[134] Compare the account of Mr. Eden Greville, one of Mr. Grein's associates in the Independent Theatre Society, in Munsey's Magazine, March, 1906, entitled, Bernard Shaw and His Plays.

[135] Mr. William Archer, writing in the World (London), for Wednesday, December 14th, 1892.

[136] The Star, November 29th, 1892. Mr. Archer once told me that there was little doubt that Shaw wrote the “Interview” in toto.

[137] Matthew xxiii., 14; Mark xii., 38-40; Luke xx., 46-47.

[138] Appendix I., Widowers' Houses; Independent Theatre edition. Henry and Co., London, 1893.

[139] M. Bernard Shaw et son Théâtre, by Augustin Filon. Revue des Deux Mondes, November 15th, 1905; p. 424.

[140] Mr. Shaw's Method and Secret, letter to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, April 30th, 1898, signed G. Bernard Shaw. In the first draft, the play was entitled Mrs. Jarman's Profession.

[141] It should be clearly pointed out that Shaw is in no sense indebted to Ibsen for dissatisfaction with the existent social order. The facts of Shaw's life disprove the statement of Dr. Georg Brandes (Bernard Shaw's Teater, in Politikken, Copenhagen, December 29th, 1902): “What Shaw chiefly owes to Ibsen, whose harbinger he was, seems to be a tendency towards rebellion against commonly recognized prejudices, dramatic as well as social.” Shaw's attacks upon modern capitalistic society, both in Widowers' Houses and in Mrs. Warren's Profession, are the immediate fruits of his Socialism and his economic studies.

[142] Study and Stage, by William Archer, in the Daily News, June 21st, 1902.

[143] Compare The Author's Apology, the preface to the Stage Society edition of Mrs. Warren's Profession (Grant Richards, London, 1902), pp. xxvii. and xxviii. in especial; and also Mainly About Myself, the preface to Vol. I. of Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, pp. xxix-xxxi. in the American edition (H. S. Stone and Co., Chicago, 1902).

[144] Compare La Psychologie du Militaire Professionel, by Auguste Hamon, which appeared in November, 1893. I have no reason to believe that Shaw was under any indebtedness to this book in writing Arms and the Man.

[145] Compare the reminiscences on the Avenue Theatre production, by Mr. Yorke Stephens, who played the part of Bluntschli; Music and the Drama, in the Daily Chronicle, November 6th, 1906. It was at the première at the Avenue Theatre that Shaw, called before the audience, found himself disarmed by lack of opposition. A solitary malcontent in the gallery began to boo: Bernard was himself again. Looking up at the belligerent oppositionist, he said with an engaging smile: “My friend, I quite agree with you—but what are we two against so many?”

[146] Compare Shaw's brilliant article, A Dramatic Realist to His Critics, in the New Review, September, 1894, appearing two months after the close of the run of Arms and the Man at the Avenue Theatre. In A Word about Stepniak, in To-Morrow, February, 1896, Mr. Shaw says: “He (Stepniak) studiously encouraged me to think well of my own work, and went into the questions of Bulgarian manners and customs for me when I was preparing my play Arms and the Man for the stage as if the emancipation of Russia was a matter of comparatively little importance.... To him I owe the assistance I received from that Bulgarian admiral in whose existence the public, regarding Bulgaria as an inland State, positively declined to believe.”

[147] Der Dramatiker Bernard Shaw: in Gestalten und Gedanken, by Georg Brandes, München-Langen, 1903. “Human nature is very much the same, always and everywhere,” Shaw explained. “And when I go over my play to put the details right I find there is surprisingly little to alter. Arms and the Man, for example, was finished before I had decided where to set the scene, and then it only wanted a word here and there to put matters straight. You see, I know human nature”!

[148] From Shaw's preface to Mr. Archer's The Theatrical World of 1894, pp. xxvii-xxviii. In view of the interest manifested in Arms and the Man at the time of its first production in 1894, Mr. Archer requested Mr. Shaw to say something about it in this preface.

[149] Arms and the Man has, most appropriately, furnished the “book” for a comic opera, entitled The Chocolate Soldier, written by Bernauer and Jacobson, music by Oscar Straus, the popular composer. It was to be expected that there would be many “comic” attractions in the adaptation of Mr. Shaw's play. Of course, all the complications, such as the incident of the incriminating photograph, are multiplied by three: Nicola disappears and Louka makes way for Mascha, now the cousin of Raina. In the end all are happily mated. In consequence of the “comic variations” from the original play, Mr. Shaw insisted that the programme contain a frank apology for this “unauthorized parody of one of Mr. Bernard Shaw's comedies.” First successfully produced at the Theater des Westens, Berlin, 1909, The Chocolate Soldier, both for the borrowed, if parodied, cleverness, and the delightful music, has since won great popularity through the productions of Mr. F. C. Whitney (English version by Mr. Stanislaus Stange), in New York (May, 1910) and London (September, 1910).

[150] Shaw has been charged with indebtedness, not only to W. S. Gilbert, but to earlier topsy-turvyists. In April, 1906, there appeared in the New York Tribune a “deadly parallel” between Arms and the Man and Used Up, adapted from the French by Charles Mathews in 1845. As a matter of fact, the passage cited—Bluntschli's proposal for the hand of Raina (compared with Sir Charles Coldstream's for the hand of Lady Clutterbuck)—is neither an imitation of Mathews, nor a triumph of eccentric invention, but a paraphrase, Shaw unqualifiedly asserts, of an actual proposal made by an Austrian hotel proprietor for the hand of a member of Mr. Shaw's own family.

[151] Mr. Bernard Shaw's Plays, in Frames of Mind (Grant Richards, London, 1889), p. 47.

[152] By this method of treatment, chronology is of necessity sacrificed to logic.

[153] Preferring to see Shaw fail seriously rather than succeed farcically, Mr. Archer sternly admonished him to “quit his foolishness”; and Mr. Shaw's former champion of Independent Theatre days, Mr. J. T. Grein, gently but firmly advised him never again to send up any more such ballons d'essai.

[154] The Haymarket Theatre (Grant Richards, London, 1903). Chapter XIV. (from which the above and following quotations are taken), Mr. Maude says, “was sent to me as an aid to the completion of this work. It professes to deal with that period of our management when we rehearsed a piece by the brilliant Mr. Bernard Shaw. The writer, I am assured, is well fitted to deal with that period. I leave it to the reader to judge, and to guess its authorship.” Needless to say that the author was Bernard Shaw himself!

[155] The Court Theatre, 1904-1907, by Desmond MacCarthy (A. H. Bullen, London, 1907), p. 57.

[156] Post-Express (Rochester, N. Y.), December 3d, 1904.

[157] Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction; or the Fatal Gazogene; originally appeared in Harry Furniss's Christmas Annual for 1905 (Arthur Treherne and Co. Ltd., Adelphi, London), pp. 11-24, with illustrations by Mr. Harry Furniss.

[158] The text of this dainty little interlude is to be found in the Daily Mail, January 29th, 1907. Mr. and Mrs. Maude were playing in Toddles at the time.

[159] The figure of Lady Cicely Waynflete possesses an unique interest in view of the fact conveyed in the following record of Ellen Terry's: “At this time (1897), Mr. Shaw and I frequently corresponded. It began by my writing to ask him, as musical critic of the Saturday Review (!), to tell me frankly what he thought of the chances of a composer-singer friend of mine. He answered 'characteristically,' and we developed a perfect fury for writing to each other. Sometimes the letters were on business, sometimes they were not, but always his were entertaining, and mine were, I suppose, 'good copy,' as he drew the character of Lady Cicely Waynflete in Brassbound entirely from my letters. He never met me until after the play was written.” From Lewis Carroll to Bernard Shaw, in McClure's Magazine, September, 1908.