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Int; por; comment on Mrs Shaw and motor omnibuses, D 30, pt 4, p1

12/30/06 Some people think Bernard Shaw the greatest man of his time; some people think him a rank charlatan. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that nobody ignores him. Whatever may be his individual opinion, no one denies that Bernard Shaw is one of the foremost men of England.

For a fortnight or so past Mr Shaw has been more than usually promi­nent, because of the interest aroused by The Doctor's Dilemma, his newest play. It was to talk with him about this play that I went to see him this morning at his flat in Adelphi Terrace, which is, by the way, as beautiful a street as there is to be found in all London, for all that it lies only a few hun­dred yards from the bustling Strand. Mr Shaw's home is at the top of a big, old-fashioned house that dates back to the time of the French Revolution. On the lower floors are the premises of the New Reform Club, from which a winding stairway leads up to the Shaw menage. Part way up the stairway, however, I found myself stopped by a little wooden gate, such as is used to keep babies from falling downstairs. On the gate was a plate that read 'Mrs Bernard Shaw - Please Ring,' and when I had rung a servant came tripping down the stairs, unlocked the little gate, and led me up into a great drawing room that looks out through three big windows over the Embankment and the gray Thames, and is adorned with all sorts of interesting furniture and ornaments.

On the wall at my elbow was a sketch by Rodin 'presented to Mme Shaw,' and I was on the point of starting on a tour of exploration to seek further treasures in the more remote corners of the room when Mme Shaw herself appeared to tell me her husband would be free to see me in 'just three minutes.'

Mrs Shaw is a gracious lady, who confessed to me her fear of motor omnibuses. "Every time Mr Shaw is delayed in coming home I am in a panic for fear one has run over him," said she, and seemed naively pleased and en­couraged when I suggested that a man who had written his plays ought to be able to look out for a motor omnibus.

A moment later Bernard Shaw himself came into the room; a tall, thin man, straight and quick in movement. Like everybody else, he resembles his photographs. His red beard, straggling and flecked with white, and his big white teeth were to me the most striking things about his appearance, except a brilliant blue silk handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket, and that, of course, was not, as they say in England, 'a permanency.' After he had shaken hands with me he established himself in the classic British atti­tude, his back to the fireplace, his hands thrust out behind him to be warmed, and when he had thanked me for my compliments on his play he commenced to talk.

As a talker, Bernard Shaw is unique. He needs no drawing out; one has merely to suggest a topic, and, quick as a flash, he commences to give his views about it in his slight brogue - for, as every one knows, Bernard Shaw is an Irishman. He never hesitates for a word as an illustration - indeed, he has the air of delivering a carefully prepared lecture - he never hems and he never haws, and he never stops till one interrupts - forcibly almost - to ask a question. Of course, too, what he says is wonderfully interesting - that goes without telling.

The first thing Mr Shaw talked about was his new play. "It's easier to write and to understand than my other plays," said he. "In the others I have had to get my audience worked up over normal people in normal circum­stances; in The Doctor's Dilemma I introduce what I have avoided before - sickness and death, subjects that always work on people's emotions. It's like a man writing a novel. If he murders a baby early in the book he arouses the feelings of his readers much more easily than if he depends on normal events."

'Tell me, Mr Shaw,' I broke in, 'is the reporter in the play who behaves like such a fool in the scene where the artist dies your idea of what a news­paper man really is?'

Mr Shaw nodded. "Yes, he's real. His mistake when the doctor tells him Dubedat [the artist] is dying of a tubercle is just such a one as a reporter would make. You remember he asks, 'Is it spelled cubical or cubicle, doctor?' Just what an English newspaper man would do. He's a good-natured, well-meaning chap; but he's a fool. The incident of his suggesting to interview the artist's widow five minutes after her bereavement on 'How it feels to be a widow' is founded on fact, as are some other incidents in The Doctor's Dilemma. A few years ago, when Mrs Patrick Campbell's husband died in South Africa, a leading London paper sent a man up on the instant to inter­view her. Of course, she didn't see him, and next morning the editor of the paper in his story of the death actually expressed grieved surprise at her lack of hospitality."

Mr Shaw clearly is not partial to the press. His attitude, however, is easy to understand, for the English newspapers are mainly responsible for the creation of what may be called the "Shaw tradition," a mythical character which has grown up like Father Christmas or John Bull. It is a real part of the life of England to indulge in periodical outbursts about something Bernard Shaw has said or written. If Mr Shaw were represented as giving utterance to opinions not marked by bad taste and irreverence the British public would feel quite as thoroughly robbed of their birthright as if Father Christmas should be presented to them in a black frock coat and top hat or John Bull were to appear before them in the tulle skirts of a ballerina. All this, without doubt, is very pleasing to the British public, but it does not al­together appeal to Bernard Shaw.

I asked Mr Shaw how he felt about it. "It's annoying to be misrepre­sented so persistently," said he, "but one gets used to it, just as one gets used to cold weather and the London fog. You see, people have got an idea in their heads that I am a witty person and an unkind person, but I'm not. Still people think so, and whenever they want anything witty or unkind said they make the traditional Bernard Shaw say it.

'Does any one in the world really understand you?' I asked.

Mr Shaw smiled noncommittally. "At any rate the newspaper men don't," said he. "A man like the cubical person in the play comes to inter­view me. I've made a deep study of politics and philosophy for thirty years, and he doesn't know anything about them. Naturally, poor man, he can't un­derstand what I say, and goes away to write down the very reverse of ev­erything I have told him. No wonder people misunderstand me. Still, fortu­nately there is an increasing band of those who do understand."

One of the far greater band of those who don't said in New York the other day that Bernard Shaw is like a clown posturing before a looking glass. But the Bernard Shaw I met is as serious a man as can be found in England, taking the world, himself, and his place in the world with hardly a smile, let alone a laugh.

"It's my business," he said, "to find out what people want said, and then say it for them. There are many people who are discontented with things as they are, and yet can't put into words or even into thoughts what seems wrong. I've just got to find out what these people want said and say it for them, that’s what I'm here for," and Mr Shaw looked down at me earnestly as he paced up and down on the hearth rug.

Bernard Shaw has been attacked lately for something he said in the course of a lecture of his called "Some Repairs To Religion," and it was of these attacks that he spoke next.

"The really religious people are not angry with me when I talk about religion - it's the irreligious people who mind. The congregation at the City Temple, one of the most religious organizations in London, was delighted with the lecture I delivered to them, and so were the pious people of Birmingham. It's the irreligious man who reads a newspaper report - very possibly an inaccurate one - of what I have said who gets hysterical over what he terms my 'horrible irreverence.'

"The fact of the matter is that there is now no religion in which really thinking people can really believe, and it's part of my business to try to find one." This last clause was spoken with an engaging simplicity and earnest­ness that robbed it of any possibility of offense.

"People who really think about religion are grateful to me but the people who think good taste demands that they should put their religion carefully away somewhere and never speak of it or even think of it are, nat­urally enough, dreadfully shocked. Of course, too, I say things quite pur­posely to startle people and gain their attention. For example, I said lately that Christ's teaching would have been the same if he had died of typhoid fever in a country house instead of on the cross. The people who never think felt that to be irreverent because it is a new idea expressed in new language, but it isn't irreverent at all."

As I listened to him, I was convinced that, however startling Bernard Shaw's religious views may seem, they are unquestionably the outcome of as sincere and reverent thought as that of any orthodox clergyman and sermon writer, and that he is quite undeserving of the abuse that has been heaped upon him since he delivered his lecture at the Essex Hall a few days ago. Bernard Shaw, however, can think a dozen to my one and, while I was still pondering his remarks about religion, his nimble brain had traveled from the Essex Hall to the Court Theater, and he was beginning to tell me some more about his new play:

"I told you a while ago that several things in The Doctor's Dilemma were founded on fact. You remember, I suppose, where the scoundrelly artist states just as he is dying that he is a disciple of Bernard Shaw?"

I said I did, and for the benefit of those who have not seen the play, I quote the passage in question:

The Artist (Dubedat) - I am a disciple of Bernard Shaw.

The Old Doctor - Bernard Shaw - I never heard of him. Is he a Methodist preacher?

The artist - He is the most advanced man now living.

"Well," said Mr Shaw to me, "some people have thought that by al­lowing the immoral artist to say he was my disciple, I have virtually admit­ted that all my disciples die immoral and that immorality is what my teach­ings amount to. Of course, that is not what I meant. The incident, as I say, was founded on fact. About six months ago, a scampish youth tried to blackmail his own father, and the old gentleman, a most respectable person, was actually forced to prosecute him. At his trial the youth excused himself - just as the dying artist in my play attempted to excuse himself - by as­serting that he was a 'follower of Bernard Shaw.' Then the youth said some irreligious things that scandalized the Judge, and finally got sent to prison, where he actually expected me to go to visit him and act as a sort of chaplain to him."

Shaw's new play is being produced at the Court Theater, which has for the past two years been pursuing a policy unique among London theaters.

The Court Theater, unlike most theaters, has a clientele of its own. Mr Shaw explained to me why this is so.

"Up to my time all the plays were romantic and untrue. They usually dealt with adultery in a variety of forms and had no possible connection with life. I wrote plays where people can see on the stage things that seem real to them and can hear thoughts that interest them, instead of watching and listening to things miles away from their own or any one else's experi­ence. That's why people who never go to theaters at other times go to see my plays."

'And what will happen when you stop writing plays?' I asked. 'Nobody else can write the sort of thing you describe.'

"Nonsense, lots of people can write them. Have you seen The Silver Box, or Granville Barker's The Voysey Inheritance? Fine, both of them! Why, these young chaps can wipe my eye out," cried Mr Shaw with charming modesty. "After all, it's easy to write a successful play of my sort; the thing that must be hard is to write on of those artificial West End plays (the Court Theater is practically the only first-class theater now in the West End of London) and to make it a success."

I am convinced that if we had not been interrupted, Bernard Shaw would have talked on joyfully till dinner time. Another visitor was an­nounced just then, however, and I went away with the pleasant memory of his modest words about "these young chaps" - particularly pleasing coming as they did from a man to whom the world is not used to attribute over-much of the quality of modesty.

As I went down the stairs from Bernard Shaw's flat, I met a man I knew - a member of the New Reform Club, whose quarters are on the floor underneath.

'I've just been calling on your celebrity upstairs,' said I.

'Oh! You mean Bernard Shaw, I suppose,' replied the New Reformer; 'but he's not a celebrity! - he's a Great Man!'

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Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw, Hall Caine and Dr Bleibtreau assail the genius and genuineness of the Bard of Avon, D 9, III, p4

12/9/06 In the main Bernard Shaw's attack was found to coincide with that of Tolstoy. "I have striven hard," he says, "to open English eyes to the empti­ness of Shakespear's philosophy, the superficiality and second-handedness of his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his snobbery, his vulgar prejudice, his ignorance, his disqualifications of all time for the philosophic eminence claimed for him." He admits, however, that "Shakespear's extraordinary literary power, his fun, his mind and the en­dearing qualities that earned him the title of 'the gentle Shakespeare,' are unimpeachable facts."

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Doctor's Dilemma, The, by G B Shaw: comment, D 9, III, p4

12/9/06 Bernard Shaw's latest play, whether or not it be pronounced an artistic success, has at all events the merit, common to Mr Shaw's work, of evoking debate. The new play is called The Doctor's Dilemma. The plot turns about the discovery and employment of vaccine for tuberculosis which, if used with proper regard to the "opsinic index" will cure the disease. The treat­ment by this vaccine is still in the experimental stage; indeed, the play rep­resents that thus far it has been possible to prepare only enough for ten cases. These cases are being carefully selected and most of them are in St Ann's Hospital awaiting treatment.

Now appears an artist, Dubedat by name, and his beautiful wife. At any rate she believes she is his wife, but as the artist is a complicated rascal the audience is left in doubt as to this fact. This excellent lady, however, adores Dubedat as a man and worships him as an artist. He is dying of con­sumption. Will the pathologist save him? At first he refuses, but consents, impressed with her appeal that although Dubedat is worthless as a man his achievements as an artist are beautifying and instructing the world. Presently, however, the pathologist, finding Dubedat to be an impossible combination of artist and blackguard, a sort of up-to-date Bienvenuto Cellini, wonders whether his life is after all worth saving; whether it might not after all be better for the lady that he should die before her illusions are alto­gether destroyed.

About this time there comes to the pathologist an old fellow practi­tioner, a good man morally but of no special influence in the world; he, too, has developed phthisis. The question then arises, shall the artist be cast aside and shall his place among the fortunate ten be given to the inconse­quential Aesculapian.

Another element now enters into the problem, because the pathologist discovers that he has fallen in love with Dubedat's wife. He reflects that in the event of the artist's death he should be able to marry her. Carried away by this hope he receives, treats, and cures the fellow practitioner and hands the artist over to the tender mercies of a fashionable physician whom he known to be a wretched bungler in practice.

Dubedat dies on the stage after making an artistic confession of faith and after securing his wife's promise to marry again as speedily as may be - because the idea of a sorrowing widow has always displeased his esthetic senses.

There is an epilogue in which the pathologist appears asking the widow to marry him, confessing that when he put the artist in the hands of his fashionable colleague he did it in the full expectation that the man would die; proposing to the widow, he calls himself the dead husband's murderer. The lady is appropriately shocked, but her reply is that she has already mar­ried again.

The dilemma in which Mr Shaw's doctor is placed is not one which has much relation to the practical work of a physician, but its proposal suggests that there do abound in the life of the most commonplace physician or sur­geon real problems of most serious ethical significance. It is possible that there is no other profession whose members confront daily so many moral dilemmas. It is true that the course of a practitioner to-day is almost en­tirely determined for him by the unwritten code of medical ethics which has grown up through the practice of generations. The number of dilemmas which a modern physician or surgeon would confront and have to settle for himself were there not behind him the verdict of the body of the medical profession would be so great that he would be hampered and checked by the necessity of solving at every step grave moral perplexities.

For instance: Might he not be justified sometimes in bringing to a painless close the life of a patient doomed to suffer yet for days? Every little while a discussion of this kind is dragged before the public by some radical lay disciple of euthanasia. The mercy of man is implored for those fated to linger in hopeless misery, and it is urged that all moral laws would indicate a physician who would administer a kindly dose of death. For the medical profession, however, this question is definitely closed. Its verdict is that there is and can be no justification for shortening human life by an instant in any event or under any circumstances. The physician must never wield in his fight against the approach of dissolution, so long as the faintest flutter of the pulse remains. On principle, he must assume that there is a chance for permanent recovery. This medical maxim is in accord with the strictest moral interpretation of duty.

On the other hand ordinary morality might not altogether approve the settled opinion of the medical profession regarding the necessity of telling the truth always under all circumstances. A class of casuists affirms that a falsehood is never justifiable. But if a physician believes after exhaustive examination that his patient is likely to die in six months or a year or two years is he bound to look the latter in the eye and announce his conviction of that fact? Or is he tactfully to evade questions when he can and, while avoiding positive falsehood, to use encouraging words? Is he not the more justified in this course because he knows that his most careful prognosis may nevertheless be mistaken? Do not patients sometimes outlive the very physicians themselves who have condemned them to death? Is it not to be considered that hope might do much to aid in throwing off a disease, which belief that it would be fatal would certainly make fatal?

The question may arise, and the circumstances may be such as to make it a serious one, as to whether the physician should disclose the condi­tion of his patient's health to his family or his friends. How often would his domestic happiness be interfered with? Questions of inheritance or property be aroused to his embarrassment or discomfort? Above all, how might his business be affected - the very living of his family be cut off?

And what in general is the duty to the public of the physician who professionally becomes acquainted with facts which may affect it? Is his duty altogether to his patient, does he owe nothing to the community? Suppose the case to be so bad that his patient is charged with crime. What should be his course on the witness stand? However the matter may be ar­gued de novo by those interested in moral perplexities, the fact is that pro­fessional judgment is unanimous in holding that the doctor has no right to betray any facts regarding his patient learned while in professional atten­dance upon him. The duty taken by the courts toward the doctor on the witness stand is much like that taken toward the priestly confessor. Not only as the doctor is privileged to withhold information he has obtained professionally, but in some States the use of his testimony, even if he choses to give it, is forbidden.

There are, of course, situations in which the doctor is forced to choose between lives. Such a one was that in which Napoleon gave directions to save his Empress at all hazards. Such another Sir Morell Mackenzie once be­lieved that he faced in the palace of an Empress. Such is by no means the extraordinary question to be decided by the family physician to-day.

The death on Friday of Dr Lapponi has provoked renewed discussion of the ethics of misleading diagnosis and death certificates. As chief physi­cian to Pope Leo XIII, Dr Lapponi announced that the cause of the death of the Pope was pleuro-pneumonia, the fact being that tuberculosis, cancer caused the death of the illustrious patient. The announcement was made, it was claimed, by Direction of Cardinal Rampolla, for reasons of State.

Then there was the case of "Unser Fritz," father of the present German Kaiser, who was himself for so brief a term the Emperor of the German peo­ple, and who died of cancer. Dr Mackenzie, his English physician, though he must surely have known the nature of his disease, while he was still Crown Prince, maintained most positively that the disease was not cancer and not necessarily fatal, in order that the Emperor's wife, a daughter of Queen Victoria, might become Empress of the German people.

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Lectures London on 'Some Necessary Repairs to Religions'; asks why not personify God as a woman, N 30,1:1

(Christian Commonwealth, 29 November 1906)

11/30/6 The socialism presented by those able middle class Jews, Marx and Lasalle, was a demonstration that the working man was being robbed of one half of the proceeds of their labor, but it was found that people would not make a revolution for 50%. Men were always cowards if they were not afraid they would not constantly be getting run over. The more intelligent and sensitive a man the more cowardly he was.

If the great congregation of cowards called the human race were to be got to disregard their own safety and interest, they must be made religious. A religious man wasn't one who belonged to the Church of England or who didn't, and the enthusiasm of men who didn't belong to that church seemed much greater than the men who did. Nor was he a man with a special creed. A religious man was one who had a special knowledge that he was here, not to fulfill some narrow purpose but as an instrument of the force that created the world and probably the universe. Reality made a man courageous and if he wasn't intelligent, extremely dangerous. In the ab­sence of religion a coarse man had the most courage, but with religion the fragile and sensitive became enormously courageous.

Until we could get rid of the Bible in the sense in which we had spoken of it for 300 years, religion in England would be impossible. Another ob­stacle was Darwin's "Origin of Species" in which evolution, its great religious and philosophical side being ignored became materialistic and soul de­stroying in its conception of the universe.

There wasn't an established religion on earth today in which an intelli­gent educate man could believe. No such man could belong to the Church of England without considerable reservation. The great body of legend which every religion accreted round itself might be as true as Hamlet was true, but to tell children that the stories of Jonah and Noah's Ark were lit­erally true was to lie; to say that they were religious truth was an abom­inable lie, and to say that their salvation depended on their belief in it was a damnable lie.

Many people who said they believed in God did so because they thought that otherwise he would strike them out, that was abominable idolatry. Yet in schools religion was taught in much this way. The Jehovah of the earlier parts of the Bible was an abominable idol who was pleased to have Jephtha's daughter sacrificed to him, and sent bears up to eat little chil­dren. The result was that the masses became so irreligious that the people didn't dare teach them a general religion for they wouldn't believe it. Coming to the new testament we found something new and startling - a man who spoke of himself as God, and when he did so always caused a riot because the people could not stand for such a stupendous idea. The end of the gospel story - the popular bloody part spoiled the beginning. If Christ had died in a country house worth five thousand a year, everything he said would be just as true as if he had been crucified.

The main truth that required to be taught was the powerlessness of God. If we conceived God as a moral force we must admit that apart from us he was powerless. Millions revolted against religion when confronted with the question "if God is so powerful why is the world such a horrible place." It was no use saying God couldn't be understood. A man in the dock could not be excused because he said he had some higher purpose that others couldn't understand.

The only way in which God could work was through ourselves. He had no hand or brain but ours. He was nothing but a will. We couldn't think of God as eternal if in our mind he was an elderly gentleman rather nicely dressed, as painted by Michael Angelo. If we wanted to personify him, why not personify God as a woman? The doctrine of the immaculate con­ception should be incorporated in all religions because it reminded us of woman's place in godhead and made us realize that all conception was im­maculate and not sin.

The will that drove the universe was driving every man more or less even the most sordid stockbroker in London, and it was evidently driving at some sort of moral conscience. Another thing to remember about God was that he made mistakes. Only after many trials he had produced a man who, though only a makeshift, was at his best rather a wonderful creature, If men realized that what God was driving at finally was a perfect compre­hension of his own purpose, there would be little difficulty in making them real, observant, and intelligent.

The one thing religion could give us wasn't comfort, but courage and self-respect. No religion promising personal immortality really got over the fear of death. The speaker said the idea that his body would persist forever was unpleasant to him, and what must it be for others? He wanted the life he represented to continue on earth, doing what was called the will of God. If he had startled his hearers he would ask them to believe that though in many ways he was very unready and stupid, yet he had the fac­ulty for analysis, which the ordinary Englishman hadn't.

People lumped in with their religion and philosophy and morals a num­ber of things which were merely associated ideas and customs. He never talked disrespectfully of religion but his mission was to tell people of the rubbish that choked religion. Until that rubbish was got rid of there was no chance of getting a world in which anything worth talking about would ever be done.

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Amer Play-Goers meet; discuss play, N 26, 3:3

11/26/06 Julius Caesar was expatriated last night by the American Playgoers, who held a meeting at the Hotel Astor and discussed Bernard Shaw's play, Caesar and Cleopatra. Not content with calling Caesar a British army officer and an American humorist, the Playgoers said such fearful things about Cleopatra and Mr Shaw that the former doubtless turned in her tomb, and the latter, when he hears of it, will write another play.

The best of good feeling marked the meeting, except that the Rev John Talbot Smith said that Charles Henry Meltzer did not know what he was talking about when he roasted Mr Shaw's play, and John De Witt Warner said Father Smith could not know much about Cleopatra's character, because he had never met the lady. Mr Warner defended Cleopatra, but nobody had a good word for Caesar, and as for Shaw - well, Miss Adelaide Bourne, who plays the nurse in the play, said he was delicious, and that was the best he got.

Miss Bourne was the first speaker. She was sure that if Shaw had not been saved by his sense of humor he would have been a great reformer. When she said that she looked squarely at Mr Warner, who was presiding, and smiled. She described most of the scenes of the play, and said there was a sermon in most of the lines, if you could only find it.

John D Barry, the author, was the next speaker. He thought Shaw had done a wonderful thing in avoiding technique and leaving out "love interest," but that he had lost a great opportunity in burlesquing a serious theme; in writing a Weber-Fields show when he might have written a real drama. Then he said of Caesar: "There is a strong resemblance between Shaw's hu­mor and our American humor. Caesar reminds me of a humorous American gentleman."

Charles Henry Meltzer didn't let either Caesar or Shaw off so lightly. He said the dramatist was not sure of himself, although "unfortunately" he knew he was clever, Shaw, said Mr Meltzer, spent his time before a mirror cutting antics like a clown, and the best thing about his play was that it had switched him off from writing about some more important subject. Incidentally, Mr Meltzer, stroking his hair, told the audience that he had read Caesar when he was 8. "Caesar seems to me to resemble a retired, ami­able old gentleman who has served in the British Army and then joined the Carlton Club. He is decidedly not American. He looks upon life as though he was looking out the club windows, but he is a perfect gentleman," said Mr Meltzer. As to Shaw, he added: "In every play I have read he takes what might be a useful subject and plays the buffoon with it."

Father Smith disagreed with Mr Meltzer. Meltzer had not grasped the idea of the dramatist and had therefore done a great injustice. He had been fooled by Mr Shaw, as Mr Shaw had fooled so many others. He hadn't looked into Mr Shaw deeply enough. He had been misled by the fact that Shaw's Caesar spoke English. Altogether, Mr Meltzer had misjudged Shaw, he said.

Then Father Smith proceeded to pay respects to Shaw in his own way. "He is what we theologians call a blatant atheist," he said. "By that I mean that he is an atheist because he doesn't know any better. He treats with the utmost violence and the most absolute ignorance every one who thinks dif­ferently from him. He is the greatest literary scamp in the whole English world. He hasn't the ability to get his characters out of situations properly, so he gets them out by causing a laugh. He can't write a great play because he hasn't the ability to rise to the heights he sees before him. He is as shal­low as a mud puddle, and not much cleaner."

Father Smith said he was glad, however, that Caesar and Cleopatra had been written, because he was tired "of men who get up in the morning and go to bed in blank verse." Caesar, he thought, was cute. Caesar would chase a penny round the block as well as he, Father Smith, could. Caesar was a Tax Collector, and Cleopatra was the personification of dirt and degradation.

Mr Warner said the play dealt with the character of "a lady."

"Pardon me," interrupted Father Smith, "she had no character."

"I must differ with you there," responded Mr Warner. "I can only at­tribute that utterance to the fact that you never met the lady." Then he went on to tell what a good mother Cleopatra had bee, and although she might have had faults she was more or less of a saint.

The other playgoers refused to discuss the matter. All of them over­looked a great chance to display their knowledge of history. An effort was made to get W J Lampton to speak, but all he would say was: "I never talk of a lady behind her back."

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Lr in London Times on woman's rights, N 15, 7:4

11/15/6 From the London Times:

Sir: "This is a terrible moment in our national life. We are not often terribly frightened. When England trembles the world knows that a great peril overshadows our island.

"It is not the first time that we have faced dangers that have made even our greatest and bravest clench their teeth and hold their breath. We watched the Armada creeping slowly up the channel. We wiped our brow when chance revealed the treason of Guy Fawkes. We are listening even now for the bugle of the German invader, and scanning the waves we rule for the periscope of the French submarine. But until now we have faced our fate like men, with our Parliament unshaken in our midst grandly calm as the Roman senators who sat like statues when Brennus and his barbarians charged bloodstained into their halls. When Charles Bradlaugh, the most muscular man in England dashed into the House of Commons to claim a seat in the august assembly, the police carried him, titanically struggling, down the stairs, deposited him in the yard with a shattered fountain pen and disdainfully set him free to do his worst.

"It was but the other day that a desperado arose in the strangers gallery of the House of Commons and burst into disorderly eloquence. Without a moments hesitation the dauntless attendants hurled themselves upon him, and extruded him from our legislature. He was not hailed before the magistrate; he was not imprisoned; no man deigned to ask security for his good behavior; the British lion scorned protection against so puny an antagonist. But the strongest nerves gave way at last. The warriors of Phillip were, when all is said, only men. German soldiers, French Bluejackets, Guy Fawkes, Bradlaugh, and the stranger in the gallery, bold and dangerous as they were, were no females.

"The peril today wears a darker, deadlier aspect. The women - ten pet­ticoated, long stockinged, corseted females - have hurled themselves on the British House of Parliament. Desperate measures are necessary. I have a right to speak in this matter because it was in my play Man and Superman that my sex were first warned of woman's terrible strength and man's mis­erable weakness.

"It is a strong confirmation of the correctness of my views that the mea­sures which have always been deemed sufficient to protect the House of Commons against men are not to be trusted against women. Take, for ex­ample, the daughter of Richard Cobden, long known to everybody worth knowing in London as among the most charming and interesting women of our day. One of them- one only and she the slightest and rosiest of the family - did what the Herculean Charles Bradlaugh did. To the immortal glory of metropolitan police, they didn't blench. They carried the lady out even as they carried Charles Bradlaugh. But they did not dare to leave her at large as they left him. They held onto her like grim death until they had her safe under bolt and bar, until they had stripped her to see that she had no weapons concealed, until a temperate diet of bread and coco should have abated her perilous forces. She - and the rest of the terrible ten.

"For the moment we have time to breath. But has the government con­sidered the fact that owing to the imperfectness of our law these ladies will be at large again before many weeks are past? I ask, in the name of the public, whether proper precaution has been taken. It is not enough for Mr Herbert Gladstone, Mr Haldane, Mr Asquith, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to sit there pale and determined with drawn lips and folded arms, helplessly awaiting a renewal of the assault - an assault the conse­quences of which no man can foresee.

"It is their duty without a moments delay to quadruple the police staff inside the House of Parliament, Westminister and Vauxhall Bridges should be strongly held by the guards. If necessary special constitutional action should be enrolled. I am no coward but I do not want to see a repetition of the folly that found us unprepared in 1899.

"I submit however, that if these precautions are taken we might, per­haps, venture to let Mrs Cobden-Sanderson and her friends out. As a tax­payer, I object to having to pay for her bread and coco when her husband is not only ready but apparently very anxious to provide a more generous diet at home. Afterall, if Mr Cobden-Sanderson is not afraid, surely the rest of us may pluck up a little. We owe something to Mr Cobden-Sanderson, both as one of our most distinguished artisan craftsmen and as a most munificent contributor in crises where public interests have been at stake. If Mrs Cobden-Sanderson must remain a prisoner while the Home Secretary is too paralysed with terror to make that stroke of the pen of which every sensible person in three kingdoms is looking to him, why on earth cannot she be imprisoned in her own house? We should still look ridiculous, but at least the lady wouldn't be a martyr. I suppose nobody in the world really wishes to see one of the nicest women in England suffering form the coarsest indignity and the most injurious form of ill-treatment that the law could inflict upon a pickpocket. It gives us an aire of having lost our tempers and made fools of ourselves, and of being incapable of acting generously now that we have opinions among sane people as to what we ought to do. Will not the home Secretary rescue us from a ridiculous, and intolerable, and incidentally a revoltingly spiteful and unmanly situa­tion?" No. 10 Adelphi Terrace W. C.

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Value of Shaw as a writer for the stage discussed, N 4, IV, p2

11/4/06 George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra plus Forbes-Robertson, Gertrude Elliott, a company of well-selected actors, and a lot of very beauti­ful and appropriate scenery is something to be thankful for. I would not willingly exchange the joy of the one scene of Caesar and Cleopatra's meeting in the desert for the sensations provided by the whole of any six plays I have seen this season. For pure, unadulterated fun, real comedy springing from a really comic idea, it would be difficult to match this scene in the drama of any language. It is comedy to revel in, even if the retrospect brings some regret at thought of the poor, thin, stringy second-hand fun that generally is its substitute.

Whatever sins may be laid at his door, Mr Shaw may never be fairly charged with springing camphorated jests; his jokes are not moth eaten, they are not decrepit relics of the ages. His comedies, and the one at hand partic­ularly, go a long way toward disproving the fallacy that there is nothing new under the sun. In Caesar and Cleopatra the fun comes springing at you; if you cannot catch it on the wing do not put the blame on Bernard Shaw.

Most men - and most Americans particularly - believe they have a sense of humor. It is one of the time-honored notions that as a race we can see a joke a long way off. If the average man or woman fails to get the point he or she usually makes up his or her mind that the fault was in the jest. When Mr Shaw's John Bull was played here the occasion took on the aspect of a polite funeral. The humor wasn't always on the surface, and it required too much effort on the part of the average theatergoer to dig it out. Mr J M Barrie's "Little Mary," and later "The Admirable Crichton," failed for just the same reason. A public that has been educated on Sunday yellow comics was not exactly in the proper mental state to rise to satire in one bound. Fortunately Caesar and Cleopatra is more whimsical than satirical. So it may not come so hard.

It seems to me that Mr Barrie and Mr Shaw - so unlike in most re­spects - have done some real good for the English theater in the last few years, while most of the other practical dramatists and theorists have been preaching. They refuse to do all the thinking for their public, and do not set forth in every play that X plus Y equals Z, so as to leave the hearer no chance for any mental calculation of his own.

People are slowly beginning to understand - and it is only a beginning - that to enjoy themselves at the theater it is not absolutely necessary for them to put their brains into their pockets. That has been the great trouble up to now; it still continues to be at the root of much of the evil that we hear discussed in essays about the stage.

Most of the plays, it is true, do not call for any sort of mental effort. Everything is made so plain that the most juvenile intelligence may grasp it. In nine cases out of ten it is all so cut and dried, so obviously along the lines of the old and frazzled patter, that, given the exposition of the first act, every mother's son and daughter in the house could tell the story of all that is to follow. Is it any wonder, then, that plays fail; that the very persons who have come hoping to be amused should go away and vote it all a bore? One has only to remember a case in point. For a month or more this season each of several successful new plays showed the familiar situation of the heroine at midnight surprised by her lover while she was making a visit to the apartments of the villain. In each case, of course, the heroine was able ulti­mately to explain the reason of her presence in time to assure the happy fi­nal curtain. Grant that this situation at one time contained a dramatic thrill; then remember that familiarity breeds contempt. And the trouble with so much of our drama is its obvious familiarity.

I have heard it frequently asserted of late that the best people do not go to the theater. I do not know just what is meant by the best people. In a democratic community - or one supposedly democratic - one rather hesitates to accept the term in exactly the sense in which apparently it is employed. But my own observations certainly lead me to believe that the men and women who represent an intellectual element in the community are not gen­erally numbered among the regular theatergoers. An actor like Mr Robertson or Mr Mansfield will bring them out. But through the general sea­son they are more or less conspicuous by their absence.

Now there can be no doubt that acting is an art, that playwriting is an art, that the conjunction of fine play and fine actor provides an artistic com­bination that ought not to be ignored. But for all save callow minds a large percentage of our stage plays have ceased to be interesting. The old puppets are trotted out over and over again, the old strings are pulled, and they dance over and over again in the same old way. Even the least intelligent of playgoers gets tired of it by and by, is already tired, as the failure of play after play goes to prove.

The magician must show his audiences new tricks. Or failing in that he must surround the old ones with the glamour of originality. In playwrit­ing the conditions are much the same. Occasionally a Pinero or a Jones can so cover the old bones that they cease to rattle. But the crying need of the the­ater to-day is new blood, new thought, new ideas; if it is necessary to have new forms along with these, in Heaven's name let us say "Welcome" and be done with it.

Since Mr Shaw does write for the theater it is a pity that he does not abide a little more by the rules of the game. His plays would gain, not lose, by more conformity. But since some sacrifice is necessary it is just as well that we take the lesser loss. Rather ideas without form than the reverse.

Mr Israel Zangwill is an illustration of the man who passes from let­ters to the stage, who in the passage loses every vestige of originality. His plays are pretty things, with pretty little candy heroines cast in the oldest molds. There is just the difference between Mr Shaw's plays and Mr Zangwill's that there is between the sickly table d'hote where you get no end of dishes, watered claret and no food, and the well-ordered meal where you get real food and drink. I daresay that I have shared a general misfortune in dining sometimes in houses where the service and the well-appointed table left absolutely nothing to be asked, and where there has appeared be­fore me, set down by sleek and well-trained servants, a multitude of viands, daintily set out in finest fragile china, garnished and made tempting in all the ways of highest culinary art. I have tasted course after course, have lied like a gentleman about the superiority of this or that, and have left the table inwardly vowing that I would never again be tempted to insult a good and loyal appetite with such a substitute for a good and honest meal.

Nine out of ten plays that one sees bear the same relation to real drama that these set culinary functions bear to a real and substantial dinner. Mr Shaw, at least, does give one food for thought.

The law of compensation is applicable to entertainment. Payment in pleasure is proportionate to effort. It is the fewest number of plays nowa­days that do entertain even those who require the least. The trouble is that people delude themselves with the idea that amusement calls for a sus­pended capacity for thought. Brains are checked in the cloak room with hats and coats. You leave the theater with the sense of an evening wasted; you wonder why you cannot enjoy these things as you once did. Then in a day or two you repeat the old fallacy about your business cares and how you only go to the theater to be amused, and you select some nice popular play to which everybody is rushing like yourself because it seems to promise some amusement with the least possible expenditure of mental effort.

It requires some hardihood on the part of actors and managers to give the public credit for possessing an intelligence which it is the first to dis­claim. But the thing must be done or the managers and actors will have to pay the price. The repeated failures of plays that were counted on to win popular success prove that there is something radically wrong. Pioneers like Mr Mansfield and Mr Daly, who literally dragged the Shaw plays to the stage, can do more than all the essayists in the world to set people moving in the right direction. If the men who talk about their abilities to write plays like Pinero's and Jones's - but who never do - will stop shouting about the form­lessness of Mr Shaw - will give us their own ideas in the raw, as they insist that he is doing - we may eventually have a drama that will be worth pre­serving. We need ideas first.

Suppose Shakespear came to New York to-day with a bundle of manuscript under his arm. Is it difficult to imagine what the up-to-date stage manager, with his ideas of stage form, would say? I saw a play acted in New York last year that lacked form, but was full of thought. I saw it a few weeks ago after a professional dramatist had hacked it all to pieces and it had form, but all the thought was gone. Let us have a combination of the two by all means if we can get it, but if one or the other sacrifice must be made, let it be the form rather than the substance.

I have purposely refrained from going into any extended or detailed account of Caesar and Cleopatra. The play has long been in print, and ought to be tolerably familiar by now to any one who is interested in the drama. It is overloaded, as are most of Shaw's plays, with dialogue, a large share of which might easily be spared in the stage representation. The one fault in fact in the present production of the play has been that of too great rever­ence for the text. Whether it was Mr Shaw or his interpreters who had that reverence I do not know, though I may have suspicions. It is certain, how­ever, that with judicious cutting the play's acting value would be increased. If there were any doubt of Mr Shaw's perspicacity in matters pertaining to the stage it would be removed by memory of the fact that in writing of this play he had Forbes-Robertson in mind for the role of Julius Caesar. In ap­pearance he is the ideal Julius, in speech and action he expresses with re­markable facility and charm every mood - and there are many of them - which Mr Shaw has embodied in the character. His opening soliloquy before the baby Sphinx is a model of eloquence and illuminative expressiveness. The succeeding scene with the kittenish Cleopatra is carried off in just the right vein of humor, blended with amazement, and he develops neurally and feelingly in the later scenes all the necessary phases of quiet dignity and ac­tive energy. I would have liked a little more volume of voice in occasional passages, but one cannot have everything. And Mr Forbes-Roberston's reading is so beautiful and varied that the absence of greatest dynamic power need not be deplored.

Miss Elliott's Cleopatra is eminently satisfying, and the Rufio of Percy Rhodes, The Ftatateeta of Adelaide Bourne, and the Brittanus of Ian Robertson are good enough to merit particular mention in a cast which has been chosen with more than ordinary judgment. The production in its en­tirety merits the highest praise.

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Caesar and Cleopatra, by G B Shaw: rev, O 31, 9:1

10/31/06 It is not often that an actor meets with such an ovation as was Forbes-Robertson's last night at the end of the first act of Caesar and Cleopatra. It was a triumph for the artist, for Miss Elliott and last, but by no means least, for George Bernard Shaw. And in justice to each of these it must be said that there was every reason why it should have been so. But that burst of enthu­siasm was of the exhausting kind. It made what followed seem compara­tively tame.

Caesar and Cleopatra is a delightful play to read, and though there were undoubtedly those at the New Amsterdam last night who will not share the sentiment it is a most delightful play to see. Not all of it is as engrossing as the scene of Caesar's meeting with Cleopatra in the first act, in fact there are times when the interest of even the most zealous Shawite must flag, but it mingles throughout such a spirit of pure fun with such amazing touches of true dignity and tenderness that one must be a dullard, indeed, who will not enjoy it. What does it matter if it is or is not history?

Mr Shaw refers to a lot of authorities to prove his case about Caesar. But some of us at least in the spirit of thanksgiving are quite willing to let the authorities go hang, for whether this Caesar ever divided Gaul into little parts or not he is with his keen sense of humor, his gentle philosophy, and his masterful resource - a rare figure in a play.

Mr Shaw has been fortunate in his interpretations. There is not a mood in the role which Mr Forbes-Robertson does not compass. He might be more forceful perhaps in an occasional passage, such as that, for instance, in which he exclaims in horror at the revelation of the death of Pothinus, but what the scene loses in dynamics it gains in tremendous, if necessarily en­forced, physical repression. Certainly nothing could be finer than the scene in which he turns in denunciation on the boasting Lucius, who has sought to make a virtue of his share in the death of Pompey.

In the hurried notice possible between the close of such a perfor­mance and the going to press one can do faint justice to the acting, to its varied phases, and many excellencies. But the briefest record must take ac­count of the actor's success in showing forth the underlying humor of the character as Mr Shaw has drawn it. It is a vein of conscious, almost melan­choly mirth at times, and is conveyed most expressively and most engag­ingly.

There are moments when this Caesar is like Hamlet - not because the best of the living Hamlets is playing him - but because he is so situated that there is a resemblance in speech and plan. Pothinus is a bit of a Polonius in his way, cut from the same cloth, colored in the same dye with much the same garrulousness and guile.

There does not appear to be any good reason why the play, in succes­sive representations, should not be subjected to cuts. A whole act was omitted last night without ill-effect. Caesar and Cleopatra cannot be cut down to situation, of course, for Mr Shaw's method defies the methods of or­dinary procedure. But the opening scene of the first act, with its verbose ex­position: the scene in Cleopatra's chamber, and the one upon the rooftops might be pruned with distinct advantage to the whole.

In producing the play the hand of sympathetic and intelligent stage direction is discernible. The scene pictures are rich and apparently correct in archaeological detail. The picture disclosing the murdered Ftatateeta - the name is quite as difficult to spell as to pronounce - lying dead before the blood-spattered altar of Ra left the spectators somewhat cold, probably through sheer horror of the gruesome spectacle. But the audience at the New Amsterdam enthused most properly at the picture in the first act when the lifting loom revealed that sleeping Cleopatra resting between the paws of the Sphinx, her head reposing on a mass of poppies. And in that indescrib­ably humorous scene which follows Miss Gertrude Elliott very quickly demonstrated her fitness for the difficult task with which she had been in­trusted.

Her Cleopatra is the character Shaw has drawn filled with girlish spirit, lightened on the one side, with the playful humor of childish fear, darkened on the other side by the vengeful cruelty of superstition and sud­denly acquired power. It will perhaps be argued that in occasional later scenes Miss Elliott lacks the power of dominating majesty. But Mr Shaw's Cleopatra, with her schoolgirl ideal of love maintained until the last, is at no time regal, and Miss Elliott's playing is in harmony with the text. She reads with beautiful variety, and there is not a single mannerism to mar the flow of eloquence. And she is beautiful with a strange sort of dusky beauty that fulfills the ideal of this youthful Cleopatra.

There are other excellent acting achievements in this performance, which can only be briefly mentioned, notable the grim Ftatateeta of Miss Adelaide Bourne, the bluff "Rufio" of Percy Rhodes, and the slow, drawling, typically British "Brittanicus" of Ian Robertson.

The story treats of the visit of Julius Caesar to Egypt at the end of the thirty-third dynasty, the Winter of 706-7 in Rome; Christian computation, October, 48 B C, to March, 47 B C.

At the time of Caesar's arrival in Egypt two factions were contending for the throne. Ptolemy Dionysus, aged 10, reigned in the palace at Alexandria, supported by Archillas, the General of the Roman army of occu­pation left by Aulus Gabinus. The supporters of Cleopatra have fled with her to a palace on the borders of Syria.

The opening scene is laid within the walls of a palace on the Syrian border of Egypt. This palace, an old, low Syrian building of whitened mud, Mr Shaw takes pains to explain, was not so ugly as Buckingham palace. The courtyard is filled with officers and soldiers of the Egyptian army, and the action begins with the arrival of Bel Affris, a military service from the tem­ple of Ra, in Memphis. He comes to bring to Cleopatra information of the ap­proach of the Roman army under Julius Caesar, who, it is announced, has landed on the shores of Egypt and will make himself master of the country. Great excitement follows this announcement, and Ftatateeta, the nurse and guardian of Cleopatra, finds that in the confusion the young Princess has dis­appeared.

The scene changes to a sphinx in the desert, disclosing Cleopatra asleep between its paws in a heap of red poppies. Then out of the deep si­lence of the night comes a man in Roman armor, lost in contemplation. This man is Julius Caesar. Caesar discovers Cleopatra's identity, but she does not recognize him as the conqueror. The scene changes to the throne room of the palace, where Cleopatra, still ignorant of Caesar's identity, is crowned by him Queen of Egypt. As the Roman soldiers troop in tumultuously they dress in military order opposite the throne, lift their swords in salutation and exclaim "Hail, Caesar!" to Cleopatra's astonishment.

The scene of the second act is the council chamber of the Chancellors of the King's Treasury in Alexandria, some days later. The young King, a mixture in character of boyish impotence and petulance, is on the throne. The King, guided by a Minister, relates the history of his house and the restoration of his father to the throne by Mark Antony. Now his sister, Cleopatra, has cast a spell on Julius Caesar to lead him to uphold her false pretense to the rule of Egypt. Caesar comes and demands the payment of the debt contracted by Ptolemy's father with the Roman Triumvirate. This refused, he desires to settle the question in dispute between Ptolemy and Cleopatra, and, to the surprise of all, produces the young Queen. His proposal that Ptolemy and Cleopatra shall reign jointly is rejected by Archillas and Lucius Septimius, who command greater Roman and Egyptian military force than Caesar, and the act ends in a battle and the great fire in which the li­brary is destroyed.

In this act Cleopatra mentions to Caesar the beautiful young man with strong, round arms, who came over the desert with many horsemen and slew her sister's husband, and gave her father back his throne. "I was only 12 then," she says, wistfully: "I wish he would come again now that I am Queen. I would make him my husband," and Caesar responds: "It might be managed, perhaps, for it was I who sent the beautiful young man to help your father."

The third act is presented in two scenes, one representing a room in the palace and the other the roof gorgeously decorated. Pothinus, Ptolemy's guardian, proposes to Cleopatra that she betray Caesar. When she refuses he denounces her to Caesar as a traitor. She revengefully orders Ftatateeta, her nurse, to kill Pothinus, and this tragedy brings about an attack on the palace by his followers. The act ends with the killing of the nurse by Rufio, Caesar's lieutenant.

The last scene as the play has been prepared for the stage, shows the East Harbor with Caesar's galley ready to sail for Rome. The campaign is over. Ptolemy has been drowned in a battle with the legions of Caesar and Cleopatra is now really Queen. Caesar appoints Rufio Roman Governor, and is about to board his galley to depart when Cleopatra comes in black, mourning for her nurse. Their parting is brief, and as he sails he tells her he will send Mark Antony, "a Roman from head to heal," for whom she has already voiced a decided preference.

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Arnold Daly produces How He Lied To Her Husband at Keith & Proctor's, O 30, 4:3

10/30/06 For the first time yesterday afternoon, at Keith & Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theater, a play by George Bernard Shaw was submitted for the ap­proval of a vaudeville audience. The play was the little one-act satire How He Lied To Her Husband, and the actor was Arnold Daly.

"I wonder just what he's making fun of?" a man in the audience said.

"It took fine," an usher insisted after it was over.

"It had just three laughs for a vaudeville audience," a cynical observer said. "I know, because I counted them."

Mr Daly gave his characteristic performance of the role of The Lover. He was capably supported by Percival T Moore as Her Husband and Isabelle Urquhart as Herself.

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F Robertson discusses the 'modest' playwright, O 28, pt 4, p2

10/28/06 I first came into personal relations with Bernard Shaw some ten years ago," said Forbes Robertson, "at the time when I announced my intention of appearing in Hamlet."

The English actor spoke deliberately, almost cautiously, and chose his words with scrupulous precision partly as if from force of habit and partly as if to avoid any possibility of misinterpretation. A slight note of weariness was manifest in his voice, for he had just returned from a rehearsal of Caesar and Cleopatra, and was obviously fatigued. Before continuing he fitted a cigarette into a long mouthpiece and meditatively struck a match.

Even then he did not continue immediately. From his writing table he took a copy of a letter from the interviewer; a letter upon the delivery of which his managers had politely insisted and which contained an explicit statement of the subjects on which the actor was to be cross-examined. For Mr Robertson is not a man who trusts to chance and circumstance, and therefore not easily to be interrogated. He is an Englishman to the core and most conservative. He put on his eyeglasses and studied the brief as if to make sure that he was not departing from the outlines of debate. Then, and not till then, did he venture further utterance.

"Although we were complete strangers at the epoch of which I speak," he continued, "Shaw wrote me voluminous letters in his characteristic vein, telling me just what to do and what not to do; precisely how to do it and ex­actly how it shouldn't be done. He gave me a lot of really good advice and some ideas that I didn't hesitate to use.

"Mr Shaw was then still a critic in active service. 'If you think you're going to do so and so,' he would write with the most humorous assurance, 'you're altogether mistaken.' And then he would dilate extensively upon the subject." The Englishman smiled quietly at his recollection of a Gallic eccen­tricity.

"That attitude bears a striking resemblance to the lawyer in the last act of You Never Can Tell," remarked the interviewer, reflecting almost be­fore the words were out of his mouth that the observation might well be ruled out of order inasmuch as Mr Shaw is man who generally bears a striking resemblance to himself and his writings.

"I suppose it does," came the judicial reply. "The story of our final meeting in a personal way - for we never actually met during the period of our long written communications - is merely the history of an author and actor making arrangements for a professional production. Our personal in­timacy was born when I was preparing to produce The Devil's Disciple, which ran for a whole season and drew crowded houses.

"Do you object to giving me some details about your first meeting?"

"I don't in the least object," responded Mr Forbes Robertson, again putting on his eyeglasses and scrutinizing the brief to assure himself that he was not digressing from the topics as prescribed, "but there is really nothing to tell. It is simply merged with all my other innumerable remembrances of Shaw. It has become part and parcel of the composite photograph."

"Why not describe that portrait?"

"Most assuredly. Shaw is a tall, thin, pale-faced man. His eyes are a kindly blue, he wears a beard, and he stands notably erect. His manner is always alert. He is a man who has given liberally of his time and means to the public service. Underneath that joking attitude toward life for which the public knows him he has a serious object and profound convictions. His wife has an equally altruistic disposition. Mr Shaw himself, as, of course, you know, is pure Irish and his wife is a thoroughgoing Englishwoman. Moreover, and here he is most grievously misunderstood, Shaw is essentially the most modest of men.

The interviewer was nonpulsed and probably expressed his surprise even in his silence. Silent he was, for Mr Robertson had begun to speak more freely, and it seemed unwise to halt the flow of conversation with even the interpolation of a sentence.

"I mean that the real Shaw is really modest," he explained with char­acteristic care. "Of course he says and writes a great many things that are merely results of his erratic humors. But the public is wrong in taking these vagaries seriously and in supposing that he takes them seriously himself. He has actually as correct and unidealized an estimate of his own powers and achievements as any man it has ever been my fortune to know. His achievements are truly very great; his abilities equally versatile and bril­liant.

"It seems to me that I have the right to speak with authority on this matter. Mrs Robertson and I have now played two of the three plays that constitute the Plays for Puritans - The Devil's Disciple, which I have already mentioned, and Caesar and Cleopatra.

"Caesar and Cleopatra does not strike me in any way as satire, though there is much satire in it - and satiric wit of the most scintillating order. The words that Shaw puts into Caesar's mouth do not seem unnatural or forced to me when I am delivering them. Though he has not altered or concealed his personality, and though he has not forgotten how to employ his trenchant weapons, I consider the play to be sincere. At least this is the way it appeals to me in playing the part. All of his plays contain moments of wonderful sincerity and mighty truths marvelously driven home."

"How about such a piece as Man and Superman?"

The actor did not hesitate nor make any reference to his notes. "It contains heaps of sentiments that are absolutely true," he declared. "Though he approaches the subject in a light spirit, he is none the less truthful. And I am sure Mrs Robertson will agree with me in saying this."

For the last ten minutes the reporter had distinctly heard a voice which he had easily identified as the personal property of Gertrude Elliott, or Mrs Robertson, as she is known in private life. As if the mention of her name or the reference to Man and Superman had served to move the spirit - or rather the spirit of the visitor who was detaining her in the next room - she now appeared looking as fresh as if she had never dreamed of such an ordeal as a rehearsal. She came into the apartment, graciously recognized the human interrogation point with whom she had already made acquain­tance on previous occasions, and seated herself as meekly as a lamb awaiting the journalistic onslaught that is no respecter of persons.

Miss Elliott is American from her heels to the tips of her fingers. Her eyes are wide-awake and American; her speech is vivaciously American; her whole bearing bespeaks the new life in the younger of the great English-speaking countries.

"Do you agree with Mr Robertson as to the veracity of the statements in Man and Superman?" demanded the interviewer, wickedly hoping to arouse discord in the heart of the family.

"Certainly," responded Mrs Robertson, with her equanimity unruffled and not at all as if under coercion. "Caesar and Cleopatra was written ex­pressly for me several years ago," continued the 'subject,' adhering to the written formula which still lay before him. "I have been intending to do the play ever since, but most of the stages in London are inadequate for such an elaborate performance, and, for one reason or another, it has been postponed these half dozen years. Shaw always intended me to do the play, and I doubt whether he would have consented to its production by any other man."

"Did you suggest that he should write a play on a subject so far afield from his customary haunts?"

"No."

"Oh, no!" echoed Mrs Robertson. "He brought it to us as a completed manuscript."

"Yet, if I remember rightly," said her husband, taking up the thread of the conversation, "he did say that he had long had it in mind to write about Caesar and Cleopatra."

"Most of Shaw's plays are so original in theme that it seems strange he should have chosen so antiquated a story," observed the reporter, mustering the courage to pose as one of the critically disposed.

"But it is practically an original theme," replied Forbes Robertson. "I am reasonably well read in English dramatic literature, and I recollect only one other play on the same subject. That play, by W H Wills, the author of Sir Henry Irving's 'Charles I,' was never finished. Most of the dramas in which Cleopatra has figured have been founded on events after the conclu­sion of her romance with the great Caesar. In Shakespear's Antony and Cleopatra, when Caesar is mention by an attendant, the Egyptian Queen re­proaches her servant for calling him to mind, since she is now engrossed in the more tragic affair with his successor. It is Augustus Caesar who in the end actually appears upon the scene."

"Does Shaw customarily rehearse his own pieces?" asked the inter­viewer, turning in the direction of the less awe-inspiring and very American wife.

"Yes," she responded. "And he rehearses them excellently. You see, his experience both as a musical and dramatic critic has given him a splendid knowledge of stage management and technique. Nobody knows more of Shakespear than he does, and that absurd statement of his about his own comparative abilities as a playwright so often quoted as an example of colos­sal egotism, was never meant for anything at all but an out-and-out joke."

"Shaw has a most admirable faculty, you know, of seeing a joke on himself and turning the point in the opposite direction," added Mr Robertson, actually hastening to interpose with his recollection of a specific instance. "This has been proved time and time again and in my own presence. For ex­ample, almost everybody knows the story of how he appeared before the curtain in response for prolonged calls for the author, and was greeted with salvos of applause. One man in the gallery hissed. Shaw heard him, stopped short, and succeeded in spotting him. 'I quite agree with you, Sir,' said he, with the most urbane politeness. 'But what are we two all alone to do against these numbers?'"

"I think Mr Shaw has a beautiful optimistic, and cheerful mind," chimed in Mrs Robertson, as if determined not to be outdone and to furnish her full quota of the praise. "He seems to be an egotist because it is his er­ratic humor quite frankly to tell the truth not only about other people and their work, but about himself and his own work. He is in reality as modest as many apparently modest men are in reality self-centered and conceited. He is amazingly sanguine, and if he ever feels worn out or unhappy he al­ways keeps his troubles absolutely to himself.

"I always think of Mr Shaw as smiling. I believe he smiles almost ev­ery time he speaks - and even when he's meditating. In rehearsal he is re­markably wise and considerate. His methods of correcting and suggesting improvements would be a perfect revelation to some of the clumsy and brutal stage managers. He is peculiarly happy in expressing his opinions, and he shows great discretion in his judgment. It is a positive pleasure to work with him or under him."

Mrs Robertson turned yet again to her husband as if to suggest that he should corroborate her testimony even before it could be called in question. They not only sustained one another, but each sought to emphasize what was evidently a sentiment of genuine affection and esteem.

"Is Shaw as brilliant in conversation as in writing?" asked the insa­tiable man.

"He is wonderfully brilliant," said Mr Robertson in his most decisive manner.

"Every sentence, almost every phrase, contains something startling or quaint," declared his wife. "After all, Bernard Shaw is certainly a strange character!"

"How so?"

He's so charmingly audacious! I'll never forget one day when he came to a rehearsal of one of his own plays. He stuck his head in at the door and leaned forward with that long, slim body of his.

"'Oh, what is this?' he said, as innocently as if he had never heard about of the piece before. 'Really. I think those words are remarkably good!'"

Interviewing Bernard Shaw

Some characteristic comment about his latest play:

To interview Mr Bernard Shaw is at once the easiest and the most dif­ficult thing in the world. That, at any rate, is the opinion of a London inter­viewer who tried to interrogate him about his forthcoming play, The Doctor's Dilemma. He will talk on every subject except the one immediately in hand, while his opinions regarding his own and others works are of so daring a kind as almost to baffle reproduction.

"I fear," said Mr Shaw, somewhat wistfully, "the title will have to be changed, as it has already been used in the case of a novel by Miss Hesba Stretton, authoress of 'Jessica's First Prayer.'" Upon the last three words Mr Shaw lingered with a tender air of regret. I seemed almost as if he grudged their ownership to the lady in question.

Presently, however, he allowed himself to be coaxed back to the sub­ject of The Doctor's Dilemma. "It is a cheap job," he stated, rather patheti­cally. "Anybody can write a play about births, marriages, and deaths, just as any one can write a novel about a mother or a dying child. The truth is, William Archer has started me on an enterprise utterly unworthy of my powers. So far from death being the supreme test of an author's ability, it is the crutch of every dramatic cripple, the onion of every actor who cannot pump up a real tear. Life is the important thing; who cares how, when, or where anybody dies? I am going to die myself one of these days; why don't you interview me about that if it is so enormously interesting and impor­tant?"

"A baby in arms could have written this play of mine, as far as the death part of it is concerned. Pathos? Oh, yes, there will be lots of pathos; the Court Theater will be damp with tears and windy with sniffs; the fourth act will give London rheumatism. The really difficult and interesting part is the handling of that pressing modern problem - the doctor - the man who had a pecuniary interest in mutilation and an absolute license to commit murder. That is what sensible people will come to hear. They will have to bring their brains with them, too. The first act is like 150 pages out of Joyce's Scientific Dialogues. Did you ever hear of Opsonin? No? Of course not; you spend your life in the theater, and therefore never hear of anything that is going on in the world. Well, The Doctor's Dilemma is all about Opsonin. So glad to have met you and had the chance of telling you all about it. Good-bye" And, with an audible sigh of relief, Mr Shaw dispatched his visitor.

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Comment on his saying that nobody has a right to live at all who cannot prove that he does more for the world than the world does for him, O 25, 8:4

10/25/06 "A man must live" is an old saying, and that was enough to make it certain that George Bernard Shaw would attack it sooner or later. The time is already come, and Mr Shaw announces, with characteristic gravity, that the traditional necessity does not exist. On the contrary, he says, nobody has a right to live at all who cannot prove that he does more for the world than the world does for him, and therefore has Mr Shaw proposed that every citi­zen should every few years be brought before a board and required to prove that his continued existence is justifiable. Those who cannot give the proof he would have sent hastily to a convenient slaughter house - or, as he more gently puts it, to a lethal chamber.

The proposition has a certain charm. There are a good many men and a few women who have no obvious excuse for being alive; who, if requested to give one, would find difficulty in doing it. That, in a way, warrants the establishment of lethal chambers, but there would be some rather large ob­stacles to be overcome before entirely satisfactory boards of judges to serve in the Shawian courts could be selected. If they could all be appointed by Mr Shaw himself, the task would be easy, and of course it would be perfectly performed. The trouble is that he could not get the job except by the votes of the very people whom he would at once declare unfitted for existence, and then the whole plan would break down.

If Mr Shaw would only look sharp he would notice that his scheme was invented and put in force by "Nature" more than a few hundred years ago, and that since then the killing of the unfit has been constant and of enormous extent. Mr Shaw is himself the product of this process, just as all the rest of us are, and he may be sure that if he or we cease to be useful "Nature will put us out of the way in short order, or at least in good time for "Natures" purposes.

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Shaw gives his view on spelling reform; says Roosevelt's idea is useless, letter to London Times; wants phonetic spelling with more letters added to alphabet, S 22, 9:1

9/25/06 George Bernard Shaw has set forth his views on spelling reform in the following characteristic letter:

To The Editor of The Times:

Sir: It is to be regretted that the scheme of the Simplified Spelling Board so energetically and wisely forced on our attention by President Ruzvelt (if he will allow me to simplify him to that extent) has been received not only with the outburst of ignorance and folly which any sensible pro­posal may nowadays count on, but with a false delicacy which has led gen­uine phonetic experts to withhold serious technical criticism. It is bad enough to have men of letters passionately defending such a recent absurd and transient aberration as our pseudo-etymological spelling on the ground that it is the spelling of the Bible and Shakespear, (a libel gross enough to make Tyndale and Shakespear turn in their graves,) but it is far worse to have the defects of the scheme passed over in polite silence by the people who know authoritatively that, though the President does not overrate the enormous importance of spelling reforms, his methods cannot be regarded as an advance on those of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings.

I tried to express this myself by comparing his action to the reform calendar by Mohammed, who divided the year into twelve lunar months, with results on the caravan season arrangements from which Arabian com­merce has not recovered to this day, but I find that most of your contempo­raries regard Mohammed's arrangement as an excellent one, and accordingly report me as enthusiastically in favor of the Presidential scheme.

Not Simplified Spelling

Pending some really authoritative comment by Henry Sweet, whose proposals of 1881 are hardly to the point to-day, or by a home expert of his school, let me point out a few obvious shortcomings in the scheme. To begin with, it is not really simplified spelling. It is shortened spelling, which is quite a different matter, as the short spelling may leave a foreigner or a child quite as much in the dark as to the sound of a word as the long one, and it anxiously disclaims any pretense to be phonetic. Now, it is doubtless wise when a reform is introduced to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all, but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least, and the fact is that a board which disclaims phonetic spelling puts it­self out of court.

Unphonetic spelling is as impossible a figment as secular education. Unless we adopt the system of Chinese ideographs and learn by heart a sep­arate arbitrary symbol for every word in the dictionary, we must spell pho­netically. We may corrupt and confuse our spelling by etymologic fads, spelling "det" with a "b" and "foren" with an "ig," just as we might spell "man" "ape," nor shall we ever spell "cat" "dog." If we did, the only result would be that we should presently spell "dogma" "catma." We cannot get away from phonetic spelling, because spelling is as necessarily and inevitably phonetic as moisture is damp.

To say that English and French spelling are not phonetic is absurd. All that it means is that the French and English spell much worse than the Germans and Italians, being relatively conceited and inhibitive people who take an uppish delight in making knowledge difficult, not to mention their love of excuses for punishing children. English spelling contains thousands of excuses for rebuking children, for beating them, for imprisoning them after school hours, for breaking their spirits with impossible tasks. It is more ef­fective even than teaching a short-sighted child the clock and then beating it because it cannot tell the time from Big Ben.

Phonetics Have Their Revenge

But in the long run phonetics have their revenge. When we begin by refusing to spell as we pronounce, we end by having to pronounce as we spell. Etymologists, to shew the French origin of the word "oblige," refused to spell it phonetically, and a generation of superior persons despised those who did not say "obleege" and were themselves despised by the still more select circle who said "obleezh." But who dares say "obleege" now, except Joseph Surface on the stage?

The history of the word "envelope" tells the same story. "Ongevelope" and "annvelope" have had their day. We spelt it "envelope," and now we have to pronounce it "envelope." The American reformers want us to spell "catalogue" "catalog." The word is in such common use that its pronunciation has been traditionally maintained in spite of the spelling. But what of "epilog" and "prolog"? These two words, which most Englishmen never utter or hear uttered in their lives, and the rest use perhaps once in twenty years, are on those rare occasions mispronounced nine times out of ten as "epiloag" and "proloag."

As the working classes become more literate and please themselves by dragging into ordinary conversation more and more long words that they have never heard pronounced, they introduce ways of their own of pro­nouncing them, founded necessarily on spelling. "Programme," a vulgarism which offends the eye as "Paris" pronounced "Paree" in English offends the ear, has been in my hearing pronounced so as to rhyme with "damn." That is how we shall all have to pronounce it some day. I foresee the time when I shall be forced to pronounce "semiconscious" as "see my conscious."

The March of Preciosity

Then there is the march of preciosity. Already I blush when old habit betrays me into calling clothes "close." I have heard a tenor pronouncing the "l" in Haendel's "Where'er You Walk." If Deptford has become "Depped Ford" in spite of usage, I see no reason to doubt that debt will become "depped."

I am fond of the word "ham," meaning a country place larger than a hamlet. I am still allowed to speak of "East Ham" and "West Ham," because the words are written separately, but when I speak of "Lewis Ham," "Elt Ham," or "Peters Ham," I am suspected of a defect in my speech, almost as if I had spoken of "Cars Halton (properly rhyming to "Walton") instead of "Ker Shalltn." The received pronunciations nowadays are "Louis sham," "Peter sham," "Eltham," and so on, and people who support the bad spelling which is corrupting the language in this fashion pretend to have special regard for it and prattle of the Bible and Shakespear. They remind me of the New York Police Commissioner who once arrested a whole theatrical company for per­forming one of my plays, and explained, on being remonstrated with, that the Sermon on the Mount was good enough for him.

The worst of it is, this want of conscience in spelling has led to anar­chy and indifference in the interpretation of spelling. London children are deliberately taught to speak hideously by teachers who speak that way themselves. I have passed a public elementary school and have heard a class of children chorusing the alphabet as follows: "I," "ber-ee," "ser-ee," "der-ee," "er-ee," "aff," ger-ee," "iche," "awy," "ji," "ki," "al," "am," "an," "ow," "per-ee," "kioo," aw," "ass," "ter-ee," "yer-eoo," "ver-ee," "dabblyew," "ax," wawy," "zad."

Oxford and Mile End Road

Already the West End and Oxford have acquired more than half this horrible pronunciation, and they will soon acquire it completely. They are lulled into false security by the fact that the coarsely nasal resonance of the costermonger distinguishes him socially from the Oxford graduate in spite of the identity of their mispronunciation. But the snarl will no doubt conquer Oxford in time. When smart society says "ow now" for "oh no" and "dahn tahn" for "down town," and calls "humbug with a gun" "hambag with agan," it is not very far from complete mastery of the language of what it already calls "Mile End Rowd," and will soon call with native perfection of accent "Mawl Enn Rowd."

Even on the stage young actors are rebuked for speaking as ladies and gentlemen used to speak and are deliberately taught not even parvenu English, which is bad enough in all conscience, but positively Hoxton English. The classic beauty of speech by which Forbes Robertson makes "Hamlet" still fascinating in spite of its intellectual obsolescence will soon be mimicked (let us hope successfully) as an eccentric dialect, and Mr Blank (the name of this excellent actor escapes me for the moment) will perhaps die prematurely, worn out by efforts to conceal his natural propensity to speak like a gentle­man and acquire the common language of the barrow and the motorcar in all its abhorrent smartness.

Death Sooner Than a Dropped "H"

I insist on this aspect of the case because, while we seem incapable of grasping the enormous advantage of making English the universal language both for writing and speech or of understanding how our spelling obstructs that consummation, most English men and women would almost rather die than be convicted of speaking like costermongers and flower girls. Our gov­erning classes dropped half the continent of North America from sheer care­lessness. Sooner than drop an "h" they would steep Europe in blood. It therefore hits them purposely in their vulnerable point.

For this very reason, however, the reform cannot be effected by shortened spelling, which is indistinguishable from ordinary wrong spelling. If any man writes me a letter in which "through" is spelled "thru" and "above" "abuv," I shall at once put him down as illiterate and in consequence plebeian, no matter what board or what potentate sanctions his orthography. Really phonetic spelling is quite unmistakable in this way. No lady or gen­tleman will ever be persuaded to spell like the late Sir Isaac Pitman, who was a very energetic bookseller and a very bad phonetician, but anybody might spell like Henry Sweet without compromising himself - indeed, with positive affirmation of having been at Oxford. A practically correct phonetic spelling justifies itself at once to the eye as being the spelling of an educated man, whereas shortenings and so-called simplifications suggest nothing but blunders.

Advice to the President

I therefore respectfully advise the President and the Board to take the bull by the horns without wasting further time and enlarge the alphabet un­til our consonants and vowels are for all practical purposes separately repre­sented and defined. By rhyming with words in daily use we shall then get a word notation which may be strange at first - which does not matter - but which will be neither ludicrous nor apparently ignorant - which does matter very much indeed.

One other point is of importance. The new letters must by designed by an artist with a fully developed sense of beauty in writing and printing. There must be no diacritical signs to spoil the appearance of the pages of new type. It is a mistake to suppose that the Bible teaches us the sacredness of pseudo-etymological spelling, but it does teach us the comeliness of a page on which there are no apostrophes and no inverted commas.

Yours truly,

G. Bernard Shaw

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Sends word to M Klaw that he fears to come to US lest he be elected Pres, S 15, 9:4

9/15/06 It is just that royal reception that makes it impossible for me to come. If I could come quietly, without convulsing America, without delivering a hundred addresses to enormous crowds, without the risk of being forcibly naturalized and elected president, and subsequently seized and imprisoned by Mr Comstock, then I might come. As it is, I prefer the quiet and retire­ment of London. Besides, I am writing a new play - an astonishingly good one. I had no idea I had so much left in me. It has delayed my reply somewhat, but you will forgive me.

GBS

Coast of Cornwall

9/2/06

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President Eliot of Harvard says Roosevelt style does not appeal to him, G B Shaw says it serves us right, Ag 27, 7:2

8/27/06 The Boston Herald prints an interview with President Eliot of Harvard had yesterday at his Summer home, North East Harbor, Me. President Eliot stated that the new style does not in the least appeal to him.

"I suppose that President Roosevelt has a right to write his message in any style of orthography to which he may incline," remarked Harvard's President with a twinkle in his eye, "but I think that it will be a long time before such a style as that proposed becomes very popular or takes a great hold upon the public. I don't myself care for it, and it is my opinion that the same view is held by the majority of leading educators. There are some dis­tinguished men, such as President Butler of Columbia, who have long favored it, but I do not see that their work has brought much of accomplishment."

"You can see some good points about the phonetic method, can't you?" was asked.

"Why, I can see that a bit of time in the day's work might be saved by typewriters and literary people," was the answer. "The English will hardly adopt this new system, which would mean not only that the publishers would be obliged to make two sets of plates, but that all the present plates of standard and popular works would be rendered incorrect and without value. It can be seen at a glance that the publishers will object strenuously to any change in the system of spelling, and as our books naturally set the style or orthography it would certainly be practically impossible, or at least difficult, to bring about any innovation in this direction without the assistance of the publishers. It will be found that the public will not like the looks of 'thru' and 'tho,' and words similarly spelled."

Asked if he believed that if President Roosevelt should set the exam­ple for new spelling in his next message the people would accept the initia­tive of the Chief Executive and follow, President Eliot said that he believed the people would follow very, very slowly. He did not believe that the peo­ple regarded a Presidential message as spelling copy, but rather as a source of information regarding current events and needed legislation.

Serves Us Right - Shaw

Among the numerous opinions canvassed by the newspapers of President Roosevelt's order with regard to a reform in spelling, George Bernard Shaw says: "There has been nothing like it since Mohammed re­formed the calendar by making the year consist of twelve lunar months. It serves us right. The thing had to be taken in hand somehow, and if we re­fused to attend to our own experts, we must make the best of the two ener­getic amateurs who have forced our hands."

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Plans visit to U S, Jl 24, 7:4

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Takes negative on question that agitates London - 'Should Christians make fortunes?'; World (pub) suggests a rival conundrum - 'Should vegetarians write plays?' Ag 22, 1:6

8/22/06 George Bernard Shaw has strongly taken the negative with respect to the question that has seized public attention here just now - "Should Christians make fortunes?" The World suggests the possibility that some good Christian who has piled up his million or two may retaliate on Mr Shaw by propounding a rival conundrum - "Should vegetarians write plays?" Mr Shaw could not well take the negative as to that conundrum without chang­ing his diet.

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A Daly says he will not revive Mrs Warren's Profession because of too much notoriety, Jl 29, 9:2

7/29/06 Arnold Daly will not present Mrs Warren's Profession, though the courts have ruled that he may if he wants to. The actor came back from Europe yesterday and told why he would not put on the Shaw play again.

"I know there is a fortune in Mrs Warren's Profession," he said, "but after the unfortunate notoriety that the play received I feel that my motives in producing it would be misconstrued, and that it would attract only the sensation loving, who are incapable of appreciating the play or its motives."

Furthermore, Mr Daly will not allow any other manager to give the play. He controls the American rights.

While he was in Paris and London he obtained several new plays. Most important among them is "Apres l'Opera," a dramatization by George Docquois of a story by Jean Reibach. The play was successfully produced at the Grand Guignol Theater. Mr Daly also has a one-act play called "Grandfather Coquesne," which was written for Sir Henry Irving and which was to have been produced by Sir Henry had he lived. Three other one-act plays obtained by Mr Daly are "The Monkey's Paw," "The Lemonade Boy," and "The Flag Station," all of which will be given in one evening.

The new plays will come later in the season. At the beginning Mr Daly will give Candida, Arms and the Man, and You Never Can Tell. He will also revive The Man of Destiny, and How He Lied To Her Husband. In February he will present Ibsen's Peer Gynt.

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Ed, Bernard Shaw's Profession, discusses play, Jl 8, 8:1

7/8/06 Bernard Shaw's Profession

The thing which may most confidently be said about Justice Olmsted's prevailing opinion in the Court of Special Sessions upon George Bernard Shaw's play, entitled Mrs Warren's Profession, is that the able dramatist himself will be the person most freely to chuckle and chortle over having to that extent "drawn" the American bench. For Mr Shaw is distinctly the foremost self-advertiser among the English-writing literati of his time. And he has received his votive "ad," the proudest trophy of his career, in having one of his pieces judicially considered from a judicial plus ethical point of view. When you come to consider that the moral bearing of his sensational little drama is the last thing which the dramatist thought about in writing it, so late and lingering that he was very likely not got around to considering it yet, you can well imagine with what heavings and agitations of private mirth Mr Shaw will read his absolution at the hands of the New York Special Sessions, by a vote of two to one, the dissenting Justice, Justice McAvoy, "writing no opinion." What kind of opinion could he write, poor man, in such a case as this?

However, Justice Olmsted rushes in where Justice McAvoy fears to tread, and divagates, with solemnity, upon the possible or probable effect of Mr Shaw's drama upon the young and thoughtless. The truth is that a judi­cial authority does not appear to good advantage in this particular branch of ethical inquiry. Our own report of his Honor's decision ably intimated that it reads like a criticism of a first night. Which is to say that its effect was not exactly judicial. Twenty-five or thirty years ago a highly impudent editorial writer in New York, reprehending some obiter dicta from the bench about the effect upon the public morals of a contrary decision to that which was in fact rendered, observed: "If his Honor will excuse us we will take charge of that branch of the case ourselves." And in truth when a Judge, deserting the letter and the spirit of the law, goes over into sociology, he is extremely likely to "find no end, in wandering masses lost."

One requires of a Judge something more precise and definite. The ex­cellent Anthony Comstock has derived from the British dramatist sufficient working criterion of literary indecency. Anything, according to these deci­sions, which might, could, would, or should bring a blush to the cheek of the most erubescent young person is legally "indecent." That position may be rough on literature and art, and adapted to wipe from the face of the earth half the artistic and literary masterpieces. But at least it is intelligible and straightforward. But when a Judge on the bench undertakes to psychologize the American public, and to decide what would probably produce an un­wholesome effect upon some section or individual of the same, he does not impress any section or individual of the same. He merely contributes to "the general joy of the whole table," and most of all, in this case, to the private hilarity of the Mephistophelean George Bernard Shaw.

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Mrs Warren's Profession; NY Special Sessions Ct approves play; declares it legally not indecent, Jl 7, 7:5

7/7/06 Bernard Shaw's play, Mrs Warren's Profession, has successfully passed the censorship of Special Sessions. The Justices call the play "not pleasant," and declare it fraught with "shock producers" and "repellent things," but say that it is not indecent in the eyes of the law. They add, indeed, that it may become a medium of much needed social reforms.

These characterizations are made in a decision handed down yester­day by the court in the case of the people against Arnold Daly, the actor, and Samuel Gumpertz, his manager, whose acquittal in ordered. Messers. Daly and Gumpertz, were arrested on the evening of Oct 29 last at the close of the opening performance of the play at the Garrick Theater. They were tried in the Court of Special Sessions on April 19. Information was also lodged against Chrystal Herne and Mary Shaw, two of the actresses who appeared in the play.

The prevailing opinion in the case is written by Justice Olmsted, with Justice Wyatt concurring. Justice McAvoy dissented, but wrote no opinion. Justice Olmsted enters into an elaborate analysis of the theme of Mrs Warren's Profession, and in some instances handles the author very much as a theatrical critic would on a first night. Here is the opinion in part:

"The complaining police officer, who was the sole witness, testified to no indecent or suggestive act on the part of the performer. The court is called upon on this state of fact to decide whether the language of the prompt book as spoken on the stage was a public nuisance per se because offensive to public decency. There is nothing in the words themselves, nor in any particular phrase or expression, which can be said to be indecent and the court is compelled to resort to the theme and motive of the play to find the indecency complained of. The theme is not a pleasant one."

Justice Olmsted then analyses the theme. This part is rather hard on Bernard Shaw. The Justice says: "The dramatist has in this play used old and hackneyed materials, the common tool of scores of other playwrights, but he has used them more boldly - so boldly in fact that their tendency is to surprise and shock the audience. It must be said for him that he has in his play made vice less attractive than many other dramatists whose plays have never received the censorious attention of the police.

The suggestion that the clergyman in the play is the father of Mrs Warren's daughter, with the situation which makes the clergyman's ac­knowledged son a suitor for the daughter's hand, is another of the drama­tist's shock producers, and there are other repellent things both in the play and in its characters: in fact there is so little that is attractive in the drama that it is safe to predict that without the preliminary sensational advertise­ment of this proposed production its life on the boards would be short."

Justice Olmsted cites precedents to show that the test of criminality under the opinions of the higher courts is "whether a production is naturally calculated to excite in the spectator impure imagination and whether the other incidents and qualities, however attractive, are merely accessory to this as the primary or main purpose of the representation."

To the question whether Bernard Shaw's play in its essence is moral or immoral Justice Olmsted replies: "If virtue does not receive its usual reward in this play, vice at least is presented in an odious light and its votaries are punished. The attack on social conditions is one which might result in ef­fecting some needed social reforms. The court cannot refrain from suggest­ing, however, that the reforming influence of the play in this regard is mini­mized by the method of the attack."

In conclusion, Justice Olmsted says: "While the court may hold de­cided opinion regarding the fitness of this play as a stage production, when it comes to consider the question of criminality of the acts of these defendants in publicly producing it, it must make application of the principle of law laid down by the Court of Appeals as the test of criminality. Making such appli­cation in the case at bar, it appears that instead of exciting impure imagina­tion in the mind of the spectator, that which is really excited is disgust; that the unlovely, the repellent, the disgusting in the play are merely accessories to the main purpose of the drama, which is an attack on certain social condi­tions relating to the employment of women which the dramatist believes, as do many others with him, should be reformed. Tried by this rule, the play does not come within the inhibition of the statute, and the defendants are acquitted."

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Sues Stone & Co for $25,000 royalties, Ap 15, 22:5;

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Devil's Disciple, The, by G B Shaw; makes hit with Budapest critics and is talk of the city, Ap 29, 7:3

4/29/06 Bernard Shaw in Hungary

Writing to a London daily a Budapest correspondent says that for a week or so preceding the first performance of Mr Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, he was beset with questions concerning the personality and dra­matic power of the now popular Irish playwright, who has at one stride reached the happy area of Hungarian popularity. At the Vig Szinhaz the re­ception of the play was flattering indeed, to an Englishman, while the criti­cisms which have appeared are adequate and fearless.

The Budapest Hiriap, which is the "Times" of Hungary, says: "It is the most independent, most original indication of the literary spirit of modern England." Another of the leading journals calls it "one of the most interesting melodramas ever staged. This Bernard Shaw is a fine man, and he knows his public as a man knows bad money." The success of the play is unprece­dented. It was Shaw's patriotic references which first of all captured the interest of the nation, and the crowd from pit and gallery repeatedly shouted out "Ugy van," ("It is so.")

One of the most delightful criticisms of the play is given by Karoly Sebestyen, who says: "The public has seen it, understood it, and applauded it." And Joseph Keszler, in speaking of Shaw, says: "Not only is he the best living writer we have seen out here, but the shyest theater fox.

The play is the talk of the city, for Budapest has in a way been pre­pared for Az ordog cimbora ja, to give Shaw's play its Hungarian name, by a series of articles discussing the genius and scope of the satirist.

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Lr offers apology for Shaw, Ap 6, 10:5

4/6/06 To the Editor of The New York Times: This is a late hour to take up a defense of George Bernard Shaw. But one grows weary of criticism that does the subject criticised a very evident wrong. After being cloyed with the superficial strictures of gentlemen sup­posedly learned in the art of the theater, it remained for Prof Adler to show us G. B. Shaw in a new light - the intellectual clown has become, forsooth, the stern moralist. What a striking metamorphosis! Is our understanding of the man and his works gone so far awry, or would we name him Touchstone? The latter would be doing him an injustice, while the former does not argue much for our understanding.

It was a matter of exceeding surprise to see that Prof Adler, who is himself a foremost champion of intellectual freedom in the field of religion, denying the same imperative right to Shaw in the drama. Moralists, he is reported as saying, should keep their hands off the drama; it is bad art to preach. The trouble with Shaw's plays is that they preach.

Then the great masters of the drama, from Euripides to Ibsen, ought to have consigned to the four winds the keen and subtle analyses that they made of the life about them from fear that their contemporaries might re­gard their dramas as ill-timed homilies. We might as well contend that the trouble with matter is that it has extension, with time that it has succession, or with space that it has infinity. The ability to moralize, to draw the essence out of our experiences, and see them in their true significance, is a very decided characteristic of the creative imagination. One is the invariable concomitant of the other.

Wherefore the necessity or even the utility of hindering and fettering the creative impulses of the dramatists by saying: "Thus shalt thou do, and thus shalt thou not do." By all means let us avoid the attitude of the mother who always accompanied a stern look with the admonition, "Johnnie, keep your hands off the jam." The paternal manner is undoubtedly necessary in the home and kindergarten, but it has no place in dramatic criticism.

Freedom to express his intuitions of beauty and truth in his own way is what the true dramatist demands, and freedom we ought to grant him. Then with minds free from preconceived ideas we might do him justice and derive the spiritual stimulus that comes from contact with a great mind!

Leonard Judson

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O Skinner & Dr F Adler wants colleges to teach dramatic art, both criticise George Bernard Shaw, Ap 2, 9:5

4/2/06 Dramatic art, its abuses, its values to the world of to-day, and its pos­sibilities for the future, was discussed by Otis Skinner before the Society for Ethical Culture at Carnegie Hall yesterday morning.

A department in Columbia or some other large university for the teaching of dramatic art was advocated by Mr Skinner and Dr Felix Adler and the plays of G Bernard Shaw were roundly scored by the two speakers. The subject of Mr Skinner's address was "The Ethics of the Theater."

"I have been asked to speak on the stage and its relation to the moral life," said Mr Skinner. "The theater must be moral to be an art. To be an art it must be beneficial, for art is uplifting. Think of a life without a song, with­out a picture or without architecture. You can't imagine such a condition. It is all right to talk about 'going back to nature,' but there must be something in our lives to uplift us. That is art. When the poet Longfellow told the ac­tress Mary Anderson to read poetry, he should have added, 'See a play.'

"Illusion is the first handmaiden of theatric art. It is her magic wand that lifts us out of our workaday lives. I recall the performance of melo­drama in Chicago when this element of illusion was so completely main­tained that a man leaped over the footlights and stopped the progress of the scene."

"'Art is only great,' said Whistler, 'when all traces of the means used are vanished.'"

G. Bernard Shaw and Mrs Warren's Profession were then attended to. Mr Skinner said: "We will take the play written by that clever Irish drama­tist lately. It was announced to be placed on the stage. It had been printed in book form and widely read and known. Protests had been made, but it was produced. It should not have been placed on the stage. It was played one night by a clever set of artists and was suppressed. It was real life. It was too real. It was justly withdrawn. It could never have uplifted the stage. But the play from a literary standpoint was superb."

Mr Skinner then advocated the establishment of a chair of dramatic art in some university, and added: "You cannot kill dramatic art. No man­ager desires to produce tawdry plays, but they must give the people what they desire. The dramatic child will grow, and I feel that his future is most promising."

Dr Adler said that moralists should keep their hands off the drama. It is bad art to preach, said Dr Adler, and added that the trouble with Shaw's plays was that they preached. Said Dr Adler: "The plays that you make by patronizing them are like the politicians you make by electing them. The masses of people should have the best of art. A dramatic department in a college is as important to the future welfare of the Nation as a school for painting or sculpture."

In closing he denounced the star system of theaters.

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Says he is cured of vanity, curiosity and ambition after receiving bill for press clippings; says he never wants to see an Amer paper again, Ja 24, 8:7

1/24/6 "I never want to see an American paper again. You have cured me of vanity, of curiosity, of ambition. You have shown me that modesty and re­tirement are sweeter, easier and much cheaper than publicity. I find that the average charge for press clippings is about $8.47 per item of news. There is one paragraph containing five line of nonsense about my whiskers which you have sent me scores. Now, I do not blame you for this. I told you it would happen to subscribers like me, who have silly little jokes copied from paper to paper throughout the United States. I therefore confess that I have had enough of it. The day you receive this, send me a final account, erase my name from your books, and never let me see the name Burrelle again. "I wish you well. I forgive you. Thank you. Bless you. And farewell. GBS"

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Rev, Cashel Byron's Profession, Jan 9, 9:1

1/9/06 James J Corbett had a go at George Bernard Shaw last evening, the scene of the mill being Daly's Theater, and the event being pulled off in three rounds. When the final bell rang Mr Corbett came up smiling. By that time, however, Mr Shaw was down and out. That, possibly, is the way some of the ex-champion's friends will put it this morning.

It is hardly likely, however, that even Mr Corbett's most hearty ad­mirers will feel called upon to assert that his exhibition at Daly's last night served to bring to him a success calculated to put his previous glory in the shade, nor are those of us who have found some things to commend in Mr George Bernard Shaw likely to admit that his particular quality is improved by the ordinary method of stage adaptation.

In dramatizing Cashel Byron's Profession, and in presenting it with Mr Corbett in its chief role, there were almost insurmountable difficulties. To begin with, Mr Shaw's story of the English fighter, with its specious pleading that proves nothing, (except Mr Shaw's brightness, which at this time needs no proof,) is, despite its subject, a most undramatic story.

It is almost without incident from beginning to end - that is to say, such incident as provides the struggle necessary to all good plays, its chief character, for all the writer's arguments and cleverness in character drawing, is not sympathetic, and its climax is ridiculous, if not to say impossible. Admitting, then, that Mr Stange's dramatization has all the attractiveness of the original work - which it has not - how was a satisfying result to be at­tained?

The projectors of this particular entertainment evidently thought they had found a way. Cashel Byron was a prizefighter, and, according to the popular notion, in a theater where personality seems the first requisite to success, who so well equipped to play him as an ex-champion? For a few moments - notably during the first act - there seemed to be some method in this madness.

Mr Corbett as to face is hardly the Hermes of Praxiteles who won the heart of the mistress of Wilstoken Park, but there was a boyishness of de­meanor, a freedom from affectation, and a good humored naturalness about his first meeting with the lady destined to become his wife that gave promise of something very agreeable in character. The ultimate develop­ment, however, was so obviously a matter of mere mechanics, of well stud­ied but wholly artificial effort at movement and speech and gesture that the whole sense of illusion was lost.

As regards Mr Stange's adaptation of the Shaw story, it may be said with all fairness that while in some respects he has succeeded in what must have been a very difficult task, he has elsewhere been guilty of the most amazing blunders.

Why, for example, is it necessary in this day and generation for a dramatist to indulge himself in such lines as that allotted to Lucian Webber, who informs an audience supposedly mystified, but not in the least in need of enlightenment, that "some one has come between me and Lydia. Can it be Cashel Byron?" And what is gained by expanding the love interest between Lydia and the admirable Bashville - here admirable no longer.

Such lapses as these are all the more regrettable because otherwise Mr Stange has succeeded in maintaining a fairly consecutive and reasonable sequence of events in a narrative rather difficult of projection. There is nec­essarily much condensation, and such scenes as that of Byron's outbreak at Mrs Hoskyn's reception and his discovery of Lydia at the Lodge while he is endeavoring to escape from his pursuers, provide mildly theatric incidents that punctuate the flow of inconsequential dialogue. The best scenes in the play are those in the first and second acts, where the genuine and lumbering awkwardness of the ex-pugilist supplements the dramatist's exposition of the natural self-consciousness of Cashel Byron. Here the peculiar combina­tion results in a considerable amount of diverting comedy, but what is gained on the one hand is necessarily lost on the occasions where the de­mand is one of sympathy and sentiment.

Margaret Wycherly, evidently chosen as a proper foil in refinement for her pugilistic lover, satisfies in that respect however she may fall short of the idea of Lydia as conceived from a reading of Mr Shaw's book. It seems as if the actress called upon too insistently to develop the one quality, has not fully taken into account the other phases of the woman's character. Miss Wycherly is charmingly girlish, and there is a good deal of attractive sweet­ness about her method, but there can be something too much of sugar - and there is. Joseph Kilgour was altogether unlike the Baskerville of Mr Shaw's story, and John C Skene erred on the side of noisy caricature. May Tulley, Alice Leigh, and Luke Martin made the most of very limited opportunities.

The employment of two badly dressed youths to represent as assem­blage of English gentlemen in a fashionable drawing room is an exhibition of stage management such as one hardly feels called upon to commend.

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Cashel Byron's Profession, by G B Shaw: J J Corbett in starring role, New Haven, Jan 2, 9:5;

1/2/06 That this city which suffered and resented the original shock of Mrs Warren's Profession, has no feeling against Bernard Shaw personally was shown to-night when James J Corbett was tumultuously greeted by New Haven's keenest critics of the drama in his portrayal of the hero in Cashel Byron's Profession at the Hyperion Theater.

It is true that the "professions" dealt with in the two plays are differ­ent, and this latest Shaw piece has the additional advantage of having been subjected to a chastening filtration through the brain of Stanislaus Stange. He dramatized the novel telling of the gentleman-prizefighter who clinched with good society and declined to break away until he took part of it with him in the form of a bride.

"'Gentleman Jim' was born for the part," declared a critic in a striped collar to-night as he watched Mr Corbett shoot down his cuffs and stride menacingly across the stage at a rickety specimen of the British nobility. It was a great night for the ex-pugilist, but a greater one for Bernard Shaw. "He has rehabilitated himself," is the verdict of New Haven on the Irish dramatist, though giving full credit to Mr Stange.

When Mr Corbett stepped before the curtain at the close of the second act, after he and his associates had acknowledged a dozen calls, the star in­quired: "Do you really mean it?" The question was answered with a wild applause.

Margaret Wycherley, associated in the public mind with the Yeats plays, shared the honors of the representation with Mr Corbett.

At the close of the matinee performance Col Theodore Macdonald of the Governor's staff of Connecticut, Judge Richard Tyner, and W H Hamilton gave a dinner at the Union League Club in honor of Mr Corbett. Among the New Yorkers present were Champe S Andrews, William Harris, Mr And Mrs Stanislaus Stange, Mr and Mrs Henry B Harris, James Forbes, Miss Margaret Wycherley, and Bel Stern.