Shaw himself, a follower of Ibsen, has shown variations sufficiently marked to bring him followers of his own. In all the history of the English stage, no man has exceeded him in technical resources nor in nimbleness of wit. Some of his scenes are fairly irresistible, and throughout his plays his avoidance of the old-fashioned machinery of the drama gives even his wildest extravagances an air of reality.

 — George Bernard Shaw: His Plays (1905)

A. B. Walkley

In perfect innocence Mr. Shaw puts his apology into the mouth of one of the people in Major Barbara. “Andrew, this is not the place for making speeches”; and Andrew replies, “I know no other way of expressing myself.” Exactly! Here is a dramatist who knows no other way of expressing himself in drama than the essentially undramatic way of speech-making. He never knew any other way, but in his earlier plays he did make an effort to conceal the fact. In his earlier plays there was some pretence of dramatic form, unity, coherence. In Major Barbara there is none.

 — Drama and Life (1907)

The Nation

“The Doctor’s Dilemma” — the nature of the dilemma need not be specified here — is one long tirade against the medical profession. The supposed indictment is fortified by reckless misstatement, gross exaggeration, unscrupulous pleading, suppression of the truth, malicious suggestion, and dogmatic assertion. Occasional instances of maltreatment are quoted as general examples. A quasi-scientific gloss is imparted to fluent nonsense by the use of technical phraseology. In his preface he coolly writes: “I deal with the subject as an economist, a politician, and a citizen, exercising my common sense,” common sense being the one quality of which his fallacious illustrations are conspicuously devoid. He does not explain why an economist or a politician should be an infallible judge of medical ethics, practice, and ability. Never were methods more unscientific than those which he employs. Unfortunately the adroitness of his whimsical humor often distracts attention from his own malpractice. He does not always talk pernicious rubbish. His advocacy of sunshine and soap, for instance, as sanitary agents, is perfectly sound. But his wise edicts are mere platitudes. Some of his conclusions are indisputable, but when he points out the way to reform he shatters his pretence of being an economist. He ruins his case by his unjust perversity, dishonesty, and egotism. But his humorous caricatures of different types of physicians and surgeons are delicious, as is his possibly unintended exposure of the humbug of the so-called “artistic temperament” in the person of the fascinating rascal Dubedat. Mr. Shaw knows something about shams.

 — March 30, 1911

The Drama

A new book by George Bernard Shaw is always hailed by a multitude of readers; even the worst of the Shaw of today is so much better than the best of many writers that the bookbuyer’s enthusiasm will not be seriously dampened by Heartbreak House. It is probably the worst of Shaw....

For the characters are not typical, and the situations are often absurd. The workmanship is frequently slipshod, not in the old way which was Mr. Shaw’s clever flouting of conventional technique, but in pure carelessness. In some cases one smarts from the unadulterated theatrical hoakum.

 — November 1919

James Agate

If a man can be partaker of God’s theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God’s rest, says Bacon. But if truth be the thing which Shaw will have most, rest is that which he will have not at all. If we will be partakers of Shaw’s theatre we must be prepared to be partakers of his fierce unrest.

But then no thinker would ever desire to lay up any other reward. When Whitman writes: “I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than oneself is,” we must either assent or dissent. Simply to cry out “Whitmanesque!” is no way out of the difficulty. When Ibsen writes a play to prove that building happy homes for happy human beings is not the highest peak of human endeavour, leaving us to find out what higher summit there may be, he intends us to use our brains. It is beside the point to cry out “How like Ibsen!” Heartbreak House is a restatement of these two themes. You have to get Ibsen thoroughly in mind if you are not to find the Zeppelin at the end of Shaw’s play merely monstrous. It has already destroyed the people who achieve; it is to come again to lighten the talkers’ darkness, and at the peril of all the happy homes in the neighbourhood.You will do well to keep Whitman in mind when you hear the old sea-captain bellowing with a thousand different intonations and qualities of emphasis: Be yourself, do not sleep. I do not mean, of course, that Shaw had these two themes actually in mind when he set about this rather maundering, Tchekovian rhapsody. But they have long been part of his mental make-up, and he cannot escape them or their implications. The difficulty seems to be in the implications. Is a man to persist in being himself if that self runs counter to God or the interests of parish, nation, the community at large? The characters in this play are nearer to apes and goats than to men and women. Shall they nevertheless persist in being themselves, or shall they pray to be Zeppelin-destroyed and born again? The tragedy of the women is the very ordinary one of having married the wrong man. But all these men — liars and humbugs, ineffectual, hysterical, neurasthenic — are wrong men. The play, in so far as it has a material plot, is an affair of grotesque and horrid accouplements It is monstrous for the young girl to mate in any natural sense with a, superficially considered, rather disgusting old man. Shall she take him in the spirit as a spiritual mate? Shaw holds that she shall, and that in the theater even spiritual truth shall prevail over formal prettiness.

 — Alarums and Excursions (1922)

QUESTIONS

1. Shaw was an active member of the Fabian Society, a reformist, quasi-socialist organization. Do you see evidence of this affiliation in the plays in this volume?

2. . Consider Shaw’s treatment of strong-minded, unconventional young women. Do they seem real flesh and blood, or mere mouthpieces for Shaw’s ideas? What do you make of their usual association with older men?

3. What are the most common butts of Shaw’s humor?

4. Do you feel that the primary effect of Shaw’s prefaces is to illuminate the plays? What else do they do?

5. Shaw is a notorious polemicist. But are the endings of these four plays polemical? Do they make a point or argue a cause in an unequivocal way? Or are they ambiguous, suggestive rather than explicit?

FOR FURTHER READING

WORKS BY SHAW

Collected Plays with Their Prefaces: Vols. 1-7. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975.

The Collected Screenplays of Bernard Shaw. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.

Collected Letters. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Vol. 1, 1874-1897, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1965; Vol. 2, 1898-1910, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972; Vol. 3, 1911 — 1925, New York: Viking Press, 1985; Vol. 4, 1926-1950. New York: Viking Press, 1988.

The Drama Observed. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. Vol. 1 : 1880 — 1895; Vol. 2:1895 — 1897; Vol. 3:1897-1911;Vol. 4:1911 — 1950. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. An invaluable collection of all Shaw’s writings about theater.

Shaw’s Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three Volumes. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Vol. I:1876-1890; Vol. 2:1890 — 1893; Vol. 3:1893-1850. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981.