Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (77 page)

 

—
George Bernard Shaw: His Plays
(1905)

 

A. B. Walkley

The stage-presentation of
Candida
adds nothing to what is the chief delight of the play—the chief delight of every one of Mr. Shaw's plays—its brilliant dialectic. And in one respect the spectator is actually deprived of a pleasure enjoyed by the reader. The book gives characteristic fragments of exegesis which necessarily disappear on the stage. One example is the account—as good as any “portrait” of La Bruyère—of the father-in-law, Mr. Burgess. Another occurs at the fall of the curtain. The stage direction is “They (husband and wife) embrace. But they do not know the secret in the poet's heart.” On the stage the actors can, and do, embrace; but they have no possible means of telling the spectator, by their actions, whether they do or do not know the secret in the poet's heart. On the whole, however,
Candida
on the stage is a capital sport. Mr. Shaw maintains that he is quite serious, an out-and-out realist; in short, that in saluting him as a merry sportsman one is like the young lady who, when Sydney Smith said grace, shook him by the hand with a “Thank you very much, Mr. Smith; you are always so amusing.” If so, one is evidently in the ignorant position of Candida and her husband when they embrace at the fall of the curtain; one does not know the secret in the playwright's heart.

—
Drama and Life (
1907)

 

P. P. Howe

 

Mr. Bernard Shaw confronts his age not so much a dramatist as a writer possessed of a philosophy and a trick of the stage, who has employed the one to expound the other. He has said so himself, on more than one occasion. At the outset of his career as a dramatist he defined the impulse which moved him as the “philosopher's impatience to get to realities,” and he went on to state, “I fight the theater, not with pamphlets and sermons and treatises, but with plays.” Now the dramatist by vocation does not fight the theater at all. It is always a pity for the artist to quarrel with his medium, for if the artist wins, he will despise the medium, and if the medium wins, he will still despise it....

Quite the most complete expression of Mr. Shaw's “philosophy” is to be found in
Man and Superman,
the “comedy” of which is a very easy-going affair. Its third act, in Hell, the “home of the unreal,” with Heaven, the “home of the masters of reality,” just round the corner, is the Quintessence of Shavianism; but it has so little to do with the theater that when the play is given there it is found necessary to omit it.
Man and Superman
, while the most characteristic product of Mr. Shaw's genius, is thus not one of the best of his plays, because it does not carry its burden. To put the case another way, its comic vision and its philosophic vision are not in alignment. The struggle between the Philosopher and the Playwright has been fearful, but the playwright has not won.

 

—
Fortnightly Review
(July 1913)

FOR FURTHER READING

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

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

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

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

Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three Volumes
. Edited by Dan H. Laurence. Vol. 1: 1876-1890; Vol. 2: 1890-1893; Vol. 3: 1893-1950. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981.

Ervine, St. John G.
Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work, and Friends.
New York: William Morrow, 1956. The most sympathetic and fair biography of Shaw.

Henderson, Archibald.
George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century.
New York: Appleton- Century- Crofts, 1956.

Holroyd, Michael.
Bernard Shaw, Vol.
1, 1856-1898:
The
Search for
Love,
New York: Random House 1988.
Bernard Shaw,
Vol.
2, 1898-1918: The Pursuit of Power
, New York: Random House, 1989.
Bernard Shaw, Vol.
3, 1918-1950:
The Lure of Fantasy,
New York: Random House, 1991.
Bernard Shaw, Vol.
4,
1950-1991: The Last Laugh,
New York: Random House, 1992. The most detailed and comprehensive biography. A condensed version is available:
Bernard Shaw: The One- Volume Definitive Edition,
New York: Random House, 1998.

Shaw, George Bernard.
Interviews and Recollections.
Edited by A. M. Gibbs. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990. An indispensable record of first-hand personal views of and by Shaw.

Bentley, Eric.
Bernard Shaw
. New York: New Directions, 1947.

Berst, Charles A.
Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama.
Champaign-Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1973.

Crompton, Louis.
Shaw the Dramatist.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969.

Evans, T. F., ed.
Shaw: The
Critical
Heritage
. London: Routledge, 1976.

Meisel, Martin.
Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. A brilliant and delightful account of Shaw's relationship to the theater of his youth.

Morgan, Margery M.
The Shavian Playground.
London: Methuen, 1972.

Turco, Alfred, Jr.
Shaw's Moral Vision
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.

Valency, Maurice.
The Cart and the Trumpet.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Watson, Barbara Bellow.
A Shavian Guide to the Intelligent Woman.
New York: W W. Norton, 1972. Still the best case for Shaw as a feminist.

Wisenthal, J. L.
The Marriage of Contraries.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Bertolini, John A. The
Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1991.

Dukore, Bernard.
Shaw's Theatre.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

Gibbs, A. M.
The Art and Mind
of Shaw
. New York: Macmillan, 1983.

Gordon, David J.
Bernard Shaw and the Comic Sublime.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Holroyd, Michael, ed.
The Genius
of Shaw.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.

Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies:
Vols. 1—22 successive. General editors: Stanley Weintraub, Fred D. Crawford, Gale K. Lar son. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981-2003.