_Cæsar and Cleopatra_, unique in Bernard Shaw's theatre, alike in
subject matter and _genre_, warrants individual consideration. To an
interviewer, on April 30th, 1898, Shaw related that he was just in the
middle of the first act of a new play, in which he was going “to give
Shakespeare a lead.” Unlike Oscar Wilde, who once said that the writing
of plays for a particular actor or actress was work for the artisan in
literature, not for the artist, Shaw freely confessed that he wrote
_Cæsar and Cleopatra_ for Forbes Robertson, “because he is the classic
actor of our day, and had a right to require such a service from
me.”[160] Asked if he had not been reading up “Mommsen and people like
that,” Shaw replied, “Not a bit of it. History is only a dramatization
of events. And if I start telling lies about Cæsar, it's a hundred to
one that they will be just the same lies that other people have told
about him.... Given Cæsar and a certain set of circumstances, I know
what would happen, and when I have finished the play you will find I
have written history.”[161]
In an opening scene of rare beauty and mystery, Cæsar discovers the
child-truant Cleopatra reclining between the paws of her “baby-sphinx.”
What possibilities, what previsions are packed in this prophetic hour,
which witnesses the meeting of these two supreme representatives of
two alien worlds, two diverse civilizations! From the sublime we are
hurled down to the ridiculous. Cæsar, dreamer and world-conquerer,
apostrophizing the sphinx in the immemorial moonlight of Egypt,
is suddenly feazed out of countenance by a childish voice: “Old
gentleman!--don't run away, old gentleman.” It is the voice of Shaw to
his public: “I may take unpardonable liberties with you; but--don't run
away.”
[Illustration: =In Consultation.=]
From the original monochrome, made at 10, Adelphi Terrace,
London, W.C., August, 1907.
_Éduard J. Steichen._
In the main, Shaw follows, as far as time, place and historical events
go, such facts of history as are to be found in Plutarch and in _De
Bello Gallico_; in every other respect the play is modern, colloquially
modern, in tone and in spirit. Shaw approaches his theme under the
domination of an _idée fixe_: scorn of tradition and of the science
of history. The notion that there has been any progress since the
time of Cæsar is absurd! Increased command over Nature by no means
connotes increased command over self; if there has been any evolution,
it has been in our conceptions of the meaning of greatness. When
Shaw wrote his celebrated preface _Better than Shakespeare?_ he had
a very definite claim to make; that his Cæsar and Cleopatra are more
credible, more natural, to a modern audience, than are the imaginative
projections of a Shakespeare. Shaw maintains that, in manner and art,
nobody can write better than Shakespeare, “because, carelessness
apart, he did the thing as well as it can be done within the limits
of human faculty.” But Shaw did profess to have something to say by
this time that Shakespeare neither said nor dreamed of. “Allow me to
set forth Cæsar in the same modern light,” pleads Shaw, in speaking of
the hero-restorations of Carlyle and Mommsen, “taking the same liberty
with Shakespeare as he with Homer, and with no thought of pretending
to express the Mommsenite view of Cæsar any better than Shakespeare
expressed a view that was not even Plutarchian....”[162] “Shakespeare's
Cæsar is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the real Julius Cæsar,” Mr.
Shaw once remarked to me; “my Cæsar is a simple return to nature and
history.”
Are there many cases in dramatic psychology, asked M. Filon, as
interesting as the _liaison_ which would have had “Cæsarion” as
result? But in _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, there is no battle of love,
no dramatic conflict. Shaw might have produced a drama of the nations,
in which the cunning intrigues of Egypt are matched against the
forthrightness and efficiency of the Romans; or a drama of passion,
charged to the full with poetic imagination. But he has availed himself
neither of the historic sense, in which he appears to be deficient, nor
of the romantic violence of poetic imagination, against which he rages
with puritanical fervour. Shaw calls the play a “history”; certainly
it is not a “drama” in the technical sense.[163] And yet, despite the
numerous _longueurs_ of the play, the pyrotechnic flashes of wit which
only barely suffice to conceal the fact that the action is marking
time, the exciting incidents which separately give a semblance of
activity to the piece, there is a genuine thread of motive connecting
scene with scene.
_Cæsar and Cleopatra_ is, from one point of view, a study in the
evolution of character; and this play, and _Major Barbara_, are
the only exceptions to Shaw's theatre of static character. The
psychological action of the piece consists in the evolution, under the
guiding hand of Cæsar, of the little Egyptian sensualist, in the period
of plastic adolescence. Cæsar has the weak fondness of an indulgent
uncle for the adolescent Cleopatra, with her strange admixture of
childish _mauvaise honte_ and regal covetousness. Realizing with the
instinct of a king-maker Cleopatra's dangerous possibilities as a
ruler, Cæsar exercises upon her the plastic and determinative force
of an architect of states. Slowly the little Cleopatra learns her
lesson, glories in her newly-won power, tyrannizes inhumanly over
all about her, and eventually--with well-nigh disastrous effects to
herself--endeavours to teach her teacher the true secret of dominion.
From another point of view, this play is the portrait of a hero in
the light of Shavian psychology--a hero in undress costume, in his
dressing-gown as he lived, with all his trivial vanities and endearing
weaknesses. The halo of the “pathos of distance,” surrounding the head
of the demi-god, wholly fades away; and there stands before us a real
man, shorn of the romantic, the histrionic, the chivalric, it is true,
but a real man, every inch of him, for all that. Shaw clearly draws the
distinction:
“Our conception of heroism has changed of late years. The stage
hero of the palmy days is a pricked bubble. The gentlemanly
hero, of whom Tennyson's King Arthur was the type, suddenly
found himself out as Torvald Helmer in Ibsen's _Doll's
House_, and died of the shock. It is no use now going on with
heroes who are no longer really heroic to us. Besides, we
want credible heroes. The old demand for the incredible, the
impossible, the superhuman, which was supplied by bombast,
inflation, and the piling of crimes on catastrophes and
factitious raptures on artificial agonies, has fallen off;
and the demand now is for heroes in whom we can recognize
our own humanity, and who, instead of walking, talking,
eating, drinking, making love and fighting single combats in
a monotonous ecstasy of continuous heroism, are heroic in the
true human fashion: that is, touching the summits only at
rare moments, and finding the proper level of all occasions,
condescending with humour and good sense to the prosaic ones
as well as rising to the noble ones, instead of ridiculously
persisting in rising to them all on the principle that a hero
must always soar, in season or out of season.”[164]
Mr. Forbes Robertson recently said that he regarded _Cæsar and
Cleopatra_ as a “great play,” representing very truly what one would
imagine Cæsar said, thought and felt. “Possibly the play is before its
time--some people have said such curious things about it. There are
scenes of wonderful brilliancy and beauty, and I myself see nothing
farcical about the play, as some people seem to suggest. I see a great
wit and humour; and, as Mr. Shaw points out, by what right are we to
presuppose that Cæsar had no sense of humour? He meets this amusing
little impudent girl, and is very much amused with her, and interested
in her, quite naturally as a human being. Why should one expect him to
go strutting about, with one arm in his toga and the other extended,
spouting dull blank verse?” Indeed, Shaw's Cæsar is a remarkable
personality--in practice a man of business sagacity; in politics, a
dreamer; in action, brilliant and resourceful; in private, a trifle
vain and rhetorical--boyish, exuberant, humorous. When Pothinus
expresses amazement that the conqueror of the world has time to busy
himself with taxes, Cæsar affably replies: “My friend, taxes are the
chief business of a conqueror of the world.”
Like Mirabeau, he had no memory for insults and affronts received, and
“could not forgive, for the sole reason that--he forgot.” He answers
to Nietzsche's _differentia_: “Not to be able to take seriously for a
long time, an enemy, or a misfortune, or even one's own misdeeds--is
the characteristic of strong and full natures, abundantly endowed with
plastic, formative, restorative, also obliterative force.” Cæsar's
policy of clemency is constantly thwarted by the murderous passions
of his soldiers; the murder of Pompey he contemns as a stroke of
unpardonable treachery and revenge, the removal of Vercingetorix very
much as Talleyrand regarded the execution of the Due d'Enghien: it was
worse than a crime, it was a blunder. Sufficient unto himself, strong
enough to dispense with happiness, Cæsar is--to use a phrase of Mr.
Desmond MacCarthy's--“content in the place of happiness with a kind
of triumphant gaiety, springing from a sense of his own fortitude and
power.” Cæsar is a thoroughly good fellow, prosaically, patho-comically
looking approaching old age in the face and wearing his conqueror's
wreath of oak leaves--to conceal his growing bald spot. Were Rome a
true republic, Cæsar would be the first of republicans; he values
the life of every Roman in his army as he values his own, and makes
friends with everyone as he does with dogs and children. “Cæsar is an
important public man,” as Mr. Max Beerbohm puts it, “who knows that a
little chit of a girl-queen has taken a fancy to him, and is tickled
by the knowledge and behaves very kindly to her, and rather wishes
he were young enough to love her.” But when he is again recalled to
Rome, Cleopatra concerns him no more. Cæsar is the Shavian type of the
naturally great man--great, not because he mortifies his nature in
fulfilment of duty, but because he fulfils his own will.”[165]
_Cæsar and Cleopatra_, to employ a phrase of the elder Coquelin, is
a “combination of the most absolute fantasy with the most absolute
truth.” One feels at times that it belongs in the category of _Orphée
aux Enfers_ and _La Belle Hélène_, and only needs the music of
Offenbach to round it out. Shaw shatters the illusion of antiquity
with a multitude of the stock phrases of contemporary history: “Peace
with honour,” “Egypt for the Egyptians,” “Art for Art's sake,” etc.,
etc.[166] True to Shakespearean practice, Shaw revels in anachronisms,
and goes so far as to assert that this is the only way to make the
historic past take form and life before our eyes. If Shakespeare
makes a clock strike in ancient Rome, Shaw shows a steam engine at
work in Alexandria in 48 B.C.! If Shakespeare puts a billiard table
in Cleopatra's palace, Shaw alludes to the ancient superstition of
table-rapping in the year 707 of the Republic! Shaw gives free play
to his abounding humour, having long since learned that nothing can
be accomplished by solemnity. “Whenever I feel in writing a play,” he
frankly confesses, “that my great command of the sublime threatens to
induce solemnity of mind in my audience, I at once introduce a joke
and knock the solemn people from their perch.” The eighteenth-century
Irishman, with his contempt for John Bull, peeps out here and there;
and when Cleopatra asks Britannus, Cæsar's young secretary from
Britain, if it were true that he was painted all over blue, when Cæsar
captured him, Britannus proudly replies: “Blue is the colour worn by
all Britons of good standing. In war we stain our bodies blue; so that
though our enemies may strip us of our clothes and our lives, they
cannot strip us of our respectability.”
In _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ Shaw has created something more or less than
drama--a tremendous fantasy surcharged and interpenetrated with deep
imaginative reality. In certain plays of which I shall now speak, Shaw
shows that he can play the dramatist, pure and simple, and write with
a concentration of energy, a compression of emotive intensity, that
seem very foreign to the prolixity and discursiveness of his later
manner. The stern artistic discipline to which he nearly succeeded in
schooling himself in _Mrs. Warren's Profession_, once more exhibits
itself in _The Man of Destiny_, _Candida_ and _The Devil's Disciple_.
The essential fact that these plays have proved popular _stage_
successes in the capitals of the world--New York, London, Berlin,
Vienna, Dresden, St. Petersburg, Buda-Pesth, Brussels, etc.--is in
itself testimony to the fact that--always allowing for the refraction
of the Shavian temperament--Bernard Shaw is a true dramatist, capable
of touching the deeper emotions and appealing to universal sentiments.
In speaking of his earliest works, Shaw airily refers to those “vain
brilliancies given off in the days of my health and strength.” Perhaps
something of their diffuseness, and the lack of concentrative thought
evident in their construction, are explained, not alone by reference
to Shaw's _intransigéance_, but in part by the conditions under which
they were written. A bit of reminiscence voiced by the great English
comedian, Sir Charles Wyndham, is illuminating:
“I shall never forget the first time Shaw called to see me.
In those days he would not have a bit of linen about him.
He wore soft shirts and long, flowing ties, which, with his
tawny hair and long, red beard, gave him the appearance of a
veritable Viking. Well, he came in and sat down at the table.
Then he put his hand into his right trousers pocket and slowly
drew out a small pocket memorandum-book; then he dug into the
left side-pocket and fished out another of the little books,
then still another and another. Finally, he paused in his
explorations, looked at me and said:
“'I suppose you're surprised to see all these little
pocket-books. The fact is, however, I write my plays in them
while riding around London on top of a 'bus.'”[167]
The How and Where of the composition of such plays might well account
for much inconsequence and aerial giddiness!
_The Man of Destiny_ has an origin not a little unique. Many plays are
written for some one great actor or actress--few are written for two.
And yet, according to Shaw's own confessions, _The Man of Destiny_ was
written for Richard Mansfield and Ellen Terry--Mansfield serving as
the model for Napoleon, Terry as the model for the Lady. At this time,
Shaw had seen Mansfield only in _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Richard
III._; and once in 1894 had chatted with him for an hour at the
Langham. The impression he received was so strong, the suggestion of
Napoleon so striking, that he resolved to write a play about Napoleon
based on a study of Mansfield.[168]
In a letter to Mansfield (September 8th, 1897), Shaw says: “I was much
hurt by your contemptuous refusal of _A Man of Destiny_, not because I
think it one of my masterpieces, but because Napoleon is nobody else
but Richard Mansfield himself. I studied the character from you, and
then read up Napoleon and found that I had got him exactly right.”[169]
Shaw frequently corresponded with Ellen Terry during the days he was
writing _The Man of Destiny_; he saw her numberless times on the stage,
but had never actually met her when he wrote _The Man of Destiny_. Shaw
escaped the “illusion” of the Lyceum, created by “Irving's incomparable
dignity and Terry's incomparable beauty”--simply because “I was a
dramatist and needed Ellen Terry for my own plays.... I had tried to
win her when I wrote _The Man of Destiny_, in which the heroine is
simply a delineation of Ellen Terry--imperfect, it is true, for who can
describe the indescribable!”[170]
_The Man of Destiny_, Shaw, in fact, confesses, was written chiefly
to exhibit the virtuosity of the two principal characters; and it
must be confessed that their virtuosity is so pervasively dazzling
as occasionally to distract attention from the dramatic procedure.
The unnamed possibilities of the situation have been exploited in
the subtlest fashion. This little “fragment” is a dramatic _tour de
force_; the rapid shifting of victory from one side to the other, the
excitingly unstable equilibrium of the balance of power, the fierce war
of wills are of the very essence of true drama. The serious underlying
issue, the struggle of Napoleon for a triumph that spells personal
dishonour, is a dramatic motive sanctioned by that great classic
example, the _Œdipus Rex_. Unlike Sophocles, whose listeners knew
in advance the story of the ill-fated king, Shaw withholds from the
spectator any foreknowledge of the outcome; but the growing curiosity
of Napoleon, instantaneously inducing like inquisitiveness on the part
of the spectator, is one of the chief factors of interest in the play.
Early in the development of the action, the purpose of the letter is
readily guessed by anyone familiar with such Napoleonic history as is
recorded, for example, in the _Memoirs of Barras_.[171]
As Shaw's Cæsar is his interpretation of the great man of ancient
history, so Napoleon is his interpretation of the great man of modern
history. Shaw's Napoleon is a strange mixture of noble and ignoble
impulses. He is strangely imaginative--a dreamer in the great sense,
with a touch of the superstition of a Wallenstein, a great faith in his
star. A ravenous beast at table, he feverishly gorges his food, while
his hair sweeps into the ink and the gravy; his absolute obliviousness
to surroundings is the mask of tremendous energy of purpose. Gravy
answers the purpose of ink, a grape hull marks a strategic point on
the map: the mark, not the material, is Napoleon's concern. And it
is the _imprévu_ of his decisions that so often puts his adversaries
to rout. M. Filon protests against Shaw's portrait of Napoleon as a
mere repetition of the caricatures of Gillray and the calumniating
distortions of the historian Seeley; but Shaw's Napoleon is, in great
measure, not the Napoleon of the glorified Bonapartist chromo, but the
Napoleon post-figured by his later career. Le Petit Caporal is the
ancestor of the Emperor Napoleon I.; and in this early phase, Napoleon
may be best described in the sneering characterization of the Lady as
“the vile, vulgar Corsican adventurer.” Says Mr. John Corbin: “The
final sensation of the character is of vast unquenchable energy and
intelligence, at once brutally real and sublimely theatrical. And is
not this the great Napoleon? By virtue of this mingling of seemingly
opposed but inherently true qualities this Man of Destiny, for all
the impertinences and audacities of Mr. Shaw's pyrotechnics, may be
reckoned the best presentation of Napoleon thus far achieved in the
drama, as it is certainly by far the most delightful.” I asked Mlle.
Yvette Guilbert one day if she thought _The Man of Destiny_ would
succeed in Paris. “I rather fear not,” she replied. “Shaw's portrait is
too true to the original to suit the French!”[172]
Towards the close of _The Man of Destiny_, Napoleon, taking for his
text the famous phrase: “The English are a nation of shop-keepers,”
launches forth into a perfect torrent of irrelevant histrionic
pyrotechnics. “Let me explain the English to you,” he says, and in
Shaw's most Maxim-gun style, proceeds to summarize the history of
England in the nineteenth century, in a half-critical, half-prophetic
philippic, beginning with discussion of the views of the Manchester
School, of British industrial and colonial policy, and of Imperialism,
and concluding with allusions to Wellington and Waterloo! In reading
the play, this passage appears to be a gross irrelevancy and an absurd
anachronism; but on the stage the speech appears to be quite in
character with Shaw's Napoleon. Still, this passage calls attention
to Shaw's most obvious and most deliberately committed fault:
self-projection through the medium of his characters. Shaw identifies
himself with his work as possibly no other dramatist before him has
ever done. I rejoice in Shaw as M. Filon rejoices in Dumas _fils_;
selfless reserve, abdication of personality, are as impossible for Shaw
as for Dumas _fils_, and I freely confess that what I enjoy most in
Shaw's plays is--Shaw.
Sir Charles Wyndham was once asked his opinion of the plays of Bernard
Shaw. “Shaw's works are wonderful intellectual studies, but,” he
replied firmly, “they are not plays!” And he continued: “At one time I
saw a great deal of Shaw and had great hopes of him as a dramatist.
But he wouldn't come down to earth, he wouldn't be practical. When he
had just completed _Candida_ he came and read it to me. I told him
it was 'twenty years too soon for England.' Well, he put it on at a
special _matinée_, and it was much applauded. Then Shaw went out and
addressed the audience. 'I read the play to Wyndham,' he said in his
speech, 'and he told me it was twenty years too soon. You have given
the contradiction to that statement.'” _Candida_ has been played on
some of the greatest stages of Europe, as well as all over England
and America, and leading critics have praised it as one of the most
remarkable plays of this generation.[173]
_Candida_ is an acute psychological observation upon the emotional
reverberations in the souls of three clearly imagined, exquisitely
realized characters; its connection with pre-Raphaelitism, as Mr.
Shaw confessed to me, is purely superficial and extrinsic. Aside from
its association with a certain stage in Shaw's own development, the
character of Marchbanks might just as well have been linked with the
name of Shelley,[174] or with the Celtic Renascence of to-day; but the
whole atmosphere of the play makes it inconceivable at any time in the
world's history save in the age of Ibsen. It bears marked resemblances
to _The Comedy of Love_ and _The Lady from the Sea_. _Candida_ portrays
the conflict between prose convention and poetic anarchy, concretely
mirroring that conflict of human wills which Brunetière announced
as the criterion of authentic drama. “Unity, however desirable in
political agitations,” Shaw once wrote, in reference to this play, “is
fatal to drama, since every drama must be the artistic presentation of
a conflict. The end may be reconciliation or destruction, or, as in
life itself, there may be no end; but the conflict is indispensable: no
conflict, no drama.”
In striking contrast to many of Shaw's plays which are marked by a
hyper-natural, almost blatant psychology, _Candida_ reveals in Shaw a
mastery of what may be termed profound psychological secrecy. “This is
the play in which Bernard Shaw has tried to dig deepest, and has used
his material with the greatest economy,” wrote Dr. Brandes, in 1902.
“The quietude of the action, which works itself out purely in dialogue,
is here akin to Ibsen's quietude.... There is great depth of thought
in this play, and a knowledge of the human soul which penetrates far
below the surface.” A domestic drama--little more than a “scene from
private life”--_Candida_ is the latest form of Diderot's invention,
the _bourgeois_ drama. Abounding in scenes and situations tense with
emotional and dramatic power, it is stamped with the finish and
restraint of great art. The characters in this play, so chameleon-like
in its changing lustres, at every instant turn toward the light new
facets of their natures. We catch the iridescent and ever-varying
tints of life; and over all is a sparkle of fine and subtle humour,
lightening the tension of soul-conflicts with touches of homely
veracity.
The “auction scene” of the third act is transcendentally real, making
an almost imperceptible transition from verisimilitude to fantasy.[175]
Indulging his penchant for dialectic, Shaw here turns advocate, and
argues the case with all the surety of the lawyer, the art of the
_littérateur_. Men and women do not guide their actions in accordance
with the dictates of pure reason; as Alceste says to Philinte in _Le
Misanthrope_:
“'Tis true my reason tells me so each day;
Yet reason's not the power to govern love.”
And, after all, the auction scene is merely the _scène à faire_,
leaving the situation absolutely unchanged. As Shaw himself once
confessed: “It is an interesting sample of the way in which a scene,
which should be conceived and written only by transcending the ordinary
notion of the relations between the persons, nevertheless stirs
the ordinary emotions to a very high degree, all the more because
the language of the poet, to those who have not the clue to it, is
mysterious and bewildering, and, therefore, worshipful. I divined it
myself before I found out the whole truth about it.”
[Illustration: =Playbill of _Candida_.=]
Théâtre des Arts, Paris. Director: Robert d'Humières. May 7th,
8th, 9th, 1908. Twenty-five subsequent performances. Shaw's
only play to be produced in France to date.
_Candida_ well justifies its sub-title of a _Mystery_ in the number of
astounding interpretations given it by the critics. In France it was
regarded as a new solution of the Feminist problem. Candida remains
as the free companion of a weak man, we are told by certain foreign
critics, because “she understands that she has a duty to fulfil to
her big baby of a husband, who could no longer succeed in playing his
_rôle_ in society without the firm hand which sustains and guides
him.” M. Maurice Muret, who wrote me that he was induced to read
_Candida_ by laudatory articles in the German Press after Agnes Sorma's
production in Berlin, has thus betrayed his comic misunderstanding:
“From the mass of _femmes revoltées_ who encumber the contemporary
drama, the personage of Candida stands out with happy distinction.
Feminist literature has produced nothing comparable to this exquisite
figure. A tardy, but brilliant revenge of the _traditional_ ideal upon
the new ideal, is this victory of _la femme selon Titien_ over the
Scandinavian virago, this triumph of Candida over Nora”![176] And one
of the most eminent of German dramatic critics, after Lili Petri's
production in Vienna, said in an open letter to Shaw: “It is not
virtue; not prosaically _bourgeois_, nor vaguely romantic, feeling; nor
even the strength of this Morell, but simply his weakness, which chains
Candida to his side: because he needs her, the woman loves him more
than the young poet, who may perhaps recover from his disappointment
and learn to live without her. Shaw, Bernard, Irishman! I abjure thee!”
Not only with such interpretations, but even with Shaw's own dissection
of his greatest play, I find it quite impossible to sympathize or to
agree. Shaw seems merely to be taking a fling at the “Candidamaniacs,”
as he called the play's admirers; his “analysis” strikes me as a batch
of Shavian half-truths, rather than a fair estimate of the play's
true significance. In answer to Mr. Huneker's question _à propos_ of
Candida's famous “shawl” speech, Shaw wrote:
“Don't ask me conundrums about that very immoral female
Candida. Observe the entry of W. Burgess: 'You're the lady
as hused to typewrite for him?' 'No.' 'Naaow: _she_ was
younger?' And therefore Candida sacked her. Prossy is a very
highly selected young person indeed, devoted to Morell to the
extent of helping in the kitchen, but to him the merest pet
rabbit, unable to get the slightest hold on him. Candida is as
unscrupulous as Siegfried:
Morell himself sees that 'no law will bind her.' She seduces
Eugene just exactly as far as it is worth her while to seduce
him. She is a woman without character in the conventional
sense. Without brains and strength of mind she would be a
wretched slattern or voluptuary. She is straight for natural
reasons, not for conventional ethical ones. Nothing can be more
cold-bloodedly reasonable than her farewell to Eugene. 'All
very well, my lad; but I don't quite see myself at fifty with a
husband of thirty-five. It is just this freedom from emotional
slop, this unerring wisdom on the domestic plane, that makes
her so completely mistress of the situation.
“Then consider the poet. She makes a man of him by showing
him his own strength--that David must do without poor Uriah's
wife. And then she pitches in her picture of the home, the
onions, and the tradesmen, and the cossetting of big baby
Morell. The New York _Hausfrau_ thinks it a little paradise;
but the poet rises up and says: 'Out, then, into the night
with me'--Tristan's holy night. If this greasy fool's paradise
is happiness, then I give it to you with both hands, 'life
is nobler than that.' That is the 'poet's secret.' The young
things in front weep to see the poor boy going out lonely and
broken-hearted in the cold night to save the proprieties of New
England Puritanism; but he is really a god going back to his
heaven, proud, unspeakably contemptuous of the happiness he
envied in the days of his blindness, clearly seeing that he has
higher business on hand than Candida. She has a little quaint
intuition of the completeness of his cure: she says: 'He has
learnt to do without happiness.'”[177]
Candida quickly divines that Marchbanks is “falling in love with her,”
and whilst fully conscious of her charms, she is equally conscious
of the evil that may be wrought by unscrupulous use of them. She has
too much respect for Marchbanks' passion to insult him with virtuous
indignation. Her maternal insight enables her to sympathize with him
in his aspirations and in his struggles.
[Illustration: =Playbill of _Candida_. Théâtre Royal du Parc, Brussels.
Preceded by a _conférence_ on _The Theatre of Bernard Shaw_,
by M. A.Hamon. Four “Matinées Littéraires,”
February 7th, 14th, 17th, 21st, 1907.
First production of any of Shaw's plays in the French language.=]
It is quite true that Candida's standards are instinctively natural,
not conventionally ethical: “Put your trust in my love, James, not
in my conscience,” is her eminently sound point of view. It is her
desire to save Eugene from future pain, to show him quite gently the
hopelessness of his passion, that leads her to “seduce” him into
perfect self-expression, to make clear to him that he is a “foolish
boy” and that her love is not the inevitable reward for the triumph
of his logic. Marchbanks' magnificent bid of “his soul's need” does
not win her, because she loves Morell. Taught by Candida to recognize
the difference between poetic vision and prosaic actuality, Marchbanks
realizes that his hour has struck: it is the end of his youth. He has
made the inevitable Shavian discovery that service, not happiness, is
the nobler aim in life; and this episode in his soul's history, as
Friedrich Düsel suggests, should be entitled, “_Wie aus einem Knaben
ein Mann wird_.” He has learnt to do without happiness, not because
he has been completely cured of love, but because he has learnt that
his own love soars far above the unideal plane of Burgess--or is it
_bourgeois_?--respectability. This, indeed, is the “secret in the
poet's heart”; otherwise the golden-winged god of dreams shrivels up
into a pitiful shape of egoism. Candida is a miracle of candour and
sympathy; she lacks the one essential--true comprehension of his love.
Possessing some sort of spiritual affinity with the Virgin of the
Assumption, she lacks the faintest sympathy or concern with the art of
Titian; feeling some sort of sympathy with Marchbanks and what is to
her his comedy of calf-love, she lacks any true comprehension of the
fineness and spirituality of his passion.[178]
Whatever interpretation may be adopted, this drama of disillusion is
a work of true genius. In a series of productions by the Independent
Theatre in the English provinces in the spring of 1897, and again in
1898, Janet Achurch (Mrs. Charles Charrington) “created” the _rôle_
of Candida; the cast was notable, the parts of Morell and Marchbanks
being taken by Mr. Charles Charrington and Mr. Courtenay Thorpe
respectively. Doubtless Janet Achurch's interpretation of Candida as
the serene _clairvoyante_ remains unequalled to-day, even by Agnes
Sorma or Lili Petri. The play has been patronizingly spoken of as
an amusing little comedy; Oliver Herford, the humorist, hailed it
with great enthusiasm as a “problem-farce”! But _Candida_ has always
appealed to me, as to Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, “not only as the noblest
work of Mr. Shaw, but as one of the noblest, if not the noblest, of
modern plays: a most square and manly piece of moral truth.”
_The Devil's Disciple_ is the fourth and last play in the category of
authentically dramatic pieces, ranking just below _Candida_ in the
subtlety of its character-delineation and the magnetic force of its
appeal. The play had its genesis in a conversation between Shaw and
that remarkable romantic actor, William Terriss. In Shaw's words:
“One day Terriss sent for me, and informed me that since
witnessing the production of _Arms and the Man_ he regarded
me as one of the 'greatest intellectual forces of the present
day.' He proposed to combine my intellect with his knowledge
of the stage in the construction of a play. Whereupon he gave
me one of the most astounding scenarios I ever encountered....
When I endeavoured with all my reasoning powers to convince
this terrible Terriss that such a scenario contained far too
much action and far too little delineation of character, he
declared firmly: 'Mister Shaw, you have convinced me.' With
these words, and without the slightest hesitation, he threw the
whole scenario into the fire with the attitude and decision of
a man who well knows that he has another draft lying in his
desk. Nevertheless, the fact that he greeted me as a great
intellectual force and yet had implied that I was incapable of
writing a popular melodrama delighted me beyond words, and I
resolved to get together all the trite episodes, all the stale
situations, which had done such good service in the last ten
years in trashy plays, and combine them in a new melodrama,
which should have the appearance of a deeply thought-out,
original modern play. The result of it all was _The Devil's
Disciple_.”[179]
The spontaneity and naturalness which characterize the dialogue of
Shaw's plays are the results, in part, of his habit of writing his
plays on scraps of paper at odd times. And in the case of _The Devil's
Disciple_, Shaw achieved the incomparable feat of writing a brilliant
play and “looking pleasant” at one and the same time! “A young lady I
know,” relates Shaw, “wanted to make a portrait of me, sitting on the
corner of a table, which is a favourite attitude of mine. So I wrote
the play in a notebook to fill up the time.”
In that mock-modest preface, _On Diabolonian Ethics_, Shaw has
confessed his indebtedness to literary history and openly acknowledged
his thefts from the past. But in one place he quietly asserts that he
has put something original into this play. “_The Devil's Disciple_
has, in truth, a genuine novelty in it. Only, that novelty is not any
invention of my own, but simply the novelty of the advanced thought of
my own day.” How can one express more succinctly the end and aim of the
modern dramatist? Goethe once said that the great aim of the modern
intelligence should be to gain control over every means afforded by
the past, in order thereby to enable himself to exhibit those features
in which the modern world feels itself new and different and unique. A
remarkably subtle travesty upon melodrama, _The Devil's Disciple_ is a
picture of life seen through the refractory temperament of a thoroughly
modern intelligence.
The veiled satire underlying _The Devil's Disciple_ is found in
the fact that, whilst speciously purporting to be a melodrama, by
individual and unique treatment the play gives the lie to the specific
melodramatic formula. The comprehension of the dual rôle made this play
as presented by Richard Mansfield peculiarly appreciated by American
audiences; in England, the play was absurdly misunderstood, as related
in one of Shaw's prefaces.
If we consider the crucial moments of the play, we observe the
brilliant way in which Shaw has combined popular melodrama for the
masses and Shavian satire upon melodrama for the discerning few. How
the hardened old playgoer chuckles over his prevision of the situation
that is to result after Dick is arrested and led off to prison! Of
course, the minister will come back, Judith will waver between love for
her husband and desire to save the noble altruist, the secret will be
torn from her at last, her husband will prepare to go and take Dick's
place. She will adjure him to save himself, but he will remain firm as
adamant. What a tumult of passions, what a moving farewell, every eye
is moist--the genuine _scène à faire_! What a sense of exquisite relief
when Shaw has the minister take the natural, the business-like, and not
the melodramatic course! Again, in the third act, when Judith, like
a true Shakespearean heroine, disregards the convention of feminine
fastidiousness in order to penetrate to the profoundest depths of
Dick's heart, the melodramatic formula is clear: Dick will kneel at
Judith's feet, pour out his burning love for her, the two will revel in
the ecstasies of _la grande passion_. Reality is far subtler and more
complex than melodrama--not a game of heroics, but a clash of natures,
says Shaw.
“You know you did it for his sake,” charges Judith, “believing he was a
more worthy man than yourself.”
“Oho! No,” laughs Dick in reply; “that's a very pretty reason, I must
say; but I'm not so modest as that. No, it wasn't for his sake.”
Now she blushes, her heart beats painfully, and she asks softly: “Was
it for my sake?” “Perhaps a little for your sake,” he indulgently
admits; but when, emboldened by his words, she romantically charges
him to save himself, that he may go with her, even to the ends of the
earth, he takes hold of her firmly by the wrists, gazes steadily into
her eyes, and says:
“If I said--to please you--that I did what I did ever so little for
your sake, I lied as men always lie to women. You know how much I have
lived with worthless men--aye, and worthless women too. Well, they
could all rise to some sort of goodness and kindness when they were in
love. That has taught me to set very little store by the goodness that
only comes out red-hot. What I did last night, I did in cold blood,
caring not half so much for your husband or for you as I do for myself.
I had no motive and no interest: all I can tell you is that when it
came to the point whether I would take my neck out of the noose and
put another man's into it, I could not do it. I don't know why not: I
see myself as a fool for my pains; but I could not, and I cannot. I
have been brought up standing by the law of my own nature; and I may
not go against it, gallows or no gallows. I should have done the same
thing for any other man in the town, or any other man's wife. Do you
understand that?”
“Yes,” replies the stricken Judith; “you mean that you do not love me.”
“Is that all it means to you?” asks the revolted Richard, with fierce
contempt.
“What more--what worse--can it mean to me?” are Judith's final words.
Last of all, Shaw indulges in his most hazardous stroke of satire in
the scene of the military tribunal. Imagine the cloud of romantic gloom
and melodramatic horror that the author of _La Tosca_ would have cast
over this valley of the shadow of death! Shaw ushers in an exquisite
and urbane comedian to irradiate the gathering gloom with the sparks of
his audacious speech and the scintillations of his heartless wit. Thus
Shaw elevates the plane of the piece into a sublimated atmosphere of
sheer satire.
In _The Devil's Disciple_, Shaw succeeds in humanizing the stock
figures of melodrama, revealing in them a credible mixture of good
and evil, of reality and romance. In life itself, Shaw finds no proof
that a rake may not be generous, nor a blackguard tender to children,
nor a minister virile and human. All mothers are not angels, all
generals are not imposing dignitaries, all British soldiers are not
Kitcheners in initiative or Gordons in heroism. That Dick scoffs at
religion and breaks the social code does not prove that he is either
naturally vicious or depraved. In the stern asceticism of his nature,
he is a more genuine Puritan than his self-righteous mother. Under
every trial is he always valid to himself, obedient to the law of
his own nature; he might have chosen for his device the words of
Luther: “_Ich kann nicht anders_.” The play was written for Richard
Mansfield; and Mr. Shaw once told me that the part of Dudgeon was
modelled upon Mansfield himself. On the stage, Dudgeon is usually
represented either as the melodramatic type of hero, with white soft
shirt and bared neck--_e.g._, Karl Wiene, in Vienna; or as the gay
debonair rake, counterpart of the best type of those fascinating blades
of Sheridan and the other writers of earlier English comedy--_e.g._,
Richard Mansfield, in America. As a matter of fact, Dick is neither a
conventional stage hero nor a dashing rake. “Dick Dudgeon is a Puritan
of the Puritans,” says Shaw. “He is brought up in a household where the
Puritan religion has died and become, in its corruption, an excuse for
his mother's master-passion of hatred in all its phases of cruelty and
envy. In such a home he finds himself starved of religion, which is the
most clamorous need of his nature. With all his mother's indomitable
selfishness, but with pity instead of hatred as his master-passion,
he pities the devil, takes his side, and champions him, like a true
Covenanter, against the world. He thus becomes, like all genuinely
religious men, a reprobate and an outcast.” Unfortified by the power of
a great love, unconsoled by hope of future reward, Dick makes the truly
heroic sacrifice with all the sublime spirit of a Carton or a Cyrano.
Of such stuff are made not stage, but real heroes. “He is in one word,”
says Mr. J. T. Grein, “a man, spotted it is true, but a man, and, as
such, perhaps the most human creature which native fancy has put on our
modern stage.”
In _The Devil's Disciple_, as Hermann Bahr maintains, Shaw virtually
asserts the modern dramatic principle that every situation of
adventitious character, every external adventure which meets the
hero like a vagabond upon the highway, is undramatic; the sole aim
of modern drama is representation of the inner life, and all things
must be transposed into the key of spiritual significance.[180] This
principle is exemplified in the three leading characters. Like Raina
in _Arms and the Man_, Judith learns by bitter experience to distrust
the iridescent mirage of romance. Sentimental, spoiled, romantic, this
refined Lydia Languish does not know whether to hate, to admire, or to
love the fascinating, devil-may-care rake. In the briefest space of
time, her husband has become in her eyes a coward and a poltroon. Her
heart is in a tumult of emotions: like a willow she sways between duty
to her husband and love for the dashing Dudgeon. And when she puts all
to the touch, she discovers that her romance is only a pretty figment
of her fancy, powerless before the omnipotent passion of obligation to
self. And when her husband appears in the nick of time, and proves to
be a hero after all, her love floods back to him. Dick must promise
that _he will never tell_! Surely the figure of the minister's young
wife, says Heinrich Stümcke, is one of the most delicate creations of
the English stage. “In the recital of Judith's relations with Dick,”
writes Dr. Brandes, “there is convincing irony, and rare insight into
the idiosyncrasies and subtleties of the feminine heart.”
Among the minor excellences of the play, the figure of Burgoyne
stands out in striking relief. In Shaw's view, his Burgoyne is not a
conventional stage soldier, but “as faithful a portrait as it is in the
nature of stage portraits to be”--whatever that may mean! In reality,
Shaw's Burgoyne interests us, not at all as an historical personage,
but as a distinct dramatic creation. “Gentleman Johnny,” suave,
sarcastic, urbane--the high comedian with all the exquisite grace of
the eighteenth century--delights us by exchanging rare repartee with
Dick over the banal topic of the latter's death. Burgoyne's speech
of Voltairean _timbre_, quite in the key of De Quincey's _Murder as
a Fine Art_--beginning with “Let me persuade you to be hanged”--is
the finest ironical touch in English drama since Sheridan. “The
historic figure of the English General Burgoyne,” says Dr. Brandes,
“though he holds only a subordinate place in the play, stands forth
with a fresh and sparkling vitality, such as only great poets can
impart to their creations.” Shaw once modestly averred that “the most
effective situation on the modern stage occurs in my own play--_The
Devil's Disciple_.” I have always had the feeling that the first act
of this play, although actually delaying the beginning of the “love
story” until the second act, is the most remarkable act Shaw has ever
written--a _genre_ picture eminently worthy of the hand of a Hogarth
or a Dickens. And, to quote Dr. Brandes once more, “I consider _The
Devil's Disciple_ a masterpiece, whether viewed from the psychological
or the dramatic standpoint. Well acted, it ought to create a _furore_.”
FOOTNOTES:
[160] _Bernard Shaw and the Heroic Actor_, in _The Play_, No. 62,
Vol. X. In this same article Shaw says: “No man writes a play without
any reference to the possibility of a performance: you may scorn the
limitations of the theatre as much as you please; but for all that you
do not write parts for six-legged actors or two-headed heroines, though
there is great scope for drama in such conceptions.”
[161] _Mr. Shaw's Future: A Conversation_, in the _Academy_, April
30th, 1898. This interview is signed “C. R.”--presumably Clarence Rook.
[162] _Better than Shakespeare?_ Preface to _Three Plays for Puritans_.
[163] In Berlin the play was given in its entirety at the Neues
Theater; in London, at the Savoy Theatre, it proved quite feasible to
give the play omitting the entire third act. And yet the third act,
according to M. Jean Blum (_Revue Germanique_, November-December,
1906), contains the dramatic climax! Compare also, _Dramatische
Rundschau_, by Friedrich Düsel, _Westermann's Monatshefte_, June, 1906.
[164] _Bernard Shaw and the Heroic Actor_, in _The Play_, No. 62, Vol.
X.
[165] Cf. _Genealogy of Morals_ (Translated by William A. Hausemann,
the Macmillan Co.), where Nietzsche points out that in the case
of “noble men,” prudence is far less essential than the “perfect
reliableness of function of the regulating, _unconscious_ instincts
or even a certain imprudence, such as readiness to encounter
things--whether danger or an enemy, or that eccentric suddenness of
anger, love, reverence, gratitude and revenge by which noble souls at
all times have recognized themselves as such.”
[166] _Cæsar and Cleopatra_, in respect to its revolt against the
dogmas of classical antiquity, against the accepted conventions
in the reconstitution of past epochs, has been classed by Herr
Heinrich Stümcke with the _Cäsar in Alexandria_ of Mora and Thoele's
_Heidnischen Geschichten_. In a skit, _Cäsar (ohne Cleopatra)_, by the
German dramatic critic, Alfred Kerr, and dedicated “an Bernard Shaw mit
freundlichen Grüssen,” this feature is wittily satirized, in these two
verses:
“Könnt ich den Zweck des Blödsinns ahnen! Ich führte manchen schweren
Streich, Bezwang mit Mühe die Germanen-- Trotzdem kommt Sedan und das
Reich.
“Ein Zauberer, ihr grossen Götter, Ist jener nordische Poet; Herr
Arnold Rubek bleibt mein Vetter: Dich, Leben! Leben! spur ich spät....”
[167] The _New York Times_, November 20th, 1904.
[168] “Mansfield was always especially sympathetic with the character
of Napoleon, and, indeed--however extravagant the statement may seem
at first glance--his personality comprised some of the attributes of
that character--stalwart courage, vaulting ambition, inflexible will,
resolute self-confidence, great capacity for labour, iron endurance,
promptitude of decision, propensity for large schemes, and passionate
taste for profusion of opulent surroundings.”--William Winter's _Life
and Art of Richard Mansfield_, Vol. I., pp. 222-223; Moffat, Yard and
Co., New York, 1910.
[169] _Richard Mansfield: The Man and the Actor_, by Paul Wilstach, p.
264; Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1909.
[170] _Ellen Terry_, by Bernard Shaw. _Neue Freie Presse_, January,
1906; English translation, _Boston Transcript_, January 20th, 1906.
[171] On account of the vagueness of the story in certain details,
Mr. John Corbin has taken Shaw to task for not stating “who the Lady
is and why she was so heroically bent on rescuing Napoleon from
himself.” It suffices to know that she is Josephine's emissary, sent
to intercept the incriminating letter. Her duel with Napoleon is a
heroic effort, not to “rescue Napoleon from himself,” but, by playing
upon his boundless ambition, to prevent him from discovering the extent
of Josephine's perfidy, and to rescue Josephine from the consequences
of her indiscretion. That the Lady in the end proves faithless to
her trust merely transposes the key from tragedy to comedy; and
the dramatic excellence of the play is no whit impaired by this
characteristically Shawesque conclusion.
[172] I believe that Shaw's Napoleon has never been adequately
interpreted save possibly by Max Reinhardt in Berlin. The impersonation
I saw at the Court Theatre, London, in June, 1907, was an egregious
failure.
[173] Mr. W. K. Tarpey, who called _Candida_ “one of the masterpieces
of the world,” relates that some time at the end of 1894, or beginning
of 1895, Shaw fell into a calm slumber; in a vision an angel carrying
a roll of manuscript appeared unto him. To Shaw, who was no whit
abashed, the angel thus spoke: “Look here, Shaw! wouldn't it be rather
a good idea if you were to produce a work of absolute genius?” Shaw
granted that the idea was not half a bad one, although he did not
see how it could be carried out. Then the angel resolved his doubts:
“I've got a good play here, that is to say, good for one of us angels
to have written. We want it produced in London. The author does not
wish to have his name known.” “Oh!” replied Shaw, “I'll father it
with pleasure; it is not up to my form, but I don't care much for my
reputation.” Shaw undertook the business side of the matter, put in the
comic relief, and named the play _Candida: a Mystery_!
[174] Mr. Arnold Daly was in the habit of opening the third act of
_Candida_ by reading the familiar verses of Shelley to an unnamed love:
“One word is too oft profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too
falsely disclaimed For thee to disclaim it. One hope is too like
despair For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that
from another. “I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept
not The worship the heart lifts above And the heavens reject not, The
desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The
devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow?”
[175] In a notable _conférence_ on _Candida_ at the Théâtre des Arts,
in Paris, preceding a production of that play, during the latter part
of May, 1908, Mme. Georgette Le Blanc-Maeterlinck said: “La situation
du mari n'est pas neuve, mais elle se présente ordinairement au
troisième acte, et elle est toujours tranchée sans que la conscience
intervienne, elle est tranchée par la jalousie, par la douleur et la
mort. Ici, nous avons affaire à des intelligences meilleures, à des
êtres qui essayent de se conduire d'après leur raison et leur volonté
la plus haute.... C'est leur effort de sagesse qui les rend absolument
illogiques, les soustrait à l'analyse et les rend presque inadmissibles
à la lecture; mais c'est parce qu'ils sont illogiques, comme nous tous,
qu'ils sont si vivants, si curieux en scène.”--_Le Figaro_, May 30th,
1908; also _L'Art Moderne_, September 20th and 27th, 1908.
[176] _De Nora à Candida_, by Maurice Muret; _Journal des Débats_, No.
544, June 24th, 1904, pp. 1216-1218.
[177] _The Truth about Candida_, by James Huneker, _Metropolitan
Magazine_, August, 1904.
[178] Hermann Bahr has acutely observed: “In the Germanic world, the
woman wields power over the man only so long as he feels her to be
a higher being, almost a saint: so Candida is the transcendent, the
immaculate, the pure--the heaven, the stars, the eternal light. And
this Candida? There is no doubt that she is an angel. The only question
is in which heaven she dwells. There is a first heaven, and a second
heaven, and so on up to the seventh heaven. In the seventh heaven, as
you well know, Shaw, dwell only the poets; and of the seventh heaven
must the woman be, before the worshipful Marchbanks will once kneel
to her, if, indeed, it can be said that a poet ever kneels. But your
beloved Candida is of a lower heaven--a lesser alp, a thousand metres
below, in the region of the respectable _bourgeoisie_. There is she
the saint the Germanic mannikin needs. There she shines--shines for
the Morells, the good people who inculcate virtue and solve social
questions every Sunday. And it is there that she belongs.”
[179] _Vornehmlich über mich selbst_, in Program No. 88 of the
Schiller Theater, Berlin. This _Plauderei_ appeared originally in the
Vienna _Zeit_ in February, 1903, shortly before the production of
_Teufelskerl_ in Vienna.
[180] _Rezensionen. Wiener Theater, 1901-1903_, by Hermann Bahr;
article _Ein Teufelskerl_, pp. 440-453.
THE PLAYWRIGHT--III
“I find that the surest way to startle the world with daring
innovations and originalities is to do exactly what playwrights
have been doing for thousands of years; to revive the ancient
attraction of long rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to
the methods of Molière; and to lift characters bodily out of
the pages of Charles Dickens.”--_Prophets of the Nineteenth
Century_ (Unpublished), by G. Bernard Shaw.
“I have honour and humanity on my side, wit in my head, skill
in my hand, and a higher life for my aim.”--G. Bernard Shaw, in
the _New York Times_, September 25th, 1905.