GEORGE BERNARD SHAW is the second-greatest British playwright after Shakespeare. He was born in Dublin in 1856 during the Crimean War. His writings reflect the major historical and political events, movements, or ideas, such as socialism. Actually, he was so fond of this ideology that he officially became a socialist in 1884 when he joined the Fabian Society. Engels strongly criticized the Fabian Society, but he was highly appreciative of G.B. Shaw’s writing talent and his capacity to understand politics and economics. His understanding was mature, balanced, and wisely expressed with writing craft: he said that we could bring a horse to water and make it drink but when it’s thirsty—neither before, when it isn’t thirsty and may kick, nor later, when it’s already dead of thirst. In other words, to strike the iron when it’s hot.
At 20, G.B. Shaw moved to London joining his mother who divorced his father, George Carr Shaw—a Puritan hypocrite condemning alcoholism, while he was a passionate whisky drinker. In London, he first worked at the Edison Telephone Company and, then, he worked as an art and literary critic making a modest living. He was a nonconformist, a pacifist, and a vegetarian. His art was mainly a critique but, sometimes, it had accents of criticism; his theater was a public tribune; his writing style was hostile to theater topic conventions constantly approaching social topics. It is said that King Edward VII said about G.B. Shaw that he was mad. The public was hostile to his socially consistent plays because they weren’t as entertaining as they thought that theater must always be. But for Shaw, theater was the art of making people think of different social problems. In general, art is a mirror of society, and not everybody enjoys watching in the mirror. Some prefer to pay a ticket price and run as far away as possible from reality. Shaw, instead, remained faithful to his art. And the public ended up adoring him and his writings. In 1925, at 69, George Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At 75, he went to the Soviet Union for the first time to celebrate his birthday. He was impressed to see socialism in practice. In 1943, he lost his wife, Charlotte Townsend, whom he met at the Fabian Society and whom he married in 1898—the same year the play Caesar and Cleopatra was staged. He died in November 1950, at 94, because of a leg fracture trying to cut a branch tree. At his request, left by testament, his body was cremated and his ashes mixed with that of his wife. As long as he lived, G.B. Shaw wrote to complete, to explain, and to persuade—as he used to say. In modern terms, he was a multi-genre writer, but he’s known as a playwright. He wrote novels, reviews, essays, plays, satires, letters, diaries and so on. His first novel was written in 1879, three years after he moved to London. For the four following years, he published one novel a year: The Irrational Knot (1880), Love Among Artists (1881), Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882), An Unusual Socialist (1883)—all unsuccessful. He wrote reviews for the Pall Mall Gazette, chronicles in the World, and the Saturday Review; he wrote essays (Fabian Essays that is a collective work and Dramatic Opinions and Essays). In 1891, he published The Quintessence of Ibsenism—a collection of previous works. Shaw was familiar with Ibsen’s social plays, embraced them, and promoted this model. However, G.B. Shaw’s plays weren’t socialistic, but only promoted social themes for social change. For example, his first play Widowers’ Houses (1892) was an attack on slum landlords; in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1894), he approached the topic of prostitution, and the play was censored. These plays, to which he added The Philanderer (1893), were later grouped as Plays Unpleasant as opposed to Plays Pleasant which is a collection of satires: Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1894), and You Never Can Tell (1895). G.B. Shaw wrote historical plays: The Devil’s Disciple (1897), Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), The Man of Destiny (1898), Great Catharine (1913), Commonsense about the War (written in 1914, during WWI, and for which he was expelled from the Dramatist Club), Saint Joan (1927), The Apple Cart (1929), Geneva (1937), In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939). The common point in Shaw’s historical plays is that history was made by people, not by personalities. Therefore, Cleopatra is a young girl in love with Marc Anthony, Caesar is an old man, Napoleon is just a husband who’s afraid to discover his beloved wife’s affair, etc. In imagining the people behind the personalities, Shaw created brilliant caricatures made of words—in the positive sense of the word because it’s no offense to describe Cleopatra as a young woman, or Caesar at a respectable age, or Napoleon as a husband. From my point of view, this is the main thing, the greatest thing, which distinguishes Shaw from Shakespeare in terms of plays, in particular, the historical plays. The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (an adventure play) were included by the writer in the collection Three Plays for Puritans. But G.B. also wrote a political comedy with a social dimension on the Great Depression: On the Rocks (1933); other comedies: Man and Superman (1903) and Buoyant Billions (1947); a tragedy The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906). And much more. In the years before he died, G.B. Shaw wrote an illustrated guide (Rhyming Picture Guide) and sketches (Sixteen Self Sketches). The last play of G.B. Shaw is Why She Would Not (1950). THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE The Devil’s Disciple is a historical play in three acts about duty or discovering the right calling in life. The story is set in 1777 during the American Independence War which Shaw described as the year “in which the passions roused of the breaking off of the American colonies from England, more by their own weight than their own will, boiled up to shooting point, the shooting being idealized to the English mind as suppression of rebellion and maintenance of British dominion, and to the American as defence of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and self sacrifice on the altar of the Rights of Man. Into the merits of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire: suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced both Americans and English that the most high-minded course for them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and that military operations to that end are in full swing, morally supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for the blessing of God on their arms.” (Act I) The play starts with Mrs. Dudgeon waiting for her family, the pastor, Anthony Anderson, and some other officials to open the testament of her dead husband, Timothy Dudgeon. She is the mother of two sons, Richard and Christie, and she’s also taking care of Essie, the daughter of her husband’s brother. At this family reunion, all the participants are uncomfortable seeing the elder son of Mrs. Dudgeon, Richard, who calls himself “the devil’s disciple” because he loves life and has a more libertine understanding of it than the others. But right at the beginning of the play, Shaw shows Richard’s generous side and goes to showing us Richard’s willingness to sacrifice his life rather than to offend a woman’s reputation when the British officers arrested him by mistake. The British officers were publicly hanging insurgents to discourage the independence war and were looking for Anthony Anderson. At his house, the officers found Richard talking to Mrs. Judith Anderson; they arrested Richard assuming that he was the husband since he was alone with the pastor’s wife. Richard allows this confusion because he considers his life less important than that of the pastor, for the American Revolution “Amen! my life for the world’s future!” (Richard, Act III). But the play has a happy end because Anthony Anderson couldn’t stay indifferent and saved Richard from hanging in the nick of time (two minutes before twelve). “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” (Anderson, Act II) The end of the play reveals the premise around which G.B. Shaw wrote the play. He considered that in difficult circumstances, people find their true calling in life and emphasized it through Anderson, who joined the army, and through Richard, who became a pastor. Indeed, the devil’s disciple became a pastor. “Sir: it is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession.” (Anderson, Act III) CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA Caesar and Cleopatra is a historical play in five acts. It also has a prologue that doesn’t appear in all the editions. This entire prologue is a speech made by the Ancient Egyptian god, Ra. It’s a criticism of the Western’s hypocrisy and arrogance wrongly assuming that the world started with Rome and the Western civilization when, actually, it started long before: thousands of years and tens of generations before. In this sense, Shaw opposes the old Rome which was small, poor, and represented by Pompeii, to the new Rome represented by Caesar. The story is set in the year 706 or 48 B.C. and it starts in a palace in Alexandria (Egypt) that “is not so ugly as Buckingham Palace” (Act I). After having won against Pompeii at Farsala (Greece), Caesar assumes that he may be in Egypt and goes after him. But in Egypt, he discovers a fight for power between a ten-years-old king (Ptolemy) and his adolescent sister (Cleopatra) and that Pompeii was already murdered by Ptolemy’s soldiers. “CLEOPATRA. Of course not: I am the Queen; and I shall live in the palace at Alexandria when I have killed my brother, who drove me out of it. When I am old enough I shall do just what I like. I shall be able to poison the slaves and see them wriggle, and pretend to Ftatateeta that she is going to be put into the fiery furnace. CAESAR. Hm! Meanwhile why are you not at home and in bed? CLEOPATRA. Because the Romans are coming to eat us all. You are not at home and in bed either.” (Act I) […] PTOLEMY (mortified, and struggling with his tears). Caesar: this is how she treats me always. If I am a King why is she allowed to take everything from me? CLEOPATRA. You are not to be King, you little cry-baby. You are to be eaten by the Romans. CAESAR (touched by Ptolemy’s distress). Come here, my boy, and stand by me. Ptolemy goes over to Caesar, who, resuming his seat on the tripod, takes the boy’s hand to encourage him. Cleopatra, furiously jealous, rises and glares at them. CLEOPATRA (with flaming cheeks). Take your throne: I don’t want it. (She flings away from the chair, and approaches Ptolemy, who shrinks from her.) Go this instant and sit down in your place. CAESAR. Go, Ptolemy. Always take a throne when it is offered to you.” (Act II) Cleopatra is depicted as an adolescent who thinks that the Romans are monsters with seven hands holding seven swords in each of them. She is in love with a young Roman she was told about (Marc Anthony) and that Caesar promises to send her from Rome, making her thrilled. Caesar, instead, is an old man, a general, who helps Cleopatra become queen, who is always at the service of the new Rome conquering new territories, organizing them, taking money from the enslaved population, and depriving them of their cultural assets. “APOLLODORUS. I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself; but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce. CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? is war not an art? is government not an art? is civilization not an art? All these we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of the bargain.” (Act V) THE MAN OF DESTINY The Man of Destiny is a one-act historical play whose action takes place on the “twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road from Lodi to Milan.” The “man” in the title refers to Napoleon, but the play isn’t about a military victory, but about adultery. A lieutenant of Napoleon was stolen the correspondence that included a letter written by a woman. This letter was found by an Austrian spy and brought to Napoleon. Details about this letter and why it is important are revealed with lots of writing craft. “LADY (earnestly). No: on my honor I ask for no letter of yours—not a word that has been written by you or to you. That packet contains a stolen letter: a letter written by a woman to a man—a man not her husband—a letter that means disgrace, infamy-- NAPOLEON. A love letter? LADY (bitter-sweetly). What else but a love letter could stir up so much hate? NAPOLEON. Why is it sent to me? To put the husband in my power, eh? LADY. No, no: it can be of no use to you: I swear that it will cost you nothing to give it to me. It has been sent to you out of sheer malice—solely to injure the woman who wrote it. NAPOLEON. Then why not send it to her husband instead of to me?” It’s the moment when Napoleon understands that this love letter concerns his wife and a man. Bernard Shaw’s fictive assumption that Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, had an affair with Barras from the French Directorate that was ruling France at that time so that Napoleon to get an influential position and a career is Bernard Shaw’s way of pointing out political corruption that can take different forms—in this case, promiscuity. But in Shaw’s play, Napoleon isn’t a great military personality, but a man—the husband, who chooses not to know about his wife’s affair. “NAPOLEON. (…) Next time you are asked why a letter compromising a wife should not be sent to her husband, answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do you suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be compelled by public opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to injure his career by a scandal, when he can avoid it all by taking care not to know?” This play carries two messages. The first message is from the dramatist, who succeeded (again!) in creating a story that points out that history is made by people, not by personalities. The second message is from G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, who created a story and built some characters so that he could criticize the English and the way they do/did things: “NAPOLEON. (…) English are a race apart. No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. (…) As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven. (…) He makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost. (…)” SAINT JOAN Saint Joan is a one-act historical play structured in six scenes and an epilogue. It is one of the most known and successful plays written by Bernard Shaw. The play is the story of Jeanne d’Arc, the French young woman who won against the British army in the battle of Orleans. She didn’t succeed in entering Paris because she was captured in Compiegne, sold to the British, judged by a kind of Church Tribunal, found guilty of heresy and witchcraft, and burned alive on the 30th of May 1431. From a historical point of view, G.B. Shaw doesn’t miss any of these events. He even keeps the name of the archbishop who judged her, Pierre Cauchon. In French, the word “cauchon” means “pig” and it’s a detail that could have amused Shaw who didn't miss using it in the play for one of his characters. Furthermore, he didn't miss mentioning that after having judged her—actually misjudged her—and burned her alive, the Catholic Church made her a saint in 1920: “THE GENTLEMAN. On every thirtieth day of May, being the anniversary of the death of the said most blessed daughter of God, there shall in every Catholic church to the end of time be celebrated a special office in commemoration of her; and it shall be lawful to dedicate a special chapel to her, and to place her image on its altar in every such church.” (Epilog) But… “THE GENTLEMAN. I have been requested by the temporal authorities of France to mention that the multiplication of public statues to The Maid threatens to become an obstruction to traffic. I do so as a matter of courtesy to the said authorities, but must point out on behalf of the Church that The Maid's horse is no greater obstruction to traffic than any other horse.” (Epilog) The image of the Joan d’Arc changes with every scene. In the first scene, she’s depicted as an angel; in the second scene, she’s depicted as a soldier (“This creature is not a saint. She is not even a respectable woman. She does not wear women’s clothes. She is dressed like a soldier, and rides round the country with soldiers.”); in the third scene, she’s depicted as being diabolically inspired (“I will never take a husband. (…) I am a soldier: I don’t want to be thought of as a woman. I will not dress like a woman. I don’t care for things women care for. They dream of lovers, and of money. I dream of leading a change, and of placing the big guns.”); in the fourth scene, she’s the victim (“Let her perish. Let her burn. Let her not infect the whole flock”); in the fifth scene, Joan is depicted as a lonely soul (“Yes, I am alone on earth: I have always been alone.”) and wisely elaborates on the concept of loneliness from her religious point of view: “Well, my loneliness should be my strength, too; it’s better to be alone with God; His friendship will not fail me, nor His Counsel, nor His love. In this strength, I will dare, and dare, and dare until I die.” In the last scene, Joan d’Arc is depicted as a wise human being (“It is an old saying that he who tells too much truth is sure to be hanged.” or “I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.”) Joan d’Arc’s death was a “political necessity” that was wrong. But because “the ways of God are very strange”, the same Catholic Church that accused her of heresy and sentenced her to death canonized her as Saint Joan. (to be continued)
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