Shaw Sampler, Part 1

by Kirk Woodward

[Kirk Woodward, a longtime friend and frequent contributor to Rick On Theater, has written a considerable amount on George Bernard Shaw.  An avid fan of GBS, his past posts on this blog about the renowned Victorian-era Anglo-Irish dramatist and theater critic are: “Bernard Shaw, Pop Culture Critic” (5 September 2012), “Eric Bentley On Bernard Shaw” (3 December 2015), “Re-Reading Shaw” by Kirk Woodward (3 and 18 July, 8 and 23 August, and 2 September 2016), and “Shaw versus Shakes” (8 September 2023).

[As Kirk wrote in a 2013 post, “Shaw knew theater inside and out, and everything he writes about it is worthwhile.”  For “Shaw Sampler,” Kirk’s compiled a selection of brief quotations from Shaw’s theater columns from the Saturday Review that he feels illustrates the breadth of Shaw’s interest in and knowledge of theater.  

[Kirk’s read Shaw’s music criticism, his theater reviews, and much of his other writing as well.  This is one more instance in which Kirk knows something about his subject that’s well worth listening to.  He’s stated recently, however: “I disagree with Shaw on so many things, but he's eminently worth reading—and quoting.”  I think you’ll see why below.]

One of the most interesting periods in the life of the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was the three years (January 1895 through May 1898) he spent as the drama reviewer for the London Saturday Review. (Its official name was The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art.)

In 1894 the Saturday Review hired the flamboyant Frank Harris (1856-1931) as its editor, and Harris hired Shaw, then a music reviewer for the newspaper The Star, as its theater reviewer.

Shaw’s reviews were opinionated and pushy; they were also funny, readable, and grounded in theatrical knowledge, and they became influential and widely discussed.

All the quotations in this article are taken from his drama columns in the Saturday Review. As far as I can tell, only a selection from his drama criticism is still in print. I have a complete collection, Our Theatres in the Nineties by Bernard Shaw in three volumes, published by Constable and Company in 1932 and reprinted, in the edition I own, in 1954.

(The only edition of Shaw’s collected reviews that’s currently in print is Our Theatres in the Nineties Vol. II [Creative Media Partners, 2021; hardback & paperback]. Online sources include Dramatic Οριnιοns and Essays: Volume One [Brentano’s, 1916], Dramatic Οριnιοns and Essays: Volume Two [Brentano’s, 1922], “The Saturday review of politics, literature, science and art” from the HathiTrust Digital Library [with gaps], and “The Saturday Review 1855-1938” from the Internet Archive [all four are PDF’s].)

Shaw was interested in every aspect of theater. He became, of course, one of the leading playwrights of all time, with plays such as Caesar and Cleopatra (first performed in 1899), Major Barbara (1905), Pygmalion (1913), and Saint Joan (1933). (For a run-down of Shaw’s plays. see “Re-Reading Shaw” [3 and 18 July, 8 and 23 August, and 2 September 2016].)

But his activities spread well beyond his own career as a writer; for example, he financed a new building for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1927), served on its board and lectured there, and donated substantially to the school over a period of several decades.

Just about everything Shaw wrote is quotable, whether or not one agrees with him; he wrote to be provocative, which is one reason he is so quotable. I could have chosen any number of themes for this article, subjects that he returned to frequently: Christmas, elections, fashion trends, dance. . . . In this article I focus on his thoughts on theater itself.

Typically Shaw overstates his opinions, presenting them as universal truths. He doesn’t apologize for this:

In this world if you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may just as well not say it at all, since nobody will trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them. (“Mary Anderson,” 4 April 1896)

(Mary Anderson [1859-1940] was an American stage actress who went on the London stage in 1883 and stayed for six years. She performed to great acclaim before returning to the United States, where she was met with a hostile reception by the press.  She returned to England, where she died in 1940, at the age of 80. She published the first of her two memoirs, A Few Memories in 1896.)

 He read widely (although he reports that he is a slow reader), and he seems to have remembered everything he read. I am not saying that everything Shaw writes is true or has application today. I do feel his observations are stimulating and often illuminating.

WRITING REVIEWS

Some, including me, make a distinction between drama reviewers and drama critics, with reviewers writing about works when they first appear. Shaw himself, like many others, usually refers to reviewers as “critics,” a word I like to use for writers who see drama in a wider context than the plays themselves.

However, Shaw did see pretty much everything in a wider context. He writes that

Though plays have neither political constitutions nor established churches, they must all, if they are to be anything more than the merest tissue of stage effects, have a philosophy, even if it be no more than an unconscious expression of the author’s temperament. (“Nietzsche in English,” 8 April 1896)

(Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] was a German philosopher. He was best known for his concepts of the Übermensch [most commonly translated as ‘Superman’] and the declaration that “God is dead,” as well as the works Thus Spoke Zarathustra [1883–1885], Beyond Good and Evil [1886], and The Birth of Tragedy [1872]. Shaw’s Saturday Review column included remarks on the first volume of his collected works [1896].) 

And one of the things that makes his writing remarkable is his combination of immediate and long-range views. These could be political, social, economic, religious, or any other kind of view. They all find their way into his writing.  He knows that reviewers come in all varieties:

Criticisms are like boots: the low-priced ones are scamped [‘perfunctory’ (dated)], mechanical, and without individuality; the high-priced ones are sound, highly finished, and made by hand to the measure of their subject. (“Mr William Archer’s Criticisms,” 13 April 1895)

(William Archer [1856-1924] was a Scottish theater critic, author, and friend of Shaw’s. He was also an early advocate for the “new drama,” particularly the works of Henrik Ibsen.)

He claims, humorously, that he became a reviewer because a writer doesn’t have to dress up:

You, friendly reader, though you buy my articles, have no idea of what I look like in the street – if you did, you would probably take in some other paper. (“The Tailor and the Stage,” 15 February 1896)

He doesn’t pretend he doesn’t have preconceived ideas:

All really fruitful criticism of the drama must bring a wide and practical knowledge of real life to bear on the stage. (“Criticism on the Hustings,” 20 July 1895)

My criticism has not, I hope, any other fault than the inevitable one of extreme unfairness. (“Criticism on the Hustings,” 20 July 1895)

He is aware that he can seem harsh or judgmental, even when he doesn’t intend to:

Those who think the things I say severe, or even malicious, should just see the things I do not say. (“The Case for the Critic-Dramatist,” 16 November 1895)

He understands the “traps” that face a reviewer:

No man, be he ever so accomplished a critic, can effectively look at or listen to plays that he really does not want to see or hear. (“L’Oeuvre,” 30 March 1895) 

Every public man finds that as far as the press is concerned his career divides itself into two parts: the first, during which the critics are afraid to praise him; and the second, during which they are afraid to do anything else. (“The Case for the Critic-Dramatist,” 16 November 1895)

The plays that unman me as a critic are those which are entertaining without being absorbing, and pleasant without being valuable – which keep me amused during an idle hour without engaging my deeper sympathies or taxing my attention. (“Two Plays,” 22 February 1896)

A drama critic is so familiar with brainless sentiment and vulgar tomfoolery that he can stand anything except a masterpiece: a musical critic is so familiar with masterpieces that he can hardly stand anything else. (“A Musical Farce,” 9 January 1897)

Despite his firm opinions, he knows that anything can be criticized by pointing out that it’s not something else, or that it’s left something out. For example,

Any play can be ridiculed by simply refusing to accept its descriptive conventions. (“Satan Saved at Last,” 16 January 1897)

And his experience as a playwright (he had already had five plays produced by the end of his employment at the Saturday Review: Widowers’ Houses [1892], Arms and the Man [1894], Candida [1897], Man of Destiny [1897], and The Devil’s Disciple [1897]) leads him to understand one of the fundamental facts about theater, which many reviewers ignore or can’t handle:

All plays get weakened somewhere when they are performed. (“Mr Pinero on Turning Forty,” 3 April 1897)

(Arthur Wing Pinero [1855-1934] was an English playwright. His best-known plays are The Second Mrs Tanqueray [1893] and Trelawny of the “Wells” [1898].)

ART AND LIFE

Shaw feels that artists must be in touch with the events of their time:

Vital art work comes always from a cross between art and life: art being of one sex only, and quite sterile by itself. (“Chin Chon Chino,” 6 November 1897)

All art is gratuitous; and the will to produce it, like the will to live, must be held to justify itself. (“Mr Heinemann and the Censor,” 2 April 1898)

(William Heinemann [1863-1920] was an English publisher and the founder of the Heinemann publishing house in London, founded in 1890.)

When art neglects the world of its time, Shaw feels, the world has a way of crashing in on it:

When civilization becomes effete, the only cure is an irruption of barbarians. (“The Drama Purified,” 23 April 1898)

When art becomes effete, it is realism that comes to the rescue. (“Chin Chon Chino,” 6 November 1897)

There is only one way to defy Time; and that is to have young ideas, which may always be trusted to find youthful and vivid expression. (“Toujours Daly,” 13 July 1895)

(Augustin Daly [1838-1899] was an American drama critic, theater manager, playwright, and adapter who became the first recognized stage director in the United States. He maintained a standing company in New York City and opened Daly’s Theatre there in 1879, and a second one in London in 1893.)

But the current flows both ways: life shapes art, and art can shape life:

The theater is also a response to our need for a sensible expression of our ideals and illusions and approvals and resentments. As such it is bound to affect our ideas, and finally our conduct. (“Quickwit on Blockhead,” 5 June 1897)

The theater is for active workers and alert spirits. (“On Nothing in Particular and the Theatre in General,” 14 March 1896)

The serious drama is perhaps the most formidable social weapon that a modern reformer can wield. (“Mr Heinemann and the Censor,” 2 April 1898)

One might argue with that last statement, feeling that the theater has lost its influence in today’s society. I am not sure that is entirely true; but in any case drama is also found in film, on video, and in electronic games, the influences of all of which are enormous.

Shaw doesn’t idealize artists. He insists that they know their crafts in a practical sense, and that their work be socially useful:

The distinction between artist and tradesman is not a distinction between one man and another, but between two sides of the same man. (“Manchester Still Expiating,” 12 February 1898)

PLAYWRITING

During the time Shaw reviewed plays, he was attempting to have his own plays staged, with middling success. He knew that his plays had their sharp edges:

Every play which is a criticism of contemporary life, must, if it is an honest play, involve a certain struggle with the public. (“The Two Latest Comedies,” 18 May 1895)

Significantly, though, in his reviewing he did not insist that all plays follow the patterns in which he hoped to write, inspired in part by the later, socially-oriented plays of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) that he championed:

For my own part, I do not endorse all Ibsen’s views: I even prefer my own plays to his in some respects; but I hope I know a great man from a little one as far as my comprehension of such things go. (“The New Ibsen Play,” 30 January 1897)

M. Lugne-Poe [Aurélien-Marie Lugné, notable French director, 1869-1940] and his dramatic company called L’Oeuvre [Théâtre de l’Oeuvre (literally, the “Theater of the Work”)] came to us with the reputation of having made Ibsen cry by their performance of one of his works. There was not much in that: I have seen performances by English players which would have driven him to suicide. (“L’Oeuvre,” 30 March 1895)

On the one hand, he rejected the idea that a good play could simply be a tissue of “theatrical” effects: 

. . . the inveterate delusion of the old actor that an audience can be interested in incidents and situations without believing in or caring for the people to whom these incidents and situations occur. If that were so, a shooting-gallery would be as interesting as a battlefield: the mere flash, smoke, and bang of the thing would be enough. But it is not so. (“Mainly About Melodramas,” 3 October 1896)

It seems to me that a play must have a very strong element of interest in it, or a performance with a very strong element of fascination, to induce a rational person to spend the evening so expensively or uncomfortably as it must be spent in a theater. (“Two Plays,” 22 February 1896)

He saw many plays written in ways he disliked, for example the “well-made play” associated with Augustin Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) and Victorien Sardou (1831-1908):

Sardou’s plan of playwriting is first to invent the action of his piece, and then to carefully keep it off the stage and have it announced merely by letters and telegrams. (“Two Bad Plays,” 20 April 1895)

He objected to run-of-the-mill romances and melodramas, seeing them as based on “the cardinal stage convention that love is the most irresistible of all the passions,” and often featuring “that repulsive piece of stale nonsense, the impossible understanding.”

Everybody tells you that [the Romantic movement] began with somebody and ended with somebody else; but all its beginners were anticipated, and it is going on still. (“Two Bad Plays,” 20 April 1895)

Mere incident in a romance is not interesting unless you believe in the reality of the people to whom the incidents occur. (“Plays of the Week,” 11 January 1896)

“I am willing to be redeemed, and even religious,” says the converted romanticist, “if only the business be managed by a pretty woman who will be left in my arms when the curtain falls.” (“Romance in its Last Ditch,” 23 October 1897)

Romance is always, I think, a product of ennui, an attempt to escape from a condition in which real life appears empty, prosaic, and boresome – therefore essentially a gentlemanly product. The man who has grappled with real life, flesh to flesh and spirit to spirit, has little patience with fools’ paradises. (“Lorenzaccio,” 26 June 1897)

Melodramatic stage illusion is not an illusion of real life, but an illusion of the embodiment of our romantic imaginings. (“Boiled Heroine,” 28 March 1896)

And Shaw was happy to acknowledge merit wherever he saw it:

I wish I could persuade not only managers, but all persons concerned with works of art, that a fifth-rate man doing his best will always beat a second-rate man doing less than his best. (“Another Failure,” 8 February 1896)

He didn’t mind that plays were far-fetched, as long as they were consistently far-fetched:

Absurdity is the one thing that does not matter on the stage, provided it is not psychological absurdity. (“Satan Saved at Last,” 16 January 1897)

An audience will always accept a resemblance with eagerness as a freak of nature. (“Plays of the Week,” 11 January 1896)

The psychology and the doctrine can be done without, whereas the imagination, the humor, the sympathetic sense of character, whether blunt and vulgar or acute and subtle, are indispensable. (“The Season’s Moral,” 27 July 1895)

But, whatever the approach the play takes, the work has to be done well: 

The last thing an artist with a strong sense of fun learns to do is to go over his work and resolutely cut out every stroke, however uproariously laughable, that is not perfectly possible and natural. (“Alexander the Great,” 12 June 1897)

(The Alexander of the title of Shaw’s review wasn’t the Macedonian conqueror of the 4th century BCE, but Alexandre Dumas père [1802-1870], French author, famously, of the adventure novels The Three Musketeers [1844] and The Count of Monte Cristo [1844-46].)

Shakespeare, in a much coarser age, could take subjects which were reeking with the vilest stage traditions, and lift them at one stroke to the highest tragic dignity. (“Pinero as He Is Acted,” 19 October 1895)

Shaw, however, demands more of himself than routine work, and applauds when he sees it in the work of others:

There is a sense in which [the plays of Henry Arthur Jones, 1851-1929] are far more faulty than those of most of his competitors, exactly as a row of men is more faulty than a row of lampposts turned out by a first-rate firm. (“The Two Latest Comedies,” 18 May 1895)

Shaw sees hope for the drama in the fact that attitudes toward morality change. The more they change, he believes, the more the drama has to adjust:

It is only when we are dissatisfied with existing masterpieces that we create new ones. (“Chin Chon Chino,” 6 November 1897)

It is the privilege of the drama to make life intelligible, at least hypothetically, by introducing moral design into it, even if that design be only to shew that moral design is an illusion, a demonstration which cannot be made without some counter-demonstration of the laws of life with which it clashes. (“Satan Saved at Last,” 16 January 1897)

[The second installment of this article, to be posted on Monday, 3 November, will include more of Shaw’s comments on playwriting, and some comments on acting as well. 

[There will also be a third part, published on Thursday, 6 November, that is made up of some notes and commentary of the columns quoted in the two earlier parts.  Along with explanations of what Shaw covered in the columns and interpretations of the essays’ sometimes curious, provocative, and obscure titles and headlines, it will include expanded versions of some of the identification inserts in Parts 1 and 2, as well as notes that don’t appear in the main installments.  “Shaw Sampler, Part 3: Addendum” will be compiled by Rick On Theater editor Rick.)]