VI

In the chapter on Mr. Wells, I have printed an account of Mr. Shaw's

religious faith which ought properly to be printed here, but since the

reader can more easily turn to the next chapter than I can re-write

it, I will leave the account where it is and proceed with an account

of the latest developments of this faith as set forth in "Heartbreak

House" and "Back to Methusaleh." These two plays are notable for a

growth of religious conviction in their author which has brought him to

a condition resembling, in the eyes of some, that of John the Baptist

and, in the eyes of others (as I heard a clergyman of the Church of

Ireland angrily assert) that of a religious fanatic. They are also

notable for a weakening of technical skill as a dramatist. Mr. Shaw

has set himself so ably to the task of rejecting drama from his plays,

that unconsciously he ruins the effect of his lines by an excess of

garrulity. No one, reading and particularly seeing, "Heartbreak House"

and "Back to Methusaleh" can escape from the belief that Mr. Shaw is

using more words than are necessary to express his thought. Either

he despises us as people who are not sufficiently intelligent to

understand his meaning unless it is delivered to us in a variety of

sentences or he has lost his artistic sense and cannot understand that

a fine morning is not any finer for being described somewhat in this

fashion: "A fine morning is one on which the sun shines from a blue

sky in which occasional white clouds may be seen. _This_ morning is

such a morning as that. Therefore, this is a fine morning. What a fine

morning!" The whole of that extravagant speech, invented by me, not by

Mr. Shaw, is contained in the last four words. The rest is not only

excess, but insult, for it implies an ignorance in the person listening

to it which is not human. There are many passages in these two plays

which are not unlike that invented passage of mine. There is a passage

near the beginning of the second act of "Heartbreak House" which seems

to me to indicate a real decline in Mr. Shaw's sense of the theatre.

Ellie Dunn and Boss Mangan, to whom she is thinking of getting engaged,

are discussing themselves and marriage. He has just described himself

in terms which show that he is one of those financial ruffians who

are the modern equivalent, (not of highwaymen, for they were gay and

adventurous fellows,) but of slave-drivers:

MANGAN. ... Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE (_dropping her hands_): How strange! that my mother, who

knew nothing at all about business, should have been quite right

about you! She always said--not before papa, of course, but to us

children--that you were just that sort of a man.

MANGAN (_sitting up much hurt_): Oh! did she? And yet she'd have

let you marry me.

ELLIE: Well, you see, Mr. Mangan, my mother married a very good

man--for whatever you may think of my father as a man of business,

he is the soul of goodness--and she is not at all keen on my doing

the same.

The parenthetical clause in each of Ellie's speeches is unnecessary,

and in the second speech, it has the effect of ruining a very good

"line." I assert, as a dramatist with some technical skill, that

Ellie's second speech, minus the parenthetical clause, will rouse

laughter every time it is spoken. I assert, with equal confidence,

that this speech, _with_ the parenthetical clause, will not provoke

more than a strangled laugh and may not provoke any laughter at all.

Mr. Shaw is entitled to reject laughter if he thinks it is likely

to destroy the thought in his speech, but no one can believe that

the parenthetical clause to which I object adds anything to Ellie's

thought. It is mere redundance, and redundance is destructive of drama.

It is also destructive of thought for a man is more likely to be

irritated than to be stimulated by hearing a thing repeated to excess.

I may, perhaps, note another matter of technical interest to the

student of the Shavian drama, namely, Mr. Shaw's economy in characters.

He has or had a strong sense of the theatre which is almost as strong

as that possessed by Mr. Galsworthy. The difficulty a critic has

in estimating Mr. Shaw's sense of the theatre is increased by the

wilfulness with which he rejects technique: one is not always able to

decide whether the lack of technique in the later plays is the result

of intention or weakness. Mr. Galsworthy is nearly the cleverest

technician now writing for the English theatre. He cannot think as

clearly as Mr. Shaw can, but he can construct much better. When Mr.

Galsworthy treats a theme dramatic in itself, such as the theme of

"Loyalties," and does not entangle the drama with arguments, he writes

an uncommonly good play. "Loyalties" has been called a "crook" play and

in a sense it is one, but the difference between it and such a piece as

"The Bat" by Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart and Mr. Avery Hopwood is the

difference between a crook play written in terms of reality and a crook

play written in terms of trick. When, however, Mr. Galsworthy treats

a theme not dramatic in itself, such as the theme of "Windows," and

entangles any drama it has with much argument, the result is something

extraordinarily diffuse and nebulous. Mr. Galsworthy leaves you with

a sensation, not only that you do not know what he means, but also

that _he_ does not know what he means. Mr. Shaw, in his later pieces,

leaves you with the sensation that he knows only too well what he

means, but he will never admit that you are capable of understanding

him. His economy in characters is a certain sign of his mysticism. Mr.

Yeats told me on one occasion that when Sir Horace Plunkett invited "A.

E." to take a prominent position in the organization of co-operative

agriculture in Ireland, Mr. Arthur Balfour commended the choice on the

ground that a mystic is the most practical of men since he is willing

to use any instrument that will serve his purpose, whereas your plain,

blunt business man, destitute of imagination and firm purpose, will

quarrel with his tools and end up by botching his job. The mystic,

moreover, serves his purpose more than himself, whereas your plain,

blunt business man serves only himself. Mr. Shaw's method of working

is singularly interesting as a demonstration of the way in which the

mystic achieves his purpose. I do not know of any writer who is so

thrifty with his means as Mr. Shaw. Shakespeare, compared with him,

is a prodigal and a spendthrift. Mr. Shaw, compared with Shakespeare,

is a miser, uniquely stingy. But it is not stinginess which has made

Mr. Shaw so economical in his characters and even in his situations.

It is his mysticism which makes him extraordinarily indifferent to his

means. Any old plot, however disreputable it might be, would serve

Shakespeare for drawing on to the stage a crowd of dissimilar persons

and enriching their lives with his verse; and any old character,

however remote from human semblance will serve Mr. Shaw as a vent for

opinions. Shakespeare primarily was interested in people. Mr. Shaw

primarily is interested in doctrine. The principal difference between a

dramatist who is interested in people and a dramatist who is interested

in doctrines, is that the former will delight in the creation of the

greatest variety of characters whereas the latter will not trouble to

create a new character if an old one will do. I doubt whether there

are more than twelve distinct persons in the whole of Mr. Shaw's work.

When he began his career as a dogmatist, he set himself to writing

novels, but found after he had written five, of which only four have

been published, that he could not use this instrument so effectively

for his purpose as he could use the instrument of the play. And so he

turned his attention to the stage. But he did not waste his novels:

he dramatised them. He lifted passages from his books and put them

into his plays. He took some of the novel-characters and, after he had

tidied them and changed their names, forced them from between their

covers on to the stage. There is little in the thirty-eight plays

he has written which is not to be found, developed or suggested, in

his four novels. He has preached one doctrine all his life, and has

preached it with singular consistency. It is set out in the succeeding

chapter to this one. The parsimoniousness with which it has been

preached is remarkable. The whole of the first act of "Major Barbara"

is almost identically a repetition of the first act of "You Never Can

Tell." Lady Britomart Undershaft, of the first piece, is Mrs. Clandon,

of the second, under another name. The situation of two women is nearly

the same. They are living apart from their husbands whom they have

not seen for a number of years. Lady Britomart and Mrs. Clandon have

each two daughters and a son with the haziest or no recollections of

their fathers. A meeting between the two parents and their children

is arranged, in each case, on a flimsy pretext. Lady Britomart, like

Mrs. Clandon, is one of those strong-minded, silly women who flourish,

nowadays, more commonly in America than in England. (She is the sort of

dense female who belongs to the Lucy Stone League and refuses to bear

the name of the man she has chosen to be her husband although she is

willing to bear the name of the man whom she did not choose to be her

father!) Lady Britomart, like Mrs. Clandon, has abandoned her husband

for a particularly fatuous cause. Mr. Crampton (for Mrs. Clandon

is really Mrs. Crampton) was deprived of his wife's society (which

was probably no great loss) and that of his children (which probably

was) because he very properly spanked his elder daughter when she had

been naughty. Lady Britomart left her husband because he declined to

change the basis of his armaments-factory in the interests of his son.

Her excuse for her behaviour was more natural than Mrs. Clandon's

excuse for hers, for we are all susceptible to the attractions of

primogeniture; but a more sensible woman might have achieved her

purpose in being less headstrong. Barbara Undershaft, her elder

daughter, is Gloria Clandon, a little older and less priggish. Sarah

Undershaft, her younger daughter, is a chastened and spiritless Dolly

Clandon. There is a difference, however, between Stephen Undershaft

and Philip Clandon so remarkable that I can only surmise that Mr. Shaw

in transferring the Clandon family into the Undershaft family mislaid

Philip and, in searching for him, discovered another youth, this

Stephen, who was the product of an illicit love affair between Mrs.

Clandon and the austere Finch McComas! Adolphus Cusins, the Professor

of Greek who beats the big drum in the Salvation Army so that he may be

near to Barbara, is Valentine, the dentist, dragged out of "You Never

Can Tell," after a brief and misguided career as John Tanner in "Man

and Superman."

It is easy, I think, to trace the life of each one of the twelve

Shavian characters in this fashion. Consider, for example, the vivid

and very interesting career of that brutal ruffian, Bill Walker, in

"Major Barbara." Bill began his life in "Widowers' Houses" under

the name of Lickcheese and flourished so well as a speculative

property-owner that he was able to climb into middle-class society,

under the name of Burgess, and marry his daughter Candida to the

Reverend James Mavor Morell. His association with the clergy, however,

must have had a disastrous effect on him for we find him, in "Captain

Brassbound's Conversion," leading an adventurous, but misunderstood,

career under the name of Drinkwater. Religion had peculiar allurements

for Drinkwater, understandably enough when one remembers his former

association with his son-in-law, the clergyman, and we are not

surprised, therefore, to find him in the Salvation Army's West Ham

Shelter, now named Bill Walker and looking less than his years. He

suffers terribly from the spiritual garrulity of Major Barbara. The

reader who is familiar with the play will remember that Bill cruelly

misused a little Salvation Army lass, called Jenny Hill, who _would_

keep on praying for him and turning the other cheek. He struck her

on the mouth and twisted her arm and almost tore her hair out by the

roots. She cried with the pain, but she went on praying for him!...

Then Major Barbara twisted Bill's heart for him as cruelly as he had

twisted Jenny Hill's arm, by preaching with terrible iteration the

doctrine of forgiveness and non-resistance. We know how Bill, at the

penultimate moment, escaped from the penitent form, but few of us

realise what happened to him after he had fled, precipitately and full

of bitter cynicism, from that Salvation Army Shelter in West Ham. Who

could have believed, after witnessing his behaviour in the presence of

Barbara and snivelling Jenny Hill, that Jenny Hill herself would be the

means of his undoing in the wilds of America to which he had hurried

under the name of Blanco Posnet? And here we discover a characteristic

example of Mr. Shaw's sardonic humour. For Bill was nabbed, not by

the strong Barbara, not even by the weak, though willing, Jenny, but

by Jenny's helpless, croup-stricken child. The lion is caught by the

mouse; the strong are brought down by the weak; a little child shall

lead them into a trap. God, in Mr. Shaw's religion, is not a just God:

he is a God determined to have His own way and entirely indifferent

to the desires of His creatures. If man will not help God to fulfil

His purpose, then God will destroy man and invent another and more

submissive instrument whereby He may do so. Such is the Shavian gospel.

In what respect does it differ from the most devastating and blasting

form of Calvinism? When I was a child in Belfast, I was taught that if

I persisted in being a wicked boy, I would be roasted for ever in a

red-hot hell. Is there any real difference between the Calvinist who

tells a child that he will be burned for all eternity and Mr. Shaw

who tells it that it will be scrapped for all eternity. There is one

difference, in favour of the Calvinist. I was taught to believe in the

All-Perfection of God. Even if I persisted in being a wicked child and

thus damned myself for ever, my relatives could comfort themselves

with the reflection that God would fulfil Himself in His own time.

Somewhere, somewhen, there would be "peace, perfect peace." But Mr.

Shaw's God offers no such guarantee. He cannot assure us, even if we

help Him by every means in our power, that He will ever become perfect.

He makes inexorable demands upon our service, but cannot offer us any

hope that our labour will not be in vain. Serve me without question

or be scrapped, says the Shavian God, but he will not assure us that

we are not being bilked. And is not the desolation of desolations a

religious faith in which there is no certainty and very little hope? I

prefer the romantic delusions of my Ulster forefathers to the practical

religion of Mr. Shaw. I dislike the thought that I may be roasted for

ever in a red-hot hell, but I like even less the coal-black nullity

with which Mr. Shaw threatens me if I persist in my evil courses. There

will at least be colour and excitement in Calvin's hell, but there will

be nothing whatever in Mr. Shaw's. And I am not sure, after all, that

God, Perfect or Imperfect, will not prefer to spend eternity in the

company of people like me who decline to accept life on any but their

own terms, rather than in the society of servile instruments.

Mr. Shaw's thirty-eight plays are not thirty-eight separate plays but

one long, continuous piece, in which his twelve characters, in every

conceivable disguise and situation, strive to elude the hand of God but

are nabbed by Him in the end. Twist how you may, He'll get you in the

end, unless, indeed, He wearies of trying to make use of you, when,

inexorably, without a pang, He will cast you on to the scrap-heap where

you will perish utterly as your little brothers, the mammoth beasts,

perished long ago.