Chapter XII (2)

Various other incidents in the play, branded unqualifiedly by numerous critics as impish, in execrable taste, or frankly impossible, are based upon actual occurrences; the names of the parties concerned and the details are quite well known to others besides Shaw himself. For example, Dubedat's disgraceful suggestion about the worthless cheque, which of necessity must eventually be paid by Jennifer to avert Dubedat's disgrace, is an exact record of a similar proposal once made to Shaw himself by a man whose name, because of its association with that of one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, is known all over the world. Dubedat's lack of any sense of obligation to finish pictures paid for before execution is paralleled in an episode in the life of a well-known sculptor. The incident of the reporter's suggestion to interview the artist's widow five minutes after bereavement on “How it feels to be a widow,” is founded on fact. “A few years ago,” Shaw recounts, “when Mrs. Patrick Campbell's husband died in South Africa, a leading London paper sent a man up on the instant to interview her. Of course, she didn't see him, and next morning the editor of the paper in his story of the death actually expressed grieved surprise at her lack of hospitality.” There is a scene in the play in which Dubedat attempts to justify his conduct on the ground that he is a disciple of Bernard Shaw, whom he calls “the most advanced man now living.” To remove any misapprehension in the public mind on the subject, Shaw recently told the following story:

“Some people have thought that by allowing the immoral artist
to say he was my disciple, I have virtually admitted that
all my disciples die immoral and that immorality is what my
teachings amount to. Of course, that is not what I meant. The
incident, as I say, was founded on fact. About six months ago
a scampish youth tried to blackmail his own father, and the
old gentleman, a most respectable person, was actually forced
to prosecute him. At his trial the youth excused himself just
as the dying artist in my play attempted to excuse himself--by
asserting that he was a 'follower of Bernard Shaw.' Then the
youth said some irreligious things that scandalized the judge,
and finally got sent to prison, where he actually expected me
to go to visit him and act as a sort of chaplain to him.”[201]

Lastly, there is the creed of the dying artist, beginning with the words: “I believe in Michelangelo, Velásquez, and Rembrandt”--universally deplored as impossible, to say nothing of its being in execrable taste. “This creed of the dying artist,” Shaw found himself forced to explain, “which has been reprobated on all hands as a sally of which only the bad taste of a Bernard Shaw could be capable, is openly borrowed with gratitude and admiration by me from one of the best known prose writings of the most famous man of the nineteenth century. In Richard Wagner's well-known story, dated 1841, and translated under the title, _An End in Paris_, by Mr. Ashton Ellis (Vol. VII. of his translation of Wagner's prose works), the dying musician begins his creed with 'I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven.'”[202]

In _The Doctor's Dilemma_ medical quackery and humbug are portrayed with a satiric verve truly Molièresque. The long first act does little to further the action beyond indicating that “to put a tube of serum into Bloomfield-Bonington's hands is murder--simple murder,” and suggesting that Ridgeon has a temporary “idiosyncrasy” to fall in love with the first pretty woman that comes along. The real purpose of the first act is to portray the state of modern medical science; the quackeries of M. Purgon and Mr. Diafoirus come at once to mind, and one feels that the picture drawn by Shaw is done much as Molière would have done it, had he been alive to-day. In Dubedat Mr. Max Beerbohm has discovered a strong resemblance to the Roderick Hudson of Henry James. One catches here and there, too, a suggestion of the Oscar Wilde who said: “If one love art at all, one must love it beyond all things in the world, and against such love the reason, if one listened to it, would cry out. There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is something entirely too splendid to be sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be pure visionaries.” This figure of a clever young artist, of rare charm of temperament and phenomenal executive skill, who came to an early, untimely end through disease had several prototypes in actual life; but on the whole Dubedat must be regarded as a composite picture, and not a portrait.” Dubedat raises the eternal question as to how far genius is a morbid symptom.[203] The most notable passage in the play is the discussion between Sir Colenso Ridgeon and Sir Patrick Cullen as to the worthlessness of Dubedat, and the value of Blenkinsop.

“Well, Mr. Saviour of Lives,” asks Sir Patrick, “which is it to be--that honest man, Blenkinsop, or that rotten blackguard of an artist, eh?”

“It's not an easy case to judge, is it?” queries Ridgeon. “Blenkinsop's an honest, decent man; but is he any use? Dubedat's a rotten blackguard; but he's a genuine source of pretty and pleasant and good things.”

“What will he be a source of for that poor innocent wife of his, when she finds him out?”

“That's true. Her life is a hell.”

“And tell me this: Suppose you had this choice put before you: Either to go through life and find all the pictures bad, but all the men and women good, or to go through life and find all the pictures good and the men and women rotten. Which would you choose?”

“That's a devilish difficult question, Paddy. The pictures are so agreeable, and the good people so infernally disagreeable and mischievous, that I really can't undertake to say off-hand which I should prefer to do without.”

“Come, come! none of your cleverness with me: I'm too old for it. Blenkinsop isn't that sort of good man; and you know it.”

“It would be simpler if Blenkinsop could paint Dubedat's pictures.”

“It would be simpler still if Dubedat had some of Blenkinsop's honesty. The world isn't going to be made simpler for you, my lad: you must take it as it is.”

After further discussion, Sir Patrick finally poses the issue in clear-cut terms:

“It's a plain choice between men and pictures.”

“It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture,” parries Ridgeon.

“Colly, when you live in an age that runs to pictures and statues and plays and brass bands, because its men and women are not good enough to comfort its poor aching soul, you should thank Providence that you belong to a high and great profession, because its business is to heal and mend men and women.”

“In short, as a member of a high and great profession, I am to kill my patient.”

“Don't talk wicked nonsense. You can't kill him. But you can leave him in other hands.”

“In B. B.'s, for instance, eh?” queries Ridgeon, looking at Sir Patrick significantly.

“Sir Ralph Bloomfield-Bonington is a very eminent physician.”

“He is,” accedes Ridgeon.

“I'm going for my hat,” adds Sir Patrick, with conclusive finality.

Whilst all the characters are admirably drawn and sharply individualized, Shaw's inspiration is singularly displayed in making of Jennifer a native of Cornwall, that land of rhapsodic faith and splendid religious enthusiasm. She is a true child of nature, impulsive and romantic, to whom belief in Dubedat's genius, much more than love for his personality, has become nothing short of a religion. To engarb herself in the “purple pall of tragedy,” the instant Dubedat is dead, is a perfectly characteristic action. “Jennifer is an impossible person to live with, I grant you,” Mr. Shaw once remarked to me, “but it is clear to me that her impulsiveness and her unquestioning fidelity to Dubedat's memory must find immediate expression in fulfilment of the dying injunction of her King of Men. Even if I had been writing a novel, in which the treatment is more leisurely”--this in answer to my question--“I should have made her act precisely as she did.”

The first three acts of _The Doctor's Dilemma_ are as able in treatment and solid in workmanship as anything Shaw has ever achieved. The pervasive comic irony is tremendous; and if in the latter part of the play there is a regrettable drop into farce-comedy, one should remember that this is a fault shared in by the plays of Sheridan and Molière. The anti-climax of the epilogue is banal--“a sell” of the true Shavian brand. It is exceedingly amusing to the dispassionate onlooker to note the discomfiture of the dismayed audience over the discovery that the enigmatic author regards the identity of Jennifer's second husband as a quite pointless secret between Jennifer and Bernard Shaw![204]

“I have just finished a crude melodrama in one act--the crudity and melodrama both intentional,” Mr. Shaw wrote me on March 15th, 1909, “which I should say will be played by Tree if it were not that my plays have such an extraordinary power of getting played by anybody in the world rather than by the people for whom they were originally intended.” Even then, it seems, Mr. Shaw dimly foresaw the banning of his play by the King's Reader of Plays, and the enforced alteration of plans for its production entailed by that decision. Promised initial production by Sir (then Mr.) H. Beerbohm Tree, “the first of our successful West End managers to step into the gap left by the retirement of Messrs. Vedrenne and Barker from what may be called National Theatre work with his Afternoon Theatre,” _Blanco Posnet_ was driven away to far-off Dublin, where it first saw the light of production. Upon no play of Shaw's, with the single exception of _Mrs. Warren's Profession_, are we so fully “documented”--primarily due in both cases to the interdict of the Censorship. Fortunately a letter which Shaw wrote to Tolstoy in the autumn of 1909 gives a detailed account of the genesis of the play. Tolstoy had been reading Shaw's plays, and evinced much interest in the plot of _Blanco Posnet_ as it had come to his ears. He expressed a wish to read the play, says Mr. Aylmer Maude in his biography of Tolstoy, “because, as he said, to many people the working of man's conscience is the only proof of the existence of a God.”[205] When Mr. Maude repeated this conversation to Mr. Shaw, the latter sent Tolstoy a copy of the play with the following letter (quoted in part):

“MY DEAR COUNT TOLSTOY,--I send you herewith, through our
friend, Aylmer Maude, a copy of a little play called _The
Showing Up of Blanco Posnet_. 'Showing up' is American
slang for unmasking a hypocrite. In form it is a very crude
melodrama, which might be played in a mining camp to the
roughest audience.

“It is, if I may say so, the sort of play you do
extraordinarily well. I remember nothing in the whole range
of drama that fascinated me more than the old soldier in your
_Power of Darkness_. One of the things that struck me in that
play was the feeling that the preaching of the old man, right
as he was, could never be of any use--that it could only anger
his son and rub the last grains of self-respect out of him. But
what the pious and good father could not do, the old rascal of
a soldier did as if he was the voice of God. To me that scene
where the two drunkards are wallowing in the straw, and the
older rascal lifts the younger one above his cowardice and his
selfishness, has an intensity of effect that no merely romantic
scene could possibly attain; and in _Blanco Posnet_ I have
exploited in my own fashion this mine of dramatic material
which you were the first to open up to modern playwrights.

“I will not pretend that its mere theatrical effectiveness
was the beginning and end of its attraction for me. I am not
an 'Art-for-Art's sake' man, and would not lift my finger to
produce a work of art if I thought there was nothing more than
that in it. It has always been clear to me that the ordinary
methods of inculcating honourable conduct are not merely
failures, but--still worse--they actually drive generous and
imaginative persons into a dare-devil defiance of them. We
are ashamed to be good boys at school, ashamed to be gentle
and sympathetic instead of violent and revengeful, ashamed to
confess that we are very timid animals instead of reckless
idiots, in short, ashamed of everything that ought to be
the basis of our self-respect. All this is the fault of the
teaching which tells men to be good without giving them any
better reason for it than the opinion of men who are neither
attractive to them, nor respectful to them, and who, being much
older, are to a great extent not only incomprehensible to them,
but ridiculous. Elder Daniels will never convert Blanco Posnet:
on the contrary, he perverts him, because Blanco does not want
to be like his brother; and I think the root reason why we do
not do as our fathers advise us to do is that we none of us
want to be like our fathers, the intention of the Universe
being that we should be like God.”

It is inconceivable that this play should have been banned by the Censorship.[206] It is a story of religious conversion, told with sincerity and depth of conviction. So far is it from being irreverent that it may, with truth, be described as the most sincerely religious of all of Shaw's plays. “Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods,” says Shakespeare: “they kill us for their sport.” Like pawns in the great game of life are we to God, says Shaw; He uses us for His own great purpose. “There's no good and bad,” says Posnet in his puncheon-bench sermon; “but by Jiminy, gents, there's a rotten game, and there's a great game. I played the rotten game; but the great game was played on me; and now I'm for the great game every time. Amen.” It is the final expression in Shaw of that neo-Protestantism which had already found more or less adequate expression in _The Devil's Disciple_ and _Major Barbara_. It needs no exposition here--especially after Shaw's expository letter to Tolstoy.[207] One word only as to the play's “crudity.” To an American, familiar with the scenes and conditions described, its pseudo-realism is grotesque in its unreality. Fortunately the import of the play is in no wise impaired by the fact that Shaw has been unsuccessful in assimilating Bret Harte.

During the latter part of March, and the month of April, 1909, Mr. Shaw, accompanied by Mrs. Shaw, went for his health on a motoring tour through Algeria. His next play, which he had been requested to write on the chosen subject by Mr. Forbes Robertson, was written at odd moments during this trip. The play, described by Mr. Shaw as an “ordinary skit,” was aptly entitled _Press Cuttings: A Topical Sketch compiled from the Editorial and Correspondence Columns of the Daily Papers_. In form, it is very like, though superior in characterization, to a Paris _revue_; Julius Bab has pronounced it vastly above the contemporary German _Witzblatt_. Its appearance just at the time when the activities of the “militant” suffragettes were at their height, was peculiarly _à propos_. Once again, the Censorship intervened to ban one of Shaw's plays--this time on the ground that Mr. Shaw was guilty, not of blasphemy, but of employing “personalities, expressed or implied.” The Civic and Dramatic Guild was immediately created to evade the interdict of the Censorship, and the play was produced for the first time at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on July 9th, 1909.[208] The indignation aroused among dramatic authors and critics by the banning of two of Mr. Shaw's plays in succession at last focussed the opposition to the Censorship; and the dissatisfaction with its operation, which had made itself felt vigorously, but more or less intermittently, for a number of years thitherto, finally crystallized. A special committee, from both Houses, was appointed by Parliament, to examine into and report on the operation of the Censorship, and, if necessary, to make recommendations as to its powers and functions for the future. Many sittings were held, and a large number of the leading men of letters in Great Britain, including Mr. Shaw himself, actors, theatre-managers, bishops, men of various shades of opinion, gave evidence before the committee. One result of the sittings of that committee[209] has been the establishment of an advisory board in connection with the Censorship. In many quarters hopes are expressed that a Bill will be passed by Parliament for the purpose of ameliorating the hardships of dramatic authors under the present operation of the Censorship, and of giving greater encouragement to the free development of a national English drama in the future.

_Press Cuttings_ is the most perfectly amusing thing Shaw has written in many years. It recalls the days of delightful irresponsibility, which seemed to have passed for ever--the days of _Arms and the Man_ and _You Never Can Tell_. The adverse decision of the Censorship is inconceivable, in the light of the sanction of Mr. Barrie's _Josephine_, in which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour were “caricatured,” and even a number of their public utterances put in the mouths of the characters obviously impersonating them. Mr. Shaw's Balsquith (Balfour-Asquith) and Mitchener (Milner-Kitchener) bear not the faintest resemblance to any of the personages suggested by their names--representing merely, in a light of broadly farcical-comedy, a prime minister and a head of the army. From the situation arising from reversing the _rôles_ of man and woman, due to the agitation of the “militant suffragettes”--woman developing all the “manly” qualities of pugnacity and overbearing insolence, man developing the “womanly” qualities of timidity and indecision--Shaw has extracted a comedy that is breezily, devastatingly comical. But, even in a topical sketch, Shaw from time to time “puts away childish things” and shows us the serious sides of several subjects. Those who indulge in the futile claim that men are more useful to the world than women will find food for serious reflection in the passage in Shaw's play in which General Mitchener tries to excuse himself for giving way to profanity. He is sternly reproved by the Irish charwoman, Mrs. Farrell--admirably played by that remarkable character-actress, Miss Agnes Thomas.

“When a man has risked his life on eight battlefields, Mrs. Farrell,” pleads the General in extenuation, “he has given sufficient proof of his self-control to be excused a little strong language.”

“Would you put up with strong language from me,” queries Mrs. Farrell pertinently, “because I've risked me life eight times in childbed?”

“My dear Mrs. Farrell,” expostulates the General, “you surely would not compare a risk of that harmless kind to the fearful risks of the battlefield?”

“I wouldn't compare risks run to bear livin' people into the world to risks run to blow them out of it,” replies Mrs. Farrell conclusively. “A mother's risk is jooty; a soldier's is nothin' but divilment.”

The popular hysteria in the fear of German invasion is reflected with great cleverness in the discussions between Mitchener and Balsquith, and Mitchener's vigorous asseveration caps the climax.

“Let me tell you, Balsquith, that in these days of aeroplanes and Zeppelin airships the question of the moon is becoming one of the greatest importance. It will be reached at no very distant date. Can you, as an Englishman, tamely contemplate the possibility of having to live under a German moon?”

Shaw's admirable art in character-creation is portrayed in the figure of the orderly, a very minor part. In a brief scene or two, he shows us a definite, clear-cut character, full of humour, consistency and point. The orderly, with the sharpened vision of common sense, has penetrated the great drawback to military service in England. The National Service League might well ponder Shaw's words: “With regard to military service, the only real objection to it in this country is the fact that at present the man who enlists as a soldier loses all his civil rights and becomes simply an abject slave. Sooner than submit to such conditions, which are wholly unnecessary and mischievous, the country, I consider, would be perfectly justified in resisting any such measure by violent revolution.

“On the other hand, there is no reason why a man should not be compelled to do military service just as he is compelled to serve on a jury or to pay his taxes, provided that his civil rights are unimpaired.”

FOOTNOTES:

[181] In a subsequent volume will be indicated in detail Mr. Archer's intimate relation to the growth of popular interest in Shaw's plays.

[182] This parallel was called to my attention by Professor William Lyon Phelps, of Yale University. Compare, for example, Tanner's long outburst against the chains of wedlock with Mirabell's, “I must not lose my liberty, dear lady, and like a wanton slave cry for more shackles,” etc., etc. In reply to a question of mine in regard to indebtedness, Mr. Shaw replied: “Why, I never thought of such a thing! As a matter of fact, the old English comedies are so artificial and mechanical, that I always forget them before I have finished reading them.”

[183] Compare the novel, _The Confounding of Camellia_, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick, concretely imaging the thesis of Shaw's play. The pursuit of man is portrayed in its natural colours, the pursuer and temptress being a seductive siren who exploits all the intricate wiles and complex arts of personal fascination to ensnare her struggling prey.

[184] _The Actor's Society Monthly Bulletin_, Christmas, 1905.

[185] “As this scene may prove puzzling at a first hearing,” reads the leaflet, “to those who are not to some extent skilled in modern theology, the Management have asked the Author to offer the Court audience the same assistance that concert-goers are accustomed to receive in the form of an analytical programme.” Follows the synopsis:

“The scene, an abysmal void, represents hell; and the persons of the drama speak of hell, heaven and earth, as if they were separate localities, like 'the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth.' It must be remembered that such localizations are purely figurative, like our fashion of calling a treble voice 'high' and the bass voice 'low.' Modern theology conceives heaven and hell, not as places, but as states of the soul; and by the soul it means, not an organ like the liver, but the divine element common to all life, which causes us 'to do the will of God' in addition to looking after our individual interests, and to honour one another solely for our divine activities and not at all for our selfish activities.

“Hell is popularly conceived not only as a place, but as a place of cruelty and punishment, and heaven as a paradise of idle pleasure. These legends are discarded by the higher theology, which holds that this world, or any other, may be made a hell by a society in a state of damnation: that is, a society so lacking in the higher orders of energy that it is given wholly to the pursuit of immediate individual pleasure, and cannot even conceive the passion of the divine will. Also that any world can be made a heaven by a society of persons in whom that passion is the master passion--a 'communion of saints' in fact.

“In the scene represented to-day hell is this state of damnation. It is personified in the traditional manner by the devil, who differs from the modern plutocratic voluptuary only in being 'true to himself'; that is, he does not disguise his damnation either from himself or others, but boldly embraces it as the true law of life, and organizes his kingdom frankly on a basis of idle pleasure seeking, and worships love, beauty, sentiment, youth, romance, etc., etc.

“Upon this conception of heaven and hell the author has fantastically grafted the seventeenth century legend of Don Juan Tenorio, Don Gonzalo, of Ulloa, Commandant of Calatrava, and the Commandant's daughter, Dona Ana, as told in the famous drama by Tirso de Molina and in Mozart's opera. Don Gonzalo, having, as he says, 'always done what it was customary for a gentleman to do,' until he died defending his daughter's honour, went to heaven. Don Juan, having slain him, and become infamous by his failure to find any permanent satisfaction in his love affairs, was cast into hell by the ghost of Don Gonzalo, whose statue he had whimsically invited to supper.

“The ancient melodrama becomes the philosophic comedy presented to-day, by postulating that Don Gonzalo was a simple-minded officer and gentleman who cared for nothing but fashionable amusement, whilst Don Juan was consumed with a passion for divine contemplation and creative activity, this being the secret of the failure of love to interest him permanently. Consequently we find Don Gonzalo, unable to share the divine ecstasy, bored to distraction in heaven; and Don Juan suffering amid the pleasures of hell an agony of tedium.

“At last Don Gonzalo, after paying several reconnoitring visits to hell under colour of urging Don Juan to repent, determines to settle there permanently. At this moment his daughter, Ana, now full of years, piety, and worldly honours, dies, and finds herself with Don Juan in hell, where she is presently the amazed witness of the arrival of her sainted father. The devil hastens to welcome both to his realm. As Ana is no theologian, and believes the popular legends as to heaven and hell, all this bewilders her extremely.

“The devil, eager as ever to reinforce his kingdom by adding souls to it, is delighted at the accession of Don Gonzalo, and desirous to retain Dona Ana. But he is equally ready to get rid of Don Juan, with whom he is on terms of forced civility, the antipathy between them being fundamental. A discussion arises between them as to the merits of the heavenly and hellish states, and the future of the world. The discussion lasts more than an hour, as the parties, with eternity before them, are in no hurry. Finally, Don Juan shakes the dust of hell from his feet, and goes to heaven.

“Dona Ana, being a woman, is incapable both of the devil's utter damnation and of Don Juan's complete supersensuality. As the mother of many children, she has shared in the divine travail, and with care and labour and suffering renewed the harvest of eternal life; but the honour and divinity of her work have been jealously hidden from her by man, who, dreading her domination, has offered her for reward only the satisfaction of her senses and affections. She cannot, like the male devil, use love as mere sentiment and pleasure; nor can she, like the male saint, put love aside when it has once done its work as a developing and enlightening experience. Love is neither her pleasure nor her study: it is her business. So she, in the end, neither goes with Don Juan to heaven nor with the devil and her father to the palace of pleasure, but declares that her work is not yet finished. For though by her death she is done with the bearing of men to mortal fathers, she may yet, as Woman immortal, bear the Superman to the Eternal Father.”

[186] In W. B. Yeats's Collected Works, Vol. IV., p. 109 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908), appears a statement (dated 1903), with reference to “the play which Mr. Bernard Shaw has promised us.” The appended footnote reads: “This play was _John Bull's Other Island_. When it came out in the spring of 1905, we felt ourselves unable to cast it without wronging Mr. Shaw. We had no Broadbent, or money to get one.”

[187] In a subsequent volume, dealing with the dramatic movement inaugurated by Mr. Shaw, the production of his plays at the Court Theatre will be fully discussed.

[188] _Bernard Shaw and His Mannikins_, in the _New York Sun_, October 15th, 1905.

[189] _George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation_, in _The Tatler_, November 16th, 1904.

[190] _George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation_, in _The Tatler_, November 16th, 1904.

[191] Several years ago, in a public address, Mr. Andrew Carnegie made the remarkable statement: “You hear a good deal these days about poverty. People wish it abolished. The saddest day civilization will ever see will be that in which poverty does not prevail. Fortunately we are assured that the poor are always to be with us. It is upon the evil of poverty that virtue springs!”

[192] In the Fabian tract, _Socialism for Millionaires_, Shaw preaches much the same gospel to the millionaire. This paper was first published in the _Contemporary Review_, February, 1896.

[193] _'Major Barbara,' G. B. S., and Robert Blatchford_, by Sir Oliver Lodge; in the _Clarion_ (London), December 29th, 1905.

[194] _Impressions of the Theatre.--XIV. Mr. Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara,'_ in the _Review of Reviews_ (London), January 27th, 1906.

[195] Commissioner Nicol, of the Salvation Army, has pointed out that a “real” Barbara, before sending in her resignation, would have consulted General Booth as to the Army's policy in the matter of accepting “tainted money.” He relates (the _Star_, November 29th, 1905), that General Booth accepted one hundred pounds from the Marquess of Queensberry for his “Darkest England” project. A Christian friend was astonished that he took the “dirty money.” Said the General: “We'll wash it clean in the tears of the widow and orphan, and consecrate it on the altar of humanity for Humanity's good.” It is quite clear that Shaw's “Barbara” prefers to do her own thinking; if she had let General Booth do it for her, there would have been no play.

[196] _Ibsen_, by G. Bernard Shaw; in the _Clarion_, June, 1906.

[197] _About the Theatre_, by William Archer; in the _Tribune_ (London), July 14th, 1906.

[198] _About the Theatre: 'The Doctor's Dilemma'_ by William Archer; in the _Tribune_ (London), December 29th, 1906.

[199] This very able and profound discussion, in which Mr. Archer gave the very fairest exposition of his real opinion of Shaw as personality and dramatist, revealed the fundamental issues of the vexed question at issue without in the least settling them.

[200] _About the Theatre: The Dissolution of Dubedat_, by William Archer; in the _Tribune_ (London), January 19th, 1907.

[201] The _New York Times_, December 30th, 1906.

[202] '_The Doctor's Dilemma_,' in the _Standard_ (London), November 22d, 1906. Shaw's comment is characteristic: “It is a curious instance of the enormous Philistinism of English criticism that this passage should not only be unknown among us, but that a repetition of its thought and imagery sixty-five years later should still find us with a conception of creative force so narrow that the association of Art with Religion conveys nothing to us but a sense of far-fetched impropriety.” It is needless to remark that Dubedat omits God's name for the obvious reason that he does not believe in God.

[203] Shaw recently said: “I do not see how any observant student of genius from the life can deny that the Arts have their criminals and lunatics as well as their sane and honest men ... and that the notion that the great poet and artist can do no wrong is as mischievously erroneous as the notion that the King can do no wrong, or that the Pope is infallible, or that the power which created all three did not do its own best for them. In my last play, _The Doctor's Dilemma_, I recognized this by dramatizing a rascally genius, with the disquieting result that several highly intelligent and sensitive persons passionately defended him, on the ground, apparently, that high artistic faculty and an ardent artistic imagination entitled a man to be recklessly dishonest about money, and recklessly selfish about women, just as kingship in an African tribe entitles a man to kill whom he pleases on the most trifling provocation. I know no harder practical question than how much selfishness one ought to stand from a gifted person for the sake of his gifts or the chance of his being right in the long run.”--_The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate_, by Bernard Shaw, pp. 11-12; _The New Age Press_ (London), 1908. This brochure is also published by Benjamin R. Tucker, New York.

[204] I have had the privilege of reading Mr. Shaw's copy of _The Doctor's Dilemma_. Consideration of _Getting Married_, _Misalliance_ and _The Dark Lady of the Sonnets_, all unpublished in English at this time (November, 1910), is postponed for a subsequent edition of the present work.

[205] _The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years_, by Aylmer Maude; Constable and Co., 1910.

[206] The Censor objected to two passages; the second passage Mr. Shaw was perfectly willing to alter, but not so the first--Blanco's story of his conversion, so reminiscent of the style of Job, in which he describes how God “caught him out at last.” This first passage, which Mr. Shaw rightly considered to embody the crux and central meaning of the play, he refused point-blank to alter. The play was next promised production by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. A certain passage which was subject to misinterpretation was willingly altered by Mr. Shaw at the suggestion of Lady Gregory; and the phrase, “Dearly beloved brethren,” and the use of the word “immoral” in description of Feemy's relations with the men of the village, were omitted in deference to the wishes of the Lord-Lieutenant. The directors of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory and Mr. W. B. Yeats, were warned by the Lord-Lieutenant that their patent for the theatre might be withdrawn in case the play offended popular and religious sentiment in Ireland. Despite these warnings, the play was successfully produced on August 25th, 1909. “The audience took it in a very friendly manner,” wrote the dramatic critic of the _Times_ (London), “laughing heartily at its humours, passing over its dangerous passages with attentive silence, calling loudly but in vain for the author at the close.” There was no sensation and no excitement--and no cause for any. The _Irish Times_ said that if ridicule were as deadly in England and Ireland as it is in France, the Censorship would be “blown away in the shouts of laughter that greeted _Blanco Posnet_.” In September, 1909, the play was once again presented to the Censor for consideration--in the meantime the author having rewritten an important passage after it had been tested in rehearsal. Miss Horniman wished to produce it at her Repertory Theatre in Manchester. “What the Censorship has actually done,” said Mr. Shaw in comment on the decision, “exceeds the utmost hopes of those who, like myself, have devoted themselves to its destruction. It has licensed the play, and endorsed on the licence specific orders that all its redeeming passages shall be omitted in representation. I may have my insolent prostitute, my bloodthirsty, profane backwoodsmen, my atmosphere of coarseness, of savagery, of mockery, and all the foul darkness which I devised to make the light visible; but the light must be left out. I may wallow in filth, ferocity and sensuality, provided I do not hint that there is any force in Nature higher and stronger than these.” Subsequently the play was successfully produced under the auspices of the Incorporated Stage Society, at the Aldwych Theatre, London, December 5th and 6th, 1909, by the Irish National Theatre Society's Company from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

[207] For detailed and excellent expositions of the purport of the play--particularly helpful at the time of the banning by the Censorship--compare _The Incorrigible Censorship_, in the _Nation_, July 29th, 1909; and an open letter to the _Spectator_ of September 4th, 1909, by George A. Birmingham.

[208] The play was subsequently produced successfully at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, October 18th, 1909, and at the Kingsway Theatre, London, June 21st, 1910, at a benefit _matinée_ organized by the Actresses' Franchise League. The Reader of Plays allowed the production of the play after the change of the names of “Balsquith” and “Mitchener” to “Johnson” and “Bones,” respectively.

[209] _Report of the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship), together with the Proceedings of the Committee, and Minutes of Evidence_; Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1909. The many questions which intimately concern the free development of the national drama in England, arising in connection with the investigation of the Censorship, fall outside the scope of the present work. They will be considered in detail in a subsequent volume dealing with the movements in dramatic art associated with Mr. Shaw's name. Mr. Shaw, desiring to have his full views on the Censorship included in the printed report, had a volume printed at his own expense which he filed with the committee. The committee decided by vote not to allow this printed evidence to be printed in their report. This volume, entitled _Statement of the Evidence in Chief of George Bernard Shaw before the Joint Committee on Stage Plays (Censorship and Theatre Licensing)_, printed privately and marked “Confidential,” constitutes a remarkable indictment against the Censorship, and an elaborate exposition of grounds for the abolition of the Censorship as at present constituted.

THE TECHNICIAN

“Like all dramatists and mimes of genuine vocation, I am a
natural-born mountebank.”--_On Diabolonian Ethics._ Preface to
_Three Plays for Puritans_.