But even if Shaw’s plays were not performed at all, he would be a
world-figure in the modern drama, just as Ibsen is a world-figure and
Maeterlinck another. Very frequently it happens, in literature as well
as in other fields of metaphysical endeavor, that a master is unknown
to the majority except through his disciples. Until Huxley began
lecturing about it, no considerable number of laymen read “The Origin
of Species.” Fielding is not even a name to thousands who know and
love Thackeray. And Adam Smith--how many citizens of to-day read “The
Wealth of Nations”? Yet it is undeniable that the Scotch schoolmaster’s
conclusions have colored the statutes of the entire English-speaking
world and that they are dished up to us, with new sauces, in every
political campaign.
And so it is with playwrights. Ibsen is far less popular than Clyde
Fitch, but Ibsen’s ideas are fast becoming universal. Persons who
would, under no consideration, pay $2 a seat to see “Ghosts,” pay
that sum willingly when “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray” or “The Climbers”
is the bill. From these plays, unknowingly, they absorb Ibsenism in
a palatable and diluted form, like children who take castor oil in
taffy. That either is a conscious imitation of any Ibsen drama I do not
intend to affirm. What I mean is that the Norwegian is that model of
practically every contemporary play-maker worth considering, just as
plainly as Molière was the model of Congreve, Wycherley, and Sheridan.
A commanding personality, in literature as well as in statecraft,
creates an atmosphere, and lesser men, breathing it, take on its
creator’s characteristics.
Shaw himself, a follower of Ibsen, has shown variations sufficiently
marked to bring him followers of his own. In all the history of the
English stage, no man has exceeded him in technical resources nor in
nimbleness of wit. Some of his scenes are fairly irresistible, and
throughout his plays his avoidance of the old-fashioned machinery of
the drama gives even his wildest extravagances an air of reality. So
far but two men have exhibited skill in this regard at all measurable
with his. They are Israel Zangwill and James M. Barrie. Perhaps neither
of them consciously admires Shaw: but the fact is of small importance.
The essential thing is that “The Admirable Crichton” is of Shaw,
Shavian, and that “Agnes-Sit-By-The Fire,” in conception, development
and treatment, might be one of the “Plays Pleasant.”
And now let us proceed to a consideration of the Shaw plays.