Mr. Shaw has found his role and his occupation very happily cut out
for him in the unfailing stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor,
of our Anglo-Saxon democracy in England and America. In Germany, too,
there seems naïveté and simplicity enough to be still entertained by
these mischievously whimsical and yet portentously moral comedies. It
appears however that the civilization for which Rabelais and Voltaire
wrote, is less willing to acclaim as an extraordinary genius one who
has the wit to pierce with a bodkin the idolatries and illusions of
such pathetically simple people.
Bernard Shaw takes the Universe very seriously. By calling it the
Life-Force he permits himself to address it in that heroic vein
reserved, among more ordinary intelligencies, for anthropomorphic
deities. Bernard Shaw's sense of the comic draws its spirit from the
contrast between clever people and stupid people, and seems to appear
at its best when engaged in upsetting the pseudo-historical,
pseudo-philosophical illusions of Anglo-Saxons, in charmingly
ridiculous pantomimes, which the redeeming humor of that patient race
has just intelligence enough thoroughly to enjoy.
If he were himself less moralistically earnest the spice of the jest
would disappear. His humor is not universal humor. It is topical
humor; and topical humor derives its point from moral contrast,--the
contrast in this case between the virtue of Mr. Shaw and the vices of
modern society.
"Man and Superman" is undoubtedly his most interesting work from a
philosophical point of view, but his later plays--such bewitching
farces as "Fanny's First Play," "Androcles," and "Pygmalion"--seem to
express more completely than anything else that rollicking combative
roguishness which is his most characteristic quality.