I will send you a beautiful present from Rome,” he tells the volcanic -girl-queen. - -She demands to know what Rome can offer Egypt. - -“I will send you a man,” says Cæsar, “Roman from head to heel and Roman -of the noblest; not old and ripe for the knife; not lean in the arms -and cold in the heart; not hiding a bald head under his conqueror’s -laurels; not stooped with the weight of the world on his shoulders; -but brisk and fresh, strong and young, hoping in the morning, fighting -in the day and revelling in the evening. Will you take such an one in -exchange for Cæsar?” - -“His name? His name?” breathes the palpitating Cleopatra. - -“Shall it be Mark Anthony?” says Cæsar. - -And the erotic little Cleopatra, who has a vivid remembrance of -Anthony’s manly charms, born of a fleeting glimpse of him, falls into -her elderly friend’s arms, speechless with gratitude. - -Unlike most of Shaw’s plays, “Cæsar and Cleopatra” is modelled -upon sweeping and spectacular lines. In its five acts there are -countless scenes that recall Sardou at his most magnificent--scenes -that would make “Ben Hur” seem pale and “The Darling of the Gods” a -parlor play. And so, too, there is plenty of the more exciting sort -of action--stabbings, rows, bugle-calls, shouts and tumults. What -opportunity it would give to the riotous, purple fancy of Klaw and -Erlanger or the pomp and pageantry of David Belasco! - -Shaw makes Cleopatra a much more human character than Cæsar. In the -latter there appears rather too much of the icy _sang froid_ we have -grown accustomed to encounter in the heroes of the brigade commanded -by “The Prisoner of Zenda.” Some of Cæsar’s witticisms are just a bit -too redolent of the professional epigrammatist. Reading the play we -fancy him in choker collar and silk hat, with his feet hoisted upon -a club window-sill and an Havana cigar in his mouth,--the cynical -man-of-the-world of the women novelists. In other words, Shaw, in -attempting to bring the great conqueror down to date, has rather -expatriated him. He is scarcely a Roman. - -Cleopatra, on the contrary, is admirable. Shaw very frankly makes her -an animal and her passion for Cæsar is the backbone of the play. She is -fiery, lustful and murderous; a veritable she-devil; and all the while -an impressionable, superstitious, shadow-fearing child. In his masterly -gallery of women’s portraits--Mrs. Warren, Blanche Sartorius, Candida, -Ann Whitefield and their company--Cleopatra is by no means the least. - -The lesser characters--Brittanus, the primitive Briton (a parody of -the latter-day Britisher); Apollodorus, the Sicilian dilletante; -Ftatateeta, Cleopatra’s menial and mistress; Rufio, the Roman general -(a sort of Tiber-bred William Dobbin); and the boy Ptolemy--all remain -in the memory as personages clearly and certainly drawn. - -In view of the chances that the play affords the player and the stage -manager it seems curious that it was so long neglected by the Frohmans -of the day. Between Shaw’s Cæsar and Shakespeare’s Cæsar there is a -difference wide enough to make a choice necessary. That a great many -persons, pondering the matter calmly, would cast their ballots for -the former is a prophecy not altogether absurd. Just as the world -has outgrown, in succession, the fairy tale, the morality play, the -story in verse, the epic and the ode, so it has outgrown many ideas -and ideals regarding humanity that once appeared as universal truths. -Shakespeare, says Shaw, was far ahead of his time. This is shown by -his Lear. But the need for earning his living made him write down to -its level. As a result those of his characters that best pleased his -contemporaries--Cæsar, Rosalind, Brutus, etc.--now seem obviously and -somewhat painfully Elizabethan. - - - - -“A MAN OF DESTINY” - - -That characteristic tendency to look at the under side of things and -to explore the depths beneath the obvious surface markings, which -Shaw displays in “Cæsar and Cleopatra,” “Arms and the Man” and “The -Devil’s Disciple,” is shown at the full in “The Man of Destiny.” -The play is in one act and in intent it is a mere bravura piece, -written, as the author says, “to display the virtuosity of the two -principal performers.” But its picture of Napoleon Bonaparte, the -principal character, is a startlingly novel one, and the little drama -is remarkable alike for its fantastic character drawing, its cameo -craftsmanship, its ingenious incident and its fairly dazzling dialogue. -There is more of the quality called “brilliancy” in its one scene than -in most three-act society comedies of the day. Some of its episodes are -positive gems. - -The Napoleon of the play is not the emperor of popular legend and -Meissonier’s painting, but the young general of 1796, but recently -come to opportunity and still far from immortality. The scene is the -parlor of a little inn on the road from Lodi to Milan and the young -general--he is but twenty-seven--is waiting impatiently for a packet -of despatches. He has defeated the Austrians at Lodi, but they are yet -foes to be feared and he is very eager to know whether General Massena -will make his next stand at Mantua or at Peschiera. A blundering -jackass of a lieutenant, the bearer of the expected despatches, comes -staggering in with the information that he has been met on the road and -outwitted and robbed of them by a boyish young officer of the enemy’s. -Napoleon flies into a rage, very naturally, but after all it is an -incident of the wars and, the papers being lost, he resigns himself to -doing without them. - -Almost simultaneously there appears from upstairs a handsome young -woman. The lieutenant, seeing her, is instantly struck with her -remarkable resemblance to the youthful officer who cajoled and robbed -him. Napoleon pricks up his ears and orders the half-witted lieutenant -out of the room. And then begins a struggle of wits. The young woman -and the young officer are one person. Bonaparte knows it and demands -the dispatches. But she is a nimble one, this patriot in skirts, and -it seems for a while that he will have to play the dragoon and tear -them from her bodice. Even when she yields and he has the papers in his -hands, she is the victor. There is one letter that he dare not read. It -is a _billet-doux_ from a woman to a man who is not her husband and it -has been sent from Paris by a well-meaning blunderer that the husband -may read it and learn. Josephine is the woman, the director Barras is -the other man--and Napoleon himself is the husband. - -Here we have Bonaparte the man, facing a crisis in his affairs more -appalling than any he has ever encountered on the field of war. There -is no gleam of a crown ahead to cheer him on and no crash of artillery -to hearten him. It is a situation far more terrifying than the fight -about the bridge at Lodi, but he meets it squarely and resolutely. And -in the end he outplays and vanquishes his fair conqueror. - -She tells the blundering lieutenant that the officer boy who outwitted -him was her brother. - -“If I undertake to place him in your hands, a prisoner,” she says, -“will you promise me on your honor as an officer and a gentleman not to -fight with him or treat him unkindly in any way?” - -The simple-minded lieutenant promises--and the young woman slips out -and once more discards her skirts for the uniform of a young officer. -Then she reappears and surrenders. - -“Where are the dispatches?” demands Napoleon, with heavy dissembling. - -“My sister has bewitched the general,” says the protean stranger. -“General: open your coat; you will find the dispatches in the breast of -it....” - -And lo! they are even there--and all agree that as papers bearing the -gristly finger-prints of a witch, they must be burnt. Cæsar’s wife must -be above suspicion. - -“I read them the first thing....” whispers the witch’s alter ego; “So -you see I know what’s in them; and you don’t.” - -“Excuse me,” replies Napoleon blandly. “I read them when I was out -there in the vineyard ten minutes ago.” - -It would be impossible to exaggerate the humor and delicacy of this -little play. Napoleon, it must be remembered, is still a youngster, -who has scarcely dared to confess to himself the sublime scope of his -ambitions. But the man of Austerlitz and St. Helena peeps out, now -and then, from the young general’s flashing eyes, and the portrait, -in every detail, is an admirable one. Like Thackeray, Shaw is fond of -considering great men in their ordinary everyday aspects. He knows -that Marengo was but a day, and that there were thousands of other -days in the Little Corporal’s life. It is such week-days of existence -that interest him, and in their light he has given us plays that offer -amazingly searching studies of Cæsar and of Bonaparte, not to speak of -General Sir John Burgoyne. - - - - -“THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE” - - -The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Rewarded,” a blank verse farce -in two tableaux, is a dramatization by Shaw of certain incidents in -his novel, “Cashel Byron’s Profession.” Cashel Byron, the hero of the -novel, is a prize-fighter who wins his way to the hand and heart of -Lydia Carew, a young woman of money, education and what Mulvaney calls -“theouries.” Cashel sees in Lydia a remarkably fine girl; Lydia sees in -Cashel an idealist and a philosopher as well as a bruiser. The race of -Carew, she decides, needs an infusion of healthy red blood. And so she -marries Byron--and they live happily ever after. - -Bashville is Lydia’s footman and factotum, and he commits the -unpardonable solecism of falling in love with her. Very frankly he -confesses his passion and resigns his menial portfolio. - -“If it is to be my last word,” he says, “I’ll tell you that the -ribbon round your neck is more to me,” etc., etc.... “I am sorry -to inconvenience you by a short notice, but I should take it as a -particular favor if I might go this evening.” - -“You had better,” says Lydia, rising quite calmly and keeping -resolutely away from her the strange emotional result of being -astonished, outraged and loved at one unlooked-for stroke. “It is not -advisable that you should stay after what you have just----” - -“I knew that when I said it,” interposes Bashville, hastily and -doggedly. - -“In going away,” continues Lydia, “you will be taking precisely the -course that would be adopted by any gentleman who had spoken to the -same effect. I am not offended by your declaration; I recognize your -right to make it. If you need my testimony to further your future -arrangements, I shall be happy to say that I believe you to be a man of -honor.” - -An American pugilist-actor, struck by the possibilities of the story, -engaged a journeyman playwright to make a play of it, and Shaw, to -protect his rights, put together “The Admirable Bashville.” The one -performance required by the English copyright law was given by the -Stage Society at the Imperial Theater, London, in the summer of 1903. - -“It was funny,” says James Huneker, who witnessed the performance. “It -gibed at Shakespeare, at the modern drama, at Parliament, at social -snobbery, at Shaw himself, and at almost everything else within reach. -The stage setting was a mockery of the Elizabethan stage, with two -venerable beef-eaters in Tower costume, who hung up placards bearing -the legend, ‘A Glade in Wiltstoken Park,’ etc. Ben Webster as Cashel -Byron and James Hearn as the Zulu King (whom Cashel entertains by an -exhibition of his fistic prowess) carried off the honors. Aubrey Smith, -made up as Mr. Shaw in the costume of a policeman with a brogue, caused -merriment, especially at the close, when he informed his audience that -the author had left the house. And so he had. He was standing at the -corner when I accosted him.” - -Shaw explains that he wrote the extravaganza in blank verse because -he had to hurry over it and “hadn’t time to write it in the usual -prose.” To anyone “with the requisite ear and command of words,” he -says in another place, “blank verse, written under the amazingly loose -conditions which Shakespeare claimed, with full liberty to use all -sorts of words, colloquial, technical, rhetorical and even obscurely -technical, to indulge in the most far-fetched ellipses, and to -impress ignorant people with every possible extremity of fantasy and -affectation, is the easiest of all known modes of literary expression, -and this is why whole oceans of dull bombast and drivel have been -emptied on the head of England since Shakespeare’s time in this form by -people who could not have written ‘Box and Cox’ to save their lives.” - -“The Admirable Bashville” may be seen in the United States before long. -Not long ago the London _Daily Mail_ reported that the eminent comedian -and gladiator, Mr. James J. Corbett, was casting eager eyes upon it and -that Shaw rather liked the idea of his appearing in it. - -“He is a man who has made a success in one profession,” the dramatist -is reported to have said, “and will therefore understand that there are -difficulties to be encountered in making a success in another. Look -at the books written to-day, and then consider which you would rather -have--a man who can do nothing or a really capable prize-fighter.” - -All of which you will find, much elaborated, in “Cashel Byron’s -Profession,” which was written in 1882. - - - - -“CANDIDA” - - -Candida” is a latter-day essay in feminine psychology after the fashion -of “A Doll’s House,” “Monna Vanna” and “Hedda Gabler.” Candida Morell, -the heroine, is a clergyman’s wife, who, lacking an acquaintance -with the philosophies and face to face with the problem of earning -her daily bread, might have gone the muddy way of Mrs. Warren. As it -is, she exercises her fascinations upon a moony poet, arouses him -to the mad-dog stage of passion, drives her husband to the verge of -suicide--and then, with bland complacency and unanswerable logic, reads -both an excellent lecture, turns the poet out of doors, and falls into -her husband’s arms, still chemically pure. It is an edifying example of -the influence of mind over matter. - -Arnold Daly’s heroic production of the play, at the little Berkeley -Lyceum, in New York City, served as the foundation of the present vogue -of Shaw in the United States, and in consequence “Candida” has been the -theme of many metropolitan and provincial philosophers and critics. -At the start the vast majority of them muddled the play hopelessly. -Candida, they decided, was a sublime type of the virtuous wife and -mother--a good woman whose thoughts were as innocent as her acts. It -remained for Shaw--and he is usually his own best critic--to set them -right. Candida, he explained, was a “very immoral female ... who, -without brains and strength of mind ... would be a wretched slattern or -voluptuary.” In other words (as he tried to make clear) she remained -virtuous, not because there was aught of the vestal or altruist about -her, but because she had discovered that it was possible to enjoy all -of the ecstatic excitement of a fall from grace, and still, by holding -back at the actual brink of the precipice, to retain, in full measure, -her reputation as a pattern of fidelity and virtue. She solved the -problem of being immoral and respectable at the same time. - -The play is well built and thoroughly balanced and mature. Its every -scene shows that it is the work of a dramatist whose genius has been -mellowed and whose hand has been made sure by experience. The action -moves with that certain, natural air peculiar to many of Ibsen’s plays. -The characters are not sketches, but definitive, finished portraits. -They are not obvious types, perhaps, but even the poet, with all his -extravagances, is strangely human. - -The Rev. James Morell, Candida’s husband, is a Christian-socialist of -a sort not uncommon on either side of the Atlantic. He has a parish in -an unfashionable part of London, and beside the usual futilities of -a conscientious clergyman’s daily labor, finds time to make frequent -addresses to the masses and classes upon the problems of the hour. In -his make-up, there is much of the unconscious make-believe of the actor -off the stage, though his own belief in himself is unshaken. Public -speaking seems to have this uncanny effect upon many men. Beginning in -all sincerity, they gradually lay stress upon the manner of saying a -thing at the expense of the matter. Their aim is to make an effect by -means of the spoken word and in the end, without realizing it, they -become stagey and unnatural. Such a man is Morell. By no means, it will -be observed, is he to be mistaken for a hypocrite. - -Into his home, by some mad, altruistic impulse, he brings Eugene -Marchbanks, a moon-struck young man with the romantic ideals and day -dreams of a medieval Edgar Allan Poe and the practical common-sense of -an infant. Eugene is eighteen. He inhabits a world a mile or so above -the pink clouds of the sunset and writes vague, immaterial verses of -the sort that all of us invent and some of us set down in pen-and-ink -when we are young. At the start, in all probability, Candida regards -him as a nuisance. But by the time the play opens she has already lured -him on to the rocks. It is pleasant to sit by the fire and listen to -his hazy verses. He is a relief from the honest beefiness of Morell. -And so Candida has her entertainment and Eugene, poor boy! falls in -love with her. - -Now, loving another man’s wife, since the beginning of written history, -has always presupposed or developed a rather ungenial attitude toward -that other man, and Eugene, studying Morell, comes to the conclusion -that he is a mere vaporish windbag--a silly bundle of stale platitudes, -trite ponderosities and pulpit puerilities. Having the valor of youth, -he makes open confession. - -“I love your wife,” he says to Morell, “... a woman with a great soul -craving reality, truth, freedom, and being fed on metaphors, sermons, -stale perorations, mere rhetoric. Do you think a woman’s soul can live -on your talent for preaching?...” - -Morell is staggered, not by Eugene’s frank avowal of his love for -Candida, but by the other things he has said. What if it is true that -she is stifled by the atmosphere of the Morell home? What if it is -true that she has tired of being shadow and drudge to an obscure, -over-earnest clergyman in a semi-slum and has turned her fancy toward -the poet? - -“It is easy, terribly easy,” he says pathetically, “to break a man’s -faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man’s spirit is -devil’s work. Take care of what you are doing. Take care....” - -It is a time of torment for the preacher and he sees his house of cards -trembling as if for a fall. Eugene, all the while, is defiant and -belligerent. He adds the virtue of rescuing Candida to the pleasure of -possessing her, and the two together work his swift undoing. - -“Send for her!” he roars. “Send for her and let her choose between us!” - -Aha, my masters! what a scene is this!--what a scene of mad passion for -the gallery to linger over breathlessly, for the orchestra to greet -with stares and for the critics to belabor and dissect in the morning! - -Candida comes in and the two bid for her heart and helping hand. - -“I have nothing to offer you,” says Morell, with proud humility, “but -my strength for your defense, my honesty of purpose for your surety, my -ability and industry for your livelihood, and my authority and position -for your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer a woman.” - -“And you, Eugene?” asks Candida quietly. “What do you offer?” - -“My weakness!” exclaims the poet passionately. “My desolation! My -heart’s need!” - -“That’s a good bid,” says Candida judicially. “Now I know how to make -my choice.” - -Then she pauses and looks curiously from one to the other, as if -weighing them. Morell, whose lofty confidence has once more changed -into heart-breaking dread, loses all power over himself and in -a suffocating voice--the appeal bursting from the depths of his -anguish--cries “Candida!” - -“Coward!” shrieks Eugene, divining the victory in the surrender. And -Candida--O most virtuous of wives!--says blandly, “I give myself to the -weaker of the two” and falls into her husband’s arms. It is a situation -that struck the first night audience at the Berkeley Lyceum as one -eminently agreeable and refined. - -As Shaw explains, the poet, despite the fact that “his face whitens -like steel in a furnace that cannot melt it,” is a gainer by Candida’s -choice. He enters the Morell home a sentimental boy yearning for an -emotional outlet. He leaves it a man who has shouldered his cross and -felt the unutterable stimulus of sacrifice. Candida makes a man of him, -says Shaw, by showing him his strength. David finds that he must do -without Uriah’s wife. - -The dramatist makes Candida essay a most remarkable analysis of her -own motives. It is after Morell has reproached her, sick at heart and -consumed by a nameless fear, to learn if Eugene’s fiery onslaught has -been born of any unrest that may be stirring within her. She explains -freely and frankly, with more genuine honesty and self-revelation, -perhaps, than she knows. Eugene, she says, is like a shivering beggar -asking for her shawl. He needs love but scarcely knows it, and she -conceives it her duty to teach him the value of love, that no worse -woman may teach him its pains later on. - -“Will he forgive me,” she says, “for not teaching him myself? For -abandoning him to the bad women for the sake of my goodness--my purity, -as you call it? Ah, James, how little you understand me, to talk of -your confidence in my goodness and purity. _I would give them both to -Eugene as willingly as I would give my shawl to a beggar dying of -cold_, if there was nothing else to restrain me....” - -“Here,” says Huneker, “is one of the most audacious speeches in -any modern play. It has been passed over by most critics who saw -in ‘Candida’ merely an attempt to make a clergyman ridiculous, not -realizing that the theme is profound and far-reaching, the question put -being no more or no less than: Shall a married man expect his wife’s -love without working for it, without deserving it?” To this may be -added another and more familiar question: May not the woman who lives -in the odor of sanctity be more thoroughly immoral, at heart, than the -worst of her erring sisters? - -The play has a number of extremely exciting “grand” scenes and in -general is admirably suitable for public performance. The minor -characters are but three in number--Candida’s wine-buying vulgarian of -a father, Morell’s curate and Proserpine, his typewriter. Proserpine is -admirable, and her hopeless love for Morell--a complaint not uncommon -among the women he knows--gives the play a note of homely sentiment -that keeps it to earth. - -As a piece of workmanship “Candida” is Shaw at his best; as a study in -the workings of the feminine mind it deserves to rank with some of the -best plays the modern stage has to offer. - - - - -“HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND” - - -How He Lied to Her Husband” is a one-act bit of foolery that Shaw wrote -for Arnold Daly after “Candida” had made a success in New York. It was -presented for the first time on the evening of Sept. 26, 1904, and -during the ensuing week was more vociferously discussed than any other -one-act play that ever graced the boards of an American theater. - -As he made fun of the vaporing Ibsenites of the early ’90’s in “The -Philanderer,” just so Shaw got his joke at the expense of his own -ecstatic followers in this little appendix to “Candida.” The latter had -been presented with huge profit, and thousands of honest playgoers, -alert for mysterious “symbolism” and subtle “purposes” had seen -in its heroine a great many of the qualities they formerly sought -and discovered in the much-mauled Ibsen women. Candida, in brief, -became the high priestess of the advanced cult, in all its warring -denominational variety. It became a sign of intellectual vigor to go to -the Berkeley Lyceum and compare her with Nora Helmer, Hedda Gabler and -their company. And so Shaw indited “How He Lied to Her Husband.” - -The characters in the little farce are a fashionable young poet named -Henry Upjohn, an untamed American husband named Bumpus, and his wife, -Aurora Bumpus, a young woman with yearnings. Aurora and Henry have -seen a performance of “Candida” and have come away with a feeling that -an intrigue after the fashion of Candida and Eugene, is one of those -things that no really advanced poet or modern wife should be without. -So Henry writes a sheaf of sonnets to Aurora and being determined -to play the game according to the rules, proposes that they run off -together. They are about to depart, conscientiously leaving the Bumpus -diamonds behind, when Aurora, at the brink of the precipice, draws back. - -Meanwhile Bumpus happens upon Henry’s sonnets and confronts the poet -with the charge of having written them. Henry, determined to save -Aurora, “lies like a gentleman”--and incidentally overdoes it. Bumpus, -mistaking his well-meant prevarication for impolite indifference to -Aurora’s beauty, or denial of it, flies into a passion, and is on the -point of soundly thrashing the amorous bard when Aurora stays his hand. -Then Henry confesses, and Bumpus is so much pleased by the manner in -which the sonnets celebrate his wife’s charms that he offers to print -them for private circulation among connoisseurs with broad margins and -_de luxe_ binding. - -The play is built upon the lines of broad farce, and in New York it -made an uproarious success. The encounter between Bumpus and Henry is -extraordinarily ludicrous. Aurora throughout is the typical enthusiast -of the women’s clubs--filled with vague longings and ambitions, but -intensely practical and commonplace at bottom. Henry, during one of -their tumultuous exchanges, is about to break her fan. She shrieks the -warning that it cost a dollar. He ventures upon a dark, melodramatic -oath. “How dare you swear in my presence?” she demands. “One would -think you were my husband!” - -A pretty bit of fooling, _à la_ “The Wild Duck,” “The Philanderer” and -“Alice-Sit-by-the Fire.” Shaw calls it “a warning to theater-goers.” It -is. - - - - -“YOU NEVER CAN TELL” - - -You Never Can Tell,” like many of the dramas of Shakespeare, was -made to order. Shaw wrote it in 1896 and he calls it “an attempt to -comply with many requests for a play in which the much paragraphed -“brilliancy” of “Arms and the Man” should be tempered by some -consideration for the requirements of managers, in search of -fashionable comedies for West End theaters.” And so he laid the scene -in England, and made all his characters English and kept as close -to the earth as he could. But for all that, he failed to make a -conventional parlor drama of it. Shaw is Shaw, and when he set out to -build a comedy _à la mode_ he evolved instead a tragedy covered with a -sugar-coating of farce. On its face it is uproariously and irresistibly -funny; beneath the surface there is as nasty an undercurrent as that of -“Widowers’ Houses.” - -Fergus Crampton, a wealthy English yacht builder, and his most -marvellous family are the chief characters of the play. Years before -the curtain rises Crampton and his wife agree to disagree and she -packs off to Madeira with their three babies--two girls and a boy. -Subscribing to the heterodox doctrine that a married woman is entitled -to her own home, her own pocket-book and her own name, Mrs. Crampton -assumes the cognomen of Clandon, bestows it upon her offspring -and brings them up in complete ignorance of the existence of their -paternal progenitor. Also she rears them in strict accordance with -her ultra-advanced ideas of independence and individualism. In all -matters concerning the emotions and intellect, they have freedom. And -so they become unconscionable egotists, disrespectful to their elders, -self-willed and obstinate, and nuisances in general. - -As the curtain rises we find the Clandons back in England. Happening -into a small seaside town, Phil and Dolly, the younger of the three -children, scrape an acquaintance with one Valentine, a struggling young -dentist (and also a being with advanced views of human events), and -Dolly has the honor of paying him his first fee. Through him they meet -his landlord, an irascible old gentleman in a semi-nautical coat and an -habitual frown. They invite both dentist and landlord to luncheon, and -at the meal the discovery is made that the latter is none other than -the long-lost Mr. Crampton. Like the leading comedian of a burlesque -show afterpiece, Crampton is in consternation and shrieks “My wife!” in -a hoarse stage whisper. - -“You are very greatly changed,” observes Mrs. Clandon-Crampton. - -“I daresay,” replies the wretched husband and father. “A man does -change in eighteen years.” - -This much of the prologue being accomplished, the personages proceed -to the real business of the action. Crampton, outraged and disgusted -beyond measure by the manners and dress of his progeny, demands that -Phil and Dolly be given over to his care and custody on the ground -that their mother is an unfit person to have the charge of them. -Meanwhile Valentine, the dentist, has felt a yearning towards Gloria, -the elder daughter, and Gloria, after surviving five previous sieges -of her heart, looks upon him not unkindly. One brief interview, in -fact, serves to advance him to a point whereat he may safely offer her -a chaste caress. Her mother, greatly astonished by his easy victory -over Gloria’s battalions of modern principles, seeks an explanation. -Valentine very blandly discusses the situation. - -The duel of sex, he says, is much like the contest between the makers -of guns and the makers of ship’s armor. One year one is ahead and the -next year the other. In the old days, he says, mothers taught their -daughters old-fashioned methods of resisting the wiles of old-fashioned -Romeos, and for a space this method of defense was successful. But -by-and-by the Romeos learned its weak points, and the fond mammas -of England had to devise some new armor. They hit upon scientific -education, and for awhile it, too, was successful. But in the end the -old story was repeated. - -“What did the man do?” says Valentine. “Just what the artilleryman -does--went one better than the woman--educated himself scientifically -and beat her at that game just as he had beaten her at the old one. -I learned how to circumvent the Woman’s Rights’ woman before I was -twenty-three....” - -But before the play is done the philosophical duellist of sex finds -himself the vanquished rather than the victor. He begins to have doubts -about his preparedness for the marriage state and essays a polite -withdrawal. But Gloria, weighted with the wisdom of five previous -amorous encounters, is no easy adversary to lose. - -“Be sensible,” says the valiant Valentine. “It’s no use. I haven’t a -penny in the world.” - -“Can’t you earn one?” demands Gloria. “Other people do.” - -Valentine, scenting a chance to flee, is half-delighted, -half-frightened. - -“I never could!” he declares. “You’d be unhappy.... My dearest love, I -should be the merest fortune-hunting adventurer if----” - -She grips his arm and kisses him. - -“Oh, Lord!” he gasps. “O, I----” - -The trap has sprung and he is caught fast. - -“I don’t know anything about women,” wails the duellist of sex, -pathetically. “Twelve years’ experience is not enough.” - -William, the waiter at the hotel, reads the moral. - -“You never can tell, sir,” he says, “You never can tell.” - -So much for the love making, which you will find, in slightly -different form in “Widowers’ Houses” and “Man and Superman.” The battle -between the Cramptons, husband and wife, is a more serious thing. In -some mysterious way the dramatist manages to keep the spectator from -sympathizing with either, but Crampton, nevertheless, is a character in -a tragedy and not in a comedy. It is all a ghastly horror to him--the -flight of his wife, the cynical, worldwise impudence and grotesque -individualism of his children, the perversity and topsy-turveyness -of the whole domestic drama. He is no martyr, by any means, for life -in his company, it is evident, would be an excellent imitation of -existence in a cage with a tiger, but if he is not lovable, he at -least has a great capacity for loving. He and Gloria have a memorable -encounter, in which she explains her theory of conduct in detail. - -“You see,” she says triumphantly, at the end, “everything comes right -if we only _think_ it resolutely out.” - -“No,” says Crampton sullenly, “I don’t think. I want you to feel: -that’s the only thing that can help us....” - -In the end he succumbs to the inevitable senilely. - -“Ho! ho! He! he! he!” he laughs, as Gloria bears Valentine away. And -then, say the stage directions, “he goes into the garden, chuckling at -the fun.” - -Somehow the boundless humor of the play is forgotten long before this -undercurrent of ironic pathos. - -William, the waiter, is one of Shaw’s most delightful characters. -He is, in truth, the chorus to the drama, and a man of deep -philosophies. To everyone’s consternation it is discovered that the -eminent Mr. Bohun, Q. C., who is called in as legal adviser to the -Clandon-Cramptons is William’s son. - -“I’ve often wished he was a potman,” he says. “Would have had him off -my hands ever so much sooner, sir. Yes, sir, had to support him until -he was thirty-seven, sir....” - -William reads Schopenhauer, but he has no intellectual yearnings. - -“My name is Boon, sir,” he says, “though I am best known down here as -Balmy Walters, sir. By rights I should spell it with the aitch you, -sir, but I think it best not to take that liberty, sir. There is Norman -blood in it, sir, and Norman blood is not a recommendation to a waiter.” - -Bohun, the son, is a blustering, roaring legal whale of the low -comedy type. The last act of the play is made a screaming farce by -his elephantine efforts to smooth out the family tangles of the -Clandon-Cramptons. In the end he reaches a decision worthy of Solomon. - -“You can do nothing,” he says to Crampton, “but make a friendly -arrangement. If you want your family more than they want you, you’ll -get the worst of the arrangement; if they want you more than you want -them, you’ll get the better of it. The strength of their position lies -in their being very agreeable personally. The strength of your position -lies in your income....” - -And that is the nearest approach to a solution of the difficulty that -the play offers. - - - - -“MAN AND SUPERMAN” - - -Measured with rule, plumb-line or hay-scales, “Man and Superman” -is easily Shaw’s _magnum opus_. In bulk it is brobdignagian; in -scope it is stupendous; in purpose it is one with the Odyssey. Like -a full-rigged ship before a spanking breeze, it cleaves deep into -the waves, sending ripples far to port and starboard, and its giant -canvases rise half way to the clouds, with resplendent jibs, sky-sails, -staysails and studdingsails standing out like quills upon the fretful -porcupine. It has a preface as long as a campaign speech; an interlude -in three scenes, with music and red fire; and a complete digest of the -German philosophers as an appendix. With all its rings and satellites -it fills a tome of 281 closely-printed pages. Its epigrams, quips, -jests, and quirks are multitudinous; it preaches treason to all the -schools; its hero has one speech of 350 words. No one but a circus -press agent could rise to an adequate description of its innumerable -marvels. It is a three-ring circus, with Ibsen doing running high -jumps; Schopenhauer playing the calliope and Nietzsche selling peanuts -in the reserved seats. And all the while it is the most entertaining -play of its generation. - -Maybe Shaw wrote it in a vain effort to rid himself at one fell swoop -of all the disquieting doctrines that infested his innards. Into it he -unloaded Kropotkin, Noyes, Bakounin, Wilde, Marx, Proudhon, Nietzsche, -Netschajew, Wagner, Bunyan, Mozart, Shelley, Ibsen, Morris, Tolstoi, -Goethe, Schopenhauer, Plato--seized them by the heels and heaved them -in, with a sort of relieved “God help you!” The result is 281 pages of -most diverting farce--farce that only half hides the tumultuous uproar -of the two-and-seventy jarring sects beneath it. It is a tract cast -in an encyclopedic and epic mold--a stupendous, magnificent colossal -effort to make a dent in the cosmos with a slapstick. - - Why, all the saints and sages who discuss’d - Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust - Like foolish Prophets forth: their Words to Scorn - Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. - -Shaw explains that he wrote the play in response to a suggestion by -A. B. Walkley, the dramatic critic of the London _Times_ that he should -tackle the subject of Don Juan. In his 37-page preface he traces, at -length, the process of reasoning which led him to the conclusion that -Juan, as he was depicted by the fathers, was a fraud and an impostor. -In the business of mating, he says (after Schopenhauer) it is not the -man but the woman that does the pursuing. Man’s function in life is -that of food-getting. Woman’s is that of perpetuating the race. Hence -man’s ordinary occupation is making money, and woman’s is getting -married. To protect himself against “a too aggressive prosecution -of woman’s business,” he says, man has “set up a feeble romantic -convention that the initiative in sex business must always come from -him.” But the pretense is so shallow “that even in the theater, that -last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only on the inexperienced. -In Shakespeare’s plays the woman always takes the initiative. In his -problem plays and his popular plays alike the love interest is the -interest of seeing the woman hunt the man down.” - -And so, the hero of this new play, John Tanner (our old friend Juan -Tenorio) is the pursued, and Doña Ana (Miss Ann Whitefield) is the -pursuer. John is a being of most advanced and startling ideas. He -writes a volume called “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket -Companion,” full of all sorts of strange doctrines, from praise -of the Oneida Community to speculations regarding the probable -characteristics of the Superman. He laughs at honor, titles, the law, -property, marriage, liberty, democracy, the golden rule and everything -else that God-fearing folks hold sacred; he has a good word for -Czolgosz; he gives directions for beating children; he curls his lip -at civilization; he ventures the view that “every man over forty is a -scoundrel.” And then, with all this cargo of nonconformity afloat in -his hold, fate sends him sailing into a haven of staunch orthodoxy. - -He and Roebuck Ramsden, a gentleman who hangs Herbert Spencer’s -portrait on his library wall as a sort of banner of his intellectual -modernity, are appointed guardians for Ann, whose papa has just passed -away, and John, to protect himself against being caught in ambush by -the Life Force, as represented in his ward, endeavors to marry her off -to Octavius Robinson, a harmless young man who has lived beneath her -father’s roof since his childhood. John is aware of the faults of Ann -and has no yearning to be enmeshed in her web. He notices that she is -a liar and politely calls her attention to the fact; he observes her -pursuit of him and makes open preparations for flight. Finally, in full -cry, he runs away in an automobile across Europe. But the Life Force -is more powerful than gasoline, and Ann, yielding to its irresistible -impulse, follows him--across the English channel, to Dover, and across -France toward the Mediterranean. In the Sierra Nevada mountains she -brings her game to bay and in old Grenada poor John receives his _coup -de grace_. Thus he sinks to earth: - - _Tanner._ ... The trap was laid from the beginning. - - _Ann_ (_concentrating all her magic_). From the beginning--from - our childhood--for both of us--by the Life Force. - - _Tanner._ I will not marry you. I will not marry you. - - _Ann._ Oh, you will, you will. - - _Tanner._ I tell you, no, no, no. - - _Ann._ I tell you, yes, yes, yes. - - _Tanner._ No. - - _Ann_ (_coaxing--imploring--almost exhausted_). Yes. Before it is - too late for repentance. Yes. - - _Tanner_ (_struck by an echo from the past_). When did all this - happen to me before? Are we two dreaming? - - _Ann_ (_suddenly losing her courage, with an anguish that she - does not conceal_). No. We are awake and you have said no: that - is all. - - _Tanner_ (_brutally_). Well? - - _Ann._ Well, I made a mistake, you do not love me. - - _Tanner_ (_seizing her in his arms_). It is false: I love you. - The Life Force enchants me: I have the whole world in my arms - when I clasp you.... - -And this is the story upon which Shaw hangs his 175 pages of play--it -would take seven hours to perform it in its entirety--his thirty-seven -pages of introduction, and his sixty-nine pages of appendix. - -The conflict between Tanner and the ethics and traditions represented -by Ramsden is riotously and irresistibly humorous. The first act of the -play, indeed, is the most gorgeously grotesque in all Shaw. Better fun -is scarcely imaginable. The famous Hell scene, which forms a sort of -movable third act, is also a masterpiece of comedy. Tanner during his -flight from Ann, is captured by a band of social-anarchist brigands, -led by one Capt. Mendoza, a sentimental Anglo-Hebrew. Mendoza’s story -of his unrequited love for an English lass sends Tanner to dreamland, -and he dreams that he is in Hell. And then an elaborately comic play -within a play is performed. Mendoza appears as the Devil; Tanner as -Don Juan; and Ann as Doña Ana de Ulloa. It is long, this episode, -and beyond all hope of boiling down, but the persons who see “Man -and Superman” without it miss two-thirds of the drama. An excellent -exposition by the Devil of the superiority of Hell over Heaven forms -part of it. During the rest of the action the characters discuss every -imaginable subject, from love to the higher morality. - -“Whatever they say of me in churches on earth,” says the Devil, “I know -that it is universally admitted in good society that the Prince of -Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough for me....” - -In the first act Violet Robinson, Octavius’ sister, gives her family -an overwhelming shock by passing to that moral bourne whence no -feminine traveler returns. Her maiden aunt is for turning her out of -doors. Ramsden is apoplectic. Octavius is speechless. The scandal is -appalling. And here comes Tanner’s chance. He has preached against -marriage and now he will follow his preaching with practise. Virtuous -or unvirtuous, what are the odds? The Life Force is at it again, -and he, John Tanner, is its champion. So he goes to Violet’s rescue -grandly--a hero, every inch of him. - -“They think to blame you,” he says loftily, “by their silly -superstitions about morality and propriety and so forth. But I know, -and the whole world really knows, that you are right to follow your -instinct; that vitality and bravery are the greatest qualities a woman -can have, and motherhood her solemn initiation into womanhood, and -that the fact of your not being legally married matters not one scrap -either to your own worth or to our real regard for you.” - -The limelight flashes here, but suddenly it goes out and Violet’s eyes -flash instead. - -“Oh!” she exclaims, “you think me a wicked woman, like the rest! -You think that I am not only vile, but that I share your abominable -opinions.... I won’t bear such a horrible insult.... I have kept my -marriage secret for my husband’s sake. But now I claim my right as a -married woman not to be insulted....” - -And as Tanner wilts his fine theories come crashing down about his head. - -The play is such a gigantic, ponderous thing that any effort to -summarize it is difficult. The central idea--that, in mating, the -man is pursued by the woman--is one that we have seen Shaw employ in -“Arms and the Man,” “The Philanderer,” and other plays. As he himself -says, it is not a new conception. Shakespeare had it, though maybe -unconsciously, and its rudiments appear in the works of other men. -Schopenhauer made it classical. In “Man and Superman” Shaw uses it -as an excuse for airing practically every radical doctrine in the -modern repertoire. “The general impression of the book,” says Huneker, -“causes us to believe there is a rift in the writer’s lute; not in -his mentality, but in his own beliefs, or scepticisms. Perhaps Shaw -no longer pins his faith to Shaw.” Herein the critic makes the common -mistake of confusing the dramatist and the theorist. Shaw borrows part -of the title from Nietzsche and makes sad sport of the mad German in -many a scene, but that is no evidence that he is insincere when, in his -introduction, he classes Nietzsche with those writers “whose peculiar -sense of the world I recognize as more or less akin to my own.” “The -Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion” at the end of the play -is given, he says, merely to prove that John Tanner, its author, is -really the revolutionist and genius the drama makes him out to be. Too -often, says Shaw, a playwright is content to say that his hero is a man -of parts without offering any tangible evidence of the fact. - -All in all, “Man and Superman” is a work worth the two years of effort -the title page hints it cost the author. But it is a pity that Shaw -didn’t divide it into two plays, a volume of essays, two dozen magazine -articles and a book of epigrams. The age of the epic is past. To-day we -sacrifice Fortinbras to get “Hamlet” into two hours and a half. - - - - -“JOHN BULL’S OTHER ISLAND” - - -This is a political satire in Shaw’s most amusing manner and, as its -title indicates, deals with the eternal Irish question--a problem -that, in England, rivals in perennial interest the dispute between -capital and labor in the United States. The author, with characteristic -impartiality, gives all sides a fair hearing, and “though in the end,” -says A. B. Walkley, “all parties are dismissed with costs, we have a -conviction that justice has been done.” - -Two London engineers--Broadbent, an Englishman, and Larry Doyle, -an anglicized Irishman--are the central characters. Broadbent is a -political radical and insatiable reformer of a very familiar sort. -Yearning to lend a hand in the uplifting of humanity, he turns to the -martyred Irish and proposes to be their champion, without in the least -understanding them. Doyle, on the other hand, looks upon all reform as -so much moonshine. As far as he is concerned, Ireland may go hang. He -is neither a patriot nor an altruist. - -Nevertheless, when Broadbent decides to go to Ireland to study the -problem of saving the Irish on the ground, Doyle consents to go with -him, and together they arrive at a primitive sort of Irish village. -There they make acquaintance with the folks who constitute suffering -Ireland--an unfrocked priest whose mysticism has given him the -local character of a lunatic, a peasant fairly savage in his simple -superstitions, the fanatical parish priest and other types more or -less familiar. To Doyle they are commonplace bores. To Broadbent they -constitute a People yearning for a Moses. - -When Doyle refuses to stand for Parliament for the district, Broadbent -willingly steps into the breach, and in the ensuing campaign all the -multitudinous facets of the Irish question are revealed. The honest -electors, misunderstanding Broadbent’s altruistic efforts for their -welfare, get a great deal of innocent enjoyment out of his orations -and a great deal more out of his honest efforts to deal with them as -freeman to freeman. He offers to take a farmer’s pig home in his motor -car. The car runs over the pig and, in addition, knocks out the window -of the village china shop. “There is a jest in every line,” says the -critic of the London _Daily Mail_. “The play exists for and by the -comic spirit alone.” - -In the end, after many farcical situations and excellent quips, the -canny Irish yeomanry accept Broadbent as a profitable acquaintance, -and as the novelty of his misunderstood good intentions dies, come -to regard him more or less seriously. As the curtain falls they are -looking forward with interest to certain very material boons he -promises to confer upon them--a big hotel in the village, a new tower -for the village landmark and links for the village golfers. Meanwhile -he has fallen in love with an old sweetheart of Doyle’s and, after -an uphill wooing, has supplanted the latter in the fair charmer’s -affections. - -The play is a characteristically Shavian _reductio ad absurdum_ of -the vast ocean of hair-raising schemes and startling theories that -has so long deluged the Irish question. Shaw himself is an Irishman, -and no doubt the troubles of his native land are of some interest to -him, despite his vigorous denial that he is a patriot. Probably the -play indicates his subscription to the idea of many an Irishman whose -emotionalism has been tempered by English common-sense: that Ireland -must cease looking for relief without and seek it within. In so far as -this is true, the play is dialectic. But first of all it is a farce by -the dramatist whom one London critic, at least, calls “the best living -writer of comedy.” - -“It’s all rot,” says Broadbent, the Englishman in the play, of some -speech made by Doyle. “It’s all rot, but it’s so brilliant, you know.” - -“Here, no doubt,” observed Mr. Walkley of the _Times_, “Shaw is slyly -taking a side glance at the usual English verdict on his own works. -The verdict will need some slight modification in the case of ‘John -Bull’s Other Island.’ For, in the first place, the play is not _all_ -rot. Further, it has some other qualities than mere brilliancy. It -is at once a delight and a disappointment.... Shaw takes up the -empty bladders of life, the current commonplaces, the cant phrases, -the windbags of rodomontade, the hollow conventions, and the sham -sentiments; quietly he inserts his pin; and the thing collapses with a -pop.” - -The play was given six special matinée performances at the London Court -Theater in the latter part of 1904, and Arnold Daly has since presented -it in America. - - - - -THE NOVELS AND OTHER WRITINGS - - -Shaw’s four published novels both suffer and gain by the widespread -public interest in his plays; gain because this interest serves to -keep them somewhat in the foreground, and suffer because, as the work -of a very young man, they are ill-fitted to stand comparison with -the literary offspring of his maturity. Of the four, “Love Among the -Artists” is the best and “Cashel Byron’s Profession” the most popular. -“An Unsocial Socialist” is a wild extravaganza that has lived its day -and done its task, and “The Irrational Knot” is forgotten. The author’s -first novel, written in his early twenties, has never seen the light. -The publishers of that time would have none of it, and later on, when -Shaw “copy” began to find a market and there even arose a mild demand -for it, Shaw wisely decided that the yellowing manuscript should remain -in the twilight of its tomb. - -The hero of “Cashel Byron’s Profession” has become one of the most -familiar characters of latter-day fiction. References to him are made -in the newspapers frequently and every time a star of the roped arena -marries a chorus girl the love making of Mr. Byron is recalled. He was -not the first bruiser to grace the pages of an English romance--as -admirers of “Pendennis” and _The Spectator_ well know--but he has -become, by long odds, the most conspicuous. It is to be deplored -that Shaw did not save him for a play. “The Admirable Bashville,” a -burlesque dramatization of the novel, does not answer. Cashel should be -the hero of a melodrama _a la_ “Arms and the Man.” What an opportunity -he would give to our Greek god stars! - -Cashel is the son of an actress and becoming tired of her variable -moods and the exactions of his instructors, runs away from boarding -school in England and journeys to Australia. There, by chance, he -is taken into the household of Mr. “Ned” Skene, an eminent retired -pugilist, as secretary and gymnasium assistant. The alert Skene -discerns in him a rare “find” and before long he is back in England -again, battling his way to fame and fortune. - -Before long, through one Lord Worthington, a man of vast acquaintance -and catholic taste, Cashel is introduced to the notice of Miss Lydia -Carew, a young Englishwoman of huge fortune and most marvellous -intellectuality. It is not until page 189--more than half way -through the 330 page book--that Lydia learns that Cashel is a -prize-fighter. Very naturally she recoils from him, but all the while, -half-unconsciously, she has been falling desperately in love with him, -and in the end, despite his profession, she marries him. - -“I practically believe,” she explains to his rejected rival, “in the -doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly -active, I think my impulse toward a man strong in body and untroubled -in mind is a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain -proposition in eugenics.” - -And so Cashel retires from the ring and gradually, though never -completely, takes on the polish of civilization. It is a union so happy -that it soon descends into the commonplace. - -The author was born with the dramatic instinct of a Sardou or a Hal -Reid and throughout the book there are scenes of tremendous excitement -and clatter. Cashel fights fairly terrific battles--among others one -with Miss Carew’s footman, Bashville, who also loves her--and the -general air of the book is distinctly warlike. Most of the minor -characters are commonplace. Skene and his wife and Lord Worthington -are old friends from Thackeray and Lucian Webber, Lydia’s cousin -and unsuccessful Romeo, is the ready-made rising young statesman of -contemporary English fiction. - -“An Unsocial Socialist” is a tract born of the nights that Shaw passed -in pondering the philosophies. All of the ten articles in the manifesto -of 1845 are preached in it, and in addition there is much that the Hon. -“Tom” Watson, the Hon. Eugene Debs, and various other earnest gentlemen -were destined to spout forth years later. “I suppose,” says Max -Beerbohm, “that there is not under heaven a subject on which Shaw has -not thought deeply and indignantly.” “An Unsocial Socialist” justifies -this venture. It is the most riotous hodge-podge of cart-tail oratory -and low comedy in the language. - -Sidney Trefusis, a millionaire, takes to wife Henriette Jansenius, -the daughter of a millionaire, and after a brief honeymoon bids her -good-bye. He is no ordinary money-king, this strange young man, but -a Rothschild with the ideas of a Marx. The times, he decides, are -out of joint. Things have grown rotten in Denmark. To live as men of -his fortune live would be to give his tacit consent to the immoral -scheme of things. And so he deserts his wife, assumes the name of -Smilash, and going to a small country town, sets up shop as the local -jack-of-all-trades. - -From this point on, for a hundred pages, the book is a socialist tract. -To his wife, who pursues him, and to everyone else he encounters--the -faculty and student body of a refined young ladies’ seminary, the -village politicians, chance passersby, enemies, and friends--he -expounds his theories. Also--and this is what makes him rise from the -common level of propagandists--he practices many (though not all) of -the things he preaches. In the end, his neglect kills his wife and he -goes ranging England in search of a real affinity. When he finds her he -marries her and the book ends--with a most marvellous letter from the -hero to the author. - -As in the case of “The Philanderer” a great many persons have wondered -how Shaw could make such a ridiculous character of a man whose -doctrines apparently coincide with his own. In truth, it is highly -improbable that Shaw, or any other sane man, ever held to the ideas -expressed by Trefusis. The latter’s speech beside the corpse of his -wife is without parallel in fiction. And some of his other utterances -and acts--how royally and deliciously sacrilegious they are! Certainly -an age that finds Schopenhauer’s essay on women a never-ending delight -should be better acquainted with the ecstatic shocks of “An Unsocial -Socialist.” Trefusis, being utterly beyond the pale, is as productive -of wicked little thrills to the orthodox and virtuous as McIntosh -Jellaludin, David, Pantagruel, or the latest popular murderer. - -“The Irrational Knot”--the theme of which is evident from the title--is -now but a name. It was one of a vast multitude of similar books that -saw the light at the time of its birth. Not one of the reviewers, -eulogists or enemies of Shaw seems to think much of it. “Love Among -the Artists,” on the contrary, is a novel that deserves to rank with -the really important fiction of the time. The theme is not startlingly -original and in the 400-odd pages there are oceans of tiresome talk, -but the work, as a whole, bears the stamp of distinction, and if only -for the admirable searching portrait of the Polish _pianiste_, Aurélie -Szczympliça, it deserves some share of attention. - -The story has the amiably discursive cast of the other Shaw stories -and ill bears translation into a brief summary. Adrian Herbert, an -artist, is a character about whom others, in a sense, revolve, though, -in himself, he is little interesting. At the start he is affianced to -Mary Sutherland, a young woman of artistic longings. The chief business -of the book is to show how he is won away from Mary by the Szczympliça -and duly and regularly married by that remarkable young woman. As for -Mary, she finds consolation in the arms of John Hoskyn, an eminently -practical and matter-of-fact gentleman, who wanders into Bohemia quite -by accident, and is much astonished by what he sees there. - -Shaw was a newcomer in Bohemia himself when he wrote this book and to -this fact may be ascribed the freshness and virility of some of the -characters--the Szczympliça in particular, and Owen Jack, the eccentric -composer. In the former the vagaries of the artistic mind are revealed -with considerable originality and delicacy. If he was tempted to make a -burlesque of the soulful little Aurélie, he kept a tight rein upon the -impulse. Jack, on the contrary, is frankly a figure out of low comedy. -Nothing more grotesque than his struggles with the Philistines is to -be found in any of the Shaw plays. Like Cashel Byron, he and Aurélie -deserve to be translated from the closet to the stage. Jack especially -is sufficiently obvious to give any comedian of fair talents the -opportunity of a lifetime. - -Shaw’s pair of critical pamphlets--“The Perfect Wagnerite” and “The -Quintessence of Ibsenism”--will go down into history beside Robert -Schumann’s early reviews of the compositions of Chopin and Huxley’s -opening broadsides for Darwin. Each paved the way for better knowledge -and better understanding. In 1888, when “The Perfect Wagnerite” was -published, the composer of “The Ring of the Nibelung” was still caviare -to the Britons. The professors of the day knew him and feared that the -great gaping public would come to know him, and so, like the ancient -monks who kept the Scriptures under lock and key, they greatly desired -that he be ignored. Shaw undertook the vain task of proving the younger -Siegfried a socialist--and succeeded in making his readers meditate -upon Wagner. Thus he earned whatever money and fame he got from his -pains. - -“The Quintessence of Ibsenism” includes some wonderfully illuminative -and searching passages, but on the whole it is rather out of date. Shaw -makes the Norwegian a social-philosopher of most earnest purposes, and -hangs upon the book an elaborate and ingenious theory of sham-smashing. -As a matter of fact, we have Ibsen’s own word for it that few of his -plays contain much conscious preaching, and no doubt many of the -alarming doctrines Shaw found in them were not there before he conjured -them up. Nevertheless, the book remains the best estimate of Ibsen yet -written in English. - -Incidentally, it gave birth to the tumultuous discussion of the -so-called “symbolic” play which raged over England and America half a -dozen years ago. Nowadays one hears little of “symbolism” and even the -comic papers have ceased to regard Ibsen and his company as men who -write in mysterious cryptograms. But persons who follow the trend of -things dramatic remember the disputations that once awoke the echoes. -You will find the germ of them in Shaw’s half-forgotten discourses upon -“Brand,” “Peer Gynt,” and “Emperor and Galilean.” - -In the early ’90’s, when Max Nordau’s mighty tome, “Degeneration,” -was making a stir like a new best-selling novel, Shaw published a -counter-blast to it. Even exceeding Nordau in the minuteness of his -knowledge, he made an answer that, in the words of one admirer, -“wiped Nordau off the field of discussion.” Unhappily, this effort at -regeneration has been forgotten with “Degeneration.” - -Shaw’s remarkable essay “On Going to Church,” which was recently -republished in book form, is an earnest plea for less humbug in public -worship. The average church, he argues, is so hopelessly ugly, tawdry, -and irritating, that it straightway dissipates any religious emotion -the stray comer may harbor when he enters. - -The socialistic and political essays, while by no means unimportant to -the students of the Shaw plays, are scarcely within the province of -this book. - - - - -BIOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL - - -I - -George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, July 26, 1856. His paternal -grandfather, Bernard Shaw, was high sheriff of County Kilkenny, and -his maternal grandfather, Walter Bagnall Gurley, a county ’squire and -fox hunter, with an extensive, but entailed estate. Shaw’s father -was a younger son and, in consequence, no millionaire. But that he -was a pauper or that the dramatist, in his youth, was attracted to -vegetarianism because, as James Huneker hints, cabbages are cheaper -than venison, there is no reason to believe. When the family came to -London, in 1876, it took up quarters in “a well furnished house in a -pleasant part” of the city. This upon the authority of Mr. Stanley -Shaw, a relative, in a letter to the New York _Sun_, dated Berlin, -April 25, 1905. - -The Shaws then, were country gentlemen, and in all probability -little different from the other Irish gentry about them. The son of -the younger son was educated and reared in the orthodox fashion. He -learned the speech of the Irish aristocracy and the foreign tongues -in favor--English, French, and maybe a bit of German; he mastered -the three R’s, he studied the history of his country, and went to -church. “When I was a little boy,” he says in his essay “On Going -to Church,” “I was compelled to go on Sunday; and though I escaped -from that intolerable bondage before I was ten, it prejudiced me so -violently against church-going that twenty years elapsed before, in -foreign lands and in pursuit of works of art, I became once more a -church-goer. To this day, my flesh creeps when I recall that genteel -suburban Irish Protestant church, built by Roman Catholic workmen who -would have considered themselves damned had they crossed its threshold -afterward....” A virtuous, commonplace family. Its present head, says -the Mr. Stanley Shaw aforesaid, “is Major Sir Frederick Shaw, Bart., -D. S. O. of Bushey Park, Dublin.” A respectable, well-sounding name and -address. - - -II - -Shaw was twenty when he reached London--the meditative, impressionable, -speculative, iconoclastic age. Apparently he fell an easy prey -to the philosophical anarchists who then held the centre of the -stage--Proudhon, Lassalle, Marx, Louis Blanc, Engels, Liebknecht, and -the lesser Germans. Certainly it was a day of stimulating stirring -about. Huxley and Spencer were up to their necks in gore; Ibsen, with -“The League of Youth” behind him, was giving form to “The Pillars of -Society” and “A Doll’s House”; Nietzsche was tramping up and down his -garden path; Wagner was hard at work; “The Principles of Sociology” -had just come from the press. Sham-smashing was in the air. Everything -respectable was under suspicion. - -It didn’t take Shaw long to spring out of the audience upon the stage. -His first novel, in truth, must have been begun long before he learned -to find his way about the streets of London. Whether it was good or bad -the human race will never know; publishers declined it without thanks, -and the author, when his manuscripts began to have a value, decided -that it should remain unpublished. “It was a very remarkable work,” he -says, “but hardly one which I should be well advised in letting loose -whilst my livelihood depends on my credit as a literary workman. I can -recall a certain difficulty, experienced even while I was writing the -book, in remembering what it was about....” Thus heavily did his theme -bear down upon him. - -What the young Irishman did to relieve his imagination during the -next three years is not recorded. That he learned a great deal, -particularly of music and literature, is very probable. His sister -was a professional singer, and the persons he met were chiefly of the -literary-artistic sort. He was “but an infant of twenty-four, when, -being at that time one of the unemployed” he essayed to mend his -“straitened fortunes” by writing his second novel, “The Irrational -Knot.” It was no masterpiece, but if the few persons who glanced -through it possessed prophetic eyes they must have seen in it marks -of a genius rather startling. A year later came “Love Among the -Artists”--a volume of nearly 500 pages. Then, in order, came “Cashel -Byron’s Profession” and “An Unsocial Socialist.” Not one of these -extraordinary tales struck the fancy of the publishers. “An encouraging -compliment or two,” says Shaw, was his sole reward for the fatiguing -labor of writing them. Not until a good while afterward did any of -the five see the light, and then it was only “to fill up the gaps -in socialist magazines financed by generous friends.” “An Unsocial -Socialist” was the first to reach the dignity of covers. After it came -“Cashel Byron’s Profession” and “The Irrational Knot.” “Love Among the -Artists” was the last to appear upon the book stalls. - - -III - -Meanwhile Shaw had become engaged in half a dozen reform crusades. -Vegetarianism found in him an early advocate and socialism won him -easily. In 1883, the year Karl Marx died, Thomas Davidson, an American, -laid the foundation of the Fabian Society at a series of parlor -conferences in London. In 1884 Shaw joined the society, and four years -later, when it began holding public meetings, he found himself one of -its leading lights. He has told us himself how he delighted to indulge -in eloquent socialistic orations from cart-tails and how he came to -acquire a bodyguard of faithful auditors whose presence was assured -whenever it was announced that he would speak. With the pen, too, he -labored for the manifesto of 1845, and even to-day he is still hard at -it--despite prosperity, the approach of middle age and a fair imitation -of the thing called fame. He wrote tracts in great number and after -1889 edited the Fabian Essays. Incidentally he wrote “Fabianism and the -Empire” (1900), “Fabianism and the Fiscal Question” (1904), and other -socialistic broadsides. At odd moments he had his say, too, upon the -subjects of vegetarianism, the use of quotation marks, capitalization, -evening clothes, capital punishment, and the eternal snobbishness of -the patriotic Britisher. - -During all this time he was drawn nearer and nearer to the theater. As -far back as 1885 he began a play in collaboration with William Archer, -the translator of Ibsen. This drama, rewritten and amplified seven -years later, was the first of his works to be performed in public. But -the need of getting on in the world pressed gloomily. “The question -was,” Shaw has told us, “how to get a pound a week.” Novel writing -was plainly hopeless and play making seemed equally impossible. There -remained a chance to set up shop as a critic. Shaw made the plunge -and almost immediately his humor and originality won him an audience. -“Soon,” he says, “my privileges were enormous and my wealth immense.... -The classes patiently read my essays; the masses patiently listened -to my harangues. I enjoyed the immunities of impecuniosity with the -opportunities of a millionaire....” - -At the start Shaw’s regular topic was the art pictorial, but before -long he began to dabble in music. According to Max Beerbohm, his first -essay was printed in the first number of the _Star_ in 1888. This was a -highly purposeful periodical, founded by T. P. O’Connor (“If we enable -the charwoman to put two lumps of sugar in her tea instead of one,” -said “Tay Pay,” in his salutatory, “we shall not have worked in vain”), -and Shaw wrote over the _nom de plume_ of “Corno di Bassetto.” In 1890, -after two years’ service, he transferred his flag to the _World_. -Then, like his friend Huneker, he abandoned music for the drama, and -from January, 1895, to May, 1898, he was the critic of the _Saturday -Review_--the London weekly in whose columns the ingenious Mr. Beerbohm -now holds forth. - - -IV - -As has been noted, “Widowers’ Houses,” Shaw’s first play, was completed -in 1892. It was given its initial performance during that year at the -Royalty Theater, London, by the Independent Theater Company, and made -a rather strenuous success. “The socialists and independents,” says -Shaw, “applauded me furiously on principle; the ordinary play-going -first-nighters hooted me frantically on the same ground; I, being -at that time in some practice as what might be unpolitely called a -mob-orator, made a speech before the curtain; the newspapers discussed -the play for a whole fortnight, not only in the ordinary theatrical -notices and criticisms, but in leading articles and letters; and -finally the text of the play was published, with an introduction by -Mr. Grein (the manager of the Independent Company), an amusing account -by Mr. Archer of the original collaboration, and a long preface and -several elaborate controversial appendices in the author’s most -energetically egotistical fighting style.” - -“The Philanderer” was written in 1893, also for the Independent -Theater, and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” was completed the same year. -The former was withdrawn because it was found well-nigh impossible to -unearth actors capable of understanding it sufficiently to play it, and -the latter remained in the manager’s desk because the virtuous English -play-censor forbade its performance. Nine years later--January 12, -1902--it was presented privately by the Stage Society. - -In 1894 a group of philanthropic play-goers, convinced that the dramas -of the day were intolerable, financed a series of special performances -at the Avenue Theater, London. The second play presented was Shaw’s -“Arms and the Man.” It was given its premiere April 21, and ran until -July 7. Shaw, in his preface to the second volume of “Plays Pleasant -and Unpleasant” enters upon an elaborate account of its receipts and -the philosophy thereof. During its brief season the Londoners paid -$8,500 to see it and the cost of presenting it, counting salaries, -rents, lights, advertising, and royalties, was nearly $25,000. Soon -afterwards Richard Mansfield presented the play in the United States -and it made a very fair success. It is in the Mansfield repertoire -even to-day, and now and then there is a matinée performance of it. -But apparently the public does not very vigorously demand it. In -translation it has been done in Germany. - -“The Man of Destiny” was written in 1895. Two years later it was -given one performance at Croydon, England. Then it slumbered until -the last months of 1904, when Arnold Daly played it in New York as an -after-piece to “Candida.” Since then his company has appeared in it in -most of the large cities of the United States. “Candida” and “You Never -Can Tell” were written in 1896. The former was first played by the -Independent Theater Company, during a tour of the English provinces, in -1897. Arnold Daly, scraping together $300, presented it, in association -with Winchell Smith, at the Berkeley Lyceum, a diminutive theater in -West 45th street, New York, in 1904. The success of the drama was so -great that before long Daly found himself a Broadway star under the -management of Liebler & Co., and at present it seems likely that Shaw’s -plays will serve to keep him in the public eye for a good while to -come. - -Shaw wrote a one-act piece, “How He Lied to Her Husband,” for his -young American interpreter, and when it was presented in New York, in -the fall of 1904, it made a great stir. “You Never Can Tell,” which -had been withdrawn by Shaw after being placed in rehearsal in London, -was given at the Garrick Theater by Daly at the conclusion of the run -of “Candida.” The two volumes of “Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant” were -published in 1898. They included “Widowers’ Houses,” “The Philanderer,” -“Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Arms and the Man,” “You Never Can Tell,” -“Candida,” and “The Man of Destiny”--not to speak of a 37-page preface -dealing with a vast multitude of subjects. - - -V - -“The Devil’s Disciple,” the first of the “Three Plays for Puritans,” -was written early in 1897. Richard Mansfield presented it in New York -in the fall of that year and it made an excellent success. Like “Arms -and the Man” it is still in his repertoire--pretty far down in the -trunk, it may be mentioned in passing, with many other plays atop of -it. In October, 1899, Murray Carson’s company played it for a few weeks -at Kensington, near London. “Cæsar and Cleopatra” was written in 1898, -and “Capt. Brassbound’s Conversion” the next year. The “Three Plays -for Puritans” were published in 1900. “The Admirable Bashville, or -Constancy Rewarded” was given by the Stage Society at the Imperial -Theatre in 1903. Shaw evolved it from the fragments of “Cashel Byron’s -Profession” to protect his rights in the latter, an unauthorized -dramatization having been made for an American pugilist-actor. The play -was printed as an appendix to the second English edition of “Cashel -Byron’s Profession.” - -“Man and Superman” was written in 1902, and published the next year, -with a gigantic preface, and “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket -Companion” as an appendix. Preface, play, and appendix make a volume -of 244 closely-printed pages. The drama saw the light on the evening -of May 23, 1905, at the Court Theater, London. Granville Barker, made -up to resemble Shaw, played the role of John Tanner, and Miss Lillian -McCarthy was the Ann Whitefield. May 21 and 22 there were special -performances of the play by the Stage Society, and in September, 1905, -Robert Loraine and his company presented it in New York. The third act -with the scene of Don Juan in Hell was omitted. “John Bull’s Other -Island” was completed in 1904, and presented at six special matinees at -the Court Theater by the Stage Society in the fall of that year. “Major -Barbara” was written in 1905. - -Shaw’s two critical tracts, “The Perfect Wagnerite” and “The -Quintessence of Ibsenism” were published in 1888 and 1891, -respectively. His last scholastic manifesto, “The Common Sense of -Municipal Training” was issued in 1904. A remarkable essay, “On Going -to Church,” which appeared originally in the _Savoy Quarterly_--Arthur -Symons’ journal--in 1896, was reprinted early in 1905, and attained -a large sale. In the late ’80’s, in an English periodical, there -appeared his celebrated answer to Max Nordau’s book, “Degeneration.” In -the opinion of some of his admirers this is, by far, the best of his -controversial works, but, unfortunately, it has not been reprinted in -permanent form. - -“When Arnold Daly visited Shaw,” says Gustav Kobbé, “he found several -indications that cynicism and Fabian socialism are not unprofitable. -Shaw lives in large apartments in the New Reform Club, overlooking -the Thames embankment, and he has a country place at Welwin, too.... -There is no sham in the interior of his places of abode. There is a -complete absence of the cheap æsthetic or of superfluous ornamentation. -Simplicity of outline distinguishes such ornaments as there are. -Handles, incrustations and the like are eschewed. Shaw explained to -Daly that he wished nothing in his abode that would collect dust. Even -rugs are tabooed.... Daly did not find the author a _poseur_, but -simply a man who was not an ordinary man....” - -That Shaw has a keen eye to business a great many aspiring managers -have discovered. He demands a royalty of 15 per cent. of the gross -receipts of his plays--considerably more than all but the most -famous dramatists receive--and is careful and unsentimental in his -negotiations. That he is now basking in the sun of prosperity is -very probable. Saving only Shakespeare, no English author was better -represented in the productions of the winter of 1904–5. In addition -Shaw is much in demand as a lecturer and has no difficulty in finding -a publisher for whatever he chooses to write. In 1898 he inherited the -entailed estate of his maternal grandfather, Walter Bagnall Gurley. He -was married the same year to Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend. - -“Who’s Who” says that Shaw’s favorite exercises are swimming and -cycling and that his recreation is “anything except sport.” He is tall, -lanky, and wears a shaggy, red beard. He affects loose fitting flannel -shirts and heaps his curses upon the dress suit. He is a vegetarian, -a socialist, and many other things of a heterodox, fearsome sort. He -uses the typewriter in preference to a pen, even for correspondence. He -has travelled in Europe and the Levant, and may soon come to America. -He refuses to use apostrophes in such words as don’t and can’t, and -affects thin spacing, after the German style, instead of italics, to -emphasize words. “Last season,” says the sapient Mr. Daly, “he was a -social freak; now he is a legitimate amuser (sic!) of the people.” - -And so much for George Bernard Shaw. - - - - -SHAKESPEARE AND SHAW - - -Shaw’s notion that Shakespeare’s plays--or, at least, some of -them--have been left behind by the evolution of popular philosophy -and ideals is scarcely original with him. As he himself points out, -the Bard of Avon has been burned in hot critical fire for many years, -despite the “Shakespeare fanciers” who hold him as a god. Some of his -plays, says Shaw, were so far ahead of their time when they were first -presented that it has taken 300 years of theater-goers to tire of the -“long line of disgraceful farces, melodramas, and stage-pageants which -actor-managers, from Garrick and Cibber to our own contemporaries, -have hacked out of them,” and to understand performances of the -texts as the poet wrote them. By the same token, those plays which -Shakespeare himself “wrote down” to the level of his audience have -grown archaic in sentiment and character. Dramas like “Anthony and -Cleopatra,” says Shaw, will nevermore be written, “nor relished by men -in whose philosophy guilt and innocence, and, consequently, revenge and -idolatry, have no meaning. Such men must rewrite all the old plays in -terms of their own philosophy....” - -When this was published, as a preface to “Cæsar and Cleopatra,” in -“Three Plays for Puritans,” there was a volcanic critical eruption, and -ever since then the flames have roared about the ingenious Irishman. He -has delivered lectures explaining his position, he has set forth his -views, elaborately and carefully, in print, and his admirers have gone -to his rescue--but a large party of Shakespeare worshipers insist on -clinging to the belief that he has attempted to drag the bard from his -pedestal and himself climb upon it. Recently, in London, he delivered -a lecture designed to make clear his idea. Next morning the London -morning papers printed amazingly confused reports of it, and to set -himself right Shaw wrote a letter to the _Daily News_ containing 12 -assertions, which, like the 95 theses Luther nailed upon the church -door at Wittenberg, he desired should make known the substance of his -argument. Here they are: - -“1. That the idolatry of Shakespeare which prevails now existed in his -own time, and got on the nerve of Ben Jonson. - -“2. That Shakespeare was not an illiterate poaching laborer who came -up to London to be a horseboy, but a gentleman with all the social -pretensions of our higher _bourgeoisie_. - -“3. That Shakespeare, when he became an actor, was not a rogue and a -vagabond, but a member and part proprietor of a regular company, using, -by permission, a nobleman’s name as its patron, and holding itself as -exclusively above the casual barnstormer as a Harley Street consultant -holds himself above a man with a sarsaparilla stall. - -“4. That Shakespeare’s aim in business was to make money enough to -acquire land in Stratford, and to retire as a country gentleman with a -coat of arms and a good standing in the county; and that this was not -the ambition of a _parvenu_, but the natural course for a member of -the highly respectable, though temporarily impecunious, family of the -Shakespeares. - -“5. That Shakespeare found that the only thing that paid in the theater -was romantic nonsense, and that when he was forced by this to produce -one of the most effective samples of romantic nonsense in existence--a -feat which he performed easily and well--he publicly disclaimed any -responsibility for its pleasant and cheap falsehood by borrowing the -story and throwing it in the face of the public with the phrase ‘As You -Like It.’ - -“6. That when Shakespeare used that phrase he meant exactly what he -said, and that the phrase ‘What You Will,’ which he applied to ‘Twelfth -Night,’ meaning ‘Call it what you please,’ is not, in Shakespearean -or any other English, the equivalent of the perfectly unambiguous and -penetratingly simple phrase ‘As You Like It.’ - -“7. That Shakespeare tried to make the public accept real studies of -life and character in--for instance--‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘All’s -Well That Ends Well’; and that the public would not have them, and -remains of the same mind still, preferring a fantastic sugar doll, like -Rosalind, to such serious and dignified studies of women as Isabella -and Helena. - -“8. That the people who spoil paper and waste ink by describing -Rosalind as a perfect type of womanhood are the descendants of the same -blockheads whom Shakespeare, with the coat of arms and the lands in -Warwickshire in view, had to please when he wrote plays as they liked -them. - -“9. Not, as has been erroneously stated, that I could write a better -play than ‘As You Like It,’ but that I actually have written much -better ones, and in fact, never wrote anything, and never intend to -write anything, half so bad in matter. (In manner and art nobody can -write better than Shakespeare, because, carelessness apart, he did the -thing as well as it can be done within the limits of human faculty.) - -“10. That to anyone with the requisite ear and command of words, blank -verse, written under the amazingly loose conditions which Shakespeare -claimed, with full liberty to use all sorts of words, colloquial, -technical, rhetorical, and even obscurely technical, to indulge in -the most far-fetched ellipses, and to impress ignorant people with -every possible extremity of fantasy and affectation, is the easiest -of all known modes of literary expression, and that this is why whole -oceans of dull bombast and drivel have been emptied on the head of -England since Shakespeare’s time in this form by people who could -not have written ‘Box and Cox’ to save their lives. Also (this on -being challenged) that I can write blank verse myself more swiftly -than prose, and that, too, of full Elizabethan quality plus the -Shakespearian sense of the absurdity of it as expressed in the lines of -Ancient Pistol. What is more, that I have done it, published it, and -had it performed on the stage with huge applause. - -“11. That Shakespeare’s power lies in his enormous command of word -music, which gives fascination to his most blackguardly repartees and -sublimity to his hollowest platitudes. - -“12. That Shakespeare’s weakness lies in his complete deficiency in -that highest sphere of thought, in which poetry embraces religion, -philosophy, morality, and the bearing of these on communities, which -is sociology. That his characters have no religion, no politics, no -conscience, no hope, no convictions of any sort. That there are, as -Ruskin pointed out, no heroes in Shakespeare. That his test of the -worth of life is the vulgar hedonic test and that since life cannot be -justified by this or any other external test, Shakespeare comes out -of his reflective period a vulgar pessimist, oppressed with a logical -demonstration that life is not worth living, and only surpassing -Thackeray in respect to being fertile enough, instead of repeating -‘Vanitas vanitatum’ at second hand to work the futile doctrine -differently and better in such passages as ‘Out, out, brief candle.’” - -These twelve articles merely serve to arouse a new storm of discussion -and Shaw profited much thereby in the advertising it gave him. In May, -1905, the controversy had reached such a height that J. B. Fagan, a -young English dramatist, wrote a burlesque about it. The piece was -called “Shakespeare vs. Shaw” and was presented at the Haymarket -Theater, London. The scene of the one act was a courtroom, in which -the case between the two playwrights was being tried. James Welsh, -Miss Winifred Emery, Cyril Maude, and other prominent players were -in the cast and the little _revue_ evidently made a fair success. -At all events, its presentation was a rather significant thing. Few -dramatists, in their lifetimes, see plays written about them. - - -THE END - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - - -Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a -predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they -were not changed. - -Simple typographical errors were corrected; missing quotation marks at -the beginnings of chapters were left unbalanced; a missing one within a -paragraph was added. - -The Table of Contents had no page numbers. - -“Major Barbara” is listed in the Table of Contents, but thereafter is -mentioned only once, in a sentence on page 99. - -“Johnnisfeuer” may be a misspelling for “Johannisfeuer.” - -Page 7: “a chilly, waspish pig” was printed that way, but it may be -a misprint for “a chilly, waspish prig”. - -Page 15: “Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde” was printed that way, but it is a -misprint for “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. - -Pages 49 and 98: “The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Rewarded” -was printed that way, but is a misprint for “The Admirable Bashville, -or Constancy Unrewarded”. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS -PLAYS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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