CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN^IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library PR 5366.H22 1916 The twentieth century Moliere: Bernard 3 1924 012 967 653 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012967653 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY MOLlfeRE: BERNARD SHAW UNWm BROTHERS, LIUITED, THE GRBSHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY MOLIERE: BERNARD SHAW BY AUGUSTIN HAMON TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS 1916 II. L /\y7^fy^ {AH rights reserved) It is always so more or less : the novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last. — Shaw. Preface to Three Plays for Puritans, p. xxiii. CONTENTS Epistle Dedicatory The Man. PASS 19 CHAPTER I in Open-Air Speaking Publishers General Considerations Birth Family ..... A Truant Scholar Love for Music and Painting Comes to London Frequents Debating Societies and engages Becomes a Socialist . Writes Novels which are refused by all the : The Novels .... Turns Critic .... Literary and Musical Criticism Writes Plays .... Dramatic Criticism The Fabian Society and Bernard Shaw p Policy and Aims of the Fabians Bernard Shaw is not a Marxist His Socialist Pamphlets His Influence up«n British Socialism, upon Home Politics, and upon Foreign Policy His Views on Old Age Pensions Bernard Shaw and the International Socialist Congress of London /influence of Bernard Shaw and of Fabian Socialism upon German and upon French Socialism . . . . . 7 33 38 39 40 40 41 42 45, 45 47 52 S3 56 58 61 62 66 67 69 73 74 75 Contents CHAPTER II The Man — {continued). Shaw's Plays published in Book Form . • • • Played with success in Germany, they are then produced in the United States, and subsequently in London Candida in Brussels and in Paris Bernard Shaw's Idiosjmcracies Dress and Diet . . . • His Wit . " . Shaw as a Public Speaker and in Private Conversation His Imagination . . . • Diction . . • • Love of Truth .... The Legend that Shaw is Unsociable Why he is a Socialist His Individualism .... His Hatred of Worldly Customs and Conventions Bernard Shaw as a Wealthy Man His Love of Advertisement . Is he in Earnest ? . . . . He is a Moralist .... His Sense of Justice and his Determinism . Shaw as a Man of Business . The Real Bernard Shaw CHAPTER III Analysis of Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Method. Comedy is its Essence ...... Comedy of Incident, Expression, Style, Comparison, Imitation His Humour ........ His Comedy of Ideas ; by Inversion, by Transposition of Values, by the Display of the Automatism of Individuals and of Society ........ Comedy of Character ...... 8 Contents PAGE J Farce ......... 125 His Realism manifested by the Sincerity, tlie Frankness, the Intellectual and Sentimental Contradiction of the Cha- racters ; by the Exposition of the Motives of their Actions ; by the Plots ; by the Denouements ; by the Impartial Development of each Person's Ideas . . . .126 Unreality of the Plot and Realism of the Characters . . 132 Construction of his Plays ...... 133 Their Material Action and their Intellectual Action (the Subordina- tion of the Material Action to the Intellectual, the latter being voiced by a Central Figure ; Multiplicity of Incident ; Simplicity of Plot; Vividness of Life and Movement) . 134 The Tragical Element in the Plays ..... 140 The Psychological Types in these Dramas . . . 142 There are no Pathological Types ..... 142 The Male Characters are not Individual Masculine Types, but National, Professional, or Class Types . . . 143 The Characters are Accentuated, sometimes to the Extent of Caricature ....... 144 Types of the Capitalist, the Soldier, the Doctor, the Man of Law, the Priest, the Esthete, the Irishman, the Englishman, the American, the Man and Woman of To-morrow . . 145 Heroes are just like other People ..... 148 The Man of the People is given an Important and Pleasing Rdle 148 Old People, Parents, are satirized ..... 149 Characters in the Full Vigour of Manhood, and the Young . 150 The Female Characters are Individualized .... 150 Woman Symbolizes the Life Force . . . . .151 The Life of Comedy is Criticism ..... 152 His Ruthless Sg^ e. displayin^y the Contrast between Appearance and Reality . ...... 153 His Social Criticism ....... 154 His Superabundance of Ideas ..... 154 His Drama is a School of Disrespect, of Revolt against Parental, Marital, and Legal Authority : it is an Unending Campaign against Romantic and Social Lying . . . .155 9 Contents Wonderful Unity of his Ideas and of his Philosophy The Development of Man into Superman . Shaw's Determinism . . . . • Laughter as a Moralizing Force Shaw's Ethics ...... Other Peculiarities of the Plays : No Division into Scenes, and Sometimes no Division into Acts; the Lengthy Stage Directions ....••• PAGE 159 IS9 i6o i6i i6i CHAPTER IV Analysis of Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Method — (continued). Detailed Examination of some of the Plays . . . .165 Plays : Pleasant and Unpleasant — Widower^ Houses : Argument, Material Action, Conflicts between the Characters, and Mental Conflicts . . . .165 Mrs. Warren's Profession: Ideas, Material Actioii, Conflicts, Intellectual Action from the Abstract Point of View . 167 Arms and the Man: Intellectual Action, Material Action, the Characters and their Conflicts . . . . • 171 You Never Can Tell: Intellectual Action, Material Action, the Characters and their Conflicts ..... 172 Three Plays for Puritans— The Devil's Disciple : Intellectual Action, the Characters and their Conflicts, Material Action . . . . -174 Man and Superman : Intellectual Action, the Characters and their Conflicts, Material Action ..... 178 Candida : Intellectual Action, the Characters, their Conflicts, Material Action . . . . . - . .182 The Critics of Candida, their Mistakes . . . i86 Eugene is not a Don Juan ; Candida stays with her Husband from love and not from a Sense of Duty ; Candida resembles neither the Nora nor the Ellida of Ibsen ; the Setting of the Play is broadly Human, not specifically English ; Eugene is the poet in general, not an English i£sthete ; Candida is the 10 Contents PASE Mother- Woman, not an Englishwoman in particular; Can- dida is not by any means Christian .... i86 Her Love is a Sexual Love ...... 191 In the Denouement, when Eugene goes out into the Night, he goes towards the Happiness of the Poet ; the Denouement is just and well-balanced ; Habit cannot create a Right, for a Right is a Prejudice ; Candida's Freedom of Choice is Absolute, not Apparent ; for the Audience, the culminating Emotional Point is the Choice ; Candida is happy with her Husband, and does not suffer in secret ; Candida is Sincerity itself ; the Material Plot is unimportant ; the Scene between Proserpine and Eugene in the Beginning of the Second Act is intimately connected with the General Action of the Play ; the Part of Burgess is one of extreme Importance, and is necessarily burlesque ; it is essential to the Understanding of the Play that this Character should not be misinterpreted ; Candida is Comedy in respect of practically all its Characters ; A Play of Shaw's cannot be put out of Tune by Laughter, but only by the Misinterpretation of its Comedy as Tragedy 192 CHAPTER V Shaw and the Dramatic Critics. Technique of the Contemporary Drama. The Nature of Dramatic Art. § i. Shaw and the Dramatic Critics. Hostility of the Critics ...... 206 Arises from their Romantic Morality .... 207 In the View of the Critics, Lying is the Natural Atmosphere of Social Life, but in Shaw's View this Atmosphere is mephitic What is moral to Shaw is immoral to the Critics . . . 207 Shaw did not borrow his Social Criticism from Ibsen or from Hauptmann ....... 209 It was in the Air ....... 210 His Psychology is Sound and his Characters are accurately drawn National and Racial Psychology . . . . .311 II Contents PAGE Shaw's own Personality is behind his Characters . . .213 The Intermingling of Burlesque and Tragedy is a necessary Feature of the Realism of the Comic Dramatist's Art . . 215 Paradox is a necessary Part of the Comedy of Ideas . . 216 Shaw's Material Action is improbable, but his Characters are not 217 The Material Action of the Plays lacks order, but the Intellectual Action is precisely ordered ..... 217 Shaw's Dramas display a great Regard for the Form of the Comic Drama ........ 218 Virtue is not rewarded . . . . . .219 The Whole is Conversation, but Conversation is a Mode of Action 220 The Shavian Drama makes an appeal to the Emotions . . 220 The Assertion that his Plays are not really Plays . . . 221 § ii. Technique of the Contemporary Drama. The Technique of Scribe is followed by all other Playwrights . 222 The Duel between the Sexes, especially in the Form of Adultery, is the Corner Stone of the ordinary Drama The Problem Plays of Dumas and Augier . There is no Philosophy in these Plays The Problem Plays of Ibsen and of Bjornson The Philosophy of these Plays The Influence of Ibsen upon other Playwrights was inconsiderable 228 Symbolism concealed Ibsen's Realism, and switched the Play- wright on to the wrong Road during the Theatrical Revival of 1887 to 189s . . . - . . .229 Bernard Shaw alone understood the Realist Work of Ibsen, and discovered the new Path which Ibsen had opened to the Dramatist ........ Arrest of the Theatrical Revival ..... Return to the Problem Play with a Technique resembling Scribe's, but differing to some extent from that of Dumas fils . . 230 There is no Philosophy in these Plays, and nothing remarkable about any of them •■.... 2'?i They are all alike, wherever written . . . _ g'jz 12 223 224 225 226 227 229 230 Contents § iii. The Nature of Dramatic Art. PASI What is Art ? . . . . . . . . 233 Beauty and Art have as their Aim — to please . . . 234 Shaw's Work is Artistic ...... 234 Drama is a Display of Conflicting Wills, to induce Emotion, and to give Pleasure ....... 236 In addition, the Comic Drama must exhibit real Types, and must have a Moral Bearing . . . . . .237 In Comedy, the Essence is rather in the Word than in the Action 237 Materials Employed by the Playwright and the End at which he Aims necessarily Determine the Form of his Work . . 239 The Rules that Exist over and above the Conditions thus deter- mined are purely Conventional, and have no real Value . 240 The Law of the Three Unities is purely Conventional, and has no real Value ........ 240 The Desire to take as httle Trouble as possible has transformed the Convention of the Unity of Action into a Necessity : has led it to be regarded as an absolutely indispensable Obligation The Argument from Authority is utterly valueless . , . 240 In the Drama the Rule of all Rules is to please . . . 243 Bernard Shaw's Plays correspond very well to the Conditions imposed by the Nature of his Materials and to the Aim he has in View ; they fulfil also the Rule of all Rules . . 243 They are True Drama ...... 244 CHAPTER VI Parallelism between the Drama of Shaw, the GRffico- RoMAN Drama, the Medieval Drama, the Drama OF MOLIERE, AND THE DRAMA OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND Nineteenth Centuries. Bernard Shaw's Drama ...... 245 The absence of Division into Scenes and Acts a Revival of the Greek Drama ....... 248 The lengthy Stage Directions recall those of the Medieval Drama 248 13 Contents PAGE The Construction of the Plays reminds us of Moliere and of Aristophanes . . . . • • . • ^S^ As in Aristophanes and Moliere, Material Action and Plot are absent or improbable ....•• 253 The Psychological Action of Moliere becomes Intellectual Action in the Work of Shaw . . . . • -255 Both these Methods of Action give rise to the Play with a Central Figure .....••■ 256 Neither in Moliere nor in Shaw is there any real Denouement . 256 Shaw's Realism differs from that of Ibsen, Dumas, and Augier, but recalls the Realism of Manners and Character employed by Moliere, found in the Plays of Aristophanes and of the Middle Ages, and in the novels of Balzac and of Zola . . 257 Reiteration of Ideas in Shaw and in Moliere . . . 259 The use of Farce in the Dramas of Moliere and of Shaw . . 259 The Persons of the Drama in Moliere and in Shaw . . 260 The Comedy of Ideas in the Shavian Drama recalls that of Beau- marchais and that of Moliere ..... Intermingling of Tragedy with Burlesque in Moliere and in Shaw ........ 261 Shaw's Wit and Humour recall rather those of Moliere than those of Beaumarchais ....... 263 Moliere and Shaw laugh with their Reason . . . 264 During the Nineteenth Century there was no serious Comedy . 265 The Criticism of Society, of Manners and Customs, found in Shaw's Plays, recalls that of the Drama of Aristophanes, of the Middle Ages, of the Sixteenth Century, and of Moliere . 267 The Theatre is a Church and a School .... 267 Shaw, like Moliere, desires to instruct, to moralize . . 268 The use of Allegory by the Greek writers of Comedy, by the Medieval Playwrights, by Moliere, and by Shaw . . 270 Moliere and Shaw love young People and make fun of Parents and Elders ....... 270 Like Moliere and Ibsen, Shaw wages war against Hypocrisy . 270 The Social Criticism of Shaw is more profound than that of Ibsen, and even than that of Moliere , . .272 14 Contents FACE The Plays of Aristophanes, Moliere, and Shaw are Schools of Disrespect ....... 273 Shaw's Dramas are Determinists, as are all contemporary Dramas ; but in Shaw the Determinism is more plainly manifest . 274 His Determinism is mainly social, that of the Scandinavian Masters is mainly Ancestral and Individual . . . 275 In Shaw Destiny fulfils itself, and its Triumph is a good thing, this being the Converse of what is found in Sophocles . 276 Woman is a hunter of men, as in the Medieval Lays, and as . in the Dramas of Strindberg ..... 277 Shaw's Plays are yet more Feminist than those of Ibsen . . 278 Shaw's work is Meliorist, like that of Moliere, whereas Ibsen's is Pessimist ........ 278 Like Moliere, Shaw is the Philosopher of Common Sense . . 279 The Morality of Shaw's Plays recalls that of Moliere's . . 279 Shaw's work is more revolutionary than that of Moliere or Beaumarchais ....... 280 In Shaw, as in Moliere, the Characters are like every one else ; none of them are pathological ..... 281 In the Writers of Tragedy, in Ibsen, the Characters are for the most part exceptional and pathological . . .281 The Depiction of Feminine Love tinged with Maternal Feeling is a special Characteristic of Shaw's Plays . . . 282 Shaw's work, like that of Moliere, deals hardly at all with Adultery ........ 282 As in Moliere, so also in Shaw, the Master parodies the Ser- vant ........ 282 Members of the Common People play an important part in Shaw's Plays, as in those of Moliere, Plautus, and the Middle Ages, this differing from what we find in Ibsen and other Nineteenth Century Dramatists .... 283 Like Moliere, like Beaumarchais, Shaw speaks through the mouth of his Characters ....... 283 He reminds us of Voltaire, Renan, Scarron, Moliere, Rabelais, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Proudhon, Beaumarchais — but' re- mains, Shaw ....... 285 15 Contents His work revives the Serious Comedy which had disappeared since Beaumarchais ....•• The Critics received Moliere and Beaumarchais just as they have received Shaw .....■• CHAPTER VII General Considerations on Dramatic Art exemplified WITH Reference to the Work of Bernard Shaw. Essential Differences between Comedy and Tragedy, as affecting the Structure, the Style, and the Characters in Comedy Comedy Generalizes ...... Plot of Secondary Importance .... No Cuts can be made from a well-planned Comedy Comedy exhibits Average Humanity Realism of Comedy ; its Consequences Comedy deals with Types, not Individuals . The Aim of Comedy is to induce Thought and to arouse Laughter, not to move to Pathos ..... Two varieties of Comedy, the Psychological and the Politico-Social Comedy must not recoil from the Trivial and the Coarse . Comedy uses the Tongue of Common Speech Paradox and Irony ...... Farce and Burlesque ...... Please the General Public, but displease the .(Esthetes and Dilettantists . . . . . . Bernard Shaw as " the Twentieth Century Moliere " Affiliation has always existed in Art .... Synoptic Table of the Resemblances between the Dramatic Works of Moliere and of Bernard Shaw Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde .... Shaw's Kinship, as Satirist and Philosopher, with Swift, Voltaire, and Proudhon ...... The Interest of Bernard Shaw's Plays universally and eternally Human, hence they translate well Summary and Conclusion ..... 16 EPISTLE DEDICATORY 17 TO GEORGE BERNARD SHAW My dear Shaw,— A good' many years have passed since in January 1904 I sent a young friend of mine who was studying in London to see you, with a letter suggesting that he should undertake the French translation of your Man and Superman, which had not thten atta,ined its present world-wide success, but which was already attracting much interest. My friend's youth alarmed you, since, so you wrote, for the translation of your play,s there was requisite the dexterity of a Sardou. The fame which your work and your personality have now acquired was then but dawning. It was only in Germany that your plays had received an enthusiastic welcome ; America was beginning to imderstand you ; England still seemed to ignore you. But ypu yourself were well aware that your plays were masterpieces which mtist sooner or later inevitably receive full recognition. You were, then, perfectly 19 The Twentieth Century Moli^re right in desiring that the man who should translate your work into French should have the dramatic touch of a Saridou. It was with' stupefaction, there- fore, that in this same letter I read your request that I should undertake the translation. I was altogether unaware of possessing the talent of a Sardou ! My knowledge of English was some- what slender. It enabled me to plod through scien- tific treatises, but was inadequate for the proper understanding of pure literature. With the aid of my wife, who is almost as much at home in English as in her mother tongue, I had acquired some knowledge of your comedies. I admired the ideas to which you give utterance in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant and in Man and Superman. But I was unable to grasp the liveliness, the brisk move- ment, and the wit, of the dialogue j I had no real understanding either of the characters you had created or of the delicious ajidl piquant comedy with which your plays are permeated. I had done no original work in the field of pure literature, had never written a poem, not even a single line. A good many years earlier, in 1890, I had indeed dreamed of writing a novel, to be entitled Vainqueurs ; but this novel, sketched in collabora- tion with my friend Georges Bachot, joint-author of my earliest books, has never got beypnd the stage of first outlines. I had written nothing 20 npistie i^eaicauory more than studies in hygiene, sociology, and collec- tive psychology.' It was to a man burdened with these scientific impedimenta that you miade your proposal that he should undertake, in conjunction with his wife, the translation of dramas ! You must agree that we had good reason for surprise, even though we were familiar with your reputation as an eccentric. For not merely had my previous work been restricted to the field of sociological science, but further, within the scientific and literary world of France I was regarded as an Outsider, since I belonged to no coterie, and mixed but little with the world, choosing my associates from the environment of the Socialist and Anarchist International — above all during the seven years in which I edited " L'Humanite Nouvelle," an international review founded in 1897 by myself in conjunction with Elisee and Elie Reclus, Guillaume De Greef, Eugene de Roberty, Clemence Royer, Edmond Picard, and Emile Verhaeren.2 I contributed to ' Some of the author's earlier works may be enumerated here. Etudes sur Us eaux potables et le plomb, 1884-5, of which transla- tions have been published in Italian, Turkish, Polish, and Spanish ; L'Aganie d'une Sociite, 1889 ; Ministere et Milinite, 1891 (Studies in Contemporary History and Sociology) ; La France sociale et politique, 1890, 2 vols., 1891, r vol. ; Socialisme et Anarchisme, 1895, with a Preface by Alfred Naquet, translated into Spanish, Italian, and Russian. — Translators' Note. ' "L'Humanite Nouvelle" was a monthly review. Its contributors numbered many of the most eminent among the advanced thinkers 2X The Twentieth Century Moli^re none of the great dailies, and thfe solid and respect- able reviews were closed to me on account of my ideas. They could not g;ive a favourable reception to anything: written by the author of La Psy- chologie "du 'Militaire professionel, Ea Psychologic de VAnarchiste socialiste, and Determinisme et Responsabilite .^ I was too much of an iconoclast, my tendencies were too destructive. Nor did I number among my intimates any Parisian actor- managers . The notoriety I enjqy^d, far from being of service to you, might even be detrimental. of the day, such as Peter Kropotkin, Alfred Russell Wallace, Bernard Shaw, Emil Vandervelde, Hector Denis, Havelock Ellis, Jules Destree, Charles Letourneau, Ladislaz Kozlowski, Kristian B. Aars, Domela Nieuwenhuis, J. Crosby, Leonid Andreyeff, Gorki, Tolstoi, etc. The review ceased publication towards the end of 1903. — Tbanslatous' Note. • La Psychologic du Militaire prof essionnel'wa.s published'in November 1893, and made a considerable sensation in France, for the reason that the author's main contention was that the army is a school for crime. Indeed, this assertion aroused a scandal, but no legal proceedings were instituted against author or publisher. The book has been translated into German, Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian (two translations), Portuguese, and Russian. The war which rages while this note is penned has amply justified Hamon's general conclusions concerning miUtarism, which exists wherever there are armies, for the object of armies is war, and militarism proves itself to be to-day what the author described it twenty years ago, " a school of violence, murder, rape, pillage, and arson." La Psychologic de VAnarchiste Socialiste was published in Paris in 1895, and has been translated into Spanish and Czech. Diterminisme ei Responsabiliti was published in Paris in 1897, and has been translated into English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The work reproduces the substance of a course of lectures delivered in 1897 at rUniversite Nouvelle de Bruxelles. — Translators' Note. 22 Epistle Dedicatory Professional literary men and Kabitu^s of the theatre were already demanding your permission to translate some of your play3. Yet it was my wife and myself^ whom you asked to undertake this work. It seemed to me that you had a whim for throwing difficulties in the way of a knowledge of your writings in France. I hesitated to accept the arduous labour of translating your plays into French. iWhilst I might feel myself equal to the rendering of your minor political and economic works, it seemed to me that your comedies, if not beyond my powers, were at least quite outside my scope. I did not consider myself to be the Sardou whom you needed. You insisted, however, with your Irish obstinacy, which is even greater than my own obstinacy as a Breton.' And it was thte Breton who gave way. In a letter you wrote me at a later date ypu explained yourself as follows : "I knew very well what I was about. The dramatic liveliness of the reports you gave of some of the Socialist Congresses [the allusion is to my volume Le Socialisme et le Congres de Loridres and to some of my articles in " L'Humanitd Nouvelle " during the years 1900 and 1901 ] liad satisfied me that you were the man to undertake a French version of my plays. As far "! Hamon was born at Nantes in January 1862, and comes of mixed Breton and Angevin stock. — ^Translators' Note. 23 The Twentieth Century Moli^re as an intimate iknowledgie of English was concerned', it was enough that Madame Hamon possessed this. You understood the modem social organism, you knew human nature ; and it was these points that were essential." , Subsequently, when I knew you better, I realized that you were quite indifferent to the acciunulation of obstacles in the way of your drama. You were indifferent because you knew that destiny always fulfils itself, and that your drama must inevitably become popular and classical in France. From othfer persons I learned, in addition, why you urgted me to translate your plays. You wished, above all, that the revolutionary thought with which they are impregnated, equally in respect of matter and of form, should not become attenuated, sugared, and vulgarized ; and you mistrusted, with good reason, the habitues of the theatre, humbugs more or less, with their minds sophisticated by the atmo- sphere in which they live. You wanted a trans- lator who would give the lie to the proverb traduttore, traditore ; one who could reproduce in its integrity the revolutionary spirit of your work. I could not, like Marchbanks in your Candida, cry out " I am the man ! " for I did not know that I was the man. But you knew. Acquainted with my writings, acquainted with " L'Humanit^ Nouvelle," you knew how closely akin were our 24 Epistle Dedicatory views concerning capitalist society, concerning authority, concerning social determinism. . . . You knew that I should relive your comedies because I should rethink them, so much was their spirit, so much were their ideas, my own. You were insistent, I gave way, and my wife and I set to work, more than ten years ago now. The task was formidable and arduous, but intensely pleasurable to us both. Impressed by the pro- fundity of the ideas, by the penetratingi, terse, and logical criticism of society, I gradually came to entertain an enthusiastic admiration for your plays, which voiced so many of the ideas which I myself had at heart. Yet their essential comedy remained largely unperceived. I saw only the substance of the ideas, and this was so intensely luminous as actually to blind me to the spirit of comedy. It was not until at Brussels, on February 7, 1907, C'Utidida was staged, that my eyes were opened, although still incompletely, to the beauties of yovu: drama. In 1906, M. Redingi, manager of the Theatre du Pare, approached us, you will remember, for per- mission to play Candida, having heard of the play from Yvette Guilbert and her husband Dr. Schiller. He read our manuscript and accepted the play for his> literary matinees. Excellently, staged and admirably interpreted, it enjoyed a favourable 25 The Twentieth Century Moli^re reception at the hands of the public and the critics. At all four representations the house was packed, and the audience smiled, laughed, even roared with laughter. This laughter astonished me, shocked me indeed to such an extent that I could hardly restrain myself from exclaiming out loud against the stupidity of this audience which found food for laughter in ideas so just, slo great, so penetrating, and at times so bitter. But the audience was right, whilst I, who had failed to recognize the intense and powerful comedy of Caiidiiia, was the fool. •When I came to think the matter over, the veil was lifted from my eyes, and at length I under- stood the enormous comic force of your drama, which makes us laugh even in the most tragic scenes, even when the characters are expressing most serious ideas . The ireception of our translation by the critics convinced me that the dramatic tongue was neither outside nor above our powers. As you told me, I had up to that time had the power of makirigi people think, but I had now the power of making thtem laugh while making them think. In a conscientious but somewhat unsympathetic study of your dramatic work which M. Augustin Filon published in the " Revue des deux mondes " for October 1905, he made a passing allusion to the name of Molifere. Eigjhteen months later it 26 Epistle Dedicatory fell to my task to give the preliminany lecture when Candida was played at the Th^dtre du Pare, and also to give a more detailed lecture at the New University of Brussels. In preparing these lectures I had to study several of your plays, and the in- voluntary approximation which M. Filon had made of your name with that of Moli^re gave birth in my mind to the idea of comparing your technique with Moli^re's. To my surprise, I perceived that tBere was a cloise kinship between the two schools of drama. In my lectures I pointed this out, and was the first to draw attention to the resemblance. i The parallelism was merely sketched in embryo. The study was continued' alongt the same lines, though it still remained incomplete, in an article which appeared in July 1908, in " The Nineteenth Century and After," xmder the title Un Nouveau 'Moliire. The complete form of the comparison of your work and that of Moli^re was not attained ; until the following year, when I gave a course of lelctures on the subject at the Sorbonne. Paris followed the lead of Brussels, and in April and May 1908 Oandida was played at the Th6^tre des Arts. This introduction of the critics and of the Parisian public to your drama was unfortunate. ' The lecture at the New University of Brussels was published under the title Bernard Shaw et son Theatre in " La Revue Socialiste " (September 1907), and in "Finsk Tidskriftt" (Helsingfors). 27 The Twentieth Century Moli^re The company was a talented one, and their inter- pretation was painstaking, but it was completely falsified by the transformation of the Mohferesque figure of Burgess into a wearisome " comic man." As you are aware, I was unable to prevent this vulgarization of your splendid Candida. With real distress I attended the final rehearsals, doing all that was possible to attenuate the clumsiness and stupidity of the crime that was being perpetrated against art. You know how painful I found the dress rehearsal and the first night. The result was what I had anticipated, and there came a moment when the actors, whose interpretation was in the vein of tragedy, could hardly go on, so harassed were they by the perpetual smiles and laughter of the audience. As for the critics, they completely lost their bearings. They felt, confusedly, that the interpretation was inadequate. They did not and they could not understand the play, because all its values had been falsified. The result was that some of the critics wrote unfavourably of Candida, while even those who liked the play, recognizing its poetic force, sensing its tragical greatness, and understanding some of its ideas and characters, yet failed to grasp the intense spirit of comedy which is as characteristic of Candida as of all your other plays. This unfortunate experience in Paris could not 28 Epistle Dedicatory fail to retard the appreciation of your drama, that drama which is destined in France to enjoy an enormous popular success, when it comes to be played in the comical, farcical, or Moliferesque vein, for then all the wealth of its wit will be perceived. Yet out of evil came good. This transmutation of the Shavian comedy into a wearisome, pseudo -psychological comedy, and its results in the interpretation of 'Candida, impressed me with the importance of the farcical element in the serious comedy that deals with ideas, characters, anid customs. It enabled mfe to, understand iwhiy Molifere had been the leader of all writers of farce. I grasped why it was that Molifere was a great writer and a profound philosopher without ever ceasing to make use of the methods of medieval farce land the tricks of a clown at the fair. It recalled' to my mind the advice you had yotuyself given me to disregard all academic counsels on the construction of " well-written plays," and to learn my trade by, going to the circus and studying the methods of the clown. The result was that I saw more clearly all the resemblances between lyour comedy and that of Molifere. Meanwhile I had applied to the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris for authorization to deliver a course of lectures upon your drama. I was unaware when I made my application that 29 The Twentieth Century Moliere those who give such lectures mUst possess a doctor's degree of a French university or some equivalent degree of a foreign university, or must at least have published books of such merit, in the opinion of the professorial body, as to entitle their author to rank as a doctor of letters or of science. Whfen I was informed of these facts I har'dly expected that my application would be granted, for I had no imi- versity degree. I was therefore agreeably sur- prised, in June 1908, to receive permission to give the proposed course of lectures during the session 1908-9. As your wonderful William expresses it in the only corrmionplace he utters, " You never can tell." It was in February 1909 that I delivered my lectures at the Sorbonne, and I repeated them the following month at the New University of Brussels. In both places the ten lectures were well attended. The present volume presents the first six of these lectures. If the reading public receives the book as favourably as the audience received the lectures, I shall publish in a second volimie those parts of my course which are not reproduced here, treating of the ideas, the philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics, to which your dl-ama gives utterance. Although a number of books have already been published upon you and ypur writings, never before, I believe, has your dramatic work been analysed 30 Epistle Dedicatory with the hke precision in respect of its technique, its characters, and its ideas. I hope that those of my compatriots who read the present study will be animated with the desire to read your comedies and' to see them' playied. I hope to continue the work begun by my lectures and by the articles I have published in numerous reviews. I hope it will facilitate thfe task of the critics in passing judgment on plays constructed in accordance with a classical technique which they have forgotten. I hope to raise up in the younger literary world of France admirers of your drama and students of your method. If to any degtfee — and I hope it will be to a gtreat one— this volumle achieves these ends, it will have done much service to Erench literature and to dramatic art. To the renovation of the drama a renascence of classicism is essential, and this renascence cannot take place until the Erench playwrights enter the path which you have reopened. Speed the da,y I AUGUSTIN HAMON. Ty-an-Diaoul, Port Blanc en Penvenan (C6tes-du-Nord, Bretagne). 31 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY MOLIERE: BERNARD SHAW CHAPTER I THE MAN Throughout western Europe, during the years from 1887 to 1892, there was the dawn of a revival of the theatre. In Paris there were the Theatre Libre with Antoine, and L'CEuvre with Lugnd Poe ; in London, the Independent Theatre with Grein; in Beriin, the Freie Biihne. These actor -managers were surrounded by numerous youthful satellites. They were all looking for a new formula of dramatic art. Yet their efforts were but tentative, with arrests and fresh starts. The search seemed vain, notwithstanding that the work of Ibsen had passed beyond the limits of the country of its birth, reaching Germany first of all, and then France and England, giving a general im- pression that new trails were being opened. Unfortunately, the realist work of the gtreat Norwegian dramatist was not understood. People 33 c The Twentieth Century Moliere saw in it obscure symbolisln, idealism in place of the realism which it truly embodied. Our young playwrights hastened to follow the master's example I Criticism came to a standstill. Like all other men, the dramatic critic follows the law of least resistance;, for those who have to criticize plays like to do so with as little effort as possible. Eor this reason the critic is hostile to every new tendency. It throws him out of his bearings, forces him to reflect, to colnpare, to reason. What rubbish are all these innovations ! What has been done before, what all the world has always seen, is much better. Thus the dram'aitic critics, when they saw the attempts of our bold young innovators, all cried out with one voice, " This is not a drama ! There is no plot in it I " The public, following like a flock of sheep, joined in the contemptuous chorus, and refused to go to see the plays of the new school. The young playwrights, therefore, gradually changed their methods. Dominated by the leaders of dramatic criticism, and yielding to the desire for popular success, they gave up their uncompromising notions of a theatrical renascence and returned to a large extent to the dtamatic forms that were dear to our fathers. The technique of Scribe gained the day. Such writers as Brieux, Erangois de Curel, and Etoil Eabre, to speak only of France 34 The Man (though in Germany and in England just the same thing happened), took to writing plays with plots resembling those of the younger Dumas and of Augier, laying stress upon dramatic incident rather than upon ideas, giving more place to intrigue and less to concepts. Thus there ensued a return to a dramatic technique whose form really differs very little from that of the masters of the nineteenth century. It is true that certain forms that were dear to our grandtnothers, such as the aside and the mono- logue, have almost disappeared ; but most of the conventional traditions have been maintained. According to our critics, the essence of the drama must always remain a conflict of senti- ments and of passions. The duel of the sexes must be its leadingi theme, its mainspring, for in this we find the source of every emotion. The drama, they tell us, is emotion. Thus the misoneist critics conquered the philoneist spirit of the playwrights. Since they were not great artists, but merely writers of talent ( and sometimes of very great talent), they allowed themselves to be domesticated, preferring dramatic cleverness to dramatic force, traditional form' to new forms, an insufficiency of ideas to a surplus. One man, George Bernard Shaw, would not submit to this process of domestication. A critic 35 The Twentieth Century Moli^re himself, he refused to subject himself to the law of the other critics. With quiet audacity and perfect calmness of mind he persisted in follow- ing his own vision, being convinced that he could see better and more clearly than the public, that he knew better than the critics. In spite of all and in opposition to all he remained himself, and himself only. In the end he has forced the public to accept him' ; but to do this he has required more time than was needed by such writers as Pinero, Jones, Donnay^ Hervieu, Hauptmann, and Suder- mann. These are talented writers, highly talented ; but Bernard Shaw is a man of genius. They are clever technicians, but he is a profound thinker. The crowd, literate or uncultured, could not possibly care for him at first ; for the public has no love of novelty and is always loath to perceive the beautiful in an unaccustomed manner. As Oscar Wilde has admirably expressed it : "As far as thie public is concerned, every attempt to widen the field of treatment in artistic matters leads to disaster, and yet the progress of art and its vitality are largely dependent upon a continual widening of the field of treatment." The artist, the gireat artist just as much! as the great thinker, is necessarily a rebel. Neither in art, nor in philosophy, nor in the sciences is it ppssible for the iman of strong individuality to see 36 The Man with the crowd or to act hke the crowd. Artists and thinkers revolt against that which shocks their visions and their ideas. They become rebels, and thus contribute powerfully to progress, for of all the factors of progress revolt is the mtost important. But naturally by their revolt they shock the cro'wd. Bernard Shaw certainly did not hesitate to shock the crowd, and therefore it took himi twelve years — froW 1892 to 1904 — to force the English public to accept him'. It is true that two years before the end of this period his plays received an enthusiastic welcome in Germany and the United States. In the States the vogue they rapidly obtained was largely due to two extremfely able actors, Arnold Daly and Richard Mansfield. In England, if his pjays were unsuccessful, they still made a i^oise, and he tells us that the sensation was so agreeable to him' that he went on just as before. Thus among the amateurs of the drama and among men of letters there arose two parties— the Shavians and the anti-Shavians. Thanks to Bernard Shaw's tenacity and also to his unmistakable genius the former party triumphed. To a certain extent he forced the critics to disarm', and compelled the public to come to his plays. In fact, they came in crowds. Throughout the season of 1904-5, at the Royal Court Theatre, nothing was played but 37 The Twentieth Century MoHere Bernard Shaw. The resistance of the public finally gave way before John Bull's Other Island, and henceforward success was assured. Bernard Shaw's fame in fashionable circles was definitely established by the attendance of King Edward VII at a perforiiiance of the play last named. Shaw became the licensed fool, the popular clown, or, at least, a man above the law. What are the characteristics of the dramatic genius of Bernard Shaw, whose work, at first despised and reviled, has now becomfe so greatly esteetned? Before we can answer this question we inust consider the author's personality with which his writings are perlneated. Has he not himself written : "I half suspect that those managers who have had most to do with me if asked to natne the main obstacle to the per^ formance of my plays would unhesitatingly and unanimously reply, ' The Author ' " George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, July 26, 1856, his parents being Irish Protestants. His father was an employee at the law-courts, and his mother was the daughter of a small country farmer. The father, having retired with a pension, realized it in cash, and became a grain merchtot. He was poor ; that is to say, his income did not exceed two or three hundred a year. For hitti' this was insufficient, for he considered him- 38 Ihe Man self to belong to the upper class, having titled relatives, and his tastes required an expenditure three or four times greater than his income. Thus, without being in actual penury, the family was poor. It consisted of the father, Georg'e Carr Shawi ; the mother, Lucinda Elisabeth Gurly ; two daughters, Agnes and Lucy ; and one son, Bernard, thte youngest child. Agnes died in 1876. Lucy became a professional singer, and has published several books. The father was lacking in energy, and was always in ill-luck. This is his son's own account, and we are further told : "In theory he was an ardent teetotaller, but in practice he was often a secret drinker. 'He was of sardonic mien, this con- cealing a profound sensibility." The mother was twenty years younger than her husband. An in- telligent, energetic, and persevering woman, she had no regard for the innumerable prejudices of bourgeois society, was indifferent to public opinion, and acted according to her own judgment of what was right or expedient. We cannot describe her better than by saying that — fifty years ago — she was precisely what are to-day the tn'ost advanced among women. Musically gifted, and having a fine voice, she was by no means a good house- keeper ; but she was a good mbther, and exer- cised a powerful educative influence. Her son has 39 The Twentieth Century Moliere her in mind in his description of Mrs. Clandon in You Never 'Can Tell. The domestic environment was at once steeped in family prejudices ( Shaw tells us somewhere that they used to speak of " the Shaws " as of " the HohenzoUerns " or of "the Romanoffs") and emancipated from social prejudices' — a middle- class family always embarrassed for money. Find- ing the discipline of school life extremely irksome, the boy often played truant, spending much of his time in the Irish National Gallery. Hour after hour he wandered through the em^ty rooms, happy in the contemplation of the masterpieces on the walls. Urged by his natural curiosity, and having access to the works of Vasari, he soon became intimately acquainted with the lives of the great painters, and gained a thorough knowledge of Italian and Flemish art. He was also drawn to music, and in intercourse with his mother he graxhiallyt acquired considierable musical knowledge and trained powers of appreciation of the work of the great musicians ; but while thus living in intimate communion with the masters of painting and of music he was in bad odour with the masters at school. In 1871 he left school to enter the employment of a Dublin land agent. Here he worked for five years, reaping an ample harvest, often unwittingly, of painful and 40 The Man bitter observations upon thte under -currents of life in the families of the landed gentry and of the middle and lower middle class. He worked at his desk without enthusiasm', his sole desire here being to secure financial independence. On the death of the father, the mothfer and the two daughters removed to London, where Bernard joined them four years later, the object of this change of residence being to give Lucy better opportunities of training as a singer. To gain a livelihood Mrs. Shaw herself taught singing and conducted singing classes in girls' schools. Up to the age of seventy she was still engaged in this occupation, and so great was her natural vigour that her son found it difficult to induce her to relinquish it even at this age. In London, about the year 1876, Shaw entered the employment of the Edison Telephone Com- pany, »He was much interesteid in electricity and the other physical sciences, and pursued their study with ardour. But while following the work of Tyndall and of Helmholtz, and while perseveringly pursuing his initiation to scientific knowledge, he did not work much for the Edison Company. His employment was ill-suited to his undis- ciplined nature, and in 1879, after having struggled against his own inclinations for three years, he left the office for good. He had no means of 41 The Twentieth Century Moliere livelihood, but his int)ther was at hand. She helped him and provided for him, he being then twenty -three years of age. They both lived upon her musical earnings. " I have been blamed," he writes somewhere, "for not having helped my mother, but for having lived at her expense. It is true that my mother worked for me instead of telling me to work for her. This was a good thing, for it rendered it possible for me to make a man of myself instead of remaining a slave." The future showed that Mrs. Shaw was right when, for love of her son, she helped in the development of a man to the burgeoning of whose brain we owe masterpieces. Shaw, having nothing taore to do, continued to work without pause. He left the libraries only to visit the tnliseums, and if he was not to "be found in either of these he was attending some musical recital, for which, as a talented accom- panist, he could easily secure a free pass. As an Irishman he was a bom debater ; an amateur of lengthy discourses ; of assemblies where people speak or narrate, visiting these just as much to listen as to speak. He became a member of the Zeletical Club, next of the Dialectical Society, next of the Hampstead Historic Club, and a little later of an economists' club, which developed into the British Economical Association, These were 4? The Man societies for the holding of private meetings to discuss political, social, and philosophical problems. Such debating societies are extrelnely numerous in Great Britain, and constitute a permanent and. essential part of the political life of intelligent bourgeois and working-class society — they are, un- fortunately, imknown in France. In meetings of this sort Bernard Shaw developed his powers as debater, public speaker, and economist. Here he met James Lecky and Sidney Webb, and formed a friendship with both ; L'ecky, in especial, exer- cised a considerable influence over him'. Thus Bernard Shaw, following a common English practice, soon engaged in open-air speaking. At street corners, from; the pavement, from a cart, in the parks, he spoke to all who would listen. The passers-by, their attention caught by a few words, sometimes remained to listen, but at other times went on quickly about their business or became part of the audience of other speakers who had succeeded better than he in gaining the ear of the public. Eor in this matter Shaw himself had not as yet touch success — this long, red-bearded fellow, carelessly dressed, whose own comrades called him a Bohemian, As we have said, he was living at this time upon his mother's bounty, and her earnings were insufficient to allow him to spend much money upon clothes. One of his friends, 43 The Twentieth Century Moliere the late Hubert Bland, in memoirs published not long ago, said that Shaw's dress at this time reeked of poverty — his long overcoat which had once been black was now greenish, his tall hat was furry and dishevelled. He failed to gain the ear of the public, although his speeches were adorned with witty sallies and amusing anecdotes. But it happened one day in Hyde Park that a band began to play near the cart from which he was addressing a sparse audience — in fact, hardly any one was listening to him, but the band soon drew a crowd. W'hen the music ceased and Shaw was once more able to make himself heard he had a large audience. By his sallies, his jokes, his anecdotes, and his paradoxes he conquered this audience. At last he had gained the ear of the British' public. This was a lesson he could never forget. Erom' this moment dates his love of that advertisement of which he has ever since m'adfe so extensive a use. It was at this time, in the year 1881, that Bernard Shaw became a vegetarian and a teetotaller. Being a poor man, he had been accustomed to go to cheap restaurants, but found even these too dear. Moreover, there were always the same things to eat, always beef and mutton, cooked in exactly the same way. Worse still, the atmosphere was always poisonous with the smell 44 The Man of burnt fat. Bemaxd Shaw, therefore, went instead to the vegetarian restaurants, finding there more varied cheer at a lower price, and escaping the offensive fumes. In the year 1883, in the course of his unflagging attendance at public meetings, he heard Henry George speak. This was a revelation. He now recognized the enormous importance of the economic problem, at which hitherto he had glanced merely in passing. He read Henry George's Progress and Poverty and Karl Marx's Capital. He became a Socialist. But his critical and iconoclastic spirit im'ade it impossible for him to worship at the shrine of Marx or to subscribe to all this writer's economic doctrines. [Yet he did not spend the whole of his time at public meetings and debating societies, in open- air speaking, in museums, or in libraries ; he worked also at his desk. As the fruit of this work we have five novels. Naturally he tried to get them published, going from firm to firm, and getting in return, as he himself has told us, nothing further " than an encouraging compliment or two from the most dignified of the London and American pub- lishers, who unanimously declined to venture their capital upon me. Now, it is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to he worth publishing, pro- vided it is a novel at all, and not merely an inep- 45 The Twentieth Century Moliere titude. It certainly is possible for a .novel to be too good to be worth publishing; but I doubt if this was the case with tnine. I might indeed have consoled myself by saying with iWhately, ' These silly people don't know their own . silly business '. ; for when these novels of mine did sub- sequently blunder into type to fill up gaps in Socialist magazines financed by generous friends, one or two specimens took shallow root like weeds, and trip me up from time to time to this day." ' Notwithstanding his unsuccess in the search for a publisher, Bernard Shaw was in daily intercourse with some of the most brilliant personalities of the younger generation — artists, authors, econo- mists, and journalists. Among his intimates were James Leigh Joynes, Sydney Olivier, recently Governor of Jamaica, Henry Hyde Champion, Edward Carpenter, Henry Salt, secretary of the Humanitarian League, Hubert Bland, Graham Wallas, William Archer, the well-known critic, Bingham Walkley, now, dramatic critic of the "Times," Sidney Webb, Annie Besant, already famous, and, finally, William Morris. Some of these friends were editors of periodicals. Champion, for instance, was in charge of the ' George Meredith, who was reader to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, refused one of Bernard Shaw's novels. 46 The Man Socialist review " To-Day," which subsequently passed into the hands of James Leig*h Joynes and Belfort Bax ; while Annie Besant was editor of " Our Comer." Bernard Shaw's novels, subsequently to be reissued as Novels of My Nonage, found hos- pitality in the columns of these periodicals. An Unsocial Socialist and Cashel Byron's Profession appeared in " To-Day " ; The Irrational Knot and Love Among the Artists were published in "Our Comer." These Socialist periodicals had but a small circle of readers, so that the novels remained un- noticed by the general public. Being, however, original, paradoxical, and bold, they attracted the attention of William Morris, Robert Louis Steven- son, William Archer, and other distinguished or popular writers, who regarded these immature works as presaging the production of ma,sterpieces. The novels have since been republished several times in England and the United States ; they have been translated into German, and The Irrational Knot appeared two years ago in French. We do not find in them, to any appreciable extent, either plot or dramatic incident ; nor do they contain, to speak strictly, descriptions of mental states, excep- tional or commonplace. They are social theses, or rather the framework for the presentation of numerous ideas, some profound, some trivial, and some exquisite, expressed in paradoxical and witty 47 The Twentieth Century Moliere terms. In the Bernard Shaw of the novels is fore- shadowed the Bernard Shaw of the plays which have made their author famous. In The Irrational Knot Conolly, an electrical engineer, marries a girl against her father's wishes. Mrs. Conolly is of aristocratic birth, while her husband is of the middle class. Differences soon arise between the pair, and she takes as a lover a former wooer, a man of her own set. Conolly is a philosopher who knows that what must be will be. He leaves his wife to her lover and devotes himself to electricity and to music. The wife runs away with the lover, who soon abandons her. Conolly has regained his liberty, since his wife has left him, and continues his musical pastimes and his electrical researches. In Love Among the Artists we see a number of women, actresses, pianists, and singers, more or less Bohemian, some of thera clever performers and some genuine artists, exploited by managers, pestered by their pupils, but continuing all the time the pursuit of their profession, of their art, to which they are devoted body and soul. Through this world of artists there passes a composer. Jack, a man of original and independent mind, loving to shock and to scandalize. These figures serve as a text on which to hang witty and caustic diatribes against those artists who, aspiring to academic rank, devote 48 The Man themselves to the greater classical art although they are incapable even of petty art, and against the public which crowds to admire, without under- standing, picture shows and concerts. In An Unsocial Socialist, Trefusis, a rich man with a charming wife, realizes one day that the fortune he enjoys is derived from' the exploitation of the hands employed in his father's factory at Manchester. Reeling unable to continue to live upon wealth produced by the toil of ill-paid workers, Trefusis abandons his luxury and leaves his wife, to live in the country and to devote him- self to Socialist propaganda. His wife pursues him and find's him. He continues to love her, he says, but he sends her back to London, where she dies, in part from grief. Trefusis, however, is by no means distressed at this. After a while he returns to live the life of a rich man/, his chief interest being to scandalize his associates by the utterance of witty paradoxes and by the enunciation of truths which it is customary to ighore, but which in his view ought to be proclaimed from the housetops. * * * * « This brief summary of these amusing novels will show that they db not btelong to the domain of ppre literature. Their author is not an advocate of art for art's sake. His main interest lies in social problems \, he is, as we have seen, a Socialist . 49 D The Twentieth Century Moliere As a Socialist, he was one of the fi^st members of the Fabian Society, founde'd in 180-4.. Here, with his friends Sidney -Webb, Graham Wallas, and Sydney Olivier, he played a leading" part. At the Fabian Society he lectured and debated, continuing all the while his Socialist propaganda in the open air and continuing! his work as a journalist, for he had now obtained employment as a critic. The amusing passage in which he describes his abandonment of novel -writing for thte work of critic must be quoted in full : " I had no taste for what is called ' popular art,' no respect for popular mor- ality, no belief in popular religion, 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 humame person I Idetested violence and slaughter, whether in war, sport, or the butcher's yard. I was a Socialist, detesting our anarchical scramble for money, and believing in equality, as the only possible permanent basis of social organization, discipline, subordination, good manners, and selec- tion of fit persons for higih functions. Fashionable life, open on indulgent terms to unencumbered 'brilliant' persons, I could not endure." Bernard Shaw found the life of " good society " intolerable. His work in the land agent's office had early displayed to him its seamy side. His 50 The Man views of liffv were • altogether different from those of the averagfe'' respectable man. He was trying to find some suitable occtapation for his powers whfen a friend of his, an oculist, g^ve him the clue to the understanding of his own real condi- tion. Shaw writes: "He tested my eyesight one evening and informed me that it was quite un- interesting to him because it was 'normal.' I naturally took this to mean that it was like every- body else's ; but he rejected this construction as paradoxical, and hastened to explain to me that I was an exceptional and highly fortunate person optically, ' normal ' sight conferring the power of seein^g things accurately, and being enjoyed by only about lo per cent, of the population, the remaining 90 per cent, being abnormal! I immediately per- ceiveid the explanation of my want of success in fiction. My mind's eye, like my body's, was ' normal ' ; it saw things differently from other people's eyes, an'd saw them better. " This revelation produced a considerable effect on me. At first it struck me that I might live by selling my works to the 10 per cent, who were like myself ; but a moment's reflection showed me that these must all be as permiless as I, and that we coxild not live by, so to speak, taking in one another's washing. How to earn daily bread by my p^n was then the problem. Had I been a 51 The Twentieth Century MoU^re practical, commonsense, money-loving Englishman, the matter would have been easy enough : I should have put on a pair of abnormal spectacles and aberred my vision to the liking of the 90 per cent, of potential book -buyers. But I was so pro- digiously self-satisfied with my superiority, so flattered by my abnormal normality, that the re- source of hypocrisy never occurred to me. Better see rightly on a poimd a week than squint on a million. The question was, how to get the pound a week." The answer he himself found was to make him- self critic and jester, for " every despot must have one disloyal subject to keep him sane." He, with his normal vision, would be the disloyal subject of that despot, the sovereign public whose vision is abnormal. 'He therefore adopited the profession of critic, becoming the art-critic of the " World " on the introduction of his friend William Archer, him- self literary critic of the "Pall Mall Gazette" (at that time edited by W. T. Stead). Shaw was also appointed literary critic of " Truth." In the year 1888 Bernard Shaw joined the staff of the " Star," the halfpenny evening paper just then founded by T. E. O'Connor. Here he was given the post of musical critic, for that of dramatic critic had already been, allotted to his friend Walkley, and T, P. O'Connor, fearingl his Socialist 52 The Man tendencies, would not allow him to act as literary critic. In the English press criticism in general occupies a place which is unknown in France. In matters musical, artistic, literary, and scientific, the London and provincial papers usually aim at thfe publication of intelligent expert criticism, quite in- dependent of commercial influences, though often dull and hostile to novelty. It is very different in the French press, for here criticism plays an insignificant part. .With two or three honourable exceptions— those of the younger literary and artistic reviews— what passes here by the name of criticism is restricted to the publication of editorial notes and to the distribution of praise— all paid for directly or indirectly. In fact, in the French press serious criticism does not exist. It is very different in England, where criticism not only exists but is often a power when it is impartial and in- telligent, when it is the work of competent persons who can claim' to be " the right men in the right place." Such was Bernard Shaw, and as such he immediately made his mark in the world of criticism. From 1888 to 1890 his musical criticism in the " Star " attracted m^ch attention both from the general public and in the journalistic world on account of its sparkle, 'its humour, its light and penetrating sallies, covering a sound musical know- ledge. These critiques, signed by the pseudonym 53 The Twentieth Century Moli^re of " Corno Di Basseto," became so notable that the editor of the " World " offered him the post of musical critic to that paper. Having accepted it, from this new platform' he distributed praise and' blame week by week in a self-confident tone. 'He now abandoned thfe pseudonym and si^ed his con- tributions G. B. S. These initials have become celebrated, for it is by these that Shaw is com- monly known in England. His weekly budget, full of witty anecdotes, piquant thrusts, extra- ordinary comparisons, and audacious paradoxes, was an exaltation of Mozart and of Wagner, and a categorical affirmation of the infallibility of the writer's own critical discernment. He is never weary of telling us that his wares are good, and that no one else can offer anything of equal quality. In actual fact, we are assured by competent jndges that in this capacity of musical critic he displayed one of the most comprehensive and one of the most penetrating minds of our time. It was in the " World " that appeared the first draft of his studies on Wagner, subsequently published, in 1898, as The Perfect Wagnerite . Musicians assure us that this commentary on Wagner deserves to be read and to be remembered. While thus making use of the knowledge he had acquired in association with his mother, musician by profession, he interested himself at the same 54 The Man time in the theatre. As far back as 1885, William Archer, having adapted the scenario of a French play, La Ceinture Doree, asked his friend Shaw to iwrite the dialogue for him. Shaw agreed, and the first act was soon finished. He told Archer this, adding : " Tell me again about your scenario ; I have not quite got it into my head yet I " Archer burst out laughing, and said : " My dear fellow, this is absurd, and your method is altogether im- possible ! I won't have anything more to do with it. Our collaboration is at an end before it has begun." Shaw, however, determined to finish the second act, and insisted on reading it to Archer. When he reached the climax pf this second act, he looked up at Archer and fotmd him fast asleep. " Well," said Shaw to himself, " it is clear that I am not much of a playwright." He put away the unfinished play, and it was seven years before he again turned his hand to the drama. Archer's nap cost us seven years of Bernard Shaw's life as a dramatist I It was in 1889 that Ibsen's dramas, so realist and revolutionary in substance, although traditional in technique, were first staged in London, A Doll's ^House being presented at the Independent Theatre. Bernard Shaw was powerfully impressed, and the result of his study of Ibsen's works was the writing of his little volume The Quintessence of 55 The Twentieth Century Moli^re Ibsenism, published in 189 1. In this book, which attracted much notice in the Uterary and dramatic world, Ibsen was defended, preached, and main- tained against the greatest living playwrights. As far as Great Britain was concerned, he was the only dramatic author whose works could be pro- duced at the Independent Theatre, for in the autumn of 1892 Grein had been unable, despite his best endeavours, to find a single British author whose work he considered worthy to appear upon its boards. " In this national emergency," writes Bernard Shaw in one of his amusing Prefaces, " I proposed to Mr. Grein that he should boldly announce a play by, me." The manager agreed, and Shaw disinterred the unfinished play of which mention has just been made. He completed it by adding] a third act, gave it, as he say^, a far- fetched and mock-scriptural title {Widowers^ ^Houses), and— but let him speak for himself, " handed it over to Mr. Grein, who laimched it at the public in the Roy^ty Theatre with all its original tomfooleries on its head. It made a sen- sation out of all proportion to its merits or even its demerits, and I at once became infamous as a dramatist. The first performance was sufficiently exciting. The Socialists and Independents applauded me furiously on principle ; the ordinary playgoing first-nighters hooted me frantically on 56 The Man the same ground; I, being at that time in some practice as what is impolitely called a ' mob orator,' made a speech before the curtain ; the newspapers discussed thte play for a whole fortnight, not only in the ordinary theatrical notices and criticisms but in leading articles and letters ; and finally the text of the play was published. ... I "had not achieved a success, but I had provoked an uproar ; and the sensation was s|0i agreeable that I resolved to try again." In the following year, in 1893, in the leisure time left him from his occupations as musical critic and Socialist propagandist, he wrote The Philanderer, which could not be staged, for the Independent Theatre had not among its company an actor com- petent to undertake the part of Charteris. "Im- mediately," he tells us, " I threw it aside, and, returning t|0 the vein I had worked in Widowers' 'M'ouses, wrote a third play, Mrs. Warren's Pro- fession, on a social subject of tremendous force." Shaw now ran his head against the wall of the censorship, for the production was prohibited. The censor was shocked by a plaiy whose heroine was a procuress. Rutting this manuscript away in his desk, hfe set to work once more and wrote a fourth piece, for, as he himself puts it, " man is a creature of habit. You cannot write three plays and then stoR." The new piece was Arms and the Man, 57 The Twentieth Century Moli^re which was produced by Miss Florence Earr at thf Avenue Theatre, having a run of eleven weeks, from April 21 to July 7, 1894. His musical criticism in the " World " and the noise made about his plays had introduced Bernard Shaw, if not into the circle of the theatrical managers, at least into that of the journalists . The result was that when, in January 1895, Mr. Erank Harris became editor of the " Saturday Review," he offered the position of dramatic critic to Bernard Shaw. Shaw gladly accepted this hospitality, from the Conservatives, for, as he wrote tp me, " the Radical papers find me too revolutionary for their taste." Eor three years, from January 1895 to May 1898, Bernard Shaw wrote theatrical criticism for the " iSatur'day Review," signing his articles with his now well-known initials. Just as in the " World " he had conducted a crusade on behalf of Wagner, so now in the " Saturday " he conducted a crusade on behalf of Ibsen and against Shakespeare. Again arid again he turned upon Shakespeare to destroy this English idol, showing how lamentably poor is his philosophy and how his plays are lacking in psychology. But, as an impartial writer, he found pleasure in insisting upon the force of Shakespeare's comedy, upon the music of his language, and upon his imrivalled art as a story-teller. It has re- peatedly been asserted that Shaw has proclaimed 58 The Man his own plays to be better than those of Shake- speare. This is incorrect. The famous phrase " Better than Shakespeare," which heads the Preface to his Three Plays for 'Puritans, is followed by a note of interrogation. It is none the less true that hie criticized the Bard and treated him with some disdain. While thus dethroning the god Shakespeare he set up an altar to Ibsen, whose plays contain both psychology, and philosophy, and who is as unromantic as possible. This last charac- teristic could not fail to be especially pleasing to Shaw, for the romantic is his pet aversion, and he attacks it at every opportunity. For three years Bernard Shaw carried on his campaign against dramatic pharisaism', displaying marvellous wit, a wealth of ideas and of original views, his usual pleasant vein of paradox, and his beautiful style. So masterly was his criticism that in the year 1906 James Huneker, an eminent American critic, pub- lished in two volumes a selection of Shaw's articles {Dramatic Opinions and Essays), and the book has run through several editions. Such, too, was the force of his work that he compelled people to accept Ibsen as among the greatest of living play- wrights, and put an end to the uncritical worship of Shakespeare. As a further and remarkable result he succeeded, to paraphrase his own words, in establishing for all time his own literary prestige, 59 The Twentieth Century Moli^re effecting this by the vigour of his dogmatic asser- tions, by continued insistence upon his own merits as a wit, a controversialist, a maker of paradox, and as a penetrating analyst of the human mind and of human affairs. In the interim, to distract his mind from the labours of dramatic and artistic criticism, he pub- lished an essay entitled The Sanity of Art, a counterblast to Degeneration, a ponderous work (now almost entirely forgotten) by Max Nordau, published in 1895. But where he chiefly found relaxation was in his incessant activities as a Socialist. Socialism is his passion even more than the drama, for above all Shaw is an iconoclast, a subverter, and Socialism is the platform from which he attacks the existing capitalist society, that des- troyer of human lives and enertgies. Shaw, reading these pages in proof, entered a protest here, contending that he was not an icono- clast but an economist, and adding : " The love of economics is the mainspring of all the virtues : economics is the art of intensifying life ; political and sociai economy are intellectual diversions ; but vital economy is the philosopher's stone. Above all things, I detest waste." • • • * • Bernard Shaw, then, is a Socialist, and from the first, as member of the [Executive Committee, played 60 The Man an important part in the life and work of the Eabian Society. As he once wrote to me : "I am always in the camarilla of any democratic organization to which I may belong— vmderstanding by the term ' camarilla ' the little group of persons who love to defend the interests of the community, who are willing to do the hard work of the society, and who are capable of doing it." If i the camarilla is tyrannical, this does not alarm him, for, he tells us, he has no objection to tyranny when he is himself one of the tyrants. Thus he became one of the benevolent despots of the Fabian Society. In 1889 his fellow -members entrusted him' with the editor- ship of The Eabian Essays in Socialism, the famous voliraie of which new editions continually, mlajWe must leave the dead to the dead, and go forward to life — to life which is always good, always great, always worth living, despite its harshness, its cruelty, its pettiness, and its weakness. Whenever the Fabian Society wishes to issue a manifesto it makes use of the pen of Bernard Shaw. Thus, in 1 901, he wrote Fabianisint and the Empire, expressing the Society's views on military service, colonial policy, free trade, the housing of the working classes, national pensions, etc. Owing to the dominant influence of Bernard Shaw the Fabian Society is essentially realist. Accepting what exists, it makes it its business to study the immediately practicable measures to effect a change in what exists by aimeliorating the life of the workers and favouring the well-being of the community. In the Fabian manifesto which has just been mentioned, signed by Bernard Shaw, we find him demanding for South Africa measures which were subsequently adopted by the British Government in 1902 and 1906. Nothing can show better than this how extensive has been the influ- ence of the Fabian Society upon the country's domestic and foreign policy. It is hardly neces- sary to recall, in addition, the enormous extension 69 The Twentieth Century Moli^re that has of late years been effected in the domain of municipal enterprise, whereby the supplies of water, gas, and electricity have been m'ade a Local Government concern. This method of communal activity is enthusiastically advocated by Bernard Shaw in his little volume The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (1904). The mtinicipalization of public services is one of the primary demands of thie Fabian Society ; another is the Eight Hours Day, regarded as the maximum working day, and on this latter subject should be read Shaw's pamphlet An Eight Hours W of king Day. We may refer also to his Socialism for Millionaires, con- taining good-humoured mockery of the rich man who is incapable of enjoying his wealth and of making a graceful use of it. Another manifesto of the Society, Fabianism! and the Fiscal Question, is from the same prolific pen. In a note recently sent to the present writer Bernai^d Shaw summarized in the following terms the past and future work of the P'abian Society :— " I. To get rid of the old notion that the Socialist Societies (containing twenty members apiece 1 ) will be able to regenerate the world by merely enlarging the circle of their membership; and to replace it by the notion that it is, on the contrary, the business of Socialists to join all other 70 The Man kinds of organization in order to permeate these with Socialist ideas and to suggest Socialist solu- tions for their difficulties. This has been termed the Policy of Permeation; and from 1884 to 1892 it was an astonishing novelty for Socialists, who were at that time all split up into little sects, like the Christian sects, each sect expecting all the world to enter its own little Bethel. "2, To reduce Socialism to a series of parlia- mentary measures making up a constitutional policy (Collectivism), so that a respectable Englishman may just as readily be a Socialist as a Conservative or a Liberal. " 3. To detach the working classes from the Liberal Party and to form a parliamentary Labour Party. " AU this has been done. " There still remains — " 4. To detach the Socialists from the Labour Party, which is not a Socialist Party but a Radical wing of the Trade Unions. The Labour Party is good in that it represents labour, but bad in that it represents poverty and ignorance, and it is anti- Social in that it supports the producer against the consumer and the worker against the employer instead of supporting the workers against the idlers. The Labour Party is also bad on account of its false democracy, which substitutes the mis- 71 The Twentieth Century Moli^re trust, fear, and political incapacity of the masses for genuine political talent, and which would make the people legislators instead of leaving them what they are at present, the judges of legislators . "5. To constitute in Parliainent a Socialist Party independent of all the other political parties, using its ideas and its political science to give a lead to the advanced elelmfents of all these other parties." • • • ' • * We see that Bernard Shaw's part in the Fabian Society has been and is extremely important. Probably no other man has had so great an influence as he upon this Society, which in its turn has exercised enormous influence in the universities, among the working classes, and also in fashionable circles. With the possible excep- tion of Keir Hardie, Shaw's reaction upon British Socialism has been greater than that of any other man, much greater than that of Hyn(hnan, the leader of the Social Democrats. Shaw has given himself without stint to Socialist propaganda. He is not satisfied with writing pamphlets, but gives innumerable lectures and addresses, indoor and outdoor. His Socialist work has always been un- paid, as indeed is that of the great majority of the men and women who work for Socialism 72 The Man throughout the world. So mlich does he delight in the propagandist r61e that he never misses an opportunity of expressing Socialist ideas. In 1909, for example, when the question of Old Age Pensions came to the front in England, it was Qimounced' in the " Westminster Gazette " that, to avoid disorganizing British finance, the Govern- ment intended that pensions should not be universal, but should be allotted only to the destitute. Bernard Shaw imlmfediately took up his pen to reply, and the following' day there appeared in the " Westminster Gazette " thfe sensational article in which he predicted the ruin of the Liberal Party if it adopted this plan of limiting pensions to the necessitous. All had a right to the pension. " To find the necessary funds there are but two ways open : either an increase of import duties, or else an attack on our manufac- turing and commercial classes which will force them to disgorge a little more of the money they have stolen, taking from them by a new income- tax an additional part of that wealth which a really wise administration would never have allowed them to accumulate." Bernard Shaw, of course, advo- cated the latter mtethod. Meanwhile he had held the office of borough councillor for Paddington, devoting himself ably and conscientiously — as he always does when he 73 The Twentieth Century Moliere puts his hand to anything— to questions of paving, hghting, sewerage, and water supply. In the year 1896 was held in London the Inter- national Socialist Congress, to which the present writer has devoted a volutn'e, Le Socialisme et le Congres de Londres. Bernard Shaw attended this Congress as delegate of a small Dublin branch, at that timte the only Socialist group in Ireland. He did not then possess the wide fame which is his to-day, but he was already a well-known character, both as critic and as Socialist. I can still picture him in my mind when, as the sequel of the memorable intervention by the French section which split the Congress into two warring factions, he rose from' his place in the midst of the tumult as the session came to a close, crying out, " I demand the right of constituting an Irish national section 1 " I can still hear him' saying as he left the hall, " They are all mad — hopelessly toad!" I believe that this International Congress was the last at which Shaw was present. At the inter- national sittings of the Congress of London, except for a few witty and ironical interruptions made in the vain attempt to call the Social-Democrats to their senses, Bernard Shaw did not speak. In the English section, however, he was, with Keir Hardie, the defender of liberty, in opposition to 74 The Man Hyndman, the advocate of social democratic autocracy. In this way he contributed towards the victory of the French trade unionists, who, under the leadership of Eemand Pelloutier and myself, supported by the Parti Ouvrier Socialiste R^volutionnaire (commonly known as the Alle- manistes), were then in conflict with the Erench and German Social -Democracy. The Congress of London inarks the climax of power attained by the German Social -Democracy. From this time, thanks to the understanding between France and England, there began a decline in its influence, eventuating in its defeat in 1907 at the Congress of Stuttgart. Since then the leadership of the Socialist world belongs to France and to Great Britain, to the Western peoples whose political evolution is farthest advanced, to the two in which the Socialist spirit is most in- tensely developed. This logical and rational result is the outcome of the influence, oftentimes uncon- sciously exercised and unconsciously submitted to, and at first always slow and unseen, exerted upon numerous Socialists by the English policy and the English spirit, and, above all, exerted by the Fabian Society, in which the leadiijg force has been Bernard Shaw. Is it not to English, and especially to Fabian, influence that Bernstein owes the Reformism which 75 The Twentieth Century Moli^re he has so brilliantly championed in Germany — not a petty bourgeois and self-sufficient Reformism, but Reformism as conceived by the Eabian Society? Nay, more. Any one who studies the genesis of contemporary French Syndicalism will discover a British factor in this social phenomenon as well. One of the founders of Erench Syndicalism was Emile Pouget, who was directly subjected to English influences during a long residence in London. Another of its founders, and perhaps the most influential, was Eernand Pelloutier, likewise inspired by the remarkable Eabian Socialist policy. It suffices, indeed, to glance at the declaration unanimously voted by the Erench Socialist Party at the Congress of Toulouse to recognize as an incontestable fact that Erench Socialism now partly follows the lines of the Eabian policy. The word- ing of this resolution as concerns the question of reforms and as concerns the organization of the workers in trade unions and co-operative societies seems to be almost pure Eabianism. I say almost, for naturally where we have to do with different mentalities and a different national environment ideas must undergo a certain transformation. It must not be supposed from what I have just said that it is my contention that the Erench Socialist movement is simply a product of British tenden- cies and British Socialist policy. All that I mean 76 The Man to imply is that a knowledge of the English Socialist movement, with its special mentality and its peculiar tendencies, has been one of the factors which has switched the movement of the Erench proletariat towards Syndicalism.' and Reformism, just as it has been one of ' the factors in the evolution of thie German Social -Democracy. »We must not forget that in the universal pro- cess of life all things are interconnected, that everything is at the same time cause and effect. All things that happen are so inextricably inter- laced that it is a difficult matter to determine the importance of each individual factor of social evolution. Without wishing, therefore, to class such factors in a serial order of importance, we may say that in the evolution of Socialism the influence of economic phenomena has been greater than the influence of ideal concepts, whether these were the ideas of the Brance of former days, the Germany of yesterday, or of the England and of the France of to-day. Bearing on what has just been said, I may draw attention to the participation by Bernard Shaw, in April 1 9 1 2, in a meeting' held in London in favour of the Syndicalists, Guy Bowman, Buck, and Tom Mann, who were prosecuted for having suggested to soldiers that they should refuse to fire upon their brother workers on strike. At this huge 77 The Twentieth Century Moliere meeting Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald, Lans- bury, and Bernard Shaw were the principal speakers. With his tisual unfailing wit Shaw brilliantly supported the right of free speech. "The Prime Minister recently made an extra- ordinary statement. When the Minimum Wage Bill was under discussion he declared that it was im- possible for Parliament to establish the actual rates, and that all that could be done was to agree to a declaration of principle. This is a grave inno- vation. Again and again in the past Parliament has established rates of minimum wage. It has laid down the minimum wage of judges and the minimum wage of M.P.'s ; before long it will have to vote the minimum wage of the King, to vote the Civil List. Will Mr. Asquith rise in the House saying that the Govemiment can no longer do what it has done in previous years, that it cannot estab- lish rates, but must merely record its assent to the general principle of the Civil List? "Is the King not to know whether he will get £5 or £500,000? What would be the result? Let us suppose the King went on strike — I see that you are all delighted at the prospect I What would my position be? If I were to beg the soldiers not to fire upon their fellow-worker on strike, I should be sentenced to penal servitude for life. If, on the other hand, I were to tell 78 The Man the soldiers to fire upon him', I should be executed on Tower Hill for High Treason. Such are the diletnttias to which we are all / exposed when our rulers begin to play with the law," 79 CHAPTER II THE MAU— {continued) Considerable space has been devoted to Bernard Shaw's connexion with the Socialist movement, for the dissemination of Socialist ideas is the man's life, his passion. Above all things he is a Socialist propagandist, an active member of the Fabian Society, which is a part of the Socialist Inter- national . Shaw is a Socialist to the marrow of his bones, so much a Socialist that when he married in 1898 he married another Socialist. He tells us that when he married Charlotte Frances Pajoie Townshend he married for money ; but we need not believe this, and we must answer him as his wife answers him, as Anne speaks of John Tanner in Man and Supper man, "Go on talking— you talk so well I " Socialist propaganda is to Shaw the aim of his life, and he regards his plays as merely one means of propaganda. The theatre is a pulpit from which he can address the public. Art is to him no more 80 The Man than a way of expressing thoiigihts, to render them more apt to penetrate people's minds. This is the explanation of the plethora of ideas his plays contain. From 1892 to 1896 he wrote the seven plays which were published in 1898 in the two volumes entitled Plays Pleasant and Un- pleasant. The first volume. Unpleasant Plays, con- tains Widowers^ Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren's Profession ; the second volume. Pleasant Plays, Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, and You Never Can Tell. They were played in out-of-the-way theatres, and all had a very short run. But Shaw is a man of extra- ordinary perseverance, and for him it was all the easier to wait because he was profoundly convinced of the value of his own work, of his genius indeed, and he knew the worth of his plays. He waited, thereflore, and while waiting he published (in 1901) another volume. Three Plays for Puritans. This contains The Devil's Disciple, Cwsar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound's Conversion . They f oimd a reading public, but no audience, so little were they played. Siegfried Trebitsch, however, a Viennese novelist and playwright, acting on the advice of William Archer, read Shaw's plays and admired them. He translated three into German : The Devil's Disciple, produced in Vienna at the Raimund Theatre, February 25, 1903; The Man 81 F The Twentieth Century Moliere of Destiny, first played at Erankfort-on-tTie-Main, April 21, 1903 ; and Candida, staged at Dresden, November 19, 1903. All were successful. Consequently in the spring of 1904 the two plays last mentioned were produced in Berlin, the lead- ing parts being taken by two distinguished actors, Agnes Sorma and Max Reinhafdt. Leading critics, among theni Georg Brandes and Hermann Bahr, acclaimed Shaw as a writer of genius, and the public became enthusiastic about his plays. They soon formed part of the repertory of the leading theatres of Vienna and Berlin. The success of Arms arid the Man was enormbius ; that of Ccesar arid Cleopatm was less striking, but still consider- able. Shaw was now laimched in the Teutonic world, and before long his plays were produced also in Polish and Scandinavian theatres, receiving here the same warm' welcome. The London stage, however, was still closed to him'. Nevertheless, in 1903 he published Man and Superman, with its supplements. The Revolutionist's ^Handbook and ^Maxims for Revolutionists. This work was widely read. But a change was about to come over the English-speaking world. For twelve years he had been writing plays, and as a dramatist had remained almost unknown in his own country. The United - States was to force his recognition upon England. 82 The Man In New York and other cities in the States the theatrical season of 1903-4 was a veritable triumph for the plays of Bernard Shaw. The bills of Bandida, The Man of Destiny, and Y,ou Never 'Oan Tell were never taken down at the theatre of Arnold Daly, a talented youngf actor ; and Richard Mans- field's interpretation of Arms and the Man was a brilliant success. These pieces were still drawing crowds when Forbes -Robertson toured the Eastern States with Man arid Superman, receiving! ovations in all the largte towns. In view of Shaw's success' in America arid in Germany it became necessary to produce his plays in London, and when one of his admirers, Granville Barker, a fellow-member of the Fabian Society, actor, author, joint-manager with' Vedrenne of the Court Theatre, produced Candida, The Man 0/ Destiny, and You Never Can Tell, the public came and came aigain, not an ordinary theatre audience, however, but a select arid litenate public. Shaw's plays began to coin money. It was astounding, but it wa:s a fact ; and' they were to continue to coin more and more. In the season 1904-5 his success was still plainer with Man arid Superman, and finally became altogether undeniable with the production of John Bults Other Island. Shaw's genius and perseverance were thus rewarded after he had waited for twelve years. That fashionable 83 The Twentieth Century Moli^re society which he scourges in his plays simply by showing what it really is was the artisan of his triumph. Major Barbara was the principal success of the season 1905-6. Whilst the Court Theatre presented play after play by Bernard Shaw, almost all being; produced except Mrs. Warren's Profession, whose production was prohibited by the ridiculous censorship, and while all were well received, on the Continent of Europe, in the Teutonic and Scandinavian worlds, and subsequently among the Slavonic nations, the success of his works was uninterrupted. His plays were translated into Swedish, Danish, German, Magyar, Polish, Russian, Dutch. They were produced, they are still being produced, in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Christiania, Helsingfors, Amsterdam, Buda-Pesth, Warsaw, Cracow, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Petrograd, Dresden. Everywhere in these Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Slavonic lands, wherever there is a literary environment, Shaw is part of the dramatic repertory. Whenever a theatrical manager' has produced an unsuccessful play and funds are running low, he presents one of Bernard Shaw's works, and is sure that he will fill his house. Thus all the plays have on the Continent become true classics, even the one that has never been produced in pngland, Mrs. Warren's Profession. Both in Berlin and in Petrogtad this 84 The Man play ran for more than a hundred consecutive nights . As late as 1907, in France and in Belgium Bernard Shaw was barely known as sociologist and Socialist propagandist, and was altogether unknown as dramatist. Even to the best informed, with rare exceptions, he was a mere name until Candida was played at the Thditre du Pare in Brussels in February 1907. Whilst the literary matin6e public was applauding Candida at the Brussels theatre, and while most of the critics were praising the play (an unusual ex- perience in Shaw's case), the Court Theatre in London produced The Doctor's Dilemma, which was also extremely successful. At this time the Court Theatre was really living upon Shaw, for here Vedrenne and Barker produced also Widowers' Houses and The Philanderer . They even playicd, under the title of Don Juan, in Hell, the third act of Man and Superman which is found in the printed play, but which is always cut from the representa- tion of the piece. This, too, was a striking success, and so was CcBsar and Cleopatra, now staged for the first time in England, seven years after its publication, the part of Caesar being played by Forbes -Robertson . At the present date the plays of Bernard Shaw number twenty -seven, six of which are one -act 85 The Twentieth Century Moli^re plays. Most of the others are in three or four acts. The last of his plays to be staged in London, early, in 1914, was Pygmalion, at His Majesty's Theatre, and here it had the same success as the year before in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and Stockholm. All his plays have been presented on the stage throughout the Scandinavian and Teutonic world, and the majority of them in the Slavonic world as well. Three only as yet are known to the French-speaking world : Candida, Mrs. Warren's Profession, and You Never Can Tell. There has beqn a single representation in Paris of the Showing Up of Blanco Posnet, this having been undertaken by a private society. Le Petit Th^itre Anglais of Paris has also staged in English *How He Lied to Her Hus- band and Music Cure. In Italy, in 1908, the pro- ductions of Mrs. Warren's Profession and Arms and the Man were comparative failures. Subse- quently a distinguished Italian actress, Grammatica, undertook to interpret the works of Shaw, present- ing Candida, You Never Can Tell, How He Lied to Her Husband, etc ., and these performances drew large audiences. It may, in fact, be said that the only countries in Europe in which Shaw remains but little known to the theatre -going public are France, Spain, and Portugal. The full list of the plays hitherto published is as follows : Widowers' Houses; The Philanderer ; 86 The Man Mrs. Warren's Profession; Arms and the Man; The Man of Destiny; Candida; You Never Can Tell; The Devil's Disciple; Caesar and Cleopatra; Captain Brassbourid's Conversion; Man and Superman; John Bull's Other Island;