GREAT CATHERINE (WHOM GLORY STILL ADORES)
The play Great Catherine was performed for the first time at the Vaudeville Theatre (London) in November 1913. It is a play with four scenes accompanied by an introduction in which the writer thought to apologize to Great Catherine, in which he points out that writing is an art, and stresses the interdependent link between good writing and talented actors’ performances. Great Catherine is not different from the other historical plays written by G.B. Shaw because the author does not focus on the empress but on the woman behind it. “In reply, I can only confess that Catherine's diplomacy and her conquests do not interest me. It is clear to me that neither she nor the statesmen with whom she played this mischievous kind of political chess had any notion of the real history of their own times, or of the real forces that were moulding Europe. (…) But Catherine as a woman with plenty of character and (as we should say) no morals, still fascinates and amuses us as she fascinated and amused her contemporaries.” However, he successfully describes the empress, although this is not his primary goal. Who was Catherine the Great? In short, Catherine the Great was the empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, and the grandmother of Alexander II who continued and improved most of her reforms. She was of German origin, educated, and interested in understanding and learning more—this is the reason why she held an extensive correspondence with the French Illuminists, in particular with Voltaire. For Russia, she was an administrative reformer, who built on the administrative reforms of Peter the Great; she tried to introduce liberal ideas and improve education. For example, Peter the Great organized Russia’s territory into forty-five territorial divisions, and, then, Catherine the Great thought to divide it into fifty provinces run by governors accountable to her and, then, each province was subdivided into districts, with its own administration and its court of justice. Although her initiatives were great and her ideas even greater, it was hard—almost impossible—to implement during her reign because Russia lacked enough qualified personnel to handle professionally the tasks in such a large country. And despite the illuminist ideas, Russia remained an absolute monarchy. G.B. Shaw’s play story takes place in 1776, in an extravagant luxury (similar to that of Versailles during Louis XIV), but also dirt and disorder. Catherine the Great speaks with a German accent and uses German words such as ‘ausgezeichnet’, ‘wie komisch’, gelieber aller Wetter’, etc. Furthermore, the name ‘Voltaire’ appears frequently in the text. The other characters speak about her as a ‘glorious woman’, ‘the greatest woman in the world’, ‘a liberal empress’, and a ‘philosopher.’ But she does not see herself this way. “I am the only person in Russia who gets no fun out of my being Empress. You all glory in me: you bask in my smiles: you get titles and honors and favors from me: you are dazzled by my crown and my robes: you feel splendid when you have been admitted to my presence; and when I say a gracious word to you, you talk about it to everyone you meet for a week afterwards. But what do I get out of it? Nothing. (She throws herself into the chair. Naryshkin deprecates with a gesture; she hurls an emphatic repetition at him.) Nothing!! I wear a crown until my neck aches: I stand looking majestic until I am ready to drop: I have to smile at ugly old ambassadors and frown and turn my back on young and handsome ones. Nobody gives me anything.” (Scene 2) She has a sense of humor but she also knows to be severe (“A monarch, sir, has sometimes to employ a necessary, and salutary severity—“ Scene IV). Her main purpose in this play story is to build a museum because an ‘enlightened capital should have a museum’. (Scene 2) In conclusion, although this play has only four scenes is based on deep research about this empress of Russia because G.B. Shaw does not miss any of the things history teaches us about Great Catherine. And with a lot of writing craft, he succeeds in depicting both the woman and the empress. THE INCA OF PERUSALEM—AN AMOST HISTORICAL COMEDIETTA The play The Inca of Perusalem was performed for the first time at the Criterion Theatre (London) in December 1917. It is a one-act play with a prologue. The story takes place in a sitting room of a hotel where a princess expects the Inca of Perusalem to discuss marriage arrangements. The Inca is a powerful kingdom with its own currency: the Perusalem dollar! However, the princess does not want to marry any of the princes of the Inca. “It’s a dreadful thing to be a princess: they just marry you to anyone they like. The Inca is to come and look at me, and pick out whichever of his sons he thinks will suit.” Ermyntrude, the maid of the princess, offers to pretend she’s the princess. Ermyntrude is a young woman who loves living an extravagant life that his father cannot afford, and who failed to marry some millionaires. Therefore, as she loves luxury, she accepts to become the maid of the princess because it is a great environment for her to meet and marry a millionaire, such as the Inca of Perusalem. The play describes the meeting between Ermyntrude and the Inca. And an opportunity for G.B. Shaw to ridicule royalties, such as names. “His Imperial Highness Prince Eitel William Frederick George Franz Josef Alexander Nicholas Victor Emmanuel Albert Theodore Wilson” usually called Sunny; or their civil status of being ‘married’ or ‘not seriously married’; family resemblance “they all smoke; they all quarrel with one another; and they none of them appreciate their father, who, by the way, is no mean painter...”; and concluding that “I doubt whether any of these young degenerates would make you happy.” Above all, the most important feature is the Inca mustache, probably, an allusion to King George V, King of the UK and Emperor of India between 1910 and 1936, when this play was written and staged: “The Inca's moustache is so watched and studied that it has made his face the political barometer of the whole continent. When that moustache goes up, culture rises with it. Not what you call culture; but Kultur, a word so much more significant that I hardly understand it myself except when I am in specially good form. When it goes down, millions of men perish.” Similarly to the princess, the Inca finds it difficult to be royalty because “An emperor is a puppet. The Inca is not allowed to make a speech: he is compelled to take up a screed of flatulent twaddle written by some noodle of a minister and read it aloud.” However, if anyone disagrees with the Inca is insane. What is ‘insanity’? “The condition of the people who disagree with the Inca.” THE APPLE CART The Apple Cart (1929) is considered a historical play, but it is a single-issue drama because it mainly discusses one topic that is a political crisis between the King and the Cabinet. It is a drama in two acts and an interlude that fulfills Aristotle’s three-unity drama structure of time, place, and one plot. The title refers to the Cabinet as an ‘apple cart’—but why apples? My assumption is that G.B. Shaw decided on this title starting from the old saying ‘to compare apples and/with oranges.’ His point might have been that royalty and plutocracy are two different things. The Preface shows that this play was difficult even for Shaw’s critics. Therefore, “In Dresden the performance was actually prohibited as a blasphemy against Democracy.” Furthermore, the conflict of the play is not between royalty and democracy, but between these two and plutocracy (a plutocrat is a powerful person only because is rich). G.B. Shaw had explained his play to those who did not fully understand it and, thought that the play was bad. “In The Apple Cart this equality is assumed. It is masked by a strong contrast of character and methods which has led my less considerate critics to complain that I have packed the cards by making the King a wise man and the minister a fool. But that is not at all the relation between the two. (…) In short, those critics of mine who have taken The Apple Cart for a story of a struggle between a hero and a roomful of guys have been grossly taken in. It is never safe to take my plays at their suburban face value: it ends in your finding in them only what you bring to them, and so getting nothing for your money.” The play opens with the question “What was your father?” in a dialog between Pamphilius and Sempronius, two royal secretaries. Those who might think that this is dull or/and such an easy-peasy that everybody can be G.B. Shaw or even Shakespeare because his first line in Hamlet is “Who’s there?” are wrong. This question announces a play around monarchy and its hereditary feature. The entire play is a debate about whether Britain should be a constitutional monarchy or an absolute one. The Cabinet coerces the King to decide on this crisis by 5 o’clock. Act I is a debate between King Magnus and his Cabinet Ministers about what a king is and what he does or what the Cabinet would like him to do. “I am a king because I was the nephew of my uncle, and because my two elder brothers died. If I had been the stupidest man in the country I should still be its king. I have not won my position by my merits. (…) I see why you are a Republican. If the English people send me packing and establish a republic, no man has a better chance of being the first British president than you. (…) And what is the King? An idol set up by a group of plutocrats so that they can rule the country with the King as their scapegoat and puppet. Presidents, now, are chosen by the people, who always want a Strong Man to protect them against the rich.” It is also about what political science is “The scientists will have nothing to do with us; for the atmosphere of politics is not the atmosphere of science. Even political science, the science by which civilization must live or die, is busy explaining the past whilst we have to grapple with the present: it leaves the ground before our feet in black darkness whilst it lights up every corner of the landscape behind us. All the talent and genius of the country is bought up by the flood of unearned money.” And about what politics has become “Politics, once the centre of attraction for ability, public spirit, and ambition, has now become the refuge of a few fanciers of public speaking and party intrigue who find all the other avenues to distinction closed to them...” Furthermore, it is about what a Cabinet of Ministers is. “In this Cabinet there is no such thing as a policy. Every man plays for his own hand.” Or about the definition of a political demagogue “A demagogue may steal a horse where a king dare not look over a hedge.” And about what a King veto is: “the only remaining defense of the people against corrupt legislation.” The dialog has also some entertaining lines, mainly belonging to King Magnus to stress the fact that he has a sense of humor: “Many men would hardly miss their heads, there is so little in them.” Or “The multitude understands talk: it does not understand work.” Or, we cannot start one job, without creating ten other fresh problems.” The Interlude is a dialog between King Magnus and his mistress, Orinthia, with whom he talks politics, but also about his wife and what the queen means to him. “ORINTHIA. Oh, you are blind. You are worse than blind: you have low tastes. Heaven is offering you a rose; and you cling to a cabbage. MAGNUS (laughing) That is a very apt metaphor, belovéd. But what wise man, if you force him to choose between doing without roses and doing without cabbages, would not secure the cabbages? Besides, all these old married cabbages were once roses… … ORINTHIA. Oh, you know what I mean. Divorce her. Make her divorce you. It is quite easy. That was how Ronny married me. Everybody does it when they need a change.” Act II is a dialog between King Magnus and Queen Jemima. It also gives the answer to the 5 o’clock crisis around the unconditional surrender of the King asked by the Cabinet, but it is also an opportunity for G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, to point a few things about England and the English. “God help England if she had no Scots to think of her.” (Proteus) “Politics is not suited for the English, if you ask me.” (Crassus) To sum up, The Apple Cart is a play whose plot is summarized by G.B. Shaw with a proverb – if two men ride the same horse, one must ride behind. The entire play is a crafted dialog around the monarchy, from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. It is about politics like a ‘mug’s game’ in which both the King and the Cabinet have equal skills but the debate is won by the King because in a conflict and in a crisis, the wiser gives up by taking a wise decision. GENEVA, A FANCIED PAGE OF HISTORY The historical play Geneva was written in 1936, then revised several times for other two years, had its premiere in July 1938 in Poland and in Polish at the Teatr Polski (Warsaw), and then in England and in English in August 1939 at the Malvern Festival (Worcestershire that has a theater tradition since 1885). Then, it was revised again, over and over, again until 1940 in order to fulfill the exigencies for a New York performance. This play is a political satire in four acts. Its setting is Geneva in the 1930s at the League of Nations (Acts I, II, and III) and at the International Tribunal in The Hague (Act IV). The choice of these two international institutions meant to secure peace and justice, allows the writer the possibility to discuss a variety of political topics and to express his skepticism about the efficiency of these institutions and of their ignorant staff. The play has two main characters, the incompetent Miss Begonia Brown and Sir Orpheus. It also has several secondary characters that complete the discussion with observations and with different personal opinions as one character is a German Jew, another one is a British vicar, a Russian Bolshevik, a victim of colonialism, etc. But three characters that appear in Act IV are a parody of Hitler (Herr Battler), Mussolini (Bombardone), and General Franco (General Flanco) judged by a Dutch. The first three acts take place at the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva—an institutional body that belongs to the League of Nations that was an international institution created after WWI to secure peace and prevent future world wars. From a historical point of view, the League of Nations started in the mid-1920s to work on the creation of a new institution within the League whose primary task was disarmament as a war prevention tool. This institution opened in Geneva in 1932. Whether it was called the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation, as Shaw does, it is hard for me to say. But in the spirit of political satire and of parody, I doubt it. An incompetent secretary, Miss Begonia Brown, runs the workings of this intellectual cooperation committee. People of different origins and with different personal life stories come to this committee to bring their grievances, hoping to find a solution. This context allows G.B. Shaw to point out several problems, some administrative, others political. From among the administrative problems, first, he points out the fact that the employees have little to work and have to pretend to work: “From the state of the table she seems to have been working at the compilation of a card index, as there are cards scattered about (…). But at present, she is not at work. She is smoking and reading an illustrated magazine with her heels on the table. A thermos flask, a cup and saucer, and a packet of cigarettes are beside her on a sliding shelf drawn out from the table. She is a self-satisfied young person, fairly attractive and well aware of it. (…) her speech and manners are London suburban. Somebody knocks at the door. She hastily takes her heels off the table; (…) finally resumes her seat and looks as busy as possible.” Second, he points out the way jobs are occupied in these international organizations, mainly by attribution and connections rather than an interest in the job, proper education, and interview: “A friend gave me a ticket for it. (…) He saw that I was a cut above the other girls there, and picked me for his partner when he had to dance. I told him (…) that I was looking out for a job. His people fixed me up for Geneva all right. A perfect gentleman I must say: never asked so much as a kiss. I was disappointed. (…) Oh no: there were plenty of kisses going from better looking chaps. But he was a bit of a sucker; and I thought he had intentions; and of course he would have been a jolly good catch for me.” Third, he points out the fact that the offices of these institutions are all over the world, with their boss on one side of the world and another one on the other side of the world, many of them eager to be simultaneous ‘president of that, that, that and that’, ‘director of that, that and that’, ‘CEO of that, that and that’ as if this accumulation of titles for which they do nothing should compensate for the ignorance of these ‘very eminent persons’. “I am sorry. Our chiefs are scattered over Europe, very eminent persons, you know. Can I do anything?” or “There is the head office in Paris, you know, and some offices in other countries. I suppose they do their bit; and anyhow we all do a lot of writing to one another. But I must say it's as dull as ditchwater. When I took the job I thought it was going to be interesting, and that I'd see all the great men.” From among the political problems, G.B. Shaw’s main focus is on liberty and democracy, on the difference between the West and the East, on term confusions that find an ideal fertile land in the ‘void of ignorance’: “if a president kills anyone it’s an execution, but if anyone kills the president it’s an assassination” with all the decisional consequences this dictates although it is about murder in both cases. He also criticizes the British parliamentary and its first-past-the-post electoral system. Ms. Brown, ‘a complete ignoramus’ has a grand chance in her constituency because she has nerve, good looks, and publicity: “She has courage, sincerity, good looks, and big publicity as the Geneva heroine. Everything that our voters love.” Or, “British democracy is a lie…” G.B. Shaw has a German Jew character who was cast out of his native country and who brings his grievance to this committee of the League of Nations. Therefore, G.B. Shaw points to the topic of anti-Semitism. The topic is approached from the point of view of the Jew, as well as of the others on the Jew. On the one hand, “I have all the marks of a German blond. German is my native language: in fact I am in every sense a German. But I worship in the synagogue; and when I worship I put my hat on, whereas a German takes it off.” Or “It is for our talents, our virtues that you fear, not our vice.” On the other hand, “As to the Jewish gentleman himself, I need not dwell on his case as he has been driven out of his native country solely because he is so thoughtful and industrious that his fellow-countrymen are hopelessly beaten by him in the competition for the conduct of business and for official positions.” Or, “Only the Jews, with the business faculty peculiar to their race, will profit by our despair. Why has our Jewish friend just left us? To telephone, he said. Yes; but to whom is he telephoning? To his stockbroker, gentlemen. He is instructing his stockbroker to sell gilt-edged in any quantity, at any price, knowing that if this story gets about before settling day he will be able to buy it for the price of waste paper and be a millionaire until the icecap overtakes him.” This stockbroker speculation episode comes in the context of false news related to war that can influence the market and a Jew would not lose an opportunity to make some money—who would? This false news episode has a major role in the play and it is not related to the Jews (maybe only secondary because the unfolding of the text allows the writer to make this link and complete this character) but to the inefficiency of the League of Nations. More precisely, during the play, there are five such episodes: Germany withdraws from the League of Nations; the British Empire declares war on Russia; Japan declares war on Russia; Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, later, South Africa form an anti-Japanese alliance; and, last, Germany invades Ruthenia, which disturbs the stock market. In other words, this is G.B. Shaw’s way of pointing out the war dynamic in the real world. At the League of Nations, nothing is done but talk while innocent people perish. Act IV shows the inefficiency of the International Court of Justice. In order to point out its inefficiency, the three dictators come by themselves to the Court that has nothing better to propose but an attitude, and has the satisfaction that “It broke up this farce of a trial, at all events.” In this discouraging justice system, G.B. Shaw finds some room for humor in a dialog between the Jew and Battler (Hitler): “You cannot even find a Jewish lawyer to defend you, because you have driven them all from your country and left it with no better brains than your own. You have employed physical force to suppress intellect. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost.” In short, this play is very complex and its conclusions are several: “Justice is an ideal,” “Internationalism a nonsense,” “Fouls are dangerous; and the so-called League of Nations is a League of Fouls.” In the meantime, since G.B. Shaw wrote this play, “the void created by ignorance” got bigger, and other similar institutions were created. The best conclusion is that “I don’t expect any government to tolerate any doctrine that threatens its existence or the incomes of its rulers.” IN GOOD KING CHARLES’ GOLDEN DAYS: A TRUE HISTORY THAT NEVER HAPPENED The play In Good King Charles’s Golden Days is a historical play in two acts and its action set at the royal court of King Charles II (1660-1685). It was written in 1938-9 for an educational history film. Its title is inspired by the first verse of an 18th - century satirical song called The Vicar of Bay (at its turn inspired by a 17th - century folk song). This play’s characters, dialogue, and setting serve one main purpose: as an ‘act’ of historical justice—as the author says in the Preface of the play. But to what injustice, right? King Charles II is remembered by history more like a polygamous king, completely ignoring the fact that he was a wonderful husband to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. G.B. Shaw went further and imagined ‘a true story that never happened’—a dialog between Charles II, Isaac Newton, George Fox (founder of a moral society), and Godfrey Kneller who is an artist. Their clash of ideas is where the play’s interest lies. The input brought by King’s mistresses (Nelly, Castlemaine, and Louise) is the play’s second clash and where the fun dialog lies. And there is a third clash: the constant dichotomy between the physicist (represented here by Newton) and the artist (Godfrey Kneller). Act I embodies the above-mentioned clashes. The action takes place in the house of Isaac Newton, in the library. It is a discussion about several topics such as science, Church and religion, leadership, life at the court, and others. “Figures cannot mock because they cannot feel. That is their great quality, and their great fault.” (Newton) “Nothing exists until it’s measured.” (Newton) “But what a waste of time! What can it possibly matter whether the sun is twenty miles away or twenty five? (…) At such distance you could not see it. You cannot feel its heat.” (Louise) “I tell you that from the moment you allow this manmade monster called a Church to enter your mind your inner light is like an extinguished candle; and your soul is plunged in darkness and damned. There is no atheist like the Church atheist.” (Fox) “The inner light must express itself in music, in noble architecture, in eloquence: in a word, in beauty, before it can pass into the minds of common men.” (Charles) The action in Act II takes place in the boudoir of Catherine of Braganza where the king and the queen are mainly discussing their relationship. This is the act where G.B. Shaw depicts King Charles II as a good and loving husband. He does that with words (he repeats seventeen times the word ‘beloved’ and the last time ‘my very belovest’), with stage directions (‘caressing her’), and with dialog (complementing dialog: “I am not a great man; and neither are you a little woman. You have more brains and character than all the rest of the court put together” or with forgiving dialog: “I treated you very badly when I was a young man because young men have low tastes and think only of themselves.”) “CATHERINE. A wife is some use then, after all. CHARLES. There is nobody like a wife.” Charles describes his relationships with his mistresses and concludes that “Beloved: I am done with all bodies. They are all alike: all cats are grey in the dark. It is the souls and the brains that are different.” The dialog in Act II between the King and Queen of England is an opportunity for G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, to express some of his thoughts about the English. “No one can govern the English: that is why they will never come to any good.” (Catherine) “There can be only one true religion; and England has fifty.” (Catherine) “The English robbed the Church and destroyed it: if a priest celebrates Mass anywhere in England outside your private chapel he is hanged for it. (…) No: give me English birds and English trees, English dogs and Irish horses, English rivers and English ships; but English men! No, NO, NO.” (Charles) From an artistic point of view, this play has comparisons (“dressed like a nobleman”, “I thought philosophers are like the Romish priests”, “behave like a streetwalker”, etc.), repetitions (“no, no, no”, etc.) and several great antimetaboles (“They repeat themselves and repeat themselves endlessly”, “we know what we believed; and all believe the same things”, etc.), and foreign words, particularly in French.
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