FOOTNOTES:
[181] In a subsequent volume will be indicated in detail Mr. Archer's intimate relation to the growth of popular interest in Shaw's plays.
[182] This parallel was called to my attention by Professor William Lyon Phelps, of Yale University. Compare, for example, Tanner's long outburst against the chains of wedlock with Mirabell's, “I must not lose my liberty, dear lady, and like a wanton slave cry for more shackles,” etc., etc. In reply to a question of mine in regard to indebtedness, Mr. Shaw replied: “Why, I never thought of such a thing! As a matter of fact, the old English comedies are so artificial and mechanical, that I always forget them before I have finished reading them.”
[183] Compare the novel, The Confounding of Camellia, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick, concretely imaging the thesis of Shaw's play. The pursuit of man is portrayed in its natural colours, the pursuer and temptress being a seductive siren who exploits all the intricate wiles and complex arts of personal fascination to ensnare her struggling prey.
[184] The Actor's Society Monthly Bulletin, Christmas, 1905.
[185] “As this scene may prove puzzling at a first hearing,” reads the leaflet, “to those who are not to some extent skilled in modern theology, the Management have asked the Author to offer the Court audience the same assistance that concert-goers are accustomed to receive in the form of an analytical programme.” Follows the synopsis:
“The scene, an abysmal void, represents hell; and the persons of the drama speak of hell, heaven and earth, as if they were separate localities, like 'the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth.' It must be remembered that such localizations are purely figurative, like our fashion of calling a treble voice 'high' and the bass voice 'low.' Modern theology conceives heaven and hell, not as places, but as states of the soul; and by the soul it means, not an organ like the liver, but the divine element common to all life, which causes us 'to do the will of God' in addition to looking after our individual interests, and to honour one another solely for our divine activities and not at all for our selfish activities.
“Hell is popularly conceived not only as a place, but as a place of cruelty and punishment, and heaven as a paradise of idle pleasure. These legends are discarded by the higher theology, which holds that this world, or any other, may be made a hell by a society in a state of damnation: that is, a society so lacking in the higher orders of energy that it is given wholly to the pursuit of immediate individual pleasure, and cannot even conceive the passion of the divine will. Also that any world can be made a heaven by a society of persons in whom that passion is the master passion—a 'communion of saints' in fact.
“In the scene represented to-day hell is this state of damnation. It is personified in the traditional manner by the devil, who differs from the modern plutocratic voluptuary only in being 'true to himself'; that is, he does not disguise his damnation either from himself or others, but boldly embraces it as the true law of life, and organizes his kingdom frankly on a basis of idle pleasure seeking, and worships love, beauty, sentiment, youth, romance, etc., etc.
“Upon this conception of heaven and hell the author has fantastically grafted the seventeenth century legend of Don Juan Tenorio, Don Gonzalo, of Ulloa, Commandant of Calatrava, and the Commandant's daughter, Dona Ana, as told in the famous drama by Tirso de Molina and in Mozart's opera. Don Gonzalo, having, as he says, 'always done what it was customary for a gentleman to do,' until he died defending his daughter's honour, went to heaven. Don Juan, having slain him, and become infamous by his failure to find any permanent satisfaction in his love affairs, was cast into hell by the ghost of Don Gonzalo, whose statue he had whimsically invited to supper.
“The ancient melodrama becomes the philosophic comedy presented to-day, by postulating that Don Gonzalo was a simple-minded officer and gentleman who cared for nothing but fashionable amusement, whilst Don Juan was consumed with a passion for divine contemplation and creative activity, this being the secret of the failure of love to interest him permanently. Consequently we find Don Gonzalo, unable to share the divine ecstasy, bored to distraction in heaven; and Don Juan suffering amid the pleasures of hell an agony of tedium.
“At last Don Gonzalo, after paying several reconnoitring visits to hell under colour of urging Don Juan to repent, determines to settle there permanently. At this moment his daughter, Ana, now full of years, piety, and worldly honours, dies, and finds herself with Don Juan in hell, where she is presently the amazed witness of the arrival of her sainted father. The devil hastens to welcome both to his realm. As Ana is no theologian, and believes the popular legends as to heaven and hell, all this bewilders her extremely.
“The devil, eager as ever to reinforce his kingdom by adding souls to it, is delighted at the accession of Don Gonzalo, and desirous to retain Dona Ana. But he is equally ready to get rid of Don Juan, with whom he is on terms of forced civility, the antipathy between them being fundamental. A discussion arises between them as to the merits of the heavenly and hellish states, and the future of the world. The discussion lasts more than an hour, as the parties, with eternity before them, are in no hurry. Finally, Don Juan shakes the dust of hell from his feet, and goes to heaven.
“Dona Ana, being a woman, is incapable both of the devil's utter damnation and of Don Juan's complete supersensuality. As the mother of many children, she has shared in the divine travail, and with care and labour and suffering renewed the harvest of eternal life; but the honour and divinity of her work have been jealously hidden from her by man, who, dreading her domination, has offered her for reward only the satisfaction of her senses and affections. She cannot, like the male devil, use love as mere sentiment and pleasure; nor can she, like the male saint, put love aside when it has once done its work as a developing and enlightening experience. Love is neither her pleasure nor her study: it is her business. So she, in the end, neither goes with Don Juan to heaven nor with the devil and her father to the palace of pleasure, but declares that her work is not yet finished. For though by her death she is done with the bearing of men to mortal fathers, she may yet, as Woman immortal, bear the Superman to the Eternal Father.”
[186] In W. B. Yeats's Collected Works, Vol. IV., p. 109 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908), appears a statement (dated 1903), with reference to “the play which Mr. Bernard Shaw has promised us.” The appended footnote reads: “This play was John Bull's Other Island. When it came out in the spring of 1905, we felt ourselves unable to cast it without wronging Mr. Shaw. We had no Broadbent, or money to get one.”
[187] In a subsequent volume, dealing with the dramatic movement inaugurated by Mr. Shaw, the production of his plays at the Court Theatre will be fully discussed.
[188] Bernard Shaw and His Mannikins, in the New York Sun, October 15th, 1905.
[189] George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation, in The Tatler, November 16th, 1904.
[190] George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation, in The Tatler, November 16th, 1904.
[191] Several years ago, in a public address, Mr. Andrew Carnegie made the remarkable statement: “You hear a good deal these days about poverty. People wish it abolished. The saddest day civilization will ever see will be that in which poverty does not prevail. Fortunately we are assured that the poor are always to be with us. It is upon the evil of poverty that virtue springs!”
[192] In the Fabian tract, Socialism for Millionaires, Shaw preaches much the same gospel to the millionaire. This paper was first published in the Contemporary Review, February, 1896.
[193] 'Major Barbara,' G. B. S., and Robert Blatchford, by Sir Oliver Lodge; in the Clarion (London), December 29th, 1905.
[194] Impressions of the Theatre.—XIV. Mr. Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara,' in the Review of Reviews (London), January 27th, 1906.
[195] Commissioner Nicol, of the Salvation Army, has pointed out that a “real” Barbara, before sending in her resignation, would have consulted General Booth as to the Army's policy in the matter of accepting “tainted money.” He relates (the Star, November 29th, 1905), that General Booth accepted one hundred pounds from the Marquess of Queensberry for his “Darkest England” project. A Christian friend was astonished that he took the “dirty money.” Said the General: “We'll wash it clean in the tears of the widow and orphan, and consecrate it on the altar of humanity for Humanity's good.” It is quite clear that Shaw's “Barbara” prefers to do her own thinking; if she had let General Booth do it for her, there would have been no play.
[196] Ibsen, by G. Bernard Shaw; in the Clarion, June, 1906.
[197] About the Theatre, by William Archer; in the Tribune (London), July 14th, 1906.
[198] About the Theatre: 'The Doctor's Dilemma' by William Archer; in the Tribune (London), December 29th, 1906.
[199] This very able and profound discussion, in which Mr. Archer gave the very fairest exposition of his real opinion of Shaw as personality and dramatist, revealed the fundamental issues of the vexed question at issue without in the least settling them.
[200] About the Theatre: The Dissolution of Dubedat, by William Archer; in the Tribune (London), January 19th, 1907.
[201] The New York Times, December 30th, 1906.
[202] 'The Doctor's Dilemma,' in the Standard (London), November 22d, 1906. Shaw's comment is characteristic: “It is a curious instance of the enormous Philistinism of English criticism that this passage should not only be unknown among us, but that a repetition of its thought and imagery sixty-five years later should still find us with a conception of creative force so narrow that the association of Art with Religion conveys nothing to us but a sense of far-fetched impropriety.” It is needless to remark that Dubedat omits God's name for the obvious reason that he does not believe in God.
[203] Shaw recently said: “I do not see how any observant student of genius from the life can deny that the Arts have their criminals and lunatics as well as their sane and honest men ... and that the notion that the great poet and artist can do no wrong is as mischievously erroneous as the notion that the King can do no wrong, or that the Pope is infallible, or that the power which created all three did not do its own best for them. In my last play, The Doctor's Dilemma, I recognized this by dramatizing a rascally genius, with the disquieting result that several highly intelligent and sensitive persons passionately defended him, on the ground, apparently, that high artistic faculty and an ardent artistic imagination entitled a man to be recklessly dishonest about money, and recklessly selfish about women, just as kingship in an African tribe entitles a man to kill whom he pleases on the most trifling provocation. I know no harder practical question than how much selfishness one ought to stand from a gifted person for the sake of his gifts or the chance of his being right in the long run.”—The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate, by Bernard Shaw, pp. 11-12; The New Age Press (London), 1908. This brochure is also published by Benjamin R. Tucker, New York.
[204] I have had the privilege of reading Mr. Shaw's copy of The Doctor's Dilemma. Consideration of Getting Married, Misalliance and The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, all unpublished in English at this time (November, 1910), is postponed for a subsequent edition of the present work.
[205] The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years, by Aylmer Maude; Constable and Co., 1910.
[206] The Censor objected to two passages; the second passage Mr. Shaw was perfectly willing to alter, but not so the first—Blanco's story of his conversion, so reminiscent of the style of Job, in which he describes how God “caught him out at last.” This first passage, which Mr. Shaw rightly considered to embody the crux and central meaning of the play, he refused point-blank to alter. The play was next promised production by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. A certain passage which was subject to misinterpretation was willingly altered by Mr. Shaw at the suggestion of Lady Gregory; and the phrase, “Dearly beloved brethren,” and the use of the word “immoral” in description of Feemy's relations with the men of the village, were omitted in deference to the wishes of the Lord-Lieutenant. The directors of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory and Mr. W. B. Yeats, were warned by the Lord-Lieutenant that their patent for the theatre might be withdrawn in case the play offended popular and religious sentiment in Ireland. Despite these warnings, the play was successfully produced on August 25th, 1909. “The audience took it in a very friendly manner,” wrote the dramatic critic of the Times (London), “laughing heartily at its humours, passing over its dangerous passages with attentive silence, calling loudly but in vain for the author at the close.” There was no sensation and no excitement—and no cause for any. The Irish Times said that if ridicule were as deadly in England and Ireland as it is in France, the Censorship would be “blown away in the shouts of laughter that greeted Blanco Posnet.” In September, 1909, the play was once again presented to the Censor for consideration—in the meantime the author having rewritten an important passage after it had been tested in rehearsal. Miss Horniman wished to produce it at her Repertory Theatre in Manchester. “What the Censorship has actually done,” said Mr. Shaw in comment on the decision, “exceeds the utmost hopes of those who, like myself, have devoted themselves to its destruction. It has licensed the play, and endorsed on the licence specific orders that all its redeeming passages shall be omitted in representation. I may have my insolent prostitute, my bloodthirsty, profane backwoodsmen, my atmosphere of coarseness, of savagery, of mockery, and all the foul darkness which I devised to make the light visible; but the light must be left out. I may wallow in filth, ferocity and sensuality, provided I do not hint that there is any force in Nature higher and stronger than these.” Subsequently the play was successfully produced under the auspices of the Incorporated Stage Society, at the Aldwych Theatre, London, December 5th and 6th, 1909, by the Irish National Theatre Society's Company from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
[207] For detailed and excellent expositions of the purport of the play—particularly helpful at the time of the banning by the Censorship—compare The Incorrigible Censorship, in the Nation, July 29th, 1909; and an open letter to the Spectator of September 4th, 1909, by George A. Birmingham.
[208] The play was subsequently produced successfully at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, October 18th, 1909, and at the Kingsway Theatre, London, June 21st, 1910, at a benefit matinée organized by the Actresses' Franchise League. The Reader of Plays allowed the production of the play after the change of the names of “Balsquith” and “Mitchener” to “Johnson” and “Bones,” respectively.
[209] Report of the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship), together with the Proceedings of the Committee, and Minutes of Evidence; Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1909. The many questions which intimately concern the free development of the national drama in England, arising in connection with the investigation of the Censorship, fall outside the scope of the present work. They will be considered in detail in a subsequent volume dealing with the movements in dramatic art associated with Mr. Shaw's name. Mr. Shaw, desiring to have his full views on the Censorship included in the printed report, had a volume printed at his own expense which he filed with the committee. The committee decided by vote not to allow this printed evidence to be printed in their report. This volume, entitled Statement of the Evidence in Chief of George Bernard Shaw before the Joint Committee on Stage Plays (Censorship and Theatre Licensing), printed privately and marked “Confidential,” constitutes a remarkable indictment against the Censorship, and an elaborate exposition of grounds for the abolition of the Censorship as at present constituted.