— March 30, 1911
The Drama
A new book by George Bernard Shaw is always hailed by a multitude of readers; even the worst of the Shaw of today is so much better than the best of many writers that the bookbuyer’s enthusiasm will not be seriously dampened by Heartbreak House. It is probably the worst of Shaw....
For the characters are not typical, and the situations are often absurd. The workmanship is frequently slipshod, not in the old way which was Mr. Shaw’s clever flouting of conventional technique, but in pure carelessness. In some cases one smarts from the unadulterated theatrical hoakum.
— November 1919
James Agate
If a man can be partaker of God’s theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God’s rest, says Bacon. But if truth be the thing which Shaw will have most, rest is that which he will have not at all. If we will be partakers of Shaw’s theatre we must be prepared to be partakers of his fierce unrest.
But then no thinker would ever desire to lay up any other reward. When Whitman writes: “I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than oneself is,” we must either assent or dissent. Simply to cry out “Whitmanesque!” is no way out of the difficulty. When Ibsen writes a play to prove that building happy homes for happy human beings is not the highest peak of human endeavour, leaving us to find out what higher summit there may be, he intends us to use our brains. It is beside the point to cry out “How like Ibsen!” Heartbreak House is a restatement of these two themes. You have to get Ibsen thoroughly in mind if you are not to find the Zeppelin at the end of Shaw’s play merely monstrous. It has already destroyed the people who achieve; it is to come again to lighten the talkers’ darkness, and at the peril of all the happy homes in the neighbourhood.You will do well to keep Whitman in mind when you hear the old sea-captain bellowing with a thousand different intonations and qualities of emphasis: Be yourself, do not sleep. I do not mean, of course, that Shaw had these two themes actually in mind when he set about this rather maundering, Tchekovian rhapsody. But they have long been part of his mental make-up, and he cannot escape them or their implications. The difficulty seems to be in the implications. Is a man to persist in being himself if that self runs counter to God or the interests of parish, nation, the community at large? The characters in this play are nearer to apes and goats than to men and women. Shall they nevertheless persist in being themselves, or shall they pray to be Zeppelin-destroyed and born again? The tragedy of the women is the very ordinary one of having married the wrong man. But all these men — liars and humbugs, ineffectual, hysterical, neurasthenic — are wrong men. The play, in so far as it has a material plot, is an affair of grotesque and horrid accouplements It is monstrous for the young girl to mate in any natural sense with a, superficially considered, rather disgusting old man. Shall she take him in the spirit as a spiritual mate? Shaw holds that she shall, and that in the theater even spiritual truth shall prevail over formal prettiness.
— Alarums and Excursions (1922)
QUESTIONS
1. Shaw was an active member of the Fabian Society, a reformist, quasi-socialist organization. Do you see evidence of this affiliation in the plays in this volume?
2. . Consider Shaw’s treatment of strong-minded, unconventional young women. Do they seem real flesh and blood, or mere mouthpieces for Shaw’s ideas? What do you make of their usual association with older men?
3. What are the most common butts of Shaw’s humor?
4. Do you feel that the primary effect of Shaw’s prefaces is to illuminate the plays? What else do they do?
5. Shaw is a notorious polemicist. But are the endings of these four plays polemical? Do they make a point or argue a cause in an unequivocal way? Or are they ambiguous, suggestive rather than explicit?
FOR FURTHER READING
WORKS BY SHAW
Collected Plays with Their Prefaces: Vols. 1-7. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975.
The Collected Screenplays of Bernard Shaw. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.
Collected Letters. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Vol. 1, 1874-1897, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965; Vol. 2, 1898-1910, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972; Vol. 3, 1911 — 1925, New York: Viking Press, 1985; Vol. 4, 1926-1950. New York: Viking Press, 1988.
The Drama Observed. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. Vol. 1 : 1880 — 1895; Vol. 2:1895 — 1897; Vol. 3:1897-1911;Vol. 4:1911 — 1950. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. An invaluable collection of all Shaw’s writings about theater.
Shaw’s Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three Volumes. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Vol. I:1876-1890; Vol. 2:1890 — 1893; Vol. 3:1893-1850. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981.
BIOGRAPHY
Ervine, St. John G. Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work, and Friends. New York: William Morrow, 1956. The most sympathetic and fair biography of Shaw.
Henderson, Archibald. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956.
Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw, Vol. 1, 1856-1898: The Search for Love, New York: Random House, 1988. Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2, 1898-1918: The Pursuit of Power. New York: Random House, 1989. Bernard Shaw, Vol. 3, 1918-1950 : The Lure of Fantasy. New York: Random House, 1991. Bernard Shaw, Vol. 4, 1950-1991: The Last Laugh. New York: Random House, 1992. The most detailed and comprehensive biography. A condensed version is available: Bernard Shaw: The One- Volume Definitive Edition. New York: Random House, 1998.
Shaw, George Bernard. Interviews and Recollections. Edited by A. M. Gibbs. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990. An indispensable record of first-hand personal views of and by Shaw.
CRITICAL WORKS
Bentley, Eric. Bernard Shaw. New York: New Directions, 1947.
Berst, Charles A. Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973.
Bertolini, John A. The Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw. Carbon-dale and Edwardsville: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1991.
Crompton, Louis. Shaw the Dramatist. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
Dukore, Bernard. Shaw’s Theatre. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
Evans, T. F., ed. Shaw: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1976.
Gibbs, A. M. The Art and Mind of Shaw. New York: Macmillan, 1983.
Gordon, David J. Bernard Shaw and the Comic Sublime. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Holroyd, Michael, ed. The Genius of Shaw. New York: Holt, Rine hart and Winston, 1979.
Meisel, Martin. Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. A brilliant and delightful account of Shaw’s relationship to the theater of his youth.
Morgan, Margery M. The Shavian Playground. London: Methuen, 1972.
Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies: Vols. 1-22 successive. General editors: Stanley Weintraub, Fred D. Crawford, Gale K. Larson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981-2003.