Bloom’s Modern Critical Views 

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ony Kushner
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ruman Capote
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Emily
Ernest Dickinson
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Gaddis
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Geoffrey Chaucer Native American  
 ragedies
ragedies
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Wordsworth
G.K. Chesterton Norman Mailer Zora Neale Hurston
 

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views 

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 

 New Edition

 Edited and with an introduction by 

Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
 Yale
 Yale University 
 

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: George Bernard Shaw—New Edition

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George Bernard Shaw / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
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  1. Shaw, Berna
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rd, 1856–
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Contents 

Editor’s Note vii

Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination
Imaginat ion 25
 John A. Bertolini 
Ber tolini 

 he Shavian
Shavia n Inclusiveness 47
 Jean Reynolds 
Rey nolds 

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and

the Playing of Pygmalion  69
Celia Marshik

 Major Barbara   87
Stuart E. Baker 

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 111

111
Lagretta allent Lenker 

Shaw among the Ar

Artists
tists 131
 Jan McDonald 

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form

Form and Content
Content 145
145
 Michael Goldman
 

 vi Contents

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s
he Homecoming : Comedie
Comediess of Implosion 155
 Emil Roy 

Chronology 167

Contributors 169
Bibliography 171
Acknowledgments 175
Index 177
 

 Editor’s
 Editor’s Note 
Note 

My introduction, which considers Shaw’s copious intellectual debts, offers

critical readings of  Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion , and Saint
 Joan, in the hope of arriving at a freshly balanced estimate both of Shaw’s
limitations and of his varied achievement as a comic melodramatist.
 John A. Bertolini
Ber tolini marks Saint Joan  as a new phase in Shaw’s preoc-
cupation with the workings of the imagination, after which Jean Reynolds
borrows Eric Bentley’
Bentley ’s phrase “Shavian inclusiveness” to explore elements of
postmodernism in the plays.
Celia Marshik traces Pygmalion’s long journey to the page and stage,
locating the comedy within the context of turn-of-the-century purity move-
ments. Stuart E. Baker identifies  Major Barbara   as containing the fullest
expression of Shavian philosophy and dramatic method.
Lagretta allent
allent Lenker considers Shaw’s varied and contradictory
contradictor y ideas
about war, followed by Jan McDonald’s appraisal of Shaw’s views of art and
artists as expressed in the plays.
Michael Goldman grapples with the relationship between style and
ideology in the plays and the influence of Shaw’s evolving critical reputa-
tion. Emil Roy concludes the volume by comparing the implosive comedy of
Heartbreak House  with
 with Pinter’s
P inter’s Te Homecoming .

 vii
 

HAROLD BLOOM

 Introduction
 Introduction

“ W  ith the single exception

except ion of H
Homer
omer there is no eminent writer, not even
Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespear when
I measure my mind against his.” Shaw , obsessive polemicist, would write
anything, even that unfortunate sentence. No critic would wish to measure
Shaw ’s’s mind against Shakespeare’s, particularly since originality was hardly
Shaw ’’ss strength. Shavian ideas are quarried from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Ibsen, Wagner, Ruskin, Samuel Butler, Shelley, Carlyle, Marx (more or less),
 William Morris, Lamarck, Bergson—the list could be extended. hough
an intellectual dramatist, Shaw   essentially popularized the concepts and
images of others. He continues to hold the stage and might appear to have
earned his reputation of being the principal writer of English comic drama
since Shakespeare. Yet his limitations are disconcerting, and the experience
of rereading even his most famous plays, after many years away from them,
is disappointingly mixed. hey are much more than period pieces, but they
hardly seem to be for all time. No single comedy by Shaw  matches
  matches Wilde’s
he Importance of Being Earnest  or
 or the tragic farces of Beckett.
Eric Bentley best demonstrated that Shaw   viewed himself as a prose
prophet in direct succession to Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris. Tis is the Shaw  
of the prefaces, of  Essays in Fabian Socialism, of Doctors’ Delusions , Crude
Criminology , Sham Education. Only the prefaces to the plays are still read, and
of course they are not really prefaces to the plays. Tey expound Shaw ’s ververyy
odd personal religion, the rather cold worship of creative evolution. Of this
religion, one can say that it is no more bizarre than most and less distaste-
ful than many, but it is still quite grotesque. o judge religions by aesthetic

1
 

2 Harold Bloom

criteria may seem perverse,

per verse, but what others are
a re relevant for poems, plays, sto-
sto-
ries, novels, personal essays? By any aesthetic standard, Shaw ’s’s heretical faith
is considerably less interesting or impressive than D.H. Lawrence’s barbaric
 vitalism in Te Plumed Serpent  or  or even Tomas Hardy’s negative homage to
the immanent will in Te Dynasts.
G.K. Chesterton, in his book on Shaw  (1909),
 (1909), observed that the heroine
of Major Barbara 

ends by suggesting that she will serve God without personal hope,
so that she may owe nothing to God and He owe everything to
her. It does not seem to strike her that if God owes everything
to her He is not God. Tese things affect me merely as tedious
perversions of a phrase. It is as if you said, “I will never have a father
f ather
unless I have begotten him.”

“He who is willing to do the work gives birth to his own father,” Kierkeg-
aard wrote, and Nietzsche mused: “If one hasn’t had a good father, then it is
necessary to invent one.” Shaw  was was neither a Darwinian nor a Freudian, and
I think he was a bad Nietzschean, w
who
ho had misread rather weakly the sage of
Zarathustra. But in his life he had suffered an inadequate father and certainly
cer tainly
he was willing to do the work. Like his own Major Barbara, he wished to have
a God who would owe everything to G.B.S. Tat requires a writer to pos-
sess superb mythopoeic powers, and fortunately for Shaw  his  his greatest literary
strength was as an inventor of new myths. Shaw  endures
  endures in a high literary
sense and remains eminently readable as well as actable because of his myth-
making faculty,
f aculty, a power he shared with Blake
Blak e and Shelley,
S helley, Wagner and
a nd Ibsen.
I bsen.
He was not a stylist, not a thinker, not a psychologist, and utterly lacked
even an iota of the uncanny Shakespearean ability to represent character and
personality with overwhelming
over whelming persuasiveness. His dialogue is marred by his
garrulous tendencies, and the way he embodied his ideas is too often weari-
somely simplistic. And yet his dramas linger in us because his beings tran-
scend their inadequate status as representations of the human, with which
he was hopelessly impatient anyway.
anyway. Tey suggest something more obsessive
than daily life, something
something that moves and has its being in the cosmos we learn
to call Shavian, a comic version of Schopenhauer’s terrible world dominated
by the remorseless will to live.
As a critic, Shaw  was
  was genial only where he was not menaced, and he
felt deeply menaced by the Aesthetic vision, of which his socialism never
quite got free. Like Oscar Wilde and Wilde’s mentor, Walter Pater, Shaw  
 was the direct descendant
descendant of Ruskin, and his animus against
against Wilde and Pater
Pater
reflects the anxiety of an ambitious son toward rival claimants to a heritage.
 

Introduction 3

Pater insisted on style, as did Wilde, and Shaw  has

 has no style to speak of, not
much more, say, than Eugene O’Neill. Reviewing Wilde’s  An Ideal Husband  
on January 12, 1895, for Frank Harris’s Saturday Review, Shaw   was both
generous and just:

Mr. Wilde, an arch-artist, is so colossally lazy that he trifles

even with the work by which an artist escapes work. He distils
the very quintessence, and gets as product plays which are so
unapproachably playful that they are the delight of every playgoer
 with twopenn’orth
orth of brains.

A month later, confronted by he Importance of Being Earnest: A rivial

Comedy for Serious People , Shaw  lost
  lost his composure, his generosity, and his
sense of critical justice:

I cannot say that I greatly cared for Te Importance of Being

Earnest. It amused me, of course; but unless comedy touches me
as
mywell as amuses
evening. I go tome,
theittheatre
leaves me
to bewith a sense
moved of havingnotwasted
to laughter, to be
tickled or bustled into it; and that is why, though I laugh as much
as anybody at a farcical comedy, I am out of spirits before the end
of the second act, and out of temper before the end of the third,
my miserable mechanical laughter intensifying these symptoms at
every outburst. If the public ever becomes intelligent enough to
know when it is really enjoying itself and when it is not, there will
be an end of farcical comedy. Now in Te Importance of Being
Earnest there is plenty
plent y of this rrib-tickling:
ib-tickling: for instance, the lies, the
deceptions, the cross purposes, the sham mourning, the christening

of the only
could two grown-up
have beenmen,
raisedthefrom
muffin
theeating,
farcicaland so forth.
plane Tese
by making
them occur to characters who had, like Don Quixote, convinced
us of their reality and obtained some hold on our sympathy. But
that unfortunate moment of Gilbertism breaks our belief in the
humanity of the play.

 Would it be possible to have a sillier

 Would sill ier critical
critica l reaction
react ion to the most delightful
delightfu l
comic drama in English since Shakespeare? wenty-three years later, Shaw  
 wrote a letter
let ter (if it is that) to Frank Harris,
Harr is, published by Harris
Harr is in
i n his
h is Life
 (1918) and then reprinted by Shaw  in
of Wilde  (1918)  in his Pen Portraits and Reviews. 
Again Wilde was an artist of “stupendous laziness” and again was indicted,
this time after his death, for heartlessness:
 

4 Harold Bloom

Our sixth meeting, the only other one I can remember

remember,, was the one
at the Cafe Royal. On that occasion he was not too preoccupied
 with his danger to be disgusted with
with me because I, who had praised
his first plays handsomely, had turned traitor over Te Importance
of Being Earnest. Clever as it was, it was his first really heartless
play. In the others the chivalry of the eighteenth-century Irishman
and the romance of the disciple of Téophile Gautier (Oscar was
old-fashioned in the Irish way, except as a critic of morals) not
only gave a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious passages
and to the handling of the women, but provided that proximity of
emotion without which laughter, however irresistible, is destructive
and sinister. In Te Importance of Being Earnest this had vanished;
and the play, though extremely funny, was essentially hateful. I had
no idea that Oscar was going to the dogs, and that this represented
a real degeneracy produced by his debaucheries. I thought he
 was still developing; and I hazarded the unhappy guess that Te
Importance of before
projected long Being Earnest
under thewas in idea aofyoung
influence Gilbertwork
andwritten or
furbished
up for Alexander as a potboiler
potboiler.. At
At the Cafe Royal that day I calmly
asked him whether I was not right. He indignantly repudiated
my guess, and said loftily (the only time he ever tried on me the
attitude he took to John Gray and his more abject disciples) that
he was disappointed in me. I suppose I said, “Ten what on earth
has happened to you?” but I recollect nothing more on that subject
except that we did not quarrel over it.

Shaw   remains unique in finding he Importance of Being Earnest   (of all
plays!)
in Shaw “essentially
’s outragedhateful.”
’s responseAtoclue
Maxto Beerbohm’s
this astonishing reaction
review canand
of  Man anbe found
d Super-
Sup er-
man, as expressed in his letter to Beerbohm, on September 15, 1903:

 You idiot, do you suppose I don’t know my own powers? I tell you
 You
in this book as plainly as the thing can be told, that the reason
Bunyan reached such a pitch of mastery in literary art (and knew
it) whilst poor Pater could never get beyond a nerveless amateur
affectation which had not even the common workaday quality of
 vulgar journalism (and, alas! didn’t
didn’t know it, though he died of his
own futility), was that it was life or death with the tinker to make
people understand his message and see his vision, whilst Pater had
neither message nor vision & only wanted to cultivate style, with
 

Introduction 5

the result that of the two attempts I have made to read him the first
broke down at the tenth sentence & the second at the first. Pater
took a genteel walk up Parnassus: Bunyan fled from the wrath to
come: that explains the difference in their pace & in the length
they covered.

Poor Pater is dragged in and beaten up because he was the apostle of style,
 while Bunyan
Bunya n is summoned up supposedly t he model for Shaw , who also
supposed ly as the
has a message and a vision. It is a little difficult to associate he Pilgrim’s
Progress   with  Man and Superman , but one can suspect shrewdly that Pater
here is a surrogate for Wilde, who had achieved an absolute comic music of
perfect style and stance in he Importance of Being Earnest. Shavians become
indignant at the comparison, but Shaw  does
  does poorly when one reads side by
side any of the Fabian Essays  and
  and Wilde’s extraordinary essay “he Soul of
Man under Socialism.” Something even darker happens when we juxtapose
 Man and Superman  with he Importance of Being Earnest , but then Shaw   is
not unique in not being able to survive such a comparison.

 Man and Superman

Super man
Everything about
about  Man and Superman , paradoxical as the play was to begin
 with, now seems almost
al most absurdly problematical. he ver
veryy title cannot
can not mean
(any more) what Shaw   doubtless intended it to mean: the Superman of
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, the heroic vitalist who prophesies the next phase
of creative evolution, the next resting place of that cold god, the life force.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, as Shaw  blandly
  blandly chose never to see, is a god-man
 who is free of what Freud came to call the
t he Over-I
Over-I (superego)
(superego),, the shadow or
specter of bad conscience that hovers above each separate self. But Shaw ’’ss
Superman is simply Bunyan’s Pilgrim writ large and brought (supposedly)

up toNietzsche
date, Shaw   being about
 being
transvalued all as much(perhaps)
values an immoralist
or triedastoBunyan.
(in some moods),
and at the least developed an extraordinary perspectivism that really does call
every stance—rhetorical, cosmological, psychological—into question. Shaw  
 was interested
interested neither
neither in rhetoric (which he dismissed
dismissed as Paterian “style”) nor
in psychology (associationist or Freud
Freudian),
ian), and his cosmological speculations,
though mythologically powerful, are are informed primarily
primaril y by his post-Ruskin-
ian and only quasi-Marxist political economics. His His Fabian socialism marries
the British Protestant or evangelical sensibility (Bunyan, Carlyle, Ruskin)
to philosophical speculation that might transcend Darwinian-Freudian sci-
entism (Schopenhauer, Lamarck, Nietzsche, Bergson). Such a sensibility is
moral and indeed puritanical, so that Shaw   always remained in spirit very
close to Carlyle rather than to Nietzsche (who despised Carlyle and loved
 

6 Harold Bloom

Emerson for his slyly immoralistic self-reliance). Shaw ’s ’s Superman, alas, in

consequence looks a lot more like Tomas Carlyle crying out “work, for the
night cometh in which no man can work” than he does like Zarathustra-
Nietzsche urging us: “ry
“ry to live as though it were morning.”
In Shaw ’s ’s defense, he took from the Nietzschean metaphor of the
Superman what he most needed of it: a political and therefore literal reading,
in which the Superman is nothing but what Shaw  called   called “a general raising
of human character through the deliberate cultivation and endowment of
democratic virtue without consideration
consideration of property or class.” Tat is a bor-
ing idealization, from an aesthetic or epistemological perspective, but prag-
matically it is indeed what we most require and never will attain, which is why
doubtless we must perish as a civilization. Such a consideration, fortunately,
has nothing to do with Man and Superman as a farce and a sexual comedy, or
 with its glory,
glory, the extraordinary inserted drama of dialectic and mythology,
mythology,
“Don Juan in Hell,” certainly the outstanding instance of a play-within-a-
play from Shakespeare to Pirandello.
 Te preface to  Man and Superman is a dedicatory epistle to the drama
critic Arthur Bingham Walkley
Walkley and is a piece of Shavian outrageousness, par-
ticularly in promising far more than the play can begin to deliver.deliver. Shakespeare,
Shakespeare,
perpetual origin of Shavian aesthetic anxiety, is associated with Dickens as
being obsessed with the world’s diversities rather than its unities. Conse-
quently, they are irreligious, anarchical, nihilistic, apolitical, and their human
figures are lacking
l acking in will. th em, Shaw  ranges
wi ll. Against them,  ranges Bunyan,
Buny an, Nietzsch
Nietzsche,
e, and
himself—the artist-philosophers!
artist-philosophers! Shakespeare did not understand virtue and
courage, which is the province of the artist-philosophers.
 Te shrewdest reply one could make to Shaw  is  is to contrast Shakespeare’s
Shakespeare’s
Falstaff (whom Shaw  praises)
 praises) to Nietzsche’s
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Which is the Super-
man, embodiment of the drive dr ive to live, person free of the superego? Hamlet, to

is that, is
Shaw  theanDon
inadequate
Juan weDon
will Juan, since hethe
see debating is famously
Devil in irresolute.
Hell is onlyTe
(atsadness
best) a
 wistful impersonation
impersonation of Hamlet,
Hamlet, who remains the West’s
West’s paradigm of intel-
lectuality even as Falstaff abides forever as its paradigm of wit.
 Yet
 Yet this epistle
epistle comm
commencin Superman is one of Shaw ’s
encingg Man and Superman ’s grandest
performances, reminding us of how soundly he trained as a Hyde Park soapbox
orator, a splendid preparation for a polemical playwright of ideas. In the midst
of his perpetual advertisements for himself, he utters a poignant credo:

Now you cannot say this of the works of the artist-philosophers.

 You
 You cannot
c annot say it, for instance, of Te Pilgrim’s Progress. Put your
Shakespearian hero and coward, Henry V and Pistol or Parolles,
beside Mr Valiant and Mr Fearing, and you have a sudden
 

Introduction 7

revelation of the abyss that lies between the fashionable author who
could see nothing in the world but personal aims and the tragedy
of their disappointment or the comedy of their incongruity, and
the field preacher who achieved virtue and courage by identifying
himself with the purpose of the world as he understood it. Te
contrast is enormous: Bunyan’s coward stirs your blood more
than Shakespear’s hero, who actually leaves you cold and secretly
hostile. You suddenly see that Shakespear, with all his flashes and
divinations, never understood virtue and courage, never conceived
how any man who was not a fool could, like Bunyan’s hero, look
back from the brink of the river of death over the strife and labor
of his pilgrimage, and say “yet do I not repent me”; or, with the
panache of a millionaire, bequeath “my sword to him that shall
succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill s kill to him that
can get it.” Tis is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn
out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force
of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and
grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to
making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is the being
used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize
to be base. All the rest is at worst mere misfortune or mortality:
this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and the revolt against it is
the only force that offers a man’s work to the poor artist, whom our
personally minded rich
ric h people would so willingly employ as pandar,
buffoon, beauty monger, sentimentalizer and the like.

Shakespeare then is not a prophet or at least does not himself suffer

personally
if the then
they suffer, burden
alsoofthey
his prophecy.
experienceBunyan
the “trueandjoyShaw    are. .prophets,
 are
in life anda
. the being
force of Nature.” Te passage has in it the accent of Carlyle, except that Car-
lyle rendered it with more gusto in his sublimely outrageous style, and Car-
lyle (not being in direct competition with Shakespeare) set Shakespeare first
among the artist-prop
ar tist-prophets,
hets, higher even Goet he. We are moved by Shaw ,
e ven than Goethe.
 yet he has not the rhetorical power to over overwhelm
whelm us (however dubiously) as
Carlyle sometimes does.
 Why has Shaw , of all drdramatists
amatists,, written
writte n a play about
a bout Don Juan J uan 
enori
enorio,
o,
or John anner, as he is called in  Man and Superman? And in what way is
the bumbling anner, cravenly fleeing the life force that is Ann Whitefield,
a Don Juan? A crafty ironist, Shaw  knows
 knows that all Don Juans, whether whether liter-
ary or experiential, are anything but audacious seducers. Poor anner is a
 

8 Harold Bloom

relatively deliberate Shavian self-parody and is all too clearly an Edwardian

gentleman,
gentlema n, a pillar of
o f society
societ y, and very
ver y much a Puritan.
Pur itan. He is all superego, and
f rom the start is Ann’s
Ann’s destined victim,
vic tim, her proper and ine
inevitable
vitable husband,
hus band, the
father of her children. She will let him go on talking; she acts, and that is the
end of it. Te true Don Juan does not like women, which is why he needs so
many of them. anner adores and needs Ann, though perhaps he will never
know how early on the adoration and the need commenced in him.
Don Juan, as Shaw   revises the myth, is Faust (whom Shaw   calls the
Don’s cousin). He is the enemy of God, in direct descent from Faust’s ances-
tor, Simon Magus,
Mag us, the first Gnostic,
Gn ostic, who took the cognomen
cognom en of Faustus (“the
(“ the
favored one”) when he moved his campaign of charlatanry to Rome. Shaw ’s
Don Juan is Prometheus as well as Faust and so is an enemy not so much of
God as of Jehovah (Shelley’s Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound ) the sky-tyrant,
the deity of finance capitalism, repressive
repressive sexual morality, and institutional or
historical Christianity.
Christianity.
It is manifest that  Man and Superman  does not have a Faustian or Pro-
methean hero in the absurdly inadequate though amiable John anner. an-
ner is, as Eric Bentley economically observes, a fool and a windbag, all too
human rather than Don Juan enorio the Superman. But Shaw  gives  gives him a
great dream: “Don Juan in Hell.” Again Bentley is incisive: “ake away the
hel l, and Shaw  has
episode in hell,  has written an anti-intel
anti -intellectual
lectual comedy
come dy.”
.” I would go
a touch further and say: “ake away the episode in hell, and Shaw  has  has written
a very
ver y unfunny comedy
c omedy.”
.” Tough it can
c an be directed
direc ted and acted
act ed effectively,
effect ively, most
of the play singularly lacks wit; its paradoxes are sadly obvious. But the para-
doxes of “Don Juan in Hell” continue
continue to delight and disturb, as in the contrast
between the erotic philosophies of Don Juan and the Statue:

DON JUAN: I learnt it by experience: When I was on earth, and made

those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have
made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in
some such way as this. he lady would say that she would countenance
my advances, provided they were honorable. On inquiring what that
proviso meant, I found that it meant that I proposed to get possession
of her property if she had any, or to undertake her support for life if
she had not; that I desired her continual companionship, counsel, and
conversation to the end of my days, and would take a most solemn oath
to be always enraptured by them: above all, that I would turn my back
on all
al l other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these condi-
tions because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraor-
dinary irrelevance
frankness thatnever
that I had prostrated
dreamtme. I invariably
of any of thesereplied
things;with
that perfect
unless
 

Introduction 9

the lady’s character and intellect were equal or superior to my own, her
conversation must degrade and her counsel mislead me; that her con-
stant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious
to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance,
much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and
unconstrained intercourse with half my fellowcreatures would narrow
and warp me if I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me under the
curse of clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly
unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a per-
fectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.
ANA: You mean that it was an immoral impulse.
DON JUAN: Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it;
but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, ime a wrecker, and Death a
murderer. I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build
institutions on their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three dev-
ils by proclaiming their chastity
chastit y, their thri
thrift,
ft, and their
t heir loving
loving kindness;
k indness;
and institutions
the to base yourdoinstitutions on these flatteries. Is it any wonder that
not work smoothly?
 HE SA
S AU
UE: E: What
W hat used the ladies
lad ies to say, Juan?
DON JUAN: Oh, come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what you
used to say to the ladies.
 HE S
S AUE: I! Oh, I swore that t hat I would
wou ld be faithf
f aithful
ul to the death; that I
should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever be to me what
she was—
ANA: She! Who?
 HE SAU
SAUE: E: Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had
certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I was
eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me tremble
more than the thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head.
Another was that I could not bear the thought of anyone else being the
mother of my children.
DON JUAN [revolted ]:]: You old rascal!
 HE SAU
SAUE E [stoutly ]:
]: Not a bit; for I really believed it with all my soul at
the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it was this sincerity that
made me successful.
DON JUAN: Sincerity! o be fool enough to believe a ramping, stamp-
ing, thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! o be so greedy for
asincerity,
woman youthatcall
youit!deceive yourself in your eagerness to deceive her:
 

10 Harold Bloom

 HE SAUE: Oh, damn your sophistries!

sophistr ies! I was a man
ma n in love, not a law-
 yer. And the
t he women loved me for it, bless them!

Does Shaw  take
 take sides? Don Juan, advance guard for the Superman, pre-
sumably speaks for the dramatist, but our sympathies are divided or perhaps
not called
in Don uponrhetoric,
Juan’s at all. Iprobably
hear theasstance of Shelley’s
a deliberate  Epipsychidion
allusion ’s taken
on Shaw ’s up
part. Te
Statue though, splendid fellow, speaks the universal rhetoric of all ordinary
men in love, and his rather dialectical “sincerity” has its own persuasive-
ness. Much trickier, and a larger achievement, is Shaw ’s ’s management of the
fencing match between the Shavian Don Juan and that Wildean-Paterian
Aesthete, the Devil. Shaw ’s ’s lifelong animus against Pater, and his repressed
anxiety caused by Wilde’s genius as an Anglo-Irish comic dramatist, emerge emerge
 with authentic sharpness and turbulence as Don Juan and the Devil face off.
 Tey are as elaborately courteous as Shaw  and  and Wilde always were with each
other,, but their mutual distaste is palpable, as pervasive as the deep dislike of
other
Shaw  and
 and Wilde for each other’s works, ideas, and personalities:

 HE DEVIL: None, my friend. You thin think,

k, because you have a purpose,
purp ose,
Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and
toes because you have them.
DON JUAN: But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And
I, my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part
of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the
mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to under-
stand itself. My dog’s brain serves
ser ves only my dog’s purposes; but my own
brain labors at a knowledge which does nothing for me personally
but make my body bitter to me and my decay and death a calamity.
 Were I not poss
possesse
essedd with
wit h a purpose
pur pose beyond my own I had better
bet ter be
a ploughman than a philosopher; for the ploughman lives as long as
the philosopher, eats more, sleeps better, and rejoices in the wife of
his bosom with less misgiving. his is because the philosopher is in
the grip of the Life Force. his Life Force says to him “I have done
a thousand wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live
and following the line of least resistance: now I want to know myself
and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a special
brain—a philosopher’s brain—to grasp this knowledge for me as the
husbandman’s hand grasps the plough for me. And this” says the Life
Force to the philosopher “must thou strive to do for me until thou
diest, when
carry on I will make another brain and another philosopher to
the work.”
 

Introduction 11

 HE DEVIL: What is the use of knowing?

knowi ng?
DON JUAN: Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage
adva ntage instead
of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to
its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? he philosopher
is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to

 HEdrift:
DEVIL:to beOnin heaven
the rockiss,tomost
t he rocks, steer.likely.
DON JUAN: Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the bottom?
the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
 HE DEVI
DEVIL: L: Well,
Wel l, wel
w ell,l, go
g o you
yourr way,
wa y, Señor Don Juan.
Jua n. I prefer to be my
own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know
that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is
good to feel; and that they are all a ll good to think about and talk about.
I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and
studies is to be a refined and cultivated being. Whatever they may say
of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in
good society that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is
enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
is the most resistable thing in the world for a person of any character.
But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it
 willll thru
 wi th rust
st you f irst
irs t into reli
religion,
gion, where you willwi ll sprink
spri nkle
le water on
babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion
into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprin-
kling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it
accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become
the catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious
humbugs; and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve
and
and shattered
sacrifices, hopes, vainand
the waste regrets for that
sacrifice worst
of the and ofsilliest
power of wastes
enjoyment: in
a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he
has secured the good.
DON JUAN: But at least I shall not be bored. he service
serv ice of the Life For
Force
ce has
that advantage, at all events. So fare you well, Señor Satan.
 HE DEVIL [amiably ]: ]: Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think of our
interesting chats about things in general. I wish you every happiness:
heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But if you should change
 your mind, do not forget that the gates are alwaysalway s open here to the
repentant prodigal. If you feel at any time that warmth of heart, sincere
unforced affection, innocent enjoyment, and warm, breathing, palpitat-
ing reality—
 

12 Harold Bloom

 Tis is hardly fair to the Devil, whose Paterian sense of repetition is

a powerful answer to the idealism of Schopenhauer’s life force, and whose
Ecclesiastes-like vision of vanity does not exclude the holiness of the heart’s
affections. Don Juan regards the Devil as a sentimentalist, but the creative
evolution preached by the Shavian Don now seems precisely the sentimental-

ity of avision
thetic lost world. By and
of Pater a paradox
Wildethat
nowShaw  would
 would
appears notRuskin’s
to be have enjoyed,
abidingthelegacy,
Aes-
 while Shaw ’s Fabian evolutionism would seem to have been a Ruskinian dead
end. Man and Superman  is effective enough farce, and its “Don Juan in Hell”
is more than that, being one of the rare efforts
effor ts to turn intellectual debate into
actable and readable drama. Yet Man and Superman survives as theater; if you
 want an artist-philosopher
artist-philosopher in social comedy,
comedy, then you are better off returning
to the sublime nonsense and Aesthetic vision of Te Importance of Being Ear-
nest , a play that Shaw  so
 so curiously condemned as being “heartless.”
“hear tless.”

 Major Barbara
Shaw  initially
  initially planned to call  Major Barbara  by
  by the rather more imposing
title of Andrew Undershaft’s Profession. he play has been so popular
popula r (deserv-
(deserv-
edly so) that we cannot think of it by any other title, but the earlier notion
 would have emphasized Undershaft’s strengthstrengt h and centrality.
central ity. He dwarfs
dwar fs
Cusins and dominates Barbara, as much during her rebellion against him as
in her return. And he raises the fascinating question of Shaw ’s own ambiva-
lence toward the socialist ideal, despite Shaw ’’ss lifelong labor in behalf
beha lf of that
ideal. Undershaft may be the archetype of the capitalist as amoral munitions
monger, but his arms establishment dangerously resembles a benign state
socialism, and the drama moves finally in a direction equally available for
interpretation by the extreme left or the extreme right.
Despite his ignorance of Freud, Shaw  in  in  Major Barbara  (1905)
 (1905) wrote a
drama wholly consonant with Freud’s contemporary works, Te Interpretation
of Dreams  and
  and Tree Essays on the Teory of Sexuality. Consider the first ami-
able confrontation of Barbara and her father Undershaft, who has not seen
her since she was a baby:

UNDERSHAF
UN DERSHAF : For me there is only one true moral
morality
ity;; but it might not
not ffitit
 you, as you
you do not m
manufac
anufactu
ture
re aerial battleships. here is only one trtrue
ue
morality for every man; but every man has not the same true morality.
LOMAX [overtaxed ]]:: Would you mind saying that again? I didnt quite fol-
low it.
CUSINS: It’s quite simple. As Euripides says, one man’s meat is another
man’s poison morally as well as physically.
UNDERSHAF: Precisely.
 

Introduction 13

LOMAX: Oh, that! Yes, yes, yes. rue. rue.

SEPHEN: In other words, some men are honest and some are scoundrels.
BARBARA: Bosh! here are no scoundrels.
UNDERSHAF: Indeed? Are there any good men?
BARBARA: No. Not one. here are neither good men nor scoundrels:
there are just children of one Father; and the sooner they stop calling
one another names the better. You neednt talk to me: I know them. Ive
had scores of them through my hands: scoundrels, criminals, infidels,
philanthropists, missionaries, county councillors, all sorts. heyre all
 just the same sort of sinner; and theres the same salvation ready for
them all.
UNDERSHAF: May I ask have you ever saved a maker of cannons?
BARBARA: No. Will you let me try?
UNDERSHAF: Well, I will make a bargain with you. If I go to see you
tomorrow in your Salvation Shelter, will you come the day after to see
me in my cannon works?
BARBARA: ake care. It may end in your giving up the cannons for the
sake of the Salvation Army.
UNDERSHAF: Are you sure it will not end in your giving up the Salva-
tion Army for the sake of the cannons?
BARBARA: I will take my chance of that.
UNDERSHAF
UNDERSHAF : And I will
wi ll take my chance of the other.
other. [hey shake hands
on it.] Where is your shelter?
BARBARA: In West Ham. At the sign of the cross. Ask anybody in Can-
ning own. Where are your works?
UNDERSHAF: In Perivale St Andrews. At the sign of the sword. Ask
anybody in Europe.
LOMAX:
LOMA X: Hadnt I better play something?
BARBARA:
BARBAR A: Yes.
Yes. Give us Onward, Christian Soldi
Soldiers.
ers.
LOMAX: Well, thats rather a strong order to begin with, dont you know. Sup-
pose I sing hourt passing hence, my brother. It’s much the same tune.
BARBARA: It’s too melancholy. You get saved, Cholly; and youll pass
hence, my brother, without making such a fuss about it.
LADY BRIOMAR: Really, Barbara, you go on as if religion were a
pleasant subject. Do have some sense of propriety.
UNDERSHAF: I do notpeople
only one that capable find itreally
an unpleasant
care for. subject, my dear. It is the
 

14 Harold Bloom

Barbara, having replaced the absent Undershaft by God the Father in

his Salvation Army guise, begins by accepting her phallic father as one more
sinner to be saved. Teir prophetic interchange of signs—daughterly cross
and fatherly sword—bonds them against the mother, as each stands for a
 version of the only subject that the capable Shaw  really
 really cares for: religion as

the life force,

ognition, havecreative evolution.
commenced Teinevitably
on their daughter narcissistic
and the father, in of
dance mutual rec-
repressed
psychosexual courtship. Cusins shrewdly sums up the enigma in his act 2
dialogue with Undershaft:

UNDERSHAF: Religion is our business at present, because it is through

religion alone
alone that we can win Barbara.
CUSINS: Have you, too, fallen in love with Barbara?
UNDERSHAF: Yes, with a father’s love.
CUSINS: A father’s love for a grown-up daughter is the most dangerous of
all infatuations. I apologize for mentioning my own pale, coy, mistrust-
ful fancy in the same breath with it.
Undershaft’s love for Barbara is conversionary and therefore complex;
its aim is to transform family romance into societal romance. After three-
quarters of a century, G.K. Chesterton remains much the best of Shaw ’s ear
early
ly
critics, but he insisted on a weak misreading of Undershaft’s (and Shaw ’’s)s)
scheme:

 Te ultimate epigram of Major Barbara  can

 can be put thus. People say
that poverty is no crime; Shaw says that poverty is a crime; that
it is a crime to endure it, a crime to be content with it, that it is
the
saysmother
to Shawofthat
all crimes of brutality,
he is born corruption,
of poor but and fear.Shaw
honest parents, If a man
tells
him that the very word “but” shows that his parents were probably
dishonest. In short, he maintains here what he had maintained
elsewhere: that what the people at this moment require is not
more patriotism or more art or more religion or more morality or
more sociology, but simply more money. Te evil is not ignorance
or decadence or sin or pessimism; the evil is poverty. Te point of
this particular drama is that even the noblest enthusiasm of the girl
 who becomes a Salvation Army officer officer fails under the brute money
power of her father who is a modern capitalist. When I have said
this it will be clear why this play, fine and full of bitter sincerity as
it is, must in a manner be cleared out of the way before we come
to talk of Shaw’s final and serious faith. For this serious faith is in
 

Introduction 15

the sanctity of human will, in the divine capacity for creation and
choice rising higher than environment and doom; and so far as that
goes,  Major Barbara   is not only apart from his faith but against
his faith.  Major Barbara  is
  is an account of environment victorious
over heroic will. Tere are a thousand answers to the ethic in
 Major
out thatBarbara 
  which
 which
the rich I should
do not be buy
so much inclined to offer.
honesty I might
as curtains point
to cover
dishonesty: that they do not so much buy health as cushions to
comfort disease. And I might suggest that the doctrine that poverty
degrades the poor is much more likely to be used as an argument
for keeping them powerless than as an argument for making them
rich. But there is no need to find such answers to the materialistic
pessimism of Major Barbara. Te best answer to it is in Shaw’
Shaw ’s own
best and crowning philosophy.

Is the environment of Undershaft’s “spotlessly clean and beautiful hill-

side town” of well-cared-for munitions workers victorious over Barbara’s
heroic will? Has the sanctity of human will, its divine capacity for creation
and choice, been violated by Undershaft playing the par partt of Machiavel? Who
could be more Shavian than the great life forcer,
forcer, Undershaft,
Undershaft, who cheerfully
provides the explosives with which the present can blast itself into the future,
in a perhaps involuntary parody of creative evolution? How far is Undershaft
f rom the Caesar of Caesar and Cleopatra?  Te
 Te questions are so self-answering
as to put Chesterton, splendid as he is, out of court.
But that still gives us the problem of Barbara’s conversion: o what pre-
cisely has she come? Te scene of her instruction is a characteristic Shavian
outrage, persuasive and absurd. Cusins asks Undershaft the crucial question
as to his munitions enterprise: “What drives the place?”

UNDERSHAF
UNDERSHAF  [enigmatically ]:
]: A will of which I am a part.
BARBARA [startled ]]:: Father! Do you know what you are saying; or are you
laying a snare for my soul?
CUSINS: Dont listen to his metaphysics, Barbara.
Barbara . he place is driven by the
t he
most rascally part of society, the money hunters, the pleasure hunters,
the military promotion hunters; and he is their slave.
UNDERSHAF: Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer’s Faith. I will
take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you
good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and
f ighting the rascals, dont blame
blame me. I can make
mak e cannons: I cannot make
courage and conviction. Bah! you tire me, Euripides, with your morality
mongering. Ask Barbara: she understands. [He suddenly reaches up and
 

16 Harold Bloom

takes Barbara’s hands, looking powerfully into her eyes.] ell him, my love,
 what power really
rea lly means.
mea ns.
BARBARA [hypnotized ]: ]: Before I joined the Salvation Army, I was in my
own power; and the consequence was that I never knew what to do
 with myself.
mys elf. When
W hen I joined it, I had
ha d not time enough for aallll the
t he things
thi ngs
I had to do.
UNDERSHAF [approvingly ]: ]: Just so. And why was that, do you
suppose?
BARBARA: Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power of
God. [She resumes her self-possession, withdrawing her hands from his
with a power equal to his own.] But you came and shewed me that I
 was in the power of Bodg
Bodgerer and Undersh
Undershaf
aft.t. oday I feel—
feel—oh!
oh! how
can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the earthquake at
Cannes, when we were little children?—
ch ildren?—how
how little the su
surprise
rprise of the
first shock mattered compared to the dread and horror of waiting
for the second? hat is how I feel in this place today. I stood on the
rock I thought eternal; and without a word of warning it reeled and
crumbled under me. I was safe with an infinite
inf inite wisdom wat
watching
ching me,
an army marching to Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke
of your pen in a cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were
empty. hat was the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for
the second.

 Tere will not be a second shock, nor

n or need there be. Te dialectic
dialec tic of
Barbara’s conversion is all there in the single moment when Undershaft
speaks of “a will of which I am a part” and Barbara is startled into the
realization that her two fathers, Undershaft
Undershaft and God, are one. Te realiza-
tion is confirmed in the covenant of power that springs up between father
and daughter as Undershaft takes Barbara’s hands, while hypnotizing her
through the will of which he is a part. Having been driven by one version
of the life force, she yields now to another, but it is the same force. We
somehow wish to find Shavian irony here, but there is less than we seek to
find. What we discover is Shavian cruelt
crueltyy at Barbara’s
Barbara’s expense. Yielding her
 will to Undershaf
Unde rshaftt sends Barbara
Bar bara into a massive
ma ssive regression,
regre ssion, which calls into
question her Christian idealism at the play’s opening. A baby clutching at
her mother’s skirt, poor Barbara ends as the most reduced and humiliated
heroine anywhere in Shaw . Why is he so harsh to so vivacious a figure, exu-
berant in her early idealism?

muchEric
less Bentley observes
force than accurately
her previous that “Barbara’s
disillusionment.” Tisfinal conversion
is useful as far ashas
it
 

Introduction 17

goes, but Bentley is too fond of Shaw  to

 to see and say that her final conversion
destroys her as an adult.  Major Barbara  is
  is not a text for feminists, and if it
can be construed as one for socialists, then they are very unsocial socialists
indeed. Undershaft was a brilliant indication of where Shaw   was heading,
toward Carlyle’
Carlyle ’s worship of heroes, strong men who would impose socialism
because
Undershaftthe nevertheless
Superman still
is a waited to be
dangerous born.ofPlayful,
vision wise, and
the father-god charming,
enforcing the
evolution. One remembers that Shaw , though knowing
 will of creative evolution. knowi ng better,
be tter,
always retained a fondness for Stalin.
n othing, and Shaw  makes
Nothing is got for nothing,  makes Barbara pay the price for this
extravagant triumph of the religion of power. o be reconciled with the father,
she becomes a child again, in a very curious parody of the Christian second
birth. Perhaps she is a Shavian
S havian self-punishment that masquerades as a Nietzs-
chean will revenging itself against time. Her pathetic dwindling remains a dark
tonality at the conclusion of one of Shaw ’s’s most enduring farces.

 Pygm alion
 Pygmalion
Part of the lovely afterglow of Pygmalion   (1913) resides in its position-
ing both in Shaw ’’ss career and in modern history. he First World War
(1914–18) changed Shaw ’s ’s life and work, and nothing like so effective and
untroubled a comedy was to be written by him again. If we seek his strong
plays after Pygmalion , we find Heartbreak House  (1916),
  (1916), Back to Methuselah 
(1921), Saint Joan (1923), and oo rue to be Good  (1932),
  (1932), none of them free
of heavy doctrine, tendentious prophecy, and an unpleasant ambivalence
toward human beings as they merely are. Fifty-eight and upon the heights
of his comedic inventiveness, Shaw   reacted to the onset of a catastrophic
 war with his bitter satiric pamphlet Common Sense About the War , which
denounced both sides and called for instant peace.
British reaction, justifiably predictable, was hostile to Shaw  until
  until late
1916, when
when the increasing slaughter confirmed the accuracy of his prophetic
 views. By war’s end, Shaw ’s ’s public reputation was more than restored, but
an impressively impersonal bitterness pervades his work from Heartbreak
 until his death. Pygmalion , hardly by design, is Shaw ’s
House  until ’s farewell to the
age of Ruskin, to an era when that precursor prophet, Elijah to his Elisha,
cried out in the wilderness to the most class-ridden of societies. Since Great
Britain now is now more than ever two nations, Shaw ’s loving fable of class
distinctions and of a working girl’s apotheosis, her rise into hard-won self-
esteem, has a particular poignance that seems in no immediate danger of
 vanishing.
 vanish ing.

and itPygmalion   manifests

is certainly Shaw ’s’who
Shaw  himself
  himself s mythopoeic powers
is still central andattriumphant
their mostboth
adroit,
in
 

18 Harold Bloom

the film (which he wrote) and in the musical  My Fair Lady.  Mythmaking
most affects us when it simultaneously both confirms and subverts sexual
clearl y Shaw ’s dramatic advantage over such male vital-
stereotypes, which is clearly
ists as D.H. Lawrence or the entire coven of literary feminists, from Doris
Lessing to Margaret Atwood.

again Te
Ericbest judgment
Bentley
Bentley’’s: of Pygmalion as drama that I have encountered is

It is Shavian, not in being made up of political or philosophic

discussions, but in being based on the standard conflict of vitality
and system, in working out this conflict through an inversion of
romance, in bringing matters to a head in a battle of wills and
 words, in having an inner psychological action in counterpoint
to the outer romantic action, in existing on two contrasted levels
of mentality, both of which are related to the main theme, in
delighting and surprising us with a constant flow of verbal music
and more than verbal wit.

 Tat is grand, but is Pygmalion more “an inversion of romance,” more a

Galatea , as it were, than it is a Pygmalion? Shaw  subtitled
  subtitled it “A Romance in
Five Acts.” All romance, literary or experiential, depends on enchantment,
and enchantment depends on power or potential rather than on knowledge.
In Bentley’
Bentley ’s reading, Eliza acquires knowledge both of her own vitality and of
something lacking in Higgins, since he is incarcerated by “system,” by his sci-
ence of phonetics. Tis means, as Bentley severely and lucidly phrases it, that
Higgins is suspect: “He is not really a life-giver at all.” Te title of the play,
and its subtitle, are thus revealed as Shaw ’s’s own interpretive ironies. Higgins
is not Pygmalion,
Py gmalion, and the work is not a romance.
 Tat Eliza is more sympathetic than Higgins is palpably true, but it
remains his play (and his film, though not his musical). In making that asser- a sser-
tion, I do not dissent wholly from Bentley, since I agree that Higgins is no
Promethe us. Shaw, after all, has no heroes, only heroines, partly
life giver, no Prometheus.
because he is his own hero, as prophet of creative evolution, servant only
of God, who is the life force. Higgins is another Shavian self-parody, since
Shaw ’s’s passion for himself was nobly unbounded. Te splendid preface to
Pygmalion, called “A Professor of Phonetics,” makes clear that Shaw  consid-  consid-
ers Higgins a man of genius, a composite of Shaw  himself,
 himself, Henry Sweet who
 was reader of phonetics at Oxford, and the poet Robert Bridges, “to whom
sy mpathies,” as Shaw  slyly
perhaps Higgins may owe his Miltonic sympathies,”  slyly added.
Higgins,
toward womenlike Carlyle
Carly
that le and
great , is a fierce
Shaw maxim
Miltonic (soMi
Miltonist,
ltonist,byanliterary
beloved elitist who adopts
ado pts
feminists):
 

Introduction 19

“He for God only, she for God in him,” where the reference is to Adam and
Eve in their
the ir relation
relat ion to Milton’
Mil ton’s God. Te myth of o f Shaw ’s Pygmalion is that of
Pygmalion and Galatea but also that of Adam and Eve, though as a Shavian
couple they are never to mate (at least in Shaw ’s interinterpretatio n). Shaw  rewrote
pretation).  rewrote
some aspects of his Pygmalion in the t he first
firs t play, In the Beginning , of his Back to
 Methuselah cycle. Tere Adam and Eve repeat, in a sadly less comedic tone,
the contrast between Higgins and Eliza:

ADAM: here is a voice in the garden that tells me things.

EVE: he garden is full of voices sometimes. hey put all sorts of thoughts
into my head.
ADAM: o me there is only one voice. It is very low; but it is so near that
it is like a whisper from within myself. here is no mistaking it for any
 voice of the birds
bi rds or bea
beasts,
sts, or for your voice.
EVE: It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only one
from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and
not
fromfrom the voices. he thought that we must not cease to be comes
within.

Like Adam, Higgins hears the inner voice only, which is the Miltonic
response to reality. Eve, like Eliza, hears the voice of the life force. Yet Adam,
like Higgins, is no slave to “system.” Tey serve the same God as Eve and
Eliza, but they cannot accommodate themselves to change even when they
have brought about change, as Higgins has worked to develop Eliza and
 wrought better than,
than, at first, he has been able to
to know or to accept or ever be
able to accept fully.
 Te famous final confrontation of Higgins and Eliza is capable of sev-

eral antithetical
ning, interpretations,
as he too wrought which isthan
better (perhaps) a tribute to Shaw 
he knew, but ’s
’then
s dialectical
he trulycun-
was
a Pygmalion:

HIGGINS [wondering at her ]: ]: You damned impudent slut, you! But it’s bet-
ter than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles,
spectac les,
isn’t it? [Rising ] By George, Eliza, I said I’d make a woman of you; and
I have. I like you like this.
LIZA: Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I’m not afraid of
 you, and can do without you.
HIGGINS: Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like
abattleship.
millstoneYou
round
andmyI and
neck.Pickering
Now youre
will abetower
threeofoldstrength: a consort
bachelors instead
 

20 Harold Bloom

of only two men and a silly girl.  Mrs Higgins returns,

returns , dressed for the wed-
ding. Eliza instantly becomes cool and elegant.
MRS HIGGINS: he carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready?
LIZA: Quite. Is the Professor coming?

MRSmakes
HIGGINS:
remarksCertainly not.theHe
out loud all cant
time on behave himself in
the clergyman’s church. He
pronunciation.
LIZA: hen I shall not see you again, Professor. Goodbye. [She goes to the
door.]
MRS HIGGINS [coming to Higgins ]: ]: Goodbye, dear.
HIGGINS: Goodbye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects some-
thing.] Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese, will
 you? And
A nd buy me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, aand nd a tie to
match that new suit of mine. You can choose the color. [His cheerful,
careless, vigorous voice shews that he is incorrigible.]
LIZA [disdainfully ]:
]: Number eights are too small for you if you want them
lined with lamb’s wool. You have three new ties that you have forgot-
ten in the drawer of your washstand. Colonel Pickering prefers double
Gloucester to Stilton; and you dont notice the difference. I telephoned
Mrs Pearce this morning not to forget the ham. What you are to do
 without me I cannot iimagine.
magine. [She sweeps out.]
MRS HIGGINS: I’m afraid youve spoilt that girl, Henry. Henr y. I should be uneasy
about you and her if she were less fond of Colonel Pickering.
HIGGINS: Pickering! Nonsense: she’s going to marry Freddy. Ha ha!
Freddy! Freddy!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! [He roars with laughter as the play
ends.]

Shaw , in an epilogue
epilog ue to the play,
play, married
marr ied Eliza off to Freddy and maintained
maintai ned
Higgins and Eliza in a perpetual transference, both positive and negative, in
 which Higgins
Hig gins took the
t he place of her father,
fat her, Doolittle:

 Tat is all. Tat is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how

how much
much
Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole
Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable
that though she never nags her husband, and frankly loves the
Colonel as if she were his favorite daughter, she has never got out
of the habit of nagging Higgins that was established on the fatal
night when she won his bet for him. She snaps his head off on the
faintest provocation, or on none. He no longer dares to tease her
by assuming an abysmal inferiority of Freddy’s mind to his own.
 

Introduction 21

He storms and bullies and derides; but she stands up to him so

ruthlessly that the Colonel has to ask her from time to time to
be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only request of his that brings
a mulish expression into her face. Nothing but some emergency
or calamity great enough to break down all likes and dislikes, and
throw
they bethem
sparedboth back trial!—will
any such on their common
ever alterhumanity—and
this. She knows maythat
Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her.
 Te very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he
had become used to having her there, and dependent on her for
all sorts of little services, and that he should miss her if she went
away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to
say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certaint
certaintyy that she is “no
more to him than them slippers”; yet she has a sense, too, that his
indifference is deeper than the infatuation of commoner souls. She
is immensely interested in him. She has even secret mischievous
moments in which
island, away sheties
from all wishes
andshe could
with get him
nobody elsealone,
in theonworld
a desert
to
consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making
love like any common man. We all have private imaginations of
that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she really
leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes
Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins
and Mr Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his
relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.

Shaw  is
 is clearly Pygmalion-Higgins here, and Mrs. Patrick
Patrick Campbell is
Galatea-Eliza. Mrs. Campbell, the actress who first played Eliza, had jilted
 definitively the year before Pygmalion opened in London, thus ending
Shaw  definitively
their never-consummated love affair. Te price of being the prophet of cre-
ative evolution, in art as in experience, is that you never do get to make love
to the life force.

Saint Joan
Saint Joan (1923) is a work written against its own literary age, the era of
Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and above all others, Freud. It seems astonishing that
Saint Joan is contemporary with Eliot’s he Waste Land  (1922).
 (1922). Eliot, whose
own once-fashionable neo-Christianity now seems a refined superstition,
rejected Shaw  with
  with his customary generosity of spirit: “he potent ju-ju of
the Life Force is a gross superstition.” hat might be Stagumber crying out
as he drags Joan out to be burned in Shaw ’s
’s play, but then Eliot had become
 

22 Harold Bloom

more English than the English. Luigi Pirandello, Shaw ’s ’s peer as dramatist
(as Eliot was not;  Murder in the Cathedral 
Cathedral  weirdly
  weirdly concludes with a blatant
imitation of the end of Saint Joan) made the inevitably accurate comment on
the play,
play, which is that it could as cal led Saint Bernard Shaw:
a s well have been called

 Joan,
herselfata faithful
bottom,daughter
quite without
of the knowing
Church, isit,a and still like
Puritan, declaring
Shaw
himself—affirming her own life impulse, her unshakable, her even
tyrannical will to live, by accepting death itself.

 Tat “tyrannical will to live” is once again Shaw ’s

’s revision of Schopen-
hauer by way of Ruskin and Lamarck—the only wealth is life, as Ruskin
taught, and the will creatively modifies the evolution of life in the individual,
as Shaw  strongly
 strongly misread Lamarck.
L amarck. Eric Bentley, always the brilliantly sym-
sy m-
pathetic defender of Shaw , reads Saint Joan  as a triumphant resolution of
Shaw ’s’s worn-out agon between system and vitality, between society and the
individual,
old a resolution
antagonists. that is comprised
Te sympathy cannot beof an exactly
denied, equal
but the sympathy
play for the
is overwhelm-
o verwhelm-
ingly Protestant and its rhetoric wars against its argument, and so takes the
side of Joan.
 What precisely is Joan’
Joan’s religion, which is to ask: Can we make a coher-
ent doctrine out of the religion of Bernard Shaw —his
—his religion as a dramatist
rather than as G.B.S. the polemicist and public personality? Did he indeed
believe that what he called the evolutionary appetite was “the only surviving
member of the rinity,” the Holy Spirit? Milton, Shaw ’s ’s greatest precursor
as exalter of the Protestant will and its holy right of private judgment, had
invoked that spirit as one that descended, in preference to all temples, in order
to visit the pure and upright heart—of John Milton in particular. We know
how prophetically serious Milton was in this declaration, and his sublime
rhetoric persuades us to wrestle with his self-election. But what are we to do
 with Shaw , whose rhetoric perhaps can beguile us sometimes but never can
persuade?
 Joan, like Shaw , does very well without either God the Father or Jesus
Christ His Son. Tough her ghost concludes the epilogue by addressing the
“God that madest this beautiful earth,” she does not intend her auditor to be
the Jehovah of Genesis. Her initial divine reference in the play is to “orders
f rom my Lord,” but immediately she tells us that “that is the will of God that
 you are to do what He has put into my mind,” which means means that her own will
simply is the will of God. Since she is, like Shaw , an Anglo-Irish Protestant,
she never once invokes Jesus or His Mother. Instead, she listens to the voices
of “the blessed saints Catherine and Margaret, who speak to me every day”
 

Introduction 23

and who might as well be girls from

f rom her own village. Her battle cry is: “Who
“W ho
is for God and His Maid?” And her last words, before she is pushed offstage
to the stake, make dear that she is Shaw ’s substitute for Jesus of Nazareth:

His ways are not your ways. He wills that I go through the fire to
His bosom;
among you. for
TisI am Hislast
is my child,
wordand
to you
you.are not fit that I should live

In the queer but effective Te Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search
 for God , Shaw   has his surrogate, whose “face was all intelligence,” explain to
the black girl his doctrine of work: “For we shall never be able to bear His full
presence until we have fulfilled all His purposes and become gods ourselves. . . .
If our work were done we should be of no further use: that would be the end of
us.” Carlyle would have winced at our becoming gods ourselves, but the gospel
of labor remains essentially Carlyle’s and Ruskin’s. Defending Te Black Girl  in
 in
a letter to a friendly but pugnacious abbess, Shaw  associated
 associated himself with the

prophet
 who
 who, Micah
, after tryingand refused
to exter to take
exterminat
minatee theashuman
his idea of by
race God “the
drowning
drow anti-vegetarian
anti-veget
ning arian ddeity
it, was coaxed
coaxe out
of finishing
finishin g the job by a gorgeous
gorge ous smell of
o f roast meat.”
meat. ” Tat is good enough
eno ugh fun,
but we return to Saint Joan to ask a question that has nothing in common with
the Anglo-Catholic Eliot’s indictment of a gross superstition. Vocabulary aside,
is Joan at all interested in God, any God at all? Is Shaw ?
If the term God   is
is to retain any crucial aspect of its biblical range of ref-
erence, then Joan and Shaw  could
 could not care
c are less. Te life force has no personal-
ity, whereas Jehovah most certainly does, however uncomfortable it makes us.
Is Joan anything except an embodiment of the life force? Has Shaw  endowed  endowed
her with a personalit
perso nality?
y? Alas, I think not. Te play holds the st stage,
age, but that will
not always be true. Shaw ’s rhetoric is not provident or strong enough to give
us the representation of a coherent psychology in Joan. Te figure of the first fi rst
few scenes has nothing in common with the heroine who repudiates her own
surrender at the trial, or with the shade of a saint who appears to the king of
France in his dream that forms the epilogue. No development or unfolding
authentically links the country girl with the martyr.
Shaw ’s’s bravura as a dramatist saves the play as a performance piece,
but cannot make it into enduring literature. Its humor works; its caricatures
amuse us; its ironies, though too palpable, provoke analysis and argument.
But Joan, though she listens to voices, cannot change by listening to her own
 voice speaking, which is what even the the minor figures in Shakespeare never fail
to do. Creative evolution, as a literary religion, could not do for Shaw  what  what he
could not do for himself. In Saint Joan, he fails at representing persons, since
they are more than their ideas.
 

 J O H N A . B E R  O L I N I

Saint Joan: Te Self as Imagination

 Heartbreak House
ll of Shaw’s plays act as compendiums of his ideas, motifs, and themes,
but none does so more than Heartbreak House .1 Its compendiousness signals
A
Shaw’s having reached the end of one phase of his playwrighting course and
the beginning of another, as if Shaw, having ended Heartbreak House  with   with
an anticipation of apocalypse in Ellie Dunn’s longing to have the bombers
return
retu rn the next night with their eerily aesthetic
aest hetic appeal of powerful
powerfu l sound and
sheer energy, the pleasurable prospect of being finally done with the world,
he then has to re-create
re-cre ate the world in Back to Methuselah, just as Shakespeare
in King Lear   had
had made time go backward and had uncreated the world, and
then had to re-create the world in his romances, especially he empest .
Likewise Shaw had to transform the disillusioned young woman of Heart-
break House   into the inspired young woman, Saint Joan. he despair that
Shaw confronted (not succumbed to) in Heartbreak House  did   did not of course
simply go away,
away, but it was suppressed, relegated to the status of ana n overtone,
as when it appears in Adam’s weariness of the world in Back to Methuselah 
and in Joan’s resignation to the world’s inhospitability to its saints.
Of all Shaw’s plays, Heartbreak House  remains
  remains for me the most elusive,
the most ambiguous; pieces of it are graspable, but not the whole. Perhaps
that makes it a gravel pit in my understanding of Shaw, but for the present,
I can only offer the following brief remarks toward a discussion of the play’s

From he Playwriting Self of Bernard Shaw, pp. 123−44, 191−95. Copyright © 1991 by the
Board of rustees, Southern Illinois University.
 25

26  John A. Bertolini

relationship to Shaw’s playwrighting self.2  Critics have often interpreted

Captain Shotover as a Shavian self-portrait; I see him also as one of a long
line of artists and artist figures in Shaw’s plays from Eugene Marchbanks to
Dr. Ridgeon, to Professor Higgins. As an inventor, sea adventurer, and ship
captain, he seems to me to figure both the crafter of original plays and the
fabulous voyager; I note also that as the designer of his own house, which is
modeled after a ship and which serves as the set for the play in which he is a
character,, he
character he figures Shaw as the master of stagecraft.
Captain Shotover like Ibsen
I bsen’’s Master Builder has designed his own set.
Our first encounter with that set suggests the incompleteness of Heartbreak
House : something is being made at a carpenter’s bench, for we see a vice with
“a board in its jaws; and the floor is littered with shavings, overflowing from a
waste-paper basket .”
.” Here we have a condensation of the several
se veral ways in which
Shotover figures Shaw’s playwrighting self: the scene of crafting as a scene
,” “littered ”—Louis Dubedat’s
of writing (“waste-paper ,” D ubedat’s studio is also “littered ,”
,”
but with “sketchbooks, loose sheets of paper ,”
,” etc.); the playwright as creator of
stage metaphors,
ity, a house on landmaking
like a one
shipworld
on thebehave
water (“ like another, ”);
overflowing  ”the stage
); and thelike real-
Shavian
signature (“shavings ”)—which
”)—which is in fragments, as the result of an unfinished
piece of work.
As many critics have noted, Shaw sets up the world of Heartbreak House  
as a fragmentary
f ragmentary dreamworld: action and dialogue are constantly interrupted
or disrupted, characters appear, disappear, reappear, and doubling is a promi-
nent motif, as in Strindberg’s  A Dream Play   (Captain Shotover asks Billy
Dunn when he first catches sight of him, “Are there two of you?”). Te whole
of the play can be read as Ellie’
Ellie’ss dream since at the beginning of the play she
falls asleep while reading—Shakespeare of course— Othello, and when she
awakes the action proper begins. Tus Shaw presents the play as generated
by the dreaming self (as anner dreams the Don Juan in Hell sequence), its
imagination stimulated by the reading of Shakespeare. Ellie might be Joan
attending to her voices, except that Ellie’s imagination contemplates the
destruction of the world with a certain gleeful anticipation, or, at the least,
she seems reckless of the safety of her immediate world.
 Te dreamlike state in which the action of Heartbreak House   occurs
insures that order will always be threatened, whether by bombs ffrom rom an aero-
plane or one of Captain Shotover’s sudden entrances or exits. What order
there is, whether aesthetic, moral, or social, is fragile. Whatever is built or
arranged may topple over, or be wrecked, or be bombed. Shaw provides the
key to this aspect of the play when he begins it with a pantomime that enacts
the fragility of all order: Nurse Guinness “ fills her ttray ray with empty bottles. As
she returns with these, the young lady  [Ellie]
 [Ellie] lets her book drop, awakening herself,
 

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 27

and startling the womanservant so that she all but lets the tray fall .”
.” Te tray full
of bottles—the attempt to keep order—barely escapes falling into f ragments,
 just as the play will end when the
the house barely escapes being blow
blown n to smith-
ereens (as Andrew Undershaft would have put it). I read Shaw’s anxiety for
the order of European civilization as extending to the aesthetic realm. Shaw’s
experiment with dramatic form as rondo discussion in Heartbreak House  had  had
begun with  Misalliance ; it is a dramatic form that seems always on the verge
of formlessness, an aesthetic order always about to collapse under the pressure
of impulse or whimsy or lack of will.
Shaw has Captain Shotover, however, meet the prospect of annihila-
tion, as if it were judgment day, and deliver himself of a warning that has
frequently been taken to be the lesson of the play, that the business of an
Englishman is to learn navigation, “and live; or leave it and be damned.” But
 when the danger
danger passes, he urges “all hands”
hands” to “turn
“turn in
in”;
”; and he himself “ goes
asleep,” perhaps to dream another play or to dream of a regenerated world. His
sleep ends the play as it began, mysteriously, under the aegis of the dreaming
self.the
of
Back to Methuselah and in Saint Joan, Shaw shows the positive powers
Inself that dreams.

Saint Joan: I
In his notice of the first
f irst production of Shaw’s Saint Joan, Pirandello asserted
that the play was “a work of poetry from beginning to end.” 3 What Piran-
dello may have meant by that encompassing statement is not clear, but that
he thought of the play as something other than either an impudent historical
pamphlet masquerading as drama or a flippant treatment of a sacred subject
is   clear. My purpose now is to explore what Pirandello asserted about the
play: its deeply poetic nature—a quality of the play that has as often been
denied as asserted.4  he play’s poetic nature lives as much in its subject,
 which I take to be the workings of the imaginationimagi nation more than Joan’
Joan’ss par-
ticular sainthood, as it does in its artistry. o make my point, I shall begin
 with the Epilogue, where I see the clearest cleare st evidence of Shaw’s preoccupa-
preocc upa-
tion with the nature of imagination. I will then compare the Epilogue with
Shaw’s explicit discussion of imagination in Back to Methuselah and return
to Saint Joan in order to show how Shaw conceives of Joan as a symbol of
imagination. 5
 Te famous Epilogue to Saint Joan (or notorious Epilogue, if one reads
any fair sampling of the reviews and criticism of the play from 1925 on)
begins with
wit h a description
descri ption of Charles’
Cha rles’ reading in bed, or rather, as Shaw puts
p uts it,
“looking at the pictures
pict ures in Fouquet’s Boccaccio.” At first, that stage directi
direction
on looks
like a characteristic good-humored joke at the expense of the foolish Charles,
  whom Shaw continually portrays as a childishly self centered individual,

28  John A. Bertolini

shrewd in certain matters, but of nevertheless singularly limited intellectual

capacity. Te joke is that Charles interests himself only in the dirty pictures
found in the book. Neither Fouquet’s coloring nor Boccaccio’s prose style
holds Charles’ attention; the dirty pictures do, however. And Charles’ insen-
sitivity to art here is meant to tell us how he will respond to Joan’s proposal
that she return to life. Indeed, it reminds us of how he misunderstood Joan
 while she was alive. Charles’ insensitivity to art and to Joan amount to the
same thing.
Fouquet’ss Boccaccio is only one of the means by which Shaw insinuates
Fouquet’
into the play notions about art and how people respond to products of the
imagination. It is part of a pattern of symbols and metaphors through which
Shaw dramatizes his sense of what art can and should be. o continue with
the opening stage directions of the Epilogue is to see Shaw’s preoccupation
 with art emerge more and more clearly. From From Fouquet’
Fouquet ’s illustrations, Shaw
directs our attention to a “ picture of the Virgin lighted by candles of painted wax .”
.”
He then describes the walls of the room as “ hung from ceiling to floor with
 painted curtains which stir at times in the draughts .”.” And lastly, he tells us that
Charles’ watchman’s rattle is “handsomely designed and gaily painted .” .” In short,
Shaw takes some pains to point out that Charles is surrounded by painting
of one kind or another—a painted manuscript, painted candles, paint painted
ed cur-
tains, and a painted toy—but painting used to satisfy the human need for a
decorous living space, adornment to please the eye.
Against this decorative use of art, Shaw sets Joan as symbol and meta-
phor. Joan enters when “ A rush of wind
win d through the doors sets the walls swaying
agitatedly. Te candles go out. He [Charles] calls in the darkness .”
.” Whatever visual
pleasure we took in Charles’s colorful surroundings ends as, “ A flash of summer
lightning shews up the lancet window” and “ A figure is seen in silhouette against
it .”
.” Te movement of light that Shaw depicts here, f rom darkness to a figure
seen in silhouette, to Joan dimly seen, culminates
culminates in the last moments of the
Epilogue when “Te last remaining rays of light gather into a white radiance
descending on Joan.” At that moment, Joan stands literally and figuratively illu-
minated, for Shaw intends the Epilogue to make us see Joan more clearly as
a metaphor that has meaning for the world,
wor ld, not merely as a decorative figure
in memory and imagination.
Shaw has Joan herself articulate this significance: “I hope men will be
the better for remembering me; and they would not remember me so well if
 you [Peter Cauchon] had not burned me.” Te rays ray s of white light are also a
transfiguration of the light f rom the fire that burned her, a connection Shaw
suggests to us through Cauchon’
Ca uchon’s words, “even as she burned, the flames whit- whi t-
ened into the radiance of the Church riumphant,” as well as through the
 description of the curtains in Charles bedroom:  At first glance the prevailing

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 29

 yellow and red in these hanging pictures is somewhat flamelike when the folds
breathe in the wind .”
.” Since the Epilogue follows shortly after Joan is dragged
away to be burned, Shaw’s stage directions cannot fail to remind us of those
flames.
It could be charged that the final vision of the illuminated and solitary
Saint Joan is a conventional tableau that has no more meaning that other
such melodramatic stage-lighting effects, that it is visual rhetoric merely,
a counterpart to her final rhetorical question: “O God that madest this
beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Ty saints? How long, O
Lord, how long?” No doubt the emotion of those last moments derives
partly from the rhetorical strategy, but the emotion is also genuinely and
complexly poetic. Te Te final “radiance” fulfills the imagistic movement f rom
darkness to light that the figure of Joan follows before our eyes. Poetic, too,
is the ritualistic structuring of the immediately preceding episode. With a
 ee Deum-like
  Deum-l ike sequence
seque nce of lauds to Joan, each character
chara cter in the Epilogue
Epilogu e
kneels in turn to hymn her praises, only to be asked by Joan if she should
then return to earth. With their sadly comic volte-faces, each one rises to
reject her proposal and leave her on stage alone. Tis ritual-like stage action
points to Joan’s
Joan’s isolation as a symbolic figure as well as to her personal iso-
lation. She remains a scapegoat rejected by her comrades and community,
and therefore a tragic figure. Te kneeling to praise, the the rising to reject, and
the successive desertions of Joan in the Epilogue reenact the whole drama, dra ma,
 which consists
con sists of her rise
ri se to influence
in fluence and power in Scenes
Sce nes I to III and her
fall in Scenes IV and V.6
Shaw liked this patterned action of successive desertions so well he used
 versions of it for the conclusions of Te Apple Cart  (1928)
 (1928) and oo rue to be
Good  (1931),
 (1931), but he did not invent it for Saint Joan; he invented it for the con-

clusion
and whereof Back
Adam,to Eve,
Methuselah , where
Cain, and Lilith corresponds
the Serpent correspond to Charles,
Joan figuratively
Dunois,
and the rest. Shaw there uses a similar ritual-like stage action and plays simi-
larly with light and darkness: “ It is now quite dark. A vague radiance appears
near the temple and shapes itself into the ghost of Adam .” As each ghost appears,
it announces itself, hears the voice of the next to appear,
appear, and asks whose the
 voice is. Ten the voice introduces
introduces itself, and the person appears.
 Tis progress repeats itself
itself for Adam, Eve, Cain, the Serpent, and lastly
Lilith, who then starts a new pattern, whereby each ghost defines its contri-
bution to life, notes the condition of the world, and asks the next ghost what
he or she makes of it. Te new pattern ends with the Serpent, who defines
her contribution thus: “I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil;
and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.” With
 her muted expression of philosophical content, the new ritual enters its final

30  John A. Bertolini

phase as, first the Serpent vanishes, and then Cain, Eve, and Adam express
resignation, confidence, and dismay, respectively, and each vanishes in turn,
leaving Lilith alone on stage to give her peroration to the whole play cycle
that makes up Back to Methuselah. Te order of the ghosts’ exit lines reverses
the order of their entrance lines, just as in Saint Joan, the order of the e
Deum speakers is reversed for their exit speeches. (Te order of exits in Saint
 Joan is not so schematic as in Back to Methuselah; but it is close enough so that
the audience has the sense of reverse order.)
order.)
Shaw’s use of similarly structured endings for both plays suggests that
Shaw’s imagination connects Lilith’s ritualistic isolation with Joan’s. Both are
icons in the scripture of Creative Evolution; both look to the future for fulfill-
ment of their meaning. Here is how Lilith does so (with a strange conscious-
ness of her metaphoric dimension):

I brought life into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my

enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. . . . and now I shall see . . . the
 whirlpool become all life and no matter.
matter. And because these infants
that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards that, I will
have patience with them still; though I know well that when they
attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and
Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of
Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions
many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain
is as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master
its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond,
the eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a
beyond. [She vanishes ]]..

Lilith looks forward to the time when she will have been so successfully
incorporated into the imagination of humankind (“they shall become one
 with me”) that she will become a dead
dead metaphor (“a lay that has lost its mean-
ing”). But in that incorporation and that becoming Lilith is reborn (“my seed
shall one day fill it”), for she lives on in her acceptance by the imagination.
 Joan looks forward
for ward to a similar death and rebirth in the imagination of her
audience (with, however, less visionary confidence), when her meaning will
be so fully understood and accepted that her image is no longer necessary in
humankind’s memory. Joan’s illuminated isolation at the end of the Epilogue
is an attempt by Shaw the poet to help us imagine Saint Joan, which means
above all to see her clearl
clearlyy.
 But seeing Joan clearly requires imagination from the audience and
reader.. Tat is why the basic metaphors for lack of imagination in this play
reader

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 31

are poor eyesight and darkness, images that are associated chiefly with John
de Stogumber and Charles.
Char les. When de Stogumber
S togumber realizes (in the Epilogue)
that he may again be in Joan’s presence, he reacts immediately by denying
that she is Joan: “My sight is bad; I cannot distinguish your features: but
 you are not she.” Just
Ju st before he says this, de Stogumber
Stogum ber explains
explain s how he
 was saved: “I had not seen it [cruelty]
[crue lty] you know.
know. Tat is the great thing:
 you must see
s ee it. And then you are rede
redeemed
emed and
a nd saved.”
saved .” Cauchon
Caucho n asks him
h im
if the sufferings of Christ were not enough for him, and de Stogumber
replies: “I had seen them in pictures, and read of them in books, and been
greatly moved by them, as I thought. But it was no use: it was not our Lord L ord
that redeemed me, but a young woman whom I saw actually burned to
death. It was dreadful. But it saved me.” Cauchon then asks what I take to
be a central question of the play, “Must then a Christ perish in torment in
every age to save those that have no imagination?” In the play’play ’s terms, then,
imagination is how the human mind bridges the gap between life and art,
between reality and fantasy, distinguishes the real toad in the imaginary
garden. For that gap to be bridged the word must be made flesh in our
minds. It is not so much a question of action in the real world (though that
may be partly
partl y its consequence), but rather of what takes place in the human
mind: understanding.
 oo understand Shaw’s art and thought here it will be helpful to turn to
 
two other plays that contain both imagistic connections with Saint Joan and
explicit illustrations of Shaw’s idea of the imagination: Back to Methuselah 
(again) and On the Rocks . As part of the Preface to On the Rocks , Shaw pres-
ents a short imaginary dialogue between Jesus and Pontius Pilate in which
the following exchange takes place:

PILAE.
 JE SUS. OhA plea
 JESUS. Salutary
se! . .severity—
please! . I am so made by God that
th at officia
off iciall phrase
phr asess make
mak e
me violently sick. . . . I have spoken to you as one man to another
in living words. Do not be so ungrateful as to answer me in dead
ones. . . . a thought is the substance of a word. I am no mere chance
pile of flesh and bone: If I were only that, I should fall into corrup-
tion and dust before your eyes. I am the embodiment of a thought
of God: I am the Word made flesh: that is what holds me together
before you in the image of God. . . . he Word is God. And God is
 withi
 wit hinn you. . . .
PILAE. here are many sorts of words; and they are all made flesh sooner
or later. . . . Your truth, as you call it, can be nothing but the thoughts
 for which you have found words which will take effect in deeds if I set
 you loose to scatter your words broadcast
broadcas t among the
t he people.

32  John A. Bertolini

 What is most striking at first in this dialogue is Shaw’s evident concern

concern
 with language, that words matter,
matter, that they are efficacious in the real world.
But words are not reality (and here Shaw shows his intellectual inheritance
from Coleridge); their substance is thought. When Shaw has Jesus declare
Himself to be “the embodiment of a thought of God . . . the Word made
flesh,” and then has Him explain “that is what holds me together . . . in the
image of God,” Shaw means that God created humankind by first imagining
it. Tings can become real after they have been imagined. Shaw as a dramatist
habitually converts words into flesh on stage before an audience, but that con-
 version is only complete when the audience accepts the imaginative reality of
 Joan, in short, when the audience also imagines
imagines Joan.

 Back to
t o Methusel ah: A Digression
Methuselah Dig ression
Shaw most clearly set forth his view of imagination in the first part of
Back to Methuselah (the play which in composition immediately precedes
Saint Joan), “In the Beginning.” 7  he first clue to the nexus in Shaw’s
mind between the Jesus–Pilate dialogue, Saint Joan, and Back to Methu-
selah  comes in the opening stage directions of “In the Beginning” where
the Serpent is described as “sleeping with her head buried in a thick bed of
wort ..”” Johnswort is not a commonly known plant; Shaw has chosen
 Johnswort 
 Johns
it because in a punning sense it means John’s Word: “In the beginning
 was the Word and a nd the
t he Word wasw as with God.” Back to Methuselah is Shaw’s
 Word—a
 W ord—a f ifthif th gospel,
gospe l, picking
pick ing up where Saint
Sai nt John’s left off, or a third
thi rd
testament in ambition
a mbition ((if
if not in execution)
e xecution),, an attempt to account for man’s
purpose on earth, a new iconography for man’s purpose on earth, a new
iconography for the new religion of Creative Evolution. At the center of
that new religion is an intimate connection between life and imagination, 8 

atheconnection which
Serpent and Eve.Shaw expounds in the wonderful dialogue between
 Te idea of imagination first appears when the Serpent explains to Eve
how Lilith divided herself in two in order to make Adam and Eve. Eve asks
how Lilith worked the miracle and the Serpent replies that Lilith “imagined
it.” Eve then wants to know what “imagined” is.

 HE SERPEN
SERPE N.. She [[Li Lilith]
lith] told
t old it to me as a mar
m arvelous
velous story
stor y of some-
thing that never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not
know that imagination
imag ination is the beginning
beginni ng of creation. You
You imagine what
 you desire
de sire;; you will
wi ll what you imagine;
imag ine; and at la
last
st you create
creat e what you
 willll.. . . . W hen Lilith
 wi Lil ith told me what she had imagined
imag ined in our silent
 language
lang uage (for there were no words then
then)) I bade her desire it, and then,

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 33

to our great wonder,

wonder, the thing
thi ng she had desired and willed
wi lled created itself
in her under the urging of her will.
w ill. . . .
EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your
silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet

 HEcame true. . A poem.

SERPEN.
SERPEN p oem.

As Shaw conceives it, imagination precedes words, and the act of pro-
creation is analogous to literary creation. Shaw had already drawn this anal-
ogy in  Man and Superman (I argue in chapter two), when he made anner’s
acceptance of fatherhood analogous to his own acceptance of the authorship
a uthorship
of  Man and Superman. Shaw generates writing in the same way that anner
comes to see himself
hims elf as a procreator.
procrea tor. Shaw needs
nee ds Don Juan as anner
anner’’s ances-
tor because Shaw wants to turn Don Juan from a mere seducer into a pro-
creator of new life and a creator of new thought; and that is also what Shaw
does with the Serpent and Eve in Back to Methuselah. For what the Serpent
does here is seduce (but not corrupt) Eve into procreation with a “poem.”
Shaw quite directly dramatizes Eve’s impregnation with imagination. Here,
for example, is how he describes the Serpent’s first appearance: “ Te body of
the serpent becomes visible, glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head
slowly from
f rom the bed of Johnswort,
Johnswor t, and speaks into Eve’s ear in a strange,
st range, seductively
.”9 Te Serpent approaches Eve like a lover,
musical whisper .” lover, and Eve responds
to her unabashedly:

 HE SERPEN. I have come to chew you my beautif beautiful

ul new hood. See
S ee [she
spreads a magnificent amethystine hood ]!
]! . . . I am the most subtle of all
the creatures of the field.
EVE. Your hood is most lovely. [She strokes it and pets the serpent ].
]. Pretty
thing! Do you love your godmother Eve?
 HE SERPEN.
SERPEN. I adore her. [She licks Eve’s neck with her double tongue ]]..

 hough the interplay between them clearly resembles a sexual seduction, the
Serpent’s scope is wider than that: she wants Eve to use her imagination to
procreate herself in order to defeat the nothingness of death.

 HE SERPEN.
SERPEN. Life must not ceas cease.
e. . . .
EVE [thoughtfully ] here can be no such thing as nothing. he garden is
 full, not empty.

34  John A. Bertolini

 HE SERPEN.
SERPEN. hat is true,tr ue, Darling Eve: this is a great thought. Yes:
there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. he cha-
meleon eats the air.

 What
ing this seems
scene to haveconfrontation
is Hamlet’s been in the back of Shaw’s
of death. 10 Temind whileline
Ser pent’s
Serpent’s compos-
above,
for example, echoes Hamlet’s reply to Claudius’s nervous inquiry after his
 well-being, “Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air promise
cramm’d” (III, 2). But, more particularly, Shaw seems to be playing variations
on the theme of the gravediggers’ scene (V, 1). In Back to Methuselah, Adam
and Eve first become aware of death’s death’s having entered the world when Adam
sees a playing fawn trip head over heels in the garden and break its neck.
Adam realizes that someday he will die too: “Sooner or later I shall fall and
trip. . . . We shall fall like the fawn and be broken.” (Shaw died at the age of
ninety-four, after he had stumbled in his garden and broken a leg. He had
been pruning a tree.)
Adam expresses his weariness of the gardener’s life of weeding and
pruning thus: “If only the carec are of this terrible garden may pass to some other
gardener! . . . If only the rest and sleep that enable me to bear it from day to
day could grow into an eternal rest, an eternal sleep, then I could face my
days, however long they may last. Only there must be some end, some end.
I am not strong enough to bear eternity.” Te Preface to Buoyant Billions  
begins magnificently this way: “I commit this to print within a few weeks of
completing my 92nd year. . . . I can hardly walk through my garden without a
tumble or two; and it seems out of all reason to believe that a man who cannot c annot
do a simple thing like that can practise the craft of Shakespeare. . . . Should it
not warn me that my bolt is shot and a nd my place silent in the chimney corner?”
 Te juxtaposition in Shaw’s mind between the recreation of a walk in his
garden with the creation of playwrighting indicates that Shaw conceived of
his essential self as the playwrighting self, and that when he could no longer
 write plays his life would be at its end. Is it too fanciful to think that in Back
to Methuselah Shaw imagined the death he then willed in his ninety-fourth
 year?11 One of the things Eve notices especially about the dead fawn is: “It
has a queer smell. Pah!”—an exclamation that Hamlet makes when he con-
siders Alexander’s dead body:

HAMLE. Dost thou think Alexander look’d o’ this fashion i’ the earth?
HORAIO. Fen so.
 HAMLE. And smelt so? Pah!
HORAIO. Fen so, my lord.

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 35

HAMLE. o what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagina-
tion trace the noble dust of Alexander, till ‘a find it stopping a bung-hole?
HORAIO. ‘were to consider too curiously, to consider so.12

Shaw concerns himself in Back to Methuselah precisely with Hamlet’s ques-

tion: what may imagination do when it considers death?
In the remaining four parts of the play Shaw fantasizes
fantasiz es that certain indi-
 viduals find the secret
secret of long life. Shaw,
Shaw, of course,
course, intends this
this fantasy
fantasy to be a
metaphor, as in other such
su ch symbolic
symbol ic visions of the future.
f uture. His basic ide
ideaa is that
man does not live long enough to solve the problems of human society; Shaw
therefore posits an Aristophanic fantasy,
fantasy, whereby
whereby man imagines himself able
to live three hundred years, wills what he imagines, and finally achieves his
 will. Shaw’s metaphor of long life surely means that people should live their
seventy-odd years as if   they were three hundred years or more. With each suc-
cessive part of Back to Methuselah, humankind keeps extending the life-span

(in
butPart V, “As death
accidental Far as remains.
Tought And
Can that
Rea
Reach,”
ch,”
is thetokey
eight hundred
hundre
point thatdinsures
years and
themore),
more
meta-),
phoric import of Shaw’s fantasy: death does not disappear; it diminishes in
importance
import ance though. Tus, Back to Methuselah assumes the generic function of
all comedy, to thumb the nose at death.
In Part II, “Te Ting Happens,” the mockery mocker y of death forms itself in
the person of Bill Haslam, who has lived to be 245 years old, without any-
one knowing about it, by pretending to have drowned several times, each
time assuming a new identity upon emergence.13 His sham drownings are
metaphorically a braving of death, a denial of its importance, and hence a
freeing of the human imagination from its obsessive fear of death, what
Horatioo calls
Horati cal ls considering
conside ring “too curiou
c uriously,”
sly,” and what Ophelia’s
O phelia’s “muddy death”
symbolizes.
Shaw dramatizes one such failure of imagination in the confrontation
 with death at the end of “Te Ting Happens.” Burge-Lubin, the president
of the British Isles in the year 2170 .., finds himself attracted sexually to
the Minister of Health, a beautiful Negress who invites him to a rendezvous
aboard a “steam yacht in glorious sea weather ””::

 HE NEGRESS. here is a lightning

lightnin g express
expres s on the Irish Air service
serv ice at
half-past sixteen. hey will drop you by parachute into the bay. he
dip will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and give you a
first-rate time.
 BURGE-LUBIN. Delightful. But a little risky, isn’t it?
 HE NEGRESS. Risky!
Risk y! I thought you were afraid
afr aid of nothing.
noth ing.

36  John A. Bertolini

As it turns out Burge-Lubin is  afraid

 afraid of nothing , that is, the nothingness of
death. For, although he at first seems willing to risk death by water when
Confucius tells him they will give him an “unsinkable tunic,” finally he
rejects the chance because, as Confucius tells him, “the water is not safe
. . . the sea is very cold,” and he “may get rheumatism for life”: “BURGE-
LUBIN. hat settles it: I won’t risk it.”
Burge-Lubin’s refusal to take the physical risk is a metaphor for his
refusal to take metaphysical risks. A sexual alliance with the Negress requires
the daring of imagination, which he lacks. Earlier in the play, Shaw carefully
sets in our minds Burge-Lubin’s fear of death by drowning, when we hear
him warning Barnabas, the Accountant-General: “You know you never never
look where you are going when you are immersed in your calculations.
c alculations. Some
day you will walk into the Serpentine.” It is precisely being immersed  in   in the
 waters of imagination
imagination that Burge-Lubin himself fears—the imagination that
reduces the importance of death, that defeats death. Te Serpent is an arche-
typal symbol of eternity, and thus, of the idea that life is cyclical, that death
is not final. Burge-Lubin fears the risk involved: he is afraid
af raid to walk into the
Serpentine because he refuses to dare—exactly what the Serpent in Part I is
 willing to do and does:

 HE SERPEN.
SERPEN. You see things;
thi ngs; and you say “why?” But I dream things
thin gs
that never were; and I say “Why not?” . . . and I have eaten strange
things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.
EVE. You dared!
 HE SERPEN.
SERPEN. I dared everything.
every thing. And at last I found a way of gathering
together a part of the life in my body—

Back to Methuselah  announces its main theme when the Serpent tells Eve:
“Death is not an unhappy thing when you have learnt how to conquer it . . .
by another thing, called birth.”

Saint Joan: II
 he Serpent’s “dar
“ daring,”
ing,” which is really
rea lly her imaginative
ima ginative triumph over death
and loneliness, is the same “daring” that Joan talks about:

Do not think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone.

France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before
the loneliness of my country and my God? I see that tthe
he loneliness
of God is his strength: what would He be if He listened to your
  jealous little counsels? Well,
Well, my loneliness shall be my
my strength too;
it is better to be alone with God: His friendship will not fail me,

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 37

nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare,
and dare, until I die.14

 Te centra
cen trall drama
dra ma of Saint Joan  lies in her conquest of the fear of
death in the trial scene. Plainly,
Plainly, the locus of powerful emotion in the play
is Joan’s
Joan’s recantation when she tears up her confession. Learning that she
 willl not go f ree, but suffer
 wil suff er lif
lifee impris
imp risonme
onmentnt instea
ins tead,
d, makes
mak es her asser
ass ertt
the value of freedom over life itself. However, the freedom she desires is
not merely freedom of movement (though that is important to her), but
also the freedom of the imagination: “if only I could still hear the wind
in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through
the healthy frost,
f rost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel
 voices
 voi ces floatin
floa tingg to me on the wind.win d. But
Bu t without
with out the
thesese I cannot
can not live.”
live .” Te
imaginative freedom Joan asserts here is exclusively aural. 15  In Shaw’s
mind Joan’s
Joan’s voices replicate the voices Adam and Eve hear in the garden
in “In the Beginning.” Real death for Joan means being cut off from the
 voice
 voi ce of imagina
ima gination
tion:: her dread
drea d of the imprison
impr isoning
ing of her imagin
ima ginati
ation
on
crushes her fear of the fire. fi re.
Shaw makes Joan not only imaginative herself, but a stimulus to imagi-
nation in others (that is one of the reasons why she, like Falstaff, can be seen
as an emblem of the imagination). Te first Shaw does, humorously, through
a pair of stage directions. At her first entrance, Shaw describes Joan as having
“eyes very wide apart and bulging as they often do in very imaginative people .” .”
In contrast, when Shaw introduces the Dauphin, he describes him as having
“little narrow eyes, near together .” .” Shaw does not need to indicate any more
explicitly the Dauphin’s lack of imagination. We remember his description of
 Joan and draw our own conclusion: the Dauphin has no imagination (rather
W ilde’ss Salome , for whom “the moon is llike
like Herodias in Wilde’ ike the moon,
moon , that is
all”). Te Dauphin’s later assertion to Joan, “I have my eyes open,” adds ironic
counterpoint to Shaw’
Shaw ’s humorous hinting at Charles’
Char les’ lack of imagination: his
eyes may be open, but only to see what lies in front of him; he has no vision
of what France should be as Joan does.
Shaw also makes Joan stimulate imagination in others (again humor-
ously). For example, after de Baudricourt is finally convinced to send her to
the Dauphin, Joan says, “Oh squire! Your head is all circled with light, like
a saint’s,” and he looks “up for his halo rather apprehensively .”
.” Joan can make
people see more than what is in front of their eyes. In short, Joan enables
people to see the metaphoric dimension of reality. Tat poetic power in her
is brought into high relief through the discussion of miracles between the
 Archbishop and La remouille, where the Archbishop explains that the
church nourishes the people’s “faith by poetry.”

38  John A. Bertolini

 HE ARCHBISHOP
ARCHBISHOP. Parables are not lies because they describe events
that never happened. . . . if they [the people] feel the thrill of the super-
natural, and forget their sinful clay in a sudden sense of the glory of
God, it will be a miracle.

Shortly thereafter, Shaw underlines his point through a deft bit of char-
acterization, when
when he has the Archbishop identify Pythagoras as “A “A sage who
held that the earth is round and that it moves round the sun,” at which La
 remouille
  remouille exclaims; “What
“W hat an utter fool! Couldnt he use his eyes?” La rem-
ouille, like Charles and like de Stogumber,
Stogumber, has
has limited vision because he can-
not see the metaphoric dimension of reality,
reality, the poetry in life, its miracles.
More important, however, than these two aspects of Joan is her iden-
tity as an emblem of imagination itself, especially in its essence of freedom.
Nowhere does Shaw bring this identification out more clearly than in the
short scene before Orleans between Dunois and his Page. Tat scene opens
 with Dunois invoking the west wind in an attempt at poetic incantation
(echoing Shelley’
Shelley ’s “Ode to the West
West Wind,” of which more later). As DunoisD unois
finishes his prayer-poem, the Page bounds to his feet:

 HE PAGE.
AGE. See! 
here!
here! here she goes!
DUNOIS. Who? the Maid?
 HE PAGE.
AGE. No: the kkingf
ingfisher.
isher. Like blue lightning.
l ightning.
A bit later, they watch another kingfisher fly by the reeds and “they fol-
low the flight till the bird takes cover .”
.” Tat they are waiting for Joan, and that
Dunois thinks the Page means Joan when he first cries out, suffic sufficeses to enforce
our identifying Joan with the kingfisher. But if we think of the bird’s name
and back to how Joan, at the court of the Dauphin in the preceding scene,
searches “along the row of courtiers, and presently makes a dive, and drags out
Charles by the arm,” we can see that Shaw’
Shaw ’s mind symbolically identifies Joan
 with the kingfisher bird. (Summer lightning
lightning presages Joan’
Joan’s appearance in the
Epilogue—a reminder of the “blue lightning” to which the Page compares
the kingfisher.) Tat identification, however, goes beyond the merely pictur-
esque or the punning senses in the bird’s name and in Charles’ label, Dauphin
(Dolphin), for in the next exchange between the Page and Dunois,
D unois, we see the
kingfisher image expand into a mutivalent metaphor for Joan that reaches to
the core of the play’s meaning:
  HE PAGE.
AGLet
DUNOIS. E. Arent tthey
heyyou
me catch lovely?
tryingI to
wish
trapI could
them, catch them.
t hem.
and I will put you in the iron
cage for a month to teach you what a cage feels like.

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 39

Dunois’ words proleptically point to the trial scene where Joan’s imprison-
ment is in question, and where Shaw maintains Joan’s association with the
image of flying:
f lying: “JO
“ JOAN.
AN. And why must I be chained by the feet to a log of of
 wood? Are you afra
a fraid
id I will
wi ll f ly away? . . . COURCELLES.
COU RCELLES. If
I f you
y ou cannot
c annot
16
fly unimaginative
of like a witch, how is it to
people thattheyou are stillthings
“lovely” alive?”in life,
 hethe
instinctive reactlike
reaction
free things, ion
the kingf
ki ngfisher
isher,, is to capture and cage them.t hem. So too it is with Joan: her lovely,
lovely,
free imagination provokes them to want to destroy her, or failing that, at
least to cage her for life.
l ife. In ttheir
heir desire to imprison Joan, Shaw shows that
they want to deny metaphor. For Joan embodies imagination, the freedom
to soar beyond things, to metaphorize the world by seeing more. After
Dunois utters a second prayer-poem, this time to the kingfisher bird, ask-
ing it to send a west wind, Joan immediately enters, and at the end of the
scene the west wind comes, as if there were a silent consonance between
them. Indeed, there is, but the consonance alludes al ludes loudly to Shelley’s “Ode
to the West Wind”:

Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

 Te trumpet of a prophecy!

O wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?17

 Joan imagines into existence a new France out of the blood and death
of Orleans. Tat is why Shaw sounds overtones of sexual attraction between
 Joan and Dunois as they discuss tactics for laying siege to Orleans. Teir
conversation veers off midway onto the topic of love and marriage. With her
enthusiasm and familiarity Joan could be said to seduce Dunois into believ-
ing in her, not through feminine wiles or any means so overt, but through
her innocent self-assurance and intimacy of address, even as she seduces de
 Baudricourt
combines andmaternal
with Charles. caring
In Joan’
Joan(as
’s meeting
is typicalwith Dunois,
D unois,Dunois’
in Shaw). femininedecorative
sexuality
masculinity asserts itself playfully even before Joan arrives: he “ has had his

40  John A. Bertolini

lance stuck up with a pennon” and “has his commander’s baton in his hand .” .” And
 when the wind changes, the seduction
seduction ends in union:
union: the surrender of Dunois
(he kneels and hands her his baton), and Joan’s seizing of him (she flings “her
arms around Dunois, kissing him on both cheeks ”).
”). But Joan’
Joan’ss conquest
conques t of Dunois
D unois

is not only
deliver a lover’s
you from fear.”conquest,
(In SceneforV she
she simultaneously mothers
says to him, “You are thehim:
pick “I
of will
the
basket here, Jack.”)
 Te crowning of Charles
Char les as king of a new ne w France out of the victory
victor y at
Orleans adumbrates Shelley’s imagery only in a general way, with Joan as a
rejuvenating, fertility figure, but what Joan as a marty martyred
red saint can do for the
rejuvenation of the world echoes Shelley more specifically: “You will all be
glad to see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to their
hearts [of the common people] for ever e ver and ever.”
Shelley’’s prayer that the west wind “Scatter, as ffrom
Shelley rom an unextinguished
hearth / Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”18  turns into “the
trumpet of a prophecy,” like Joan’s prediction, and modulates finally into a
temperate, yet half-fearful, faith in time’s transforming power—“If Winter
comes, can Spring be far behind?”—tonally not unlike the ending of Saint
 Joan, “How long, O Lord, how long?” (though there is also anguish in Joan’s
question).
Shelley’s theme of time brings me to my final point about the central
drama in Saint Joan: the possibility of overcoming the fear of death through
imagination. For Joan’s final question, “O God that madest this beautiful
earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, O Lord, how
long?,” is a real question, not just a rhetorical
r hetorical flourish to conclude the play.
play.
Shaw calls Saint Joan a chronicle  play,
  play, and he means it in three senses.
Saint Joan is a historical play that represents actual persons and events of
the past. It is play that rivals Shakespeare’s history plays (based as they were
on sixteenth-century chronicles), particularly Henry VI, Part One , which
had so maligned the historical Joan that Shaw could appear to be rewriting
Shakespeare for the sake of justice. But it is also a play about time. Much
of what characters spend their time doing in Saint Joan is waiting: in the
first scene, waiting for the hens to lay; in Scene II, the court waits for the
Dauphin (“LA REMOUILLE. What the devil does the Dauphin mean
by keeping us waiting like this?”); in Scene III, Dunois waits for the west
 wind and for Joan; in Scene IV, IV, War
Warwick
wick waits for Cauchon to arriv
arrive;
e; in
Scene V, after the coronation, the people wait to see Joan; in Scene VI, the
English wait for the outcome of the trial (“WARW
(“WARWICK. ICK. Is this trial never
 going
be to to
ready end?”); and
receive in thesaints.
God’s Epilogue, Joan remains
Te recurring sensewaiting for the of
of expectancy, earth to
wait-
ing upon time, works as a structural force in the play and gives Joan’s last

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 41

line its peculiar power to move. We have been waiting all through the play
for historical time to unfold, and at the end of the play we wait for imagi-
native time to unfold; that is, we ask ourselves what our imaginations can
create in time.

moreShaw placeshethe
than that, tellsEpilogue in historical
us the exact time for time: “night in June
the beginning, 1456.” and
the middle, But
the end of the scene, midnight. Before the dialogue begins, he tells us, “ A
distant clock strikes the half-hour softly ,” ,” which we know means 11:30 ..
Approximately halfway through the scene, just before the Soldier enters, “Te
clock strikes the third quarter .”
.” In other words, the time Shaw indicates as pass-
ing during the action of the Epilogue equals half an hour. Although Shaw
locates the action chronologically and represents it as tra transpiring
nspiring in real time,
 yet the action is not realistic, for characters who are dead appear in it ( Joan
herself, Cauchon, et al.), as well as characters who are alive but who could not
actually be present in Charles’ chamber.
Moreover, Shaw creates unrealistic entrances for his characters. For
example, Dunois enters “through the tapestry on Joan’s left, the candles relighting
themselves at the same moment, and illuminating his armor and surcoat cheerfully ,” ,”
and Shaw thereby metaphorically underlines his sense of the Epilogue as a
pure product of art and the imagination, while at the same time rehearsing
the larger illumination provided by the end of the play. Tus, Shaw collapses
time and space in the Epilogue19—a normal procedure for a dramatist who
 wishes to represent the action of a dream on stage. It is clear, however, however, that
Shaw does not intend
inten d the Epilogue to be Charles’
Char les’ dream merely, and certainly
certa inly
not his wish fulfillment.20 Indeed, it cannot be the dream of any character on
stage, for toward the end of the scene, “ a clerical looking gentleman,” dressed
“in the fashion of 1920, suddenly appears .” .” It can only be the audience’s dream
projected on stage as a fantastical, Lucianic adventure: a “what if Joan were
free to talk with her friends and foes after her death and learn of her canon-
ization?” proposition.
 Te author helps the audience to imagine the situation, to ask itself
 when it will be ready to receive God’s saints. And the moment when it con-
templates this question is midnight, in stage time and in real time (Shaw
surely must have planned that the last half-hour of the play from 11:30 to
midnight would also correspond to the time the audience would be hear-
ing the play—assuming an evening performance beginning at 8:00), so that
imagination and reality come together artfully on the borderline between the
death of the midnight bell’s last chime and the day’s rebirth into the white
 radiance descending
green light on Joan.
of the false imagesInand
the dim
ritualized
sight ending
yields totothe
the visionary
play, the white
pallid
light around the lonely figure of Joan, praying her quietly urgent question,

42  John A. Bertolini

“How long, O Lord, how long?” Shaw wrote Saint Joan to help us imagine
Saint Joan, that is to help us sense what imagination is.
But Shaw knows he can only go so far in the direction of represent-
ing imagination. In doing so he appeals to three kinds of imagination in
the audience:
auditory throughthe the
hallucinatory
chimes; andimagination through the
the visual through thewhite
dreamradiance.
setting; Yet
the
there remains something ineffable about the imagination that the dramatist
can only hint at—JOAN: “I cannot tell you the whole truth: God does not
allow the whole truth to be told.” Shaw has Joan express this idea during the
cathedral scene (V), midway through the play, where he creates a moment
that rehearses the use of the chimes in the Epilogue. In speaking to Dunois
after Charles’
Char les’ coronation, Joan tries to explain her sense of imagination reso-
nating within her:

It is in the bells I hear my voices. Not to-day, when they all rang:
that was nothing but jangling. But here in this corner, where the
bells come from a distance through the quiet of the country-side,
my voices are in them. [Te cathedral clock chimes the quarter ] Hark!
[She becomes rapt ] Do you hear? “Dear-child-of-God”: just what
 you said. At the half-hour they will say “Be-brave-go-on.” At
the three-quarters they will say “I-am-thy-Help.” But it is at the
hour, when the great bell goes after “God-will-save-France”: it is
then that St. Margaret and St. Catherine and sometimes even the
blessed Michael will say things that I cannot tell beforehand. Ten,
oh then—

Dunois interrupts her at this point, for to him, when Joan talks this way,
she seems “a bit cracked,”
crack ed,” but surely
surel y his interruptio
inter ruption
n is timely
timel y. Te filling
fillin g in of
that dash that halts her speech is the Epilogue, especially its final moments
 when we hear those chimes Joan only describes here, and we see the white
radiance descending on her head. Te poetry of the play concentrates itself
in the theatrical gestures of light, sound, and language combining together
to make us feel what we might otherwise be incapable of feeling. Shaw’s use
of theatrical metaphor creates a heightened and therefore new sense of real-
ity in his audience, as well as in those of his readers who have imagination
themselves.
 Te delicacy and feeling with which Shaw accomplishes his meaning
elude demonstration somewhat, in part because aural and visual stage rhythm
 account
regularlyfor muchcharacter
as each of the proper
in turneffect.
demursTe ritual
f rom
from herisolation
proposal of Joan
that sheproceeds
ret
return
urn to
life, and then rises and exits. When we reach the last two characters, Charles
Charles

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 43

and the Soldier, Shaw applies a ritardando to the rhythm of the exit speeches:
first, as Charles “[mumbling in his pillows ] Goo ni,” falls asleep, finally weary
of Joan and irredeemably unconscious of her sadness, while Joan bids him
“Goodnight, Charlie,” showing her affection for him in her use of his nick-
name,annotwithstanding
 with instinctive, if nothis indifference
fully to her;of and
conscious, sense second,
the pain as the
caused Soldier
by the oth-
ers’ rejection of her, counsels her not to pay any heed to such lofty personages
as kings and archbishops. He even starts to explain why she “has as good a
right to [her] notions as they have to theirs,” but before he can get on with
his “lecture,” the chimes of midnight begin to sound and Joan never hears his
lecture: “Excuse me: a pressing appointment—[He goes on tiptoe ].” ].” All dur-
ing his half-attempted consolation of her, his friendly chattiness focuses the
audience’s attention, not on himself, but on the chimes and on Joan’s silence
as she attends to them. 21
“A work of poetry
poetr y from
f rom beginning to end,” wrote
wrote Pirandello. What Joan
Joa n
hears in those chimes—the Word made flesh, poetic imagination overcoming
the fear of death—Shaw makes her embody as a ccharacter haracter and a symbol, thus
helping us to imagine imagination herself, Saint Joan.

N
  1. hese have been well catalogued and analyzed by several critics (see for
example J. L. Wisenthal’s chapter on Heartbreak House   in i n he Marriage of Contrar-
ies  (Cambridge:
  (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974) for the play’s relationship to  Man and
Superman, Major Barbara , and  John Bull’sBull ’s Other Island ),), and I will not repeat their
findings here.
 2. Shaw himself strongly identified with the inexplicability of the play; for
example, he said about it (in the Sunday Herald , London, Oct. 23, 1921): “I am not
an explicable phenomenon: neither is ‘Heartbreak House’” (see Collected Plays , Vol.
5, 185).
 3. “Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan” in Bernard Shaw’s Plays , ed. Warren S. Smith
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 450.
  4. Denied in he Harvest of ragedy  (New  (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966),
194–95, by . R. Henn, for example (whose objections to Joan’s diction seem to
me way off the mark insofar as they do not take into account Joan’s mystical bent);
asserted by J. I. M. Stewart,  Eight Modern
Mode rn Writers , Vol. 12 of the Oxford History of
 English Literature  (Oxford:
  (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), 179: “ . . . certainly Shaw’s
outstanding play, conceivably the finest and most moving English drama since he
Winter’s ale  or
 or he empest ..””
  5. A shorter version of this chapter was published in 1983 in Shaw: he
Berna rd Shaw Studies , Vol. 3, Shaw’s Plays in Performance , ed. Daniel Leary
 Annual of Bernard
 (University Park: he Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1983), as Imagining Saint
Saint”;Joan
 Joan almost at the same
 (Kingston time, Bryan
and Montreal: yson published
McGill-Queen’s hisPress,
Univ. fine book,
1982).he
It isStory of
a plea-
sure to note here that yson and I had reached independently similar readings of

44  John A. Bertolini

how Shaw used the theme of imagination in Saint Joan. I refer the reader to yson’s
book for insights parallel and additional to those I try to articulate here regarding
the role of imagination in the play.
  6. I sho
should
uld lik
likee to note hhere
ere that I believe Robert Bolt borrowed this str
struc-
uc-
ture (whether consciously or unconsciously) for the screenplay of Lawrence of Arabia ,
 where
and wherethe “miracu
“miraculous”
lous” becoming
Lawrence’s tak
taking
ing of persona
Aquaba corresponds
non grata totothe Joan’
Joan’s
s victory
victor
British andy atthe
O
Orleans,
rleans,
Arabs
corresponds to Joan’s becoming a thorn to both church and state. here are many
further parallels
paral lels..
  7. Actually,  Jitta’s Atonement  intervenes
  intervenes between the two plays, but can be
considered a parenthesis in Shaw’s imaginative course as a dramatist, since it was a
translation-adaptation of a Siegfried rebitsch play, Frau Gittas Suhne , which Shaw
made as a gesture of gratitude to his German translator.
  8. In this
this,, as in so many other intellec
intellectua
tuall and visionar
visionaryy matters, Shaw fol-
lows Blake, for whom imagination was not merely another faculty but the substance
of life. For a convenient index to Blake’s statements on imagination, see S. Foster
Damon,  A Blake Dictiona ry   (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1971). See also, Northrop
Dictionary 
Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake  (Princeton:
  (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1947),
of 114: “Amind.
the human thing’shat
nameisisanother
its numen, its imaginative
reason why Jesus isreality
calledinthetheWord
eternalof world
God.
Reality is intelligibility, and a poet who has put things into i nto words
words has lif lifted
ted ‘things’
from the barren chaos of nature into the created order of thought.”
  9. Shaw seems to have based the Serpent’s
Serp ent’s cour
courtship
tship of Eve on his own of Mrs.
Patrick Campbell—or hers of him. In a letter to Shaw, postmarked Sept. 2, 1912, she
refers to his “beloved Irish accent! which I believe the serpent had or Eve would never
have noticed the apple far less eaten it.” See Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell:
heir Correspo ndence , ed. Alan
Cor respondence  Ala n Dent (New Y York:
ork: Al
Alfred
fred A. K Knopf,
nopf, 11952
952).). Several years
yea rs
later, after Shaw had written Back to Methuselah, he twice professed to have imagined
her   as
as the Serpent: “God intended you to play the serpent in Methuselah: I wrote it for
 your voice” (letter
(letter of Mar. 27
27,, 1924
1924):): and in a letter of July 28
28,, 1929
1929,, he refers to “the
Serpentin Methusel ah, whom l always hear speaking with your voice.”
 Methuselah
10. In the Postscript (1944) to Back to Methuselah, Shaw identifies Hamlet   as
the play Shakespeare would most likely have selected for inclusion (“if he could be
consulted”), in the Oxford series of World’s Classics.
11. Shaw seems particularly to have identified himself with Adam’s perplexity
in the face of longevity. Almost twenty years after writing Back to Methuselah, he
echoes the following (one of Adam’s more desperate utterances): “It is the horror of
having to be with myself for ever. I like you [Eve]; but I do not like myself. I want
to be different; to be better; to begin again and again; to shed my skin as a snake
sheds its skin. I am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day, but
for ever. hat is a dreadful thought.” At the age of eighty-one Shaw said about what
he thought was his imminent death: “I find I cannot like myself without so many
reservations that I look forward to my death, which cannot now be far off, as a good
riddance.” (See he Religious Speeches of Bernard Shaw, ed. Warren S. Smith [New
  York:
 York: McGraw Hill
Hill,, 1965], 96.) Anyone who ha
hass heard the tape of this
t his broadcast
speech
Adam’scan miss
ude isneither
attitude
attit neitherthe sinceritylonging
a romantic nor thefor
detachment
dissolution,innor
Shaw’s tone.
a desire to His and
embrace
darkness,
dark ness, but rather the poise of one who feels his life’s work is done and who
who accepts
death as a necessary condition for the continuation of life as a whole.

Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination 45

12. Another indication

indic ation that Shaw had the gravedigg
grave diggers’
ers’ scene in mind is C
Cain’s
ain’s
line, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” from Act
II of  In the Beginning , which begins and ends with a tableau of Adam’s digging
and Eve’s spinning. Behind this, it seems to me, lies the clown’s identification of
“gard’ners, ditchers, and gravemakers. hey hold up Adam’s profession . . . the
Scripture saysSirAdam
13. In dig Sullivan’s
digged.
Arthur ged.”” operetta, Cox and Box , based on the farce Box
and Cox   by
by J. Maddison Morton (a well-known 1847 play alluded to by Shaw), Box
pretends to have drowned in order to avoid marrying a widow. Martin Meisel notes
that in Back to Methuselah Shaw imitated the farcical device of the feigned drowning
from Box and Cox . See Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century heater  (Princeton:
  (Princeton: Princ-
eton Univ. Press, 1963), 246.
14. he idea that God can feel lonely is not, I believe, an invention of theo-
logians, but rather of poets. For example, Milton, in Bk. VIII of Paradise Lost , has
God say to Adam, “Seem I to thee sufficiently
suff iciently possessed / Of happiness, or not? who
am alone / From all eternity, for none I know / Second to me or like, equal much
less” (404–7). Shaw refers to the idea of the loneliness of God in a letter to Mrs.
Patrick Campbell, New Year’s Eve, 1913: “On the last New Years eve . . . there was
eternity and Beauty
God. herefore you .must
. . andstillif your
be thepart in it was
Mother an illusion,
of the angels tothen
me. I. am as lonely
. . And as
now let
us again hear the bells ring: you on your throne in your blue hood, and I watching
and praying.” See Collected Letters: 1911–1925 , ed. Dan H. Laurence (New York:
Viking,
Viki ng, 1985), 2212.
12. It was for her that Shaw fifirst rst conceived the idea of writi
writing
ng a play
about St. Joan (see his letter of Sept. 8, 8 , 1913, in Laurence, 201). ShawShaw tra
transforms
nsforms his
 vision of M
Mrs.
rs. Patrick Campbell into D Dunois’
unois’ prayer before O Orleans,
rleans, “Ma
“Maryry in the
blue snood, kingfisher color: will you grudge me a west wind?” Below in the text I
discuss the kingfisher as a symbol of Joan, and the sexual chemistry between Joan
and Dunois.
15. hat is partly
part ly because her speech der derives
ives from MiMilton’
lton’s invocation to Light
at the beginning of Bk. III of Paradise Lost : “hus with the year / Seasons return,
but not to me returns / Day,
Day, or the sweet approach of ev ev’n’n or
or morn, / Or sight of ver-
nal bloom, or summer’s rose, / Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine” (40–44).
Both set pieces express the feeling of loss, but Shaw disguises his inspiration by
shifting the terms of loss from the visual in Milton to the aural in Joan. Moreover,
Shaw characteristically shifts the emphasis away from the experience of the loss to
the affirmation of Joan’s feeling for nature.
16. When Shaw prepared a screenplay sc reenplay of Saint Joan, he added a scene set in the
marketplace
market place of Rouen in which the Executioner is seen prepar preparing
ing the stake
stak e for Joan’s
burning; Shaw suggests that “if a bird or two could be induced to ligh lightt on the stake,
the effect would be deadly” (see Saint Joan: A Screenplay by Bernard Shaw , ed. Ber-
nard F. Dukore [Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 19681, 158)—a Hitchcockian
touch, that, and simultaneously additional and ironic enforcement of the connection
between Joan and flight.
17. Cf. Milton: “Meanwhile / he world shall burn, and from her ashes spring
 / New heav n and eart
earth,
h, where
wherein
in the just shall dwell
dwell,, / And af
after
ter all ttheir
heir tribulation
long / See golden
fair truth.” days,
Paradise Lost fruitful of golden
, Bk. III, 333–38.deeds, / With joy and love triumphing and
18. Cf. Pilate’s speech from On the Rocks , particularly, “ . . . if I set you loose to
scatter your words broadcast among the people.”

46  John A. Bertolini

19. In the Preface, Shaw hints at his self-conscious treatment of time in the
play: “ . . . as it [the play] is for stage use I have had to condense into three and a
half hours a series of events which in their historical happening were spread over
four times as many months; for the theatre imposes unities of time and place from
 which Nature in her bou boundless
ndless wastefu
wastefulness
lness is free. herefore tthehe re
reader
ader must not
suppose
nor that that Joan really put Robert
her excommunication, de Baudricourt
Baudrico
recantation, urt inand
relapse, herdeath
pocket in ffifteen
were aifteen
matterminutes,
of half
an hour or so.” he point, as I see it, of Shaw’s playful patronizing of his reader
here, his exhortation to a willing suspension of disbelief (as if some readers might
be unfamiliar with the conventions of stage time), is to make the reader aware in an
indirect way that Shaw is playing with time in the play for a reason.
20. “he Epilogue is obviously not a representation of an actual scene, or even
of a recorded dream; but it is none the less historical,” says Shaw in his “Note by
the Author” in Collected Plays , Vol. 6, 213. Shaw does  use   use the technique of dramatic
action as wish-fulfillment dream in oo rue to be Good , where, as Northrop Frye
points out, for the anonymous heroine, “the action . . . is really her own wish-fulfill-
ment dream.” See he Secular Scripture: A Study of Romance  (Cambridge:
  (Cambridge: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1976), 79.
21.and
Barbara hePeter
interplay between
Shirley, when Joan and the
the latter triesSoldier repeats
to console that between
Barbara Major
for her loss of
purpose in life at the end of Act II: “Ah, if you would only read om Paine in the
proper spirit, miss!”
miss! ” Peter’
Peter’ss limited awareness (l(like
ike the Soldier’s) intensif
intensifies
ies our sense
of Barbara’s
Barba ra’s ((and
and Joan’s
Joan’s)) pai
pain.n.
 

 J E A N R E Y N O L D S

Te Shavian Inclusiveness 

HIGGINS. Tis is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish own with

80 £ a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. Tey want to
drop Kentish own; but they give themselves away every time they open
their mouths. Now I can teach them—

E ric Bentley’s phrase “the Shavian inclusiveness” offers a useful starting

point for a study of Shavian postmodernism. Jacques Derrida—like Shaw,
powerfully influenced by Karl Marx—consistently rejects traditional dual-
istic “either/or” thinking. Deconstruction, focusing on the marginal and
repressed elements in a text, offers many
ma ny insights into SShavia
haviann “new speech,”
 which encompasses an astonishing range of styles, styles , roles, and rhetorical
devices.

matistPygmalion
than Shaw can be called
might an “inclusive”
not have included anplay: A more
“upstart
“upstart”” likeconventional dra-
Eliza Doolittle in
a drama about gentlemen like Higgins and Pickering. Eliza is a marginal per-
son, startlingly out of place beside the pillars of St. Paul’s Church in Covent
Garden, where Higgins first sees her. But Shaw, marginal himself because of
his Irish origins
or igins and radical thinking, was just as unconventional. Regar
Regarding
ding
himself as “a sojourner on this planet rather than a native of it,” he pondered
life from the vantage point of an alien ( CP  3:3
  3:3 5). In  Mainly about Myself   
(1898) he vividly described his outsider status:
 From Pygmalion’s Wordplay: he Postmodern Shaw, pp. 20−42, 138. Copyright © 1999 by the
Board of Regents of the State of Florida.

47

48  Jean Reynolds

I had no taste for what is called popular art . . . no admiration for

popular heroics. As an Irishman I could pretend to patriotism
neither for the country I had abandoned nor the country that had
ruined it. As a humane person I detested violence and slaughter,
 whether
detesting inourwar,
waranarchical
, sport, orscramble
the butcher’s yard. Iand
for money, wasbelieving
a Socialist,
in
equality as the only possible permanent basis of social organization,
discipline, subordination, good manners, and selection of fit persons
for high functions. Fashionable life, open on indulgent terms to
unencumbered “brilliant”
“brilliant ” persons, I could not endure, even if I had
not feared its demoralizing effect on a character which required
looking after as much as my own. (CP  1:24)  1:24)

Shaw used his outsider status to advantage, writing both dramatic and
nondramatic works that—like Pygmalion—critique contemporary ideologies

by exposing
prose what Michael
often explores Ryan
political, callseconomic,
social, their “gestures of exclusion”
and religious ideas (3). Shaw’s
overlooked
by other writers of his day: the necessity of women’s rights, the failure of
Britain’s criminal justice system, the sins of science, and the absurdity of reli-
gious orthodoxy. In his Preface to  Misalliance , Shaw explained that alien and
rejected ideas are essential to “progressive
“progressive enlightenment [which] depends on
a fair hearing
hear ing for doctrines which ata t first appear seditious, blasphemous, and
immoral, and which deeply shock people who never ne ver think originally
or iginally,, thought
thought
being for them merely a habit and an echo” ( CP  2:38).
 2:38). Tis “Shavian inclu-
siveness” is a hallmark of Shaw’s thought.
Shaw’s interest in margins and their problems—things excluded and
included—links him to Jacques Derrida, who is preoccupied with the seem-
ingly extraneous features in a text or ideology that subtly undermine its pri-
mary message. According to Derrida, “Every culture and society requires an
internal critique or deconstruction as an essential part of its development. . . .
Every culture is haunted by its other” (Kearney 116). Tis “otherness,” so per-
 vasive in Shavian prose, is a vital component of deconstruction, as Derrida
explains: “Deconstruction
“Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness
towards the other” (Kearney 124). In a 1994 interview, Derrida noted that
“otherness” is a prerequisite rather than a detriment to dialogue, community,
and national unity: “Once you take into account this inner and other differ-
ence, then you pay attention to the other and you understand that fighting
 for your own identity is not exclusive of another identity, is open to another
identity. And this prevents totalitarianism, nationalism, egocentrism, and so
on” (Deconstruction in a Nutshell  13–14).
 13–14).

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 49

Like psychoanalysts, deconstructionists attach great significance to the

unspoken, unnoticed “others” that are often repressed and denied. Tey make
a sharp break with the traditional Western metaphysics, which, heavily influ-
enced by Plato, seeks to differentiate and banish everything that does not fit
syst em. In Te Realm of Rhetoric , Chaim Perelman expl
its system. explains
ains that P
Plato
lato “rec-
ognized a cleansing role in dialectic—the technique Socrates used to refute
his opponent’s opinions insofar as he was able to bring out their internal
inconsistencies. As soon as they contradict themselves, opinions cannot be
simultaneously admitted, and at least one of them has to be abandoned for
the sake of truth” (Bizzell and Herzberg 1072).
Shaw, with his “both/and
“bot h/and”” habit of mind,
mi nd, often exposes
e xposes suc
suchh metaphysi-
metaphysi -
cal “cleansing.” In the Quintessence of Ibsenism, for example, he tells the story
of a contemporary
contemporar y woman, Marie Bashkirtseff, who has shocked Britain Br itain with
her “unfeminine” intellect and independence. Her critics, Shaw points out,
simply deny that she is a woman at all: He quotes one who wrote, “She was

the very antithesis

Shaw’s prose of a true woman”
challenges (Selected 
Platonist  224). in still another way, by
 224).
metaphysics
showing how it smoothly absorbs differences and conflicts into a false appear-
ance of harmony. Christopher Norris points out “that power of logocentric
thinking to absorb all differences into itself by viewing them as mere stages
or signposts on the way to some grand conceptual synthesis” (Derrida  231).   231).
A prime example appears in the Preface to Saint Joan, in which Shaw shows
that contemporary thinkers dismiss religion as an early, inadequate source of
knowledge that has been superseded by science, rather than considering the
possibility that religion may still have something to offer the modern world.
Shaw’s penchant for both/and thinking is clearly visible in Pygmalion.
Despite her outsider status, Eliza, along with her Angel Court neighbors, is a
 vital part of English
English soci
social
al structure.
structure. Like Eliza’
Eliza’s dustman
dustman father,
father, membe
membersrs of
Eliza’s class perform
per form distasteful but essential services
ser vices for the rich.
r ich. Higgins and
his fellows use both strategies mentioned earlier to “cleanse” themselves from
the less desirable elements of society. First, the lower classes are banished from
 view: out of sight,
sight, out of mind. Although
Although a small army of workers
workers is requi
required
red
to maintain the standard of living depicted in Pygmalion, only a housekeeper,
a dustman and a parlormaid are seen onstage. Second, the poor are denied the
status of human beings, as in this exchange from f rom Act II of Pygmalion:

PICKERI
PICKERING
NG [in good-humored remonstrance ] Does it occur to you, Higgins,
 that the girl has some feelings?
HIGGINS [looking critically at her ] Oh no, I dont think so. Not any feelings
that we need bother about. (694–95)

50  Jean Reynolds

Most important, the poor are stereotyped as morally weak. Moments after
Pygmalion  begins, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill suspects that Eliza is a prostitute and
buys a bunch of flowers in hopes of confirming her suspicions:

 HE MOHER [to the girl ] You can keep the change.
 HE FLOWER
F LOWER GIRLGIR L Oh, thank
than k you, lady.
 HE MOHER Now tell me how you know that young gentleman’ gentleman’ss
name.
 HE FLOWER
F LOWER GIRLGIR L I didn’t.
 HE MOHER
MO HER I heard
hea rd you call
ca ll him by it. Dont try
tr y to deceive me.
 HE FLOWER GIRL [ protesting ] Who’s trying to deceive you? I called
him Freddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to
a stranger and wished to be pleasant. (672)

Freddy’s sister
sister Clara protests her mother’s
mother’s injustice to him: “Really,
“Real ly, mamma,
 you might have spared Freddy that” (6 (672)
72).. But Clara does not take
ta ke offense
at the insult directed at another member of her own sex: Eliza is beneath
her notice.
Despite the scorn repeatedly heaped on Eliza and others of her class,
they perform another vital function that goes beyond their menial services
to the rich: Tey help classify British social structure. Eliza’s “Lisson Grove
lingo” so clearly
clear ly defines her social position that when she masters upper-class
speech, guests at the embassy reception have no clue to her origin. And it
is here, with Eliza’s “new speech,” that British class ideology breaks down,
or “deconstructs.” Genteel speech, supposedly a natural acquisition of the
 well bred, isn’t
isn’t “natural”
“natural” at all—nor is it a reliable social indicator.
indicator. Although
Although
the embassy guests seem homogeneous, they are a jumbled lot: Teir ranks
include both “upstarts” who who have mastered refined speech and aristocrats who
never learned to speak it. Of the latter Higgins complains, “theyre such fools
that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they
never learn” (746–47).
And Higgins himself is seriously
seriousl y flawed. Despite his social standing and
“Miltonic mind,” he is boorish and manipulative, with as little respect for his
peers as for members of Eliza’s class. He airily suggests an arranged marriage
for Eliza,
Eliz a, who retorts,
retort s, “ We were above that
tha t at the corne
cornerr of ottenha
ottenham m Court
 Road. . . . I sold flowers.
flo wers. I didn t sell myself (750). At the end of the
t he play sshe
he
tells Higgins,
Higg ins, “I had only
onl y to lift up my finger
fi nger to be as good
goo d as you” (781). Eliza
has discovered the fallacy of British social-class ideology.
ideology.
Marxist critic Kenneth Burke defines an ideology as an “inverted gene-
alogy of culture, that makes for ‘illusion’ and ‘mystification’ by treating ideas

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 51

as  primary  where
 where they should have been treated as derivative ” (Rhetoric  104).
 104).
Ideologies naturalize events and relationships, creating the impression of
inevitability by concealing their causes and origins in order to deter ques-
tions, doubts, and critical thinking. Critic Patricia Waugh says this process
is accomplished through the medium of “everyday language” by “power
structures through a continuous process of naturalization whereby forms of
oppression are constructed in apparently ‘innocent’
‘innocent ’ representations” (11).
 Te insults that Higgins directs at Eliza are linguistic evidence of the
“naturalization” process that British class structure has undergone: He can
throw epithets at her with no fear of reprisal or contradiction. Eliza’s low
status seems “primary”—the unchangeable result of heredity—even though
it is actually “derivative,” resulting from economics, education, demographics,
and other social phenomena. Higgins’s phonetics game of guessing people’s
origins in Act I drives the point home: Speech patterns are the product not of
genes or inborn character, but geography.
In “Karl
cess—the Marx and ‘Das
establishment Kapital’”
of gold (1887), Shaw
as a “natural” recounts
medium a similar “Te
of exchange: pro-
soap-maker . . . finds it troublesome to estimate the value of his ware not only
in nails, but in candles, gloves, bread, and every separate ware used by him.
So does the nail-maker; and so do all the other exchangers. So they agree
upon a suitable ware, such as gold, in which each can estimate the value of
his ware. Gold can then be bought for wares; and all wares can be bought for
it. Gold becomes money; and values become prices. Money then becomes
the customary expression of the “natural price of all things.” In the Robinson
Crusoe age, before division of labor and exchange, labor seemed the natural
price; when wares were exchanged and bartered, wares seemed the natural
price”” (Karl Marx  130).
price  130).
Such naturalizations reinforce ideologies by concealing the discords
simmering within them. Burke’s description of an ideology, focusing on the
conflicts beneath its surface harmony, sounds much like Derridean decon-
struction: “An ideology is not a harmonious structure of beliefs or assump-
tions; some of its beliefs militate against others, and some of its standards
militate against our nature. An ideology is an aggregate of beliefs sufficiently
at odds with one another to justify opposite kinds of conduct” (Counter-State-
ment  163).
 163).
 Tis commonality between Burke, Shaw, Shaw, and Derrida should not be
 surprising, since all three have a Marxist background, and the critiquing of
ideologies is a Marxist activity. Shavian critics have tended to underestimate
Shaw’s debt to Marx 1
beca use they focus only on the failed socialist econom-
because
ics of Das Kapital .  Bernard Dukore, describing the myopic views of several
of these critics, explains, “o Marxist critics like [Alick] West, Christopher

52  Jean Reynolds

Caudwell, and E. Strauss, Shaw is a bourgeois playwright who is not as radical

as he thinks. Before and after
af ter 1917, they denounced his Fabian-inspired plays
as unsocialistic, for they fail to dramatize the class struggle, vilify capitalists,
applaud the moral preeminence of the working class, and present exemplary
socialists with whom audiences of workers might identify” (xviii). Actually,
Marx’s ideas helped form many features of Shavian “new speech”: Shaw’s
passion for social change, his attraction to people and problems outside main-
stream thinking, his hatred of idealism, and his ability to break through sur-
face harmony to expose the discord underneath.
Reading Das Kapital  in in 1882
18 82 changed Shaw’
Shaw ’s whole life. Biographer and
f riend Hesketh Pearson said that Marx “directed [Shaw’ [Shaw ’s] energy
energ y, influenced
influenced
his art,
ar t, gave him a religion, and, as he claimed,
c laimed, made a man ofo f him” (52). Shaw
himself told Pearson that discovering Marx “was the turning-point in my
career. Marx was a revelation. His abstract economics, I discovered later, were
 wrong, but he rent the veil. He opened my eyes to the facts of history and
civilisation,
 with gaveand
a purpose me aanmission
entirelyinfresh
f resh conception of the universe, provided me
life” (51).
Difficulties multiplied. Only the first two volumes of Das Kapital  had   had
been published, and Shaw had to go to the British Museum to study Deville’s
French edition because no English translation was available. Shaw attended
meetings of the Democratic Federation, a Marxist organization, but no one
there except the leader, J. M. Hyndman, had actually read Das Kapital . Nor
 were there any critical analyses to clarify Marx’s difficult ideas—his formi-
dable definition of an ideology, for example: “[It] transforms the predicates,
the objects, into independent entities, but divorced from their actual inde-
pendence their subject. Subsequently the actual subject appears as a result,
 whereas one must start f rom the actual subject and look at its objectifica-
tion. Te mystical substance, therefore, becomes the actual subject, and the
real subject appears as something else, as an element of the mystical subject”
(Marx and Engels 18).
Shaw did have an unusual advantage, however: Several of his friends,
including Hyndman, an actress named Mrs. Teodore Wright, and Marx’s
 youngest daughter Eleanor
Eleanor,, had actually talked with Marx at length about his
ideas. One of Shaw’s 1887 essays about Marx refers to these friends without
naming them: “Te charm of [Marx’s] conversation, admitted by those who
knew him personally, would not alone account for his reputation, although it
 is true that his reputation must be measured by its intensity as much as by its
 width”” (Karl Marx  106).
 width  106).
Hyndman had discovered Das Kapital  in
 in 1880 and, learning that Marx
lived in London, met with him for long talks at the end of 1880 and early
in 1881. Shaw described Mrs. Wright, who was a Fabian, as “a revolutionary

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 53

beauty ” and “the friend

beauty” frie nd of Karl Marx” (Letters  2:474).
 2:474). And Shaw was in love
 with Eleanor,
Eleanor, an aspiring actress who was a political activist and had done
research for her father in the British Museum and translated Das Kapital ;
she was also a close friend of Friedrich Engels, Marx’s collaborator. Eleanor
and Shaw, drawn together by their interest in socialism and the theater, often
met at Eleanor
Ele anor’’s home, which she shared with
w ith Dr. Edward Aveling, her com-
mon-law husband, whom Shaw described as “saturated with Marx” (Letters  
1:379). She and Shaw also spent time together at the British Museum and at
political and literary meetings. From Eleanor, Shaw learned that Marx was
intensely interested in British literature, having taught himself English by
studying the works of Shakespeare. At one meeting of the Shelley Society,
 whose members included Shaw,
Shaw, Eleanor presented a lecture about her father’s
father’s
interest in Shelley—a writer who had profoundly influenced Shaw.
Shaw. A
Although
lthough
Shaw loved Eleanor, she preferred Aveling and finally killed herself when
Aveling betrayed her.

ideas.Shaw quickly developed

Anticipating de veloped
such an exceptionally
twentieth-century broad understanding
thinkers of Marx’s
as Erich Fromm, Ken-
neth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, and erry Eagleton, Shaw
recognized that MarxMar x was a psychologist, philosopher,
philosopher, and rhetorician as well
as a political economist.
e conomist. Shaw’s 1887 essays often
of ten mention Marx’s rhetorical
power: In the first, published on August 7, Shaw wrote, “[Marx] wrote of the
nineteenth century as if it were a cloud passing down the wind, changing its
shape and fading as it goes” (Karl Marx   109). Besides mentioning Marx’s
“spirit” twice (113 and 121), Shaw discussed “the novelty and fascination of
his treatment” (109) and Marx’s “remarkable historical sense” (113). Accord-
ing to Shaw, Marx’s style had a powerful effect on his readers, demonstrating
that “the old order is one of fraud and murder . . . [and] it is changing and
giving place to the new by an inexorable law of development. It is easy to
shew that Mill . . . knew this and said this; but the fact is that the average
pupil of Marx never forgets it, whilst the average pupil of Mill and the rest
never learns it”
it ” (117).
Shaw was especially impressed by Marx’s humanist assertion that pas-
sion is central to a meaningful life. Marx’s detractors have often overlooked
his humanism because they misunderstand the “materialism” that shapes
much of his philosophy and a nd working methods.
method s. In the Foreword to Kar
Karll Marx,
Marx ,
Selected Writings in Sociology & Social Philosophy , Erich Fromm explains that
 Marx’s “materialism” has nothing to do with the physical world: It referred
instead to “the real man and the real conditions of his life
life”” (xv).
Unlike Freud, whose emphasis on biological instincts was popular with
progressive Victorians, Marx declared that humans are motivated by higher
drives: “Passion is man’s faculties striving to attain their objects” (Fromm,

54  Jean Reynolds

 Marx’s Concept   65). Marx was interested in the “spontaneous activity of

human fantasy, of the human brain and heart” (69). Similarly, Erich Fromm
notes that Marx “speaks in very concrete terms of human passions, particu-
larly that of love,” which Marx defined as the human connection to life: “it
is love which teaches man to truly believe in the world of objects outside of
him” (69).
In the same way, Shaw believed in human drives such as an “appetite
for knowledge” that transcend biological longings. In the Preface to Saint
 Joan he explained, “But that there are forces at work which use individuals for
purposes far transcending the purpose of keeping these individuals alive and
prosperous and respectable and safe and happy in the middle station in life,
 which is all any good bourgeois can reasonably require, is established by the
fact that men will, in the pursuit of knowledge and of social readjustments for
 which they will not be a penny the better, and are indeed often many pence
the worse, face poverty, infamy, exile, imprisonment, dreadful hardship, and
th” (CP  2:509).
death”
dea  2:509).
Shaw often used “passion” to describe the inner forces that shaped
his character and mission. As a “boy atheist,” he discovered that he had
“evolved a natural sense of honor” that served as a moral guide: “I ranked it,
and still
sti ll do, as a passion”
pa ssion” ( EPWW  65).
 65). elling Hesketh Pearson
Pearso n about a for-
f or-
mative spiritual experience that came to him when he was twelve, he said,
“Te change that came to me was the birth in me of moral passion; and I
declare that according to my experience moral passion is the only real pas-
sion” (29). In 1895 Shaw encouraged readers to find their own inner basis
of upright behavior: “[Y]ou will find that your passions, if you really and
honestly let them all loose impartially, will discipline you with a severity
 which your conventional
conven tional friend
f riends,
s, abandoning
abandon ing themselves
themsel ves to the mechanical
mechan ical
routine of fashion, could not stand for a day” ( Selected  356).
 356). In Act I of Man
and Superman, anner declares, “according to my experience moral passion
is the only real passion” (74).
 With his emphasis on passionate living, Shaw did not extol extol science and
logic as his Victorian contemporaries did. “In process of time the age of rea-
son had to go its way after the age of faith,” Shaw declared in Te Quintessence
of Ibsenism (Selected  213).
 213). As often happens in Shaw’Shaw ’s writings, the “Shavian
inclusiveness” prompted him to put human reason into a larger context, rather
than discarding it. Shavian “new speech,” integrating reason and passion, is
 consistent with Marx’s assertion, in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts ,
that “man is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking,
but with all   his senses” (Marx and Engels 88).2  In the Preface to Back to
 Methuselah Shaw wrote,

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 55

My own Irish XVIII centuryism made it impossible for me to

believe anything until I could conceive it as a scientific hypothesis,
even though the abominations, quackeries, impostures, venalities,
credulities, and delusions of the camp followers of science, and
the brazen lies and priestly pretensions of the pseudoscientific
cure-mongers, all sedulously inculcated by modern “secondary
education,” were so monstrous that I was sometimes
s ometimes forced to make
a verbal distinction between science and knowledge lest I should
mislead my readers. But I never forgot that without knowledge
even wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist ignorance,
and that somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and
 weed it properly. (CP  2:429)
 2:429)

As a result, Shaw’s “new

“new speech”
spee ch” often
ofte n “includes
“includ es the excluded
exc luded”” by appeal-
ing to readers’ emotions as well
wel l as their reasoning
reaso ning powers. He told Henderson,
“Emotion evolved and fixed in intellectual conviction—will save the world”
(894).3 In “Te New Teology,” Shaw declared, “I do not address myself to
 your logical
logical faculties, but as one human mind trying to put himself himself in contact
 with other
other human minds” (Religious Speeches  10).  10). “Te Religion of the Piano-
forte” (1894) declares, “It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought
that sets him feeling” ( Music   3:127). In 1918 Shaw wrote, “Te appalling
fact that nobody in this country seems to know that intellect is a passion
for solving problems, and that its exercise produces happiness, satisfaction,
and a desirable quality of life, shews that we do not yet know even our crude
bodily appetites in their higher aspect as passions: a passion being, I take
it, an overwhelming impulse towards a more abundant life” (CP  2:297).   2:297). In
“Literature and Art,” Ar t,” a 1908 lecture, Shaw explained how the power of art is
created through the “both/and” of reason and feeling: “Leaving out all that is
irrelevant, [the artist] has to connect the significant facts by chains of reason-
ing, and also to make, as it were, bridges of feeling between them by a sort of
ladder, get the whole thing in a connected form into your head, and give you
a spiritual,
spiri tual, political, social, or religi
religious
ous consciousness.
conscio usness. Literally
Literall y, then, the work
of the artist
ar tist is to create mind” (Platform 43–44).
After reading Marx, Shaw committed himself to a lifetime of advo-
cacy for social change. In a self-drafted 1901 interview, “Who I Am, and
 What I Tink,” Shaw explained how Marx helped shape his ggoals: oals: “Now the
 real secret of Marx’
Mar x’ss fascination was his appeal
a ppeal to an unnamed, unrecognized
passion—a new passion—the passion of hatred in the more generous souls
among the respectable and educated sections for the accursed middle-class
institutions that had starved, thwarted, misled, and corrupted them from

56  Jean Reynolds

their cradles. Marx’s Capital is not a treatise on Socialism; it is a jeremiad

against the bourgeoisie” (Sketches  83).
 83).
Shaw perpetuated Marx’s “jeremiad against the bourgeoisie” by using
his “new
“new speech” to expose the fallacies and frauds
f rauds of contemporary
contemporar y life. One
might even conjecture that Shaw surpassed Marx since, as J. L. Wisenthal
has noted, “in Shaw’s
S haw’s view economic considerations have some importance in
history,, but
history but ideas are much more important”
impor tant” (51). But Marx too gave primary
pr imary
importance to ideas rather than “economic considerations,” as this letter of
his, written in September 1843, attests: “[O]ur motto must be then: reform
of consciousness not through dogmas but by analysing the mystical self-con-
fused consciousness, whether it has a political or a religious content” (Fromm,
Crisis  74).
  74). Marx, declaring that “language is practical consciousness” ( Por-
table Karl Marx  173),
 173), clearly understood the relationship between words and
 worldview.. Tat same understanding later engendered Shaw’s “new speech”
 worldview
and reformer’
reformer ’s mission.
One ideology that Shaw attacked—following Marx’s lead—was the
popular belief that every human possesses a stable and unchanging essence,
or Self. In Pygmalion, this ideology causes Higgins to reject Eliza, despite her
accomplishments: She will always be a “draggletailed guttersnipe” (691) to him.
Shaw held a much broader view of the human potential for change—a view
influenced
influenc ed by Marx, who had declared, “As individuals
individu als express their
the ir life, so they
are” (Marx and Engels 150). In the Preface to Te Irrational Knot  (1905)
 (1905) Shaw
emphasized his own capacity for endless
end less change: “Physiologists inform us that
the substance of our bodies (and consequently of our souls) is shed and renewed
at such a rate that no part of us lasts longer than eight years: I am therefore not
now in any atom of me the person who wrote Te Irrational Knot  in  in 1880. Te

last
the of that author
majority. perished
Fourth of hisinline,
1888; and twobeofexpected
I cannot his successors have
to take anysince
veryjoined
lively
interest in the novels of my literary great-grandfather” (CP  1:171).
 1:171).
Still another ideology challenged by Shaw is the WesternWestern belief in tran-
scendent, unchanging artistic principles. Following Marx, Shaw challenged
the notion that artists must obey eternal aesthetic laws. In A Degenerate’
Degenerate’s View
of Nordau (reissued in 1908 as Te Sanity of Art ), ), Shaw explained, “Te sever-
ity of artistic discipline is produced by the fact that in creative art no ready-
made rules can
c an help you. Tere is nothing to guide you to the right expression
 for your thought except your own sense of beauty and fitness, and as you
advance upon those who went before you, that sense of beauty and fitness is
necessarily often in conflict, not with fixed rules, because there are no rules,
but with precedents” (Selected  368).
 368).
Excluded from conventional histories of art, Shaw complained, are
the clashes and discord that must occur when rising genius breaks with

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 57

tradition. Critics Richard Poirier, in Te Renewal of Literature , and Harold

Bloom, in Te Anxiety of Influence , have explored the pressures our Western
literary inheritance places upon each new generation of writers, who suffer
acutely from the need to create something totally original that surpasses
 what previous
previ ous geniuses
geniuse s have done. Bloom describes
descr ibes “the exhaus
exhaustions
tions of
being a late-comer” that
that he hears in contemporary poetr
poetryy (12); Poirier cites
the “danger of being trapped in language, in the conformities which make
language possible” (12).
Shaw’s solution was, as usual, paradoxical: He both embraced and
rejected the past. In the Preface to  Major Barbara , repudiating “the hypoth-
esis of complete originality,” he insisted that “a man can no more be com-
pletely original in that sense than a tree can grow out of air” ( CP  1:247).
 1:247). He
described himself as “standing . . . on [the] shoulders” of “Voltaire, Rousseau,
Bentham, Marx, Mill, Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin, Butler, and Morris all rolled
into one, with Euripides, More, Montaigne, Molière, Beaumarchais, Swift,
Goethe, Ibsen, olstoy, Jesus and the prophets all thrown in” (161). In the
Preface to Tree Plays for Puritans   Shaw confessed, “my stories are the old
stories; my characters are the familiar harlequin and columbine, clown and
pantaloon (note the harlequin’s
harlequin’s leap in the third act of Caesar and Cleopatra);
my stage tricks and suspenses and thrills
thril ls and jests are the ones in vogue when
I was a boy, by which time my grandfather was tired of them. . . . I am a crow
 who has followed many
many ploughs” (CP  1:83–84).
 1:83–84).
But Shaw refused to deify the great writers and thinkers whose “ploughs”
he was following. Even
Even Mozart, whose brilliance Shaw acclaims in the Epis-
tle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, is portrayed as a genius whose time has
come and gone. Shaw dealt with the past by freely
f reely borrowing ffrom
rom its “mag-
“mag-

nificent debris ofhad

era, he declared, to be(CP 
fossils”   1:164),
 1:164),
dealt anditsthrowing
with on away
own terms. the rest.
Shavian “newEach new
speech”
 was an attempt to bring an old language into a new new age—using words
words not to
sustain established power structures, but to destabilize the world his readers
took for granted and show them the possibilities of a new order.
order.
Above all, Shaw rejected the idealist aesthetics that imprison new artists
in the values and principles of earlier times. Te essence of Shavian philoso-
phy is, in effect, that there is no essence: His metaphysics, like Marx’s, strove
to escape metaphysics altogether. Shavian Creative Evolution—the closest
 he ever came to an abstract and systematic explanation of the workings of
our world—is intrinsically fluid and mutable. Like Marx and, later, Derrida,
Shaw rejected the notion that our world is only an imperfect reflection of
a perfect realm that transcends our understanding. Tese idealistic philoso-
phies, Marx complained, convert
convert language into a medium for social and eco-
nomic manipulation.

58  Jean Reynolds

Shaw, following Marx’s idea, saw that “new speech” could renew soci-
ety by teaching men and women how to recognize and resist the misuses of
language. In Te German Ideology  Marx
 Marx had explained how “General interests
. . . decline into mere idealizing phrases, conscious illusions and deliberate
deceits. But the more they are condemned as falsehoods, and the less they
satisfy the understanding, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the
more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established
society” (Marx, Selected Writings  81).
  81). Tis idealism, according to Marx, dis-
counts the realities of human existence:

 Te production of ideas, conceptions and consciousness is at first

directly interwoven with the material activity and the material
intercourse of men, the language of real life. Representation and
thought, the mental intercourse of men, still appear at this stage
as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. Te same applies
to mental
laws, production
morality, religion,asmetaphysics,
it is expressed in of
etc., thea language of politics,
people. Men are the
producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc.—real, active men, as
they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive
forces, and of the intercourse which corresponds to these, up to its
furthest forms. (Marx and Engels 154)

Both Marx and Shaw saw that such idealism inhibits social change in
two ways. First, it devalues human efforts, emphasizing instead the author-
ity and power of transcendent forces. Marx explains that it “presupposes an
abstract or absolute spirit which develops in such a way that humanity is

nothing but
57).aMarx
Writings   57). mass was
which more or less
particularly consciously
critical bears it which
of Christianity, (Selected
along” glorified
God at the expense of humanity: “Te more of himself man attributes to
God, the less he has left in himself ” (170).
Shaw’s Preface to  Major Barbara  argues
 argues the same point: oo
oo often reli-
gion fosters complacency by making God, rather than human beings, respon-
sible for the condition of society. In “Te New Teology,” Shaw encouraged
readers to say, “I am working for the purpose of the universe, working for the
good of the whole of society and the whole world, instead of merely looking
 afte r my personal
after persona l ends (Religious Speeches  19).
 19). Shaw hoped that a human race
educated out of its dependence on Jehovah would eventually accept its own
responsibility for the condition of the world: “In a sense there is no God as
 yet achieved, but there is that force at work
work making God, struggling through
us to become an actual organized existence, enjoying what to many of us is
the greatest conceivable ecstasy, the ecstasy of a brain, an intelligence, actually

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 59

conscious of the whole, and with executive force capable of guiding it to a

perfectly benevolent and harmonious end” (19).
More seriously, both Marx and Shaw realized that idealism smoothes
over the inevitable conflicts that arise with every human endeavor. Class
struggles, identity crises, artistic feuds—all are glossed over by the relentless
power of idealism. Perceptions
Perceptions of reality become distorted by the struggle to
make them fit an idealist system. As an antidote Marx advocated “natural-
ism”—avoiding idealisms to stay close to human experience. In Te German
 Ideology   he declared, “In direct contrast to German [idealistic] philosophy,
 which descends from
f rom heaven to earth,
ear th, here we ascend from
f rom earth to heaven.
 Tat is to say,
say, we do not set out f rom what men say, imagine, conceive,
conceive, nor
from men as narrated thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at
men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their
real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes
and echoes of this life-process” (Marx and Engels 154).
Shaw echoes Marx’
Mar x’ss complaint about the substitution of abstractions for
“real, active men” in “Who I Am, and What I Tink”:

Men are not real men to us; they are heroes and villains, respectable
persons and criminals. Teir qualities are virtues and vices; the
natural laws that govern them are gods and devils; their destinies
are rewards and expiations; their reasoning a formula of cause and
effect with the horse mostly behind the cart. Tey come to me with
their heads full of these figments, which they call, if you please,
“the world,” and ask me what is the meaning of them, as if I or
anyone else were God omniscient and could tell them. Pretty funny
this:impose
to eh? But
by when they ostracize,
force their grotesque punish,
religionsmurder, and make
and hideous war
criminal
codes, then the comedy becomes a tragedy
tr agedy.. Te Army
Arm y, the Navy,
Navy, the
Church, the Bar, the theat
theatres,
res, the pictu
picture-galle
re-galleries,
ries, the libraries,
libraries , and
the trade unions are forced to bolster up their pet hallucinations.
(Sketches  90–91)
 90–91)

Although Shaw was in many ways a Platonist—citing Plato as an exam-

ple of a true realist, for example (Selected  222)—he
 222)—he followed Marx in opposing
 the optimistic abstractions of Platonic idealism. In the Preface to Misalliance ,
Shaw chastised Britons who prefer abstractions to reality:
reality : “in discussing fam-
ily life we never speak of actual adults or actual children, or of realities of any
sort, but always of ideals such as Te Home, a Mother’s Influence, a Father’s
Care, Filial Piety, Duty, Affection, Family Life, etc., etc., which are no doubt
 very comforting phrases, but which beg the question of what a home and a

60  Jean Reynolds

mother’s influence and a father’s care and so forth really come to in practice”
mother’s
(CP  2:14).
 2:14).
Shaw’s insistence on dealing with the realities of human experience
shaped everything he wrote. Always conscious of the complexity of the
human race, Shaw never underestimated his audience. In a 1939 interview
about Pygmalion’s huge success, he explained that he never tried to appeal to
the “low intelligence
intelli gence of the average
aver age filmgoer.”
filmgo er.” Tere was, he insisted,
insisted , “no such
person” (Collected Plays  4:821).
 4:821).
Politically, too, Shaw was firmly grounded in reality. In a 1900 letter to
H. M. Hyndman, Shaw explained his mission in the Mar Marxist
xist terminology not
of economics,
economic s, but of social reform:
re form: “I am a moral revolutionar
revol utionaryy, interested,
interest ed, not
in the class war, but in the struggle between human vitality and the artificial
system of morality, and distinguishing, not between capitalist & proletarian,
but between moralist and natural historian” (Letters  2:163).
 2:163). As a “natural his-
torian,” Shaw included himself and his own writings
w ritings in the category
categor y of tran-
sient entities. Hence this surprisingly humble self-assessment in the Preface
to Tree Plays for Puritans : “I shall perhaps enjoy a few years of immortality.
But the whirligig of time will soon bring my audiences to my own point of
 view; and then the next Shakespear that comes along will turn these petty
tentatives of mine into masterpieces
master pieces final for their epoch” (CP  1:83–84).
 1:83–84).
Shaw’s refusal to canonize himself and his writings clashes with the
New Criticism and its insistence on the timelessness of great literature. It
is, however, consistent with two twentieth-century outgrowths of Marxism:
Russian formalism and Derridean deconstruction. Te Russian formalists
 were a literary group that included such notables as Roman Jakobsen and
Viktor Shklovsky;
Shklovsky ; they flourished for about a decade after the Russian Revo-
lution ofis1917.
 writing Teyand
temporal, rejected idealist
that its value notions of literature,
varies according insisting
to the ways inthat all
which
it is used.
 Jacques Derrida—who has acknowledged the importance of Rus-
sian formalism to his own thought (Positions  70)—similarly
  70)—similarly argues against
metaphysical definitions of literature. In a 1971 interview with Jean-Louis
Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta,
Sc arpetta, h hee explained, “I have tried to describe and to
explain how writing structurally carries within itself (counts-discounts) the
process of its own erasure
er asure and annulation, all the while marking what remains  
 of this erasure” (Positions  68).
 68).
Te Quintessence of Ibsenism is a compelling example of Shaw’s attacks on
ideologies, often along Marxist and deconstructionist lines. It began in 1890
as a paper for a Fabian Society lecture series called “Socialism in Contempo-
rary Literature.” In 1891 it was published as a small book; later it was revised
and republished several times, and Shaw added a new Preface in 1922.

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 61

Although Ibsen was neither a Marxist nor a member of any political

movement, his sympathy for socialism made his plays attractive to the Fabi-
ans. Ibsen described his own affinity for socialism in an
a n 1890 letter that refers,
 without naming them,
them, to Te Quintessence of Ibsenism and its author:

I should be very much obliged if some of the expressions attributed

to me could be corrected. . . . I did not, for instance, say that I have
never studied the question of socialism. Te fact is that I am much
interested in the question and have endeavored to the best of my
ability to acquaint myself with its different aspects . . .
 What the correspondent
corresp ondent writes about my surprise
surpris e at seeing my
name put forward by socialistic agitators as a supporter of their
dogmas is particularly liable to be misunderstood.
 What I really
real ly said was that I was surprised
sur prised that I, who had
made it my chief business in life to depict human character and
human destinies, should, without consciously aiming at it, have
arrived at some of the same conclusions as the social-democratic
moral philosophers had arrived at by scientific processes.
 What led me to express my surprise sur prise (and, I may add, my
satisfaction) was a statement . . . to the effect that one or more
lectures had lately been given in London, dealing, according to
him, chiefly with  A Doll’s
Doll ’s House . (291–92)

Here I will focus on the first three chapters of Te Quintessence of Ibsen-

ism, which features
featu res two aspects of “Shavian
“Shav ian inclusivene
incl usiveness.”
ss.” First, Shaw exposes
expo ses
unpopular truths about family life—its prosaic origins, banalities, and injus-
tices. In addition,
dissatisfied he foregrounds
with traditional the marginal
marriage—and placesmembers
them at of
thesociety—those
center of the
quest for human progress. Both arguments serve Shaw’s larger purpose:
“deconstructing” conventional morality by calling attention to the people
and problems at the margins of respectability. Trough Shaw’s deft handling,
margins and mainstream exchange places.
Shaw’s primary target is idealistic attitudes that deny the realities of
family life. Like Marx, Shaw complains that conventional thought obscures
complex relationships by simplifying them into lofty ideals. “In conscious-
 ness . . . relations become concepts,” wrote Marx (Ryan 54). In Te Quintes-
sence of Ibsenism, Shaw explains, “Te family as a beautiful and holy natural
institution is only a fancy picture of what every family would have to be if
everybody was to be suited, invented by the minority as a mask for the reality,
 which in its nakedness is intolerable to them” (Selected  219).
 219). Almost no one,
Shaw declares, acknowledges the truth about family life. Exalted talk about

62  Jean Reynolds

love, sacrifice, and duty prevents people f rom seeing that marriage “really is a
conventional arrangement, legally enforced,” says ShawS haw (219).
 Tis is the pragmatic attitude of the characters in Pygmalion. Alfred
Doolittle, who has had at least six mistresses, finally gets married only
because Eliza’s “stepmother” insists on it: “Middle class morality claims its
 victim,” he says sadly (771). Both Higgins and Eliza view marriage as an
economic institution whose primary benefit is security for a woman. After
the embassy reception, when a desperate Eliza asks what is to happen to her,
Higgins replies, “I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who
 would do very well” (750). Although Eliza indignantly rejects the suggestion,
suggestion,
she too takes a practical view of marriage: Better to be married to Freddy
than subservient to Higgins. She never says that she loves Freddy, and she
acknowledges that he cannot offer her economic security, but she needs the
respectability he can provide for her.
In the Quintessence  Shaw
 Shaw argues that most people are contented “Philis-
tines” who marry for similarly practical reasons. A smaller number are disillu-
sioned “idealists” who, however, vehemently deny their marital failures. Only
one in a thousand, suggests Shaw, is a “realist” capable of facing the truth:
“Te alleged
a lleged natural attractions and repulsions upon which the family ideal is
based do not exist; and it is historically false that the family was founded for
the purpose of satisfying them” (220).
Marriage is not a sacrament at all, argues Shaw: It is a pragmatic eco-
nomic institution, dedicated to perpetuating the status quo:

 When the social organism becomes bent on civilization, it has to

force marriage and family life on the individual, because it can
perpetuate itself in the
by fitful glimpses, no other
basis way whilstrelationship
of sexual love is still being
knowninonly
the
main mere physical appetite. Under these circumstances men try
to graft pleasure on necessity by desperately pretending that the
institution forced upon them is a congenial one, making it a point
of public decency to assume always that men spontaneously love
their kindred better than their chance acquaintances, and that
the woman once desired is always desired: also that the family is
  woman s proper sphere, and that no really womanly woman ever
 womans
forms an attachment, or even knows what it means, until she is
requested to do so by a man. (218–19)

Like Marx, who complained that capitalism glosses over the conflicts
between property owners and labor, Shaw explains that marriage only pre-
tends to serve the best interests of men and women. “An overwhelming

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 63

majority of such marriages as are not purely de convenance , are entered into
for the gratification of that appetite either in its crudest form or veiled only by
those idealistic illusions which the youthful imagination weaves so wonder-
fully under the stimulus of desire. . . . Te man himself keeps her confirmed
in her illusion; for the truth is unbearable to him too: he wants to form an
affectionate tie, and not to drive a degrading bargain. . . . Ten comes the
breakdown of the plan” (227–28).
Shaw explains how repression and denial reinforce these deceptions. I
have already cited the example of Marie Bashkirtseff, whose enemies repu-
diated her independent lifestyle by denying that she was a woman at all.
Discontented husbands and wives also practice denial, denouncing any-
one who speaks honestly about marriage. “[]he idealists will be terrified
beyond measure at the proclamation of their hidden thought—at the pres-
ence of the traitor among the conspirators of silence—at the rending of the
beautiful veil they and their poets have woven to hide the unbearable face
of the truth” (220).
 Tese falsehoods will not prevail indefinitely: Revolution is inevitable.
But Shaw reminds his readers that “every step of progress is a duty repu-
diated, and a scripture torn up” (212). Tere are echoes of Marx, with his
refusal to idealize human progress, in Shaw’
Shaw ’s insistence that the evolution of
more humane attitudes toward marriage will be appear to be the opposite—a
regression into immorality: “Te point to seize is that social progress takes
effect through the replacement of old institutions by new ones; and since
every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it,
progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step. . . .
 Tis crablike progress of social evolution, in which the individual
individual advances by
seeming to go backward, continues to illude us in spite of all the lessons of
history”” (212).
history
Shaw, again rejecting the strictures of Enlightenment thought, proposes
a revolutionary system based not on reason, but on a new understanding of
“the soul or spirit of man” and “justification by faith”: “no action, taken apart
f rom the will behind it, has any moral character: for example, the acts which
make the murderer and incendiary infamous are exactly similar to those
 which make the patriotic hero famous. ‘Original sin’ sin’ is the will doing mis-
 chief. Divine grace is the will doing good (214).
Despite such Christian terminology, Te Quintessence of Ibsenism  dis-
avows the Christian ideology of a stable and infallible system of ethics in
 which “good” and “evil” are opposing polarities. Shaw argued that good and
evil, inextricably connected, define each other on a continuum that is con-
stantly changing; no appeal to absolutes is possible. Shaw’s shifting moral
system of endless
end less displacements anticipates Derrida’s
Derrida’s rejection of the either/

64  Jean Reynolds

or thinking that reduces complexities to “the simple exteriority of death to

life, evil to good, representation to presence, signifier to signified, representer
to represented, mask to face, writing to speech” ( Grammatology  315).   315). Shaw,
declaring he did not “deal in definitions” (Selected  222)
 222) had a working under-
standing of différance  before
 before Derrida was born.
 Te strongest link between Shaw and Derrida is a deconstructionist
twist—margins becoming a mainstream text—in Shaw’s classification sys-
tem. At first it seems that marital malcontents are only a small minorityminority.. Shaw
speculates that out of a thousand Britons, seven hundred are content enough
 with traditional
traditional marriage; another 299 find it a failure, but only only one “is strong
enough to face the truth. . . . He says flatly of marriage, ‘Tis thing is a failure
for many of o f us’ ” (2
(220).
20).
But Shaw then shows that alienated members of society, forced by their
frustrations to break with conventional morality, are so numerous that they
are not marginal at all: “Now if anyone’s childhood has been embittered by
the dislike of his mother and the ill-temper of his father;
father ; if his wife has ceased
to care for him and he is heartily tired of his wife; if his brother is going to
law with him over the division of the family property, and his son acting in
studied defiance of his plans and wishes, it is hard for him to persuade himself
that passion
passi on is eternal
eterna l and that blood is thicker
th icker than
tha n water. Yet if he tells him-
self the truth, all his life seems a waste and a failure by the light of it” (219).
Happy families undoubtedly exist, Shaw admits, but they do not prove
that men and women have an innate predilection for marriage. Te occasional
success “depends altogether upon the accident of the woman having some
natural vocation for domestic management and the care of children, as well
as on the husband being fairly good-natured and livable with” (228). Te
contented husbands and wives are the real minority. “Shavian inclusiveness”
finally draws in all of Shaw’s readers, who find that Shaw’s “radical” stance
against traditional marriage actually encompasses a large percentage of the
British population.
“Shavian inclusiveness” takes a different form in Shaw’s 1924 Preface
to Saint Joan, which defends rather than attacks traditional religion. Here
Shaw exposes the “gestured of exclusion” practiced by progressive Victorians
 who dismiss religious beliefs as superstition. Earning Shaw’s praise for its
 inclusiveness is the Roman Catholic Church, which in 1920 reversed
re versed its 1431
condemnation of Joan for her “unwomanly and insufferable presumption”
(CP   2:500).
2:500). Te Church, admitting that “the highest wisdom may come as a
divine revelation to the individual” (526), elevated to sainthood this radiant
 young woman who who had, ironically,
ironically, defied its authority.
authority.
But Shaw, a lifelong critic of orthodox Christianity, was far from trying
to convert Britain to Catholicism. Instead, again employing his “new speech,”

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 65

he used the Church to remind readers that change, often looking like regres-
sion rather than progress, is essential to the forward
for ward movement of the human
race: “And as the law of God in any sense of the word which can now com-

mand
of Goda isfaith proof
a law againstand
of change, science
thatiswhen
a lawthe
of Churches
evolution, set
it follows that the
themselves law
against
change as such, they are setting themselves against the law of God” God ” (532).
 Troughout the Preface Shaw argues the superiority
super iority of the Church to
the scientific community, defamiliarizing both and provoking readers to cre-
ate a new perspective. Many of his arguments are similar to those in the
Quintessence : Science fosters repression and denial, masks conflict to create
the appearance of harmony, and reduces complex relationships to abstract,
simplistic concepts.
First, Shaw complains, science represses its similarity to religion. Scien-
tists make extravagant truth claims while indulging in practices and thought
processes that resemble sorcery. We have succumbed to them, Shaw charges,
not because of their superior explanations, but because “modern science has
convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is
magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outra-
geous is scientific” (540). (In Counter-Statement  Kenneth
  Kenneth Burke would later
point out the similarity between scientific and religious rhetoric, noting that
scientists enjoy the privileges of “circumlocution, implication, and the mysti-
cal protection of a technical vocabulary”—66.)
Furthermore, scientists, like sorcerers and seers, deny their humanity,
refuse to be held morally accountable for their behavior, and claim infallibility
for their discoveries. Te Church courageously admitted its error in condemn-
ing and burning Joan; its Dogma of Papal Infallibility, Shaw notes approv-
ingly, “is by far the most modest pretension of the kind in existence” (526).
But science allows itself to indulge in “hypochondria, melancholia, coward-
ice, stupidity, cruelty, muckraking curiosity, knowledge without wisdom, and
everything that the eternal soul in Nature loathes, instead of the virtues of
 which St Catherine was the figure head” (511). Ironically,
Ironically, says Shaw,
Shaw, our age
is more rather than less susceptible to figments of the imagination than the
Middle Ages:
Age s: “I affirm that
tha t the XIX century
centur y, and still more the
th e XX, can knock
knoc k
the XV into a cocked hat in point of susceptibility to marvels and saints and
 prophets and magicians and monsters and fairy tales of all kinds” (540).
 Te result of this scientific gullibility,
gullibility, Shaw argues, is suppression of the
open conflict and debate needed to moderate the truth claims of science. “Te

proportion of marvel to
of the Encyclopaedia immediately
Britannica credible
is enor mouslystatement
enormously in the
greater than latest
in the edition
Bible,” he
says (540). In one oratorical passage, Shaw warns that the awe of scientists
deafens us to other voices trying to convict us of “our credulities that have

66  Jean Reynolds

not the excuse of being superstitious, our cruelties that have not the excuse
of barbarism, our persecutions that have not the excuse of religious faith, our
shameless substitution of successful swindlers and scoundrels and quacks for

saints asofobjects
 visions of worship,
the inexorable andthat
power ourmade
deafness andwill
us, and blindness
destroytousthe callsdisre-
if we and
gard it” (512).
Finally, science reduces complex relationships to abstract concepts. And
 which is the healthier mind?”
mind?” Shaw asks. “[]he
“[] he saintly mind or the monkey
monkey
gland mind?” (512). Science can offer no explanation for the luminous Joan,
 with her voices,
voices, visions, and pretensions.
pretensions. Its only recourse
recourse is to argue that she she
 was insane. But “an explanation which amounts to Joan being mentally defec-
tive instead of, as she obviously was, mentally excessive, will not wash” (509).
 Yet
 Yet “Shavian inclusiveness” does not really demand a choice between
religion and science. Shaw himself is “both/and”—a would-be saint (he once
 wrote, “there is no reason why I too should not be canonized someday”—
 EPWW  327)
 327) and—despite his scientific skepticism—a student of the science
of phonetics. One of Shaw’s goals in Pygmalion and many of his prose writ-
ings is to relativize science, rather than destroy it, by undercutting its truth
claims. In  Everybody’s Political What’s What?   he described his vision of an
integrated religious science: “Both our science and our religion are gravely
 wrong; but they
they are not all wrong; and it is our urgent business
business to purge them
of their errors and get them both as right as possible. If we could get them
entirely right the contradictions between them would disappear: we should
have a religious science and a scientific religion in a single synthesis. Mean-
 while we just do the best we can instead
instead of running away from the conflict as
 we are cowardly enough to do do at present” (362–63).
Shaw’s arguments—exposing scientific denial, suppression of conflict,
and reductionism—are the same strategies used by Marx. Tere are also
anticipations of Derrida in this Preface, as in Te Quintessence of Ibsenism,
 when margins and mainstream
mainstream exchange places. Again and again Shaw con-
fronts readers with choices that push them beyond the edge of conventional
thinking.
First,, Shaw’s
First Shaw’s lucid portrait of Joan challenges readers to find a means of
reconciling
reconcili ng spirituality
spiritua lity and science:
scie nce: “Socrates,
“Socr ates, Luther, Swedenborg,
Swedenbo rg, Blake saw
  visions and heard voices just as Saint Francis
Francis and Saint Joan did. If Newton’
Newton’s
imagination had been of the same vividly dramatic kind he might have seen
the ghost of Pythagoras walk into the orchard and explain why the apples

 were falling”
relative merits(507–8). Shaw repeatedly
of spirituality raises
and science: “Asprovocative
provocative questions
to the new about
about
rites, which the
would
be the saner Joan? the one who carried little children to be baptized of water
and the spirit, or the one who sent the police to force their parents to have

 he Shavian Inclusiveness 67

the most villainous racial poison we know thrust into their veins? the one who
told them the story of the angel and Mary, or the one who questioned them
as to their experiences of the Edipus complex?” (511–12).

aboutSecond, the Preface

the
contemporary challenges
scientific, readers
religious, to take
and unconventional
political issues. For positions
example,
Shaw questions the popular concept of tolerance: Should the Church have
condemned the ecstatic but insufferable Joan? “At eighteen Joan’s preten-
sions were beyond those of the proudest Pope or the haughtiest emperor. She
claimed to be the ambassador
a mbassador and plenipotentiary of God, and to be, in effect,
a member of the Church riumphant whilst still in the flesh on earth. . . . As
her actual condition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about
her. One was that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable”
(500–501).
Faced with this either/or choice, the reader is forced to leave the com-
fortable mainstream sentiment that Joan was a brave but confused girl whose
hidebound Church victimized her: “If Joan was mad, all Christendom was
mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial person-
ages are every
ever y whit as mad as the people who think they see them” them” (510). Joan
knew full well what she was doing—as did the Church when it burned her.
 Wee are left with an uncomfortable choice: taking Joan
 W Joan’’s side by declaring our
allegiance with the “law of change,” or positioning ourselves with the medi-
eval Church that condemned her.
 Troughout the Preface, Shaw challenges his readers with unpalatable
choices and undeniable truths, beginning with “society is founded on intoler-
ance” (534). “Te degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on
the strain under
unde r which societ
societyy is maintaining
maintaini ng its cohesion. In war,
war, for insta
instance,
nce,
 we suppress the gospels and put Quakers
Q uakers in prison, muzzle
muzzle the newspapers,
and make it a serious offence to shew
she w a light at night”
night ” (534). “Edith [Cavell],
like Joan, was an arch heretic. . . . She nursed enemies back to health, and
assisted their prisoners to escape, making it abundantly clear that she would
help any fugitive or distressed person without asking whose side he was on”
(523). “It is, I repeat, what normally innocent people do that concerns us; and
if Joan had not been burnt by normally innocent people in the energy of their
righteousness, her death at their hands would have no more significance than
 the okyo earthquake, which burnt a great many maidens” (543).
 Tis juxtaposition of tolerance and intolerance, science and spirituality
spir ituality,,
truth as preached in the Middle Ages and truth taught by science today,
today, again
again

constitutes
unstable différance 
reality with —Shaw’s
— Shaw’s unchangeable
abstract, rejection of the logocentrism
concepts. Shaw isthat replaces
never satis-
fied with refuting erroneous ideas: His “new speech” seeks out the ambiguity
in commonplace words that form the foundation of conventional thought.

68  Jean Reynolds

Saint , lunatic, vision, murder, tolerance,

Saint, tolera nce, justice, science, religion, truth—these
 words take on broader,
broader, unexpected meanings in the “Shavian inclusiveness”
of the Preface to Saint Joan.

sion.”Before
So far this chapter
I have ends, I must point
not acknowledged out myabsence
the general own “gestures of public
of Shaw’s exclu-
 persona  from
  from Te Quintessence of Ibsenism and the Preface to Saint Joan. Te
Quintessence , replete
replete with footnotes, seems to come from f rom the pen of a faceless
 writer who calls attention to his ideas rather than his personality. And while
the outrageous G.B.S. shows himself several times in the Preface to Saint
 Joan, those
those appearances are brief. Tere is one hyperbolic self-comparison to
Shakespeare: “I can only invent appropriate characters for them in Shake-
spear’s manner” (541). Near the end of the Preface, Shaw taunts his critics in
the familiar Shavian voice: “I have to thank several critics on both sides of the
Atlantic, including some whose admiration for my play is most generously
enthusiastic, for their heartfelt instructions as to how it can be improved”
(544). Otherwise there is little of G.B.S., Shaw’s outspoken literary alter ego,
in either work.
Closer scrutiny of the Shavian  persona  will
  will be delayed until chapter 3.
For now I want to point out that Shaw, whether openly performing as G.B.S.
or not, is always making himself present through his “new speech”: His bold
 wordplay and oratory
orator y and daring
dar ing opinions are present in abundance in both
the Quintessence  and
 and the Preface to Saint Joan. (Similarly, Higgins is present
in every word that Eliza says, even when he is offstage at the embassy recep-
tion.) Paradoxicall
Paradoxi callyy, the outrageousnes
outra geousnesss of Shavian
Shavi an “new speech” is more hon-
est than the impersonal omniscience affected by more conventional essayists.
 Te outcome is an empowered readership,
readership, liberated f rom their unthinking
dependence on a human author disguised as a god. Tat empowerment is the
subject of the next chapter.

N
1. Shaw’s socialism is discussed in Paul A. Hummert, Bernard Shaw’s Marxian
Romance , Harry
Harr y Morrison, he Socialism of Bernard Shaw; and Eric Bentley, Bernard
Shaw.
2. Western philosophy has a long tradition of affirming human affective
 functions. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and oulmin, among
others, considered emotion an important adjunct to logic.
3. For an analysis of Shaw’s
Shaw ’s synthesis of reason and passion, see R.
R . F.
F. Dietrich,
Dietric h,
“Shaw and the Passionate Mind.”

CELIA MARSHIK 

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw

and the Playing of Pygmalion

A lthough fifteen years would pass before he realized his intentions, Ber-
nard Shaw conceived of the plot of—and cast for—Pygmalion  in 1897. In
September of that year, he informed Ellen erry that he wanted to write a
play for Mrs. Patrick Campbell in which the popular actress would star as
“an east end dona in an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers.”1 
Pygmalion —starring Mrs. Campbell—did not debut in England until 1914,
 when it quickly
quick ly became Shaw’s most popular
popula r work to date. In the decades
that followed, Shaw’s tale of a young flower girl turned “duchess” through
the exertions of a phonetic expert achieved widespread circulation through
revivals,
reviv als, publication, musical adaptation ( My Fair Lady ),
 My Fair ), and f ilm. It became

atransformation
popular version of seems
that the Cinderella story,the
to transcend withhistorical
a message about personal
distance between
Shaw’s era and our own.
If Pygmalion’s ongoing popularity demonstrates the comedy’
comedy ’s appeal to
contemporary tastes and concerns, the play and its initial performance are
closely tied to the 1880s and 1890s, decades when Shaw was mainly known
as a political speaker and critic of late-Victorian drama. Te seeds of Pyg-
malion’s central joke were planted as Shaw saw the political power of social
 purity movements, which he initially championed, turned against the the-
ater. When Shaw finally wrote and helped to produce Pygmalion, he used

From he Yale Journal of Criticism,  13, no. 2 (2000): 321−41. Copyright © 2000 by Yale
University and the Johns Hopkins University Press.

69

70 Celia Marshik 

the play to parody the social movements that had, he felt, assumed hysterical
proportions and hampered his early career.
career. Te comedy engages in a critique
of the “Maiden ribute of Modern Babylon,” a founding document of the
purity movement,
ever,, escaped
ever as it mocks
the attention Shaw’s old
of audiences opponents.
and Tisbecause
critics, partly parody of
has,
thehow-
pas-
sage of time and partly because Mrs. Patrick Campbell hyper-eroticized the
role of Eliza Doolittle in the play’
play ’s English and American debuts. Shaw may
have hoped that his leading lady would sharpen his critique of social purity;
instead, Campbell compromised Shaw’s spoof as she brought her previous
roles with her onto the stage.
Pygmalion has received considerable scholarly attention because it dem-
onstrates Shaw’s interest in the role of language in the English class system.
It has also drawn the attention of psychoanalytic critics, who see Higgins as
a figure for Shaw. Te comedy has not, however, been considered in dialogue
 with the efforts of nineteenth- and twentieth-century purity movements.2 
By contextualizing the play within the Victorian climate that inspired it, I
demonstrate that Shaw’s early battles with stage censorship and social purity
linger in works that seem preoccupied with other concerns. Moreover, I argue
that Shaw’s casting choice powerfully influenced how Pygmalion would be
understood by audiences of the 1910s and 1920s, audiences that might oth-
erwise have recognized Shaw’
Shaw ’s play with moralists’ myths.

* * *

In July of 1885, the editor and journalist William . Stead shocked the
British public with his “Maiden ribute,” a series of articles in the Pall Mall
Gazette . After declaring that “the most imperious sense of duty” impelled
his pen, Stead documented how working-class girls were

snared, trapped, and outraged, either when under the influence of

drugs or after a prolonged struggle in a locked room, in which the
 weaker succumbs to sheer downright force. Others are regularly
procured; bought at so much per head in some cases, or enticed
 under various promises into the fatal chamber. 3

Stead interviewed prostitutes, madams, johns, policemen, and others to

unveil systemic efforts in the nation’s capital to deprive young, vulnerable
females
than life”of(3).
their virginity, which he asserted a “woman ought to value more
 Te highlight of Stead’s work, “A “A Child of Tirteen Bought for £5,”
chronicled the purchase of young “Lily” from her parents. According to

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 71

Stead, Lily’s drunken mother knew that her daughter was purchased for a
brothel, while the child’s father, “who was also a drunken man, was told that
his daughter was going to a situation. He received the news
ne ws with indifference,
 without
describe even
the easeinquiring where the
with which she child
was going to” (6). Te
was certified articlebrought
a virgin, went ontotoa
brothel, and placed in a bed. Te tale ended as a man entered the girl’s room,
causing Lily to emit “not a loud shriek, but a helpless, startled scream like the
bleat of a f rightened lamb” (6). Te reader was left lef t to conclude that poor Lily
had joined the ranks of the “fallen”
“fallen” and to feel
f eel outrage at such wanton sexual
predation.
Stead’s exposé marked a high point in the British public’s attention to
the sexual exploitation of working-class women. His series led to mass ral-
lies and calls for government intervention; eventually, the outcry led to the
passage of the Criminal Law L aw Amendment Act of 1885, which raised the age
of consent from thirteen to sixteen and facilitated prosecutions of brothel-
keepers and prostitutes. But Stead was not satisfied with mere legislation. He
later organized
organiz ed a conference on the subjects covered by the “Maiden ribute,” ribute,”
a conference with a “practical program” of organizing “the Vigilance Associa-
tion of London.”4 Tis Association—later known as the National Vigilance
Association (NVA)—insured
(NVA)—insured that authorities enforced the provisions of the
new Act. Stead argued that the government could not be trusted to pro-
tect the nation’s purity on its own; the new tools of the state would only be
employed if a vigilant public demanded action.
A broad range of individuals joined Stead’s initial campaign for social
purity. Shaw, who had begun reviewing books for the Pall Mall Gazette   in
May of that year, was among Stead’s early supporters. 5 When W.H. Smith
and Son,
Son , a prominent
prominen t bookseller,
booksel ler, refused to carry
carr y the “Maiden
“Maide n ribute
ribute”” issues
of the PMG , Shaw wrote to Stead with an offer to support “the first news-
paper which evere ver inspired respectable men with enthusiasm.” He went on to
state that he was “quite willing to take as many quires of the paper as I can
carry and sell them (for a penny) in any thoroughfare in London.” He was
sure that he could find “both ladies and gentlemen willing to do the same.”6
Stead never took advantage of Shaw’s offer, but for a brief moment,
 Shaw was prepared to take the reformer’s message to the streets. Subsequent
events undermined Shaw’
Shaw ’s dedication to Stead. In October of 1885, the editor
 was brought to trial
tria l for abduction and technical assault under the Criminal
Law Amendment Act—the very ver y law that “Te Maiden ribute”
ribute” had carried
through
old ElizaParliament.
Parlia ment. After
Armstrong the series’
reported seri
the es’ publication,
publica tion, the
disappearance mother
of her childof
tothirteen
thirteen-year-
-year-
local authori-
ties. Eliza
Eliza was quickly identified as “Lily
“Lily,”
,” the virgin that Stead had purchased
for five pounds and whose tale he had fictionalized in order to arouse his

72 Celia Marshik 

audience’s fury. Although the child was not in fact seduced and had been sent
to the Salvation
Salva tion Army in France, Stead was indicted for kidnapping becbecause
ause
Eliza’ss father had not given permission for his daughter to leave his house. As
Eliza’
the trial unfolded, some observers concluded that the editor’s enthusiasm had
led him to make “serious errors of judgment.”7 Although Stead’s intentions
 were seemingly pure, his pose as Eliza’s purchaser and seducer (the account
 was written in third person, but it was Stead himself who had startled Eliza
in the brothel) complicated his moral position. His actions were illegal, and
the journalist was convicted under the law he had helped to pass.
Shaw, disgusted with the revelations about Stead’s journalism, dismissed
the entire “Maiden ribute” as a “put-up job” that betrayed “our confidence
in him.” Stead was “so stupendously ignorant that he never played the game”
of professional reporting.8 While Shaw’s
S haw’s reaction was not uncommon among
 journalists, his subsequent contact with the editor reveals that their point of
disagreement ran deeper than professional ethics. Although Shaw appreci-
ated Stead’s commitment to reform, the two men disagreed on the means to
achieve social change.
 While Shaw felt that art—and specifically,
specifically, theater—was a useful tool
for reformers, Stead and the NVA were suspicious of theater’s moral impact
on its practitioners and audience members. “Te Maiden ribute” contained
several examples of Stead’s puritan attitude toward the theater; in one col-
umn, he alluded to a “notorious” theater where “no girl ever kept her virtue
more than three months,” and he also mentioned the rumor that “some the-
atrical managers . . . [insist] upon a claim to ruin actresses whom they allow
to appear on their boards.”9 Stead depicted theaters as dens of vice and sexual
predation and provided vigilance movements with a mandate to “clean up”
public entertainments. Tis mandate had a direct impact upon Shaw’s early
career as a playwright.
 Te English theater of Shaw’s era was policed through a combination
of government regulation and private initiative. Te Teatres Act of 1843
required that all plays performed in England be submitted to the Lord
Chamberlain for licensing “at least seven days before the first performance.”
His office could refuse a license without providing a reason and could fine
 or close theaters that presented unlicensed plays. Te Act did not make any
provision for appeal.10 Although the stage was thus regulated through offi-
cial, state censorship,
censorship, individual moral reformers and organizations supported
the government’s actions and pressured the Lord Chamberlain to apply ever
more stringent guidelines to plays. Tey hoped that the office might eventu-
ally prohibit any works that would violate “the conscience of the Bishop or
any other decent citizen.”11 Such arguments found a sympathetic ear in pub-
lic officials; as Jeffrey Weeks notes, “there was a continuing close, and often

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 73

symbiotic relationship between morality pressure groups, church and state.”12 

Shaw was aware of this close relationship and expressed dismay that organi-
zations such as the NVA were “strong enough to . . . bring [their] convictions
13
to bear effectively on our licensing authorities.”
A number of Shaw’
Shaw ’s early works were denied a license for public per
perfor-
for-
mance because they might offend off end bishops and other decent citizens. Between
1895 and 1909, ten percent of the plays banned by the Lord Chamberlain
Shaw.14  Mrs.
 were by Shaw. Warren’s Profession  (rejected in 1898), Te Shewing-up
Mrs. Warren’
of Blanco Posnet  (1909),
  (1909), and Press Cuttings  (1909)
  (1909) were all banned from the
British stage, events that did not surprise Shaw but that drove him into an
increasing frenzy over official censorship and the moral reformers who sup-
ported it. As a result of these encounters with stage censorship, Shaw issued a
number of articles, prefaces, public letters, and statements that protested the
government’s licensing requirements and berated social purity groups’ preten-
sions to intervene in the theater.15 He called the Secretary of the NVA “in
artistic matters a most intensely stupid man” who was “on sexual questions
something of a monomaniac”; he asserted that “the paid officials of [purity
and vigilance] societies . . . combine a narrow but terribly sincere sectarian
bigotry with a complete ignorance of art and history”; and he called Stead
“an abyss of ignorance” who made “a round of theatres as if they were broth-
els.”16  Blanco Posnet  contained
  contained a clear jibe of its own; in the play, a drunken
and dissolute “Vigilance
“V igilance Committee” metes out “justice” to those unfortunate
enough to fall in its path.
Such actions did not endear Shaw to the Lord L ord Chamberlain’s office or
to social purity leaders (one wryly
wr yly noted that his group had “not often found
themselves running in parallel lines of thought to Mr. Bernard Shaw”),17 
but they did earn him public stature as an opponent of stage censorship.
Newspaper and journal cartoons depicted Shaw as both victim and critic of
censorship. Indeed, one might argue that Shaw’s experience of censorship
contributed to his status as a public intellectual. It certainly contributed
toward a new direction, one that would prove quite popular with audiences,
in his playwriting.
In 1895, at the beginning of his career as a playwright, Shaw expressed
 his belief that “it is quite impossible to legislate and administer with a view to
the comfort of . . . abnormal people.” 18 In the course of the next two decades,
prosecutions of performance halls and publishers—prosecutions instigated
and supported by social purity groups—had proved him wrong. So Shaw
 would write no more of what he called his “unpleasant”
“unpleasant ” plays. Instead of dra-
matizing a social problem and making undisguised appeals to his audience’s
reason, later works such as Pygmalion seem on the surface deliberately apo-
litical. But Pygmalion was Shaw’s parting shot at social purists, and at the

74 Celia Marshik 

increasingly repressive state that they supported, through a parody of the tales
circulated by Stead and other moral crusaders. If Shaw couldn’t undo their
social policing and censorship, he would at least have a good laugh at their
expense.
 While Shaw was writing Pygmalion, Stead’s reputation underwent
another reversal. Te journalist died when the itanic sank in April of 1912,
and his behavior on this occasion led the press to lionize him. According to
 various survivors, Stead never attempted to board the itanic’s lifeboats, and
he was last seen in “a prayerful attitude of profound meditation.”19 After this
event, Stead was not a figure Shaw could openly mock or critique; as the
playwright finished Pygmalion in May and June of that year, a subtle parody
 was the most he might
might tactfully direct at the sainted Stead.
 Te laughing, lighthearted Pygmalion has a dark side. From the play’s
beginning, there are “repeated threats to Eliza
Eliz a [Doolittle’s] sexual and physi-
20
cal safety.”
ing  When
flowers and the flower
making moneygirl realizes
have that her casual
been recorded by an remarks
unknownabout
man,sell-
she
immediately fears that she will be accused of soliciting: “I aint done nothing
 wrong by speaking to the gentleman. . . . I’m a respectable girl: so help me, I
never spoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off me.” 21 Concerned
that her “character” will be indicted for “speaking to gentlemen” (20), Eliza
panics and works to assure those around her of her respectability.
respectability. She repeat-
edly states that she was attempting to sell flowers—not, the audience is to
understand, herself.
Other characters initially mock the young woman’s attempts to defend
her virtue. Te crowd, the stage directions state, deprecates “her excessive
sensibility” (20). Te phoneticist Henry Higgins indicates that he was only
noting down her accent; far from being a “copper’s nark,” he can’t wait to get
away from Eliza (27). Higgins thus implies that Eliza is making something
of nothing—that she need not insist that she’s a “good girl” because no one
is accusing her of anything (24). And yet, the crowd that surrounds Eliza
and Higgins is ready to defend the flower girl, assuring her that “nobody’s
going to touch you” and telling Higgins to “mind your own affairs” (20, 22).
  Te bystanders think that Eliza is overreacting to
to Higgins s actions, but they
acknowledge that she might be mistreated. Shaw’s
Shaw’s play thus mocks the work-
ing-class woman’s anxiety over her “character,” but it also implies that such
concern is sometimes warranted.
Pygmalion continues to question Higgins’s role and his threat to Eliza
after she arrives at his house with the intention of paying for lessons that will
rid her of her Cockney accent. When Higgins and his friend
f riend Colonel Picker-
ing begin to plan their grand educational experiment with and on Eliza, the
play returns to the question of Higgins’s
Higgins’s intentions toward the working-class

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 75

 woman. Just as Stead’s actions in the Eliza Armstrong affair were variously
var iously
interpreted by those surrounding the case,
ca se, Higgins is implicated as reformer
and seducer of Eliza Doolittle as Pygmalion  reveals the fine line between
philanthropy and predation. When he talks about a bout burning Eliza’s clothes and
buying her new ones, Higgins is ostensibly initiating the flower girl’s trans-
formation. Eliza, however, reads his actions as those of a sexual predator:
“Youre
“Youre no gentleman,
gentlema n, youre not . . . I know what the lilike
ke of you are, I do” (41).
Eliza sounds like someone who has read “Te Maiden  ribute”
ribute” and commit-
ted its lessons to heart:
hear t: as a “daughter
“daughter of the people,” she is the natural prey of
the idle rich and must constantly guard against the temptations they offer.
Eliza’ss response is f ramed as a comic misrecognition. Higgins
Eliza’ Higgins claims to
have no sexual interest in the girl and dismisses her words as “Lisson Grove
prudery” (41). But the young woman’s attempts to protect herself and to
assess the safety of her surroundings are not misguided because she is essen-

tially “safe”
perceives herinsituation
Higgins’sthrough
flat; rather, Eliza’s
hysterical reactions
tales are foolish
of lost virtue. Her because she
interpretive
structures, what scholars have called her “melodramatic state of mind,” cause
her to misunderstand the evidence before her.22 Eliza’s reading of the world
thus mirrors the text that Shaw parodies in Pygmalion; as historian Judith
 Walkowitz
 W alkowitz has argued, “Te Maiden ribute” needs to be understood in rela-
tion to stage melodrama in its focus on individual actions at the expense
of economic and social issues. Eliza, unlike Shaw and Pygmalion, reduces
the world to “innocent female victims” and “individual evil men,” and she is
therefore a bad interpreter.23 Sexual predation certainly exists—that is not
“fiction”—but
“fiction ”—but it does not follow the scripts that Eliza anticipates.
If Higgins dismisses Eliza’s fears, Pygmalion continues to play with the
unstable opposition between reformers and sexual predators. Higgins’s pro-
posal to “take [Eliza] out of the gutter and dress [her] beautifully and make a
lady of [her]” mimics the kind of offer a rake would make to a potential mis-
tress (43). Other characters express reservations about Higgins’s intentions:
Mrs. Pearce, Higgins’s housekeeper, tells him that his offer to remake Eliza
is “wicked” and worries about the terms under which “the girl is to be here”
 (43, 44). She doesn t even know if she can consent to the arrangement at all
(46). Although Mrs. Pearce insists that Higgins “dont mean . . . any harm”
(46), the older woman reminds the audience that any interaction between a
male reformer and a working-class woman is fraught
f raught with danger—albeit of
different kinds—for both parties.
Pygmalion repeatedly exposes the dual nature of relationships between
social reformers and young, unmarried women. In a society where sex is a
 working-class woman’
woman’s most valuable commodity,
commodity, a middle-class man’s phil-
anthropic interest in an Eliza Doolittle is vexed by her sexual availability and

76 Celia Marshik 

 vulnerability. Higgins repeatedly mocks Eliza’s

 vulnerability. Eliza’s attempts to protect herself
as unwarranted and melodramatic, but minor characters at the periphery of
the action imply that Higgins acts and talks like a seducer. Indeed, Higgins
becomes an uncanny double for reformers and sexual predators; he is repre-
sented as upright and trustworthy, but as an upper-class man he looks like
the johns Stead attacked and follows their script. Eliza may have an overac-
tive imagination, but
but Higgins—like Stead—becomes implicated in the sexual
misdeeds of the very system he appears to reject.
As Shaw’
Shaw ’s play exposes the unsettling proximity of male philanthropy to
sexual predation, it also mocks the fictions of late-Victorian social reform.24 
One widespread belief about sexual predators, or “Minotaurs” as Stead liked
to call them, was that they sedated their victims to make abduction and
assault easier. ales of drugged drinks and candies circulated widely as young
 women were told to regard any stranger’
stranger’ss offer of refreshments with caution.

For),example,
lion at one
the 5,000 youngpoint in 1913
women who(just one year
operated before the
London’s debut of
telephone Pygma-
exchanges
 were provided with an official warning to watch out for drugged candy.25 In
Pygmalion, Shaw ridicules such stories by having Higgins offer Eliza choco-
lates. She hesitates, questioning, “How do I know what might be in them?
Ive heard of girls
gir ls being drugged by the like of you” (44). Higgins assuages her
concern by cutting the candy in half and eating
ea ting part himself, and Shaw’s
Shaw’s play
thus asserts that sometimes a chocolate is just a chocolate. Tis scene once
again demonstrates that Eliza makes sense of her world through stories of
sexual danger; to a young woman familiar with tales of public injections and
unwholesome sweets, Higgins has an uncanny resemblance to a “Minotaur.”
But since Eliza is proved to have overreacted, Shaw’s play indicts the individ-
uals who circulated stories about druggings for making mischief. Pygmalion 
thus deflates calls for increased government intervention
inter vention into public arenas in
the name of protecting young women.26
As the comedy unfolds, Shaw continues to spoof reformers’ tales of sex-
ual danger
dange r. Eliza’s father, Alfred
Alf red Doolittle,
Dooli ttle, appears at Higgins’s
Higgi ns’s home bearing
his daughter’s belongings but not, significantly, her clothes (56). He implies
 that he’s coming “to rescue her from [a fate] worse than death” (56), but he
eventually makes the teacher-reformer a seemingly unusual offer:

Regarded in the light of a young woman, she’s a fine handsome girl.

As a daughter she’s not worth her keep; and so I tell you straight.
All I ask
expect meistomy
letrights
her goasfora father;
nothing;and
foryoure
I canthe
see last
youreman
onealive to
of the
straight sort, Governor. Well, whats a five-pound note to you? and
 whats Eliza to me? (57)

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 77

Doolittle makes this offer although he is ignorant of Higgins’s plan to edu-

cate and reform Eliza. He professes to believe that Higgins’s intentions are
“entirely honorable,” but Doolittle states that they are “men of the world”
and asks no probing questions about Eliza’s future (57). Higgins is tickled
by Doolittle’s arguments and, after some further discussion, the five pounds
change hands.
As Eliza is traded from her father to Higgins, this scene demonstrates
how women circulate in a masculine economy.27 But this exchange is also
a parody of such bargains, pointing back toward Stead’s “Maiden ribute”
and mocking it in the process. Five
Five pounds is not an ar
arbitrary
bitrary figure: it is the
exact amount that Stead’
Stead ’s contact paid Eliza Armstrong’s
Armstrong’s mother in order to
demonstrate how easily young girls could be purchased by vicious men. Tis
figure gained widespread “currency” as the proper value for female virgins.
 Walkowitz
 W alkowitz reports that in the fall of 1885,

the PMG   actually
actually reported two cases of sexual assault of “virgins”
 where monetary reparations were offered at the valuation set by
the “Maiden ribute”: in Manchester, a father whose daughter
had been assaulted, “having read the Pall Mall Gazette   and the
War Cry ” (Salvation Army paper) demanded “no less than £5” as
consolation for “wounded honour”; while a farmer, charged with
assaulting a domestic servant in his employ, offered £5 to “square
the matter.”28

Five pounds was what “good girls” like Eliza were worth, according to
Stead’s reports; while his conclusions were later questioned, the amount
had entered public consciousness as an appropriate price for female virtue.
Although Doolittle has personal reasons for requesting five pounds (more
money would force him to be “prudent”), the dustman’s demand puts this
scene in dialogue with the “Maiden ribute.” Like other (nonfictional)
fathers before him, Doolittle seizes on this figure as the amount that
another man ought to pay for the services of his child.
 Pygmalion  is full of similar links to the “Te Maiden ribute.” Most
obviously, Shaw’s heroine shares the first name of Stead’s “Lily,” Eliza Arm-
strong.29 In addition to sharing a first name, the two women share a neigh-
borhood: both Elizas are from Lisson Grove. And, like Eliza Doolittle’s,
Eliza Armstrong’s “grammar
“grammar was very
ver y shaky”
shaky ” and “although
“although her spelling was
extraordinary, she was able to express herself with much force and decision.”30 
extraordinary,
Pygmalion thus encourages readers and audiences to connect its comedy with
“Tee Maiden ribut
“T ribute.”
e.” At the level of plot,
plo t, both texts explore
exp lore the treatment
treatm ent of
a working-class “Eliza” at the hands of an acquisitive male reformer. Trough

78 Celia Marshik 

particular details about Eliza

Eliz a Doolittle’s character and the exchange between
her father and Higgins, the play develops more than a passing resemblance
to the articles of 1885.
Shaw’s comedy thus gestures toward Stead and toward the vigilance
groups that the editor had set in motion. Pygmalion  plays with this con-
nection: Higgins does not sexually assault his new property, and the scene
between the phoneticist and Eliza’s father is passed off as a joke about the
latter’s greed. Since Eliza’s sexual integrity is not ultimately violated, Shaw’s
play merely laughs at the idea that a parent would “sell” his child. Instead of
confronting Stead’s (discredited) claim that “daughters of the people” could
be molested for a petty fee, Pygmalion displaces Shaw’
Shaw ’s old editor by making
him and his followers the butt of the play’s joke. Te question of Eliza’s rela-
tive safety—at the hands of Higgins and of her father—is deflected, and the
 young woman’
woman’s sexual vulnerability is laughed off the stage.

 with Shaw’s joke at theand

actors, directors, expense of Stead
producers whomay help to
tinkered explain
with his frustration
Pygmalion ’s ending.
Although Shaw’s play implies that Eliza will eventually
e ventually marry young Freddy
Freddy
Eynsford-Hill, various productions have found ways to insinuate that Eliza
and Higgins have a romantic future. In the 1914 London debut, the actor
 who played Higgins threw flowers at Eliza as the curtain fell; during the
play’s first American tour, the actress cast as Eliza returned to Higgins at the
comedy’s conclusion.31  Shaw was so troubled by such interpretations that
he added a postscript to the play that insists upon the incompatibility of his
main characters. While Shaw may have had several reasons for writing his
postscript,32 he needed to combat a romantic reading to preserve his parody
of Stead. If Higgins marries Eliza, if he takes her as a sexual partner, he has
effectively purchased a £5 virgin and confirmed—rather than undermined—
Stead’s arguments.33
By parodying Stead’s tale of £5 virgins, Shaw directed his audience’s
attention to the absurdities of the social purity movement. Tis caricature
of moral reform is developed by the fate of Alfred Doolittle as the play
draws to a close. Te drinking, cohabiting dustman becomes a lecturer for
 the Wannafeller Moral Reform World League (116). Tis transforma-
tion is somewhat less dramatic than it first appears; as a member of the
“undeserving poor,” Doolittle states that he is “a thinking man and game
for politics or religion or social reform same as all the other amusements”
(58–59). Trough Higgins’s intervention, Doolittle is compelled to adopt
this “amusement”
“amusement” as a way of life as he is paid handsomely to adopt ““middle
middle
class morality
mora lity”” and to lecture audiences (115). Doolittle’s
Doolittle’s own morals, skin
deep and adopted under economic persuasion, serve to parody the author-
ity of “real” social reformers. If Doolittle can “amuse” himself with social

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 79

refor m, so might anyone,

reform, a nyone, and Pygmalion  suggests that one requires neither a
pure character nor sincerity to take a leading role in contemporary vigilance
societies and moral movements.
In a drama of social amelioration that becomes a burlesque of the vigi-
lance craze, Shaw exposed the unstable authority of the social forces born in
1885. Stead had opened the floodgates of censorship and moral policing by
 writing and publishing a melodrama. Shaw struck back at these repressions
by drawing attention to the proximity of philanthropy to sexual predation
and by parodying the melodramatic reactions of individuals who had been
taught by reformers’ tales. Eliza Doolittle could have become a prostitute and
madam like Kitty Warren, the protagonist of  Mrs. Warren’
Warren’s Profession , quite
easily. Te two characters share a class background and employment options,
but Shaw had been pushed away from f rom such “unpleasant” thoughts by a social
movement intent on repressing dissent along with indecency. In Pygmalion,
Shawsupported
they worked tohadundodone
the damage that relations,
to personal social reformers a nd the
and
the theater, paternal
and public state
life.
 Trough a subversive mime mime of their work, moral crusaders and purity groups
 were indicted for circulating hysterical tales, fictions that led to ever more
oppressive laws and enforcement. If working-class women were still sexu-
ally vulnerable in the 1910s, Shaw insinuated that social purity was not an
adequate response to their condition.
 When Shaw’s
Shaw’s play was first performed in London and the United States,
his casting decisions complicated Pygmalion’s engagement with the late-Vic-
torian reform impulse and its confused sexual mores. As I have noted, he wrote
the role of Eliza
El iza for, and brought the
th e play to, one of the most
mos t famous actre
actresses
sses
of the turn-of-the-century stage: Mrs. Patrick Campbell. After After a couple years
of wrangling over financial backing, the remaining cast, and other produc-
tion details,
detai ls, Campbell,
Campbel l, Shaw, and Sir Herber
He rbertt Beerbohm
Beerb ohm ree
ree finally
final ly brought
brough t
Pygmalion to His Majesty’s Teatre in April of 1914. Shaw and ree made
sure that the play received a great deal of advance publicity, and much of it
focused on Campbell in her role as flower-girl-turned-duchess. When audi-
ences attended Pygmalion in 1914 (and during its revival in 1920),192 0), they knew
 three things about the play: the title indicated that it was based on a myth of
female transformation, reviewers noted that it featured the then-scandalous
profanity “bloody,” and advertisements emphasized that Mrs. Campbell was
cast in the starring female role.
By tying his play so tightly to the reputation of Stella Campbell, Shaw
stood to lose as much as he gained by associating his work with a popular
performer. Campbell was nearly
nearl y fifty in 1914 and was somewhat mature to be
playing the eighteen-year-old Eliza Doolittle, a fact that was noted in some
reviews. More important, she had made her professional reputation in quite

80 Celia Marshik 

different plays and was ostensibly cross-cast in Pygmalion.34 In her twenty-

five years as an actress, Campbell had played a number of roles, but she was
strongly associated with ethereal sex objects. In 1901, Shaw wrote that her
presence imbued dramas with an “overpowering odor di femmina ,” ,”35 a
 ann odor  
that was most apparent when she acted in the “woman with a past” play.
In its various manifestations, the late-Victorian “woman with a past”
play addressed the question of whether a woman could leave sexual license
behind and reenter respectable society as a wife, mother, or friend. Most
dramas concluded that she could not. Like Stead’s “Maiden ribute,” such
plays linked lost virginity with dire consequences, and like Stead, play-
 wrights
 wrigh ts depicted
depicte d women as victims destined
destine d to suffer for the sexual liber-
ties of upper-class men. Although they challenged the “double standard” by
encouraging audiences to sympathize with the “fallen” character36  (much
as Stead drummed up pity for young prostitutes), the majority of such
plays ended
female by ostracizing or killing off the troublesome, erotically charged
protagonist.
If “an entire stage history accompanies an actress onto the stage” when
she assumes a new role,37 Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s history was longer—and
racier—than most. Her first major role was in Arthur Wing Pinero’ P inero’s Te Sec-
ond Mrs.
M rs. anqu eray , which debuted in 1893. In this play, Campbell portrayed
anqueray 
the title character, a former mistress and perhaps prostitute who attempts to
reform but is finally unable to escape her past. anqueray   was enormously
popular—Campbell called the work “the most successful modern English
play of the century”38—and her acting was widely acclaimed. Or rather, her
ability to “be” Mrs. anqueray was much remarked; Campbell’s naturalistic
acting style encouraged association between the actress and her part, and
audience
audien ce members and
a nd critics alike
a like claimed
c laimed that
tha t she “was” Paula anquer ay..39 
anqueray
Campbell was startled to discover that she was identified with her role. A few
people called her “Mrs. anqueray” by accident, and one woman even investi-
gated her background to see whether she was a demi-mondaine .40 According
to Elaine Aston and George Savona,
S avona, “the image of fallen woman was hence-
41
 forth encoded in Mrs Pat s on and offstage identity.
Campbell’s subsequent career encouraged further confusion between
actress and role. Her next major part
par t was in Pinero’s 1895 drama Te Notori-
ous Mrs. Ebbsmith. In this play, Campbell was cast as a young intellectual (a
“New Woman”) who lives openly with a married man. In the middle of the
play, Agnes Ebbsmith gives up her political ambitions, dons a sensual gown,
and resigns herself to becoming a traditional mistress. Although Ebbsmith
feels shame when she goes from “workday drudge” to “faerie gown[ed]”
enchantress, Campbell’s audiences didn’t always grasp this point and cheered
the actress’s costume change.42 Tis response indicates that some spectators

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 81

 valued Campbell’s
Campbell’s physical charms more highly than her ability to create a
character. But critics praised the actress’s performance while Campbell’s audi-
ence conflated her with Agnes Ebbsmith; in the words of Edmund Gosse,
“the play was [Mrs. Campbell].”43
Although Campbell went on to play other characters (including addi-
tional women with sexual pasts), Paula anqueray and Agnes Ebbsmith
remained her most popular roles. Whenever her management, touring touring com-
pany, or Campbell herself needed a guaranteed success, one of Pinero’s plays
 was revived and the actress received new acclaim. Indeed, Campbell played
these parts
par ts again in 1898,
18 98, 1901, 1902, 1907, 1913, 1914 (while
(wh ile on the Ameri-
Amer i-
can tour of Pygmalion), 1922, and 1924, firmly cementing her reputation as
an actress who could bring “fallen women” to the stage in unparalleled ways.
Shaw was aware of her reputation and indeed had hoped to exploit it in one
of his earlier works. Before the Lord Chamberlain refused to license  Mrs.
Warren’s Profession, Shaw had suggested that Campbell be cast in the role of
his impenitent former prostitute and madam.44
Because of her performance history, Campbell as Eliza Doolittle was—
in the words of one critic—a “crosscasting joke.”45 And yet, her presence in
Pygmalion was generally
generall y a hit with critics. As Eliza, Campbell sniveled “I’m a
respectable girl” and
and reminded audiences of all the specific ways in which such
a woman might not be respectable, while her presentation of Eliza after her
transformation highlighted the character’
character ’s newfound refinement and beauty
beaut y.
In retrospect, Campbell’s
Campbell’s Eliza seems to underline Pygmalion’s allusions
to the late-Victorian obsession with sexual danger. But her presence compro-
mised that subtext for the play’
play ’s 1914 and 1920 audiences. Indeed, Campbell
brought the “odor di femmina ” to Shaw’s comedy; the frustrated playwright
discovered that he could not control the actress and complained that she
insisted on wearing costumes that “displayed Mrs. Patrick Campbell while
eclipsing Eliza.”46  Pictures of the 1914 production indicate that some of
these costumes, and certainly Campbell’s appearance in them, were decidedly
 vampish. Advertisers exploited Campbell’s
Campbell’s sexual
sexual appeal in cartoons based on
 Pygmalion  but reminiscent of the actress s famous—and fallen—roles. Like
Te Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Pygmalion threatened to become a play known
for Mrs. Campbell’s
Campbell’s sexual appeal
a ppeal and dramatic costumes.
As Campbell’s Eliza paraded around Higgins’s bachelor apartments,
she alternately raised and undermined the expectation that such a woman
 would inevitably fall prey to the machinations of male sexuality.
sexuality. While Stead
had worried about the fate of “daughters of the people” who became the
sexual objects of upper-class men, Shaw’s play used Campbell’s character to
mock such fears. And yet, the playwright had not reckoned with the force of
Campbell’s status as a sexual icon. Campbell’s sexual appeal made her—and

82 Celia Marshik 

Eliza—popular with audiences, who could gaze upon the actress; her sexual
magnetism compromised their ability to laugh at the assumptions that had
made Stead—and the woman-with-a-past play—so well known.
Some viewers noted the vexed connection between Pygmalion   and
Campbell’ss earlier
Campbell’ ear lier work. Te reviewer for Vanity Fair  observed
 observed that “toward
the end of the play . . . Mrs. Campbell got into her ‘Pinero stride,’ and
the Eliza of the streets faded before one’s memories of Paula anqueray
and Mrs. Ebbsmith.”47 While some might read this comment as a sign of
Campbell’s failure as an actress, this review indicates that members of the
1914 audience came close to recognizing Shaw’
Shaw ’s subtext. F
For
or Shaw’
Shaw ’s play is
about £5 virgins and phonetics, and Campbell was a physical link between
Pygmalion ’s dialogue and the preoccupations of late-Victorian drama and
reform movements.
Implying that the repressive enforcement of British laws was fueled
by colossal misreadings, Shaw’s “pleasant play” concealed some polemical
thoughts underneath its comedic surface. Eliza, he would tell Stella Camp-
albeit a very successful one.48 But it is time that readers
bell, “was only a joke,” albeit
and audiences remember who Shaw was laughing at and why he had stopped
 writing his “unpleasant” plays.
Henry Higgins and Alfred
Alf red Doolittle mime the complicated sexual iden-
tities and melodramatic myths that Shaw had first observed
obser ved in the 1880s. By
exposing the proximity of social reform and sexual desire, Shaw put a “mod-
ern” spin on the Pygmalion myth while undermining the moral authority of
Stead and his followers. His jokes repeatedly worked to challenge the pub-
lications and actions of social purity movements, an effort that had become
increasingly important as such groups gained political power and government
support.
If we do not recognize the butt of Shaw
Shaw’’s jokes, it is undoubtedly because
beca use
 William . Stead, “Te Maiden ribute,”
ribute,” and the NVA
NVA have largely disap-
peared from our cultural memory. If Shaw’s contemporaries did not fully
recognize these jokes, it is perhaps because the playwright overestimated his
 ability to use Mrs. Campbell’s public persona for his own ends. Her Eliza
Doolittle was too much of a Galatea to rewrite the Pygmalion myth; Camp-
bell was too desirable and too strongly associated with narratives of sexual
consummation.49 Shaw
 Shaw’’s casting choice did more than draw audiences to his
play; his insistence that Campbell play his “east end dona in an apron and
three orange and red ostrich feathers” jeopardized his ability to recast Stead
and the purity movement. If we remember Shaw more than the actors who
brought his works
work s to the stage, Pygmalion demonstrates that certain perform-
ers—such as the seductive Mrs. Campbell—shape what we can see at work
(and at play) in Shaw’
Shaw ’s drama.

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 83

N
  1. Collected Letters , ed. Dan H. Laurence, 4 vols. (London: Max Reinhardt,
1965–88), 1:803.
  2. Jean Reynolds, one of the most recent critics to analyze Shaw’s view of
language, brings
bri ngs together Pygmalion and Derridean deconstruction to argue that the
dramatist collapsed “opposing terms into each other in a synthesis that anticipates
Derrida’s critique of logocentrism” (Pygmalion’s Wordplay: he Postmodern Shaw 
[Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999], 134). Arnold Silver’s Bernard Shaw:
he Darker Side   (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), in contrast, provides
a psychoanalytic reading of Shaw’s work and presents Pygmalion  as one of many
plays in which the author’s “destructive urges” circulate (282). My argument leaves
aside the play’s concerns with language to reconstruct Shaw’s conscious—and quite
public—battles with middlebrow moral movements. With the exception of Charles
Berst, who notes in passing that “Doolittle’s attempt to ‘sell’ Eliza to Higgins” is
“perhaps” linked to “the genteel slave market of Victorian times,” critics have not
linked Shaw’s comedy with late-Victorian sexual myths and scandals ( Pygmalion:
Shaw’s  3.
Spin on Myth
“he MaidenandCinderella 
ribute   [London:
 [London:
ribute of Mode
Modern wayne,Pall
rn Babylon,” 1995],
Mall104).
Gazette , 6 Jul. 1885,
3. Subsequent
Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
  4. Raymond L. Shults, Crusader in Babylon: W.. Stead and the Pall Mall
Gazette  (Lincoln:
 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 171.
  5. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 4 vols. (New York: Random House,
1988–92), 1:138. Shaw was perhaps enthusiastic about the series because Stead
opined that the future
futu re “belongs
“belong s to the combined forces ooff Democracy and Socia
Socialism”
lism”
(“We Bid You Be of Hope,” Pall Mall Gazette , 6 Jul. 1885, 1).
  6. Frederic Whyte, he Life of W.. Stead , 2 vols. (London: Jonathan Cape,
1925), 1:1
1:175.
75.
  7. revor Fisher, Scandal: he Sexual Politics of Late Victorian England  (Phoe-
 (Phoe-
nix Mill: Alan Sutton, 1995), 89.
  8. Whyte,
9. “he he Life
Maiden  of W..
ribute
ribute Stead , 1:304.
of Modern Babylon,
Babylon,”” 10 Jul. 1885, 4. Stead later mod-
ified his attitude toward the theater; in 1910, he asserted that “theatre can be made
a great instrument of public education and inspiration.” He acknowledged, however,
that many of his readers—supporters of a movement he had initiated—would not
agree with this view (“he Relations of the heatre to Public Morals—Part I,” in
he Nation’s Morals , ed. James Marchant [London: Cassell, 1910], 193–94).
 10. John Johnston, he Lord Chamberlain’s Blue Pencil  (London:
  (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1990), 29–30.
11. Rev. hos. Philips, “he Relations of the heatre to Public Morals—Part
II,” in he Nation’s Morals , 195.
12. Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics, and Society: he Regulation of Sexuality since  
1800 (London: Longman, 1989), 214.
13. George Bernard Shaw, “he Living Pictures,” in Our heatres in the Nine-
ties  (London:
 (London: Constable and Co., 1932), 84.
14. Sally Peters, Bernard Shaw: he Ascent of the Superman (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1996), 220.
15. Shaw’s battle with stage censorship has received considerable attention
from scholars, so I do not recount his specific campaigns here. See Leon Hugo,

84 Celia Marshik 

an d his Age  (New
 Edwardian Shaw: he Writer and   (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 197–230;
Lucy McDiarmid, “Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw, and the Shewing-Up of Dub-
lin Castle,” PMLA  109
 109 (1994): 26–44; and Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 2:224–38. For a
general
ian urndiscussion of Edwardian
of Mind  (Princeton:
 (Princeton: stage censorship,
Princeton see Samuel
University Press, 1968),Hynes, he Edward-
212–53.
16. Shaw, “Living Pictures,” 84; he Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet , in Bernard
Shaw: Collected Plays with heir Prefaces  (London:
  (London: he Bodley Head, 1971), 3:733;
“heatres and Reviews hen and Now,” in Shaw on heatre  (New   (New York: Hill and
 Wang,
 W ang, 1958), 1173;
73; Collected Letters , 1:448.
17. James Marchant, he Master Problem (New York: Moffat, Yard, and Co.,
1917), 281.
18. Shaw, “Living Pictures,” 89.
19. Whyte, he Life of W.. Stead , 2:314.
20. J. Ellen Gainor, Shaw’s Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of
Gender  (Ann
  (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 229. Gainor argues that
these threats are finally realized in a “lesbian ‘rape’ scene” that displaces Higgins’s
actions onto those of Mrs. Pearce, his hi s housekeeper (235–36). Nigel
Nigel AAlexander,
lexander, Louis
Crompton, Errol Durbach, and Charles Berst also note that Pygmalion raises ques-
tions about Eliza’s fate at the hand of Higgins. Unlike Gainor, they assume that the
play eventually “clears up” these concerns. See Alexander,  A Critical Commentary
Commentar y
on Bernard Shaw’s  Arms
 Arms and the Man and  Pygmalion
  Pygmalion (London: Macmillan, 1968),
62–65; Crompton, “Improving Pygmalion,” Prairie Schooner  41  41 (1967): 74; Durbach,
“Pygmalion: Myth and Anti-Myth in the Plays of Ibsen and Shaw,”  English Studies St udies
in Africa  21
  21 (1978): 29; and Berst, Pygmalion, 63.
21. Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1916; reprint, London: Penguin, 1944), 19–20.
Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the
text.
22. Berst, Bernard Shaw, 204.
23. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in
Late-Victorian England  (Chicago:
 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 94.
24.often
objects” Walkowitz
pursuednotes
their that reformers
reform work in concerned with
“perverse” or young girls
“prurient” ways,asrevealing
“sexual
the fine
f ine line between predation and philanthropy (Prostitution and Victorian Society:
Women, Class, and the State  [Cambridge:
 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], 249).
25. Edward Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since  1700
 1700
(otowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 193.
 26. Shaw s dismissal of the dr
drugging
ugging my
myth
th might seem callous, but it appears
that there were few facts to substantiate such tales. he Vigilance Record  noted
 noted that
“in spite of careful investigation, [the NVA] had never been able to establish the
truth of such statements” (“An Incredible Story—But rue,” he Vigilance Record   99
[1915]: 75). he case of Mrs. Allen, investigated in November of 1927, reveals that
the meaning of “drugging” was unstable. he widow claimed that a male friend
had drugged her coffee and impregnated her; after several interviews, the NVA
investigator
front of Mrs.concluded that a small
Allen. A female friendamount of beer present
of the widow, had beenat added to the
the time, coffeethat
insisted in
Allen did
d id not seem “dr
“drugged”
ugged” by the concoction (NV(NVA A Archives, FaFawcett
wcett Library,
Box 116, file
f ile 14).
27. Gainor, Shaw’s Daughters , 230.
28. Walkowitz, City , 124.

Parodying the £5 Virgin: Bernard Shaw and the Playing of Pygmalion 85

29. Shaw remembered Eliza Armstrong’s name years after the “Maiden rib-
ute” scandal; in 1922, he joked that “Armstrong (not Eliza)” smuggled him onto the
PMG  staff
  staff (Whyte, he Life of W.. Stead , 1:305).
30. F“he
31. For Maiden ribute
or additional vvariat
ariationsof on
ions Modern
Shaw’ssBabylon,”
Shaw’ ending, see6 Jul. 1885,
Rober
Robert t G.6.Everding, “Shaw
and the popular context,” in he Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, ed.
Christopher Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 315–16.
32. See, for example, Arnold Silver’s contention that the postscript enabled
Shaw to indirectly attack Stella Campbell, who brought their year-long flirtation to
an end in the fall of 1913 (Silver, Bernard , 255). While the “affair” with Campbell
may have influenced Shaw’s revisions of Pygmalion, this interpretation requires a
biographical reading of the play. I am arguing that Pygmalion needs to be placed
 within
 with in larg
larger
er socio-politica
socio-politicall contexts and that the postscr
postscript
ipt works to preser
preserve
ve the
“Maiden ribute” parody.
33. racy
racy C. Davis notes that Higgins has “in effect enslaved” Eliz Elizaa “by tak
taking
ing
away [her] independence as a kerbstone flower seller” (“Shaw’s interstices of empire:
decolonizing at home and abroad,” in he Cambridge Companion to George Bernard
Shaw, 225). By depriving Eliza of economic self-sufficiency, and thus leaving her no
option but
but to marry, Higgins brutalbrutalizes
izes Eliza
Eliz a in a way that Stead never imagined.
34. On the day that the play opened, the Daily Sketch covered its front page
 with pictu
pictures
res of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in her most famous par parts
ts (Richard
(Ric hard Hug-
gett, he ruth about   Pygmalion [New York: Random House, 1969], 127). Such
publications
publicatio ns insured tthat
hat audien
audiencesces would associate Mrs. Campbell
Campbell’s’s Eliza with the
actress’s previous roles.
35. Shaw, Collected Letters , 2:219.
36. Elliott Simon, “Arthur Wing Pinero’s he Second Mrs anqueray : A Reap-
praisal,” Ball State University Forum 28 (1987): 47.
37. Sos Ann Eltis, “‘Did Good Woman Ever Play Bad Woman So Well?’:
 
 ypec
ypecastin
astingg and Cross
Cross-Casti
-Casting
ng the Victorian Actress,” W Women
omen on on the British Stage
Panel, MLA Convention, San Francisco Hilton, 29 Dec. 1998.
1922),38.
62.Mrs. Patrick
Pinero’s Campbell,
biographer  Mythat
states Lifethe
andplay
Some Letters  (London:
achieved  “a(London:
total . . .Hutchinson,
of 228 per-
formances and a profprof it of over £1£10,000
0,000”” during its ffirst
irst ru
run.
n. It also made a success-
success-
ful tour of provincial centers. See John Dawick, Pinero: A heatrical Life   (Niwot:
University Press of Colorado, 1993), 200.
39. Eltis, “‘Did Good Woman,’” 29 Dec. 1998.
 40. Campbell,  My Life , 83.
41. Elaine Aston and George Savona, heatre as Sign-System: A semiotics of text
and performance  (London:
 (London: Routledge, 1991), 103.
42. Joel Kaplan, “Pineroticism and the problem play: Mrs anqueray, Mrs
Ebbsmith and ‘Mrs Pat,’” in British heatre in the 1890s , ed. Richard Foulkes (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 55. In a review of a different production
that same year, the theater critic William Archer observed that such applause was
mainly due‘World’
heatrical to Campbell’s “extraordinary
of 1895  [London:
  [London: Walter beauty and elegance”
Scott, 1896], 179). (“Fedora,” in he
43. Margot Peters,  Mrs. Pat: he Life of Mrs. Patrick
Patric k Campbell   (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 106.
44. Peters,  Mrs. Pat , 106–107.
45. Eltis, “‘Did Good Woman,’” 29 Dec. 1998.

86 Celia Marshik 

46. Peters,  Mrs. Pat , 365.

47. Vanity Fair , 30 Apr. 1914, 26.
48. Shaw, Collected Letters , 4:157.
49.. Gail
49
“sculpture Marshall
metapho
metaphor”r” thatargues that nineteen
nineteenth-cen
was authorized th-centur
by tthe turyy actresses
he Pygmal
Pygmalion hadmyth
ion-Galatea
-Galatea to negotia
negotiate
te a
( Actresses
on the Victorian Stage: Feminine Performance and the Galatea Myth [Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998], 4). Marshall largely ignores Mrs. Campbell in her
study; in a brief endnote, she simply observes that the actress was criticized for her
adherence to the sculptural (Galatean) model when other actresses, such as Elea-
nora Duse, were becoming known for their interpretive engagement (214 n. 67). I
describe Campbell as “Galatean” because of her profound sexual appeal; while I find
Marshall’’s study sug
Marshall suggestive,
gestive, I do not here co
consider
nsider Cam
Campbell’s
pbell’s intellectual engage-
ment with the roles she performed.
 

SUAR E . BAKER 

Major Barbara

 The Orga
O rganic
nic and
a nd the Didactic
Didac tic
 M  ajor Barbara  provides
ajor   provides the first step of Shaw’s journey out of hell into
heaven, out of the despair of impotency to the triumph of Godhead. We
should not expect it to supply a map, for
for the region
reg ion is uncharted.
unchar ted. It does show
us how we must start, which is task enough, for the first step is as difficult
and terrifying as the exit from the womb.  Major Barbara  is   is the single most
complete statement of Shaw’s philosophy and the epitome of the dramatic
method he developed to express that philosophy. It is the most Shavian of
Shaw’s plays. By now he had mastered the technique, first successfully used
in Candida , of presenting a reality both difficult to contemplate and worthy
of respect. His chosen role as “interpreter of life” is no longer disguised in
popular theatrical confectionery but is brought into the foreground, while
the action moves simply where his dramatic imagination takes him. And for
the first time we see evidence of internal conflict in his dramatic method:
a clash between the free narrative of real people struggling with their cir-
cumstances and the need to provide an “interpretation” of something far
 below the surface
sur face of life as it is consciously lived.
liv ed. o
o serve
ser ve the parable,
para ble, Shaw
put constraints on his characters that we do not see in any previous play.
 here are
a re awkward
awkwa rd moments
moments when one character
charac ter is clearly
clea rly feeding a line to
another, such as the following exchange in the second act:

From Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion: A Faith hat Fits the Facts,  pp. 123−46, 247−49.
Copyright © 2002 by Stuart E. Baker.

87

88 Stuart E. Baker

CUSINS. . . . Barbara is quite original in her religion.

UNDERSHAF [triumphantly ] Aha! Barbara Undershaft would be. Her
inspiration
CUSINS. How docomes
you from within
suppose it gotherself.
there?
UNDERSHAF [in towering excitement ] It is the Undershaft inheritance.
(3:120)
“How do you suppose it got there?” is not a question worthy of Cusins, but
it allows Undershaft to makes his paradoxical point.
 Tis conflict of purpose
pur pose may be the reason Shaw found it necessary to
do the must extensive revision he had yet undertaken of any play since Te
Philanderer . Te changes were of a different nature fromf rom those applied to the
early play. Te revisions of Te Philanderer  tended
 tended to cut out Shaw’s
S haw’s penchant
for letting the characters dictate to their author where to take the play and to
bring it more into the familiar, structured pattern of farcical comedy, that is,
to make it less “organic” and more conventional; the changes made to  Major
Barbara  help
 help resolve potential conflicts between Shaw’s “organic”
“organic” and didactic
tendencies and so help make it even more Shavian, rather than more con-
 ventional. Te most sweeping changes were to the second scene of the third
act, which was entirely rewritten. Shaw was right in his dissatisfaction with
the original, for the first draft was dramatically inferior to the final product,
but missteps can be illuminating.1 One of the most interesting changes is an
alteration in the moral and intellectual debate between Cusins and Under-
shaft. In the original draft (called the “Derry” manuscript), Undershaft is
unambiguously the winner and Cusins is clearly brought around to Under-
shaft’s point of view. In the final version, Cusins is changed but remains his
own man at the end. Te resulting intellectual ambiguity is interesting, and
the exact nature of its significance is an important question in determining
the play’
play ’s meaning.
  Anoma lies in the
 Anomalies t he Action
Act ion
 he dramatic structure
struct ure of the play is especially
especia lly unusual. In all
al l of the preced-
ing plays the action is a clear development of the desires of the characters
in conflict with each other and their circumstances: classic examples for a
teacher of play analysis. Caesar and Cleopatra  may   may appear an exception, but
its episodic nature is merely a shell for the true action: the partly success-
ful education of Cleopatra. When Shaw uses a conventional “complication”
to change the course of the action, it helps complete the picture, showing
us more fully how the characters behave by altering their circumstances.
 he change in the status of the slums proposed by Lickcheese in Widow-
ers’ Houses   and the arrival of the American navy in Captain Brassbound’s

 Major Barbara  89

Conversion both change the action in order to illuminate it. he fundamen-

tal conflict remains clear and consistent. Despite the intense philosophical
concerns of both  Man and Superman  and  John Bull ’s Other Island , Shaw lets
the unfolding of the story take precedence over any attempt to contrive the
morality of the piece. he result is a pair of organic if unconventional works
that are more successful
successfu l as art
ar t than as complete statements
statements of Shaw’s
Shaw’s beliefs.
 Major Barbara  is  is a different case.
An overview of the play’s action will make its oddness clear. Te first
scene ends with a reversal that sets the tone for numerous shifts the action
 will take as the play progresses. We are led to believe that Lady Britomart
Br itomart is
(apparently for the first time) asking her eldest child to make an important
decision regarding the family finances, then we suddenly learn that the deci-
sion has been made and that Stephen was being asked only to take respon-
sibility for it. Tis might be just an amusing way to provide exposition, but
it is characteristic of the entire play, which is a mosaic of altered and over-
turned expectations. Indeed,
Indeed, the scene between Lady Britomart and Stephen
introduces an action that is dropped toward the end of the first act, ignored
entirely in the second, and picked up again in the third only to be resolved in
a casual anticlimax. Te problem presented by the first act, like that of Wid-
owers’ Houses , is the need for money and the moral difficulty of obtaining it
f rom a “tainted” source—in this case the profits from the death and destr destruc-
uc-
tion factory of Stephen’s father, Andrew Undershaft. We are made to suspect
that Stephen’
Steph en’s sister Barbara
Ba rbara,, a recent convert
conve rt to the Salvat
S alvation
ion Army, will have
moral objections to both the money and her father’s character. As soon as the
father makes his entrance,
e ntrance, this expected conflict melts away and is forgotten.
 Te money
free of is not mentioned,
moralizing theand
priggishness, daughter shows
the father herselfunaccountably
becomes to be surprisingly
fas-
cinated with both the daughter he has just met and her religion of poverty.
A new question arises from the meeting of father and daughter. It is a kind
of battle of missionaries; each will try to convert the other and both agree to
 submit to the attempt. Undershaft will visit the Salvation Army shelter, and
Barbara will come to the munitions works. Tis action, which involves two
distinct steps, is also interrupted by the resumption of the question raised in
the first act. Te question of obtaining additional income for the two sisters,
 which is treated with awkwardly indelicate delicacy in the first act, is settled
 with casual abruptness in thethe first scene of the third
third act. When Andrew,
Andrew, obvi-
ously ignorant of the purpose of his invitation, asks after his first entrance,
“What
“W hat can I do for you all?,” Lady Brit tells him that he need not do anything
but sit and enjoy himself, a remark that puts everyone
ever yone out of countenance and
successfully evades the issue. Andrew’s
Andrew’s entrance in the third act is ver
veryy differ-
ent; he barely has time to draw a breath before Lady Brit peremptorily and

90 Stuart E. Baker

emphatically demands more money for the girls. Undershaft agrees without
a murmur. Strife occurs when she demands the inheritance of the factory
for Stephen, but as Undershaft is resolute that it will go to a foundling as
the tradition demands, and Stephen immediately renounces his claim, that
conflict, too, disappears. Ten the only difficulty—obviously not the central
conflict of the play—is for Undershaft to find a suitable profession for Ste-
phen, whose priggishly aristocratic upbringing has made him unfit for almost
all gainful employment. But just as Stephen’s inheritance of the factory is put
entirely out of question, we casually learn that Undershaft has yet to find a
foundling to inherit the munitions works. In the middle of the last act a new
“action” is introduced. Ten that is forgotten for the moment, as they gather
together to accompany Barbara on her promised visit to the factor
factoryy of death.
It turns out to be a model of cleanliness and respectability rather than the pit
of Hell, and Cusins, the neurasthenic and bespectacled professor of Greek,
claims by a quibble to be an eligible foundling, offering himself as a candidate
for the inheritance. His proposal is accepted virtually without hesitation. Te
conflict is not Cusins’s trying to persuade Undershaft to accept a weak, inex-
perienced academic as his apprentice; it is not about his struggle to become
the master of an arms empire that dominates Europe. No, it is Cusins’s inner
struggle with his conscience over the moral propriety of acceptance. Te
battle between Undershaft and Cusins at the end of the play is about the
arms manufacturer’s attempt to persuade the professor to abandon his moral
standards. So many strange things have happened by now that we are not
surprised when he accepts, or even when Barbara tells him that if he turned
it down she would jilt him for the man who accepted. Te “big” question at
the end of the play is whether the young idealists will take on the factory;
Cusins is the only one who asks the eminently sensible question: Why would
Undershaft take on Cusins?
 Tere is a sense in which we are being overly scrupulous here; it is a
little like looking at the complexion of a beautiful woman with a powerful
 magnifying glass so as to “prove” how grotesque she really looks. Te play
is not incoherent, for the overall action is limpid: the mutual challenge of
father and daughter and its conclusion in the father’s favor. But there are
many digressions and extraneous details whose purpose is not immediately
apparent. We might expect that in a historical epic like Caesar and Cleopatra ,
 where the busy pattern of historic fact is apt to clutter up the picture, but
 is presented frankly as a parable.2 One expects a parable to be
 Major Barbara  is
simple and—at least relatively—uncluttered. Part of the problem is that Shaw
S haw
is using “real people I have met and talked to” as a means of telling his tale
(Collected Screenplays   485).
485). Tat makes the play much more interesting, but it
complicates the task. Even more important is that the moral of this parable

 Major Barbara  91

is not simple, Shaw crams a great deal into an evening’s traffic on the stage.
Even the action that emerges when one steps back far enough from the play

is not without
proceed its peculiarities.
in a direct Te ward,
mutual
and straightforward,
straightfor attempts
manner butatare
conversion do not
indirect and even
e ven
oblique.
 When Undershaft visits the Salvation
Sal vation Army shelter,
shelter, Barbara does not spend
any time trying to convert her father; she gives her entire attention to the
conversion
conversi on of Bill Walker.
Walker. When
Whe n Barbara
Barba ra comes to the
t he munitions factor
f actoryy, her
father spends only a few minutes talking to her; he devotes most of his time
to converting Cusins, despite the remarkable, even obsessive, interest he had
shown in Barbara during the two previous acts.
 Wee have barely touched on the difficult  philosophical  issues
 W   issues of the play.
It is not surprising that readers are confused by it, but at a good perfor-
mance audiences are unaware of these difficulties. Te play has a remarkable
coherence in spite of all of these apparent irrelevancies and discontinuities.
All of the complexities are resolved in the throughline of the play, which is
ultimately simple, consistent, and unambiguous. A careful look at both the
overall action and the details shows how they come together in an almost
perfect whole.

 An Il
Illusor
lusoryy Conf lict 
 he parable opposes two sets of seemingly irreconcilable principlprinciples,
es, polar
opposites
opposi tes that must be eternally at war:
war : spirit against matter, religion against
atheism,, altruism
atheism altr uism versus egoism, heroic
heroic idealism opposed to cynical pragma-
tism. he triumph of Undershaft—or at least the triumph of Undershaft and
Lazarus, Ltd., over the Salvation Army—can be interpreted as Chesterton
saw it: “ Major
 Major Barbara  .
  . . . contains a strong religious element; but when all
is said, the whole point of the play is that the religious element is defeated”
(190). A more popular view, at least among Shaw’s fans, is that the play
represents a Hegelian dialectic with the succession of Barbara and Cusins
to the Undershaft throne as the final synthesis of spirit and power, idealism
 and pragmatism, growth and destruction (for example, Whitman 223–30).
Although some, like Wisenthal, feel that Shaw successfully presents Cusins
as an advance on Undershaft (and perhaps even Barbara), others are not con-
 vinced ( Marriage 
 Marriage  75–79).
 75–79). urco,
urco, for example,
exa mple, believes
believe s that the play ultimately
u ltimately
fails because Shaw does not succeed in presenting Cusins as a clear advance
over his predecessor. Most critics now would reject Chesterton’s view that

religion,
of represented
her father. urco, inby particular,
Barbara, ishasdefeated
noted the by materialism in thebetween
many similarities person
father and daughter
daughter.. he diff iculty is that critics
cr itics are inclined to seek salvation
in Cusins. Many find this view
v iew appealing, and there is evidence in the play ttoo
support it, but it is wrong. he play can be interpreted in a Hegelian manner,

92 Stuart E. Baker

but Cusins does not represent the synthesis that emerges from the play as a
 whole.
 whole. he real enemy
enemy is iidealism,
dealism, which is the refusal to look
look hard truths in

the eye.
conflict
conf Like Candida 
lict from underl, ying
but on
an underlying a much
unit y, and deeper
unity, level,
the point  Major
is that theBarbara 
Barbara 
ict develops
conflict
confl  develops
is illusorya
or unnecessary. Many of the complexities and apparent contradictions are
the result of the fact that the moral
moral conflict,
conf lict, which first
fi rst appears to Cusins so
unavoidable,
unavoidab le, is artif
ar tificial.
icial. he play does not deny the existence of evil, insist i nsist--
ing emphatically that it cannot be avoided; it only denies the possibility of
isolating and destroying it. Evil is not something that can be cut out like a
cancer; it can only be transformed. It is part of us and we are part of it. We
can try to repudiate it as alien to us, and we will find that we can do so only
by choosing death over life, declaring a victory while accepting annihilation.
But the play does represent the defeat of idealism, and if, like Chesterton, you
are unable to see religion as other than a form of idealism, you must perforce
agree with
w ith him about the moral of the t he play.
play.
From
Fro m such a point of view the play must be unbearably pessimistic. More More
important, much would appear irrelevant or incomprehensible, so complete
understanding demands a realistic point of view. Te play’ play ’s purpose is to show
us the path to heaven, a path forever invisible to idealist eyes. Only from the
realist’s point of view do all of the pieces of the dramatic picture—a map of
the world and the spirit—fit meaningfully together. together.

Responsibilities and Choices

In  Major Barbara , as in Shaw’s other plays, the issues develop through the
relationships of different sets of characters. One of Shaw’s favorite devices
is a triad of characters representing a range of approaches to a particular
ethical or social problem. hey might be presented in the abstract, like
the Philistine, idealist, and realist of the Quintessence , or as three major
characters in a play, such as Broadbent, Larry, and Keegan—in  John Bull’s
Bull ’s
 Other Island . he use of three points of view permits greater complexity and
avoids a simple dichotomy that would tempt us to see the issues as oppo-
sites of right and wrong. Here, the obvious trio is Undershaft, his daughter
Barbara, and her fiancé Cusins, but nearly all of the characters are set off
against each other in revealing ways. Sometimes the characters are paired
and then bracketed with another person or set of characters. Lady Brit and
Stephen are contrasted to Undershaft
Undershaft aand
nd Barbara. Mrs. Baines and
a nd Barbara

represent different
proletarians of the views
secondofact—Snobby,
the mission ofRummy,
the Salvation Army. he
Peter Shirley, and four
Bill
 Wal
 W alker—serv
ker—servee as foils
foil s for and mirrors
mi rrors to each
e ach other.
Stephen and his mother, who open the play, are the representatives of
the aristocracy, the traditional ruling classes. Te scene between the two of

 Major Barbara  93

them is not merely exposition; it begins, with a single note, the theme that
 will resonate in many complex chords later in the play
play.. Te issue is money,
money, and

the
phen,question
that theis money
where to getcome
must it. Orfrom
f so
romit Undershaft’s
seems, for wefactory
quicklyoflearn,
deathwith
becaSte-
because
use
there is no other possible source. Lady Brit’Brit ’s true objective in consulting with
her son is not to ask for advice but to avoid responsibility for a moral deci-
sion that, although necessary, appears distasteful. She has made her decision
and acted on it; she merely wants Stephen
S tephen to take responsibility for it. In this
scene, Lady Brit is the schoolmistress and Stephen her pupil. She instructs
him, in word and deed, how the aristocracy approaches difficult moral ques-
tions. Stephen’s horror of mentioning such “frightful” things as his father
and his money produces this admonition from his mother: “It is only in the
middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror
 when they find that there are wicked people in the world. In our class, we
have to decide what is to be done with wicked people; and nothing should
disturb our self-possession” (3:73). Tus we have the ruling-class solution:
boldly face the facts, confidently take the money,
money, and deftly shift the respon-
sibility onto someone else.
 Tis approach is not without its price. Lady Britomart steams into view
as a classical dowager dreadnought, a moving mountain of indomitable will,
but we later see that it is all bluff. She has no genuine power apart from her
(very considerable) strength of character. When her husband, who has real
power and knows it, opposes her, she is helpless. Even her son, who seemed
so firmly under her thumb in the first scene, has only to declare his indepen-
dence to achieve it. Te strength that comes from position and the appear-
ance of power is not inconsiderable, at least not until it is challenged by real
power. In that way Stephen
St ephen and his mother
moth er are alike. Had the business passe
passed
d
on to him, Stephen, like “all the other sons of the big business houses,” would
have had to hire a manager to run it. Even then the enterprise would run pri-
 marily on its own momentum, as Undershaft wisely notes (3:145). When that
possibility is rejected by both Stephen and his father
father,, the
the discussion moves to
finding an alternative career. Stephen’s aristocratic disdain for any ordinary
profession eliminates all but one avenue: “He knows nothing and he thinks
he knows everything. Tat points clearly to a political career,” Undershaft
sarcastically reminds them. Andrew may have had something of that sort
in mind all along, as the other career choices were suggested merely as step-

ping-stones on the ever

event that Stephen way did
to becoming
make it to prime
such a minister. Even
pinnacle of in theeminence,
political unlikely
his power would be circumscribed in much the same way that his mother’s
is, for in his next speech Undershaft declares, “I am the government of your
country:: I, and Lazarus.” Te moral choices of Andrew and his mother isolate
country

94 Stuart E. Baker

them from
f rom real power in ways that may not be readily obvious but are debili-
tating nonetheless. Tey are the “butts” of the piece, but Barbara and Cusins

are equally
ences weakened
between by their attempt
the aristocratic positiontoof
take the moral
mora
Stephen andl high
Ladyroad. Te differ-
Britomart and
that taken by Cusins are obvious, but the similarities, which are crucial, are
overlooked. Stephen is sincere in his simplistic morality, but he is immature
and naïve. His mother’s hypocrisy grows from an unwillingness to give up
either the moralism she shares with Stephen or the money and power she gets
f rom Undershaft. Cusins,
Cusins, as we shall see, suffers from
f rom a more subtle form
for m of
the same disease.
 Te relationship
relationship of mother to son parallels in many ways that of Under-
shaft with Barbara
Barbar a and Cusins—both taken together and separately. Stephen
is his mother’s protégé as Cusins and Barbara are Undershaft’s. Stephen
has his position by virtue of birth and upbringing; Cusins and Barbara are
both, in a very real sense, adopted,
adopted, for Undershaft has not previously known
his daughter. Seen from another viewpoint: Barbara and Cusins must both
qualify for their inheritance, while Stephen simply has the mantle laid across
his shoulders. More interesting, both heirs try to defy and even repudiate
the bequests, yet there is a real question how effective their claims to inde-
pendence will be. Stephen declares his autonomy, but on the central ques-
tions of morality and power how different will he be—how different can he
be—from Lady Britomart? Even as he goes his own way, showing a healthy
ability to learn from
f rom his mistakes by apologizing to his father about his preju-
dices regarding Perivale St. Andrews, he reveals his naïveté afresh. Like the
educated gentleman he is, he caps his admiration for the wonderfully orga-
nized town with a quotation from Milton: “Peace hath her victories no less
renowned than War” (3:160). Tis is a stark contrast to Cusins, whose “it’s
all horribly, frightfully, immorally, unanswerably perfect” shows him to be as
painfully sensitive to irony as Stephen is unconscious of it (3:158). Stephen’s
 hypocrisy is only slightly obscured by his confusion about the inconsistencies
in his position. Tese particular
part icular victories
vict ories of peace
peac e are, of course, made possible
possibl e
only by war. And why does he applaud the operation now that he has found
it to be clean and respectable? His objection was to the exploitation of war
and destruction;
destr uction; that has not
no t changed. Did he imagine, like his sister, that just
because Perivale St. Andrews is engaged in the manufacture of weapons it
must have been “a sort of pit where lost creatures with blackened faces stirred

upet smoky
 Y
 Yet firesescape
he cannot and were driven
his mora and
moralistic
listic tormented
conviction thatbypain
[Undershaft]” (3:154)?
is good for the soul.
 Te pampered son of wealth and breeding worries that too much much luxury will
destroy the workers’ independence and sense of responsibility. Unlike Bar-
bara, he has no comprehension that responsibility means having something

 Major Barbara  95

to do and knowing that if you do not do it it will not be done, not ffrom
rom hav-
ing experienced egregious suffering. Tis superstition of the English upper
classesof
hands allowed
sadisticthem to believe that
schoolmasters having
qualified runto
them a gauntlet
govern anofempire.
fl oggings at the
floggings

Parents and Children

If Stephen’s independence of his mother is questionable, the same ques-
tion can be raised about the succession of the Undershaft inheritance by
Barbara and Adolphus. he closing line of the play—“Six o’clock tomorrow
morning, Euripides”—underscores the unsettled nature of that question by
reminding us that Cusins had not even agreed to the working hours Under-
shaft demanded. 3 How much will the next Andrew Undershaft be like or
different from the present one? How much will the necessities imposed by
the world and the realities of manufacturing and selling arms change the
ideals of the saver of souls and the humanitarian professor of Greek? his
is what the play is about: the spiritual and moral contest between father and
daughter—solemnly agreed upon like a medieval joust.
 Te overturned expectations are nowhere more complex and enigmatic
than in the relationship of the father, his daughter, and her suitor. All three
are more than we might expect them to be, both in themselves and in their
relations to the other two. Undershaft is the most obviously inscrutable. He
is discussed as if he were a towering monster of evil; his first entrance reveals
him as kindly, considerate, thoughtful, and somewhat embarrassed by being
surrounded by a family he does not know. Money was the sole item on this
meeting’s agenda, but that is evaded—by the person who called the meet-
ing—and the conversation is turned to religion—by Undershaft. He begins
to question Barbara about the Salvation Army, and when his wife attempts
to change this (to her) unpleasant subject by asking that Charles play some-
thing on his concertina
conce rtina “at once,” he stops them
the m by saying: “One moment, Mr
 Lomax. I am rather interested in the Salvation Army. Its motto might be my
own: Blood and Fire” (3:88).
 Te reactions to this announcement are characteristic: Lomax is
shocked, but
but Barbara,
Barbara , with perfect calm and unperturbed good nature, invites
invites
her father to come down to the shelter and “see what we’re doing.” She even
has the audacity to ask the millionaire profiteer in mutilation and murder
murder,, the
the
man who has all of Europe under his thumb
thumb,, if he can play anything in their
planned
and calmlymarch. o Lomax’s
as Barbara unspeakable
had asked. Father amazement,
and daughterhehit
accepts
it off as naturally
splendidly,
and their common ground is religion. Te opposition, for the moment, is
represented by Lomax, who takes up the cause of moral purity championed
earlier by Stephen and his mother
mother.. He
He succeeds in making the contradictions

96 Stuart E. Baker

in that position even more obvious than had Lady Brit: “Te cannon business
may be necessary and all that: we cant get on without cannons; but it isnt
right,
not “oneyouofknow.”
“one Lestwho
those men anyone
keepmiss
theirthe point,and
morals Undershaft explains
their business that tight
in water he is
watertight
compartments.” He is speaking for himself, as a munitions manufacturer, but
his observation
obser vation is valid for anyone who, like Lomax, regards the cannon busi-
ness as necessary. Tis, as we shall see, includes just about everyone—and
especially anyone who wishes to make the world a better place rather than
 just to deplore its wickedness.
Father is more firmly drawn to daughter in the exchange that follows his
observation that there “is only one true morality for every man; but every man
has not the same true morality.” Stephen’s contemptuous dismissal, that “some
men are honest and some are scoundrels,” is met by Barbara’s “Bosh! Tere are
no scoundrels.” Immediately interested, Undershaft asks if there are any good
men. When she assures him that there are neither good men nor scoundrels,
he offers his challenge: “May I ask have you ever saved a maker of cannons?”
Undershaft has clearly recognized something in his daughter that impels him
to claim her, for if the audience suspects at this point that he  is  is considering
becoming one of Barbara’s  converts,
 converts, they
they will be disabused in the next act.
 Te coda that resolves this scene
scene is a counterpoint of religious attitudes.
attitudes.
Barbara asks for “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” Lomax volunteers “Tou’rt
Passing Hence, My Brother,” and Lady Britomart calls for prayers. Te lines
are drawn. Forced to choose, both Undershaft and Cusins declare their alle-
giance to Barbara’s position rather than those of Lomax and Lady Brit, but
there are differences. As usual, Undershaft is not explicit; he merely says
that he has “conscientious scruples,” but Cusins is diplomatically honest: he
objects to the ritual confession of sin as unjust and untrue. He has worked for
his moral rectitude, he has earned it and is proud of it, and he will not have
it denied. His position is different from that of Lomax, Stephen, and Lady
 Britomart, or of Barbara and her father. He avoids the hypocrisy and confu-
sion of the one by courage and honesty but lacks Barbara’s cheerful rejection
of moral stereotypes. Cusins does believe in scoundrels, or he would not work
so hard to avoid becoming one.
Undershaft is, if anything, even more puzzling when we see him at the
Salvation Army shelter
shelter.. He is astonished that Barbara would suggest that he
is a secularist, protesting that he is a “confirmed mystic,” but pressed to iden-
tify his religion
(3:110–11). Whenmore specifically,
Cusins a sks thehe
asks declares
same merely
question, that he that
he explains is a millionaire
he believes
that there are two things necessary to salvation: money and gunpowder. He
does not explain the “mystical” nature of money, gunpowder, or his millions.
Nor does he provide a metaphysical or spiritual basis for this “religion,” other

 Major Barbara  97

than to imply that it is the foundation on which ethical and spiritual values
must necessarily rest (3:116). But his attraction to Barbara emerges more
powerfully
none aboutthan ever. If here
his purpose thereatisthe
doubt aboutitthe
shelter: is tonature ofdaughter
win his his religion,
awaythere is
ffrom
rom
the Salvation Army to become apostle and missionary of the Undershaft reli-
gion. Tis is the exchange between Undershaft and Cusins:

UNDERSHAF
UN DERSHAF . . . . We have to win her; and we are neither of us
Methodists.
CUSINS. hat doesnt matter. he power Barbara wields here—the power
that wields Barbara herself—is not Calvinism, not Presbyterianism, not
Methodism—
UNDERSHAF. Not Greek Paganism either, eh?
CUSINS. I admit that. Barbara is quite original in her religion.
UNDERSHAF. Aha! Barbara Undershaft would be. Her inspiration
comes from within herself.
CUSINS. How do you suppose it got there?
UNDERSHAF [in towering excitement] It is the Undershaft inheritance.
I shall hand on my torch to my daughter. She shall make my converts
and preach my gospel—
CUSINS. What? Money and gunpowder!
UNDERSHAF. Yes, money and gunpowder. Freedom and power. Com-
mand of life and command of death. (3:119–20)
 his is a notable bit of dialogue.
dia logue. Undershaft sees more in Barbara
Barbar a than an
intelligent and determined young woman deluded by religion. He is not
like Peter Shirley, who thinks she would have been a “very taking lecturer
 on Secularism if she had only learned to use her reason (3:111). Barbara s
religion is her own; it is not something she has taken from the Salvation
Army but something she has given it. Her father thinks it is his bequest.
 he unavoidable but amazing
amazi ng conclusion is that he sees his own religion
relig ion
in his daughter. He insists that the gospel she must preach is salvation by
money and gunpowder.
 The Undershaft
Undersha ft Inheritance
Inher itance
 What is the nature
nature of Barbara’s religion?
relig ion? Cusins sees that the power she uses
is a power that uses her, just as later Undershaft speaks of being driven by a
“will of which I am a part” (3:169). Is there a deeper reason for Undershaft
to see himself in Barbara, or is he, as Cusins believes, simply mad? We see
Barbara’s religion at work in her treatment of Bill Walker. o understand

98 Stuart E. Baker

Barbara—and her relation to her father—we must look carefully at the way
she handles Bill, but there is another clue to Barbara’s spiritual power that
is often
In overlooked.
many ways Barbara’s unique and individual religion is in harmony
 with that of the Salvation
Sal vation Army; this is why she could so easily find a home
there. Cusins describes the Salvation Army as “the army of joy, of love, of
courage,” and we have many opportunities to see those qualities in Barbara
personally (3:116). Tere is certainly no striking difference between Barbara
and the Salvation Army with respect to what Shaw sees as the two opposing
camps of Christianity: what he calls “Crosstianity” and (confusingly) Chris-
tianity.. Crosstianity
tianity Crosstianity preaches salvation through the gibbet, while
while Christianity
teaches the vanity of punishment and revenge. Logically, the two points of
 view are hopelessly irreconcilable, so that you would think that the division
between them would form a major split dividing the followers of Jesus of Naz-
areth. Not so. It is a tribute to the powers of hypocrisy and muddled thinking
that one can easily find members of the two camps sitting side by side in the
same pew,
pew, listening
listening to a sermon in which both of these contradictory notions
are wholeheartedly endorsed. Te reason the two are inconsistent is transpar-
ent. Salvation through the cross is the theory that two wrongs make a right
carried to its most extravagant extreme. Evil must be balanced by evil, and the
evil represented by the sins of humanity is so great that it can be wiped out
only by the greatest imaginable wickedness: the torture and murder of God.
 Te doctrine
doctrine of atonement is thus deprived even of its only reasonable
reasonable excuse:
excuse:
deterrence. God becomes humanity’s whipping boy, but since the atonement
 was paid ere our own sins were possible, we need not even worry lest our
sin bring pain to another; the sin has been paid for in advance and in full.
It could be cynically argued that since God made man to sin, it is only right
that God should be punished for it, but this is not what the Crosstians have
 in mind. Te Christian doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount, in contrast, is
(at least as Shaw understands it) a flat rejection of expiation as an attempt to
cancel wickedness with more wickedness. Te one belief is founded on the
endorsement of atonement as solidly as the other is on its rejection. Barbara
and the Salvation Army
Ar my are in agreement here: they accept the injunction to
 judge not; they return good for evil, kindness for cruelty
cruelty,, and a helping hand
for battering blows. Tey celebrate the life and teachings of Christ rather than
His torment and execution.
 Tere is a difference between Barbara and the others on this question,
but it is subtle and largely latent—latent, that is, until Undershaft adds the
catalyst that makes it manifest. On one level Undershaft’s actions are plain:
he wants to win Barbara over to Perivale St. Andrews,
Andrews, and the first step is to
 win her away f rom the Salvation Army.
Army. But how did he know his method

 Major Barbara  99

 would be effective? Tis question is not often asked. Most assume that he
shows his daughter that the Salvation Army, because it is financially depen-
dent on the likes of Bodger and Undershaft, is inescapably corrcorrupt,
upt, but Shaw
explicitly rejects this interpretation in his preface. Authors can be wrong
about their own works, of course, but they at least deserve a hearing, and
Shaw is emphatic on this point: he repudiates the notion that the Salvation
Army “reduced itself to absurdity or hypocrisy” by accepting the donation
of a distiller and a cannon founder. He condemns as idolatrous superstition
the notion that certain coins are tainted by the hands through which they
have passed. He notes with approval the assertion of an actual officer of the
Salvation Army that “they would take money from the devil himself and
be only too glad to get it out of his hands and into God’s” (Pref. 3:35). An
understanding of how Barbara’s religion differs from that of the Salvation
Army must begin at the most obvious and striking point of departure: the
fact that Mrs. Baines accepts the money and Barbara does not. If the reason
for Barbara’s rejection is an unwillingness to accept tainted money, then Mrs.
Baines is closer to Shaw’s own position than is Barbara. Tat is unlikely. It
 would also mean that Mrs.
Mrs. Baines, in her open-eyed pragmatism, is closer to
Undershaft than is his daughter. But if Barbara is less  enlightened
  enlightened than the
Salvation Army—from the Undershaft   point of view—it is difficult to see
 why he should think
think her so special.

Religion and Responsibility 

Barbara’
Barba ra’ss disillusionmen
disil lusionmentt at the end of the second act illuminates
illum inates the distinc-
dist inc-
tive nature of her faith. It is special, for Barbara understands a fundamental
truth missed by Mrs. Baines: the truth about the admonition to abstain
from judgment. In the preface Shaw points out that “you can no more have
forgiveness without vindictiveness than you can have a cure without a dis-
 ease (3:43). he essence of vindictiveness is the concept that a misdeed is
something to be repaid. Forgiveness is the cancellation of a debt, and sin
(to use Barbara’s terminology) is not a debt. It cannot be erased; it can only
be stopped. his, Shaw says, is a profound point of his disagreement with
the Salvation Army, and Barbara is on his side, not the Army’s. Barbara
demonstrates the practical wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount in fighting
brutality and cruelty. She treats Bill Walker as an equal, a fellow sinner and
child of God. She talks about his assaults on Jenny and Rummy as casually
as she might his clothing or his trade: she actually suggests it is  his
  his trade.
She does not bully, threaten, or condemn him. In fact, she does nothing to
save his soul, as that is generally understood. She merely encourages Bill’s
soul to save him. Rummy’s violent vindictiveness justifies his brutality, and
so, in a real
rea l sense, he is comfortable with
w ith her. ogether
ogether they inhabit
i nhabit a world

100 Stuart E. Baker

in which anger begets anger and violence excuses more violence. When
Barbara tells Bill that he cannot buy his salvation, either in coin or in kind,
 what she really
real ly means is thatt hat she will
wil l not let him
hi m buy off his
h is sou
soul,l, she wil
w illl
not permit him to bribe his conscience. Moral responsibility, the theme
raised and evaded in the first act, is the core of Barbara’s morality and the
expression of her religion. Her enemy is its evasion. In Barbara’s religion,
salvation is achieved not through works, not faith, and certainly not pain or
atonement, but by responsibility to one’s own soul. Anything that erects a
 walll between
 wal bet ween a man’
ma n’ss conscience and his h is consciousness is her foe.
 Te wall
wal l closes
clo ses like
lik e an iron
i ron gate when her father signs his hi s check.
chec k. Bar-
bara treats her father and Bill Walker alike, as she sees it, they “are the same
sort of sinner, and theres the same salvation ready for them” both (3: 89).
Curiously, Undershaft invites the comparison. He first offers twopence to

round out the

ninety-nine meagertocollection
pounds frombids
the one Bill their
formeeting, then proposes
the purchase to add
of his soul. He
appears to be testing his daughter, testing her devotion to the religion of
responsibility. She does not waver: “You cant buy your salvation here for
twopence: you must work it out” (3:123). Jenny Hill, an orthodox Salva-
tionist, argues for taking the money. Barbara’s refusal shows precisely where
she differs from the Army. She understands, where Jenny does not, that
the acceptance of conscience money, however desperately needed, defeats
the work of saving souls—at least as Barbara conceives that work. Under-
shaft’’s action highlights the difference and reveals the strategic weakness in
shaft
Barbara’s position: she cannot do without conscience money because that
is all the money available. Bill is not convinced that consciences cannot be
bought here; he contends that he is not allowed to buy off his soul only
because he cannot come up with the price.
All this leads to the scene of hushed awe in which Undershaft signs
 his check. Te charged pause is broken by Bill’s “Wot prawce selvytion nah?”
Barbara’s silence, maintained after her initial brief expression of dismay at
the news of Bodger’s offer, is over as well. Her father’s check confirmed Bill’s
cynicism and justified his contempt. His conscience has been bribed by proxy.
She must protest now, as keenly as she feels the Army’s need for the money,
because her   vision
vision of the Salvation Army is on the edge of annihilation. She
cannot demand moral responsibility only from those who cannot afford the
price of irresponsibility.
irresponsibility. Even if she could accept such inconsistency and dis-
crimination, she knows that as long as the Bill Walkers of the world under-
stand that consciences are for sale, her sword must turn to straw. After a
 valiant last stand, she accepts the inevitability of defeat. Like a soldier yield-
y ield-
ing his sword, she submits her badge of Salvation to her father. It is uncon-
ditional surrender.

 Major Barbara  101

Undershaft has helped to illuminate Barbara, but he himself remains

a mystery. If anything, he has become more enigmatic: Why, short of mali-
ciousness, has he done this? He robs her of her faith, but what does he offer
in return but cynicism and pessimism? Undershaft challenges his daughter
to seek a new and better faith when she sees that the old one has failed. Like
Barbara, we would be glad for a better one, but can see only a worse. Does
he want to break her spirit? oo destroy the very
ver y qualities that had drawn him
to her? Everything he has said suggests that he believes her particular reli-
gious inspiration allies her naturally with him, and not the Salvation Army;
he wants Barbara because  of
  of her unique religion. Te faiths of daughter and
father become one in the final scene.

Father and Daughter 

Barbara’s attention
in the second is directed
act, and Undershafttoward
doesBill Walker
battle rather than
with Cusins ratherher father
than his
daughter in the third. his curious indirectness is the consequence of the
point that Shaw makes: that there is no real conflict between father and
daughter,, that they are
daughter a re two
t wo sides of one co
coin,
in, two
t wo manifestat
manifestations
ions of the same
spirit. he apparent conflict between the two is a misunderstanding, the
result of Barbara’s youth and inexperience. In this parable, Barbara stands
for religion, spirit, and morality; her father for matter, wealth, and destruc-
tive power. he third act brings them together by showing that the barrier
between
betwe en them is only a wall
wal l of lies erected to protect
protect weak aand
nd sensitive con-
con-
sciences from reality.
real ity. here is a genuine conflict
conf lict in the play, however: a con-
flict between ideas. Barbara and Undershaft are on the same side. heirs is
the camp that views the world as one, not divided into good and evil. heir
 world has no scoundrels
scoundre ls or good men, only children
child ren of the same
sa me Father: or
in Shavian terms, different expressions of the Life Force. We see one side
 of that unity in the second act and another in the third. he reason that
Shaw needs Bill Walker to provide a subject for Barbara’s soul-saving skills
is that, while they are effective and greatly needed in this soul-destroying
 world of ours, they would be useless against
aga inst her father. hey are not too
 weak;; they are simply
 weak simply redundant. Retribution, atonement
atonement and repayment are
the bricks and mortar with which Bill Walker, like most of us, builds walls
of evasion around his soul; Barbara saves it by tearing down the walls. Bill
is not allowed to escape from his conscience with money or pain. Andrew
Undershaft does not attempt to avoid his soul; he takes pride in standing
up and facing it. He refuses to spend money on “hospitals, cathedrals, and
other receptacles for conscience mon
money,
ey,”” and puts his spare cash
ca sh instead into
research on bombs and bullets (3:89). His motto is “Unashamed.” Since he
refuses to hide from his conscience, he can remain
rema in unasha
unashamed
med only by doing

102 Stuart E. Baker

nothing shameful. His soul does not need salvation because it is already
strong and free.
Undershaft’s clear conscience is not enough to demonstrate an affinity
between father and daughter if all it means is that her conscience is strong
and healthy while his is dead or dying—if Barbara is a saint and Undershaft
a scoundrel.4  If that is so then Barbara’s defeat does mean cynicism and
despair. Dramatically,
Dramatic ally, the question is
i s whether Barbara
Bar bara can accept the cannon
ca nnon
foundryy and what it represents without compromising all that she represents.
foundr
 Te answer to this question lies in Undershaft’
Undershaft ’s “true
“tr ue faith of an Armorer”
and the mottoes of the seven successive Undershafts. Barbara declares that
there are no saints or scoundrels; she practices what Shaw calls moral equal-
ity, and she espouses, by her actions, the Christian precept to “judge not.”
 Te Armorer’
Armorer ’s faith is the logical extension of that rule. Te second Under-
Unde r-

shaft
NONE wasHAVE
explicitHE
on this point: “ALL
RIGH HAVE HE
O JUDGE” RIGH
(3:168). O FIGH.
Te Armorer’s faith
still shocks and puzzles critics,
cri tics, although Shaw takes pains
pain s to explain it in his
preface. It is not a glorification of machismo and combat for its own sake; it
is the ultimate test of Barbara’s principles of moral equality, an affirmation
that you cannot divide the world into good people and bad. Undershaft, like
his daughter, is an ethical anarchist. He is not necessarily a social anarchist,
as we see both in his speech on social organization to Stephen and, more
significantly, the experiments in social cooperation and community welfare
he has created in Perivale St. Andrew. Undershaft understands the need for
social organization, but he also understands that socialism must be founded
on what Shaw called the “Anarchist Spirit” ( Impossibilities
 Impossibil ities of A narchism 23).
o f Anarchism
 Te organization of civilization must not outrage the consciences of its indi-
 vidual members. Whenever
Whene ver it does, it will justify the “morality of militarism”
and individualist defiance that Undershaft represents. As Shaw observes,
 “the justification of militarism is that circumstances may at any time make it
the true morality of the moment” (Preface 3:50). Te one true morality for
each man or woman, Undershaft maintains, is dependent on circumstances.
His own circumstances include a financial dependence on the manufacture
of arms, but all who find their consciences outraged by a social system that
methodically degrades and brutalizes large numbers of its citizens will find
that militarism must become their own true morality—if they have the cour-
age to face reality. “Te consent of the governed
go verned”” has been the accepted foun-
dation of our political theory for centuries, yet Undershaft’s bald statement
of its implications still shocks the very people who regard themselves as the
champions of liberal democracy.
Foundations are not pretty, and Undershaft represents the foundation of
the same principles of which Barbara embodies the superstructure. He makes

 Major Barbara  103

this clear in the brief exchange he has with her in the final scene. He saved her
soul from
f rom the crime of poverty and allowed her to become Major Barbara, to
become a champion of spirit and saver of souls. Foundations,
Foundations, however
however hard to
look at, are essential. You cannot free
f ree the soul without first f reeing the body;
 you cannot serve others without first serving yourself; you cannot give to
others if you have impoverished yourself. And you can only choose ffrom rom the
alternatives which are presented to you. Undershaft says:

I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer

than a slave. I dont want to be either; but if you force the alternative
on me, then by Heaven, I’ll chose the braver and more moral one.
I hate poverty
povert y and slavery
slaver y worse than any other crimes whatsoever.
(3:174)

Make no mistake, when Undershaft

Undershaft says that poverty
povert y and slavery are crimes,
he means that the pauper and slave are criminals. By accepting the degrada-
tion society has imposed on them they are guilty of unspeakable sins against
the Life Force that can be redeemed only by the courage to rebel against it.
Undershaft offers them the means. When bloodshed is the only alterna-
tive to degradation of oneself, “hou shalt starve ere I starve” becomes the
foundation of all ethics.5  What is wanted is “courage enough to embrace
this truth” (3:173).
 Tat is why Andrew Undershaft needs Barbara. Undershaft points out
that he “can make cannons: [he] cannot
ca nnot make courage
cour age and conviction”
convicti on” (3:169).
(3:169 ).
 Tat is what is wanted. He can provide the means for those who are willing
to risk their lives in order to save their souls, but he cannot give them the will
to do it. Tat is the truth about his own well-fed, comfortably housed, and
self-satisfied workers. He has not only saved them, like his daughter, from
 self satisfied workers. He has not only saved them, like his daughter, from
the crime of poverty;
poverty ; he has saved them from the need to fight their way out
of it. Tere is no reason to believe that they would have had the necessary
courage and conviction if he had not. If the conviction needed is faith in their
own equality,
equality, they
they would fail the test; Undershaft is the only one who thinks
of the workers as equals: they want nothing to do with such radical notions.
Andrew comments that the mosaic in the William Morris Labor Church,
“No Man Is Good Enough to Be Another Man’s Master,” shocked his men.
Obviously, the motto was his idea (this is explicit in the original manuscript)
(3:162 –63). Tere is plenty of
(3:162–63). o f hierarchy and inequalit
ine qualityy at Perivale St. Andrew,
Andrew,
but none of it originates from Undershaft, save that which is a spontaneous
reaction to his personality. It is created and enforced by the workers them-
selves, although the inequality in income that justifies the hierarchy and is
 justified by it merely augments the profits of the owner,
owner, as Undershaft wryly
wr yly

104 Stuart E. Baker

notes. Shaw is making the same point Gunnar Myrdal

My rdal made the foundation
of his 1944 study of American race relations:

Our hypothesis is that in a society where there are broad social

classes and, in addition, more minute distinctions and splits in
the lower strata, the lower class groups will, to a great extent, take
care of keeping each other subdued , thus relieving, to that extent,
the higher classes of this otherwise painful task necessary to the
monopolization of the power and the advantages. (68) (Emphasis
in original)

Cusins, like most of the critics, sees nothing but cynicism in Undershaft’s
recognition of this truth, but Shaw’s point is that this attitude among the
exploited perpet
perpetuates
classes. Most uates their
liberals exploita
ex ploitation
and socialists tion
comeregardless
regard
fromlesstheofcomfortable
the wishes ofclasses.
the upper-
upper
he-
irony is not, as Cusins believes, that the workers are Undershaft’s willing
accomplices in his gulling of them; it is that no one can be forced to accept
the responsibility of freedom who prefers the comfort and safety of slavery.
If men are docile and acquiescent when forced into brutal and degrading
circumstances, should we expect them to accept painful responsibility when
they are well-fed and self-satisfied? Shaw believed that one of the worst
effects of poverty was to maim souls beyond redemption, but nourished
bodies do not necessarily produce flourishing souls. In the Derry manu-
script, Undershaft tells Barbara that she is proof of the “principle that if
 you take care
ca re of people’s
people’s bodies their souls
sou ls will
wi ll take
ta ke care of themselves,”
themselves,” but
he also accepts Cusins’s description of his workers as slaves: “o those who
are worth their salt as slaves, I give the means of life. But to those who will
 not or cannot sell their manhood . . . I give the means of death (200 06).
In the revised version, he merely challenges Barbara to “ry your hand on
my men: their souls are hungry because their bodies are full” (3:173). Some
hearty souls, like Barbara’s, will thrive untended if they have good soil, but
most others require more careful attention. hat is Barbara’s job.
 Te unity that binds Undershaft
Undershaf t and his daughter together is the unity
in which they both believe. Neither is afraid of evil because neither believes
in its existence as a separate entity, a formidable Other. Each has utter con-
fidence in the basic goodness of other human beings: Barbara in Bill Walker,
and Undershaft in the varieties of human beings to whom he sells his arms.
Many otherwise perceptive critics go astray when confronted with Under-
shaft; they cannot comprehend how such a unity is possible because they
imagine that Undershaft advocates indiscriminate murder, but that is not in
the least what he is saying. Like his daughter, the sire of Major Barbara has

 Major Barbara  105

faith in the consciences of his brothers and sisters—fellow children of God.

Barbara trusts Bill’s conscience to persuade him not to assault women, and
Andrew appeals to the consciences of the poor to demand their freedom
and dignity—and to be willing to kill if it is not granted. For Shaw, as for
Undershaft, poverty and slavery
slaver y are forms of living death, to accept them is to
acquiesce in your own murder. If killing is the only alternative offered to you,
to choose the sword is to choose life. Te issue is whether to passively accept
a large evil rather than actively choose a lesser one. Most tolerate the greater
evil rather than allow themselves to feel contaminated by active participation
in the lesser. Undershaft does not, and that is the source of his contempt for
the lust after
af ter “personal
“personal righteousness.”
Some critics imagine that Shaw is offering Undershaft as a kind of Sav-
ior of Mankind, an idea he vehemently repudiated ( Collected Letters  3:629).
  3:629).
 Te search
search
If Shaw for adepicted
often savior isstrong,
quixoticpositive
folly because saviors are
and dynamic an idealist
characters likedelusion.
Under-
shaft it was not because he was dotty about Great Men, as some imagine; it
is because he believed in the future and wished to point us toward what we
might become rather
ra ther than ru
rubb our noses in our present
prese nt follies.
follies . Caesar, Under-
shaft, Joan, and Lady Cicely are not supermen and superwomen, because the
superman does not yet exist. Tey are only hints as to what he might become.
Barbara and her father are both such beacons of the future because they have
unified souls, they have faith in their own wills, and they have each dedicated
themselves to a cause beyond themselves. Tey are both doing God’s work
because they have given themselves over to the Will of which they are a part,
the piece of deity in each of them. Tey look at the world with open eyes
and know the only way to combat the copious evil they see is to face and
transform it. o flee only grants it possession of the field. Tey are realists.
 Barbara s vision was at first obscured by her youth and ignorance, but she
has her father’s eyes. Te real conflict is not between father and daughter, but
between realism and idealism. Idealism, not surprisingly, has many champi-
ons. Nearly everyone else in the play expresses some idealist notion, but the
most important advocates of the idealist viewpoint are Stephen, his mother,
and especially Cusins.

Cusins
 Yes,
 Yes, Cusins is an
a n idealist.
ideal ist. He is the best example
exa mple of that superior
super ior variety
var iety of
the human species to be found in all
al l of Shaw’s
Shaw’s plays. He is highly intelligent,
intell igent,
strong in will, conscientious to the point of self-destruction, and remarkably
perceptive. He illustrates in an extreme degree both the admirable and the
pernicious traits Shaw saw as the marks of an idealist. he principle differ-
ence between his idealism and that of Lady Britomart or Stephen is that he

106 Stuart E. Baker

is far more perceptive and clear-headed, so that idealism leads him to bitter
irony and cynicism rather than hypocrisy and self-deception. Cusins is set
apart ethically from Lady Brit and Stephen by the fact that they are moral-
ists while he is conscientious. Undershaft makes the difference clear when
he says to his wife: “My dear: you are the incarnation of morality. Your con-
science is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names.”
Morality tells us to condemn those whose behavior we find disagreeable;
conscience tells us how we ourselves should or should not behave. Stephen’s
concern that too much pampering will be bad for the souls of workers is a
more subtle form of morality because it is unconscious of any similar delete-
rious effect his own privileges might have on his character. Stephen regards
a clear conscience as his birthright; Cusins knows he has to work for his.
Stephen worries about maintaining the character of others (especially those
in thes lower
classes
classe Cusinsorders), Cusinsalong
as a moralist worries
a long withabout wihis
his wife. own. Undershaft,
fe. Cusins’s
Cusins’ however,
s lust for a clear con-
science he calls “patronizing
“patronizi ng people who are not so so lucky as yourself
your self ” (3
(3:1
:177).
77).
 his is an interesting
i nteresting statement of the principle of moral eequal
quality,
ity, implying
that a person born with a flawed character is unlucky in the same way as
one born with a club foot. Bill Walker is a ruffian largely as a result of his
circumstances, according to Undershaft, for he ventures that he could save
his soul more effectively than Barbara just by giving him a job and a decent
income. Environment is not the only culprit: there are congenital character
defects as well as physical ones, but a person born with a murderous temper
is quite as unfortunate as one born with a withered arm. A moral disability
is as worthy
wort hy of compassion
compassion as a physical
physica l one. hat is why Undershaft equates
equ ates
the lust for personal righteousness with “patronizing people not so lucky as
 yourself.
 yoursel f.”” It is Undershaft’s equivalent
equiva lent of the Christia
Christiann “here
“ here but for the
 grace of God, go I.” he very fact that Cusins wants to avoid being a rascal
means that he too divides the world into rascals and heroes. He would dis-
tribute the black and white hats differently
dif ferently from Stephen oorr Lady Britomart,
but the principle is the same.
 Tis is how Undershaft
Undershaft greets Cusins’s claim to believe in love:

UNDERSHAF. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love the
oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the underdog everywhere.
Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the French? Do you love the
English?
CUSINS. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the wick-
edest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.
UNDERSHAF. hat is what comes of your gospel of love, is it? (3:177)

 Major Barbara  107

 his passage is an assault on liberallibera l idealism that has puzzled even the
best of Shaw’s critics. When Shaw says that we are all expressions of the
Life Force, imperfect manifestations of God’s attempts to become perfect,
Shavians nod in assent, but when he insists that is as true of the thief as the
saint, or the capitalist
capital ist as the worker, many cannot take h him
im seriously. Bu
Butt the
gospel of love falls apart when love is denied to those you have condemned
as wicked: those less fortunate than yourself. So Cusins is a moralist as
 well, but rather than directing
direc ting his moral scorn safely outward
outwa rd like
l ike Stephen
and his mother, he directs it toward himself and those groups of which
he is a member. If Barbara and her father are alike in possessing unified
souls, Cusins’s soul is marked by division and conflict. Shaw describes him
as a man whose health is being destroyed by a perpetual struggle between
his conscience and impulses of which he does not approve. o judge from
the passages he quotes, his favorite Greek tragedy is he Bacchae , and like
Pentheus, he is being torn apart. Pentheus is both drawn to and repelled
by Dionysus; Cusins is drawn to both Barbara and Andrew Undershaft in
spite of his conscience, and he casts both of them in the role of Dionysus. 6 
 Yet
 Y et he calls
ca lls Barbara
Ba rbara his “guardian
“guardia n angel”
ange l” and turns
t urns to her father to exclai
e xclaim
m
“Avaunt!” (3:156). He describes himself as a “poor professor of Greek, the
most artificial and self-suppressed of human creatures” (3:117). His answer
to bigotry, intolerance, and class snobbery is to reverse the roles of the con-
demned and the privileged. Instead of damning others, he damns himself.
He identifies himself with the English when he calls England the wickedest
nation on earth.
eart h. After accepting
a ccepting the role of apprentice to Undershaft,
Undershaft, he jus-
tifies himself by saying that he loves the common people and wants to arm
them against the intellectuals, a group to which he himself conspicuously
belongs. His love of the poor
po or is only pity, which Undershaft contemptuously
contemptuously
 dismisses as the
t he “scavenger of misery” His
H is condemnation of
of the English and
the intellectuals is self-hatred inspired by guilty consciousness of his own
privileges and comforts. His attempt to achieve moral purity by avoiding
contact with wickedness is doomed. It is not only ruining his health, but
 when the strain
strai n is brought to crisis at the conclusion of the second act, he
suffers what amounts to a moral nervous collapse and wallows hysterically
in what he is convinced is evil, even to the point of getting drunk with the
man he calls the Prince of Darkness (who stays characteristically sober).
Unlike Barbara and Undershaft, he views transgressions as debts to be
repaid. He approves, to Barbara’s dismay, of Bill’s attempt to pay for his
misdeed, and rejects forgiveness, not (like Shaw and Barbara) because the
concept is fraudulent, but because “we must pay our debts” (3:114, 178).
Many critics, themselves liberal intellectuals, believe that Cusins will be an
improvement on the old Andrew Undershaft because of his commitment to

108 Stuart E. Baker

arm the oppressed rather than the establishment. his is a desperate hope
at best. he new Undershaft, like the old, will have to sell to whom he can
in order to thrive, and can no more make courage and conviction than his
predecessor. Barbara is the real hope, because the job at hand is to awaken
dormant souls.

Revisions
 here were two signif icant trends in the many changes Shaw made to the t he
final scene of the play: one was to make Cusins a strong and more stead-
fast advocate of the idealist viewpoint. he other was to pull Barbara more
into the background. he portrayal of Cusins in the Derry manuscript is
dramatically unfocused; in the final version he is a stronger opponent to
Undershaft. Speeches are added to set him apart from Undershaft and oth-
ers deleted that had shown him
hi m coming over to the older man’s posiposition.
tion. he
original ending was less ambiguous with respect to the struggle between
Cusins and Undershaft. Barbara, on the other hand, has considerably less
to say in the final version of the last scene. Some of her dialogue, like her
reproach to her father about robbing from her a human soul, is moved to
earlier in the play. Some minor lines are given to other characters, and oth-
ers are cut. Curiously, the effect of this is to give her greater strength, as the
men are engaged in a struggle for her—more specifically, for the spiritual
power and moral authority she represents. he parable is also better served
since some of her almost peevish objections to the munitions plant in the
original undercut her final acceptance of it. he unity of father and daugh-
ter is made clearer while the ideological conflict of realism and idealism is
made more vital through the strengthening of Cusins. here is no ambigu-
ity about the philosophical meaning of the play: that is dear and consistent.
  he only question remaining
remaini ng at the
t he end of the
t he play is whether Cusins, the
moralist, will change. Much depends on the answer. If he does not, if we
go on dividing the human race into the righteous and the unrighteous, we
 willl perpetuate
 wil perpet uate evil
evi l rather than exterminate
exter minate it. Barbara
Barbar a knows you cannot
cure evil
ev il by either hiding or punishing. Only by facing it—with strength but
 without vindictiveness—ca
vindict iveness—can n we begin to challenge
chal lenge the multitude of social
evils our bungled and hysterical attempts at civilization have brought upon
us. hat is what  Major Barbara  is  is about.

N
1. A thorough and informative discussion of Shaw’s numerous and substan-
tial revisions of the play can be found in Bernard Dukore’s Introduction to  Major
Barbara: A Facsimile of the Holograph Manuscript . Dukore’s analysis details the many
 ways in which Shaw
Shaw’s’s changes iimprove
mprove the dr
dramatic
amatic st
struct
ructure
ure of the
t he play.

 Major Barbara  109

2. Shaw implies at the end of the preface that the play should be considered as
a parable when he “solemnly” denounces anyone foolhardy enough to claim it as a
record
British ofversion
actualoffact.
theLest
film:anyone
“What miss the about
you are point,tohesee
made it utterly
is not an idleexplicit
tale of for the
people
 who never existed and thingsth ings th
that
at could never have happened. It is a ” (Col-
lected Screenplays  485).
 485).
3. Shaw further emphasized the difference between Undershaft and his suc-
cessor in his revision for the 1931 standard edition by changing “Six o’clock tomor-
row morning, my young friend” to “Six o’clock tomorrow morning, Euripides.” See
Dukore, “oward an Interpretation of  Major Barbara ..””
4. In the Derry manuscript, Undershaft explicitly tells his daughter that the
issue between them is whether or not he is, as Cusins had said, “a most infernal old
scoundrel.”
5. It is possible that Shaw got the expression from . H. Huxley. In an essay
called “he Struggle for Existence in Human Society,” Huxley expresses very
Undershaftian ideas. He discusses the difficulties in trying to achieve cooperation
and peace among citizens with conflicting interests: “he moral nature in us asks
for no more than is compatible with the general good; the non-moral nature pro-
claims and acts upon that fine old Scottish family motto, ‘hou shalt starve ere I
 want’” (93
(93).). 
he
he ac
actua
tuall motto, that of tthe
he ffamil
amilyy of Cranstoun from the barony of
Midlothian, was “hou shalt want ere I want.” Huxley stresses the egoism of the
sentiment and Shaw the extremity of need.
6. In his hysteria at the end of the second act, Cusins says, “Dionysos Under-
shaft has descended. I am possessed,” but he also says that the Salvation Army
“reveals the true worship of Dionysos” to “the poor professor of Greek” and that he
 worshiped Barbara
Ba rbara because he saw “Dionysos and a nd al
alll the ot
others”
hers” in her.
 

L A G R E  A A L L E N  L E N K E R  

 Make War
War on War:
War: A Shavian Conundrum

O n September 3, 1914, C. F. G. Masterman, England’s propaganda

chief, convened a meeting of well-known authors to appeal for their aid
in building confidence for the British war cause. his meeting resulted in
fifty-three of England’s most eminent authors and dramatists signing a
patriotic declaration supporting Britain’s entry into World War I. George
Bernard Shaw did not attend the meeting, nor did he sign the document,
and the omission of his name from the list was a glaring one. 1
Shaw, instead of attending the meeting, was busily completing one of
his most infamous non-dramatic pieces, Common Sense About the War , which
 was distributed as an eighty-four page
page supplement to the Sunday
Sunday,, November
14, 1914, edition of the  New Statesman. Te article said, in effect, that no
 cause, not even patriotism, justified the terrible cost of war; however, popular
sentiment erroneously interpreted Common Sense  as   as a pro-German appeal.
Consequently, Shaw was attacked on all sides as unpatriotic, and was espe-
cially vilified by his fellow writers who signed Masterman’s document. As
a result, several literary organizations, including the prestigious Society of
Authors, expelled Shaw from their membership.2 However, unbeknown to
those public patriots, Shaw, despite his condemnation of the war, contributed
twenty thousand pounds to the war campaign in 1915. Shaw reasoned that
 war is wrong but that
that once engaged in it, a country must responsibly provide

From War and Words: Horror and Heroism in the Literature of Warfare, edited by Sara Munson
Deats, Lagretta allent Lenker, and Merry G. Perry, pp. 165−85. Copyright © 2004 by
Lexington Books.

111

112 Lagretta allent Lenker

for those charged with waging it and not burden future generations with war
debts.3 As the dead and wounded began arriving home in England, popular
sentiment began to embrace the philosophy espoused in Common Sense . Real-
izing this swing in public opinion, Shaw explained that his visionary thinking
 was both a blessing and a curse, “Shaw [speaking about himself ] is often ten
minutes ahead of the truth, which is almost as fatal as being behind time.”4
Although Shaw was famous for his definite opinions on almost every
topic, he continually presented multiple, often contradictory ideas about war.
Perhaps this conflicting
conflicting and conflicted viewpoint resulted ffrom
rom his visionary
intellect
intell ect or, perhaps,
perhap s, his Eros side was more dominant
domi nant than his
hi s Tanatos side,
or more than likely,
likely, he was dramatizing society’
society ’s ambivalent attitudes toward
 war..5 Alf
 war  Alfred
red urco
urco distills the ideas found in Shaw’s
S haw’s massive writings on war
and peace:

Although war is a human abomination that no amount of

romanticizing or heroics can justify, nonetheless, Shaw believed,
“when war overtakes you, you must fight. . . . One does not trouble
about the danger of damp sheets when the house is on fire”
(WRW   [What I Really Wrote About the War ],], pp. 234, 232). Te
best outcome that can be hoped for from the “colossal stupidity
of modern war” (WRW , p. 27) is a concluding peace conference
capable of creating structures of international cooperation banning
 war as an instrument of future policy.
policy. Pacifism, while admirable
in theory, is not practicable because “we must face the fact that
pugnacity is still(WRW 
in its infancy” a part, p.
of 236)
human6 nature, and that civilization is still
 Even though Shaw’s treatises, prefaces, and correspondence concerning
 war make fascinating
fascinati ng study, this essay focuses on how Shaw’s multivalent
multiva lent
ideas on war influence his creation of five of his major plays:  Arms and the
 Man, Caesar and Cleopatra ,  Major Barbara , Heartbreak House , and Saint
 Joan. Despite their various themes and settings, all five plays employ three
discernable strategies to dramatize Shaw’s love–hate fascination with war.
I study these plays bearing in mind urco’s maxim that although patterns
emerge in his work, Shaw never made the same point twice in exactly the
same way.7
 Te first technique
technique Shaw employs to interrogate
interrogate his society’
society ’s love/hate
relationship with war is to create multifaceted, complex heroes.  Arms and the
 Man, Caesar and Cleopatra , Major Barbara , Heartbreak House , and Saint Joan 
all feature military
mili tary images usually associated with the hero;
he ro; however
however,, in a com-
plicit yet subversive critique, the playwright also limns portraits that reveal the

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 113

 weaknesses and humanity of the very military figure or idea being valorized.
 weaknesses
Such treatments call into question the efficacy of war as well as the stature of
the hero and illustrate the ambivalence of the culture that highly esteems
este ems brav-
ery and
an d military prowess while simultaneously deploring
deplor ing the violence, destruc-
tion, and horror that accompany any battle. As Richard Dietrich notes:

Because of the considerable debunking of the hero that goes on

in . . . [a] Shaw play, Shaw was once thought one of the fathers of
antiheroicc literature,
antiheroi literat ure, . . . but to huma
humanize
nize the hero
h ero as Shaw has done
don e
is not to kill the hero. Shaw, in fact, was one of the last defenders of
heroism in literature, seeking to rescue the hero by separating his
essence from all the romantic claptrap that had grown up around
him. “We want credible heroes,” said Shaw.8

In keeping with Shaw’s penchant for educating characters and by extension

the public through his plays, each of the unconventional heroes considered
here attempts to tutor another in his or her philosophy or practice of war.
 his professorial stance is one of Shaw’s favorite means of supporting and
sustaining his innovative drama of ideas.9
 Te second hallmark of these war plays concerns their settings—each
settings—each
takes place in
i n a drawing room, court chamber, or royal encampment well away
from the battlefield. Tese locales provide Shaw’s characters with the ideal
 venue in which to hold their famous debates. Shaw,
Shaw, the ardent socialist and
advocate of a “practical” league of nations, employed his dramas to explore aand
nd
promote
tions for these ideas as theyofrelate
war, philosophies war to war.
(and Teseand
peace), many discussions
causes of prepara-a
of war constitute
 kind of Shavian “war in the head,” in which Shaw’s war talk permeates the
plays without a single blow being struck,
str uck, without a shot being
bei ng fired. One reason
for the success of this cerebral
cerebr al strateg
strategyy is that Shaw often
of ten presents his “enemy”
as a social institution—such
instituti on—such as capitalism, nationalism, or patriotism—instead
of the conventional villain of melodrama and military romance.10
 Te third
third pattern characterizing
characterizing these war playsplays is their ambivalent end-
ings. Tese dramas end, not in battles won or lost, but in questions, hopes,
and dreams. Perhaps Shaw’s own ambivalence about war, as exemplified by
his private, not public, support of England’s war effort, informs the endings
of these plays and makes closure difficult, if not impossible. Or maybe Shaw
deliberately stages the open-ending approach to encourage audiences to con-
sider these issues of war and peace long after a fter leaving the theater.
 Arms and the Man (1894), for example, features a handsome soldier with
a realistic attitude toward war who deflates the romantic notions of the hero-
ine concerning battle and the bravery of her betrothed. In this well-known

114 Lagretta allent Lenker

farce, bits of chocolate

c hocolate substitute for bullets, and overcoats prove more useful
than smart uniforms. Captain Bluntschli, the practical realist turned Sha-
 vian hero, debunks
debunks Raina’s notions of the glamour of war with pronounce-
ments such as: “All of them [soldiers are afraid to die] . . . It is our duty to
live as long as we can,” and “nine soldiers out of ten are born fools.” 11 Most
deflating, however, is Bluntschli’s description of the cavalry charge, led by
Raina’s betrothed Sergius, which has captured the romantic imagination of
the Bulgarians. Raina asks the soldier who has intruded into her bedroom
(Bluntschli, as it is later revealed) to describe the charge: “It’s like slinging
a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes; then two or three
close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump.” When she presses for an
account of Sergius’ bravery, the mysterious stranger replies: “He did it like
an operatic tenor. . . . We did laugh.”12 Here and elsewhere in the play, Shaw
does not depict war, the ultimate in human aggression, as laughable; rather, it
is the romantic glorification of war that Shaw
S haw finds silly.
As is usually the case, Shaw pairs a “conventional”
“conventional” soldier to serve
ser ve as foil
for the unconventional hero. In  Arms and the Man, Sergius, the windmill-
tilting fiancé of Raina, embodies the more traditional, rromantic
omantic notions about
 war.. Despite his fabled cavalry charge, Sergius soon learns that his victory
 war
 was a hollow one, because the Serbs had the wrong ammunition, and that
the astute soldier would have seen that the battle could have been won with
little effort.13  In a touch of Shavian irony, Bluntschli, the chocolate-cream
soldier, must finish the business of war for the cavalry-charging hero and
his soon-to-be father-in-law, Major Petkoff. Te victors, Sergius and Pet-
koff, cannot
and ask for manage the transfer
their former enemy of three cavalry
cavalr
Bluntschli’s y regiments
help. to anotherthough
Te professional, locale
 unconventional, man of arms dispatches the troops after lunch while the Bul-
garians sign forms and have tea. Is this an educational experience for Sergius
and Petkoff? Perhaps not, but the episode wittily establishes Shaw’s point
about the identity of the true
tr ue wartime hero. Grudgingly admired by the men,
Bluntschli, the citizen soldier, the can-do pragmatist, the silent intruder who
carries chocolate in his ammunition belt, becomes the first in a long line
of Shavian non-traditional heroes, who grow ever more unconventional as
Shaw’s dramatic arsenal develops.
Shaw never dramatizes the actual military maneuvers that frame and
incite the action of Arms and the Man; instead he presents descriptions of the
battles in the boudoir,
boudoi r, patio, and the much-touted
much-toute d library
librar y (complete with three
bookshelves and an electric bell!) of the Petkoff home. Of course, dramatists,
including the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, have relied on messengers
and other forms of report to relay the news of victories, defeats, and the hor-
rors of warfare. Shaw, however, employs this technique not only for dramatic

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 115

economy but also to provide a forum to discuss the social problems and issues
that underlie even his romantic tales of chocolate soldiers. Te result becomes
a kind a “war in the head,” in which the drama of ideas explodes to perform
the real Shavian
S havian work. Tis discursive element in  Arms and the Man portrays
society’s ambivalence about war as demonstrated by the description of the big
cavalry charge, which is subsequently undercut; Sergius’ report of being pun-
ished for winning an important battle in the wrong way; and Major Petkoff ’s
asking his wife to give military orders and keep discipline. Moreover, for
good measure, Shaw incorporates discussions on nationalism via the conflicts
between the Serbians and Bulgarians, depictions of class warfare between the
Petkoff
Petk off ’s servants
ser vants and their employers, and an exposé of the sham aristocracy.
aristocracy.
(Mrs. Petkoff announces: “Our position is almost historical: we can go back
for twenty years.”)14 Certainly, in subsequent plays, the drama of ideas con-
siders graver issues, but the foundation is laid here as one martial stereotype
after another falls victim to Shaw’s pen.
 oo conclude his “drama
  “drama of real life,” Shaw chooses not victory in battle,
or bellicose speeches, but the age-old stage convention for comedic end-
ings—marriage. However, this time, the unconventional hero not only gets
his military rival’s girl but also his admiration. As Bluntschli concludes his
business of winning Raina’s hand and dispatching the final bit of military
deployment, Sergius—Bluntschli’s rival in love and war—is heard to say
“What a man! Is he a man!”15 Tus, the victors do not receive the spoils: Te
military careers of the would-be serious soldiers Sergius and
a nd Petkoff are over,
over,
 while Bluntschli, the practical man of the world, goes on to greater chal-
lenges. Tus the chocolate soldier, who prefers candy to bullets and efficient
 battle tactics to those that bring glory and fame, effectively subverts the big
ending of the conventional warriors with their romantic pomp and visions
of valor in battle. With this conclusion, Shaw debunks sentimental notions
of war while showing an almost grudging admiration for the practical fellow
 who performs well in battle. Yet,Yet, as noted above, earlier in the play Blunt-
schli delivers brutally frank
f rank indictments of contemporary warfare. H Having
aving his
unconventional hero profess the horrors of war yet execute exemplary feats
fe ats in
combat suggests Shaw’s understanding of society’s ambivalence toward war;
having this hero assimilated into the family of his enemy through marriage
demonstrates Shaw’s notion that causes of battles are often shallow, unrea-
sonable, and easily resolvable.
Interestingly, Shaw’s audience for  Arms and the Man  consisted of a
nation that had “seen only one serious war . . . (the Crimean) in almost a
hundred years,” and they regarded it as shocking and almost traitorous that
a dramatist should so demean the noble profession of arms.16 Also, the criti-
cal debate over whether  Arms and the Man is a charming little romance or

116 Lagretta allent Lenker

stagecraft with political import took a real-world turn in 1903 1 903 when the Aus-
trian government banned the play for fear of possible “political excitement
about Macedonia and Bulgaria” and because of its dangerous revolutionary
tendencies.17  Shaw, stung by the British press’ initial reception of his play,
gloated: “I am charmed and flattered by the action of the Austrian govern-
ment. . . . Here the critics persist in treating ‘Arms and the Man’ as comic
opera or a burlesque.
bur lesque. It has been left for the Austrian Government to see my
original purpose and to discover that it is really a serious study of humanity
 with a revolutionary tendency.”18 Tus, although the play ends in the comedic
revolutionary tendency.”
tradition of marriage, the
the critical reviews and political implications are decid-
edly at odds.
Four years later, Shaw again considers the art of war and peace as he
offers his portrayal
portraya l of the legendary warrior and ruler Julius Caesar.19 Writ-
r uler,, Julius
1898 , Caesar and Cleopatra  offers
ten in 1898,  offers the most nearly perfect, albeit uncon-
 ventional, hero in the Shavian canon; in fact, Caesar often is called Shaw’s
Christ figure.20 Shaw creates a striking contrast to Shakespeare’s
Shakespeare’s Caesar, who
claims to be a god while overlooking his own human frailties. Both shatter-
ing and transcending stereotypes of aging and leadership, Shaw’s Caesar is an
unassuming, self-deprecating itan who performs military and diplomatic
feats worthy of a superman while laughing at his own humanity. Most par-
ticularly, Caesar continually points to his advancing age, which may deflate
his heroic appearance but does not affect his heroic actions. His Egyptian
friends counter his claims by calling Caesar not only a “conquering soldier,
but also the creative poet-artist.”21 Caesar becomes another heroic character
in the Shavian tradition who exhibits incongruity between an almost “bland,
 self-possessed manner of speech and startling, outrageous, or absurd mat-
ter.”22 Similarly these heroes are plain and direct in their speech yet larger
than life in action.
Shaw deftly undermines the nineteenth-century
nineteenth-centur y tradition of the histori-
cal romance that the play’s title evokes. Audiences
Audiences of that time would expect
to see a memorable romance blossom between the dashing older conqueror
and the fair young queen, but instead Shaw delivers a play in which Caesar
the warrior becomes the father figure, restructuring Egypt and guiding the
sixteen-year-old Cleopatra toward adulthood and full royal power power.. Romantic
Romantic
love is out of the question but at the play’s conclusion, Caesar promises to
send Cleopatra a more traditional romantic warrior/hero (Mark Antony)—as
if Caesar were a father choosing a husband for his daughter.
daughter.
Many critics suggest that Shaw humanizes his protagonist by emphasiz-
ing qualities not typically associated with the hero, which, nevertheless, do
not interfere
inter fere with his abilitie
a bilities.
s. imothy
imot hy G. Vesonder notes
no tes that Caesar’s
Cae sar’s traits
do not match the “age of the typical hero who is always in the prime of life,

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 117

at the height of his physical prowess.” 23 Instead of physical strength, Caesar

embodies the heroic spirit, inverting the convention of youth overcoming
age. Charles A. Berst argues that references to Caesar’s age serve as anticli-
mactic devices. For example, at his first entrance, Caesar claims in soliloquy
a lofty spiritual kinship with a sphinx, after which Cleopatra deflates him
by addressing him as “Old Gentleman.” Later, after Caesar has shown his
capacity for action and donned his armor, he is mocked for being bald. At
the play’s end, the height of Caesar’s glory, he jests that he is “old and ripe for
the knife,” a foreshadowing of his murder.24 As Daniel Leary asserts, most
late-nineteenth-century audiences knew Julius Caesar primarily from f rom Shake-
speare’s tragedy, so an allusion to his murder would evoke the play’s famous
stabbing scene rather than a historical account of Caesar’s death.25
Shaw creates a conspicuous contrast to Shakespeare’s Caesar, at one
 juncture having his Caesar admit his own military mistakes, which have
returned to haunt him, and affirm the lessons of clemency and peace that
he now attempts to teach his officers. As Caesar the conqueror performs the
unlikely act of freeing the Egyptians he has captured in the Alexandrian
palace, the Egyptian leaders and generals of the Roman occupation army
remind Caesar that they, acting in concert, beheaded the invading Pompey,
Caesar’s chief Roman rival. When Caesar expresses disgust at this fickle act,
accusing the perpetrators of extracting unnecessary revenge and of backing
the winning side, Lucius reminds Caesar of his own earlier actions involving
a rival warrior: “You have seen severed heads before, Caesar, and severed right
hands too, I think; some thousands of them, in Gaul, after you vanquished
Vercingetorix. Did you spare him, with all your clemency? Was that ven-
 geance?”26 Tus, Caesar s attempt to lead others to peace by example fails
in a very human fashion, but this lapse does not dissuade Caesar from his
attempts to inculcate in another, younger warrior his principles of warfare.
His trusted lieutenant Rufio does learn and practices “Caesar’s boasted laws
of life,” killing his perceived enemy “Without punishment. . . . Without judg-
ment.”27 For this and other acceptances of Caesar’s theories of war and peace,
Rufio, the son of a f reedman, is made Governor of Egypt, while the queen of
Egypt, another of Caesar’s pupils but one who failed to embrace his philoso-
phy, is almost forgotten as Caesar leaves Egypt for Rome.
Once again, the reports of battles and military intrigue are given primar-
ily in palaces, throne rooms, and adjoining esplanades. Despite some minor
saber rattling between Romans and Egyptians in acts one and two and a
memorable scene at the lighthouse in the Alexandrian harbor,
harbor, on-stage
on-stage Shaw’s
Egyptian siege is “drawing room” war. Lucius describes Pompey’s murder to
the attendant crowd in Cleopatra’s throne room; Cleopatra discusses the siege
of Egypt
Egy pt in her boudoir; and Pothinus,
Pothinus, the
the enemy of Cleopatra, warns
warns Caesar

118 Lagretta allent Lenker

of eminent mutiny and revolt on the splendidly decorated roof of Cleopatra’s

Cleopatra’s
28
palace.
“learn to Although CaesarShaw
look on battles,” tells never
Cleopatra thatthis
requires to of
behis
a true queen29she
audience must
 Instead,
 Inste ad,
 we are treated to typical Shavian discourse on the pitfalls of nationalism as
Caesar mocks the savage ways of his British secretary, who, in turn, derides
Caesar for his frivolous Italian habits.30 Te more pertinent topics, however,
deal with education,
educ ation, clemency,
cleme ncy, and leadership,
leader ship, all treated in the finest
fine st Shavia
Shaviann
dialogue. Shaw’s Caesar,
Caesar, the
the warrior antitype par excellence characterizes his
preference for companions: “Oh, this military life! this tedious, brutal life of
action. . . . we are mere doers and drudgers: a swarm of bees turned into men.
Give me a good talker—one with wit and imagination enough to live without
continually doing something!”31
 Yet
 Yet the ending of Caesar and Cleopatra   perhaps most appropriately
expresses Shaw’s multivalent approach towards war. At the play’s conclusion,
Shaw’s heroine has become a “New Woman” manqué, as she fails to grasp
Caesar’s doctrine of clemency and peace.32 Te glorious Egyptian victory is
over, but Caesar’s wars are not—he must engage in battle on his way back to
Rome and realizes that he faces almost certain death. Most tellingly of all,
however,, Caesar forgets Cleopatra in his leave-taking. Tis slight is not mere
however
absentmindedness but the result of Cleopatra’s failure to learn; consequently,
she has become irrelevant in his plans. When Cleopatra reminds him that
he has not bade her farewell and tells him that he has treated her badly, he
rewards her with the promise of a Roman toy (Mark Antony). As Caesar
departs, Cleopatra displays a familiar ambivalence toward a Shavian S havian warrior-
 hero: weary from
f rom attempting to attain Caesar s standards but still attracted by
his strength and magnanimity, she begins to weep. When assured that he will
return, Cleopatra replies, “I hope not. But I can’t help crying, all the same,”
in a bittersweet bit of Shavian irony that foreshadows the stage departure of
S havian hero some thirty years later.33
another legendary Shavian
 Te next play to be considered,
considered,  Major Barbara   (1905), is perhaps the
most unlikely to be included in a study such as this. Te drama features not
practitioners of war, but the incongruous combination of munitions manufac-
turers and sincere salvationists—destroyers of bodies and savers of souls. In a
complex scenario constructed around each person attempting to convert the
other to his/her respective brand of “warfare,” Barbara Undershaft, a major in

the Salvation Army;

ra’s estranged father; Andrew Undershaft,
and Adolphus Cusins,wealthy arms
professor of magnate
Greek and and Barba-
Barbara’s
fiancé, compete for each other’s souls and ultimately create a kind of holy
trinity to, as Andrew Undershaft states “make war on war.” 34 Tus, instead of
the singular hero, Shaw produces a synthesizing triumvirate, a strategy that
according to Dietrich confuses literary critics searching for traditional heroes:

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 119

In his middle period we mostly find that certain characters possess

only pieces of
an effective that synthesis
whole. and must
And the idea work with
of synthesis others
seems to betoreplaced
achieve
by that of maintaining a fruitful tension between opposites. No
 wonder critics have been bewildered by  Major Barbara   (1905),
for they have tried to locate in a single character what Shaw
intended for the ensemble. Here Barbara . . . finds that salvation
is a complicated matter requiring more than simple faith. o be
effective that faith must engage in dialectical play, . . . which in
practical terms, in this play, means marrying a professor of Greek
and making a pact with her “devil” of a father. 35

Subsequently, Barbara and her father join in a wager to attempt to con-

Subsequently,
 vert each other to their respective
respective religions,
religions, and Barbara, while losing the bet,
gains her soul—rather the Shavian version of it—free from the hypocrisy
of organized religion and the crime of poverty. Her father offers his crusad-
ing daughter the opportunity for effecting genuine salvation through ““money
money
and gunpowder”: “It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in
one hand and a slice of bread in the other. . . . ry your hand on my men:
their souls are hungry because their bodies are full.” As Barbara experiences
the enlightenment that Undershaft desires, he turns to Cusins: “Plato says
. . . that society cannot be saved until either the Professors of Greek take
to making gunpowder, or else the makers of gunpowder become Professors
of Greek.”36 When Cusins agrees that Undershaft’s gunpowder is the more
 universal power, Shaw forges an unholy alliance, all three united under the
Salvation Army’
Army ’s unlikely banner of “Fir
“Firee and Blood.”
Consequently, the clash between the militant salvationists and the
unashamed armorer propels the play into a fierce discussion of the morality of
 war,, religion, and capitalism. Tis play’s most aptly labeled “war in the head”
 war
takes place not on a battlefield or military garrison but in a fashionable Lon-
don home, a Salvation Army Shelter, and a manufacturing plant—without a
real soldier in sight, Yet Shaw peppers the ensuing discussion with bellicose
phrases such as “make war on war,” “Blood and Fire” (the Salvation Army’s
motto that Undershaft says could be his own), and “money and gunpowder,”
to highlight the actual topic of the play.37 In addition to the enticing epi-

grams,
drum ofthe dialogue of
humanity’s the play explores
fascination with wartheand
seemingly irreconcilable
how force conun-
may be employed
for the advancement of society. Four examples will serve. First, early in the
play as the estranged Undershaft family attempts to renew their acquaintance
 with the father,
father, Charles
Char les Lomax, suitor to the younger Undershaft daugh-
ter, asks her father if he believes war will be abolished once it becomes too

120 Lagretta allent Lenker

destructive. Undershaft retorts: “Not at all. Te more destructive war becomes

the
and more fascinating
destruction we find
escalates, it.” As
Undershaft
Undersh aft the
anddebate
Cusinsover the forces
consider of ssalvation
Barbara’s
Barbara’ possible
role in Undershaft’
Undershaft ’s world. Undershaft proclaims that his daughter will carr carryy
his torch and message. When Barbara and her father engage in heated con-
troversy, he states fervently that he would like to kill poverty, and she in turn
taunts that killing
ki lling is his answer
answe r to everything.
ever ything. Undershaft replies:
repl ies: “It is . . . the
only lever strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying
Must.”38
In another Shavian twist, the social system Undershaft refers to is his
own—capitalism, the villain that sustains poverty and social slavery. Shaw
identifies this “villain” early on, through one of the Salvation Army’s clients,
Snobby Price, who avers that he is not the Salvation Army’s usual clientele:
his intelligence places him above the social niche into which the “capitalists”
have placed him.39 A few fe w scenes later, the shelter comes under the influence
of that arch-capitalist, Andrew Undershaft. Dietrich labels him “the million-
aire owner of a ‘devilish’
‘devilish’ munitions factory that supplies weapons to whoever
has money to buy, in the best capitalist tradition. Capitalism in this repressive
society being one of the few accepted vents for self-assertion, strong spirits
such as Undershaft tend to overindulge.”40 In Shaw’s philosophy, the leaven
to capitalism must be the trinity that synthesizes intellect, love, and power.41
However, for all the “glory hallelujahs” and fire and brimstone rhetoric
on both sides of the debate, Shaw, once again, crafts an ambivalent ending.
At the climactic point of the formation of this unconventional trinity, Bar-
 bara turns from
f rom her partners in the forging of a new society to her mother to
discuss a most conventional topic—housekeeping
topic—housekeeping.. Shaw thus subverts his big
scene, hinting that the redemption into the rinity is not absolute, character-
ized not by the Salvation Army’s anthem “Onward Christian Soldiers” but
by the Shavian conundrum “make war on war.” With this battle cry, Under-
shaft, Barbara, and Cusins unite to live both in the world and of the world.
Redemption or Damnation? Shaw’s play answers with the conjecture that
the manufacture of these instruments of war offers a more effective means of
feeding humanity’s bodies and souls than does the charity of the Salvation
Army. Tis unsettling hypothesis demonstrates how deeply the dual aspects
of war pervade
per vade modern society.
society.

Images“cultured,
symbolizes of war even penetrate
leisured S
Shaw’s
Europehaw’s fantasies.
before Heartbreak
the war” and, as House 
such, (1917)
 (1917)
suffers
what Shaw terms “indifference and neglect.”42 In his
f rom a malignant ennui, what
preface to the play,
play, Shaw concedes that nineteenth-century England had been
spared the horrors of war on her own soil, but that security was destroyed by
the events of World War I. In Shaw’s mind, the “Plague of London” could

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 121

responsibly.43 Tose who
have been avoided if the privileged classes had acted responsibly.

could have with

concerned prevented the plague
war “than mightofbewar
inferred Heartbreak
inhabitfrom House 
its oblique , a play more
treatments.” 44 
Heartbreak House   features
features the fantastic Captain Shotover, a bellicose octo-
genarian who conducts experiments with dynamite. Although Shotover
attempts in vain to abdicate his role as father, head of the household, and,
by extension, patriarchal ruler of his clan, the closely related roles of leader,
savior, and even unconventional hero will not release him from their literal
and metaphorical hold. In Literature of Crisis 1910–22, Anne Wright prese presents
nts
a cogent analysis
analy sis of Shotover, the play’s unlikely and reluctant hero:

His claim to the title is implicitly considered in what he says and

does. . . . Shotover’s denunciation of capitalism and materialism
is in the vein of Carlyle and Ruskin. With them he shares a
faith in strong leadership, which connects with his career as a sea
captain. Te ship is the dominant dynamic (and male) symbol for
Heartbreak House , which overlays . . . the static (and female) symbol
of the house, centre
centre of personal relationships. Te ship of state—for
this is indeed a metaphor for the organization of society—needs
direction and responsible leadership: navigation.45

 Wright continues by discussing how Shotover

 Wright Shotover possesses a mystical ele-
ment, which combines with his “Christian moralistic fervour,” to produce
a “prophet-preacher” who announces the arrival of judgment, calls himself
 the hand of God, and “speaks for ‘God’s way’; but with a hint as well of
magical, even diabolical power.” Furthermore, Wright sees Shotover as a
forerunner of the wisdom and power of the Ancient in Shaw’s next play,
Back to Methuselah.46
 Yet
 Yet for all of his heroic
heroic qualities (if tinged with the mystical
mystical and diaboli-
cal), Shotover
Shotover supports the inhabitants of Heartbreak House by passionately
exploring the forces of darkness and death. His goal, as he explains to his son-
in-law Hector,
Hector, is to “discover
“discover a ray mightier than any X-ray
X-ray:: a mind ray that
 will explode the ammunition in the belt of my adversary
adversary before he ca
cann point
his gun at me.” Nevertheless, his daughter Hesione reminds him that there
is more money to be made in weapons of mass destruction: “Can’ “Can’t you think

of something
his thatShotover,
experiments, will murder
in ahalf Europe that
statement with perhaps
one bang?” As he returns
contradicts to
another
Shavian unlikely hero, Andrew Undershaft, intones, “Give me deeper dark-
ness. Money is not made in the light.” 47 Tus, Shotover’s moral philosophy
involves his “steering of the ship” of his family, and, by extension, the ship of
state; however, his business is the invention of the trappings of war.48

122 Lagretta allent Lenker

Heartbreak House   presents another Shavian triangle of an older man

and two younger
 wisdom. individuals
Ellie Dunn,
D unn, who disappointed
the ingénue fall under his in influence
love andand/or debate
life, turns his
to the
ancient captain for wisdom, while his son-in-law Hector Hushabye serves ser ves as
his debating partner in the consideration of the morality of war and peace.
Hector, described
describ ed by Wright as a Byronic “Hero“He ro manqué,”
manqué, ” is tied to home
hom e and
hearth by his wife, one of the fascinating Shotover sisters who enchant men
for sport. His escape becomes a rich fantasy life wherein he adopts the pose
of Marcus Darnley, revolutionary soldier. Wright labels Hector’s theories of
evolution as “natural selection imbued with a moral imperative”; however,
“Unlike Hector, Shotover would kill, not spare, the enemy. Te ‘political phi-
losophy’ of Heartbreak House  is  is expressed largely as a debate between these
two characters: Hector with his swordstick, Shotover with his twentieth-
century dynamite.”49 Nevertheless, Hector expresses sincere concern for the
survival of society.
society. When he implores Shotover to tell him how to affect this
salvation, the Captain advises that he “learn your business as an English-
man,” which Shotover regards as “navigation,” the responsible steering of the
England’s future depends.50 Tus, Ellie and Hector
ship of state upon which England’s
each fall under Shotover’s tutelage in much the same fashion as Rufio and
Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra . YetYet,, in Heartbreak House , Shaw rev reverses
erses the
outcome. Hector/Marcus, deluded by fantasy fanta sy,, remains the sspoiled,
poiled, pessimistic
romantic who questions all, waits for war’s death, and is disappointed when
it does not come.51 After Shotover saves her from a mercenary marriage to
the capitalist Boss Mangan and shares with her his thoughts on attaining the
 seventh degree of concentration, Ellie gives her “broken heart and . . . strong
sound soul to its natural captain, my spiritual husband and second father.”52 
Consequently,, Ellie and the Captain find “life
Consequently “ life with a blessing” and carry
carr y the
Shavian message of calling for the bombs of war to clear away the dead in
society to make room for a new world order—from war to peace. 53
Heartbreak House   only considers war, presumably, far away from the
battlefields of World
World WWarar I at a country
countr y estate garden party on a lovely after-
af ter-
noon and evening, until the war comes to Heartbreak House and its inhabit-
ants in a spectacular, almost surreal, manner. Preliminary discussions of war
are even more oblique than those between Hector and Shotover at the end
of act one (noted above). In act three, as the setting moves to the terrace,
almost
how to every
rescuecharacter has prison
“Tis soul’s a comment
we callonEngland.”
how to solve society’s
54 Boss Mangan problems:
reveals
that his capitalist talents are a sham and that he cannot offer suggestions on
how to better the country; Addie nominates her colonial-governor husband
as England’s leader; Hector admits his natural abilities are bound up in his
enthrallment to women; and Hesione advocates the appreciation of beauty

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 123

as an antidote to discontent.55 Louis Crompton analyzes the action: “What

is remarkable
dialectical about this
structure scenelargely
remains is thatimplicit.
for all itsTe
intellectual
charactersintentions . . their
. . . assert . the
own convictions and express their feelings very much as if the others were
not present.”56  However, even in this idyllic, if ethereal scene, war mania
looms. Hesione avers that they are all madder than usual, or, as Wright says,
“madness, heartbreak and violence are endemic.”57 For just as Hesione and
Mazzini Dunn rise in defense of beauty and bohemianism (Dunn gushes
that the peace found in the bohemian nature of Heartbreak House is more
meaningful than in all his previously supported social causes), tthe he first bombs
fall onto the English countryside. 58
Shaw introduces the bombs into the madness, tedium, and bohemian-
ism not merely as a spectacular ending to fantasy but in large measure as an
antidote for a social system that he had fought against all of his adult life. In
Heartbreak House , capitalism has a name and a human form: Boss Mangan.
As Wright proposes,
prop oses, “Heartbreak House  is is intensely committed to defining, or
redefining, the Enemy, as well as to finding the Savior. Te play identifies the
Enemy within as the international adversary, capitalism, in the representa-
tive figure of Boss Mangan the financier.”59 Boss is lumped with the Burglar
Billy Dunn
D unn and killed in the Captain’
Captain’s dynamite pit in what has been termed
the symbolic end of capitalism. However, Shaw’s old adversary does not sur-
render easily, even in his own plays. As we shall see, those afflicted with the
ennui born of the capitalist
c apitalist system wherein the privileged few, even for all of
their advantages, find no peace and contentment and miss the meaning of the
 drama’s big event.
At the end of the play, an air of expectation pervades the moonless
evening. Ellie announces that she is always anticipating something but does
not know what. Hector avers that not all of their talking can last. Shotover
expects Providence to intervene although he realizes that “the Church is on
the rocks.” Moreover, just as the idealistic Mazzini assures the group that
nothing will happen, a far-away rumbling begins.60 As the crescendo builds
and the danger comes closer to Heartbreak House, the doldrums give way to
terror and then, most tellingly, to an electric excitement. Although two lesser
beings are killed and the German Zeppelin pilots run a terrible risk, Ellie and
Hesione, perhaps having the courage to express what the rest of those caught
in
andthe group
trill madness
at the feel, compare
exhilaration the concatenation of bombs to Beethoven
of danger:

Hesione: But what a glorious experience! I hope they’ll come again tomor-
row night.
Ellie: (radiant at the prospect) Oh, I hope so. 61

124 Lagretta allent Lenker

Are these the expressions of silly, unthinking women, or an uncensored

portrayal
Shotover’soffamily
“civilized” society’s
and guests true pyrotechnics
in the feelings about
of war? he delight
the German of
air raid
underscores the ennui of early twentieth-century England and clearly por-
trays humanity’s fascination with the paradoxical beauty and horrors of
 war. Lady Augusta Gregory reported that Shaw had diff iculty icult y ending the
play because it was “so wild.”62  Perhaps the difficulty came not only from
the fantastic nature of the drama and its characters but also from Shaw’s
own ambivalence towards war. Although Heartbreak House   was published
in 1919, Shaw withheld production of the play until 1921. 63 Even then, the
play was misunderstood by the English, who remembered Shaw’s Common
Sense About the War   and who were perhaps still not ready to acknowledge
their own Janus-faced attitudes about war.
Christianity’s ambivalent association with military might denaturalizes
Shaw’s chronicle play, Saint Joan (1923) in which the “angel
“angel dressed as a sol-
dier” persuades the authorities that she is on a heavenly mission to teach the
French to fight so that “the will of God may be done in France.” Te legend-
ary Joan had been one of the most famous and popular female figures in
fin de siècle England, and Shaw’s treatment of Joan followed those by om
aylor and others.64 Yet Shaw’s transition from the fantastic, bohemian, and
 aylor
 
almost ephemeral figures of twentieth-century Heartbreak House  to  to the bold,
confident girl of the Middle Ages is not as severe as one might think. Shaw’s
treatment of the Maid also features unconventionality and ambivalence about
 war.. Joan’
 war Joan’s being a mere girl of seventeen who presumptuously challenges
 secular and religious authorities renders her Shaw’s most unconventional and
subversive military hero. She boldly bests men of the Church and govern-
ment and is ultimately burned at the stake for embarrassing them by being
right when they were wrong.65  Although Joan confidently commands the
French army, wins near-miraculous battles, and glories in her self-proclaim-
ing fulfillment
fulfil lment of God’
God ’s will on earth,
ear th, she cannot
canno t ignore the realities
real ities of war. In
scene one, Robert de Baudrico
Ba udricourt,
urt, one of Joan’s first supporters
suppo rters in
i n the military,
milita ry,
 warns her
her about the brutality of the
the English
English soldiers.
soldiers. Joan responds
responds that good
people always turn evil
e vil when they invade another country and that she would
become wicked, too, if she attempted to conquer England without God’s
blessing. Later in their conversation, Joan offers Robert a practical assessment
of thefor
fight French soldiers’ motivation
self-preservation and the for fighting:
only way to She avers
insure that
that onein will
battle men
survive
the battle is to turn and run. Joan promises to teach the French to fight for a
higher purpose and to drive the inevitably wicked from French soil.66
After Joan has succeeded in having the Dauphin (Charles VII) crowned
at Rheims Cathedral, she becomes uncharacteristically melancholy, longing

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 125

for the exhilaration of battle and victory at Orleans. Ten she confesses to
harboring all too familiar emotions so prevalent in the Shavian canon: “I am
frightened beyond words before a battle; but it is so dull afterwards when
there is no danger: oh, so dull! dull! dull!” La Hire, another French soldier,
chimes in as Joan prepares to leave court: “You will miss the fighting. It’s a
bad habit,
habit , but a grand
gra nd one, and the hardest of all
a ll to break
brea k yourself of.” And so,
even the Saint who fights for the Glory of God is not immune to the seduc-
tive thrill of war, as she and her French comrades readily admit. 67
 Tus, more capable than Church and State, Joan becomes a liability. liability.
After being captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English, she endures
a lengthy trial by those whom she embarrasses, complicated by their inability
to decide whether she is a witch or a heretic. Finally branded a heretic, Joan
is burned at the stake and dies in scene six, at least for the moment. However,
before this ignominious end, Joan attempts to teach her betters the art of war
for the glory
glor y of her heavenly father. As self-appointed tutor to the Dauphin,
 Joan attempts to teach the uncrowned
uncrowned king
king how to pray,
pray, how to
to be a father to
his own son, and how to be God’s soldier. 68 In this Shavian inversion of the
traditional education model where the venerable teach the lowly, the Maid
f rom Lorraine instructs the King of France, albeit with mixed results. Charles
accepts Joan’
Joan’s tutelage but still relies on her strength and martial accomplish-
ments to fight his battles and to help him accede to the throne.
Saint Joan, along wiwith
th Caesar and Cleopatra , becomes one of Shaw’Shaw ’s most
militaristic plays, featuring battle encampments, soldiers in war garb, and
prison towers, yet the actual war is once again “in the head,” as Shaw crafts
 one of his most famous dramas of ideas. In Saint Joan, too, battles are vividly
described and reported, most notably the siege at Orleans led by “the invin-
cible” Dunois and the battle at Compiègne that resulted in Joan’s capture by
the Burgundians.69 Nevertheless, even if no blows are struck on stage, the
 verbal pyrotechnics are vintage
vintage Shaw.
Shaw. Although the exchange
exchange of ideas occurs
throughout the play, as soldiers debate war strategy, noblemen discuss affairs
of state, and churchmen
churchme n argue theology,
theol ogy, the dominant
dominan t theme throughout
throughou t fea-
tures the rise of the twin tides of Nationalism and Protestantism, both shown
f rom multiple perspectives.70
 Te major debate
debate takes place in scene four
four,, often termed the Drama of
Ideas section, among those officials on both the French and English sides of
the war who plot Joan’s capture. Shaw foreshadows the importance of the play’s
predominant discussion scene when his powerful Archbishop, in response to a
question about miracles, observes that an old era is dying and a new epoch is
 waiting
 waiti begin.71 Te angst caused by this “new
ng to begin. “new spirit”
spirit ” may be observed
obser ved inter-
mingled with the plotting of Joan’s possible capture and trial. First the English
Earl of Warwick and Chaplain de Stogumber review the many defeats of the

126 Lagretta allent Lenker

English forces at the hand of the Maid but soon digress into talk of “labels”
for groups of men from various regions. Te Chaplain identifies himself as an
“Englishman,” and the Earl,Ear l, representing
representing feudalism (a form of social organiza-
tion that knew no national borders), teasingly questions his embracing of this
modern concept. Te Chaplain demurs, but admits that he does have a patri-
otic “feeling” for English soil. Next, the Chaplain calls their enemy Dunois a
“Frenchman,” and this time the Earl responds with more passion: “If this cant
of serving their country once takes hold of them, goodbye to the authority of
their feudal lords, and goodbye to the authority of the Church. . . . goodbye to
 you and me.”72 After the French conspirator, the Bishop of Beauvais, arrives,
the talk soon turns to Joan’s supposed heresy, her direct appeal to God without
intercession through the Church. Te collusion between these two warring fac-
tions is affirmed, as they, in turn, explicate each other’s interests. Te English
Earl identifie
i dentifiess Joan’s religious heresy
he resy as Protestantism,
Protesta ntism, while the French bishop,
returning the favor, connotes Joan’s presumptive crimes in the secular arena as
Nationalism. Tus, momentarily
momentarily laying
lay ing aside their differences that have caused
such bloody wars, representatives
representatives of the Church and State embark on another
 war—agains
 war—a gainstt a seventeen-y
seventeen-year-o
ear-oldld “angel
“angel dressed
dressed as a soldier
soldier.”
.” Te English
English
Earl concludes the parlay
par lay that seals Joan’s earthly fate with a catchy phrase that
perhaps applies to wider ideals than the maid: “if you will burn the Protestant,
I will burn the Nationalist.”73
Dietrich suggests, “However
“However much we have outgrown both Nationalism
and Protestantism, Shaw showed how in Joan’s fifteenth century they were
necessary to historical dynamics.”74  Perhaps, however Shaw uses the shift
 from feudalism to Nationalism and from Catholicism to Protestantism as
an analogy for what he saw as the next step in modern human progress—
the advent of a multinational world where global interests supersede those
of individual countries and a more tolerant and open religious community
nations.75
 where respect, love, and peace are key—a practical league of nations.
Shaw’s most subversive feature of his tale of the Maid remains the Epi-
logue, which takes place twenty-five years after Joan’
Joan’s burning and allows her
to confront those individuals from Church and State who convicted her of
heresy and inflicted their most cruel punishment upon her. After construct-
ing the proper tragedy of her life and death, Shaw creates a comic dream
sequence in which King Charles, Brother Martin, the Bishop, her favorite
soldier Dunois, the English Chaplain and Earl, and the Executioner each
appear before Joan in the King’s bed chamber (it is, after all, his dream) and
good naturedly express regret at their respective parts in her bad end.
Charles issues what may be a general confession/apology for the entire
group: “It is always you good men that do the big mischiefs,” seemingly
excluding himself.76 Yet when Joan asks if she should come back to earth as

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 127

a living woman, each man, friend and foe alike, recoils in horror at the idea
of another encounter with the Maid and quickly disappears f rom the reverie.
Interestingly, the last man remaining with Joan is not a king or bishop but a
Interestingly,
simple soldier who, in many respects, is the most sympathetic character
char acter in the
Epilogue.
Epilogu e. At Joan’s
Joan’s burning,
burnin g, the Sol
Soldier,
dier, a mere person
pe rson in the
th e crowd watching
watc hing
the execution, heard Joan’s plea for a cross, tied two wooden sticks together,
and gave the make-shift cross to her as she stood in the flames. For this one
good deed, the Soldier, now dead, receives one day a year out of hell as his
reward. Trough an anonymous soldier, a man of war, who shows such kind-
ness to Joan when all others had forsaken her, Shaw undercuts the bellicose
images of the king and princes of Church and State and adds an element
of ambivalence to the play’s ending in which a burned soldier-saint will not

stay
havedead. Tus,ofShaw
the Maid writesreturn
Orleans beyond the the
about traditional
time ofending of the legendand
her rehabilitation to
then canonization. Again, the images are martial as Saint Joan relives her
now famous military accomplishments. Tus, the complicit critique probes
the tension between the glories of war and those of salvation.
 Te age-old ambivalence of humanity towards war is difficult to com-
prehend and still more difficult to express. Perhaps as Captain Shotover intu-
its, human beings. must
must “feel the fear of death sharply in order to feel the life
intensely.”77 More than any other playwright of the nine-
in themselves more intensely.”
teenth and twentieth centuries, Shaw’s work provides an emblem of this per-
plexing paradox and shows us ourselves confronting the issue of war, which is
 both the anathema and the apotheosis of man and womankind.

N
  1. Stanley Weintraub,  Journey to Heartbreak:
Heartbreak : he Crucible
Cruc ible Years of Bernard
Berna rd
Shaw 1914–1918  (New
 (New York: Weybright and alley, 1971), 37–39. For their work on
Shaw and war, I am indebted to Professor Weintraub as well as Anne
A nne Wright, Alfred
Alf red
 
 urco,
urco, and
a nd Gordon Bergqui
Bergquist.
st.
  2. Weintraub,  Journey , 118–20.
 3. Weintraub,  Journey , 108.
  4. Shaw qtd. in Weintraub,  Journey , 69.
  5. See Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning  (New
 (New York: Public
Affairs, 2002), 157–85. Hedges gives a cogent discussion of the concepts of Eros
and hanatos.
gives a  6.useful
Alfred urco,of“On
summary Warwritings
Shaw’s and Peace,”
on warSHAW    16 (1996):
and peace. urco’s 165.
list ofurco also
pertinent
 works includes Arms and the Man and the follow-up essay “A “A Dramatic Rea
Realist
list to His
Critics”; Heartbreak House  and  and its preface; letters Shaw wrote during World War I,
many of which are available in Collected Letters, 1911–1925 , ed. Dan H. Laurence;
What I Really Wrote About the War; he Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism; and  Everyb
 Everybody’s W hat’s What?  (188–90).
ody’s Political What’s   (188–90).

128 Lagretta allent Lenker

  7. 
urc
urco,
o, “War and Peace,” 165.
 
 wayne  8.Publishers,
wayne PRichard
Richa rd F.1989
ublishers, Dietric
Dietrich,
1989), h, British Drama 1890–1950: A Critical History  (Boston:
), 99.  (Boston:
  9. Lagretta allent Lenker, Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare and Shaw 
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001). his work contains several discussions
of Shaw’s penchant for having characters, especially fathers and daughters, educate
one another.
10. Gordon N. Bergquist, he Pen and the Sword: War and Peace in the Prose
and Plays of Bernard Shaw (Salzburg, Austria: Institute für Englische Sprache und
Literatur, 1977). See p. 68 passim for a discussion of Shaw’s views on capitalism,
nationalism, imperialism, and war.
11. George Bernard Shaw,  Arms and the Man, in he Bodley Head Bernard
Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces , ed. Dan H. Laurence, 7 vols. (London:
Max Reinhardt
R einhardt,, 1970–1
1970–1974
974),), I:396, 398. Al
Alll quotations of Shaw’s work are from tthe
he
seven-volume Bodley Head  collection.
 collection.
12. Shaw,  Arms and Ma n, I:403, 404.
a nd the Man
13. Shaw,  Arms and Ma n, I:404.
a nd the Man
14. Shaw,  Arms and Ma n, I:420, 443, 470.
a nd the Man
15. Shaw,  Arms and Ma n, I:472.
a nd the Man
16. Bergquist, Pen and the Sword , 44.
17. Shaw qtd. in Samuel A. Weiss, “Shaw,  Arms and an d the Man , and the Bulgar-
ians.” SHAW  10 10 (1990): 27–28.
18. Shaw qtd. in Weiss, “Arms,” 28.
19. Lagretta allent Lenker and Valerie Barnes Lipscomb, “Reflections of
the Aging Caesar: Drama as Cultural Perspective,” in  Journal of Aging and a nd Identity  
7, no. 4 (December 2002): 275–86. Portions of my discussion of Shaw’s Caesar as
unconventional
unconve ntional hero are drawn from this aarticle.
rticle.
 20. Dietrich, British Drama , 100.
Shaw:21. George
Collected Bernard
Plays Shaw,
with their Caesar
Prefaces  andDan
, ed. , in he7Bodley
Cleopatra 
H. Laurence, Head Bernard
vols. (London: Max
Reinhardt,
Reinha rdt, 1970–197
1970–1974),
4), II:270.
22. David J. Gordon, “Shavian Comedy and the Shadow of Wilde,” in he
Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, ed. Christopher Innes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 131.
23. imothy G. Vesonder. “Shaw’s Caesar and the Mythic Hero.” Shaw
Review 21 (1978): 74.
24. Charles A. Berst, “he Anatomy of Greatness in Caesar and Cleopatra ,” ,”
 Journal of English and
an d Germanic Ph ilology  68
Ger manic Philology   68 (1969): 74–91.
25. Daniel Leary, “Shaw and Shakespeare: Why Not!”  Independe nt Shavian  
 Independent
23 (1985): 6–8.
26. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:208.
27.
28. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:289.
II:207, 255, 263.
29. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:223.
30. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:241 and 287, 243.
31. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:261.
32. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:255, 282.
33. Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra , II:292.

Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 129

34. George Bernard Shaw,  Major Barbara , in he Bodley Head Bernard Shaw:
Collected Plays with their
hardt, 1970–1974), Prefaces , ed. Dan H. Laurence, 7 vols. (London: Max Rein-
III:178.
35. Dietrich, British Drama , 117.
36. Shaw,  Major Barbara , III:173, 178.
37. Shaw, Major Barbara 
Barba ra , III:178, 88, 120.
38. Shaw,  Major Barbara , III:89, 174.
39. Shaw,  Major Barbara , III:96.
40. Dietrich, British Drama , 118.
41. Dietrich, British Drama , 121.
42. George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House , in he Bodley Head Bernard
Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces , ed. Dan H. Laurence, 7 vols. (London: Max
Reinhardt, 1970–1974), V:12, 18.
43. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:18.
44. Anne Wright, Literature of Crisis, 1910–22 (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1984), 7.
45. Wright, Literature of Crisis , 84.
46. Wright, Literature of Crisis , 85.
47.
47. George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:102, 103, 105; Wright, Litera-
ture of Crisis , 80.
48. Weintraub,  Journey , 166.
49. Wright, Literature of Crisis , 82–83.
50. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:177.
51. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:181.
52. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:168.
53. Dietrich, British Drama , 130.
54. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:177.
 55. Louis Crompton, Heartbreak House , in Bernard Shaw s Plays , ed. Warren
Sylvester
56. Smith (New“Heartbreak
Crompton, York: W.W. Norton, 1970), 428.
,” 428.
57. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:103; Wright, Literature of Crisis , 3.
58. Crompton, “Heartbreak ,” 428–29.
59. Wright, Literature of Crisis , 70.
60. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:177.
61. Shaw, Heartbreak House , V:181.
62. Lady Augusta Gregory qtd. in Weintraub,  Journey , 183.
63. Weintraub,  Journey , 330.
64. George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, in he Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Col-
lected Plays with their Prefaces , ed. Dan H. Laurence, 7 vols. (London: Max Rein-
hardt, 1970–1974), VI:95; Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at
the Fin de Siècle  (New
 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1990), 29.
65.
66. Shaw, Saint Joan, Preface VI:15–16.
V I:94–95.
VI:94–95 .
67. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:141, 144–45.
68. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:112–13.
69. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:104 and 129, 158 and 172–73.
70. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:38–39; 124–40.
71. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:107.

130 Lagretta allent Lenker

72. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:126.

73.
74. Shaw, Saint
Dietrich, Joan,Drama 
British VI:99,, 140.
135.
75. See Bergquist, Pen and the Sword , 159, for a discussion of Shaw’s views on
a practical League of Nations.
76. Shaw, Saint Joan, VI:197.
77. Ronald Bryden, “he Roads to Heartbreak House ,” ,” in he Cambridge
Companion to George Bernard Shaw, ed. Christopher Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 188.
 

 J A N M C D O N A L D

Shaw among the Artists 

For art’s sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence.
Shaw (1976: 35)

I have, I think, always been a Puritan in my attitude towards Art.

Shaw (1946c: xii)

G eorge Bernard
Berna rd Shaw (1856–
if controversial, dramatist,
(1856–195
1950)
0) was a committed socialist,
dra matist, an inspired theatre director
socia list, a successf
di rector of his own work
successful,
work and an
ul,

influential commentator on contemporary music, drama and fine art. In all

 his endeavours he demonstrated an indefatigable zeal to reform existing social
conditions,
In thissterile
chaptertheatrical conventions
I shall focus and
on Shaw’
Shaw outworn
’s views artistic
on ar
art orthodoxies.
t and artists, examin-
ing some of his many critical and theoretical writings, but concentrating on
how his opinions were expressed in dramatic form in plays which particu-
larly engage with such issues, namely, Candida  (1895),
  (1895), Caesar and Cleopatra  
(1899),  Mrs Warren’
Warren’s Profession  (1902),  Man and Superman (1905), Te Doc-
tors Dilemma   (1906), Pygmalion (Berlin: 1913; London: 1914) and Back to
 Methuselah (New York: 1922; London: 1923).

 Towards a Shavian
 Towards Shav ian Aesthetic?
Aesthet ic?
Shaw’s opinions on art and artists are scattered throughout his work, in his
critical and journalistic writing, in letters and notebooks, as well as in his

From A Companion to Modern

Moder n British and Irish Drama: 1880–2 005,, edited by Mary Luckhurst,
1880–2005
pp. 63–74. Copyright © 2006 by Blackwell Publishing.

131

132  Jan McDonald

plays and the prefaces to them. hese observations, spanning many years, are
not consistent and can seem almost wilfully contradictory. His comment that
‘Wagner can be quoted against
aga inst himself almost
a lmost without limit’ (Shaw
(Shaw 1930: 265)
is at least as applicable to Shaw. As Sidney P. Albert among others has pointed
out Shaw was much influenced by his reading of Hegelian dialectics, a meth-
odology well suited to his inclination to play with conflicting ideologies, par-
ticularly
ticula rly in his dramas (Albert
(A lbert 1956:
1956: 423–4)
423– 4).. In addition, his taste for polemics,
polemics,
his mischievous flying of multi-coloured kites and his sense of irony—which
he engaged on occasion to subvert ideas that he had previously endorsed—all
militate against the expression of a structured aesthetic philosophy.
Finally, and most importantly, for much of his life Shaw was politically
engaged, both theoretically and practically, as a socialist, and his writings
demonstrate hisaattempt
conditions with to balance
deep attachment to athe
utilitarian ethicperforming
creative and of improving
arts.social
‘I am
an artist, and, it is inevitable, a public moralist’, he announced in a letter to
Robert W. Welch in September 1905 (Laurence 1972: 560).
 Judith B. Spink believes that Shaw failed to achieve the desired equi-
librium and that his aesthetics were seriously compromised by his politics:
‘Shaw’s complete commitment to the socialist cause led him eventually to
such contorted views on art as are perhaps more familiar from more uncom-
promisingly Marxist critics and artists’ (Spink 1963: 83). It is certainly true
that Shaw passionately eschewed the notion of ‘Art for Art’s sake’, as the
first epigraph above makes clear, and he repeatedly asserted that his prime
 motive for engaging in aesthetic pursuits was to promote political ideas. Te
preface to his first play, Widowers’ Houses  (1892),
 (1892), is unequivocal: ‘It is not my
fault, reader,
reader, that
that my art
a rt is the expression of my sense of moral and individual
perversity rather than my sense of beauty’ (West 1950: 115). In a letter to
Henry Arthur Jones (8 January 1899), he went further, asserting not only
that a work of art should have a social function, but that a sense of purpose
and social responsibility was essential, a sine qua non of excellence: ‘Te best
established truth in the world is that no man produces a work of art of the
 very first order except under the pressure of strong conviction and definite
meaning as to the constitution of the world’ (Laurence 1972: 71). In this, as
in many other respects, Shaw was a true Platonist. Plato, as Albert has noted,
‘praised art only when it is allied with philosophy in the pursuit of the Form
of Beauty which is also intellectually viewed, ruth, and morally considered,
the Good’ (Albert 1956: 430). Te artist-philosopher was the only artist Shaw
took seriously.
seriously. On occasion he implied that art was only  of
 of value as a means of
making radical ideas pleasing. He wrote in the preface to Mrs Warren’
Warren’s Profes-
sion: ‘I am convinced that fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most
effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world’world ’ (Shaw 1946b: 7).

Shaw among the Artists 133

In practice, in Shaw’s best work, the ‘art’ is not merely the handmaiden
of his favoured philosophy, whether he is promoting Fabian socialism, the
Schopenhaurian Life Force, the Nietzschean Superman or the theories of
Lamarck, Bergson et al. on Creative Evolution. Nevertheless, it is, paradoxi-
cally, in two passages in which the art of the dramatist is least effective that
Shaw expounds his aesthetic theory at some length, the ‘Don Juan in Hell’
episode in  Man and Superman and Part V of Back to Methuselah, ‘As far as
thought can reach’. A brief comparison of these non-dramatic sections—
‘non-dramatic’ because the two-dimensional characters are merely mouth-
pieces for opposing ideologies—is useful, bearing in mind the twenty years
between the two plays, years which encompassed World War I. Te latter is
rarely performed in whole or in part, and Shaw himself gave permission to
the directors of  Manhave
Both passages
and Superman to omit the ‘hell’ scene.
as their subject Creative Evolution; in the first the
instrument of humankind’s ascent is the Nietzschean ‘Superman
‘Superman’:’: in the sec-
ond, it is time and abstract
abstra ct thought. Shaw believed that in Man and Superman 
as a whole the ‘message’ had been obscured in order to fit the drama to the
tastes of his contemporar
conte mporaryy audience;
audienc e; that is, one might say, to engage with the
‘art’ of playwriting. Te later development of the ‘religion’ of Creative Evolu-
tion makes no such concessions.
In ‘Don Juan in Hell’ the artist-philosopher, Don Juan/John anner,
rails against the aesthetic hedonism of the Devil, comparing his religion of
 love and beauty to ssitting
itting for all eternity
eternit y at the first
fi rst act of a fashionable play
(Shaw 1976: 139). ‘Hell is the home of the unreal and the seekers of the hap-
piness’; the ‘masters of reality’ inhabit Heaven (139)—artists such as Rem-
brandt, ‘a fellow who would paint a hag of seventy with as much enjoyment
as a Venus of twenty’ (171) and Mozart, and by implication from the preface,
Bunyan, Hogarth, Ibsen and olstoy among others, artists who committed to
a struggle for reform, artist-philosophers like Shaw himself.
In Part V of Back to Methuselah the ‘artist-philosopher’ becomes the ‘art-
ist-prophet’ while retaining much of his earlier Platonism.
P latonism. Believing that great
art of the past was ‘great’ because
because of the religious conviction that inspired its
creation, Shaw seeks to be ‘an iconographer of the religion of my time [i.e.
Creative Evolution] and thus fulfil my natural function as an artist’ (Shaw
1945: lxxxv).
In a futuristic pastoral nightmare, beautiful children play at love and art;
they abandon both pursuits by the age of four. At the ‘Festival of the Arts’ the
sculptor Arjillax shocks his spectators by producing busts of the Ancients;
that is, he seeks to represent the reality of the world around him rather than
an idealized prettiness. Martellus goes further for, in collaboration with the
scientist Pygmalion, he creates two ‘living’ creatures. ‘Anything alive is better

134  Jan McDonald

than anything pretending to be alive’, he asserts (ibid.: 240). But they have
made mere automata, and Pygmalion dies at the bite of his female ‘monster’.
 Te She-Ancient, a true Platonist, rebukes the artists and aesthetes: ‘Art Art is
the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures’
(ibid.: 268). ‘Y
‘You
ou can create no nothing
thing but yourself
yourse lf ’ (ibid.: 267). As art and
artists dissolve into an abstract world of thought, however, the future seems
bleak and cold, a ‘reductio ad absurdum of [Shaw’s] puritanic distrust of the
senses’ (Woodbridge 1963: 111).
If ‘As
As far as thought
tho ught can reach’
rea ch’ is the pie
piece
ce by Shaw that
tha t is most ‘anti-art
‘anti-art’,’,
his great defence of art and artists is his response to Max Nordau’ Nordau’ss celebrated
treatise on Degeneracy  (1895).
  (1895). Tis first appeared as ‘A Degenerate’s view of
Nordau—an Open Letter to Bernard ucker in NY Weekly, LIBERY, 27
 July 1895’, and was reprinted in 1908 as Te Sanity of Art . Te kernel of Nor-
dau’s thesis was thus summarized by Shaw: ‘Nordau’s message to the world
is that all our characteristically modern works of art are symptoms of disease
in the artists, and that these diseased artists are themselves symptoms of the
nervous exhaustion of the race by overwork’ (Shaw 1930: 328). Many of the
 works which Nordau characterized as ‘degenerate’ were by artists whom Shaw
regarded as outstanding contributors to contemporary culture: Ibsen, Wagner
Wagner
and olstoy, for example. Te fact that Nordau identified such geniuses with
‘the refuse of our prisons and lunatic asylums’ (ibid.: 339) only confirmed to
Shaw that Nordau was ‘the dupe’ of a fashionable theory, namely psychiatry.
 He dismissed the theories of the German writer as nothing but the familiar
delusion of the used-up man that the world is going to the dogs’ (ibid.:
(ibid.: 326–
7). While admitting that when a new movement in art, literature or music
is initiated a great deal of imitative rubbish can be accepted temporarily by
critics seeking to embrace new forms, Shaw remains adamant (and eloquent)
about the intrinsic possibilities of the creative and performing arts improv-
ing the human condition. His spirited defence was much appreciated in the
United States,
S tates, where his response was first published.
pu blished. Te Kansas City Journal  
 was only one paper to review it enthusiastically: ‘Probably never before has
there appeared such a wonderful defence of modern art and music as Mr
Shaw has given us in his criticism’ (see Edwards). But—and there is always
a but with Shaw—in his Lecture on Art at Bedford (10 December 1885)
he wrote: ‘Te arts contain methods of seeking happiness: and they are mis-
chievous or beneficial, moral or immoral, just as other methods of seeking
happiness are’ (Weintraub 1989: 59). Tere is no special pleading for art as a
‘palliative for social gangrene’, and all artists are not equally worthy either in
their pursuit of their vocation or as members of the community.
community. In seeking to
examine further Shaw’
Shaw ’s complementary or contradictory views, I shall turn to
his dramas for illumination.

Shaw among the Artists 135

Shaw’s Portraits of the Artists

Spink commented that Shaw attributed to his fictional artists ‘less of heroic
stature and more of biting satire that one has any reason to expect in so
inveterate an artist’
ar tist’ (Spink 1963: 82).
82). here are clear
clea r parodic elements in his
approach at times, but rather than describe the overall approach as ‘satiric’, I
 would suggest that he is attempting
attempting a compreh
comprehensive
ensive and objective appraisal
of representative samples of a genus of which he is a member.
 Te artists (and the art lovers) will be investigated, first through their
physical appearance, secondly
secondly by testing the quality of their creative produc-
tion, and thirdly by assessing the manner in which they relate to the other
characters, in order to extrapolate, if possible, their place in society.
 With the important exception of Eugene Marchbanks in Candida , the
artists in Shaw’s plays are explicitly endowed with a handsome appearance,
tastefully dressed, perfectly groomed, amiable, engaging and socially at ease.
 Tere is more than a hint in the descriptions that the characters have self-
consciously created themselves according to some preconceived image of the
artist or aesthete. In  Man and Superman even Octavius’s mourning dress is a
carefully contrived costume to enable him better to undertake the role of the
bereaved, one in which he takes some pleasure. Te artists present themselves
 with a studied attention
attention to their appearance, more ccommonly
ommonly associated with
 women than with men. In this gallery of charming matinée idols, Eugene
Marchbanks is an alien creature, ‘so uncommon as to be almost unearthly ’,’,
 described variously as ‘a strange shy youth of eighteen’—he is younger than the
others—‘
slight
expressions ’.’. Hiseffeminate with
clothes are a delicate
’ andchildish
‘anarchic  ‘there isvoice and a hundred
no evidence tormented
of his ever having
brushed them’ (Shaw 1946a: 120). He is nervous and socially inept. His youth,
unkempt appearance and vulnerability naturally appeal to Candida’s inde-
fatigable maternalism. Te description of Eugene as ‘effeminate ’—Dubedat ’—Dubedat
is specifically labelled ‘not effeminate ’—requires
’—requires some investigation. A review
in the  Manchester Guardian (15 March 1898) described him as a ‘childlike
creature . . . a boy of eighteen got up to look like Shelley, not a man, femi-
ninely hectic and timid and fierce’ (see Evans 1976: 71). Te association of
Eugene with effeminacy has led critics such as Sally Peters in Te Ascent of
the Superman  first to associate the Shavian artist with homosexuality, and
secondly, by viewing the character of Eugene as a self-portrait of the young
Shaw, to deduce that he himself had veiled homosexual sympathies. Her
carefully documented argument concludes: ‘Shaw created a vaguely allusive
atmosphere that bathed Marchbanks in a coded homosexuality—a character
 with autobiographical parallels to to the playwright’ (Peters
(Peters 1996: 165). ‘Coded’
messages are always seductive, but the final deduction is not proven. Never-
theless, leaving aside Shaw’s personal gender preferences, which are irrelevant

136  Jan McDonald

here, it is useful in the context of examining his representation of the artist to

probe further. Praed, ‘hardly past middle-age’ (Shaw 1946b: 211), is unmar-
ried, and is the only one of the older generation in  Mrs Warren’s Profession  
 who has
has not taken advantage
advantage of the services she offers. In Man and Superman,
Ann Whitefield observes, ‘avy ‘avy will never marry’;
marr y’; ‘Te poetic temperament’
temperament ’s
a very nice temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I daresay;
but it’s an old maid’s temperament’ (Shaw 1976: 204). Shaw may have been
influenced in the representations of some of his fictional artists by the  fin
de siècle   fascination
fascination with homosexuality—popularly but by no means solely
associated with Oscar Wilde—and the sexologists’ investigations into the
‘Uranian’ or ‘Urning’, the intermediate sex, that was, as some would have it,
superior to the male and the female. Edward Carpenter, for example, himself
a homosexual, associated this gender type
ty pe specifically with the artist’
artist ’s nature
and the artist’s sensibility and perception (Carpenter 1908). Was Shaw ren-
dering some of his artists and aesthetes ‘barren’ because he was influenced
by Carpenter and others, or because he was intent on effecting
effe cting a meaningful
opposition between the artist and the procreative dynamic of the Life Force?
Or, in Eugene’s case, was he simply showing the first immature heterosexual
impulses of an adolescent boy?

How Talented are Shaw’s Artists?

In the plays under examination, Shaw portrays two poets, an easel painter,
 an artist-craftsman, an architect and two sculptors. One might add the

two ‘Pygmalions’,
and the creators of partnership
Martellus/Pygmalion living things,in Henry
Part V Higgins Pygmalion. 
of Back toinMethuselah
 here is no musician and a nd no actor, surprising
sur prising perhaps if one considers thatt hat
Shaw focused on the portrayal of such artists in his novels. And there are
no women artists. In the Epistle Dedicatory to  Man and Superman , Shaw
 wrote: ‘I am sorry
sorr y to say that it is a common practice with romancers to
announce their hero as a man of extraordinary genius, and then leave his
 works entirely
entirely to the reader’s imagination’
imagi nation’ (Shaw 1976:
1976: 26).
26). Hence the inclu-
sion of ‘he Revolutionist’s Handbook’ in the appendix to the printed play
text. his
 his prompts the question: what is the perceived qual quality
ity of the work of
the artists
ar tists represented in Shaw’s
Shaw’s drama, and how does he conveyconvey that quality
qual ity
to an audience?
 Te quality of Octavius’
Octavius’ss literary endeavours
endeavours (perhap
(perhapss they do not exist)
exist)
remains unknown. A review in the imes Literary Supplement  referred  referred to him
as an ‘alleged’ poet: ‘So far as the play is concerned the “poet” might just as well
have been a dry-salter’ (Crompton 1971: 113). A. M. Gibbs astutely remarked
that ‘In the larger allegory
allegor y of the play,
play, Octavius is associated with sentimental-
ity, debased romanticism and the poetic idealization of women . . . the qualities

Shaw among the Artists 137

he is associated with . . . are seen forming part of the condition of hell’ (Gibbs
1983: 124). Te quality of the work of Eugene, Louis Dubedat, Apollodorus,
and the Martellus and Pygmalion partnership is more germane to the theme
of the play in which each appears. Charles Berst asserts that, in Eugene’s case,
‘his spirit is more poetic than his talents’ (Berst 1973: 57). Eugene’s passages
of poetic prose, notably
notably the speech about his dream of taking Candida away to
‘where the marble floors are washed by the rain and dried by the sun; where the
south wind dusts the beautiful green and purplepur ple carpets’ (Shaw 1946a: 142), are
meretricious, no doubt deliberately so. Tis example, together with the descrip-
tion of Candida as the Madonna (ibid.: 161), might be designed as parody,
assigning Eugene to the category of poets described by Shaw in Te Sanity of
 Art , ‘who have nothing
no thing to versify
versi fy but the commonplaces
commonp laces of amoro
amorous
us infatuation’
infatua tion’
(Weintraub 1989: 383). Te truth of Eugene’s poetic genius remains suspect,
and Shaw does not provide the audience with any of his original work—prob-
ably because the dramatist himself was no poet.
One is left in no doubt as to the genius of Louis Dubedat
D ubedat in Te Doctors
Dilemma . It is an integral
inte gral feature
fe ature of his character
ch aracter and
a nd of the ‘dilemma’ explored
in the play. Te doctors are agreed about his brilliance as a painter, but this
is difficult for the audience or the reader to judge. Shaw, however, evolved a
clever device for actualizing Dubedat’s talent. Te painting on which he is
 working in Act III is of his wife, and Jennifer is seen modelling for it on the
throne, beautiful, caring and draped in brocade. We can have a clear impres-
 sion of what the picture will be—Louis,
be—L ouis, having ‘Pygmalion-like’
‘Pygmalion-like’ transformed

a naïveposthumously
tinue young Cornishwoman into the splendid
to create beautiful Jennifers creature
according shetonow is, will con-
his preordained
instructions. But Louis’s art is not only two-dimensional. oday, he would
be credited with a talent for ‘installations’ or ‘live art’, as witnessed by his
staging of his own death-scene before an invited audience. In his invalid’s
chair, flanked by Jennifer
Je nnifer and
an d Sir Ralph,
Ralph , he occupies
occupie s the position in which
whi ch his
easel was previously placed, the embodied ‘picture’ replacing the painted one.
Louis is ‘making the most of his condition, finding voluptuousness in languor and
drama in his death’ (Shaw 1987: 169). Urging his wife to remarry and always
to remain beautiful, and assuring her that he will live on in her, he utters his
artist’s creed: ‘I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the
might of design, the mystery of colour, the redemption of all al l things by Beauty
Beaut y
everlasting, and the message of Art that made these hands blessed. Amen.
Amen’ (ibid.: 174). His final posthumous work of art is the appearance of
 Jennifer created according to his directions, ‘wonderf
wonderfully
ully and beautifully dressed
and radiant, carrying a great
grea t piece of purple silk, handsomely embroidered, over her
arm’ (ibid.: 179). With this cloth she covers his dead body: another triumph
for the artist.

138  Jan McDonald

Dubedat ’s paintings are on exhibition in the gallery which is the setting

Dubedat’
for Act V,
V, but are hardly sufficiently visible for an audience to make any serious
 judgement. On the occasion of the first production at the Royal Court, how-
ever,, Shaw borrowed paintings from the Carfax Gallery
ever Galler y to dress the stage. As
 Weintraub
 W eintraub describes, these were the works of ‘Beardsley,
‘Beardsley, Rothenstein, Augus-
tus John, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon’ (Weintraub 1989: 28). Tis
evinced a scathing notice from Max Beerbohm in the Saturday Review (24
November 1906): ‘Dubedat seems to have caught, in his brief lifetime, the
 various styles of all the young lions of the Carfax Gallery . . . Masterpieces of
painting must be kept to an audience’s imagination. [ . . . ] only by suggestion
can these masterpieces be made real to us.’ Te solecism was, however, com-
mitted by Shaw the director, not Shaw the dramatist.In Caesar and Cleopatra  
Apollodorus’ss exquisite taste in craftsmanship, very much in the style
Apollodorus’ sty le of W
Wil-
il-
liam Morris, Shaw’s mentor and friend who promoted the art of the beauti-
fully useful, is evident in his sword: ‘designed
‘designed as carefully as a medieval
medieva l cross
[which] has a blued blade shewing through an openwork of purple leather
and filigree’ (Shaw 1946c: 184). Tis, ‘the only weapon ft for an artist’ (ibid.:
189), is put to use by its owner, who is an accomplished duellist, Cleopatra’s
‘perfect knight’ (ibid.:
(ibid.: 188), and a not inconsiderable soldier besides.
 Te work of those who ‘create’ or ‘transform’
‘transform’ human creatures is also
available for judgement as to its quality. In Pygmalion Henry Higgins does
‘make’ a beautiful duchess f rom the apparently unpromising material of Eliza
 Doolittle (with help from Pickering and his mother), but his creation takes

control of herself,
and Pygmalion and to
in Back surpasses the (Part
Methuselah imagination of her
V) are less creator.
fortunate in Martellus
their col-
laborative project and produce only primitive monsters, who are finally exter-
minated. Except in the last two examples, it is difficult to convey on stage
the genius of the artist. It is much easier
easier,, as in the case of Octavius ( Man and
Superman) and Eugene (Candida ), ), to indicate the absence of it, but using the
devices with which he engages in Te Doctors Dilemma , Shaw makes a most
convincing attempt.

 The Art
A rtist
ist in Society
Societ y or Who
W ho Changes
Cha nges the
t he World?
In all of Shaw’s dramas which feature an artist or an aesthete, that character
is brought into direct confrontation with one who holds a contrasting view
of life—variously, soldiers, scientists, rationalists and social reformers. his
section will examine how, or if, the conflicts are resolved.
 Tree of the plays, Candida , Man and Superman and Te Doctors Dilemma ,
have a triangular pattern of characterization, with a woman at the apex, and
the artist and the other with whom he is in opposition or competition at the
base. Te woman is given an additional symbolic dimension: Candida ‘is’ the

Shaw among the Artists 139

Virgin Mother, Ann ‘is’ Everywoman, and Jennifer ‘is’ the Muse. In compet-
ing for her, the men are, therefore, not merely sexual rivals but philosophi-
cal adversaries. Eugene is matched with James Morell, a Christian socialist;
Octavius with Jack
Jac k 
anner
anner,, a revolutionary and philosopher; Louis Dubedat
 with Ridgeon, a physician/scientist. Shaw thus ‘tests’ ‘tests’ his artists in the boxing
ring of contemporary social preoccupations.
In Candida , Morell, the charis
charismatic
matic prea
preacher,
cher, and Eugene,
Eugen e, the embryonic
embr yonic
poet, are both equally engaged with words. Neither, however, has any sympa-
thy with the manner in which the other chooses to deploy them. Candida is
impressed by neither; she trivializes
trivializ es the effects
eff ects of Morell’s oratory, attributing
his rhetorical
rhetor ical effectiveness
effe ctiveness to his sex appeal,
ap peal, and Eugene’s verses bore her. She
 would rather he reverted
re verted to his usual conversational ‘moonshine’. Te men’ men’s
accomplishments are directly juxtaposed in Act III. Te exhilaration of the
returning Lexy and Prossy, in Dionysian high spirits, intoxicated not only by
Burgess’s champagne but by the excitement of Morell’s
Morell’s revolutionary social-
ism, is set in sharp contrast to Candida’s strictures on temperance and her
failure to engage with Eugene’s poetic endeavours. Te ‘artist’ emerges as the
‘stronger’
‘stronger’ man in terms of his self-sufficiency and capacity for coping with an
independent existence, but Morell’s successful commitment to social reform,
in which Eugene has absolutely no interest, renders him the more effectual
member of society.
 Octavius Robinson in  Man and Superman, would be poet and play
 wright, is a highly
highly conventional
conventional young man, firmly embedded in the manners
and mores
ctedofbyEnglish
constructed
constru Jack upper-middle-c
upper-middle-class
Jac k anner.
anner. halass
As Berst has society.
society
s pointed
pointe d .out:
His‘o
‘role as a his
o prop poetmetaphys-
is largely-
metaphys
ics [anner] gives Octavius a role which is entirely disproportionate to the
ineffectual, untalented, romantic stripling’ (Berst 1973: 114). anner has to
create his generic adversary
adversar y for the hand of Ann; Shaw does not provide one.
 anner’s
  anner’s ‘true artist’
artist ’ who ‘will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot,
his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything
but his art’ (Shaw 1976: 61) is a to miles from Octavius Robinson. Just as
Candida decides that Morell will better serve her maternal purposes, Ann
selects and pursues anner
anner because she needs a father for the Superman, and
the barrenness of the so-called ‘poetic temperament’ is of no use to her. Jack
 anner’s
  anner’s revolutionary fervour, his endless quest to improve society society,, as well as
his sexual energy
energ y, select
select him as
a s the chosen partner of ‘Everywoman
‘Ever ywoman’.’. In each
play, the ‘poet’ is defeated by the social reformer.
Te Doctor’s Dilemma , while broadly adhering to a similar triangu-
lar structure and maintaining the confrontational trope of the other plays,
engages with these dramaturgical strategies to develop a somewhat different
issue. rue, in this last instance, the artist wins the woman who does not even

140  Jan McDonald

notice the existence of his rival, but Shaw’s purpose is to show the similarities
between the artist and the man of science rather than their differences. Te
‘dilemma’, as Sir Patrick
Patric k expresses it, is ‘a plain choice between
betwe en a man and a lot
of pictures’, but ‘the most tragic thing in the world’, ironically articulated by
Ridgeon, is ‘a man of genius who is not a man of honour’ (Shaw 1987: 176).
Neither Dubedat or Ridgeon is an honourable man, although although each is a highly
gifted one. Ultimately the artist is the victor, for he achieves immortality for
 Jennifer,, his Muse, and for his art. Ridgeon saves liv
 Jennifer lives
es for this world alone.
 Te ‘dilemma’,
‘dilemma’, or to be more explicit, the contest between the artist’s
output and his contribution to society, is further explored in two other plays
by Shaw that do not adhere to the ‘triangle’ formula described above. In Mrs
Warren’
arr en’s Profes sion, described
P rofession described by Berst as ‘A ‘A moral allegory—the Battle for the
Soul of Vivie Warren’ (Berst 1973: 29), Praed is the most attractive tempter
 whom she encounters. Crofts, Frank and even her mother (finally) are more
easily dismissed. But Praed is not tainted like the rest. He represents a cul-
tured and civilized world, demonstrating to Vivie, and to the audience, that
the capitals of Europe may be the sites of a chain of capitalist whorehouses
but they are also centres of great art. Vivie’s crude dismissal of the Gospel of
Art which Praed preaches diminishes her and renders her final appearance
alone in the putative seat of ‘honour’, the actuary’
actuary ’s office, a bleak picture.
In Caesar and Cleopatra , Apollodorus, the Sicilian patrician, whose uni-
  versal password Art for Art s sake should render him among the damned,
is not so much in an adversarial position in relation to Caesar as a comple-
mentary
ruler. Heone.
is aCaesar is represented
successful as world’
‘man of the a greatin
soldier and sense
the best a wiseofand
thejudicious
phrase.
Although he jestingly dismisses Apollodorus as a ‘popinjay’ (Shaw 1946c:
216), he
he immediately acknowledges
ac knowledges the wit and imagination of his conversa-
tion. On Caesar’s departure from Egypt, he leaves Apollodorus in charge of
the art of the ‘colony’ with the words (surely ironic and
a nd referring to the British
as well as the Roman Empire):

CAESAR: Remember: Rome loves art and will encourage it ungrudgingly.

APOLLODORUS: I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself;
but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce.

CAESAR:
art? Is What! Rome not
government produce noIsart!
an art? Is peace not
civilization not an
an art?
art? IsAllwar not we
these an
give you in exchange for a few ornaments.
(Shaw 1946c:239)

Caesar and Cleopatra  reaches

  reaches a nice balance in endorsing aesthetic sensibil-
ity as having a rightful place in the ideal state and in extending the concept

Shaw among the Artists 141

and function of creativity to permeate all aspects of government. hus, in

the plays, as in his theoretical writings, Shaw questions the nature of art,
the function of art, the engagement of art with political and social con-
cerns—with the same ambiguities and the same dialectic.

Pictures in the Plays and on Stage

 he printed texts of Shaw’s dramas dra mas abound in references, explicit and
implicit, to works of art, and his directorial notes to actors and scenic art-
ists frequently offer advice on costume and setting. A key visual property in
Candida , described as a ‘modern Pre-Raphaelite play’ (Shaw 1946a: vi), is
the ‘ large autotype of the chief figure in itian’s Assumption of the Virgin’ (ibid.:
104) which hangs above the mantelpiece
ma ntelpiece in Morell’s study. One learns much
about the characters and the meaning of the play from this picture (Adams
1966). Shaw notes in the stage directions that:  A ‘ wise-hearted observer . . .
would not suspect either  [
 [Candida’s ] husband or herself of . . . any concern with the
art of itian’ (ibid.: 104). Candida and Morell belong to the practical every-
day world, of domestic chores in her case, and of social work in his. Shaw
later was to comment that the picture has been ‘boiled down to a cockney
Candida’ (Weintraub 1989: 20). It was a gift from Eugene, chosen because
of the resemblance he perceived between Candida and the depiction of the
Madonna. Eugene is the aesthete, the Pre-Raphaelite whose adoration of
 Candida is, as Margery Morgan aptly observes, ‘a blend of erotic with reli-
gious emotion’ (Morgan 1972: 76), expressed in his idealized description of
her: ‘Her shawl, her wings, the wreath of stars on her head, the lilies in her
hand, the
t he crescent moon beneath her feet’ (Shaw 1946a:
1946a: 161)
161).. he
 he choice of
 itian’s painting over Shaw’s
Shaw’s earlier selection of Raphael
Raphael’s ’s ‘Sistine Madonna’
 was made because the former did not include the Christ child. here are no
distracting children in Candida  either.
  either. Conveniently the ‘real’ ones are still
recuperating in the country
countr y where their mother has left them, and she makes
 virtua
 vir tually
lly no reference to them throughout the playplay.. It is f irst Eugene, and
then Morell, who sits in the child’s chair. Of the two adults whom Candida
reduces to childhood, paradoxically but not surprisingly, it is the artist who
leaves, taking with him the much-debated ‘secret’ in his heart. he man,
poet or not, who saw the Madonna (Raphael
(Raphael’s
’s or itian’s
itian’s) in a commonplace
commonplace

and predatory
Beatrice Webbsuburban
(Morganhousewife—‘a sentimental
1972: 72)—having prostitute’,
the scales according
lifted from to
his eyes,
must effect his escape. As for the mysterious ‘secret’, there is no reason to
doubt Shaw’s own explanation:

 Te poet then rises up and says ‘Out, then into the night with
me’—ristan’s holy night. If this greasy fool’s paradise is happiness,

142  Jan McDonald

then I give it to you with both hands: ‘life is nobler than that’.
 Tat is ‘the poet’s secret
secret’.’. (Letter to James Huneker, 6 April 1904;
Laurence 1972: 415)

 Weintraub
 Weintra ub also draws attention
attention to
to pictorial
pictorial references
references in stage
stage settings which
give the spectator or reader important insights into character, for example the
interior decoration of Roebuck Ramsden’s study in Act I of  Man and Super Super--
man  and Mrs Higgins’s drawing room in Pygmalion. he former contains
‘autotypes of allegories by GF Watts ’ (Shaw 1976: 25), a fashionable Victorian
painter, first husband of the actress Ellen erry. (Is this a Shavian quip, one
 wonders,
 won ders, considering
considering his amorous
amorous corresponden
correspondence ce with the lady?
lady?)) Watts’s
allegories fit well with Ramsden’s inherent conservatism and conventional
moral attitudes. he collection of busts of John Bright and Herbert Spencer
again attests to Ramsden’s erstwhile radicalism, and the impression of the
 whole
 who le room gives physi
physical
cal corroborati
corroboration
on to the ddescripti
escription
on of him in the stage
stage
directions, namely that he ‘believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a
man who doe not understand them ’ (ibid.: 42). Similarly, in Pygmalion the decor
of Professor Higgins’s laboratory, with its arid engravings of architectural
perspective drawings, is sharply contrasted with the elegance of his mother’s
Chelsea drawing room, with its Morris wallpaper and soft furnishings, and a
selection of paintings in the Burne-Jones manner.
 It is difficult to determine the extent to which an audience, certainly
a twenty-first-century audience, would be qualified to read such visual ref-
erences. But
decoration wereit isdictated
likely that at a time
by ‘society when
drama’ on women’s
the West fashions andShaw’s
End Stage, home
contemporaries would be visually sophisticated. Even if specific references
proved elusive, the overall effect of Shaw’
Shaw ’s artistic choices in terms of setting
could not fail to illuminate an understanding of character and theme.

Conclusion: Platonist, Philosopher, Puritan and Playwright 

It is easy to become enmeshed in the complex web of Shaw’s opinions on
art and artists. A few constants do, however, emerge: a work of art must
be grounded in the society from which it grows and must contribute to the
progress of that society, spiritually, morally or practically. Romance, pret-
tiness and superficial sentiment will not serve. Great artists, be they poets,
painters, craftsmen or dramatists, must be philosophers, moralists or proph-
ets of their own ‘religion’, from which their art will draw its power. Shaw’s
own work is testimony to his aesthetics.

P R
Shaw, George Bernard (1930).  Major Critical
Cr itical Essays . London: Constable.

Shaw among the Artists 143

Shaw, George Bernard (1931). Our heatre in the Nineties . 3 vols. London: Constable.
Shaw, George Bernard (1945). Back to Methuselah. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shaw, George Bernard (1946a). Plays Pleasant . London: Penguin. (Includes Candida .).)
Shaw, George Bernard (1946b). Plays Unpleasant . London: Penguin. (Includes  Mrs Warren’s
Warre n’s
Profession.)
Shaw, George Bernard (1946c). hree Plays for Puritans . London: Penguin. (Includes Caesar
and Cleopatra ..))
Shaw, George Bernard (1976).  Man and Super man. London: Penguin.
S uperman
Shaw, George Bernard (1987). he Doctor’ Dilemma . London: Penguin.

F R 

 
Adams, Elsie B. (1
(1966).
966). ‘Bernard Shaw’s Pre-Raphaelite Drama’,
Drama’, PMLA  81:5,
 81:5, 428–38.
Albert, Sidney P.
P. (1956)
(1956).. ‘Bernard
‘Berna rd Shaw: he Artist
A rtist as Philosopher’, Journ
 Journal
al of Aesthetic
Aestheticss and

Berst, Art C riticism
Critici
Charles  XIV:4,Bernard
A.sm(1973). 419–38.Shaw and the Art of Drama . Urbana, IL, and London: Uni-
 versityy of Ill
 versit I llinois
inois Press.
Carpenter, Edward (1908). he Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some ransitional Men and Women.
London: Allen and Unwin.
Crompton, Louis (1971). Shaw the Dramatist . London: Allen and Unwin.
Doan, William J. (2001). ‘he Doctor’s Dilemma : Adulterating a Muse’,  Annual Confe Conference
rence of
Bernard Shaw Studies  21,  21, 151–61.
Edwards, Sashona ‘he Worthy Adversaries: Benjamin R. ucker and G. Bernard Shaw’.
 www.uncleta
 ww w.uncletaz.comz.com/l/libert
iberty/shaw.html.
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Evans, . F. (ed.) (1976). Shaw: he Critical Heritage . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 Gibbs, A. M. (1983). he Art and Mind of Shaw. London: Macmillan.
Laurence, Dan H. (ed.) (1972). Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters: 1898–1919. London, Sydney
and oronto:
oronto: Max Reinhardt.
Meisel, Martin (1984). Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century heatre . New York: Limelight
Editions.
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Ma rgery M. (1972).
(1972). he Shavian Playground . London: Methuen.
Peters, Sally (1996). he Ascent of the Superman . New Haven, C, and London: Yale Univer-
sity Press.
Spink, Judith B. (1963).
(1963). ‘he Image of the Artist
Art ist in the Plays of Bernard
Berna rd Shaw’,
Shaw’, Shaw Review 
6, 82–8.
 Weintraub, Stanley
Stan ley (1989). Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene . University Park and Lon-
don: Pennsylvania University Press.
 West, Alick
A lick (1950).
(1950). A Good
Goo d Man Fallen
Falle n Among Fa bians . London: Laurence and Wishart.
Fabians 
 Woodbridge,, Homer (1963).
 Woodbridge (1963). Bernard Shaw: Creative Artist . Carbondale, IL: South Illinois
University Press.
 

MICHAEL GOLDMAN

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content 

S haw’s plays bristle with

w ith ideas, and the
t he more one looks at his works for the
stage, the more complicated becomes the relation between these ideas and
the style in which they are expressed. he apparently clear-cut social posi-
tions become elusive, perplexingly bound up with the energy and impulse,
the music and texture of theatrical performance. It would seem important,
 then, to try to get a grip on the relation between style and idea in Shaw’s
ar
art.
t. Historically,
Historical ly, this effort has proved harder than one might
might expect,
expect , in part
because of a peculiar critical distortion of Shaw’s work that has persisted
almost from the beginning of his dramatic career.
Even a famous author can be a victim of his or her reputation. For some
 writers, time eases the burden relatively quickly
quickly.. . S.
S. Eliot was soon under-
stood to be a passionate and personal poet, rather than a coldly cerebral one.
By now Jane Austen is safe from the reputation of maiden delicacy. But will
Shaw (1856–1950) ever recover from f rom being thought entertaining? In his case,
of course, the reputation is deserved—as far as it goes. He is entertaining,
like his beloved Mozart, who, Shaw said, had taught him “how to write seri-
ously without being dull.” Shaw faces greater problems than Mozart, how-
ever, because even his reputation for seriousness has hurt him. So, even as he
is considered too much of an entertainer, too given to gags and paradoxes to

From Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. LXVIII, pp. 71−81. Copyright © 2006 by
Princeton University Library.
Librar y.

145

146 Michael Goldman

be
thattaken seriously,
his plays are notatreally
the same time
art but reviewers
a kind and critics
of platform continue
orator
oratoryy. to insist
 Te enduring popular picture of Shaw seems to be of a kind of com-
bination of merry prankster and socialist demagogue, a writer who will do
anything for a laugh yet is at bottom drily didactic. Certainly no play of his
can be performed in New York without the imes  reviewer   reviewer using the word
“soapbox” somewhere in his article, as if it explained everything, or anything.
Behind this paradoxical and patronizing attitude lies the assumption that the
relation between style and content in Shaw’ Shaw ’s work is of the crudest kind; the
practiced orator finds snappy diversions to punctuate his harangue.
Surprisingly, among the many ways to deal with this misapprehension,
one that is seldom tried is to treat Shaw seriously as an analyst of his own art,
particularly of the way in which what we usually call “ideas” operate in his
 work. In the discussion that follows, I look at a few of his statements about a bout
art, aesthetics,
aesthetics, and meaning that I think help one to grasp the complexity of
his understanding of these issues. Focusing on some passages from his pref-
aces, especially the preface to  Man and Superman (1901), I want to attempt
some close reading of a typety pe that is usually not directed at Shaw’s prose, pre-
sumably because it is considered unnecessary.
unnecessary.
Shaw is at ease in his prefaces. He is writing free of the tight demands
 of dramatic time and structure, and so there are garrulous, overly relaxed
moments but also flashes of free-form brilliance on all subjects—and some-
times the flashes are impressively sustained and the brilliance deeply pen-
etrating. I intend to look at a couple of places where Shaw emerges as an
extremely interesting literary theorist, with results that are revealing for his
own plays and indeed for literature in general. Tey treat the subject of con-
tent in the arts in unexpected fashion; that they have been generally ignored
 would be
be remarkable,
remarkable, except that the reasons
reasons are all too obvious. First, no one
 wishes to credit Shaw with this kind of seriousness. And second, they are so
much fun to read, so brimming with ShawShaw’’s Mozartian vitality that it is easy
to enjoy them without thinking too hard—or rather,
rather, to assume that they are
saying simply what one has always
al ways expected Shaw to saysay..

* * *

Some of Shaw’s
Shaw’s comments on style may leave us wondering iiff we can be right
to approach him in terms of art at all. Coming to maturity in the era of art
for art’s sake, Shaw
Shaw ty
typically
pically takes a very strong line against purely stylistic
styl istic
considerations and tends to dismiss formal or aesthetic analysis, of his work,
preferring to emphasize its content instead. When he was shown an analysis
of his prose style, he commented, “It was very much as if I had told him his

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content 147

house
and was on ,fire,
Superman Helland he had
seems said,
to be the‘How admirably
appropriate monosyllabic.’”
destination In Man
for devotees of
aesthetic pleasure, with the Devil voicing a particularly powerful version of
 what elsewhere Shaw callscal ls the Gospel of Art.
Ar t. Yet
Yet Sh
Shaw
aw was himself a superb
technical analyst of drama, particularly of acting, and a notable appreciator
of art and music. And even in Man and Superman Superm an, we note that Mozart, for
Shaw the greatest of composers, quickly finds Hell boring and chooses to
reside in Heaven instead.
 Wee sense this complication as early as Caesar and Cleopatra   (1898),
 W
 where we encounter the engaging dandy Apollodorus, who smuggles Cleopa-
tra to Caesar concealed in an expensive Persian rug. Apollodorus proudly
insists on his status as an artist,
ar tist, and Shaw pokes a certain amount of fun at his
aesthetic pretensions. But Apollodorus is a man of parts, a brave and skilled
swordsman, and Caesar admires him as much for his artistic and intellectual
flair as for his daring. In Caesar and Cleopatra ’s hierarchy of best-and-bright-
est (a hierarchy that is a feature of most of Shaw’s plays), Apollodorus ranks
high, perhaps next to Caesar. And even the critique to which his aestheticism
is exposed is subtler than expected.
e xpected. Finding
Finding his way barred by a Roman sen-
try, Apollodorus declares, “My motto is art for art’s sake.” Unimpressed, the
sentry replies that this is not the password of the day. We are nudged toward
 historical awareness here. A scant three years after Oscar Wilde’s trial, “Art
for art’s sake” was certainly not the password in 1898. More important is a
more general point, the same one that Bertolt Brecht was to make when he
said that you can sail with the wind or, against the wind, but you cannot sail
 with yesterday’s
yesterday’s wind or tomorrow’s.
tomorrow’s. Te power of art cannot be separated
or insulated from the demands of the historical moment, the ever-chang-
ing passwords of the day. Apollodorus has to shift his tactics, but he finally
prevails, and this conscious artist (who sings, turns phrases, arranges exquisite
banquets, and manages to sell a few rugs on the side) turns out to be the
character who best understands Caesar’
Caesar ’s mind.
In fact, Shaw’s attack is never on art itself or its aesthetic qualities, but
on a certain kind of aestheticism, the worship of art as one might worship
sensual pleasure, as the following passage from the preface to Tree Plays for
Puritans  (1900)
 (1900) suggests: “I am as fond of fine music and handsome building

as
ingMilton was, or Cromwell,
the instruments or Bunyan;
of a systematic but if of
idolatry I found that theyIwere
sensuousness becom-
would hold
it good statesmanship to blow every cathedral in the world to pieces with
dynamite, organ and all, without the least heed to the screams of the art
ar t crit-
ics and cultured voluptuaries.”1 Tis statement seems designed to provoke our  
screams as art lovers, but the mention of Milton, a supremely sensuous writer,
reinforces the distinction Shaw is pursuing. He writes as someone at home

148 Michael Goldman

 with
ideas the sumptuosities
or themes of great
of art overgreat art. Norbeauties.
its formal does he Indeed,
ever,
ever, in any
if wesense,
readprefer the
his most
searching comments on art carefully,
carefully, we
we see that for S
Shaw
haw this distinction is
meaningless and misleading.
I turn now to my main exhibit, a passage from the preface to  Man and
Superman. Because it is by Shaw, who is not supposed to be theoretically
complex, especially on aesthetics, scholars have tended to look right
r ight past such
statements. (How differently they would be treated if they were by . S. Eliot
or Jacques Derrida!) Shaw’s analysis is in fact as subtle and original a discus-
sion of form and content as any I know, and it deserves to be quoted—and
examined—at length:

My contempt for belles lettres , and for amateurs who become the
heroes of the fanciers of literary virtuosity, is not founded on any
illusion of mine as to the permanence of those forms of thought
(call them opinions) by which I strive to communicate my bent
to my fellows. o younger men they are already outmoded; for
though they have no more lost their logic than an eighteenth
century pastel has lost its drawing or its color, yet, like the pastel,
they grow indefinably shabby, will grow shabbier until they cease
 to count at all, when my books will either perish, or, if the world is
still poor enough to want them, will have to stand, with Bunyan’s,
by quite amorphous qualities of temper and energy. . . .”[f]or art’s
sake” alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence. . . .
Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He
 who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none; he
 who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as
its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove
his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. Darwin has no
more destroyed the style of Job nor of Handel than Martin Luther
destroyed the style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved
sooner or later; and so we find the world full of a magnificent
debris of artistic fossils, with the matter-of-fact credibility gone
clean out of them, but the form still splendid. 2

 Te best way to navigate this remarkable passage is to follow the appar-
ently simple distinction with which Shaw begins: the distinction between
form and content, the oldest and usually most cliché-ridden of critical bina-
ries. Te idea is normally
normall y expressed in language that suggests the clearest and
simplest of oppositions. On the one side we are accustomed to find style,
form, texture, expression, beauty;
beaut y; on the other,
ot her, content, ideas, meaning, truth.

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content 149

At firstIn
terms. Shaw seems towords
the opening insist on the passage,
of the contrast anin interest
the boldest, evenisthe
in style crudest
associated
 with the mincing “fanciers of literary virtuosity,”
virtuosity,” a phrase of the same ilk as
“the screams of art critics and cultured voluptuaries,” and it mimes Shaw’s
“contempt” for an aestheticism that is again none too delicately linked to
effeminacy. “Belles lettres” and “amateurs” reinforce the effect.
But watch how quickly the style/content distinction gets obscured, how
Shaw keeps inserting
inser ting new terms for the two sides of the binary. Each substi-
tution is made as if the simplest contrast were being pursued, but in fact each
introduces a nuanced, complicating spin. Halfway through the first sentence,
the phrase “forms of thought”
thought ” is substituted for “content” and in turn imme-
diately replaced by “opinions.” And these more evanescent formulations are
seen as merely
mere ly the vehicles
vehi cles not
no t of some truth, idea, or even a poi
point
nt of view, but
of what Shaw calls his “bent.”
“Bent” is the crucial word in the passage. It diminishes the ideational
status of content, yet replaces it with something more personal that opens up
an entirely more nuanced vision of the artistic process. “Bent” “Bent ” is a wonderfully
simple, casual, very
ver y English word. It is diffident, apparently
apparen tly dismissive—Sha
dismiss ive—Shaw w
refers not to his ideas, discoveries, beliefs, or even opinions, but to a tendency,
an attitude,
atti tude, a leaning. And yet a bent is i s directed,
directe d, human, individual, dynamic.
 It involves the whole personality; it connects an impulse to a person and
through that person connects the impulse to action.
By the second sentence, then, we are looking at a new binary—not
style/content, but forms of thought/bent. Tese forms of thought, Shaw now
reminds us, are subject to rapid historical decay; already, younger men find
them “outmoded.” What remains of them is their “logic.” Tis word returns
us to the more enduring, presumably more substantial side of the binary, the
“content” side. But again, the ground is shifting. Logic suggests rigor and
strictness of thought, but of thought’s formal process rather than its subject
matter.. And
matter And suddenly—we are still in the second sentence—logic is equated
 with the “drawing”
“drawing” and “color”
“color” of an eighteenth-century pastel, with the
the for-
mal qualities, that is, of a nondiscursive art. Te content side has again dis-
solved into form; but at the same time we are being invited to think of formal
qualities in a new way.
way.
A littleusfurther
 yan shows in we
how far the have
same come.
sentence, the startling
Having introduction
first equated what is of Bun-
perma-
nent in his writing with the line and color of an elegant pastel, Shaw now
equates both with the enduring value of a great Christian writer. Content,
ideas, beliefs would seem absolutely central to the author of Pilgrim’s Progress ,
 yet Shaw reminds us that most readers of Bunyan today are not drawn to
him because they credit his religious opinions. Rather, they appreciate the

150 Michael Goldman

“qualities of temper
do these qualities andtoenergy”
refer style orthey find inTey
content? his work. emper
are deeper andand
moreenergy—
lasting
than ideas, but harder to assign to one pole of the binary. Like the idea of a
bent, they direct us toward a personal quality that is deeper than any formula-
tion, a marshaling of the impulse toward life.
For Shaw, personal qualities of this sort are of the greatest ethical and
historical importance. He usually uses a word like “energy” with a sense of its
scientific definitions, in this case the capacity to do work in the world. Indeed,
many of the most appealing effects in Shaw’s plays derive their force from
dramatizing a superior use of energy. In Caesar and Cleopatra , for instance,
Shaw introduces a steam engine eighteen centuries ahead of its time. Te
anachronism has been seen as cheekily perverse—Shaw making fun of the
 whole enterprise of historical drama—but the point is that a steam engine
seems amazing, supernatural in a culture that makes much less efficient use
of energy, just as the Roman legions and Caesar’s rational generalship seem
miraculous to the Egyptians over whom he triumphs. Much theatrical fun
is had with the steam engine—it is the device that hoists Cleopatra and her
rug up to Caesar on the Pharos—and we see it in elaborate operation. Not
surprisingly, it fascinates Caesar, even in the midst of a military crisis. As
 with the play’s enormously entertaining presentation of Caesar himself, the the
 theatrical fun associated with the steam engine celebrates the ability to do the
 world’s work,
work, to put energy to use in a superior way
way.. Te brio of its theatrical
deployment is a metaphor for Caesar’s own “temper and energy.” In  Man and
Superman, a “practicable” motorcar is used to very similar effect. Tere, too,
it’s impossible to separate the energy, the color, the bold wit of the theatrical
presentation from ideas about power, history, and human excellence.
But now in the paragraph we are reading, Shaw—after having appar-
ently replaced the sharply defined notion of a readily formulable content with
more fluid terms like “bent,”
“ bent,” “temper,”
“temper,” and “energy”—seems to change direc-
tion and swing back to the emphatic favoring of content over style, a trum-
petlike affirmation of the priority of what one has to say over how one says it.
“Effectiveness of assertion
asser tion is the Alpha and Omega of style.” Power
Power of style,
sty le,
he declares, depends on having “something to assert.” We quickly discover,
however,, that what is important about the assertion
however a ssertion is not finally its message,
its content
ment. as a fixed
“Disprove and formulable
his assertion idea.
after it is Style,
made, yetrather,
its styleisremains.”
the enduring ele-
Te link
between assertion and style is the “momentousness and conviction” of what
is asserted. Effectiveness
Effectiveness of assertion is not so much a matter of putting one’s
point across as of communicating one’s bent.
Shaw drives his argument home by invoking the stylistic power of three
religious artists: the author of the book of Job, George Frideric Handel, and

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content 151

Giotto.
appeal isTe last first
in the two instance
introducesensual,
a typical
andShavian twist orfull
Shaw knows enrichment. Teir
well that we do
not think of them as didactic: they continue to speak profoundly to people
 who share not a single one of Handel’s
Handel’s or Giotto’s convictions. All convic-
tions—everything we normally think of as “con “content”—are
tent”—are doomed to pass. All
assertions will be disproved—Shaw’s as much as Darwin’s or Luther’s. What
remains, the enduring quality
qualit y behind any assertion, is something we can feel
 with special force in the greatest of books or paintings or works of music.
 With a full sense of the reversal of the by nownow thoroughly dismantled binary,
binary,
Shaw calls this quality “form.” “And so we fi find
nd the world full of a magnificent
debris of artistic fossils, with the matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of
them, but the form still splendid.” He can still poke fun at the pretensions of
aestheticism by calling the great works of the past “fossils,” while nevertheless
making the grandest claims of value for the aesthetic dimension.
 Wee have come a long way in a short paragraph.
 W paragra ph. Appropriately
Appropriately enough
for Shaw’s subject, it is hard to sum up in a simple formula the rich concep-
tion that has emerged. Yes, to make great art one has to have a point, a belief,
an attitude to life. But one’s point is not the point. And the idea of form has
been transvalued too. By now we think of form, of its “splendor,” as inextri-
 cably linked to the power of conviction, that
that is, to the power of communicat
ing a bent, a vital thrust of mind and spirit. Shaw has quite literally, in the
purely Derridean
Derr idean sense, deconstructed the form/content binary. Importantly
for Shaw, however, the aim of deconstruction in his hands is not a mise en
abyme , which is finally no more than a sophisticated way of throwing up one’s
hands at the presumed insufficiency of language. Rather,
Rather, Shaw uses this kind
of analysis as an instrument of education, a way of breaking down outmoded
forms of thought to achieve a more enlightened understanding. It conserves
and renews what it has disassembled. It is a Fabian performance, not destruc-
tive but reconstitutive.
reconstitutive.

* * *

If art is about communicating a bent, how is a bent communicated? What

is the content of a bent? A complete
complete answer wou
would
ld require a study of Shaw’
Shaw ’s
poetics, a book
another idea thatthat remains aunwritten.
is broached little laterBut onepreface
in the answertomay
 Manbeand
found in
Super-
man —the idea of resistance:

If you study the electric light . . . you will find that your house
contains a great quantity of highly susceptible copper wire which
gorges itself with electricity and gives you no light whatever. But

152 Michael Goldman

here and there

resistant occurs
material; anda scrap of intenselyscrap
that stubborn insusceptible, intensely
grapples with the
current and will not let it through until it has made itself useful to
 you as those two vital qualities of literature, light and heat. Now
if I am to be no mere copper wire amateur but a luminous author,
I must also be a most intensely refractory person, liable to go out
and to go wrong at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary
possibilities.3

It’s no accident, of course, that Shaw chooses an image drawn ffrom

rom elec-
tricity, for—as with Caesar and the steam engine—the question of putting
power to use is central to his politics and to his view of history as well as to
his idea of art. Te passage reminds us that, in reading Shaw, we should look
not only for the opinions the characters utter but also for the clash of those
opinions with our own, their resistance to our ideas and to currents of belief,
action, and expectation generated by the play that sets them in motion. It is
this resistance-to-the-current
resistance-to-the-current that creates the dramatic experience.
In  Major Barbara  (1905),
 (1905), for example, Andrew Undershaft, the Nietzs-
chean arms manufacturer, argues persuasively, movingly, delightfully that
 developing weapons of mass destruction and selling them to whoever can pay
top dollar is the most moral undertaking possible, specifically more virtuous
than sheltering the homeless, feeding the poor, and following the en Com-
mandments. In a drama that everywhere resonates with Shaw’s impassioned
socialist critique of society, this brilliant capitalist carries the day and con-
 verts the play’s
play’s most charming and morally intelligent characters to his point
of view. We spend the play resisting his arguments, while, thrillingly, their
impulse carries the play along.
a long.
Not surprisingly,  Man and Superman provides a particularly neat illus-
tration of the process. Te whole play is about a man resisting a current, the
current of the Life Force embodied by the woman who is determined to
make him her husband. By marrying Ann Whitefield, Jack anner gives in
to the Life Force, as no doubt he should, but by resisting  it   it for four acts, he
makes the drama. He allows us to see and enjoy what it is all about. And in
making Jack anner both an articulate socialist of the most advanced intel-
lectual positions and a poor jerk who cannot see what’s obvious to everyone
else and who has no chance of escaping Ann, Shaw is really expressing the
same point he makes in the preface when he talks about form and content.
 Jack’ss intellectual
 Jack’ intellectual opinions,
opinions, valid as they may be, are at best of transitory value
and are relatively trivial compared with the Life Force, which uses them up, is
illuminated by them—and then moves on.

Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content 153

Compared with some of Shaw’s heroes and heroines, with Undershaft

and Caesar and Major Barbara, anner is relatively limited in his gifts. It is
probably a mistake to play him as he is often played, made up to look like
Bernard Shaw. But he is like Shaw in at least one respect: he makes a contri-
bution that Shaw feels characteristic
char acteristic of art. When the play ends, A Ann
nn speaks
to him tenderly but condescendingly, “Never mind . . . dear. Go on talking.”
 anner’s—
  anner’s—and
and the play’s—last word is an exasperated “alking!”
“alking!” which Shaw
follows with
wi th the stage direction,
direct ion, “Universal laughter .”
.” His ffriends
riends are laughing
at Jack’s expense, of course, but Shaw’s direction—with typical tongue-in-
cheek arrogance—also refers to the laughter he is confident will issue from
the delighted theater audience, from all audiences of  Man and Superman 

everywhere. Butuniverse,
pleasure of the “universal” aimsLife
of the even wider
Force thanwhich
itself, that; itmay
points to the general
be amused at the
pretensions of individual men to truth and understanding, but which thrives
on their efforts toward greater knowledge and enlightenment. Jack anner
has made his contribution. He has added to the growing, blooming, value-
creating energy of the living world. Tough they may not quite understand
him, he has communicated his bent to his fellows. And if we wish to under-
stand what a Shaw play communicates, we must look first and finally to its
complex liveliness as a work of art, to the life-tendencies it imparts to us, to
the splendor of its form.

N
1. hree Plays for Puritans  (New
 (New York: Brentano’s, 1906), xx.
2. “Epistle Dedicatory,” in  Man and Superman,
Superma n, and hree Other Plays  (New
  (New
 York:
 York: Ba
Barnes
rnes aand
nd Noble, 20
2004),
04), 329–30.
3. “Epistle Dedicatory,” 331.
 

EMIL ROY 

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House and Harold

Pinter’s Te Homecoming: Comedies of Implosion

G . B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House   (1919) and Harold Pinter’s he Home-

coming   (1965) are two of twentieth-century British drama’s premier plays.
Shaw’s debt to Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard   is too well known for rehearsal
 here, while the Pinter play mines preoccupations displayed as early as he
Room, reflecting his indebtedness to Samuel Beckett’s fiction among others.
 hough nearly half
hal f a century
centur y separates these two works and though Shaw
had no discernable influence on Pinter, a side-by-side comparison illumi-
nates not only
emanating fromtheir differences
formal butvalues.
and social underlying preoccupations they share,
Both playwrights are outsiders, Shaw famously considering himself a
“downstart” Irish protestant, and Pinter a secular Jew. Born in 1930, twenty
 years before Shaw’s death, Pinter, like Shaw,
Shaw, works within the conventions
of fourth-wall realism. As Christopher Innés says of Pinter, both plays are
“models of power structures,” though unlike Shaw, Pinter depicts “political
themes in purely personal terms.”1 Shaw views his play as a scrim through
 which to visualize a corrupt, demoralized European society,
society, emphasizing his
point through his lengthy commentary and ship interior set standing in for
imperial England. Pinter’s
Pinter’s down-at-the-heels setting obliquely acknowledges
ac knowledges
a larger urban context, but reduces “politics to a worm’s eye view.”2

From Comparative Drama  41,

  41, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 335−48. Copyright © 2007 by Comparative
Drama .

155

156 Emil Roy

If we consider how interchangeable the two plays’ titles are, their under-
lying similarities reverberate even more meaningfully. Both plays exploit an
enduring archetype deeply rooted in the dramatic form: the impact of one
or more outsiders on a closed, emotionally conflicted family group, eliciting
long-buried antagonisms and flimsy lies, the unforeseen death of a minor
character and, in both plays, futile attempts, after the departure or expulsion
of an outsider, at reforming the shattered social group. Quite ironically, both
playwrights work twists on this time-honored plot device: Shaw’s “outsider”
“outsider”
Ellie becomes through “heartbreak” an “insider,” in effect the third of Sho-
tover’s daughters, defeating her rival, Hesione Hushabye, and discarding her
putativee lover, Mangan. In Te Homecoming , Ruth rejects her husband, eddy,
putativ

 who may her

re-enters haveformer
offeredprofession
marriage on
as aher
form of terms.
own redemption. She then seamlessly
Neither Shaw nor Pinter has available the highly artificial Elizabethan
convention of the soliloquy, which allowed characters to reveal their inner
thoughts to the audience. However, characters in both their plays feel driven
to embarrassing, self-abnegating confessions that serve much the same pur-
pose. Teir enigmatic characters let slip buried snippets of memory, giving
 the audience few guideposts to distinguish truth from f rom fiction if Pinter even
considers the distinction meaningful. Shaw’sShaw’s characters are knowable, if com-
plex and neurotic, occasionally breaking into recitations of agonized, but rec-
ognizably
ogniz ably truthful
tru thful insights into their
thei r pasts. Pinter’s
Pinte r’s characters, like Shaw’
Shaw ’s, are
often self-deluded but even more distanced f rom reality reality,, both
both theirs and ours:
they are all unreliable narrators at times. Where Shaw overexplains, Pinter’s
dialogue is spare, even cryptic. What Shaw achieves in scope and breadth,
Pinter gains in depth and ambiguity. Teir plays can be called “comedies of
implosion” as, despite the final offstage explosions in Shaw, the characters in
self-destructing reveal the emptiness they had struggled to conceal from f rom both
themselves and us. Rolf Fjelde approvingly quotes R. D. Laing’s definition of
“implosion” as “the final precipitation of a state of dread which experiences
the full terror of the world as liable at any moment to crash and obliterate
all identity,”3 language that aptly describes the moods of both the Shaw and
Pinter plays.
In dismissing Pinter’s Jessie as “ no more  than
  than an offstage, inarticulate
figure” (italics mine), Mireia Aragay slights the grip offstage, unseen char-
acters exert on the behavior of both playwrights’ onstage figures.4  Shaw’s
Hastings Utterword and Shotover’s unnamed “Negress” (Shaw’s word) wife
occupy archetypal positions roughly analogous to Pinter’s MacGregor and
 Jessie. Tese characters all appear sharply bifurcated, joining power and pas-
sivity, eliciting both idealization and fearful contempt from onstage figures.
 Tough Hastings exemplifies great political authority
authorit y as “governor of all the

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s he Homecoming  157

crown colonies in succession,”5 his wife has not only completely domesticated

him, but she has also deserted him—as she once left home—in her quest for
“heartbreak,” an all-consuming submersion in passion. For his part, Shoto-
 ver recommends a West Indian as an “excellent wi[fe]” (76). Shotover never
explains why they separated after only two years of marriage.
Pinter’s wraithlike dead characters also reveal mismatched contraries:
father/betrayer (MacGregor) and mother/whore ( Jessie). Tough Max lauds
MacGregor as a quick study in the butcher trade, Sam blasts him as a ““lousy
lousy
stinking loudmouth.”6 Just as Hastings first tamed Ariadne before he alien-
ated her, MacGregor could have conceivably displaced Max by fathering one
or more of his sons, as Sam hints before his collapse. Te actor Paul Rogers
7
suggests,”MacGregor
gregor’s is . . . accounts
parentage perhaps almost the
forruling idea ininthat
differences thehousehold.”  Mac-
sons’ personalities
and temperaments, though all of them are spiritually empty and, possibly,
physically impotent, except for eddy. Similarly, Max both idealizes Jessie as
“the backbone
bac kbone to this
thi s family . . . a will of iron,
iro n, a heart
hear t of gold and a mind”
m ind” (62),
 while maligning
maligning her “rotten face” (25). In both plays, then, dichotomized par-
ent/spousal figures project infantile confusion toward parent figures, between
 nurturing, protective images, on the one hand, and threatening, intimidating
symbols, on the other. Tese characters, especially the men, exert their power
subtly and pervasively
per vasively not by the direct application of brute force—“any fool
can govern with a stick in his hand” (145), Shotover announces dismissively.
 Tey do so through
through political or sexual charisma,
charisma, their effects magnified rather
than diminished by physical absence.
Both playwrights express a deep uneasiness with all of society’s ways
of controlling and channeling the sex drive: marriage, prostitution, platonic
attachments, and celibacy, among others. Teir men and women fight out
the “war of the sexes” on traditional grounds, using sex, love, and money as
pawns in their quest for unhampered power. Instead of romanticizing the
conventional
conventio nal “gay couple,”
couple ,” Margare
Margarett Croyden has
ha s observed,
obser ved, Shaw,
Shaw, like Pinter,
P inter,
presents the calculating “shrewd couple.”8 Te stakes are high in Shaw and—
until the last few minutes—almost laughably trivial in Pinter. Both men
and women view romantic infatuation as entrancing madness (in Shaw) or
obsessive possessiveness (in Pinter). In neither play do men or women under-
stand the other sex nor have they reconciled the yawning splits within their
own psyches. Romance or infatuation (for Shaw) and sexual encounters (for
Pinter) pass too quickly,
quickly, and marriage for both lasts too long.
Both plays are preoccupied with women’s nature: her status, rights,
and prerogatives. In particular, women insist on choosing their own mates
or partners. Tis demand violates social dictates that only men exercise
this right, a longstanding preoccupation of English literature at least since

158 Emil Roy

Chaucer. Helplessly enthralled and

Chaucer. a nd often resentful, even misogynistic,
misog ynistic, men
seem driven to extreme lengths to captivate women with plumage, money,
or words. Tey both crave and resent the power of sirens who tantalize
tantaliz e them
 with a magnetic,
magneti c, uncontrol
u ncontrollable
lable allure. Mazzini
Mazzin i Dunn
Du nn clai
claims
ms mildly
mild ly that
Ellie is “such a lovely girl” because he had “been in love once” (104). Sho-
tover grumbles that “fellows like Mangan” “bring forth demons to delude
us, disguised as pretty daughters . . . for whose sake we spare them” (87).
He goes on to ask, “Is there any slavery on earth viler than this slavery of
men to women?” (137). Randall—termed “the Rotter” by Ariadne—bitterly
grouses that he has “loved
“ loved this demon [Ariadne] all [his] life”
life ” but “have paid
for it” (136). Mangan chimes in: “When you [Hesione] gave me the glad
eye . . . Ariadne,
in-law, ,you weresuccumb
making atofool
the ofsudden,
me” (111–112).
irrational Hector andothers
attraction his sister-
have
experienced, recognizing the social hypocrisy masking adultery: “If you do
and say the correct thing, you can do just what you like” (83). Betrayed by
his loss of control, Hector angrily assails a “damnable quality”
quality ” of fascination
in Shotover’s daughters that “destroys men’s moral sense, and carries them
beyond honor and dishonor” (82).
 In Te Homecoming  Pinter
 Pinter s equivalent of the Hector–Ariadne encoun-
ter involves eddy’s wife, Ruth, and his brother, Joey, which proceeds nearly
 wordlessly.. After Lenny puts on music, dances with and kisses Ruth, Joey
 wordlessly
embraces then lies heavily on her; they roll onto the floor. Like Hector, how-
ever,, Joey recognizes bitterly that Ruth like Ariadne is available to others, that
ever
powerful emotion is no guarantee of possession: “I don’t want to share her
 with a lot of yobs!”
yobs!” (89). In Te Collection Bill explains preconceptions implied
in Te Homecoming : “Every woman is bound to have an outburst of . . . wild
sensuality at one time or another. . . . It’s part of their nature. Even though it
may be the kind of sensuality of which you yourself have never been the for-
tunate recipient.”9 Underlying the struggles for dominance among men and
 women in both playsplay s is, on a deeper,
deeper, more internal level, a contest between
independence and interconnectedness.
interconnectedness.
If both playwrights’ men
men are torn by wishes for sexually beguiling tempt-
resses, they also yearn paradoxically for homebodies devoted to household
upkeep and children. A few exceptional men, like the never-seen “numskull”
Hastings, seem to thrive on marriage: “So long as Ariadne takes care he is
fed regularly, he is only too thankful to anyone who will keep her in good
humor” (132). For his part, Randall Utterword accepts the disadvantages of
a “platonic” relationship to Ariadne with none of the advantages of marriage.
 Yet
 Y et if men successfully confine women to traditional homebody roles, the
men quickly feel bored and imprisoned. Te self-loathing Hector complains,
“I might as well be your lapdog. . . . What a damned creature a husband is

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s he Homecoming  159

anyhow!” (89). Te Captain tells Ellie, “It’s a dangerous thing to be married

right up to hilt, like my daughter’s husband.” He adds, in the same vein, that
a husband resembles a broken-in horse.
 While Pinter’s men, like Shaw’s, recognize a woman’
woman’s sexual allure—“
[Ruth’s] a lovely girl. A beautiful woman” (75)—they too seek control, to
diminish her freedom to choose. Even after Ruth has sealed her agreement
 with Lenny to return to prostitution, the family seeks to domesticate her, her,
fearing
fear ing “She won’t
won’t . . . be ad
adaptable
aptable”” (97):
Max: And you’d have the whole of your daytime free, of course. You could
do a bit of cooking here if you wanted to.

Lenny: Makethetheplace
Max: Scrub beds.out a bit.
 eddy:
 eddy: Keep everyone
ever yone company.
company. (93–94)
(93–94)
Ruth evidently turns a deaf ear. She may have no intention of mothering
the brood, father and sons. Pinter’s conclusion may require his audience to
believe two contradictory things: Ruth gains both the freedom of the whore
 (without a housewife’s status) and freedom from entrapment in eddy’s
bourgeois marriage (without the freedom to choose sexual partners).
Shaw’s women, like his men, acknowledge the power their sexual allure
gives them over
ove r men’s
men’s imaginations.
imagina tions. Ariadne
Ariadn e is married to a powerful,
power ful, success
success--
ful man and possesses a “strange fascination”
fascination” that keeps men ““hanging
hanging about
her” (133). Finding
Finding herself
hers elf lovesick,
lovesic k, Ariadne
Ariadn e had returned to her father’s
fathe r’s house
in a desperate quest for psychic health. Yet her perverse search for romantic
enchantment confirms its mythic power: she had “never been in love in her
life, though she has always
al ways been trtrying
ying to fall in head over ears” (84), Hesione
muses. Tey also decry
decr y its transitory
transitor y impact, leaving their men mere husks of
the heroes they once captivated. F Foror both Ellie and Hesione, their infatuation
 with Hector made a stunning impact followed followed by ennui and regret. “We were
frightfully in love with one another . . . an enchanting dream” (84), Hesione
recalls, anticipating Ellie’s agonized sorrow at her dashed fascination with
Hector’s imposture: “In the world for me is Marcus and lot of other men of
 whom one is just the same as another” (108). Te women women’’s mingled fascina-
tion by and fear of passion—and its concomitant loss of control—emerges in
Hesione’ss brief flirtation
Hesione’ flir tation with Mazzini Dunn:D unn: “Women
“Women have flirted with me
because I’m safe,” he sighs, “but have tired of me for the same reason” (104).
Shaw’s women are as confused and distraught as his men: “What do men
 want?” Hesione agonizes: “Tey have their food, their firesides, their their clothes
mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are they not satisfied?” (90).
Dazzled by fantasies of unattainable romantic liaisons, yet deeply frustrated

160 Emil Roy

by their intangibility, Shaw’s women seek—like Strindberg’s Miss Julie—to

impose codes of conduct on others they themselves blatantly evade.e vade.
If Shaw’s women cannot sustain their own and their lovers’ burning
passion, they desperately try other stratagems: throwing beautiful women in
their husbands’ paths, somehow burnishing their partners’ heroic qualities,
engaging in unconsummated fantasy romances. Hesione had “invited pretty
 women to the house” to give
give Hector “another
“another turn, but it has never come off?”
off?”
(84) she regrets. For
For her part,
par t, Ellie stubbornly persists in believing she could
reinvent a dwindling husband as dashing hero: “I would have made a man of
Marcus, not a household pet” (109), she taunts Hesione. Like Ruth, Ellie is
“both a threat and an object of desire,” in Varun Begley’s terms. 10 Ellie’s final
liaison withInShotover
from love. results
the process as much from despair
of disillusionment, and“heartbreak,”
termed resignation as
sheit gives
does
up Hector, rejects Mangan, and attaches herself, finally, to the oblivious Sho-
tover, her “spiritual husband and second father” (149). Heartbreak House  thus
 thus
continues Shaw’s imaginings of young women mentored if not entranced by
older men in such plays as  Major Barbara , Pygmalion, and Saint Joan (if we
may, for the moment, think of God in the latter play as an “older man”).
  Just as Shaw’s Ariadne posits a fanciful societal polarity between Heart-
break House  and
 and Horseback Hall, Pinter’s Ruth contrasts a dystopian view of
Arizona with that of her husband’s more benign Utopian vision. “It is so clean
there, you can bathe until October,” eddy protests, and adds (in his mind) a
laughable clincher: “You can help me with my lectures” (71). Ruth responds
 with parched, sterile, and biting imagery: “It’s “It’s all rock. And sand. It stretches
. . . so far . . . everywhere you look. And there’s lots of insects there” (69),
repeating the last phrase for emphasis. Like Ariadne’s failed homecoming and
Mangan’s promises of a house in the country, neither eddy’s trip to Venice
nor his hopes of entangling Ruth in his teaching duties save their marriages.
Male characters in both plays seek refuge from sexual frustration at times in
passivity and escape. Despite
Despite his short-lived, model marriage, Shotover voices
the play’s insistent misogyny: “Go, Boss Mangan, and when you have found
the land where there is happiness and where there are no women, send me its
latitudee and longitude,
latitud longi tude, and I will join
j oin you there”
there ” (114). Pinter’
Pinter ’s Joey, the failed
faile d
boxer, boasts of picking up girls, running off their “escorts,” and forcing sex
upon them. Yet Yet his dalliance
dal liance with
wi th Ruth consists
cons ists entirely
enti rely of impotent
i mpotent foreplay.
f oreplay.
Of his inability to reach orgasm with Ruth, he says lamely, “Now and again
. . . you can be happy . . . without going any hog” (84).
Past and present violence defines both playwrights’ patriarchs, though
instigated by female greed and perfidy. Shaw’s Shotover is a merchant of
death, supporting his household by inventing weapons of mass destruction:
“Living at the rate we do,” Hesione prods him, “You cannot afford life-saving

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s he Homecoming  161

inventions. Cant you think of something that will murder half Europe at one
bang?” (89). On a much smaller scale, Pinter’s Max is a one-time butcher,
hinting at flesh-peddling involving his wife Jessie. His apparently unmoti-
 vated violent outburst—hitting first Joey in the stomach and thenthen Max across
the head—closely follows his angry abuse of Ruth: eddy, he claims, “brings
a filthy scrubber off the street. . . . Have you ever had a whore here?” (58). His
outrage rings ironically hollow, considering his late wife’s profession.
Sometimes, in both plays, violence stems directly from sexual frustra-
tion. Alternately tempted and enraged by the wiles of Ariadne, his wife’s sis-
ter, Hector complains bitterly, “You got your claws deeper into me than I
intended” (83). After Ariadne humiliates Randall, Hector seizes Ariadne by
the throat and throws her forcefully into a chair. Shaw suggests wryly she is
“not in the least put out, and rather pleased by his violence ” (136). Te incident,
of course, reflects a misogynist fantasy that women not only court but enjoy
 violence. In a later scene, Shaw hints that Shotover’s dynamite, buried in a
cave outside, serves much the same purpose as Chekhov’s first-act gun. Infu- Infu-
riated by Randall’s acquiescence to Ariadne’s bullying, Hector shouts. “Oh
 women! women! women! (He lifts his fists in invocation to heaven ) Fall. Fall
 and crush” (138). When bombs fall in the third act, they respond as much to
Hector’s misogynist curse as to all the characters’ wish for anarchy. Pinter’s
Lenny recounts physical abuse toward women, one of them a supposedly
supposedl y dis-
eased prostitute, the other a woman who had asked him to help move a heavy
laundry appliance. Given the triviality of the women’s misdemeanors, Lenny’s
brutality seems entirely motivated by misogyny
misog yny..
In both plays women seal their advantage over male antagonists in bar-
gaining scenes formalized in Restoration drama, a staple since Elizabethan
times. Ellie and Ruth discard lovers and husbands, if a bit reluctantly at first,
at least in Ellie’s case. Ellie accuses Hesione, “You were born to lead men
by the nose” (107). Heartbroken by her loss of the solidly married Hector,
she coolly blackmails Boss Mangan into promising her both the luxuries
she craves and an open marriage before rejecting him. She later recalls hyp-
notizing her father, a feat she repeats onstage with Mangan. Finally, Ellie
bullies Mangan into marriage by threatening to place Hesione beyond his
reach. Quite ironically, as Irving Wardle suggests, in Ellie’s bargaining scene
 with Mangan, as in Ruth’s
Ruth’s with Lenny,
Lenny, she translates sexual power into real
11
estate.  Ellie wonders before she rejects Mangan, “whether there are any nice
houses to let down here” (93) near Hesione, that is.
In Te Homecoming  Ruth
  Ruth rejects her husband heartlessly in the process
of driving a hard bargain with the pimp Lenny. She overcomes eddy’s feeble
resistance to their separation, then the family’s attempts at subjugation, with
a combination of guile and ruthlessness. Her deal administers a shock to the

162 Emil Roy

system for both Max and Sam, (possibly) killing one of them and deeply
humiliating the other. As Francis Gillen’s cogent analysis of Pinter’s drafts
makes clear, the author “develop[s] Ruth as a woman of strength able to con-
 vey and accomplish her own agenda.”12 In a reversal of dramatic tradition,
both Shaw and Pinter treat marriage comically while courtship is tinged, if
not with tragedy, at least with the darkest irony.
Shaw and Pinter instill in their plays the logic of the unconscious: love
must be paid for, sometimes in coin of the realm for both Ellie and Ruth,
sometimes at an even
e ven more terrible cost. Mangan is stripped of both preten-
sions and illusions by the relentless assaults of the other characters. He is
driven finally to admit that his power and arrogance have no basis in reality,
that his managerial prowess is fake. In the logic of the unconscious, again,
characters in both plays believe, “If I hurt myself, you’ll love me.” Mangan’s
rush into the cave where Shotover has stored his dynamite mingles a search
for refuge from approaching bombers with a disguised suicide attempt, as
though any reason for living has disappeared.
In Pinter, recognizing that Jessie’s death like her profession have made
 her forever unavailable to him, Sam shouts, MacGregor had Jessie in the
back of my cab as I drove them along” (94), then collapses. Sam’s confession
mocks the liebestod  of
  of classic romantic literature, closely linking Jessie’s and
Ruth’s professions, their replacement of husbands with nameless strangers,
and their three sons. Sam may faintingly join Jessie in fantasy, or his collapse

may
Again,re-enact
in the his despairing
logic shock at seeing
of the unconscious, Sam’sher enjoy
death (ifsex with
that’s whatMacGregor.
it is) and
Max’s final, groveling plea for Ruth’s favors are unanswered calls for uncon-
ditional love.
Both Shaw and Pinter link the scarcity of food and drink to loveless-
ness, a loss of psychological underpinnings and social instability. Giving or
 withholding food involves the exercise of power,
power, ways of taking advantage,
or showing approval or disdain while a plenitude of food and drink—though
dr ink—though
much rarer—suggests love, security, acceptance, and order. “Tere is no love,”
says Shaw’s
Shaw ’s Jack anner,
anner, “sincerer than the love of
o f food.”
foo d.” Disorder, uneasiness,
uneasin ess,
and distaste often emerge in food imagery, as food providers give or with-
hold food in lieu of love. In Heartbreak House   Ariadne Utterword equates
mealtime irregularity with rational and emotional anarchy. She had entered
a loveless marriage to compensate, in part, for the House’s failure to nurture
her: “no
“no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because
bec ause they are always gnawing
bread and butter or munching apples, and, what is worse, the same disorder
in ideas, in talk, in feeling” (55). After pouring out stale tea, Shotover favors
the still-innocent Ellie with his special brew. Nurse Guinness comments, “O,
miss, he didn’t forget you after all! You have made an impression” (57). Te

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s he Homecoming  163

lovelorn overeat or engage in fruitless complaint. While the Captain favors

Ellie’s self-aware if humble father, with a macaroni meal, Mangan’s digestion
has been ruined,
r uined, suggesting his inner turmoil and insecurity: “oo rich: I cant
eat such things”
thin gs” (92). For
For the unlovable
unlov able “captain of industry
indust ry”” has overindulged
overi ndulged
disastrously: “he has ruined his liver eating and drinking the wrong things;
and now he can hardly
hardl y eat at all”
all ” (102).
In Te Homecoming  Ruth Ruth associates a nostalgic memory of her premari-
tal work as a “photogra
“photographer’s
pher’s model” with a rare abundance
abunda nce of drink and food:
foo d:
“when we changed in the house we had a drink. Tere was a cold buffet” (73).
Ruth’s wistful recollection passes nearly
near ly unnoticed. Seemingly trivial struggles
over food and drink mask disdain, barely concealed battles for dominance,
even vengeance. As Michael Billington comments about a film ( Te Quiller
 Memorandum), “Pinter uses the consumption of food as a constant metaphor
for a kind of moral blankness.”13 By suggesting Max is “cooking for a lot of
dogs,” Lenny slyly reveals the family members’ animality. Ruth later contests
Lenny over an otherwise inconsequential glass of water, a struggle Ruth sexu-
alizes and turns to her advantage:
 Lenny: Just give me the glass.
Ruth: No
  Pause
Lenny: I’ll take it then,
Ruth: If you take the glass . . . I’ll take you.
Lenny recognizes their byplay as a sexual contretemps: “What are you
doing, making me some kind of proposal?” (30) Later, eddy steals Lenny’s
cheese roll, another seemingly trivial contest masking a complex power
struggle. When confronted, eddy admits, “I took it deliberately” (80). His
petty, evidently unmotivated theft deflects his resentful loss of Ruth’s love
upon his brother; it also pays Lenny back for asking embarrassing philo-
sophical questions; furthermore, it anticipates Lenny’s deal returning Ruth
to prostitution.
Both playwrights use clothing symbolically, not only to shield nakedness
but as a stand-in for society’s weakening repressions. Clothing is a proxy for
lying, gratuitous display, subjugation, spurious self respect, and social hypoc-
risy. In Heartbreak House  Hector’s
  Hector’s costumes paradoxically symbolize female
desire to his wife, entrapped male will to Hector. Tey signify his wife Hes-
ione’s much-regretted grip on his imagination, the powerful role of roman-
tic fantasy in their marriage. Yet the same costumes ensnare Hector, who
calls them the “chains” of “the escaping slave” (114). Nakedness, on the other
hand, connotes self-awareness and truth-telling, experiences often striking

164 Emil Roy

characters with the force of an epiphany. Mangan, having seen the façade of
his power and prestige ripped to shreds, threatens hysterically to tear off his
clothes, “blowing his cover,” so to speak. “Weve stripped ourselves morally
naked: well, let us strip ourselves physically naked as well” (146–47). Later,
as the group gathers outdoors, Mazzini Dunn appears completely at ease in
his pajamas. Hesione favorably contrasts his behavior with that of the shal-
low Mangan, who “as a practical business man, has tried to undress himself
and has failed ignominiously; whilst you, as an idealist, have succeeded bril-
liantly” (150). As Hesione notes, Mazzini’s near-nakedness reflects his poise,
his secure sense of belonging.
Pinter too views clothing as both camouflage and enticement, meant
to blind observers and accentuate female sexuality. Lenny’s uncanny echo of
Heartbreak House , “Isn’t it funny? I’ve got my pyjamas on and you’re fully
dressed” (45), calls attention to Ruth’s charisma. Ruth’s complaint about her
inability to find satisfactory shoes in America glances obliquely at both her
once-forsaken role as streetwalker and her ill-fitting role as a professor’s wife.
Oddly, the play’s only two lyrical passages invoke gifts of clothing to sym-
 bolize rare moments of affection. In one of them, Max congratulates him-
self on his “generosity” to Jessie, invoking clothing to idealize his otherwise
ambivalent relationship to his dead wife. He recalls promising Jessie “a dress
in pale corded blue silk, heavily encrusted in pearls, and for casual wear, a pair
of pantaloons in lilac flowered taffeta” (62), a fantasy masking a profession

usually
recalls
recal conducted
ally, “Iin
ls poetically,
poetic the nude.
bought
bough t a girlIn ant unusually
a hat
ha once. . . . Ittender reminiscence,
had a bunc
bunch Lenny
h of daffodils
daffodi ls on
it, tied with a black satin bow, and then it was covered with a cloche of black
 veiling” (73). Like Max’sMax’s over-refined dress imagery
imagery,, Lenny’
Lenny ’s hat gift invokes
a male fantasy of female submission and obedience.
Ruth later exploits the clothing-nakedness paradox with her verbal
striptease, a simultaneous act of revealing through concealing. Ruth tanta-
lizes the family while remaining fully clothed. She suggests they visualize
her body clad only in underclothes, that they consider her body language,
the movements of her lips, quite quite apart f rom any words she may speak: “Look
at me. I . . . move my leg. Tat’s all it is. But I wear . . . underwear . . . which
moves with me . . . it . . . captures your attention” (68–69). In effect, Ruth
 verbally and gesturally pre-enacts Sam’s report of the sex act Jessie had per-
formed blatantly in the back of his taxi as he watched, helplessly enthralled.
After eddy confesses his theft of Lenny’s cheese roll, Lenny pointedly ties
up food, dishonesty, and social hypocrisy with a clothing metaphor: “this is
something approaching the naked  truth,  truth , isn’t it?” (80; italics min
mine).
e). Pinter has
tellingly acknowledged that “speech is a constant stratagem to cover naked-
ness.”14 In both plays references to clothing heighten the imagined sex appeal

G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

 and Harold Pinter’s he Homecoming  165

of naked bodies while pointing up their authors’ preoccupations with love’s

scarcity and loss. Tey also suggest social inhibitions the characters all yearn
to sustain and evade, illustrating the psychological maxim, “What we desire
 we also fear.”
fear.” Both plays, then, probe the deeper implications of an essential
item of stagecraft—clothing, with its power to manifest, hide, and titillate, all
at the same time.
In Heartbreak House  and
  and Pinter’s work, both playwrights have not so
much abandoned the hackneyed conventions of the well-made, three-act
play as they have hollowed it out, slowed its pace and sought poetic, highighly
hly
evocative language and action. Tey build their mastery
master y of stagecraft on the
ruins of earlier dramatic contrivances designed either to hide their often
flimsy plotting (think letters, pistols hanging on walls, revelations of con-
cealed parentage, birthmarks, and the like) or to be parodied, most bril-
liantly in much of Shaw and Oscar Wilde (consider naming confusions,
memoir-writing ingénues, and concluding mass marriages in Te Importance
of Being Earnest , for example). Bert States’s shrewd insight applies to both
authors: “Fidelity to experience, moral qualm, truth, these are indeed per-
 petuated, but in terms of the medium.” 15 Shaw still clings to the pretense
that his characters are artfully constructed amalgams of opposites, compli-
cated but knowable. For
For his part Pinter affirms a deeply rooted uncertainty
principle regarding the knowability of his characters indebted as much to
his social ambience as to Beckett. Shaw maintains the useful pretense that a

rigid
ing asclass
much strinucture
structure dominates
despair and
as in hope forrepresses
its liter althe
literal English body
destruction. politic,
Austin call-
Quigley
Quigley’ ’s
suggestive comment applies to both: “Te recognition of irrevocable loss is
matched by recognition of an inescapable future.”16 Shaw  Shaw’’s outdated social
distinctions have not so much disappeared in Te Homecoming  as  as they have
been posited, then undermined and negated. Tey leave in their stead a
rootless, alienated society driven primarily by naked, self-lacerating strug-
gles for love, money, power, and status.
s tatus.

N
  1. Christopher Innés,  Modem British Drama: he wentieth Centur y  (Cam-
Century   (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 332.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Rolf Fjelde, “Plotting Pinter’s Progress,” in  A Casebook on Harold Pinter’s
“he Homecoming,”  ed.
 ed. John Lahr (New York: Grove Press, 1971), 98.
  4. Mireia Aragay, “Pinter, Politics and Postmodernism,” in he Cambridge
Companion to Harold Pinter , ed. Peter Raby (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 2001), 250.
  5. George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House  (1919;
  (1919; reprint, Baltimore: Pen-
guin, 1964), 55. (Subsequent citations of Shaw’s play refer to this edition.)

166 Emil Roy

  6. Harold Pinter, he Homecoming, in Complete Works: hree   (New York:

Grove, 1978), 34. (Subsequent citations of this play refer to this edition.)
  7. “An
“An Actor’s Approach: An Interview wit withh Paul Rogers,” in  A Casebook
C asebook on
Harold Pinter’s “he Homecoming”  169. 169.
 8. Margaret Croyden, “Pinter’s Hideous Comedy,” in  A Casebook on Harold
Pinter’s “he Homecoming”  50. 50.
 9. Harold Pinter, he Collection, in Complete Works: wo (New York: Grove,
1977), 151.
10. Varun Begley, Harold Pinter and the wilight of Modernism (oronto: Uni-
 versity of oronto
oronto Press, 202005),
05), 68.
11. Irving Wardle, “he erritorial Struggle,” in  A Casebook
Caseb ook on Harold Pinter’s
“he Homecoming”  44. 44 .
12. Francis Gillen,
Gil len, “Pinter At WWork:
ork: An Introduct
Introduction
ion to the Fir
First
st Draft
Draf t of he
Homecoming 
Collected   and1997
 and
Essays its Relationship
and 1998 , ed.toFrances
the Completed Drama,”
Gillen and Stephenin Gale
he Pinter Review:
(ampa: he
University of ampa Press, 1999), 42.
13. Michael Billington, he Life and Work of Harold Pinter  (London:
 (London: Faber &
Faber, 1996), 183.
14. Ronald Hayman, Harold Pinter  (London:
 (L ondon: Heinemann, 1968), 79.
15. Bert O. States, “Pinter’s Homecoming : he Shock of Recognition,” in Har-
 old Pinter , ed. Harold Bloom ((New
New Y
York:
ork: Chelse
Chelseaa House, 1987), 17
17..
16. Austin E. Quigley, he Pinter Problem  (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1975), 227.

Chronology 

1856 Born on July 26 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of George Carr

Shaw and Lucinda
L ucinda Elizabeth Shaw.
 1871–1876 Works for land agent in Dublin.
ca. 1876–1885 Joins mother in London. Works as writer and commercial
laborer. In 1884, cofounder of the Fabian Society.
ca. 1885 Starts as book reviewer,
reviewer, also as art critic and music critic.
1889 Editor of Fa
Fabian
bian Essays in Socialism.
1891 Publishes Te Quintessence of Ibsenism.
1892 Widowers’ Houses , his first play
play,, produced.
1894  Arms and the Man produced.
1896 Te Devil’s Disciple  produced.
 produced.
1898 Marries Charlo
Charlotte
tte Payne-
Payne-
ownshend. Plays Pleasant and
Unpleasant  published.
 published.
1904–1906 Several plays produced, including  Man and Superman,  John
Bull’s Other Island , Major Barbara , and Te Doctor’s Dilemma .
1908 Getting Married  produced.
 produced.
1909 Te Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet  produced.
 produced.
1910  Misalliance  produced.
 produced.

167

168 Chronology 

1911 Fanny’s First Play  produced.

 produced.
1913 Pygmalion produced.
1914 Common Sense About the War  published.
 published.
1920 Heartbreak House  produced.
 produced.
1922 Back to Methuselah produced.
1923 Saint Joan produced.
1925 Award
Awarded
ed Nobel Prize for literature.
1929 Te Apple Cart  produced.
 produced.
1931 ravels to Moscow.
1932 Publishes Te Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God .
1933 Te Shaws travel to numerous countries, including the United
States.
 1934 Publishes Prefaces .
1938 Academy Award for screenplay of Pygmalion. Geneva  
produced.
1939  In Good King Charles’s Golden Days  produced.
 produced.
1943 Wife dies.
1944 Publishes Everybody’s Political What’s What .
1950 Dies in November.

Contributors 

HAROLD BLOOM is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale Uni-

 versity. Educated at Cornell and Yale universities, he is the author of more
 than 30 books, including Shelley’s Mythmakin
Mythmaking  g  (1959),
 (1959), he Visionary Company  
(1961), Blake’s Apocalypse  (1963),
  (1963), Yeats  (1970),
 (1970), he Anxiety of Influence (1973),
 A Map of Misreading   (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism  (1975),  Agon: oward
a heory of Revisionism  (1982), he American Religion  (1992), he Western
Canon (1994), Omens of Millennium: he Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resur-
rection (1996), Shakespeare: he Invention of the Human (1998), How to Read
and Why  (2000),
 (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds  
(2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited   (2003), Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?  
(2004)
(200 4),, and Jesus and Yahweh: he Names Divine  (2005).
 (2005). In addition, he is the
author of hundreds of articles, reviews, and editorial introductions. In 1999,
Professor Bloom received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Gold
Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of Catalo-
nia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen
Bicentennial Prize of Denmark.
 JOHN A. BER
BERTOLINI  is
TOLINI a professor at Middlebury College. Much of his
 work is on Shaw,
Shaw, including the introduction and notes to two editions of
Shaw’s works.
tional Shaw Professor
Society Bertolini
and serves on isitsalso a founding
advisory council.member of the Interna-
Additionally, he is on
the editorial board of Shaw: he Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies.
 JEAN REYNOLDS is a professor at Polk State College in Winter Haven,
Florida. She is the author of several textbooks and has published in Shaw:
he Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies and other journals.

169

170 Contributors

CELIA MARSHIK is an associate professor at Stony Brook University. She

is the author of British Modernism and Censorship .
STUART E. BAKER  has
  has been a professor of theater at Florida State Uni-
 versity. He is the author of Georges Feydeau and the Aesthetics of Farce   and
many essays devoted to a multidisciplinary approach to theater studies.
LAGRETTA TALLENT LENKER   has been director of the Office of
Graduate Certificates and codirector of the Center of Applied Humanities
and the Florida Center for Writers at the University of South Florida. She
authored Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare   and Shaw and coedited Shaw
and War .
 JAN MCDONALD  is
MCDONALD emerita professor of drama at the University of
Glasgow and vice president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the
Citizens’ heatre, Glasgow. She has published he New Drama, 1900–1914
and Drama and the Actor .
 MICHAEL GOLDMAN  is emeritus professor at Princeton University.
He is author of a number of books, including Shakespeare and the Energies
of Drama ,  Ibsen: he Dramaturg
Dramaturgyy of Fear , and he Actor’s Freedom: oward a
heory of Drama .
EMIL ROY is an emeritus professor at the University of South Carolina at
Aiken. He published British Drama Since Shaw  and coauthored Studies in
Drama  and
 and Studies in Fiction.

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 Acknowledgment
 Acknowledgments s 

 John A. Bertoli
Bertolini,
ni, “Saint Joan: he Self as Imagination.” From he Playwright-
 ing Self of Bernard Shaw. Published by Southern Illinois University Press. Copy-
right © 1991 by the Board of rustees, Southern Illinois University.

 Jean Reynolds, “
“he
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Postmodern Shaw. Copyright © 1999 by the Board of Regents of the State of
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Stuart E. Baker, “ Major

 Major Barbara .”
.” From Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion:
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courtesy of the University Press of Florida.

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 Jan McDonald,
Mc Donald, “Shaw among the
t he A
Arti
rtists.”
sts.” From  A Companion to Modern
Mode rn Brit-
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by Blackwell Publishing, editorial material and organization, © 2006 by Mary
Luckhurst.

175

176 Acknowledgments

Michael Goldman, “Shavian Poetics: Shaw on Form and Content.” From Princ-
eton University Chronicle 68 (2006–2007): 71–81. Copyright © 2006 by Princ-
eton University Library.

Emil Roy, “G. B. Shaw’s Heartbreak House  and

  and Harold Pinter’s he Homecom-
ing : Comedies of Implosion.” From Comparative Drama 41, no. 3 (Fall 2007):
335–48. Copyright © 2007 by Comparative Drama .
 Every effort has been made to contact the owners of copyrighted material
and secure copyright
copyri ght permission. Articles
Art icles appearing in this volume generally
appear much as they did in their original
origina l publication with few oorr no editorial
changes. In some cases, foreign language text has been removed from the
original essay. hose interested in locating the original source will find the
information cited above.

 Index 

Characters in literary works are indexed by first name (if any), followed by the
name of the work in parentheses
Adam (Back to Methuselah) 29–30, abandonment
abandon ment of fam
family
ily 14, 17
17,,
 32, 37 118 119
 weariness
 wear iness of tthe
he world 25, 34 actions 100
Adolphus Cusins ( Major
 Major Barbara ) 98 and Barbara 12–1712–17,, 89–92, 995,
5,
and Barba
Barbarara 92, 94–95, 97 97,, 107
107,, 97–105, 107, 118–120
118–120 character 89
changes 88 conscience 101–102, 105
conscience 90, 105–107 and Cusins 12, 114–15,
4–15, 88, 90–
conversion 91–92 92, 95–97, 101, 104, 106–108,
idealism 105–108 118–120
inheritance 9090–91,
–91, 94, 107–1
107–10808 cynicism 104
and Undershaft 12, 114–15,
4–15, 88, factory 89–9
89–90,0, 93–96, 1101,
01, 107
107––
90–91, 95–97, 101, 104, 106– 108, 119–120, 152–15
152–1533
108, 118–120, and morality 12, 88, 995–96,
5–96, 1106
06
 Adventures of the Black
Bl ack Girl in Her personality 103
Search for God, he 23 strength and centrality ooff 12
aesthetics 2, 110,
0, 12, 129 triumph of 91
anxiety 6 Ann Whitefield ( Man
 Man and
in Shaw’s Prefaces 146–1
146–14949 Superman) 7
Alfred Doolittle (Pygmalion) and John anneannerr 8–9, 15
1522
and Eliz
Elizaa 20
20–21,
–21, 49, 76–78, 82 Inf luence, he (Bloom) 57
 Anxiety of Influence,
fate of 78 78
foolishness  Apple C art, heto 29
Cart,
conclusion
mistresses 62 Aragay, Mireia 156
sale of daughter 76–77 Archbishop of Rheims (Saint Joan)
transformation 78 38
Andrew Undershaft ( Major
 Major Barbara )  Arms and the Man
27 audience for 115

177

178 Index

banning of 116 and her father 12–15, 1177, 89–92,

characters in 113–114 95, 97–105, 107, 118–120
chocolates for bul
bullets
lets in 11
114–115
4–115 and God 2, 16, 8989,, 91, 95–1
95–101,
01,
complex heroes in 112–114 103–105
ending 113, 115–116 heroic will 15
marriage in 115–116 idealism 16
nationalism in 137 on men 13
setting 113 responsibility 94
Shaviann ideas in 11
Shavia 114–115
4–115 and the Salvation
Salv ation Army
Ar my 13–14,
13–14,
sociall problems in 115–1
socia 115–116
16 16, 89, 91–92, 95–101, 104,
 war in 112–1
112–115
15 108, 118–120
Ar
Armstrong,
 “Asmstrong, Eliz
Elizaa 71–
Far as hought 71–72,
72, Reach”
Can 75, 77 in  youth 101,Marie
Bashkirtseff, 105 49,49, 63
Back to Methuselah Beaumarchais, Pierre 57
death in 35 Beckett,, Samuel 1, 155
Beckett
Aston, Elaine 80 Beerbohm, Max 4
 Atwood, Margaret 18 Begley, Varun 160
Austen, Jane 145 Bentham, Jeremy 57
Austrian government 116 Bentley, Eric
Aveling, Edward 53 on Shaw 1, 8, 16– 16–18,
18, 22, 4477
Bergson, Henri 1, 5
Back to Methuselah Berst, Charles A. 117117
the Ancient in 121 Bertolini,i, John A. 169
Bertolin
birth in 36 on Back to Methuselah 32–36
characters
char acters in 17
17,, 25, 27,
27, 29–37 on Heartbreak House   25–27
conclusion to 29–30 on Saint Joan 27–32, 36–43
creative evolution in 32 Billington, Michael 163
death in 34–36 Bill Walker ( Major
 Major Barbara )
dreams in 27 conversion of of 91, 97–1
97–101,
01, 1104
04––
ghosts’ exit lines 30 107
imagination
imagi nation in 27 27,, 331–33,
1–33, 35–37 cynicism 100
plays in 19
19,, 32, 35–37 Blake, William 2, 66
preface to 54–55 Bloom, Harold 169
procreation in 33 he Anxiety of Influence 57
secret of long life in 35 introduction 1–23
 world in 25 Bluntschli, Captain ( Arms and the
Baker, Stua
StuartrtBarbara 
E. 170  87–109  Man)
on  Major and Raina 114–115
Bakhtin, Mikhail 53 Shavian hero 114
Barbara Undershaft ( Major
 Major Barbara ) Boccaccio, Giovanni 28
153 Bodger ( Major
 Major Barbara ) 100
conversion 15–17, 89 Boss Mangan (Heartbreak House )
and Cusins 92, 94, 97 97,, 107
107,, 156, 158
118–121 and capitalism 122–123
disillusionment
disil lusionment 99, 106, 108 Ellie’s
Ell ie’s rejection of 160–163

Index 179

power 164 capitalism 12, 62, 113, 120

capitalism 120––123,
Brecht, Bertolt 147 152
Bridges, Robert 18 Captain Brassbound’s Conversation
Britomart Undershaft ( Major
 Major American navy in 88–89
Barbara ) 13 Carlyle, homas 57 57,, 121
aristocratic disdain 92–94, 96, influence
inf luence ooff 1, 5–
5–77, 117–
7–18,
18, 23
106 Caudwell, Christopher 52
family finances
fi nances 89, 93 Cavell, Edith 67
hypocrisy 94 censorship
prayers 96 and Shaw 70, 73– 73–774, 79
and Stephen 92–95, 105–106
105–106 Chamberlain, Lord 72–73, 81
Bunyan, John  147–148
he Pilgrim’s Progress   5–7, Charles 119 ( Major
12–13,Lomax  Major Barbara )
149–150 moral purity 95–96
Buoyant Billions  Charles VII of France (Saint Joan)
Preface to 34 29, 125
 Burke, Kenneth 50
50–5
–51,
1, 53, 65 crowning of 40, 42, 42, 124
Butler, Samuel 1, 57 and darkness 31
dream 41, 126–127
Caesar and Cleopatra 57 foolishness 27–28
aesthetics 147 insensitivity
insensi tivity to
to art 28
Apollodorus in 147 label 38
audiences
audienc es for 116, 118 rejection of Joan 43
characters
char acters in 113, 116,
116, 122, 114747,, Chaucer, Geoffrey 158
150, 152–15
152–1533 Chekhov, Anton
dialogue 118 Orchard 155
Cherry Orchard
ending
endi ng 113, 116, 118 Orchard   (Chekhov) 155
Cherry Orchard 
historical epic 90, 150 Chesterton, G.K. 2, 14–15
Lucius in 117 on  Major Barbara 91–92
nationalism in 118 “Child of hirteen Bought for ₤5,
Pompey in 117 A” (Stead) 70 70–71,
–71, 78
Pothinus in 117 Christianity 8, 98
Rufio
Ruf io in 11
1177, 122 criticism 58, 64
setting 113 idealism 16, 63
Shaviann tradit
Shavia tradition
ion in 11
116,
6, 1118
18 second birth 17
 war in 112, 116–11
116–118,8, 125
1 25 Clara Eynsford Hill (Pygmalion) 50
Cain (Back to Methuselah) 29–30 Cleopatra (Caesar and Cleopatra ) 147
Campbell,
Campb ell, Stella and Caesar 11 116–11
6–118,
8, 150
as Eliz
Elizaa Doolitt
Doolittlele 21, 69–70, education of in 88, 11 118,
8, 122
79–82 and Mark Antony 116, 118
other roles 80–82 Colenso Ridgeon (he Doctor’s
Candida   Dilemma )
characters in 26 artistic character 26
conflict in 92 Coleridge, Samuel aylor
Shaviann ideas in 87
Shavia influence of 32

180 Index

Collection, he (Pinter)  158 and Freddy 20 20–21,

–21, 62, 78
Common Sense About the War future 77
(pamphlet) 17 and Higg
Higginsins 19–21, 50
50–5
–51,1, 68,
ideas on war in 111
111–1
–112,
12, 124 74–76, 78, 81–82
Compton, Louis 123 knowledge 18
Criminall Law Amendment Act 71
Crimina on marriage 62
Croyden, Margaret 157 new speech 50–51, 68, 70
safety 74–76, 78
Darw in, Charles 2, 55,, 148
Darwin, 148 sexual
sexu ality
ity 75–7
75–76,
6, 78–79, 82
K apital l  (Mar
Das Kapita (Marx)
x) 51
51–53,
–53, 56 sociall status 47
socia 47,, 49–50, 5566
Degenerate’s View of Nordau, A. See stepmother 62
Sanity, Jacques
Derrida
Derrida, Jofacques
Art, he
53, 57
57,, 63, 66, 148,
148, tra nsformation
transforma
81 tion 69, 74–75, 78–79,
151  vitalit
 vita lityy 18
deconstruction
deconstruc tion 47–49, 51, 60, 64  working girl 17
dialogues 2 Ellie Dunn (Heartbreak House )
 Dickens, Charles 6, 57 and danger 123
Dietrich, Richard disillusion 25
on Shaw’s heroes 113, 118,
118, 120, dream 26–27
126 fear of passion 159
Doctors’’ Delusions, Crude Criminology,
Doctors Criminology, heartbreak
hear tbreak 122
122,, 156, 160–163
Sham Education 1 imagination 26
Doctor’s Dilemma, he  longing 25, 159
characters in 26 loveliness 158
Doll’s House, A (Ibsen) 61 Emerson, Ralph W Waldo
aldo 6
Dream Play, A (Strindberg) 26 Engels, Friedrich 53
Dukore, Bernard F. 51 English comic drama
Dunois (Saint Joan) 29, 41 and Shaw 1, 3, 6–76–7,, 12, 1177
and his Page 38–39  Epipsychidion (Shelley) 10
and Joan 39–39–40,
40, 42, 147–
147–148
148  Essays in Fabian Soci alism 1, 5
Fa bian Socialism
surrender of 40 Eugene Marchbanks (Candida )
Dynasts, he (Hardy) 2 artistic character 26
Euripides 57
Eagleton, erry 53 Eve (Back to Methuselah) 29–30, 37
Manu scripts  
 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts  conversation with Serpent 32–34,
(Marx) 54 36
Eliot, .S.
.S. 22, 145,
145, 148
148 and death 34
 Murder in the Cathedral   22 imagination 32–33, 36
“he
“ he Waste Land
Land”” 21 procreation 33
Eliza Doolittle (Pygmalion) 70  Everybody’s Political What’s W hat? 66
What ’s What?
character
char acter 74, 78, 82
father 20
20–21,
–21, 49, 62, 76–78
76–78 Fjelde, Rolf 156
fears 75, 81 Fouquet, Jean 28
f lower girl 69, 74–75, 79,
79, 81 Freddyy Eynsford Hill (Pygmalion) 50
Fredd
foolish reactions 75 and Eliza 20
20–21
–21,, 62, 7788

Index 181

Freud, Sigmund 2, 53 bombers 25

he Interpretation of Dreams   12 capitalism in 121–123
superego 5 characters
char acters in 113, 121–
121–124,
124,
hree Essays on the heory of 156–162
Sexuality 12 clothing
clothi ng symbols in 163–1
163–165
65
Fromm, Erich 53–54 compared to Pinter’s he
Homecoming   155–166
Gautier, héophile 4 complex heroes in 112, 1114,
14,
German Ideology, he (Marx) 58–59 121–122
121– 122,, 159
Gillen, Francis 162 darkness and death in 121–
121–123
123
Giotto 148, 151 dialogue 156
Goethe,
57 Johann Wolfga
olfgang
ng von 7, doubling motif
dreamworld of in 26 159
26–27,
Goldman, Michael 170 ending 113, 123–124
on Shaw’s form and content fragility
fragil ity ooff all orde
orderr in 26–27
 145 153 Hastings in 156 157
Gosse, Edmund 81 incompleteness of 26
Gray, John 4 preface to 120
Great Britain Randallll Utterwo
Randa Utterwoodod in 158, 161611
class
cla ss system in 1717,, 49,
49, 70 setting 26, 113
criminal justice
justice system 48 Shaviann ideas in 121–
Shavia 121–122
122
literature 53 society in 165
press 116  war in 112, 12120–124
0–124,, 127
propaganda 111 Hector Hushabye (Heartbreak House )
sociall purit
socia purityy movemen
movementt 69–73, costumes 163
75–76, 78–79, 82 and Hesione 121, 159–1
159–161,
61, 163
theater 72 self-loathing 158–159, 161
 war cause 11 111–
1–112,
112, 121200 theories of evolution 122–123
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hamlet   (Shakespeare) 6 dialectic 91–92
Claudius in 34 Henry Higgins (Pygmalion) 70
death in 34 artistic character 26
gravediggers’ scene in 34 elitist 18, 47
47,, 49–50, 56
Hamlet in 34–35 flaws 50–51
Horatio in 34–35 intentions 75–76
Ophelia in 35 manipulation 50
Handel, George Frideric 148, man of genius 18
150–151 on marriage 62
Hardy, homas phoneticss game
phonetic gamess 51, 69, 74
he Dynasts 2  work with Eliz
Elizaa 19–21, 50–51,
Harris, Frank  68, 74–75, 77–78, 81–82
Life of Wilde   3 Henry V  (Shakespeare) 6, 40
Heartbreak House 17 Hesione (Heartbreak House ) 156,
Adriadne in 157–162 158, 164
bohemian nature of 123 and beauty 122

182 Index

and danger 123  Jakobsen, Roman 60

fear of passion 159  Jenny Hill
Hil l ( Major Barbara ) 99–100
and Hector 121, 159–161,
159–161, 163  Jesus (On the Rocks ) 31–32
and Mazzini 159  Joan (Saint Joan)
and money 121 bravery 67
Higgins, Mrs. (Pygmalion) 20 canonization 41, 64
Homecoming, he (Pinter)  condemnation of 64–65
clothing
cloth ing symbols in 163–1
163–165
65 confession 37, 147
compared to Heartbreak House   death 21–
21–23,
23, 28–30
28–30,, 37
37,, 441,
1, 65
65,,
155–166 124–127
dialogue in 156 dreams 27
 Jessieinin 158,
 Joey 156–157
156–157,
160
160–1, 161–1
161
61 –162,
–161 62, 164 and Dunois
feminine 39–40,39–40
sexuality 42
Lenny
Len ny in 158–159, 161, 163–164 freedom 37, 39
MacGregor
MacGr egor in 156
156–157
–157,, 162 heresy 125–126
 Ma x in 157, 159, 161–1
Max 161–162
62 image of f lying 39
Ruth in 156, 158–164 imagination 27–28, 30–32,
Sam in 157, 162 37–38, 41–43
 
 eddy
eddy in 156–161,
156–161, 164 imprisonment 39, 125
Homer 1 isolation 29–30, 42
Houdebine, Jean-Louis 60 loneliness 36, 41, 43
Hyndman, J.M. 52, 60 melancholy 124
mental illness 66
Ibsen, Henrik 1–2, 57 rebirth 30
 A Doll ’s House 61 religion 22
Bu ilder 26
 Master Builder resignation to inhospitabil
inhospitability
ity 25
Husband , An (Wilde) 3
 Ideal Husband, rise toto inf
influence
luence and power 29
idealism 5959,, 63, 92, 105–108
105–108 and the Saints’ vo voices
ices 22, 25–26,
Ear nest, he  
 Importance of Being Earnest, 29, 37, 42
(Wilde) 1 scapegoat 29
compared to  Man and Superman silence 43
5, 12 as symbol and metaphor 28
mass marriages in 165  willll of God 22–23, 36, 1124
 wi 24
review of 3–4  willll to liv
 wi livee 22
Innès, Christopher 155  John Bull ’s Other Island 
 Interpretation of Dreams, he  (Freud)
 (Freud) Broadbent in 92
12 Keegan in 92
“In the Beginning” in Back to Larry in 92
 Methuselah narrative 92
Adam in 19 19,, 32, 3377 philosophicall concerns of 89
philosophica
Eve in 1919,, 32–34, 37  John de Stogumber
Stogu mber (Saint Joan) 21,
Serpent in 32–34 125
 Irrational Knot,
K not, he  and darkness 31
preface to 56 poor eyesight 31

Index 183

 John anner
anner ( Man and Superman
Su perman) Louis Dubedat (he Doctor’s
153, 162 Dilemma )
and Ann 8–9, 152 studio 26
as Don
Don Juan 7–
7–12,
12, 33 Luther, Mar
Martin
tin 66, 148,
148, 15
1511
dreams 26
fatherhood 33 “Maiden ribute of Modern
passion 54 Babylon” (Stead) 70
superego 8  Mainly about Myself  
 Joyce, James 21 outsider status in 47–48
 Julius Caesar (Caesar and Cleopatra )  Major Barbara  
15, 147, 152–153 changess made to 88, 1108
change 08
advancing age 116
Christ figure 116–117 cha113,
charac
racters
ters in 12
12–1
152–153, –17
7, 27, 87–1
160 87–107,
07,
and Cleopatra 11116–11
6–118,
8, 150 complex heroes in 112, 1118–120,
18–120,
father figure 116 153
 foresh adow of murder 117
foreshadow 117–1
–118
18 dia logue 97
dialogue 97,, 108, 11
1199
speech 116 ending 113
 Juliu
 Jul Ca esar r   (Shakespeare) 116–
iuss Caesa evil in 92, 98, 108
117 God and religreligion
ion in 2, 12–15, 1177,
91–92, 95, 98
Kafka, Franz 21 idealism
ideali sm in 92, 105–105–108108
Kierkegaard, Søren 2 imagination 87
King Lear   (Shakespeare) 25 irony 16
materialistic
material istic pessimism of 15, 91
Laing, R.D. 156 narrative 87
Larmarck
Lar marck,, Jean-Bap
Jean-Baptiste
tiste 1, 5, 22 out of hell into heaven 87
La remouille, Lord Chamberlain parable 90–91, 101
(Saint Joan) 38, 40 people stru
struggli
ggling
ng in 8787,, 90, 92, 95
Lawrence, D.H. 18 philosophy of 15, 87 87,, 89, 91, 120
he Plumed Serpent 2 povertyy in 14, 89–9
povert 89–90, 0, 1103,
03, 1107
07,,
Leary, Daniel 117 120
Lenker, Lagret
Lagrettata al
allent
lent 170 Preface to 57–58
on Shaw
Shaw’s’s ideas on wawarr 111
111–130
–130 setting 113
Lessing, Doris 18 Shaviann ideas in 87
Shavia 87,, 89
89,, 103, 107
107,,
Lexy Mill (Candida ) 119–120
Life of Wilde   (Harris) 3 socialism
socia lism 12, 1177, 11119–120
9–120
Lilith (Back to Methuselah) 29 structure of 88
consciousness 30  war in 112, 118–120
creation 32–33 Su perman  
 Man and Superman
isolation 30 aesthetics 146–149
peroration 30 characters in 6–12, 26, 54, 15 152–
2–
“Literature
“Litera ture and Art” 55 153, 162
Literature of Crisis 1910-22 (Wright) compared to he Importance of
121–123 Being Earnest 5, 12

184 Index

Devi l in 8–12, 14
Devil 1477 Milton, John 147
“Don Juan in H Hell
ell”” in 6, 8, influence
inf luence of 19,
19, 50, 94
10–12, 26, 147  Misalliance   27
Don Juan
Juan enorio
enorio in 6–12, 33 preface to 48, 5599
dream world in 26 Molière 57
Epistle Dedicatory to 57 Montaigne, Michel de 57
irony in 7 More, homas 57
life force in 7, 10–12 Morris, William 1, 57
philosophicall concerns of 89
philosophica Mozart,t, Wolfgang Amadeus 57,
Mozar 57,
preface to 6, 1146
46–15
–1511 145–147
procreation in 33  Mrs. Warren’s Profession
P rofession
reviewscoofmedy
4 in 6
sexual comedy censorship
Kitt
Kitty of in
y Warren 73, 79
81
the Statue in 8–10 preface to 132
Marshik, Celia 170  Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot) 22
 on the playing of Pygmalion 69–86 L ady (musical) 18, 69
 My Fair Lady
Marx, Eleanor 52–53 Myrdal, Gunnar 104
Marx, Karl 1, 5
Das Kapital 51–53, 56 nationalism 113, 115, 11
118,
8, 125–
 Economic and Philosophic 1266
12
ipts 54
 Manuscripts
 Manuscr National Vigilance Association
he German Ideology 58–59 (NV
(N VA) 71, 73, 82
influence
inf luence of 47,
47, 50, 552–
2–63,
63, 66  New Statesman 11
1111
Selected
SocialWritings in  Sociology
Philosophy  53 & “New heology,
Nietzsche, he”1,55,
Friedrich 17,,58
17 15
1522
Bui lder  (Ibsen)
 Master Builder   (Ibsen) 26 Zarathustra 2, 5–6
Masterman, C.F.G. 111 Norris, Christopher 49
Mazzini Dunn (Heartbreak House ) E bbsmith, he  
 Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith,
158 (Pinero) 80–82
and Hesione 159, 164 Nurse Guinness (Heartbreak House )
idealism 123 26–27, 162
McDonald, Jan 170
Back to Methuselah  131, 132, 136, “Ode to the West Wind” (Shelley)
138 39
Caesar and Cleopatra   131, 140 imagery in 40
Candida 131, 135, 138, 139, 141 time theme in 40
he Doctor’s Dilemma   131, 137, O’Neill, Eugene 3
138, 139 On the Rocks 
Su perman   131, 132,
 Man and Superman characters in 31–32
135, 136, 138, 139, 142 dialogue of 32
P rofession  131, 132,
 Mrs. Warren’s Profession preface to 31–32
136, 140 Othello  (Shakespeare) 26
Pygmalion  131, 136, 138, 142
on Shavia
Shaviann aesthetics 131 131–1
–143
43 pacifism 134
Mill,, John Stuart 57
Mill Pall Mall Gazette 70–71, 77

Index 185

Pater, Walter 10 char acters in 18–21, 26, 47

characters 47,, 49–
style 5, 12 51, 56, 62, 68–70, 74–81, 160
and Wilde 2–5, 12 class distinctions
distinct ions in 1717–1
–18,
8, 56,
patriotism 113 69, 73–74, 80
Pearson, Hesketh 52, 54 epilogue to 20
Pen Portraits and Reviews 3 film 18, 69
Perelman, Chaim  inclusive play 47
he Realm of Rhetoric   49 ironies in 18
Peter Cauchon (Saint Joan) 40 language
lang uage 5151,, 69
69,, 82
death 41 musical 18, 69
death of Joan 28 openings 21, 79–81
sufferings
Petkoff, Major 31
( Arms
 Arms and th Man) 114
thee Man personal transformation
69, 74–75, 78–79, 81 theme in
Philanderer, he  playing of 69–86
characters in 88 plot of 69
 revisions of 88 Pygmalion and Galatea myth in
Pickering, Colonel (Pygmalion) 19, 21, 82
and Eliz
Elizaa 19–21, 74 reviews 79, 81
sociall status 47,
socia 47, 49 romance of 17–19
Pilgrim’s Progress, he (Bunyan) science in 66
149–150 sexual stereo
stereoty
types
pes in 18
hero in 5–7 sociall reformers in 75–77
socia
Pinero, Arthur Wing success of 60, 69
he Notorious Mrs.anqueray
Second Mrs. Ebbsmith 80–82
80–82  wr iting of 74, 78
 writing
Pinter, Harold Quigley, Austin 165
he Collection 158 Quintessence of Ibsenism 49, 54, 60,
he Homecoming   155–166 92
he Room 155 Christian ideol
ideology
ogy in 63
Pirandello,
Pira ndello, Luig
Luigii 6, 22, 27
27,, 43 family life in 61
61–62,
–62, 64
Plato 59 marriage in 62–64
metaphysics 49 religion and science in 65–66
Plumed Serpent, he (Lawrence) 2 Shaviann inclusiveness in 61
Shavia 61–68
–68
Poirier, Richard
he Renewal of Literature 57 Raina Petkoff ( Arms and the Man)
Pontius Pilate (On the Rocks ) 31 and Bluntschli 114–115
Press Cuttings  notions of war 11
1144
censorship of 73 and Sergius 114–115
Prometheus Unbound   (Shelley) realism
real ism 92, 1105,
05, 108, 155
 Jupiter in 8 Realm of Rhetoric, he (Perelman) 49
Protestant will 22 religion
Proust, Marcel 21 absurdity of 48–49
psychoanalysis 49 heretical faith 2
Pygmalion personal 1, 14–1
14–177, 22–23
cast of 69–70, 78–81 and science 65–67

186 Index

“Religion of the Piano-forte, he” self as imagination in 25–4

25–466
55 setting 113
Renewal of Literature, he  (Poirier)
 (Poirier) Soldier in 42–43, 127
57  
 ee Deum sspeakers
peakers in 30
Reynolds, Jean 169  war in 112, 1124 24–127
–127
on Shavian Inclusiveness 47–68  willll of God iinn 22–23, 36, 1124
 wi 24
Robert De Baudricourt (Saint Joan) Sanity of Art, he (A Degenerate’s
124 View of Nordau)  56
Rogers, Paul 157 Sarah Undershaft ( Major
 Major Barbara )
Room, he (Pinter)  155 13, 16, 119
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 57 Savona, George 80
Roy,onEmil
Heartbreak House compared Scarpetta, GuyAr
Schopenhauer, 60thur 1–2, 5, 12, 22
Arthur
to Pinter’s
Pi nter’s he Homecoming   Scott, Walter 1
155–166 Second Mrs. anqueray, he  (Pinero)
 (Pinero)
 155 166
Rummy ( Major
 Major Barbara ) 99 80–82
Ruskin, John Selected Writings in Sociology & Social
influence
inf luence of 1–2, 5, 12, 17
17,, 22– Philosophy   (Marx) 53
23, 57, 121 Sergius Saranoff ( Arms and the Man)
Russian formalism 60 and Raina 114–115
Russian Revolution 60 Serpent (Back to Methuselah) 29–30
Ryan, Michael 48 conversation with Eve 32–34, 36
Shakespeare, William 1, 6, 53, 60,
Saint Joan 17 in 21–
characters
char acters 21–23,
23, 25–31, 36– 68
characters
char acters 2, 77,, 23, 1114
14
43, 64–65, 67, 113, 124–127, Hamlet   6, 34–35
160 Henry V 6, 40
complex heroes in 112 historical plays 40
conclusion 30  Julius Caesar   116–117
dreams in 27 27,, 42, 126–127 King Lear   25
ending 113 Othello 26
epilogue of
of 27–31
27–31,, 41–42
41–42,, he empest   25
126–127 Shavian 10, 12
exit speeches in 30 aesthetic anxiety 6
historical play 40–41 creative evolution 57
imageryy in 31, 39
imager cruelty 15
language of 32 dialogue 118
lighting effects in 29 great life force 15, 221,1, 23, 103,
nationalism in 125–126 107, 152–153
nature of imagi
imagination
nation 27–28 heroess 11
heroe 1144 –11
–116,
6, 118, 121
philosophical content 29 ideas 1–2, 11116,
6, 1119–120,
19–120, 122
122,,
poetic nature 27 125, 151
Preface to 49, 54, 64 64–68
–68 inclusiveness 47–68
Saint Catherine in 22, 29, 42, 65 irony 16, 114, 118
Saint Margaret in 22, 29, 42 new speech 47 47,, 52,
52, 54–58, 6767–68
–68

Index 187

outrage 15 Stephen Undershaft ( Major

 Major Barbara )
philosophy 57 13, 102
postmodernism 47 aristocratic disdain 92–94, 96,
romance 18–19 106
self-parody 8, 18 inheritance 90, 93–95
self-portrait 26 mother 92, 95 95,, 105–1
105–106
06
self-punishment 17 profession 90
signature 26 responsibility 89–90
Shelley, Percy
Percy Bysshe 1–2, 53 Strauss, E. 52
 Epipsychidion 10 Strindberg, August 160
“Ode to the West Wind” 39–40  A Dream Play 26
Prometheus
Shewing-up Unbound
of Blanco 8 he 
Posnet, Swedenborg,
Sweet, HenryEmanuel
18 66
censorship of 73 Swift, Jonathan 57
 Vigila nce Committee in 73
Vigilance
Shklovsky, Viktor 60  
 aylor,
aylor, om
om 124
Shotover, Captain (Heartbreak House ) empest, he   (Shakespeare) 25
127, 156, 158, 163  
 err
erry,
y, Ellen 69
Christian morality 121–122  heatres Act of 1843 72
design of set 26 “hing Happens,
Happens, he” in Back to
experiments 121, 123–124,  Methuselah
161–162 Bill Haslam in 35
on marr
marriage
iage 157
157,, 159–160
159–160 Burge-Lubin in 35–36
prospect
prospe
Simon ct of annihi
Magus annihilation
8 lation 27 Confucius
death in 36
in 35–36
socialism 2, 56 imagination in 36
and Shaw 12, 17 17,, 60–61,
60– 61, 152 the Negress in 35–36
“Socialism
“Social ism in Contemporary
Contemporary hree Essays on the heory of Sexuality  
Literature” 60 (Freud) 12
Societyy of Authors 11
Societ 1111 hree Plays for Puritans  
Socrates 66 Preface
Prefa ce to 57
57,, 60, 1147
47
“Soul of Man Under Socialism, he”  
 olstoy
olstoy,, Leo 57
(Wilde) 5 oo rue to be Good 17
Stalin, Joseph 17 conclusion to 29
States, Bert 165 totalitarianism 48
Stead, William .  
 ree,
ree, Herbert Beerbohm 79
arrest 72, 75  
 urco,
urco, A
Alfred
lfred 134
“A Child of hirteen Bought for
£5” 70–71, 78 Vesonder, imot
imothy
hy G. 116
death 74 Voltaire 57
 journalism
 journa lism 72–73, 81–82
“Maiden ribute” art articles
icles 70–72,  Wagner, Ric
 Wagner, Richard
hard 1–2
75–77, 79–80, 82  Wal
 Walkley,
kley, A
Arthu
rthurr Bingham 6
“Maiden ribute of Modern  Wal
 Walkowitz
kowitz,, Judith 75
Babylon” 70  Wardle,
 Wardle, Irvin
Ir vingg 16
1611

188 Index

“Waste Land, he” (Eliot) 21  An Ideal Husband 3

 Waugh,
 Wa ugh, Patric
Patricia
ia 51 he Importance of Being Earnest 1,
 Weeks, Jeffrey 72–73 3–5, 12, 165
 West, Alick
Al ick 51 and Pater 2–5, 12
What I Really Wrote About the War “he Soul of Man Under
112 Socialism” 5
“Who I Am, and What I hink”  Wisenthal, J.L. 56, 91
(interview) 55, 59  women’s rights 48
Widowers’ Houses   World
 Wo rld War I 17
17,, 111, 120, 122
Lickcheese in 88  Wright, Anne
need for money in 89 Literature of Crisis 1910-22
slumsOscar
 Wilde, Oscinar8810, 147 121–123
 Wright, heodore, Mrs.
M rs. 52
aestheticism of 2–3