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Daly held for trial, D 24, 3:3

12/24/05 With cases against Arnold Daly, Samuel Gumpertz, manager, and William H Reynolds, lessee of the Garrick Theater, and five members of the Daly Company charged with offending public decency by giving a performance of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession were called in the Tombs Court yesterday Lawyer Goldsmith announced that they would waive further examination. It would be necessary under the circumstances, he said, to have the matter acted on by a court of record. Magistrate Whitman, who had been studying the prompt book, said: "I have decided to hold Actor Daly and Business Manager Gumpertz for a misdemeanor, although in my opinion, there are many plays infinitely more reprehensible and dangerous to the public morals."

Miss Chrystal Herne and Miss Mary Shaw were belated on account of a mistake as to the court where the case was to come up. Before they arrived Assistant District Attorney Kresel announced his intention to call for warrants for all who did not appear. The bail for Daly and Gumpertz was fixed at $100 each.

Mr Goldsmith said he would try to have the case transferred from Special Sessions where, as a misdemeanor, it should be tried, to General Sessions, in order that a jury might have a chance to act on it. He asked the assistance of Mr Krotel, who replied that he could promise nothing.

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Theater review of Major Barbara, N 29, 9:2

11/29/05 In concluding his notice of George Bernard Shaw's new play, Major Barbara: A Discussion in Three Acts, The London Time's dramatic critic says:

"What a farrago! Mr Shaw has certainly justified the subtitle, and discussed everything under the sun, Salvationists, Whiggism, Parliament, the press, university education, the choice of a profession, the philosophy of war, alcohol, charity, Donizetti's music, Greek scholarship, English slang, courtship and matrimony, the manipulation of explosives, quicquid agunt homines. It is all very Shawian, very bewildering, very suggestive in its flashes of shrewd sense, very amusing in its long stretches of March-hare madness until they become too long and absolutely undramatic.

"Throughout the acting is excellent in spirit, but some of the players - small blame to them - have not yet succeeded in getting Mr Shaw's rigmaroles to heart."

This new play of Bernard Shaw presented at the Court Theater last evening drew a crowded and brilliant audience. Among those who joined in the enthusiasm with which the work was received were Premier Balfour, Dr Jameson, and Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr Balfour appeared thoroughly to enjoy Mr Shaw's witty audacities, which were directed against Governments in general and the conventions of society in particular.

Miss Annie Russell's playing of the title role is highly praised by the critics in this morning's newspapers.

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Magistrate Whitman holds Daly for producing play; warrants issued for members of cast N 15, 13:4

11/15/05 When Magistrate Whitman, sitting in the Tombs Court yesterday, called the cases of the actors and actresses concerned in the production of Bernard Shaw's play Mrs Warren's Profession, at the Garrick Theater recently, only Arnold Daly, the principal member of the cast, responded. Others for whom warrants had been issued to Inspector Brooks are Mary Shaw, Chrystal Herne, John Finley, Fred Tyler, and Sam Gumpertz.

Magistrate Whitman said that he had paroled the other defendants in the custody of Manager Gumpertz on his promise to produce them in court yesterday. "We ought to have them here," he continued, "but go on."

Detective Cohen of Inspector Brooks's staff told of visiting the playhouse on the night the play was produced, of reading parts of the prompt book, and of arresting the manager. Cohen's power of discrimination was questioned by Daly's lawyer on the ground that he was merely a policeman and not a habitual theatergoer. The prompt book was placed in evidence and was admitted by the defense to be a correct copy of the play.

With the conclusion of Sergt. Cohen's testimony the examination ended abruptly.

"It has not been shown here," said C P Williamson, Mr Daly's lawyer, "that any offense whatever has been committed under the statute, and I move for the discharge of the prisoner."

"Motion denied," tersely replied the court.

Further argument followed between counsel for Daly and Assistant District Attorney Paul Krotel, and it was agreed to adjourn the case until Dec 23. Magistrate Whitman, in the meantime, will read the "prompt book" of the play, and pass on the question of whether it is a case for the Court of Special Sessions. The Magistrate held Mr Daly in $500 bonds and paroled him to enable him to find a surety.

"I want it distinctly understood," said he, "that all these defendants must be in court on the next examination. Otherwise the warrants for their arrests, which I have signed, will be executed forthwith."

"It will not be necessary for Mr Daly to appear, will it?" asked the actor's counsel.

"It most certainly will be," answered the Court.

"I wish I could delegate to somebody else the reading of this prompt book," said the Magistrate, as he left the bench with the thick package of typewritten matter under his arm.

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Prof F Adler calls Shaw a literary anarchist; says he is not all bad but has chosen cheap road to notoriety, N 6, 6:5

11/6/05 To an audience that filled Carnegie Hall long before the hour fixed for his appearance, compelling the closing of the doors and the shutting out of several hundred persons, Prof Felix Adler talked yesterday about the abnormal in literature and the drama, with particular reference to the works of George Bernard Shaw. He considered the causes which led to the support of this sort of literature, and decried the rapidity with which it is gaining a foothold. In part Prof Adler said:

"There always have been good and bad in the world, not only among individuals but in society. When I say that there is a faction for good in every community I do not mean to encourage the idea of self-righteousness. No one is perfect, and I would not encourage sniffing at bad and all that kind of foolishness. The idea that I intend to convey is that there is an element which can tell black from white in matters of morality. There is an element that is developed and another element that is undeveloped.

"On occasions the moral slums overflow into the brownstone district, so to speak. Sometimes there is an alliance between the slums and politics of the Tammany Hall brand. Sometimes there is an alliance between the slums and literature, and it is against this alliance that we must fight now.

"The other day there was the first and last production of a play which was stopped by the police. The Commissioner of Police, who was present, remarked of the number of young girls who were present. Why should young girls attend such presentations? Why do parents, assuming that they have influence with their daughters, which is not always the case, permit them to attend?

"There is, in the first place, the most frivolous of all motives, the itching desire to be in the fashion, no matter what it is. Set a fashion going, and the great, unthinking crowd rushes to keep up with it. Young people are governed by the fashion in books and plays, as they are by the fashions in hats. They want to be able to talk about what everybody else talks about. This is the impulse of the crowd, strongest where the greatest numbers of people are gathered together.

"Mr Shaw's philosophy is more recent, but it is not on that account more sound. It is to be deplored that in cultivated circles and in certain colleges for girls so much attention is give to the recent phenomenon in literature. The fact that an opinion is advanced does not necessarily prove it is truth.

"Literature may be advanced. That is not the question. The true test of a book is to ask how far it is advanced. Literature is like a piece of fruit. At a certain stage it is unpalatable and sour. At another stage it is ripe and good to the taste. At a more advanced stage it is rotten. With Mr Shaw or any other author the question is, How far advanced is he?

"You want to see life, do you, young people? Do you realize that it is impossible for anybody to know life? That even the greatest minds can grasp only a part of life? If you fill your minds with the nether side of life, you are denying yourself the profitable, beautiful side. When you study the seamy side of things you are not learning of life, but of death.

"As long as one keeps within the proprieties it is hard to gain an audience unless on has something to offer of striking beauty or worth. The short cut to notoriety, if one be unscrupulous is to shock the sensibilities of a community by saying outrageous things. This is cheap, but it is the road which Mr Shaw has chosen.

"He deals in half truths, the most dangerous form of lies. He says a philanthropist, for instance, is a parasite on misery. It is true that some self-styled philanthropists use misery to magnify themselves, but surely not all philanthropists are of this type. If a man saves another from death in a watery grave, is he a parasite on drowning men? Was Florence Nightingale a parasite on the sick she nursed? Was Abraham Lincoln a parasite on the evils of slavery?

"The world is topsy-turvy. Good isn't all bad and bad isn't all good. This is no reason for permitting ourselves to be enveloped in an atmosphere of the abnormal and cry out with literary Anarchists against 'conventional morality.' As a matter of fact, morality is nothing more or less than fair play as between men and women. It stands on its own reasonableness.”

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McAdoo replies to women who protested closing of show, N 3, 6:3

11/3/05 Commissioner McAdoo made public yesterday his reply to one of many letters he has received in regard to his attitude to the play, Mrs Warren's Profession. He received the letter just after the play closed at the Garrick. It was signed by a woman in society, who declared she had intended to send her son and daughter to the play. Here is Mr McAdoo's reply:

'Dear Madame: 'As yours is the only letter I have received in favor of the play Mrs Warren's Profession, I think it only fair, without in any way disclosing your identity, that I should give, as it were, the other side a hearing, stating your reasons in its behalf.

'Personally, I do not agree with you at all. I have had a good deal of experience in life in a good many of its phases, and I think the young people, if anything, know too soon about the terrible problem of the life of the present day. Besides, I would not select a play like that, nor the book, as a proper method of teaching them. You can and should take occasion to tell your son and daughter what you think to be correct views of the many difficult problems which the complicated civilization of this day presents, pointing out to them in a discreet but honest way such social errors or crimes as you may deem important, and to get in their minds a sense of justice and the impulse to consider the rights of others in an unselfish, impersonal, and equitable light, and those more especially in dealing with those less fortunate than themselves, and above all, cultivate a deep and far-reaching charity for the failings of others.

'I think the Ten Commandments and - although now looked upon in certain quarters as trite and controversial - the Sermon on the Mount, teach a young man or a young woman a great deal more than he or she can learn from the books that Shaw has written, and I have read them all.

'Shaw is a very clever and cynically humorous writer and has marked ability. He sees fame and profit in being radically and originally unconventional and in attacks on existing order, teasing his rich readers and friends about the inequity and injustice of their position, and when he had them annoyed or convinced, he turns around with a laugh and says that the whole thing is a joke.

'You say, "I shall not take only my daughter, when she has graduated from school, but also my son, to see it, hoping it will make them think and understand a little of the terrible problem of the life of the present day, before they face it and take an individual part in it."

'If you are perfectly sincere and honest, take you son and daughter to such plays if you wish, but I would not take my daughter, and I would be grieved to the heart if I knew she had gone voluntarily.'

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Daly to fight to present play in NY, N 2, 9:1

11/2/05 The cases against Arnold Daly and the others in the cast of George Bernard Shaw's play, Mrs Warren's Profession, were postponed by Magistrate Whitman, in the Jefferson Market Court, yesterday, until Nov 9. Moses H Grossman, representing Arnold Daly, and the actors and actresses accused with him of offending against public decency, moved for an adjournment.

Police Inspector Brooks, who was present to prosecute, agreed to the request on the understanding that no performance of the play be given pending the disposal of the cases.

Arnold Daly was early at court, but left as soon as he had been informed that it was not necessary for him to remain. The members of the company who were present were John Findlay, Frank Warren, and Fred Tyler. Those who did not appear were Miss Chrystal Herne and Miss Mary Shaw, members of the company; ex-Senator Reynolds, owner of the Garrick, and the stage manager. Samuel Gumpertz, manager of the theater, was in a law office near by.

After the court proceedings Mr Grossman said that Mr Daly proposed to fight to the last. "We will show," he said, "that the play is not immoral if we have to carry the cases to the Court of Appeals. If the book is not immoral it stands to reason that the play is not, and Mrs Warren's Profession, as a book, is in free and untrammeled circulation here and in Great Britain. Mr Daly wishes to have it legally determined whether or not the play is an offense to the morals of the public. We are confident that the courts will take the liberal view of the matter and permit its resumption."

It was only through the insistence of Mr Grossman that Mr Daly appeared in court. At a conference Tuesday night he said to the actor that his presence was imperative.

"But, my dear fellow," Mr Daly is quoted as saying, "that is out of the question. I have an engagement for luncheon and want to go to the races. Tell the Judge that I would be charmed to come down almost any other day and look at his little jail, but to-morrow it is impossible."

"If you don't go you will be liable to arrest at any time and any place," Mr Grossman warned, and then Mr Daly changed his mind.

Police Commissioner McAdoo said yesterday that he had received two letters from well-known women, one expressing disapproval at his step in stopping the Shaw play and the other commending his prompt action. 'The Garrick Theater manager,' the Commissioner said, 'has asked for an opportunity to appear before me and submit arguments as to the merits of Mrs Warren's Profession as a play. I refused the request and will stand upon my action in stopping the play.'

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Halts production, N 1, 1:3

11/1/05 Shaw's Play Stopped; Manager Arrested

Police Commissioner McAdoo took steps yesterday which stopped the further presentation at the Garrick Theater of Mrs Warren's Profession, George Bernard Shaw's play. Mr McAdoo say the performance on Monday night, and the first thing he did when he reached his office yesterday morning was to report to Mayor McClellan that the production was 'revolting, indecent, and nauseating where it was not boring.'

After talking with the Mayor Mr McAdoo wrote to Arnold Daly, ex-Senator Reynolds, who is said to be the owner of the theater, and Samuel W Gumpertz, its manager, telling them that he would prevent a second performance and arrest those participating therein. Later a warrant was issued by Magistrate Whitman calling for the arrest of Mr Reynolds, Mr Gumpertz, Mr Daly, and the other actors and actresses in the cast, which was served by Inspector Brooks in person.

Mr Gumpertz was arraigned in Jefferson Market Court. He was paroled upon his own recognizance until this morning at 11 o'clock. The warrant charged a violation of that section of the Penal Code which relates to "offending public decency." Before his parole Mr Gumpertz promised to be present this morning and to have the others named in the warrant, or such of them as were able to appear, in readiness for the hearing. He also said there would be no further performances for the present. Shortly before the arrest of Mr Gumpertz, but long after the receipt of Commissioner McAdoo's letter, the sale of tickets at the box office was stopped and the following notice was posted on the door of the theater:

Further performances of Mrs Warren's Profession will be abandoned, owing to the universal condemnation of the press. Arnold Daly.

Theater closed to-night. Will reopen tomorrow night with Candida, original cast.

Until Commissioner McAdoo made plain his position in regard to the production there was no indication about the theater that a discontinuance of Mrs Warren's Profession was contemplated.

Sale of Tickets Was Rushing

The box office opened at the usual hour, and the sale of tickets went on with a rush. By 1 o'clock in the afternoon more than $10,000 worth of tickets had been sold. It was after 4 o'clock when the sale was stopped, and after 9 o'clock last night when Winchell Smith, Mr Daly's personal representative, issued a statement assigning reasons for the step.

Before he made public his determination of stopping the play, Commissioner McAdoo talked with Mr Gumpertz by telephone. Mr Gumpertz told the Commissioner that Mr Daly had read all the newspaper criticisms, and that there was nothing in any of them to induce him to discontinue the production. He said upon his return from New Haven that he would abide by the decision of the New York critics and would abandon the production if their verdict was unfavorable.

'I thought the verdict was distinctly unfavorable,' said Commissioner McAdoo, in telling of his talk with Mr Gumpertz, 'but the manager told me Mr Daly failed to see it in that light.' Commissioner McAdoo had a long talk with Magistrate Whitman Monday, and it was then agreed that the Commissioner should attend the performance that evening with Inspector Brooks and Sergt. Henry Cohen. The Commissioner was to pass upon the play, and if he found it unfit for presentation, Inspector Brooks and Sergt. Cohen were to receive the warrant. After the warrant had been handed to him Inspector Brooks asked Magistrate Whitman to stay after the hour for closing the court in order that the case could be disposed of before the time fixed for the evening performance. The Magistrate consented.

Gumpertz Pleaded Not Guilty

Inspector Brooks and Sergt. Cohen then went to the theater and arrested Manager Gumpertz. He pleaded not guilty.

'The warrant upon which you were brought before me also calls for the arrest of Arnold Daly, W H Reynolds, Mary Shaw, Chrystal Herne, John Findlay, and George Warren,' Magistrate Whitman said. 'You were alone taken into custody to facilitate the matter of getting the case into court.'

"I would like to have an adjournment," Mr Gumpertz said.

'If I let the case go over until tomorrow morning will you produce the other persons named?'

"Miss Herne is ill, Mr Reynolds is indisposed, and Mr Daly is all upset," replied Mr Gumpertz. "I will have all those named who are able to appear before you at whatever hour you fix."

Attached to the papers in the case were affidavits signed by Inspector Brooks and Detective Sergeant Cohen. There was also a typewritten report made by Commissioner McAdoo. The report, which was addressed to Magistrate Whitman, read: 'Last night I attended in person, accompanied by Inspector Nicholas Brooks and one or two other police officials, the play known as Mrs Warren's Profession, by George Bernard Shaw, at the Garrick Theater. The play is in four acts. I saw three of them. There are six characters in the play. The leading characters profess to have led and are leading immoral lives, and defend their position with all the cleverness and ability of the author; they are and they continue prosperously immoral to the end of the play. The daughter and son condone the immorality of their parents, for both of whom otherwise they express contempt in public. The clergyman is portrayed as a hypocrite, sneak, sniveling blackguard, and promiscuous adulterer. Mrs Warren defends her profession successfully to the close of the play. Her daughter condones her mother's mode of living and accepts her own shame with indifference until her pride is stung by the fact that her mother has deceived her as to her present sources of income. Mrs Warren and her titled partner conduct in European capitals high-grade disorderly houses, which in the play are called hotels, something like the disreputable Raines law hotels, I presume. The conduct of these houses is a cold business proposition in which they make a great deal of money, and at the close of the play they both avowed that they would give more attention 'hereafter' to their business for the profit that is in it.

'This whole play, to my personal view, is revolting, indecent, and nauseating where it is not boring. It tells working girls that it is much better to live a carefully calculated life of vice rather than of honest work. No character in the play, not even the clergyman, has one word for the cardinal virtues in man or woman. Played at the Academy of Music, in the east side, or at the Grand Opera House, on the west side, at popular prices, the effect on the public morals would be most pernicious. I doubt, however, if the hard working and plain-minded heads of families in those neighborhoods will permit it to be played. That audience last night did not hiss the play off the stage or engage in mob demonstrations against it was due I think to the fact that the audience was not a representative one. Even in the galleries seats sold as high as $5, and in the afternoon $35 was asked for one seat in the orchestra. There was nothing during the evening that could really be called applause. Some young women present, from foolish bravado, applauded a little at certain points, but as the dialogue grew stronger and ranker, even this ceased. I think the play is distinctly against public morals and decency, and utterly discreditable to the managers and those taking part in it. If artfully and cleverly acted, so much the worse.'

A duplicate of the report had been sent to Mayor McClellan earlier in the day. The Mayor referred it to Corporation Counsel Delany, and late yesterday afternoon the Commissioner received the following letter:

My advice is to immediately notify the managers of the play that you consider it indecent and immoral, and that if they produce it to-night you will cause their arrest. This threat will undoubtedly cause them to procure an injunction against you, and by so doing you will be in a much better position than if you went to court yourself. If you apply for an injunction the court will be apt to say that if this play is indecent and immoral it is your duty and not the court's duty to suppress it. On the other hand, if you threaten to act and are stayed the responsibility lies not with you but on the court.

It was said last night that ex-Senator Reynolds will apply for an injunction to prevent further interference with the play.

This is the letter which Commissioner McAdoo sent to Mr Daly and the owner and manager of the Garrick Theater after his talk with the Mayor:

'This is to notify you that after personal inspection and report made to me I have determined that it is my official duty to prevent a further performance of the play called Mrs Warren's Profession. As a further performance will be a violation of the law, I will use the power vested in me to prevent the same, and arrest those participating therein.'

Until the posting of the notice announcing the discontinuance of the play ticket speculators fairly haunted the Garrick. Every passer-by was buttonholed and asked to buy seats for them. The notice came so late and the assurances of those in the box office until its appearance had been so positive that many persons who bought tickets in the morning and early afternoon went to the theater last night fully expecting to see a performance. As a rule ticket holders demanded the return of their money. It was given to them without a word. There were a few who had bought from speculators and who insisted that the whole amount of their outlay should be refunded, irrespective of box office prices.

"I paid $30 for my ticket," said one woman, "and you only give me $2 back."

"Your lucky to get that," said the man in the window.

The speculators, by the way, will lose nothing.

Inspector Schmittberger and Roundsman Brown of the Tenderloin Police Station were at the theater by 7 o'clock with a large force of policemen, including the theater squad commanded by Sergt. Fogarty. They had all they could do to preserve order. While the crowd was surging about the theater doors a rehearsal of Candida was under way on the stage. Mr Daly was there for a short time, but would not be seen. At 9:30 o'clock the following statement was handed out by Winchell Smith, his personal representative, who said it was authorized:

"When Mr Daly said on Saturday night that he would abide by the decision of the press with regard to the merits of Mrs Warren's Profession, he meant what he said. At that time the approaching production through no wish of ours had been surrounded by so much sensationalism we feared that the public would get an erroneous impression of the play and our purpose in presenting it. And the turn of events proved that this was true. On the opening night the theater was besieged by a motley throng of curiosity seekers, who came expecting to see something that would appeal to their morbid tastes. This was exactly the portion of the public to which we did not wish to appeal, and, had it not been too late to withdraw, we would not have produced the play then. When, this morning, we saw how unanimous the papers were in condemnation of the drama, we then and there gave up all thought of continuing its presentation. There is no financial or other consideration whatever that could have tempted Mr Daly to give a second performance of the play after last night's experience at the doors, and after seeing the attitude of the papers to-day."

Mr Smith would not say why tickets had been sold until late in the afternoon.

Anthony Comstock of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, was early advised of the position assumed by Commissioner McAdoo. He chuckled when the news reached him.

'I had full confidence that Mr McAdoo would do his duty,' he said. 'And now I will do all in my power to help him see to it that Arnold Daly and those associated with him in the production get the limit of the law. I will forward to Mr McAdoo a copy of the warning I sent to Mr Daly. This warning will prevent any plea in extenuation of the outrageous offense against decency which was perpetrated last night. I did not witness last night's performance, nor did I have any agents there. I knew that Mr McAdoo would be present. An example should certainly be made of guilty persons.'

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Play called unfit by all NYC critics after 1st performance in NYC; excerpts of revs; Police Comr McAdoo attends, O 31, 9:1

10/31/05 Crowds began struggling to get into the Garrick Theater as early as 6:30 o'clock last evening to see the first performance in this city of George Bernard Shaw's play, Mrs Warren's Profession, by the Arnold Daly Company. When the curtain went up there was not a vacant seat in the house, and as many as the management would allow to do so stood back of the rail. Between 2,000 and 3,000 persons had been turned away at the door. Extra police were ordered out to handle the crowd.

It was an audience that had paid for its seats, and many of the typical firstnighters were absent. Knowing that the demand would be great, the speculators got to work early. As much as $30 each was paid for orchestra seats and $5 was the prevailing price for the top gallery. The tickets were eagerly snapped up at these prices.

Dense crowds thronged Thirty-fifth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues from 6:300 to 8:30 o'clock, and when those who had tickets began to file in, it was almost impossible for a carriage to force its way to the curb in front of the building. There were as many women as men in the throng. Several policemen were on duty in the lobby and street, but they were powerless to keep the crowds moving.

A slim young man stood in the street and bawled out at intervals: "I have the only unsold ticket for this show in New York, ladies and gentlemen, but I won't have it long."

"How much?" yelled a dozen voices at each announcement.

"Only fifteen dollars?" replied the young man.

He did not seem to have any competitors, and after a time his voice was silenced. He probably got the fifteen. Three policemen in the lobby took turns in declaring to the crowds: "There ain't no tickets; there ain't no seats on sale; there ain't no admission nor no standin' room on'y."

When the policemen got tired, the man in the box office stopped counting money long enough to emphasize their remarks. He counted money with exasperating coolness, and wrapped up dozens of parcels of it with red strips or paper, on which were printed the inscription, "$100."

McAdoo Saw the Play

One feature of the audience was the presence of a number of young girls. This fact was commented upon by Police Commissioner McAdoo as he stood watching the theater squad take care of the crowd that poured out of the house and got into the waiting carriages that stood for a block in each direction in Thirty-fifth Street.

Mr McAdoo saw the play from start to finish. He occupied one of the upper boxes on the right-hand side of the house. Inspector Brooks was there, too, and so were several of the Headquarters staff. Two of these, at the instance of the Commissioner, went back on the stage after the play was over and Mr Daly showed them the original prompt book of the play and the cuts he had made in the original business and dialogue.

Anthony Comstock was not in the theater, but it was said by the management that he had two of his agents there who would make a report to him this morning. It was said that these agents would apply for warrants to-day, and that an effort would be made to have the show stopped to-night. This information came from the management, but how they got it they would not say. It was said for Mr Daly that he was prepared to meet any of these attacks, and would argue the matter out in court if such proceeding became necessary.

Many Young Girls There

Police Commissioner McAdoo refused to say anything when he came down stairs after the third act. When the play was over he said: "I will not say now what I will do, if anything. It appears to me, however, that this is not the usual first night audience at a New York theater. Most of these people came in their own carriages and it looks like an opera first night. I don't think that this is a good test of trying it on the dog. The dog in this instance is rather high bred, and the ordinary run of dog may have different ideas." Then looking over the crowd, Mr McAdoo said: "Remarkable, isn't it, what a lot of young girls there were in the house to-night? It was also rather interesting for me to find out that there were Raines law hotels in Budapest and several other places on the Continent. At least Mr Shaw is frank when he puts this play in his book among his 'plays unpleasant.' Mr Daly sent for me to come back on the stage, but I sent word that I couldn't see him this evening."

Mr Daly's Speech

At the end fo the third act, in response to repeated calls, Mr Daly came before the curtain. He said: "So much has been said - too much has been said - about Mrs Warren's Profession, so that I do not intend to go into an ethical discussion as to its fitness or purpose, further than to say that, in my opinion, we should be able to face the problems of life when we attain our majority, and willingly cast off illusions and youthful legends to do our day's work. But I also believe that the person who attempts to disillusionize a child, or to take from them their legends - as of Santa Claus and our revered Washington and his little hatchet - is a brutal and conscienceless destroyer of all that youth owes us. We have many theaters devoted to plays appealing to the romanticist or child. New York has even provided a hippodrome for such. Surely there should be room in New York for at least one theater devoted to Truth, however disagreeable Truth may appear. If public opinion forces this theater to close and this play to be withdrawn it will be a sad commentary indeed upon twentieth century so-called civilization and our enlightened new country."

It was said at the box office last night that nearly every seat in the house for the week has been sold. Should the play be stopped the money will be refunded.

The Audience Polled

At the door last-night the agents of The New York World gave every one who went in this card:

In your opinion is Mrs Warren's Profession

a play fit to be presented on the American stage?

Fit

Erase one {

Unfit

This card will be collected as you leave the theater.

According to The World's poll, there were 963 persons in the theater and 576 voted. Of these 304 voted "Fit" and 272 "Unfit."

Play Stupid and Vicious; A Performance About as Elevating as a Post-Mortem

Arnold Daly has made a serious mistake. Mrs Warren's Profession, whatever its merits or demerits as a play for the closet, or as an exposition of the author's views upon a sociological question, has absolutely no place in a theater before a mixed assemblage such as witnessed it at the Garrick last night. The post-mortem and the clinic undoubtedly have their place as utilities of scientific investigation. But they would lose their value if permitted to become subjects of general and morbid curiosity.

Mrs Warren's Profession, as an acted play, bears about the same relation to the science of which it is a part. Mr Shaw takes a subject, decayed and reeking, and analyzes it for the edification of those whose unhealthy tastes find satisfaction in morbific suggestion.

As a play to be read by a limited number of persons capable of understanding its significance, of estimating Mr Shaw and his themes at their full value, and of discounting them through their personal knowledge of him and their general knowledge of the life he seeks to portray, it undoubtedly has a place. But as a play to be acted before a miscellaneous assemblage, it cannot be accepted.

If there had been any doubt upon that subject it was dispelled after seeing the performance last night. Mrs Warren's ProfessionMrs Warren's Profession as a moral treatise, becomes ridiculous in the consideration of it as acted drama.

As it stood revealed last night, it was neither drama nor moral. It failed to qualify as the one primarily by reason that in its writing no attempt has been made to mould it to any sort of form suggestive of a play to be acted, beyond the fact that it is divided into scenes and its dialogue is framed in the familiar manner of the theatrical manuscript. It failed to qualify as the other by reason of the fact, first, that its lesson, if any, is not conveyed in such a way that it is readily received by an audience; second, by reason of the fact that the audience which had assembled to see it was not prepared to recognize or accept any lesson.

In these matters there is always this element of the audience to be taken into consideration, and here it is that Mr Shaw in his larger, and Mr Daly in his lesser one, have failed to take account of the conditions that exist, that up to the present have always existed, and will probably continue to exist. The persons in the Garrick Theater last night represented an average theater assemblage. There was so far as could be determined no preponderance of any one class such as might have been expected under the circumstances.

It was, on the other hand, an audience of average intelligence and of average quality. But when it laughed - and the laughs were few enough - one had the uncomfortable feeling that it was a moment that might better justify tears, and when it applauded one knew that the sentiment would have been more properly met with silence or some show of disapprobation.

While we do not admit that Mr Shaw's works are as inscrutable or tripleplated with meanings as some of his critics would have us believe, and while there is every reason for attributing much credit to his magnificent powers of mentality, and while we feel that tragic seriousness, not willful flippancy, may be the motive for his work, we must exclude Mrs Warren from our theater - reject her, as a moral derelict. She is of no use to us as a lesson or a study.

When she becomes a subject for laughter and amusement, as occurred last night, she is something more than useless - she is vicious. She may serve a purpose when we are free to ponder over her under our own vine and fig tree, without the uncomfortable conviction that others, not, perhaps, so earnest as we, are gaining a certain amount of unholy enjoyment from the utter profundity of the horror.

In the acting of the chief role there was exactly the overemphasis of its more repugnant features that might have been expected. Mary Shaw, an artist of broad experience and undoubted ability, has been successful in the theater exactly in proportion to her knowledge of theatrical needs. In playing such a role as Mrs Warren she approaches it primarily from the point of view of the actress who knows when and how to get her effects. As a result we find Mrs Warren depicted from the very outset in the broadest tints.

Miss Shaw lays on her colors too heavily, and the result is that, while giving us a portrait of a person who undoubtedly has existed and unfortunately does exist, she fails to impress us as reproducing the particular type that Mr Shaw has in mind. Mrs Warren's exact status would have been at once patent to her daughter and to every one else had she been the sort of person shown to us by Mary Shaw.

Viewed merely as an exhibition of theatrical characterization, however, Miss Shaw's performance justifies a share of appreciative comment. She reflected to an astonishingly offensive, natural degree the abandoned creatures after whom she has evidently modeled her study. It is not the creature of the text, but it is true to the type it seeks to reproduce, so true in fact that it contributes to the generally revolting picture another and a nauseating quality. But, though it was for the most part highly colorful acting, it was acting of a most uneven character. As an artistic achievement it did not approximate her performance in "Ghosts."

Mr Daly's fault in the exploitation of Mrs Warren's Profession, however misguided it may have proved itself to be, can in no wise be laid at the door of personal vanity as regards the hope of distinguishing himself in the role of Frank Gardner, for it is a part about which he can have had no beforehand delusions. He is perhaps the more to be pitied - that his aim in producing it was so single. There are only two possible exculpating reasons for the acting presentation of the play - a blind, unreasoning desire to revolutionize the moral state-of-being, or else a wholly unnatural and somewhat disgraceful attempt to win much tainted notoriety. Personally we believe Mr Daly has simply made the error of attaching to this work of Mr Shaw's an artistically dramatic value which it does not possess.

Of the actors in the cast, Chrystal Herne, though temperamentally opposed to the role of Vivie Warren, and generally unable to realize it, had occasional impressive moments, and the others acted as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

Critic's Verdict Hostile:

Opinions of the Newspapers by Which

Daly Said He Would Abide

From The Herald: "The lid" was lifted by Mr Arnold Daly and "the limit" of stage indecency reached last night in the Garrick Theater in the performance of one of George Bernard Shaw's "unpleasant comedies" called Mrs Warren's Profession - a profession, by the way, which is the occupation of a certain class of female harpies. "The limit of indecency" may seem pretty strong words, but they are justified by the fact that the play is morally rotten. It makes no difference that some of the lines may have been omitted and others toned down - there was superabundance of foulness left.

The whole story of the play, the atmosphere surrounding it, the incidents, the personalities of the characters are wholly immoral and degenerate. The only way successfully to expurgate Mrs Warren's Profession is to cut the whole play out. You cannot have a clean pig sty. The play is an insult to decency because: It defends immorality. It glorifies prostitution. It besmirches the sacredness of a clergyman's calling. It pictures children and parents living in calm observance of most unholy relations. And worst of all, it countenances the most revolting form of degeneracy by flippantly discussing the marriage of brother and sister, father and daughter, and makes one supposedly moral character of the play, a young girl, declare that choice of shame instead of poverty, is eminently right. If New York's sense of shame is not aroused to hot indignation at this theatrical insult, it is indeed in a sad plight.

From The Sun: All New York will now discuss the hitherto unspeakable - race suicide is for the moment back numbered. The opening act was all but over before people seemed convinced that nothing would happen to make Mr McAdoo pull the joint. There was none of the languorous enticement of "Sapho," never a touch of the suggestion of 'Orange Blossoms.' Except from the advertising of mistaken Comstockers, the occasion would probably have been rather a funeral - with no flowers. At the end of an hour many an aspiring "rubberneck" must have felt that the poverty of those on the sidewalk was more blessed than that of a mendicant friar. And this was not due to the cuts which Mr Daly has made in the text. Nothing worse was sacrificed than Miss Warren's Scotch and her cigar, while one really objectionable passage, in which her young lover makes eyes at Mrs Warren and is kissed by her, received all possible prominence. The play is, in fact, little more than the dramatization of a tract on the social evil.

From The Tribune: What the verdict should be the performance last night left no doubt. Advertised as the play has been by the most glaring and exciting methods, bearing the ban of two censors - the royal play reader of England and the Mayor of New Haven - decried as indecent by those who knew and (most loudly, perhaps,) by those who did not, the audience which entered the theater last night was not of the kind properly to appreciate the serious drift of the drama, and before such an audience it should never have been presented. Such will be the audiences of the next week, if the performances go on, and the continuation of Mrs Warren's Profession before them can do no possible good to anybody. It is an affront to decency and a blot on the theater. Mr Daly owes it to his profession and the public to remove the drama from the boards.

From The World: Mrs Warren's Profession from any point of view which it may be judged is a frank, brutal, and wholly nasty justification of prostitution. The question that presents itself, however, is not so much one of good morals as of good taste. Bernard Shaw has portrayed with rarest fidelity and minutest detail a form of social ulcer the existence of which is perfectly well known to all persons. But the theater is not the place for its exhibition. It belongs to the moral clinics.

From The American: Mrs Warren's Profession is an intellectual and unnecessary but cold-blooded discussion of a pestilential issue. It is an effort to set before unthinking men and women, by means of the footlights, the putrefaction of social life. It is illuminated gangrene. It is the suppuration of a plague spot. It is undoubtedly a true picture, but it is the sort of picture that few want to look at, and that many should not be allowed to look at - on the stage.

From The Press: In sight of one of the most representative audiences New York has seen in many years the "red light" was hung high, and the Drama, that the other week was honored in Westminster Abbey, was dedicated formally to the glorification of the "Scarlet Woman." Many doubtful points were settled to general satisfaction. No doubt was left that in Mrs Warren's Profession, Shaw has written his best play. The plot held every auditor, there was directness in every spoken line. The play was well staged, and on the whole well acted.

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Comment on stage morals and stage money, O 30, 8:4

10/30/05 Stage Morals and Stage Money

Discussion of Mrs Warren's Profession has resulted in the solemn presentation of innumerable platitudes from people who have heard somebody else say that it is a "bad" play and then have proceeded to perform the not difficult task of proving that plays of that sort should not be put on the stage. The people who have taken the trouble to read Mr Shaw's production have for the most part formed the judgment that it is not suitable for public performance, but as they have also discovered that all the arguments oftenest made against it are based on grotesquely inaccurate misunderstandings of what its real faults are, they have been amused rather than indignant over the situation created by Mr Daly's keen sense of values and have treated the subject with a levity which, while it has enabled them to tell many sound truths, has yet had an effect in some respects regrettable, since it has distracted intelligent attention from the fact that there are real and sufficient reasons why the play should be kept in book form, where it is not likely to hurt, or even to offend anybody, and be kept off the stage, where it is certain to do a lot of harm - chiefly, it seems to us, by adding new stains to minds already far from immaculate. This certainty is not dependent upon either a fair or an unfair dislike for Mr Shaw and his work as a whole. It rests, instead, upon the very obvious fact that even if Mr Shaw intended to teach and has taught, as he and Mr Daly declare, a deep - or was it a high? - moral lesson, there is not the slightest chance that more than one person in a hundred who goes to see the play will learn that lesson from it, and every prospect that the other ninety-nine will find in it many things which Mr Shaw and his friends like to say are not there. He and they, with their avowed fondness for truth and reality, as distinguished from convention and assumption, might profitably ponder what they are doing when they talk of teaching on the stage this particular kind of moral lesson. They know as well as the rest of us that an enormous majority of people who go to the theater do it with little other purpose than to be amused, with some incidental stirring of the simpler emotions, and that they neither look for moral lessons nor will get them - except unconsciously and unintentionally. And there will be nothing unconscious or unintentional about the gettings of the general public from Mrs Warren's Profession. For presenting it there is no valid excuse, and it should not be forgotten that the recent arguing about it will have an advertising effect for the folk who go to see it as well as for its author and its producer.

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Daly editing play to cut out double meaning, O 30, 9:2

10/30/05 Mrs Warren's Profession will not be presented to-night at the Garrick Theater as it was written by George Bernard Shaw. Arnold Daly was busy yesterday and until late last night editing it, and when the jury of New York dramatic critics passes on it as to its cleanliness the verdict will not necessarily imply the commendation or condemnation of the play as it came from Mr Shaw's pen.

Every single line which is capable of double construction will be either eliminated entirely or so changed as to convey directly the meaning intended.

"It is true," said Mr Daly, through his personal representative, Winchell Smith, "that some of the lines have been cut out or changed, but nowhere has the impression which Mr Shaw meant to convey been clouded. The changes are purely changes of words, made necessary by the fact that some of the lines, as the play is written, are susceptible of impure constructions which were not at all intended.

"I am greatly upset by the injustice of the stand taken by the Mayor of New Haven, and am tired out by last night's long rehearsal, so that I have not the strength nor the time to go further into the defense of the play," Mr Daly said. "The play will positively be presented to-night, and if it is condemned by the jury of critics it will be withdrawn. That is all there is to it."

"But suppose the jury disagrees," it was suggested. "How will you govern yourself then?"

"I will take the consensus of opinion."

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Play shown once and then stopped; New Haven in uproar; Mayor Stanley says play is well written and well acted, but rotten, O 29, 1:3

10/29/05

The first night's performance was all New Haven could stand of Arnold Daly's production of Mrs Warren's Profession, by Bernard Shaw. There was an uproar here to-day over any further presentation of the piece from all quarters - the newspapers, the police, those who had seen the performance last night, and the public generally. Because of this Mayor John P Stanley at noon directed Chief of Police Wrinn to revoke the license of the Hyperion Theater as long as Daly was in town. The police then sent word to Mr Daly that he could not present the play at the scheduled matinee this afternoon and to-night on the ground that Mrs Warren's Profession was 'grossly indecent and not fit for public presentation.'

Mr Daly, his manager, his press agent, and a squad of attorneys made every effort to get Mayor Stanley to change his mind, but he was obdurate. Mr Daly left New Haven in high dudgeon late this afternoon, saying before he went: "New York will stand for the play if New Haven will not."

The Mayor, who was formerly Judge of the Common Pleas Court, frankly stated that he had taken his action because of the complaints he had received, and incidentally gave Manager Boone some fatherly advice as to the kind of shows New Haven would not stand for in the future.

'From what I have heard this play is grossly indecent and an insult to the New Haven public. While I did not attend the opening performance last evening, I am well informed as to the general outline of the play, and in my mind it is an imposition on public decency. I shall not allow it to be presented again. That is final. The play is well written and well acted, but rotten. It was nothing that this city ought to license. Manager Boone had told me that the play ought to be allowed, that he expected some trouble in New York, but hoped that Tammany Hall would pull the thing through."

Manager Boone invited the Mayor and Chief Wrinn to witness the performance this afternoon and asked that they defer any contemplated action until they had seen the play and had personal knowledge of it. Neither would accept.

Mr Daly was beside himself when he heard of the Mayor's order. He made every effort to have the play go on again, even ordering to furnish bonds. Senator Reynolds of New York, who is interested in the play, also telephoned an offer of bonds, but the Mayor said it wasn't a matter of bonds. New Haven, he said, simply wouldn't stand for the show. Mr Daly was with the Mayor for a large part of this afternoon at the Mayor's club, but could make no impression on him. Mr Daly gave orders for the dismissal of his company until Monday night at the Garrick Theater in New York, and went to his hotel.

Mr Daly was asked what he had to say in response to the charges that his play was immoral and should not be allowed on the stage. His eyes flashed angrily.

"It is perfect nonsense," he said, with disgust. "When the first performance is given in the Garrick Theater in New York on Monday there will be ladies and gentlemen there who, I know, represent the best society in New York and would not for a moment countenance anything that was in the least immoral. Is that not enough? I have no patience with the charges. I am perfectly willing to go into any courtroom and argue with Anthony Comstock, or any one else, for hours on the question, and show that he knows absolutely nothing about immorality, or, for that matter, morality. He may know about potatoes or tomatoes or something of that kind, but that is all."

New Haven papers this evening are severe in their condemnation of Mrs Warren's Profession. The New Haven Leader says it is 'the most shockingly immoral dialogue ever publicly repeated' and that 'the words, suggestions - the whole rotten mess of immoral suggestions - have no place on a public platform.'

The New Haven Register says to-night: 'The play itself is fit for publication only as a document for the sociologist and reformer, and even the most ardent of Mr Shaw's admirers cannot plead that as a justification for putting it in dramatic form. Acted, it is incredibly worse. The full force of the utterance and gestures only add to its vulgarity and the necessity of acting up to the parts makes it equally repulsive, one would imagine, both to those who live without and to those who live within the world it describes. On these facts alone its pretended value of moral purpose must rest: To ask a hearing for it on the time-worn plea of artistic realism would be simply grotesque. The play drew last night, in a large part, the type of audience that it was seeking to reprove, and their behavior indicated that they went away more pleased and amused than rebuked. The fatuous sophistry, by which Mrs Warren defended her conduct to her daughter, was greedily observed and approved of by an element that clearly wished to believe in it. A spectator at last night's performance who failed to note and be impressed by this quality of the audience, must have been densely ignorant of human nature. After Candida, You Never Can Tell, Captain Brassbound's Confession, and other plays, admirers of Mr Shaw cannot but be disappointed to see his undeniable talents used for a play of this sort - at least they must regret its being put on the stage. Distinction may have to be drawn sharply as to plays that are to be read and plays that are to be acted, but such a play as Mrs Warren's Profession cannot under any circumstances be given before mixed audience. For the good of the stage and those sincere supporters of it who can distinguish between dramatic worth for its own sake and dramatic worth with mere nastiness and sensationalism added to it, whether with sincerity of purpose or as a drawing card, we wish the play a speedy exit from the boards, here and elsewhere."

Daly Selects A Jury

Willing to Risk Jail if Dramatic

Critics Favor His Play

"My ultimatum is," said Arnold Daly last night when he had returned to the Garrick after his experience in New Haven, "that I will leave the question of presenting Mrs Warren's Profession to the dramatic critics of the New York newspapers. If they say on Tuesday morning the play is unfit, detrimental to public morals. I will not give another performance. If, however, they say it is fit, that it is what I think it is, then I will go on with it and run the risk of being arrested.

"I know of no better way than this to get a fair judgment of the play. The press is, as I have always understood, the exponent of public opinion. I shall leave the matter to the judgment and the honor of these men. I can do no more.

"I have never maintained, mind you, that Mrs Warren's Profession is a play for children. It is a play for intelligent grown-ups. How such can find anything to cavil at is, as I have said, beyond me.

"Another thing. I will find it difficult to believe, impossible, in fact, that the New York public thinks the play immoral until the truth is forced upon me. This because of the class of persons who have bought tickets in advance. Many of these men and women are not only eminently respectable, but intelligent as well. Some of them, I feel convinced, have read Shaw, have even read Mrs Warren's Profession. I will not believe until I must that these persons would attend a performance they thought questionable.

"The only intimation that I have received in this city that the play was not acceptable is from this fellow Comstock and from a few anonymous writers. No, none of these letters were from persons of any consequence.

"We selected New Haven on purpose for the opening performance. It was my opinion that New Have, with its Yale students, as well as the influence which the college has upon the minds of the citizens in it, would be a good town in which to try the play out. I thought that the students would in the first place be profound enough to grasp the lesson which the play teaches, and flippant enough to guy anything in it which they thought salacious.

"Nothing in the slightest degree, and, mind you, we were not watching for the manifestations, occurred to indicate that the audience was displeased. I notice that a morning paper states that some persons jeered. This is absolutely false. The audience comprised the best citizens of New Haven, and there was absolutely no sign of disapproval on the part of any one.

"On the contrary, at the end of the third act a professor at Yale - I think his name was Mendel - came behind the scenes to compliment me on the play, to assure me that there was absolutely nothing to cavil at in it. Some others told me this, I think among them another member of the Faculty of Yale, but I do not remember his name.

"I went to see Mayor Stanley after he had closed us up. I asked him if he had seen Mrs Warren's Profession or read the play. He replied that he had not. I then asked him on what ground he had stopped our further rendering of it. He replied that several citizens had complained to him.

"I then made him this offer: I requested him to rescind his order - to withdraw it publicly. He might then select any twelve persons he chose, and I would give a private performance for his and their benefit. He was to have the book of the play himself, so that he could follow it and see that we did not cull, or what faultfinders might say, expurgate it. If after he saw it, saw and heard for himself, he and his colleagues still thought the play detrimental to public morals, I would abide by the decision without demurring. He would not grant me this concession.

"I pleaded with him that my standing as an actor was more or less affected by his action of stopping the play, and that he ought to concede me this test, which I regarded as nothing more than common justice, but he declined. He explained that he was nothing more than the servant of the public: that sufficient persons had complained, had gone about it in the legal way, and that it had been imperative for him to act.

"In a sort of an aside he explained to me that I had selected a poor town in which to open the play - that the citizens of it were rather hide-bound. I did not tell him, as I have told you, that that was the very reason why I had selected it. He did say commiseratingly that he was sorry that he could not pay our fare back to New York again.

"It's a singular thing that the morning papers of New Haven - the morning after the performance - all praised the play. As soon as Mayor Stanley had closed us up, however, that afternoon, all the afternoon papers denounced us vigorously."

Shaw Play For Miss Rehan

Her Health Delays Presentation of

Capt. Brassbound's Conversion

Miss Ada Rehan, who is to appear in George Bernard Shaw's play, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, arrived on the American liner New York Yesterday afternoon. Miss Rehan had been in England and Scotland since last May. While away Miss Rehan underwent an operation for appendicitis, and the date of her appearance on the stage will rest with her physician. The Shuberts will be her managers. Her leading man will be Charles Richmond.

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Play presented at New Haven; audience critical of some lines, O 28, 9:3

10/28/05 Bernard Shaw's four-act social study, Mrs Warren's Profession, was staged at the Hyperion Theater to-night. The play has existed in book form for some years, but no manager dared put it on until Arnold Daly broke the ice with his Garrick Theater company, with whom he will open in New York next Monday.

To start such an extreme Shaw play in a New England town was bold enough for anybody, and that the attempt was justified in the impression made on New Haven is not so certain. The big audience to-night was not sure whether it dared stay out the play or not, and there were a number of withdrawals. The house manager had to suppress a number of the audience from outspoken protest at certain dialogues in the play.

The scene is an English town, at the house of Miss Warren, the young daughter of Mrs Warren, intellectual and unable to understand her mother's character and reputation as she hears it. Frank Gardner, son of the rector, is in love with the girl. Mrs Warren arrives with one of her roue companions, Sir George Crofts, and discovers in the rector one of her early admirers.

In the second act the daughter discovers her mother’s character. Frank Gardner learns that he is half-brother of the girl he loves and gives her up. The lines are broad throughout the four acts.

Fred Tyler acted Sir George Crofts, the roue. George Farren, was an architect. John Findlay a conventional minister, and Arnold Daly was Frank Gardner. Mary Shaw, who starred in "Ghosts," was Mrs Warren, and Miss Crystal Herne took the part of the daughter.

Mr Daly, called before the curtain after the third act, said: "I do not think Mr Shaw's play appeals to the lewd minded, but should be taken as it is - as a strong moral lesson on a phase of society that some might not care to see portrayed, but hidden, but which can with profit be shown in such a play as this. If Mr Comstock wants to shut us up next Monday I only ask that he come to see it when he will see that it is not on the order of the 'Night Owls.'"

After the play Mr Daly declared: "If Mr McAdoo thinks he ought to stop Mrs Warren's Profession, he probably will do it. But he certainly won't do that until he sees the play. We should be delighted to have him come and see it on Monday, when I am sure that he, as well as any right-minded man, will see that it is merely a strong moral lesson."

Mr McAdoo said yesterday that he had spent the greater part of Thursday evening reading Mrs Warren's Profession. An official complaint had been made to him by some women, and he wanted to see for himself whether the allegations were true.

'I have no power to prevent the initial performance at any theater,' said the Commissioner, 'and I have no power to revoke a license after it has once been granted without going to the courts.'

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Shaw in London, says Comstock cannot scare him and that he believes a rest in prison would be good for A Daly, O 27, 9:1

10/27/05 "Well, what is it now?" demanded George Bernard Shaw as, backed up to his grate fire, he received me this morning in his charming home, Adelphi Terrace.

I showed him a telegram to the effect that Anthony Comstock had warned Arnold Daly under threat of criminal prosecution not to produce Shaw's play, Mrs Warren's Profession.

Shaw at once assumed that Comstock's warning was tantamount to a threat to imprison Daly, and commented on it in that sense. He said:

"You tell me Anthony Comstock threatens to put Arnold Daly in prison if he produces Mrs Warren's Profession, and ask me what I have to say.

"Do you remember the classic telegram sent by Lord Clanricarde to his tenants in Ireland? 'If you think you can intimidate me by shooting my agent you are very much mistaken.'

"Well, all I can say is if Comstock thinks he can intimidate me by imprisoning Daly he does not quite know his man. Let him imprison Daly, by all means. A few months rest and quiet would do Daly a great deal of good, and the scandal of his imprisonment would completely defeat Comstock's attempt to hide the fact that Mrs Warren's profession exists because libertines pay women well to be evil, and often show them affection and respect, whilst pious people pay them infamously and drudge their bodies and souls to death at honest labor.

Comstock's Postcard Performance

"Because I have been striving all my public life to awaken public conscience to this, while Comstock has been examining and destroying ninety-three tons of indecent postcards, it is concluded that I am a corrupt blackguard and Comstock's mind is in such a condition of crystal purity that any American who reads, sees, writes, or says anything of which he disapproves or which he is 'doggoned if he understands' must be put in prison.

"Well, far be it from me to question the right of American to manage its affairs its own way. Every country has the Government it deserves, and I presume Comstock couldn't govern America without America's consent. He will not lack supporters.

"I cannot fight Comstock with the American Nation at his back and the New York police in his van. Neither can Daly. I have advised Daly to run no risks. When this news reached me I had already cabled both Daly and my agent, Miss Marbury, to countermand the performance, because I think New York has had enough of me for one season. Now I am bound to leave Daly free to accept the challenge and throw himself on the good-sense of people who want to have the traffic in women stopped instead of driven underground for its better protection.

Elderly and Intimidated

"He is young and bold; I am elderly and thoroughly intimidated by my knowledge of the appalling weight of stupidity and prejudice, of the unavowed money interest, direct or indirect, in the exploitation of womanhood, which lies behind his opponent. I cannot save Daly. If these forces are too strong for his supporters, I am afraid he will be uncomfortable in prison. But I also have a presentment that Comstock will not be quite comfortable out of it.

"When a man begins to value himself, not on the number of decent postcards he puts in circulation, but on the number of indecent ones he throws out of it, he is on the high road to a condition of mania in which he is apt to seize every postcard he sees and declare it indecent. An Indian who counts the scalps he has torn from his enemies is under heavy temptation to get up quarrels with his friends in order to have an excuse for scalping them.

"Comstock's reputation grows with every blackguard he imprisons. A man in that position generally ends by seizing respectable citizens by the collar, raising the cry of blackguardism against them, and throwing them into prison.

"If Daly goes to prison and it becomes impossible for me to visit America without a safe conduct signed by Comstock, it will be time for President Roosevelt, who lately alluded publicly to the population question, (an indecent subject, according to Comstock,) to consider whether even he will be safe when he retires.

"Fortunately, the clubs of Comstock's policemen cannot reach across the Atlantic, and the point of my pen can.

"That's all I have to say."

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Comstock refuses to see play, O 26, 9:1

10/26/05 Anthony Comstock, Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, will not accept Arnold Daly's invitation to attend a rehearsal of the George Bernard Shaw play, Mrs Warren's Profession, which is to be put on at the Garrick next week.

'Why should I?' asked Mr Comstock yesterday afternoon. 'It is not my purpose to advertise Mr Daly or the works of Mr Shaw. In writing him regarding the play, I desired to impress upon him the fact that there are laws dealing with those who present plays which are in contravention of the morals of the community and offensive to public decency. If, in defiance of the warning, he persists in producing the play and the play proves to be what I am informed it is, then he will have no excuse to offer, and his punishment will be much more severe.'

"Have you seen the play?" Mr Comstock was asked.

'I have not. I have received a number of letters bearing upon the proposed production, however, from people who have read the book, and they tell me that it is quite impossible. Mr Shaw convicts himself out of his own mouth. His description of the character of the play, if I had no other guide, would convince me that it was unfit for presentation.'

"Would you mind saying if men of letters wrote you regarding the play?"

'Whether they were men of letters or not is not essential. They are men of morality and decency, which is to the point.'

"If you do not attend a rehearsal of the play, will you be among the firstnighters?"

Up to the Police

'The society did its full duty when I wrote a letter of warning to Mr Daly. If the play is put on it is up to the police, and I have not the slightest doubt that Mr McAdoo will take the proper steps. I am perfectly aware that the trend of the stage is toward the indecent. I know that if a manager would advertise that on a certain day there would be a beautiful girl on exhibition in his theater in the nude, the theater would be packed. It is perfectly proper to exhibit the nude in a clinic, but it is not permissible in public. The exhibition in the clinic serves a useful end. Mr Daly cannot justify himself by saying that the play is a strong sermon. The question of motive does not enter into the proposition. When a man puts on an indecent, corrupting play, the law says that he is supposed to have intended to corrupt the public morals. Some years ago a show entitled 'Orange Blossom' was given. The man who put it on was convicted, sentenced, and his sentence was confirmed on appeal.'

"Would you put Mrs Warren's Profession in the same class with 'Orange Blossom'?"

'From what I have been told of Mrs Warren's Profession it is by far the more reprehensible.'

In the 'Orange Blossoms' case referred to by Mr Comstock the decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, in affirming the decision of the lower court, read:

It is well settled that whatever outrages public decency and is injurious to public morals is indictable. The question in all these cases must be: "What is the impression produced upon the mind by perusing or observing the writing or picture referred to in the indictment?" It remains but to consider briefly two positions taken on behalf of the defendant. The first is that public decency was not offended because the actress who played the part of the bride exposed but little of her person; second, that the suggestiveness of the exhibition was connected with lawful marriage, not illicit relations.

As to the first proposition, we need only say that the test to which reference is made embraces every picture which tends to deprave and corrupt the morals of those whose minds are open to such influences, and that in applying this test regard is always had to the idea conveyed.

Such a performance as that under consideration is really more dangerous to public morals than any mere vulgar exhibition of nudity. The latter may arouse impure thoughts, but it is more apt to excite disgust. The great danger lies in an appeal to the imagination, and when the suggestion is immoral the more that is left to imagination the more subtle and seductive the influence.

The appellant's second proposition is somewhat startling. Its logic would suggest an advance into even grosser domain than that of suggestiveness. According to this view, no public display of any form of marital intimacy could be held to be indecent. The proposition is preposterous. The picture is none the less licentious because it is painted upon a clean canvas. The aim here is not to honor, but to degrade marriage, and the defendant's guilt is enhanced, not diminished, by his utilization of its sacred confidence to serve his criminal purpose.

This is the reply which Mr Comstock sent Mr Daly, when the invitation to attend a rehearsal reached him:

"Dear Mr Arnold Daly: Yours of Oct 21 is received. I wrote you, giving you the opinion and decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in and for this District, in order that you might be fully advised of rules governing indecent shows and exhibitions. The laws of the State are under the police power of this State, enacted in the interest of public morals. Their decision is in full accord with the common law decisions of England and the United States, to wit:

'Every show and exhibition which outrages decency, shocks humanity, or is, contra bonas mores, is punishable at common law.' - Knowles vs. State, 3 days R 103. 'What tends to corrupt society was held to be a breach of the peace and punishable by indictment.' 2 Archibald Cr Pr. and Pl. 218, and Queen vs, Hichlin, No 3, Eng. L. R. (G. B.) 'All acts and conduct calculated to corrupt public morals or to outrage the sense of public decency are indictable.' - Williams vs. State, 4 mo. 480. Says the supreme Court of the United States: 'The suppression of nuisances injurious to public health and morality is among the most important duties of government.' - Phalen vs. State of Virginia, 8 Howard, P. 168. S. C.

'I wrote you upon the receipt of a letter through the mails containing the following: 'I see by this morning's paper that Mr Arnold Daly intends to put on Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession. When one says that she discusses her "profession," and gives reason for its being, defending herself, when she tries to make her daughter see the reason of this, enough ought to be said to make you wipe this out as a moral cancer.

'But, furthermore, the disgusting thing is continued: the woman (Mrs Warren) does not know who her daughter's father was - he may have been the clergyman in the play - he may have been the ruffian who is the partner in her horrible business,' &c.

The writer then adds: 'A year ago women were ashamed to admit they had read it, and now it is to be put on a place of public entertainment. It was hounded off even the stage of the Independent Theater in London.'

'This, and Mr Shaw's own description of the character of this play, and the public denunciation of the public press of this particular matter, led me to address you as I did.

'In adjudicating these matters before the court, neither the motive, interest, nor opinion of the person who is responsible for the display of any matter prohibited by law, counts. That has been settled by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, over and over again, in this State.

'If the tendency of your play is to corrupt the minds of the young and inexperienced, or to suggest lewd and libidinous thoughts, then it is forbidden by law, and comes within the decision which I sent you the other night. I leave the matter in your hands, calling especial attention to the law, and decisions of the courts of this State.

Respectfully yours,

Anthony Comstock

Daly to Comstock

Mr Daly was busy rehearsing when the letter came. Immediately after the rehearsal he prepared and forwarded this answer:

Mr Dear Mr Comstock: I have written you once explaining the play of Mrs Warren's Profession, its purport, purpose, and its moral. I am too busy a man to go further into the question with you at present. Your quoting laws to me is useless, as I intend to break none. You are free to come on Monday night at box office prices to get the true message of the play if you are capable of receiving it.

Truly yours,

Arnold Daly

"Send letter at once," said Mr Daly to his stenographer. Then he remarked that he had meant to have a great deal to say in reply to Mr Comstock, but really hadn't time.

"I have been rehearsing all day," said Mr Daly, "and another rehearsal is due now. I know that I could show Mr Comstock the error of his ways if there was opportunity for me to answer him adequately.

"Why has he not taken exception to such plays as 'Camille' and 'Raffles'? In the old days they burned women as witches because they were old or beautiful - the only two things they ought to be. The world has learned sense since, but it doesn't seem that Mr Comstock has. I will say, however, that several modern plays I could name, which have a highwayman for a hero or a courtesan for a heroine, do not seem to have excited him to any undue extent.

"The difference between 'Camille' and Mrs Warren's Profession is this: If a girl sees 'Camille' she says of the courtesan: 'How grand, how noble. I want to be like Camille.' If she sees Mrs Warren's Profession she finds Mrs Warren, and the type which Mrs Warren represents, repellant.

"Such plays as 'Raffles' and 'Camille' do positive harm. Of my own knowledge I can testify to one misguided young man who tried to emulate Raffles and drew twenty-five years in the penitentiary. Who can say how many girls have been harmed by seeing 'Camille'?

"As I said in my letter, I haven't got time to talk to Mr Comstock. I am heart and soul in the work of adequately producing Mrs Warren's Profession, and I do not feel that I need any Comstockian advertising. He is altogether impossible."

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Ed holds Comstock within right in objecting to production on NY stage "of what is probably the most daring of the dramatic temerities of Shaw," O 26, 8:3

10/26/05 Comstock vs. Shaw Again

We are inclined to think that Mr Comstock is within his rights in objecting to the production on a New York stage of what is probably the most daring of all the dramatic temerities of Mr George Bernard Shaw. Not that Mr Comstock is entitled to any credit for his position in the matter. He appears blithely to dismiss the comedy in question as "one of Bernard Shaw's filthy products," without the advantage of having read it. But one who has this advantage may assert, with considerable confidence, that the subject matter of the play is not fit for public and promiscuous presentation in New York any more than the official prude decided that it was in London. It follows that when Mr Arnold Daly, gleefully welcoming the uninstructed opposition of Mr Anthony Comstock as an advertisement, invites Mr Comstock to come and see " a strong sermon and a great moral lesson," he merely expresses a belief that Mrs Warren's Profession, with Mr Comstock's able assistance, will draw, if it is allowed to be played here, and that the "strong sermon" and the "great moral lesson" are mainly, so far as Mr Arnold Daly is concerned, in Mr Arnold Daly's eye.

We are far from denying that they are also in the play. If the reading of the book, or the hearing and seeing of the play, could be confined to the Society for the Promotion of Civics, or the Medico-Legal Society, or the Episcopal Diocesan Convention, we have no doubt that those processes would be interesting. We are even inclined to admit that they might be edifying, though what any one of those societies could do about the matter would remain highly problematical. But it is a convention of civilized society, and the convention is founded on fact, that there are social subjects which cannot be discussed in public, for the very reason that the public discussion of them tends to pique the prurient curiosity which the question is of restraining. It is not quite the same question that arose the other day, when Mr Comstock most properly "pulled" the posters for the "beauty show," which were unquestionably indecent, while the show itself, which may possibly, by some of its projectors, have been conceived as a purely aesthetical occasion, was practically found to attract mainly "lewd fellows of the baser sort." And the same attraction, we think, would be the chief attraction offered by the production here of Mrs Warren's Profession. So that, in our judgment, Mr Comstock has for once interdicted more wisely than he knew.

To say this is not necessarily to quarrel with the impatience of those artists who write in English with the artificial restrictions that prevent them from choosing the most interesting subjects, nor with their envy of the artists who write in French, and who are permitted by their public a much wider range. There are writers in English who do not feel this difficulty. Mr Henry James evades it by writing about whatever he chooses to write about, only he writes in such an unknown tongue that comparatively few people ever find it out. It would probably promote Mr Jame's "sales" if Mr Comstock should "pull" one or two of the more physiological and less popular of his romances. And we have not observed that Mr Shaw himself finds himself much more restrained in his choice of treatment of subjects than a canary bird in a ten-acre lot with the bars down. At the same time, these impatient artists, or, if they insist upon it, moralists, ought to remember that the saying which assures us that there are some things which are done but not talked about is, after all, of French origin.

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Mrs Warren's Profession, by G B Shaw; A Comstock of Soc for Suppression

of Vice warns A Daly against presenting play; texts of lrs, O 25, 1:4

10/25/05 Comstock At It Again

Copies of this interesting correspondence between Anthony Comstock of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who has strong views as to the value of the works of George Bernard Shaw, and Arnold Daly, the actor, who is about to produce a new play by Mr Shaw, entitled Mrs Warren's Profession, came to The New York Times last night. Here they are:

'Dear Mr Arnold Daly: I am informed that it is your intention to put upon the stage one of Bernard Shaw's filthy products entitled Mrs Warren's Profession. I also understand that this play has been suppressed in London.

'In order that you may not plead ignorance as to the laws and in the interpretation of the laws of this State, I ge to call your attention to the following decision made by the Appellate Division in the case of People vs. Dorris. [Here Mr Comstock quotes the decision.]

'There are may other decisions besides this, but the language is so explicit in this case, and as it is the utterance of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of this State, in this district, it seems to me sufficient.'

Yours very truly,

Anthony Comstock

Secretary

Society for the Suppression of Vice

"Dear Mr Comstock: You call Mrs Warren's Profession a "filthy" play. I cannot believe that you have read it; but, if so, you use of adjective is decorative, but not descriptive.

"It is a strong sermon and a great moral lesson, and I cordially invite you to come to the Garrick Theater on Wednesday or Thursday of next week, when I will be pleased to have you see a rehearsal of it."

Yours truly,

Arnold Daly

T N Page calls him prince of advertisers; other comments, O 24, 9:3

10/24/05 George Bernard Shaw's "Comstockery" interview from London in The New York Times some days ago aroused criticism yesterday from Thomas Nelson Page, the author. Mr Page is at the Holland House. He said:

"It is to laugh. Of course, Mr Shaw has become a sort of fad in the United States in the last year or so, and in connection with this I want to term him 'the Prince of Advertisers.' Moreover, he is an exceptionally clever man, and withal a humorist. I fancy that no one has had more fun out of all this serious discussion of his plays than he has had. He has shown his cleverness in adopting as his prey the follies of fashionable society, for that society is the most ridiculous thing in the world, and a fair mark for anybody who chooses to shoot at it.

"I have seen two or three of Mr Shaw's plays on the stage, and they have this advantage - their dialogue is generally clever. But the last one I saw - Man and Superman - struck me as being, to adopt a vulgarism, as rotten as anything could well be. One line in it - "Morality to its father, the devil" - seemed a sort of keynote to the whole.

"I don't believe that ten years ago such a play could have been acted in this country, and it struck me as singular that lines in that play could have been laughed at and enjoyed so tremendously by an American audience.

"Years ago I had a casual acquaintance with Mr Shaw, who appeared to me to be more or less amusing. I recall at the house of the Pennell's in London one night he was exceptionally amusing. He told me that he had never been to America, but that he thought he would like to come over some time especially to visit the tombs of 'the martyrs,' as he called them, in Chicago, to wit: The grave of the men who caused wholesale murder at the Haymarket there by exploding dynamite bombs in the crowd. He thought it murder on the part of the Chicago authorities to hang these Anarchists. He denounced the hangings in bitter terms.

"I told him if he came to the United States he would be treated hospitably, but to accept a piece of advice, and that was that it would not be well for him to talk in that strain when he went to Chicago, for he would surely get hanged himself. Of course, this was semi-jocular, but I think his opinions expressed there were, and still are, very characteristic of Mr Shaw.

"But the fact is, from Mr Shaw's writings I cannot for the life of me, after reading them, feel that there is the least sincerity in them. I see from the foreign dispatches that he is now attacking Sir Henry Irving's reputation. I fancy, however, that that reputation is too firmly established for him to be able to injure it.

"Mr Shaw says we are enveloped in a spirit of "Comstockery." As to that, I confess to an old-fashioned respect for cleanliness in literature as in life. Unfortunately, many apostles of the clean life, in advocating their principles, make themselves ridiculous and give opportunity to their enemies to assail their cause. But decent living has survived many an enemy and many a crackbrained friend.

"I do not believe that Mr Shaw or any one else can seriously injure the world's standard of morality, which is founded on domestic virtues. The trouble about most discussions of this kind is that they are usually based upon a consideration of small classes. Mr Shaw cannot hope to lead us to believe that the British are more liberal minded or better than the American people. It is largely a matter of class. Macaulay said that while the Court of Charles II was the most corrupt and depraved in the world, the country life in England during the contemporary period was the purest.

"No matter how much the 'smart sets,' or would-be 'smart sets,' in this country or England may figure in the divorce courts, I believe that the best people in both countries try to pattern their lives upon principles of strict morality."

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Members of NY Playgoers Club discuss his sincerity, O 23, 9:4

10/23/05 Is Shaw Sincere ?

The members of the New York Playgoers' Club gathered in the College Hall of the Hotel Astor last night to discuss George Bernard Shaw and his play, Man and Superman. The meeting, which was composed largely of women, was presided over by Miss Edyth Totten. Robert Loraine, the actor now playing the part of John Tanner in the much-discussed play was the principal speaker.

Mr Loraine's speech was made up mostly of quotations from Mr Shaw's plays. He said: "The other day a lady in the street car suddenly addressed me with the staggering question: 'Is Shaw sincere?' As I was within half a block of my destination, I said 'yes.' The conditions did not permit of hair-splitting analyses or elaborate explanation. Shaw's life is the best proof of his sincerity. He has sacrificed everything for his plays. The man has long ago parted with all temptations except that of turning his blood into ink to reveal his soul. A one-hundredth part of the ridicule showered upon Shaw in the past would suffice to discourage the average author."

After the applause from the women had subsided the Chairwoman called upon Eden E Greville to address the meeting: "I have known Shaw, the man, fifteen years, and I am not sure whether he means anything he says or knows himself," Mr Greville began. "He is one of the most brilliant writers before the public, but I am not sure that he can construct or is even a playwright. He attacked Shakespear, and said that he was entirely antiquated and provincial. The only man I ever knew him to admire was Ibsen. I am not sure that everything Mr Shaw does is not a pose or an advertisement. He used to come to the theaters in London dressed in an old tweed suit and a dirty cap in the hope that some of the ushers would throw him out, but they never did. At the Avenue Theater when Arms and the Man was produced the whole house applauded, except one man in the gallery, who hissed. Shaw came on the stage and said: 'I quite agree with you, Sir, but what are we to do when all these fools applaud?' When Shaw first came to London he was a big red-headed man, and looked like an 'untamed bull.' If he sees this expression in the papers he may cable over and ask me what I mean."

Then several members of the club stood up and said things about Shaw and his plays and the meeting adjourned.

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John Bull's Other Island, O 15, III, 9:4

10/15/05 In our review of John Bull's Other Island printed the morning after the play's production, we remarked that with Shaw it becomes more and more evident that it is all in the point of view. If we had previously had any doubts upon that subject the various and varying opinions of the new play expressed in the columns of our contemporary makers of one-day history would have served to convince us. So let us hasten to reaffirm that it is all in the point of view. And to have a point a view - that justifies any expression of opinion at all, one must do some thinking. There is, then, just this to be said about Mr Shaw, and, incidentally about John Bull's Other Island: It will make even the most cavalier of the Irishman's critics sit up and take notice. Underneath the flippant discussion of his work one may always discern signs of some sort of mental disturbance. And the power to create such a disturbance is, we take it, a very valuable and very desirable asset in an author, whether he writes histories, poems, romances, or plays.

For a very long period of time one of the gravest and truest charges hurled against the English drama has involved the questions of our playwrights' paucity of ideas and their incapacity to produce works that justify any sort of serious consideration. There has always been a faction, to be sure, that has held to the opinion that the playhouse was not a place for thinkers, and that entertainment - indisputably a primary factor in the development of a theater at all - and mental activity could not or should not be combined. But such a contention is not entitled to even passing comment. George Bernard Shaw is not a playwright in the ordinary sense of the word, and having had occasion time and again to pass judgment upon works written by men who claim consideration under that head, we are not unwilling to join in the Irishman's rejoicings that he does not belong to their class. Let us have well-constructed plays, by all means, if we can get them. Let us have our dramatists conform to all the rules and regulations of the craft. Let us have our plays technically correct and structurally efficient. But let us first see that our dramatists are engaged with material that makes the application of sound art principles worth while. We want form in our drama, by all means, but let us have thought first. Let us have naked ideas if our dramatists have not the skill to clothe them properly. We have waited long enough for men who could give us vital truths in our plays. So let us not be deaf to the voice, even if it is not too precise in the method of its utterance. We have listened to dozens of well-constructed plays - plays put together most excellently according to the prescribed formula, with each part most properly fitted, and grooved, and dovetailed, and set in place with all precision and nicety. We have seen these plays come and go, some failing at the very outset, others enjoying an ephemeral sort of popularity. And as time has passed they, too, have passed, and their titles are forgotten, the names of their skilful makers unremembered.

We can have no quarrel with the men who demand a technical exhibit in the drama, for we have declared more than once that no art is susceptible to development where there is a disregard of the laws. We, too, have deplored the fact that Mr Shaw, writing for the theater, will not conform to the rules of the game. But we also insist that as between most of the playwrights, who do so conform, and who give us almost nothing, and Mr Shaw, who does not conform, and who always gives us something, there is not much doubt left as to where the choice should lie.

It is altogether possible - indeed, we feel it is a certainty - that Mr Shaw's present popularity in the theater is something of a fad. But what does that prove? Does it detract in the least from the permanent value of his writings? Is it a reflection on the playwright or on the general state of mind? John Bull's Other Island will probably fail to enjoy any large or lasting popularity. But Arms and the Man failed, and The Devil's Disciple failed, and to the prophets of those times George Bernard Shaw was a dead issue. But Mr Shaw was not dead. His is the vital spark.

Just why Nietzche, and Schopenhauer, and Ibsen should be dragged into a discussion of John Bull's Other Island, as has been done in several instances, it is difficult to understand, for whatever Mr Shaw's previous indebtedness to those philosophers, there is nothing in the theme or the treatment of this Irish-English study to suggest a borrowing of their ideas. It begins to look as though we had here the application of the old idea that any stick is good enough to beat a dog with. Fortunately, in this case the dog is so large and strong and healthy, and his teeth are of such exceeding sharpness, that he may be trusted to take care of himself without any outside assistance. But these things are apart from the main fact that in John Bull's Other Island Mr Shaw has created a work of amazing satirical brilliancy.

It is argued that Mr Shaw's weakness lies in the fact that, though he is able to show us the incongruities of existence, he is unable to suggest rational ideas for their abatement or modification. This is exactly the attitude which Ibsen's critics used to assume - which, in fact, they still assume whenever the opportunity for discussion offers. But how is there to be any progress if those whose eyes are open do not give voice to their thought until they are ready to propose the solution? And as a matter of fact, does not Mr Shaw offer a solution which most of his critics have overlooked? What does his unfrocked priest signify? Is he not a symbol of a larger, truer, better, and more spiritual outlook on life? The question here is not in his belief in this idea. He is preaching the doctrine of spiritual redemption through a less selfish mode of living, through a less persistent following of material aims and ends.

But it is not Mr Shaw, the philosopher, who is to be essentially considered in a discussion of his acted work. As a Nation we overestimate our sense of humor. We are almost totally lacking in the ability to appreciated satire. There has always been a limited audience for such work, for instance, as "The Admirable Crichton," but if, as a Nation, we were alive to the keen strokes of informed and analytical humorists, such a play would appeal to crowded houses for months. It did nothing of the sort.

John Bull's Other Island will be another case in point. The most amazing part of its reception is the misconceptions which seem to exist in minds ordinarily keen in matters of discrimination. The scene of Broadbent's proposal to Nora, for example, would certainly appear to be plain enough. Broadbent is overpowered by her beauty and the charm of her Irish voice - he is completely befuddled, and Mr Shaw, we think, makes it evident in this and in the scenes preceding and following that the Englishman is not really in a state of spirituous intoxication. Consider Broadbent as drunk, and the scene is not funny - it is coarse and vulgar. But the audience at the Garrick obviously found it nothing of the sort. The laughter was apparently exactly the laughter which Mr Shaw expected. To our amazement, therefore, we find reviewers, whose powers of analysis are usually quite trustworthy, making a point of Mr Shaw's vagueness in failing to indicate at the outset that his John Bull was "under the influence."

If Mr Shaw wants a brief for his side of the case against the Irishman he could not do better, we think, than to read the study of his play from the viewpoint of one who, obviously of his own people, has not learned to see the joke when it is at this own expense. Therein we find it argued that the play is a success in England because of "its glorification of the stolid supremacy of the English. It is a brief for John Bull's stamping of his heel on the British Isle. Thomas Broadbent appears with all his British hoggishness."

Now, if Mr Shaw has done one thing in this play, he has treated both sides with equal fairness. The play is mostly talk, to be sure, but it is bright talk and honest talk that cannot fail to appeal to alert minds and minds not too set in their opinions to be able to give every man's views a fair share of consideration. Little happens at any time, the characters come and go, discuss and preach, palaver and chatter. But the chatter is happy and the preaching sane. And even those who are firmest in the belief that Mr Shaw is only a purveyor of his own doctrines through the mouths of his characters must admit that he gives himself considerably the worst of it in this play.

Larry Doyle is the symbol for Bernard Shaw. But Larry, and every one else in John Bull's Other Island, appears cheap in comparison with the mystic priest, whose wisdom is the wisdom of something more than worldly experience - whose beauty of thought is suggestive at least of some sort of divine inspiration. If the play had nothing more to commend it than this one poetic figure it would deserve to live as literature, as, indeed, it is pretty certain to live.

With its brilliancy of satire it is much too far above the average head to continue long as a popular acted play. As the matter goes, however, it would have stood a better chance of success if reverence for Mr Shaw had not affected the better practical judgment of its producers. There are pages upon pages in the manuscript which, whatever their other value, should have been omitted from the acted version. Mr Shaw, having himself prepared Man and Superman for stage representation, tacitly admits the necessity for submitting to the process which had made Shakespear available for the modern stage. The effect of his own work in the theater would be greatly increased by a judicious use of the knife. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the employment of a more informed dramatic art form would correspondingly advance Mr Shaw's value as a playwright. But in the meantime let us be thankful that a man of his calibre has found it worth while to write for the theater at all.

Of the acting all that need be said at this time is that it is generally sympathetic and never offensive, even if not in every instance entirely satisfying, from our own point of view. No exception can justly be taken to the playing of Mr Daly. His Larry Doyle is a refreshingly simple characterization, conceived and carried out in a vein of naturalness, and highly suggestive of the Irish racial charm. His brogue is of the best. Mr Mitchell's Broadbent is generally excellent, but in some respects leaves us in doubt, while Mr Farren's Peter Keegan is as convincing and sincere a little study as our stage has seen for years. Of the others Mr Price, as Father Dempsey, and Mr Tyler, as Hodgson, are most to be commended.

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John Bull's other Island, by G B Shaw, O 11, 11:3

10/11/05 With George Bernard Shaw it becomes more and more evident that it is all in our point of view. Tie him down to the narrow conventions of a conventionally restricted theater and there is always a sense of disappointment in his acted plays - least marked, perhaps, in a case like Candida, where he seems to be telling his story for the pure fun of the telling - most pronounced when, as in Man and Superman, he rides a hobby to the very farthest ditch.

We have always believed in the theater as a theater; its conventional rules and regulations are the safeguards which time and experience create and develop as necessities of every art. But such is the tantalizing insistence of Mr Shaw that he makes us doubt even the wisdom of our own beliefs. Seriously, however, the real fact of the matter is that Mr Shaw is the exception to prove the rule. His humor is so scintillant, his wit so dazzling, his intellectuality so enveloping, that he defies all the ordinary processes. We might be sorry if he were not what he is. Certainly the theater would be infinitely poorer for his absence. Formless as are his plays, there is reason for thankfulness in his mere willingness to place his work before us in some sort of shape suggestive of the drama.

The fact of the matter is, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, whenever they are acted, call for a more open mind than is usually either expedient or necessary in a dramatic review. He is not to be cut up and weighed, labeled, and delivered according to the ordinary processes of dramatic criticism. To subject him to any such processes is to argue one's self incompetent.

These facts, evident heretofore, impress themselves with peculiar emphasis in the presence of John Bull's Other Island, which had its American premier at the Garrick last night. Our audiences may take exception to the English verdict that it is the best of Shaw's plays, but if such exception does prevail the reason will not be far to seek. To many Liberalism and Toryism are only names - even to those whose acquaintance with British politics is not the limited general knowledge gleaned from the London dispatches, their discussion in the theater is not necessarily entertaining.

But there was applause and laughter last night - much of both. And there was something more - a sense of respect in the presence of Mr Shaw's unfrocked priest which we do not remember any of his characters to have created heretofore. Certainly the playwright has never sounded a sincerer note than that which comes with the priest's poignant arraignment of the so-called "efficiency" of modern progress.

For American audiences whatever delight there is in John Bull's Other Island will come from the playwright's capacity for hitting heads wherever he sees one standing. The Coney Island barker with his balls and wooden dummies would be promptly bankrupt if such marksmanship were common. Shaw never misses. In this play, he lands on the English head as surely as on the Irish. Exposing the dull, complacent, hollow, prating virtue of the one, he is none the less ready to lay bare the self-deluding sentimentality of the other.

One cannot tell the story of John Bull's Other Island because, as these things go, there is no story to tell. Nora Reilly's love of Larry Doyle is only an incident to the main theme; Thomas Broadbent's wooing and winning of the same fair maid is only important as illustrating the Broadbent character. Throughout we have the splendid contrast of Larry, the disillusioned Irishman, laughing at the sentimentality of his own race, haranguing against the imaginativeness which saps its strength and energy. Broadbent, the stodgy, ambitious Englishman, believes in it all, or is willing to pretend to such belief, since his interests are steadily advanced by reason of it.

There is a fine passage in the first act, splendidly spoken by Mr Daly, in which the popular notion of a poetical Erin is exploded, in which the real truth of the situation, as Mr Shaw conceives it, is laid bare. He would like to see Ireland the "brains of a big empire, not the Robinson Crusoe land" of sentimental fictionists.

Passage after passage develops the narrow bigotry - again Bernard Shaw's viewpoint - of the Church. Its superstitions, jealousies, ambitions, and its power. To this end the author introduces two priests - Father Dempsey, the man of influence and authority, and Peter Keegan, unrecognized because he has given absolution to a black man. Both of these parts are extraordinarily well played at the Garrick. Mr Price's Father Dempsey being a splendid study and Mr Farren's Keegan a little masterpiece of intelligence, sympathy and sincerity.

The play has not the superficial brightness of some of the other, and the wit lies further from the surface. But it is a poor mentality indeed that will confess itself unable to get a good deal of entertainment from it. The main idea is to present the characteristics of the typical Englishman in surroundings typically Irish - to contrast the characteristics of the two races. Both appear ridiculous in the process - partly because of Mr Shaw's capacity for humorous exaggeration, partly because underneath this exaggeration we discern general truths of form and spirit.

Broadbent, for instance, accompanies Larry to his home, which he is revisiting after a lapse of eighteen years. The little Roscullen cottage is crowded, and Broadbent makes his bed on a sofa in the parlor. During the night one of the legs of the sofa comes out of its socket and Broadbent is precipitated in a heap. "You mustn't mind," says Larry, "it used to do the same thing eighteen years ago." There in a phrase is the Shaw perspective on the Irish happy-go-lucky, day in and day out carelessness and procrastination. "If we can't have men of honor let us have men of ability," argues Larry. He is out of patience with the pothouse patriotism. He wants actions, not words and sentiments. He hates the English virtuous pose, but he admires and embraces that nation's "efficiency."

There is a capital scene in which the landlord question is debated most agreeably. Matt Haffigan has suffered under the old systems of "oppression." But not that he owns his own plot of ground he fears the reforms that his class has been loudly demanding. This part, somewhat too noisily exploited by Mr Findlay, provides a view on a broadly applicable phase of human selfishness. Matt, like some of the others, is at first strongly in favor of sending Larry to Parliament. But the boy leaves no illusions in Matt's mind. Broadbent, however, has no scruples. His attitude is plain enough. Discussing the canvassing with his Irish fiancée, he is met by her reluctance to talk to the "common" people. "Oh, but we must be thoroughly democratic," he cries, "and patronize everybody without distinction."

This is not stage humor in the ordinary sense; it is just Mr Bernard Shaw's delightfully enlarged way of putting things, but it gets home. In everything Broadbent says and does we have the heavy, lumbering type of Britisher. Broadbent in politics, Broadbent in love, Broadbent in his relations with the Church and State, Broadbent, in fact, in all the varied activities of his existence. Especially is Broadbent amusing in his love making, when he defines to a hair's breadth the dimensions of the manly chest fit to bear the burden of a woman's tears. It is a masterpiece of satire, the more convincing because Mr Shaw emphasizes his virtues as well as his faults. He lays stress on all the absurdities, but he does not fail to let Larry sound the Britisher's virtues to the topmost note.

Mr Mitchell's performance of Broadbent, excellent in some respects, seemed at times too vociferous, too explosive. But we have not seen the stage directions. Mr Shaw naturally knows his Englishmen and his instructions may be explicit. As regards Mr Daly's Larry Doyle it can truthfully be said that it is the best thing the actor has done. His brogue is delightfully genuine. He resists the temptation for the most part to listen to the sound of his own voice, heretofore a flaw in his impersonations, and he moves throughout as we imagine Mr Shaw would have him move. The others are generally in the picture, Mr Smith, Mr Crosby, and especially Mr Tyler, being excellent.

Crystal Herne adds a touch of beauty and plays discreetly and with charm.

The play as it stands is much too long. Many of its best passages suffer from Mr Shaw's tendency to allow his eloquence to carry him too far. But on the whole it ought to provide a very exceptional entertainment for people whose sense of fun is not confined to the familiar antics of much that passes for humor in these days.

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Shaw criticized by NYC Police Commissioner McAdoo, O 9, 4:1

10/9/05 Police Commissioner McAdoo had a heart-to-heart talk yesterday afternoon with an audience of young men in the auditorium of the West Side YMCA in Fifty-seventh Street, near Eighth Avenue. He denounced the plays of George Bernard Shaw, lauded President Roosevelt, and found serious fault with the churches, sensational newspapers, and the kind of play that makes a joke of matrimonial relations.

Mr McAdoo's remarks met with the approval of the young men, who frequently applauded and even followed the Police Commissioner to his automobile to cheer him as he left the building. He said in part:

'When you go to Coney Island in the summer you may see a black-faced fellow with his head stuck out from a white curtain. The cry is that if you 'hit the nigger in the face you get a cigar.' It is the same with the Police Commissioner. Hit him and you are happy. If the weather is bad it is my fault. The responsibility for every evil thing rests with Mulberry Street.

As the old-time copy books in the schoolroom say, 'Be virtuous and you will be happy,' yet I know a large number of virtuous people in New York who are very unhappy. If you are honest some of the philanthropic financiers tell you that you will succeed. I know a great many aggressively honest people who are unhappy. If you are industrious, success will be yours, you are told: yet I know many industrious people who are not.

The key to the riddle is in what you yourself believe to be real happiness. There is the scientist, living in the simplest manner, with only just what he needs for his bodily support, who is completely happy in studying the flowers and the birds, and who is more concerned in the injury to one of his beloved in nature than in the failure of a bank. The insurance troubles are small to him.

There are industrious people who work as many as eighteen hours a day, and they are not happy in the treadwheel that leads them nowhere. They lack practicability in their labor. The most industrious people I know are in the poolrooms. They work all day in the Tenderloin and all night, and they themselves know that they are not happy.

Of course, honesty is the best policy, yet there are hundreds of honest people who are most unhappy and unfortunate. Honesty is a negative quality.

New York is a strange community of many people gathered from many nations. It is a dangerous place for a young man without a well-pointing compass. The average intelligence is high. This is true of the criminal and the decent citizen. If there is anything that is wrong with our young men it is in their hearts and not their heads.

One of the best things in the Young Men's Christian Association is that it gives you young men a chance to train your muscles. A sound body most always means a clear head. Shakespeare could have written no great play with a cold in the head. You must be physically and morally fit. Train your morals as well as your muscles. This training must by systematic. You can't violate all moral laws through the week and feel that you are cleansed by going to church on Sunday. You must be morally and physically clean and strong. You must exercise every day. I could never have held my police job without training like a prizefighter.

You can no more violate the moral and physical laws than you can change the date of a note to come due at a certain time. You can occasionally violate the Penal Code, with 10,000 lawyers to aid you and a few Magistrates I could recommend to you.

Place your standard of happiness high, but not on the pile of dollars you may accumulate. Take pleasure in you splendid city. Find, as I do, the squirrels in the parks more amusing and lovable than politicians. Believe that you can learn more from the ducks than from some preachers and newspaper writers. Lead the healthy life founded on faith.

The three great forces in New York to-day are the Church, the press, and the theater. I could not truly say that the press as a whole is bad; that the churches or theaters are evil. We do not find that the attendance of the young men in the churches is what it ought to be, and do believe that the churches should appeal to them in a way that they would attend. The churches talk to the young men once a week and the press every one of the seven mornings and afternoons with extras in all the colors of the rainbow.

The influence of the press is tremendous. We know the world as we read it. Our own world is small. We cannot see everything. I do not believe that one honest newspaper man will fail to admit that this mighty power is not what it once was. What has robbed it of its influence? Grave exaggeration and falsehood. People read what they know of their own knowledge is not rue, and the word goes about that you cannot believe what you see in the newspapers. A great army of people, witnesses to events, know that, with the exception of a few newspapers, the accounts have been untrue, and they do not believe the press, so that the chance of the election of a man supported by a unanimous press is no better than his adversary's. There is nothing more lamentable than this decline in the power of the press.

I know a great many reporters in my official capacity, and have found them gentlemen, whose word was good, whose honor was unimpeached, and I believe the day will come when such men will refuse to speak to the liars they know to be among them. I believe that the regeneration of the press is at hand through the public who will not patronize the base ones.

People have been mobbed in this city by hoodlums, under the pretense that they were a mysterious reporter who would acknowledge his identity when caught and give the finder a reward. That is all wrong, and I am man enough to say so. Real reporters don't do that sort of business. They would rather sweep the streets if there was nothing else that they could do.

Then there are the theaters, and I am not saying that the most of them are bad. Some of them are very good. The theater crowds, with two matinees a week, six night performances, and Sunday concerts to attend, represent a vast part of our population, more than those who go to church. They are eager for amusement. The best drawing plays are those where there is a laugh. Unfortunately that is where there are jokes at the expense of the matrimonial relations. They are written by clever men and intelligent men and women go to see them. They would not let their sons and daughters go, but they do go after hearing the parental discourse, or knowing that their parents did attend. We cannot have a censorship, but we can withhold a license.

If as fine a man as our President is right about the sacredness of the American home as the pillar of the State, what shall we think of the theater where it is preached that marriage is a joke? That is not the healthy view of life of our best Americans.

Now I do not like to attack Bernard Shaw. He is clever, able and witty, and he wants us to believe him sincere. If New York should adopt his moral code I would resign my Police Commissionership in an hour. Shaw is a countryman of mine, and, like me, was born poor. He is almost a genius, who classes Shakespeare as a second-rater in the literary world. Shaw may have seen that the way to make money was to do something out of the common. In the drama he represents the new type of Oscar Wilde, whose plays can be revived here with profit, notwithstanding the horrors of his private life.

I prefer for one the old melodrama where the hero was always a man and a gentleman at that; the villain all that should be hissed, and everything came out right in the end. I want the old days, with the good plays, and there were many of them. I do not want the plays where you are made to laugh that marriage is a joke. Public opinion will regulate this in the end, as it will the sensational press.

Sometimes I make blunders, but they are honest mistakes that I am ready to acknowledge, but I don't like it when I am doing my best and catch fifty prisoners in a poolroom in West Thirtieth Street, that there should be those who say - and some of my friends have said it - that I have infringed on the privacy of the individual citizen. They would like me first to read the Constitution and then take the accused to the station house in carriages - the accused whose privacy has been invaded behind heavy armored doors, where there are revolvers to shoot you in the back for stopping a wicked business. As long as I am Police Commissioner these people shall have their legal rights, and nothing more. There are now 200 suits against me for infringing on the rights of these delicately sensitive poolroom men.'

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Magistrate Pool tell Comstock to get out of court, says he cannot see obscenity in Shaw, O 7, 12:1

10/7/05 Magistrate Pool had dealings yesterday in the Tombs Court with Anthony Comstock, who recently asked: 'Who's Bernard Shaw?'

Magistrate Pool not only ordered Comstock out of court, but when the wrathful Superintendent of the Society for the Suppression of Vice referred to the organization he represents, the Magistrate shook his fist and cried: "I know all about your organization - just show me some of the pictures you keep in your office and I'll issue a warrant for you."

Mr Comstock's face took on a more roseate hue and his whiskers bristled.

It came about because Mr Comstock caused the arrest yesterday morning of John Storm, a wholesale dealer, with offices at 9 Ann St, whom he accused of selling obscene pictures. He left a sample of the picture in court.

The Magistrate was busy just then and did not give the picture much attention. But when Mr Comstock returned in the afternoon and had drawn up the complaint for the arraignment of the prisoner Magistrate Pool interrupted him.

"I have looked carefully at that picture," he said, "and I have shown it to a number of friends, and nobody is able to see where the obscenity comes in."

'That's not for you to say,' Mr Comstock retorted curtly. 'The court of Special Sessions has already ruled on that point.'

"I don't care," was the rejoinder of the Magistrate as he waved away the documents in the case. "I won't entertain any complaint."

'But, but … ' protested Comstock.

"But me no buts," said Magistrate Pool. "I know what you are going to do - cite an opinion of the Supreme Court. Don't I know all about It? I don't want to hear it. Get out of this court."

The Superintendent of the Society for the Suppression of Vice placed himself squarely in front of the Magistrate and remarked with emphasis: 'I represent an organization - '

"See that this person steps down at once and leaves the courtroom," Magistrate Pool called out to the Roundsman in charge of the court squad.

Mr Comstock's face grew still redder. He seemed too overcome to speak. Noticing the Roundsman close at his elbow he walked down from the bridge and out of the court. As he reached the lobby he burst out: 'I'll have that man impeached yet!'

The case against Bernard Macfadden, which was to have had a hearing before Magistrate Wyatt in Special Sessions yesterday afternoon, was adjourned after a long legal wrangle between Mr Comstock and Lawyer Abraham Levy, who appeared for the defendant.

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Ed on Comstockery in Chicago, O 6, 8:4

10/6/05 Chicago "Comstockery"

In the map of settlements radiating westward during the past three centuries from Puritan New England a faint streak runs athwart Chicago. Peculiarities of speech and morals helped the ethnologists to trace it thither, as likewise one leading into Manhattan. But further evidence is at hand to show that descendants of Pilgrim forebears still impose their austere standards of morality upon the denizens of the Middle Western metropolis. We quote the following dictum of The Chicago Chronicle upon the issue of "Comstockery," as defined recently in a letter to The Time's London correspondent by the epithetical George Bernard Shaw:

"It is no argument against strict censorship to say that some of the world's literary masterpieces must be excluded from library shelves if that censorship be enforced. Literary smut, even though it is the product of genius, is unfit for general reading. There are enough great books that are absolutely clean to render the exclusion of the unclean masterpieces a matter of no consequence."

We have once or twice observed that masterpieces no less revered by the English-speaking public than King Jame's version of the Holy Scriptures and the works of William Shakespear would fall under the strictures passed by the heroic Mr Comstock and his compeers upon the humble literary production of Shaw. They, too, ought to go on the index expurgatorius of the New York Public Library, along with Man and Superman. But before conforming too strictly to the Chicagoan, Comstockian, and Bostwickian brand of Puritanism, of devout ancestry, we beg to cite to over-hasty library censors in this country the classic argument delivered in 1644 by that very genuine Puritan, John Milton, standing on the Mars Hill of literary ethics, in his speech to Oliver Cromwell's Parliament in behalf of the liberty of unlicensed printing and unlicensed reading. Our sage and serious poet Milton said:

"Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably, and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read. But of the harm that may result hence, is feared the infection that may spread; but then, all human learning and controversy in religious points must remove out of the world, yea, the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not elegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus."

That is, were the singer of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" living to-day, he would advise the readers of The Chicago Chronicle to embrace without reserve the benefit that may be had "of books promiscuously read" he would counsel them to "scout into the regions of sin and falsity" by reading the scornful, sociological, pestiferous, but conceivably literary, tractates of George Bernard Shaw, which, perhaps due to the paternal promptings of Mr Comstock, the New York Public Librarian has again put under the ban.

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Comment on a lesson for Shaw, O 2, 8:5

10/2/05 A Lesson for Mr Shaw

We note with deep sorrow that The Syracuse Post-Standard is seriously lecturing George Bernard Shaw for failing to see in the restriction place upon his published plays by the New York Public Library an opportunity to secure some free advertising. "It was thought," says this Syracusean, who so evidently is not a direct descendant of Archimedes, "it was thought that G. Bernard Shaw had more gumption. He has gone far up in the air because a subordinate officer of the New York Public Library, Bostwick by name, has put his books on the 'restricted list,' not to be given out, we suppose, except to readers of proved morality and maturity. 'Suppose,' says Mr Bostwick, 'that Man and Superman fell into the hands of a little east sider.' But suppose a little east sider should read Spencer, Huxley, Malthus, and 'The Decameron.'" Suppose President Roosevelt should appoint John F Gaynor to succeed Secretary Shaw. There is no use in supposing these things. Neither is there any use on Mr Shaw's part of raising a rumpus over the best bit of advertising he has had forced upon him for several weeks. Some people, we suppose, will laugh at this but in our view nothing is more truly pathetic than he who reveals an entire lack of the sense of humor, an entire inability to see a joke, no matter what its size. Therefore are we much more disposed to weep than to smile at our up-State neighbor's extraordinary density. Teach Mr Shaw the art of advertising? We blush that an American newspaper should have deemed him in need of such instruction - should have thought it necessary to tell him that if he had "gumption" he could have turned Mr Bostwick's indiscretion to good advantage. And The Post-Standard is curiously ignorant, too, as to the sort of reading that is done on the east side. With just a little trouble it could ascertain that economics and science are carefully studied in that part of the city at least as much as in any other quarter of it, and are vastly more discussed there, very far from always without intelligence.

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Por, O 1, pt, 3, p2;

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H Caine comments on Shaw, O 1, pt 3, p5;

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Mr Shaw's latest philippic in its relation to the drama of the times. Alfred Sutro's Discussion of a social evil limited. O 1, pt 3, p9

10/1/05 The Shackles on Dramatic Inspiration

It is too early to determine whether Alfred Sutro's "The Walls of Jericho" will enjoy as much favor here as in London, but there seems every reason to believe that the play will have a substantial measure of prosperity. This is as it should be, for it has been constructed with exceptional skill. Its story, so far as it goes, is plausible, and its characters for the most part are human, even though they are, for the most part disagreeable. The play is not without flaws. That indeed was to be expected in the case of an author who, despite some experience, is still something of a novice in the theater. But its structural defects, surprisingly few, are more than atoned for by its many excellences of scene, situation, and character-drawing. It discusses an evil of a limited social sphere with some frankness.

It is singular, perhaps, that its reception by those who are called upon to pass the first judgment was possibly more varied than has been the case with any play produced this season. Final judgment must, of course, rest with the public. The failure of the critics to agree at the representation of a new play is not a reflection upon the critics. But it is a reflection upon the critics. But it is a reflection upon the state of the drama, and often upon the men and women who are intrusted with the making or marring of the author's conception. Few writers, we imagine, will fail to be impressed, for example, with such a work as Maeterlinck's "Monna Vanna," providing its representation be even reasonably adequate, for here we have a tremendous struggle based on an elemental principle of existence, a great, overpowering, universal emotion of humanity, projected through the medium of the stage. Human customs may change, but the bedrock emotions have always been the same. And if there were more of the universal in our drama it would not be so difficult for intelligent men to get a more harmonious perspective on that drama. But the men who write the plays are content, for the greatest part of the time, to skim the surface of things - to write pretty little passages of mock heroics and mimic passion that bear about the same relations to the real that the penny picture card printed in eight colors bears to the actual scene it represents.

Life Viewed Superficially

It is not the dramatic reviewer's province to pass judgment upon the morals of the community or its ethical standards or the means to its improvement. But the point is that we can have no great plays without a more sincere recognition of the real facts of existence. As long as our dramatists continue to treat life from its purely superficial aspect so long will our drama be hesitant and unconvincing.

Place a primary truth before ten men and you will be reasonably certain to find a unanimous recognition of it. When the dramatic power hedges, the critic is hard put to it in his search for the truth. Most of our plays are offered as entertainment, and upon the question of what constitutes good entertainment the authorities are more than likely to disagree.

The condition that exists at present is not necessarily a reflection upon our times, to the advantage of times that have gone before. The great dramatist has been rare in every age, and as a consequence the findings in dramatic criticism have been always more or less a problem. But to-day, possibly more than ever before, the critic finds himself called upon to pass judgment upon Entertainment pure and simple rather than dramatic art. And who shall be the final arbiter as to what is entertainment? The thing that makes one man roar with delight is received in stolid silence by his neighbor, the incident that evokes a flood of tears from one impressionable being is absolutely without the power to move another less emotional.

The Case of Mr Sutro

In Mr Sutro's plays we have a case in point. The little one-act play, "A Maker of Men," contained the germ of an idea so movingly true, so suggestively human, that it was susceptible of development into a tremendously powerful drama, a theme that, if truthfully enlarged upon, might have become a classic of its kind. Here in a nutshell, as it were, we had a whole life story. But when the same author undertakes a four-act play he is overpowered with the necessity for making an appeal to the public in general, and he proceeds for three-fourths of the way along the familiar lines of so-called entertaining fiction. In "The Walls of Jericho" he has availed himself of the convenient license of arguing from the particular to the general, and in so doing he follows the lead of most of the modern playwrights. The generality of our plays will on this very account be worthless in the future for the student who seeks to find in them some reflection of the average of life of our time. Such vices as Mr Sutro depicts are, perhaps, a part and parcel of life wherever men and women congregate in what we term, for want of a better phrase, polite society.

But the people and incidents of the great master tragedies are of little importance as compared with the vital truths woven into their fibre. Human virtue, vice, passion, despair, hope, fear - these are the elements of all great dramas. But most of us have long since given up the hope of applying the yard stick to any such dramatic output. We find the little foot rule of custom quite long enough for our purpose. We remember that our playwrights are seeking to entertain us for a day - that when their little day is done others will arise whose ambitions will be no larger and no more important. As a consequence we approach their efforts endeavoring to determine in how far they have succeeded in the task which they have marked out.

Enter Bernard Shaw

For two years our theaters were almost entirely given over to the most senseless form of amusement - cheap, garish, witless musical comedy that was vainly projected in the belief that it represented the level of public appreciation. To-day the public welcomes a man like Bernard Shaw, and it suddenly develops that the word entertainment is not synonymous with vacuity. Mr Shaw - sincere or insincere, as the case may be - has provided food for thought in his latest tirade against "Comstockery," his equivalent for American prudishness. We have been in the past inclined to regard Mr Shaw simply as an irrepressible humorist. But is it not possible that in this philippic he has in reality put a finger on the one fault that has made our theater for years such a weak and useless thing? Where would the great dramas of the last twenty-five years have come from if Norway, Italy, Germany, and France had not each provided its studies of topics which our playwrights dare not touch?

It is generally conceded by the idealists that the man or woman is not worth consideration who regards as indispensable a recreation which is in no wise instructive and can bring into his or her perspective no new food for reflection, whose search for entertainment is uncombined with some motive other than a desire to "kill time." What, then, to be the drama of the ideal, should our theater mean to us? May it not comprise, firstly, amusement for those who need it; secondly, advice for those who will take it; thirdly, information for those who seek it; fourthly, remedy and redress for those who will be philosophers enough to ponder over it? Our social system is far from idealistic. There is something wrong with life. Bernard Shaw says concealment lies at the base of the trouble - Anthony Comstock denies the Shawism. "Suppress!" says he. Which are we to believe? How are we to mend matters?

Exposition Versus Suppression

Mr Shaw's advice, which has come like a blow out of the clear sky of his brilliancy and when we had all begun to regard him as a man without a purpose, a juggler of arguments for the arguments' sake, is worthy of consideration. He believes (or says he does) in honest knowledge of the pitfalls of life, and an open exposition of that knowledge - the younger the student the better. Mr Comstock has shown his allegiance to his suppressing methods by many years of service and much accumulated data expressed in numerals. The question for the thoughtful man is this: Has Mr Comstock diminished the evil to a sufficiently appreciable extent to warrant our pinning our faith to his method? Is there any real cessation of liberty at the core of things? Our municipal aspect may be more wholesome, but is it not perhaps a whited sepulchre, and has the standard of our morals as a people - as human souls and not as Boards and Institutions - been lifted by these means? Mr Comstock declares he will suppress Mr Shaw. Is Mr Comstock doing a service or a great wrong? We have found no relief from the means that we have tried - in the name of fairness, why not try Mr Shaw's?

It is so much easier to perpetuate one's pet vices if the word is hushed and each man is a pillar of society in the eyes of his neighbor, and, better still, of his wife and children. Such a man has no wish to see his kind paraded openly upon a stage, and the popular illusion of his respectability destroyed. In such a play as Mrs Warren's Profession Mr Shaw lays bare a naked, shameful truth, and the all-wise censor of the public morals cries in a loud voice against its nastiness.

Some philosophic mind has said that it is Womankind who rules our morals - that man will be just what she requires him to be and no better. If she condones his faults and abets them, he continues to err. This is so true that it may be the fear of our wives and daughters being brought face to face with such a phase of life as that shown in the Mrs Warren play, and in lesser measure in such a work as "Zaza," that that is keeping the movement toward suppression alive. Does any one imagine that if our Domestic Woman could see over the threshold of her own little domain and find her Lares and Penates unmistakably with feet of clay that she would not rise in her might and enforce the demands for a moral housecleaning? If an upheaval of vice and its exponent disciples can be helped to a culmination through the theater, let Mr Shaw, or any other fanatically inclined person, try his hand. "Let there be light."

The Theater as an Educator

But, it will be argued, the theater is not the place to teach the lesson. Why not? When did the stage cease to be a great common educator? - when men became too self-satisfied in their own opinions to heed the lessons, when the playwrights, following their lead, substituted the prudish pose for the outspoken expression of real facts.

We would not willingly part from the simple plays with their sweet, gentle tales of gentle folk, living in a world half real, half of fairyland. But let us not be forced to a diet of treacle always. Let us have a drama of red corpuscles, let the men who write out plays face the problems of existence fearlessly and express them freely and openly. If the weak fall in the face of truth, what does it matter? Is there any less evil in the world as a result of a general equivocation? In those great Titanic upheavals which periodically shake the universe, has there ever been a thought of the tender weaklings who go down in the struggle? Some good may perish with the bad, but the ultimate result is beneficent to mankind.

Is an improved condition of affairs to be brought about by exhibitions of pretty pictures of the ideal domestic arrangement? That has been tried and the greater evils still lurk hidden in the shadows.

If Mr Shaw or any other dramatist treats these questions flippantly, insincerely, or in a manner calculated to cover the face of vice with an artificial enamel, no condemnation can be too severe. But is it not time that we come out into the open? Is there any one medium of expression whose voice is more eloquent than that of the acted drama? Does the pulpit reach a larger audience or one in more need of enlightenment?

We know that we have certain elemental emotions which are at the root of all human experiences. Yet we elect not to be told of them through the medium of the theater. Instead we lose ourselves in a sea of frivolity which we know of old to be salutary to the conscience which prefers to be undisturbed.

Mr Sutro has attempted to rouse that conscience. The pity of it is that the field he has chosen in "The Walls of Jericho" is so very small. It is a beginning, to be sure, but comparatively few of us are affected by these foibles of the Very Elite. When Mr Sutro, then, lays his scalpel to the dissecting of a little corner of the body social he may be doing a useful service, but it is one whose value is extremely limited. Mr Shaw asserts that he can do more. It may be for the general good to let him try.

We are much too squeamish in our drama. When that squeamishness shall have been overcome, it is possible that we may rear a theater of monumental and lasting greatness.

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Lr to clipping service, S 29, 8:7

9/29/5 "Gentlemen: The view of my order in your letter of the seventh of September is correct.

"At the end of the year I shall probably ask you to change our arrangement to one whereby I shall pay $.05 for every cutting you do not send me.

"For heaven's sake don't be too diligent. Consider your health; take it easy."

GBS

Derry Rosscarberry

County Cork

18th Sept, 1905

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Anthony Comstock, head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, asks Who's Bernard Shaw? - and finds out after reading Shaw's letter; says Shaw convicts himself; Comstock will now investigate Shaw, S 28, 9:1

9/28/05 George Bernard Shaw? Let's see - Shaw; who is he?' asked Anthony Comstock yesterday when a Times reporter found the head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice at his home in Summit, N J. Mr Comstock, wearing a blue jumper, was caught at the business end of a wheelbarrow, enriching the soil of his timothy patch. He walked up with the reporter to his front porch and sat down.

'Shaw?' said Mr Comstock reflectively, 'I never heard of him in my life. Never saw one of his books, so he can't be much.' The reporter had in his pocket a copy of The New York Times in which appeared the letter written by Mr Shaw, the author and playwright, after he had learned that his books had been removed from the 'open shelves' in the New York Free Libraries. This order of removal Mr Shaw characterized as a piece of "American Comstockery." The reporter submitted the letter, and Mr Comstock read it carefully.

"Everybody knows," wrote Mr Shaw, "that I know better than your public library officials what is proper for people to read, whether they are young or old." When Mr Comstock read that, he literally grew pale with indignation. 'Did you ever see such egotism?' he commented angrily. 'I had nothing to do with removing this Irish smut dealer's books from the public library shelves, but I will take a hand in the matter now. I see this man Shaw says down here that he knows that his works "can, and probably do do harm to weak and dishonest people." Well, that lays him, his works, his publishers, the people who present his plays, and all who or which has anything to do with the production or disseminating of them, liable to the law which was made primarily to protect the weak. He convicts himself.'

Mr Comstock took up the laws to safeguard public health and public morals. He began with 1626, when the famous case of the King vs. Kurl came up, he said. The reporter was inclined to ask questions, but Mr Comstock would brook no interruptions. 'Take it down, son,' he said, ' and later we'll talk about the questions.' Then Mr Comstock said, and the reporter wrote it down, that it was evident that 'this fellow Shaw believes the proper method of curing contagious and vile disease is to parade them in front of the public. He evidently thinks that's the way to treat obscene literature.'

Mr Comstock also said he believed that Mr Shaw was ignorant of the laws of his own country relating to the forbidden in literature. He said he would refer Mr Shaw to the King vs. Kurl case, in 1626, when Mr Kurl was foiled in his wicked attempt to spread a pamphlet that was held to be unfit. That was the time, too, when the ecclesiastical courts were deprived of jurisdiction over such cases. He would also refer Mr Shaw to the Queen vs. Hecklin case, in the trial of which Lord Chief Justice Cockburn delivered his famous opinion, holding that the test was "whether or not the books in question tend to corrupt the minds of those into whose hands they can fall." Mr Comstock put emphasis on the word "tend."

The legal phase of this question was brought up in the United States in 1873 when a Judge, Mr Comstock said, held that "it is not a question of whether the books may corrupt your or my mind, but whether they might corrupt any one into whose hands they may fall." The includes the "weak" ones mentioned by Mr Shaw, Mr Comstock argued. He also said that the old English common law was the basis of the State and National laws relative to the question in this country.

'This very morning,' said Mr Comstock, 'I confiscated for destruction 23,600 pictures and had the man convicted in the Special Sessions. Last week I confiscated 100,000 such pictures from a German in Brooklyn. For a third of a century I have battled in the ranks of the society with which I have the honor to be affiliated - battled for the morality of the young people of this country. I have done work in Canada, in Paris, in London, and in most of the civilized countries of the world. The society has made over 23,000 arrests; it has destroyed 98 tons of unfit matter.

'There are over 35,000,000 boys and girls 21 years old and under in this country. If a person stood 367 days watching 100,000 such boys and girls pass him every day, at the end of that time there would still be over 20,000 in this country whom he hadn't seen. It matters little if the literary style is of a high order if the subject matter is bad. I had a man convicted who was printing and selling pictures of paintings hung in the Paris Salon and in the art hall at our Centennial Exposition. The only question is, Can this book or picture or play hurt any one morally, even the weak? All else is of minor consequence.

'Before this, in the fight for the morals of our 35,000,000 young men and women, we have convicted Englishmen and Irishmen. I have destroyed their stuff by the tons. The English and the Irish have furnished their full quota of unfit books and pictures and plays. And if this Irish writer, Shaw, describes himself fairly in his won words, we will bring his woks and the people that disseminate them to the test of the law.

'I understand that the Shaw books have been put back upon the shelves from which they are said to have been taken. Before now we have routed objectionable books from library shelves where they were accessible alike to the young and old. Complaints are frequently made to me by parents concerning such books, and I have quietly had many a one withdrawn from the tables where everybody could see them. This Shaw is not outside of our rules.

'You say he has plays also and some of them have been presented and liked in New York City? Well, they will be investigated, and the plays and the playing people will be dealt with according to the law if it be found that they are such as are indicated by this Shaw himself. We will investigate his books.'

Mr Comstock was asked what he thought of Mr Shaw's assertion in his letter that "marriage is the most licentious of human institutions."

'I'll be doggoned if I know,' answered Mr Comstock. 'There are two or three paragraphs along there that I don't understand, and I doubt if he did when he wrote them.' Then Mr Comstock went back to work in his timothy patch. He was anxious to do some work before it rained. He looked up at the sky and spoke no further word about Bernard Shaw. But unless all indications fail, there will be trouble about the Shaw books and plays.

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Ban lifted, S 27, 1:2

9/27/05 This has to do with a mystery entitled "The Ban Lifted; or, Why Were the Books Put Back Upon the Shelf?" The scene is the New York Free Library, and the cause for action is furnished by the works of George Bernard Shaw and their removal from the open shelves of the library and by Mr Shaw's remarks thereon. It is a mystery because the Free Library officials decline to discuss it and it is amusing because the library officers don't care much how it is to end, and wonder just why they began it.

Somehow, however, the works of Mr Shaw, which were taken off the "open shelves" of the libraries several weeks ago, have found their way back to those shelves after the publication in The Times of Mr Shaw's caustic letter on "American Comstockery." Of course this was done by order of somebody, but that somebody did not sign his name to any public notice.

The order which removed Mr Shaw's books from the "open shelves" was issued by Arthur E Bostwick, head of the circulation departments of the libraries. He said he didn't believe Mr Shaw's books were good for children.

A reporter seeking the reason for the return of the books to the "open shelves," vainly sought Mr Bostwick and Dr John S Billings, the head of the libraries yesterday. Assistant Circulation Manager Adams of the Forty-second Street branch, was not inclined to discuss the matter.

"Has the ban been lifted on Mr Shaw's books?" was asked.

"Go to the counter and ask for them; you can find out what you want to know by that method," was the reply.

The reporter made a list of Mr Shaw's books, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Man and Superman, Perfect Wagnerite, and Three Plays for Puritans.

"Can these books be obtained?" he asked the attendant.

"Yes," was the reply. "If you are a regular member of the library you may have any one of those volumes."

"Then the ban has been lifted?"

"I don't know anything about the ban," was the answer. "All I know is that those books may be had here."

Thus the incident is closed.

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Ed on Shaw's reaction to ban, S 27, 8:2

9/27/05 George Bernard Shaw

It was by no means to be supposed that such a master of the art of advertising as Mr George Bernard Shaw would let slip such a chance as a subordinate official of the New York Public Library has given him in putting his books on 'the restricted list.' We have already expressed our own opinion that the bumps of this official should be privately felt by the superiors to whom he is accountable. And this for two reasons. The first is that the advertisement conveyed by putting his books on the 'restricted list' was one which it was certain that Mr Shaw would hail with delight and work for all it was worth, which is much. The second that to predicate morality or immorality of the books of this gently and joyous cynic was to do violence to their purpose. That purpose Mr Shaw has put into the mouth of one of his characters in explaining that of course every man's primary object in life is to acquire enough income to enable him to live like a gentleman.

After presumable toil and storm, Mr Shaw may seem to have reached that purer air. But plainly he is still willing to increase that income by every weapon which God and Nature have put into his hands, one of these weapons being the opportunity offered to him by the well-intentioned Mr Bostwick. But we really must take issue with Mr Shaw, however much of little in earnest he may be, when he, Londonly or britannically, draws an indictment against this hemisphere, and arraigns "America" as a "provincial place." ("place" is good from a Briton.) "a second-rate country-town civilization after all." Good Heavens! Is hypocrisy an American invention? Is Mrs Grundy, is Podsnap, is the British Matron an American character? Is not his own island, or at least the island of his adoption, the home and birthplace of that "prurient prudery" which he exists to castigate when it does not take on his own particular phase? It is true that we have a W. C. T. U., to which Greek statues are anathema. But has not Great Britain such sisterhoods and yet more abundantly? If our W. C. T. U. has managed to suppress the army canteen in the interest of drunkenness and vice, has not the British analogue of that organization procured the repeal of the Contagious Diseases act? Let Mr Shaw go to. His remarks, although "dedicated particularly" to the American public, are evidently calculated for the meridian of London, and to be taken as read in those club windows by the light of which all his writings have been composed and must by construed.

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Shaw resents Bostwick action; calls Amer Comstockery world's standing joke, explains views in lr, S 26, 1:7

9/26/05 From his country home in Ireland George Bernard Shaw sends me a letter in which he replies to the question: "What do you think of the action of the public librarian in New York in placing your books upon the restricted list?"

Mr Shaw writes as follows:

"Dear Sir - Nobody outside of America is likely to be in the least surprised. Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.

"Personally I do not take the matter so lightly. American civilization is enormously interesting and important to me, if only as a colossal social experiment, and I shall make no pretense of treating a public and official insult from the American people with indifference.

"It is true I shall not suffer either in reputation or pocket. Everybody knows I know better than your public library officials what is proper for people to read, whether they are young or old. Everybody knows also that if I had the misfortune to be a citizen of the United States I should probably have my property confiscated by some postal official and be myself imprisoned as a writer of 'obscene' literature.

"But as I live in a comparatively free country and my word goes further than that of mere officialdom, these things do not matter. What does matter is that this incident is only a symptom of what is really a moral horror both in America and elsewhere, and that is the secret and intense resolve of the petty domesticity of the world to tolerate no criticism and suffer no invasion.

"The one refuge left in the world for unbridled license is the married state. That is the shameful explanation of the fact that a journal has just been confiscated and its editor imprisoned in America for urging that a married woman should be protected from domestic molestation when childbearing. Had that man filled his paper with aphrodisiac pictures and aphrodisiac stories of duly engaged couples, he would now be a prosperous, respected citizen.

"If Man and Superman were a specimen of the same propaganda its 'wholesomeness' would not be questioned. But Man and Superman contains an explicit attack on marriage as the most licentious of human institutions. Consequently the domestic Alsatia, which has for so long wielded the stolen thunders of morality and religion to defend its excesses, with the result that man is the most morbid of all the animals, is terrified to find the thunderbolts burning its own hands and coming back like boomerangs at its own head. Well, let it defend itself if it can, how it can, and as long as it can.

"I am an artist, and, it is inevitable, a public moralist, and if everybody supposes that by going through a marriage ceremony or any other ceremony he can put himself outside the moral world on any subject whatever, he is mistaken.

"I have honor and humanity on my side, wit in my head, skill in my hand, and a higher life for my aim. Let those who put me on their restricted lists so that they may read me themselves while keeping their children in the dark, acknowledge their allies, state their qualifications, and avow their aims, if they dare.

"I hope the New York press will in common humanity to those who will now for the first time hasten to procure my books and witness the performances of my plays under the impression that they are Alsatian, warn them that nothing but the most extreme tedium and discomfort of conscience can be got by thoughtless people from my sermons, whether on the stage or in the library.

"I hope also that the many decent and honorable citizens who are bewildered and somewhat scandalized by my utterances will allow me to choose my own methods of breaking through the very tough crusts that form on the human conscience in large modern civilizations. Indeed, a man is hardly considered thoroughly respectable until his conscience is all crust and nothing else. The more respectable you are the more you need the pickaxe.

"I am extremely sorry that the insult implied in the action of the library authorities should to some extent reflect on Richard Mansfield, Arnold Daly, Robert Loraine, and the many artists who as members of their companies have been associated with my plays in America. Without for a moment pretending that the actor is committed to all the ideas of which he becomes the interpreter, I am yet convinced that the extraordinary enthusiasm with which my plays have been pushed to success on the American stage in the teeth of managerial skepticism and general incredulity has been due to moral as well as artistic enthusiasm.

"Pray do not suppose I am insensible of the good intentions of the leaders of the Comstockers, however corrupt and sensual may be the bigoted connubiality which provides them with the huge following that emboldens them to meddle with matters the greatest men touch with extreme diffidence. But, as I have said in Man and Superman, 'All men mean well,' and "Hell is paved with good intentions, not bad ones.'

"Before you undertake to choose between evil and good in a public library or anywhere else, it is desirable that you should first learn to distinguish one from the other. The moment you do that, say, after forty years' study of social problems, you realize that you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs: that is, you cannot have an advance in morality until you shake the prevailing sense of right and wrong sufficiently to compel a readjustment.

"Now, if you shake the sense of right and wrong you give to every rascal his opportunity and to every fool his excuse. Preaching of Christianity makes some men Doukhobors instead of better citizens. Socialism may become the plea of the Anarchist or the dynamiter, science of the vivisectionist, and Puritanism of the Comstocker: but the nation that will not take these risks will never advance morality.

"I do not say that my books and plays cannot do harm to weak or dishonest people. They can, and probably do. But if the American character cannot stand that fire even at the earliest age at which it is readable or intelligible, there is no future for America.

"Finally, I can promise the Comstockers that, startling as Man and Superman may appear to them, it is the merest Sunday school tract compared with my later play Major Barbara, with which they will presently be confronted."

Yours faithfully,

"G. Bernard Shaw."

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Article, The Gentle Art of Lying on the Stage, notes G B Shaw as a guide post to truth, S 24, V p9

9/24/05 If William Wordsworth had been a close observer of the theater he would not have felt impelled to write his little poem to show how lying may be taught. Modern playwrights go upon the assumption that no teaching is necessary for the development of facility in that particular art. A thousand and one farces have been written to glorify the skillful liar, and as time goes on as many more probably will be written with the same end in view. It is a peculiar fact, however, that those who would be the first to raise their hands in protest at the discovery of a real falsehood find no end of amusement in its counterfeit presentment.

Ought we not to deprecate lying on the stage as heartily as we profess to despise it in real life? How, then, are we to explain the obvious enjoyment with which a number of very estimable people last week greeted Mr Shaw's How He Lied To Her Husband? There is inconsistency somewhere.

We encourage the liar of the stage: we applaud him: we would not willingly do without him. The greater his tissue of falsehoods the greater hero we make of him. Is it possible that when we go to the theater we leave our morals - or one of our morals - sense behind? As a matter of fact, if we were as keenly sensitive about truth-telling in the theater as we profess to be out of it, there would be no farces, for there would be no audiences to listen to them, and actors of the William Collier type would have to seek some other occupation. If our consciences in the theater were as loud as our protestations out of it, the gallery of comic portraits would be woefully depleted, and Tony Lumpkin and a whole host of dramatic Ananiases would have to turn their faces to the wall.

Nor is it only in the farces that the lie plays many parts. It is doubtful if we could have a theater at all without it. It provides a means to thrills as well as a means to mirth. It is a very cornerstone of tragedy, a basis for every melodrama; the so-called society play could not exist without it. It has ever been the yeast that creates the light and fluffy bread of comedy.

Shakespear had a thorough knowledge of its value, of its varied possibilities, of its limitation. Witness Touchstone: "And so the Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct. I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial or he durst not give me the Lie Direct. And so we measured swords and parted. O, Sir, we quarrel in print by the book; as you have books for good manners. I will give you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct, and that, too, you may avoid, with an if."

Lies many and varied have played their parts and played them well in many kinds of drama. When the melodramatic heroine hisses the word through set teeth and follows it with a stinging blow of her gauntlet across the cheek of the craven villain, we always have a situation. It may be old-fashioned, conventional, commonplace. But it thrills.

In farce the glibly spoken lie is the convenient refuge of gallivanting old beaus, faithless husbands, flirtatious wives, and cowardly heroes.

One has only to remember Iago to realize how important a figure the lie has played in tragedy. In the hands of such a master of prevarication it becomes a two-edged sword of amazing keenness. It is then the weapon of the artist. No mere amateur can wield it.

But of all the lies of the theater the lie of self-sacrifice is perhaps the most generally effective. The hero who prevaricates to save a woman's name, the heroine who utters an untruth to shield a family's honor - these we have always with us, and to them we bring our freshest bays. The lie of self-sacrifice, whether active or passive - for it may be both - always creates the healthy glow of sympathy. It is the one sure touch which makes the whole world think that it is kin.

We have referred to the glib liar on the stage. Mr Bernard Shaw, with his genius for the opposite, has demonstrated that the fumbler at prevarication may be a figure none the less attractive. In so doing Mr Shaw is hardly a pioneer, for stage liars before Mr Upjohn have been caught in a mesh of their own weaving. The originality in this case is found in the failure of the liar to escape by means of his prevarications. As a rule, some happy inspiration or a sudden and unexpected combination of circumstances results in triumph for the liar at the moment when disaster seems at hand. Mr Upjohn, however, is a bungler, and, being such, invited his punishment. It follows promptly. And although a bump on the head may not be considered a full measure of poetic justice for a young man who has tried to steal another's wife, it is a step in the right direction. As a rule, fellows of his ilk get off scot free in the farces. So, after all, our debt to Mr Shaw may be greater than we thought.

There was a time, by the way, when Mr Shaw was considered a very elusive person. His philosophy was thought to be too subtle for the theater. But he really is not subtle. He is merely dazzling. Dazzling in his astounding capacity for floating a paradox, dazzling in the audacity he exhibits in adapting the ideas of serious minds to the purposes of his comic muse. He might have been a great dramatist but for the fact that with him the argumentative faculty has always been developed at the expense of the dramatic. He is never consistent, and the fine dramatist is always that. He makes a pretense of self-assurance, but when it comes to the issue, the quality is not there. He is as uncertain in his opinions as a woman is always supposed to be, and, usually, is not. And he invariably makes the very common error of arguing from the particular to the general.

If Mr Shaw were able to overcome his love of argument he would develop into a farceur of amazing cleverness. How He Lied To Her Husband is a delightful exposition of talent in that direction. But no one who has studied his plays, read his prefaces, and listened to his protests will be likely to believe that Mr Shaw will be able to put the bridle upon his wit long enough to allow his other talents to set the pace.

He has a talent - a great talent - for playwriting. But the playwright in him is never allowed full sway. His wit persistently kicks up its heels and runs away, the cart is overturned, and the moralist, the poet, the playwright, and the philosopher sit in the road and rub their eyes.

But although Mr Shaw is not a great dramatist, there can be no denying that he is the most entertaining of writers for the theater. It would be difficult to imagine two hours of rarer enjoyment than was provided in the double bill at the Garrick last week than will be provided again this week in the revival of You Never Can Tell. The illustrations of his professed theories of life as projected in Man and Superman are likewise among the joyful things that we would not willingly do without. All of his people are puppets, to be sure, worked by wires in his hands. But they are jolly puppets, and we like to see them dance.

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Ed on A E Bostwick of NY Public Library saying that G B Shaw's works should be kept from perusal of the young and thoughtless, S 21, 8:3

9/21/05 George Bernard Shaw

We can imagine nothing better adapted to promote the gayety of Mr George Bernard Shaw and his publishers and his managers than the decision of Mr Arthur E Bostwick, the Superintendent for Manhattan of the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library, that the works and plays of that writer are of a potentially pestiferous tendency which requires great vigilance to keep them from the perusal of the young and thoughtless.

Such is Mr Bostwick's explanation of his action in placing the writings of Mr Shaw on the 'restricted list' of Mr Bostwick's libraries, where, to be sure, they are accessible to those mature readers who insist upon seeing them, but where they will not be provocatively presented to the young and thoughtless. Imagine, says Mr Bostwick, the effect upon a susceptible young east sider, presumably of foreign parentage if not of foreign birth, of being confronted with the blood-curdling and anti-social statement that the Magistrate upon the bench is probably as guilty as the prisoner in the dock. Very well, Shakespear has said the same thing better, as he has similarly said most of Mr Shaw's good things. "Handy dandy; which is the Justice, which is the thief?" Is it possible that Mr Bostwick puts "King Lear" on his restricted list?

If it be true that Mr Shaw is in the way of corrupting the young east sider, then is the Borough of Brooklyn in a parlous state. For the analogue of Mr Bostwick in that borough dismisses with a smile the ethical question which has cost Mr Bostwick so many wakeful nights, and remarks in effect that the law does not concern itself with trifles. The young Polack in Brooklyn is exposed to the deleterious influences from which the young Polack in Manhattan is shielded. He may freely learn that the Magistrate before whom he is liable to be arraigned is as likely to be a criminal as the tramp who is arraigned before him. And thus we may look forward to an epidemic of youthful crime in Brooklyn from which Manhattan, thanks to the prevision of Mr Bostwick, will be free.

The most hilarious part of Mr Bostwick's explanation is without doubt the suggestion that it is to the young and thoughtless that Mr Shaw appeals. If he had said the old and thoughtless we should not much have disagreed with him. For it is obviously to a senile society, whose curiosity is jaded, that Mr Shaw has had the cleverness to make his literary appeal. His work is highly symptomatic of that society. "I notice," says Mr Kipling's American, "that Englishmen are much less afraid of being killed than of being bored." To make such people "sit up" is the task which Mr Shaw has set himself, and in which it seems that he has largely succeeded. But to imagine that the fresh curiosity of a child can be satisfied by these excitants is to make a most violent assumption. The young are in no more danger of being brought into contempt of court by reading Man and Superman than they are in danger of being attracted to the art of pugilism by Cashel Byron's Profession. And for the same reason. Nothing short of putting those books on the list of required studies will tempt the young to read them. They may be attracted for the moment by Mr Bostwick's prohibition. But when they tackle the books they will find themselves beautifully "sold." It is lucky that, as Mr Bostwick himself points out, there is a "Committee of Selection" to which he is responsible, and which has the power of overruling his decisions. To that committee we suggest the propriety of having Mr Bostwick's bumps felt, not publicly, and by the common phrenologist, but privately, and more in sorrow than in anger.

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Library, on order of Bostwick, bars Shaw from open shelves of more than 30 free libraries in Manhattan; says works are bad for children, S 21, 9:6

9/21/05 Although originally published as a literary play for library reading, George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman is exiled from the "open" shelves of the New York Free Lending Libraries. So are the rest of his books. The ban is not official, however, so far, for the Committee on Selection of Books has not yet put the seal of disapproval upon the play. Its exclusion from the "open" shelves is by order of Arthur E Bostwick, who is at the head of the Circulation Department of the thirty odd free libraries in Manhattan.

Mr Bostwick does not approve of Man and Superman for general reading, in fact, he does not approve of any of Mr Shaw's works.

'It is all right for people of mature years to read Shaw,' said he to a Times reporter yesterday, 'but children are better off without him. His attacks on existing social conditions are very radical and are almost certain to be misinterpreted by children.

'Take Man and Superman for example. Supposing that play fell into the hands of a little east sider. Do you think it would do him any good to read that the criminal before the bar of justice is no more of a criminal than the Magistrate trying him? Do you think that would tend to lower the statistics of juvenile crime? I believe not, and for that reason have kept Man and Superman off the open shelves.

'There is no personal motive in my action. I am merely doing what I believe to be right. The Committee on Selection of Books will meet on Friday and will decide whether Man and Superman as well as other of Shaw's plays shall be in the open shelves.'

The Brooklyn libraries have not barred Mr Shaw's books. F T Hill, who is chief librarian in the borough across the bridge, said there was absolutely no restriction on Man and Superman.

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Rev, Man and Superman, by G B Shaw, S 6, 7:1

9/6/05 Mr George Bernard Shaw probably realizes as well as any one else the humorous side of seeing himself a successful acted dramatist in a theater for which he has generally maintained that his was not the right quality nor the right form. Incidentally Mr Shaw is now in a position to have a laugh at himself when he remembers that the latest of his plays to win the approval of a general audience has done so after being cut and emended by himself to meet the requirements of the theater.

In this respect, at least, he has had a little the better of Shakespear, a fact which to him is probably not without its compensation.

If Mr Shaw were a consistent man we might imagine him in the throes of despair over the prospect that now looms up before him. For what he has done for one of his plays, it will be argued, he should be able to do for others. Before long, then, if all goes well, it is not impossible that he will find himself cozily installed as wielder of blue pencil in extraordinary to his own brilliant self.

Whatever views, however, one may take as to Mr Shaw's own idea of his present vogue in the theater it can only be a source of congratulation to us when contemplating such a performance as that of Man and Superman at the Hudson last night. We may rail at Mr Shaw if we like, we may denounce him as the most inconsistent of men, but we must admit that there is a kind of joy in his inconsistency. He may build only to cast down, but we stand back amazed at the process of his building and we share with a childlike sort of pleasure the overturning of the edifice.

Mr Shaw's views on the subject of actors for his plays are pretty well known, and here again we can see him chuckling on the side. For, though he has often maintained that the methods of the histrions are not such as to give effect to his lines and point to his thought, he must realize by now as well as any of us that the lines and the thoughts may be largely trusted to take care of themselves.

Primarily, of course, the credit of such a performance as that of Man and Superman must go to the man who fashioned the play. In this case the man who fashioned it also abridged it, and though we rather think we would like to see as well as read the Wagnerian scene in hell, we can readily understand the difficulties that lie in the way of such a presentation.

But it would be manifestly unjust to omit at the outset a very liberal share of recognition for the brilliant achievements of the actors who were engaged last night in lending form and verisimilitude to the figures which Mr Shaw has evolved. It is seldom, indeed, that a more admirable ensemble is seen in our theaters - rarely that an author enjoys the advantage of such a cast.

Fitted with a role in which a competent actor could hardly fail to shine, surrounded by a remarkable ensemble of artists, and the central figure in one of a brilliant author's most widely discussed works, Robert Loraine's debut as a star may be said to have been made under the most favorable auspices.

But the actor more than justified the expectations of those who had chosen him for the responsibility. From the very outset he seemed to have caught the spirit of Bernard Shaw's original - an original himself, and which is not the least little bit less amusing on that account.

In his speech describing the struggle between the artist-man and the mother-woman Mr Loraine at once lifted and carried his hearers along, and the fine bust of sarcasm with which he referred to "the poor dear friends of the family" in the scene of the first revelation of Violet's supposed misfortune had a genuine ring of magnificent audacity. Indeed, this quality of audacity is splendidly maintained by the actor up to the point where John Tanner sees his own individuality slowly, surely, but inevitably yielding to the life-force against which he has so long struggled in vain.

If one discusses Mr Loraine's part in the performance first it is not entirely because he is the star. The actor's responsibilities were greatest, for after all the success of this Man and Superman rises or falls largely with him. But at the same time it is possible to recognize the share that each of the finely contrasted characters plays in the final result. Fay Davis's Ann Whitfield is delicious - the melting eye, the dripping lids, the liquid voice, the enmeshing dimple - Tanner's fate was inevitable, that was obvious from the outset.

Clara Bloodgood, too, played with an insistent and an irresistible charm, and the sentimental Ricky-ticky-tavy could hardly have been more sentimentally satisfying than Alfred Hickman made him. J D Beveridge as Malone, Sr., and Richard Bennett as Malone, Jr., added a share of interest to this remarkably well-balanced cast.

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Talks plain to pedagogues, Ap 2, III, 2:1

4/2/5 GBS talks plain about pedagogues. What is school? He fulfills the post of English jester along traditional lines: the jester who deals out deadly truths to the jingle of bells.

He went to school to learn to despise schoolmasters and has so ever since. What is more important to the public is that GBS wound up with a rough and ready sketch of his ideal curriculum. He said school masters ought to be paid by the state and not according to results, and that any man who laid it down that this or that creed or philosophy was the right and only one ought to be incontenantly hanged. Above all there must be no intimidation.

The subjects taught at school, he continued, should be the three R's , the use of the time table and the ready reckoner, the knack of getting off the tram car while it was going, the art of electioneering, fortune telling, and one Universal Language.

The child should be able to read such simple English as 'Keep off the grass', 'Turn right', and he should be able to write letters. Why spend years on arithmetic in order to do sums incorrectly when they can be found solved correctly in the ready reckoner?

Instead of teaching the child geography in the old fashioned way, Mr Shaw would teach him how to find his way at a moments notice to Edinborough or Australia by means of a time table.

The educative value of fortune telling was illuminated by the following story: GBS upon one occasion had his fortune told by the means of palm reading. All the secret of his soul were revealed to him along with the judicious feats of the future. For two days GBS went about in a dream of belief in this revelation. Then he met William Archer and told him what had occurred. Mr. Archer like every true acetic said: Well, then, read my hand. It was read by Shaw, who told him exactly the same fortune he had heard himself. Mr. Archer was amazed. For two days he went about in a dream of belief for the secrets of his soul had been revealed. This experience would prove to the intelligent child the brotherhood of man and the universality of humanity. One man's secrets are another man's secrets and one man's hopes and ambitions are like another man's. A child should be taught the principles of every religion in the world. There are always wandering Chinamen, of Hindus, or Mohammedans who could be brought in from the streets to explain their religions and illustrate the brotherhood of man. The budding citizen should have plenty of time to himself, and if he transgresses after all this there was always the police.

Mr Shaw's most bitter and serious arraignment was of the English public schools, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, where the governing classes are educated. The schools produce the weak, intimidated, self-centered Englishman who is the curse of the nation. He contrasts this pernicious system with that of America where the schools turn out free, independent courageous men, not afraid to state their beliefs and to put them into force.

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Ed on acknowledged debt to the American political scientist Henry George , Ja 26

1/26/05 And now GBS acknowledges that he is in debt to Henry George for ideas. His indebtedness to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer requires no acknowledgement - it proclaims itself. When the sources upon which he has made all these drafts are known, what remains of Mr Shaw but his quips, his cleverness?

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