October 2002

Transferred to www.oscholars.com with minor revisions January 2009

The Associate Editor of THE OSCHOLARS with responsibility for helping with this issue of SHAVINGS was Julie A. Sparks of the Department of English, University of Arkansas-Monticello.

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Elizabeth Smily, F.R.S.A., F.C.A.

‘Oh, Shaw! That’s the man who smokes Jaeger cigarettes!’

– Oscar Wilde

quoted by Richard Le Gallienne: The Romantic Nineties. New edition. London: Putnam & Co. 1951 p.81.

Note: Subscribers to this Journal have their names printed in bold, and can be contacted through us at oscholars@gmail.com

Click  for the last issue of Shavings (September 2002); click    for the Table of Contents of this issue; click  to return to the Shavings home page.

I. The Plays

II. Shawlines

III. Review : Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship

IV. Bibliographies

i. Bibliography

ii. Websites

V. Tailpiece

I. The Plays

In this section we shall try to cover productions of Shaw’s pre-1901 plays, and news of productions of these (with offers of review) will be most welcome. The plays are Arms and the Man (1894), Cæsar and Cleopatra (1898), Candida (1895),Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1899), The Devil’s Disciple (1897),The Man of Destiny (1895), Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893),The Philanderer (1893), Widowers’ Houses (1892), You Never Can Tell (1895). (Dates of composition, not first performance.) Wilde is known to have attended the first night of Arms and the Man (20th April 1894).

Michael Friend’s 2002 of Arms and the Man had the following cast:

Raina	Liz Garland
Sergius	Callum Coates
Bluntschli	James Harwood

Michael Friend has staged a number of Shaw’s plays at Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence. Full details of all the productions, cast lists, photographs, and touring plans for 2003, can be found at Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

Sir Peter Hall’s production of Mrs Warren’s Profession opened at the Strand Theatre, London on 2nd October and runs to 1st February 2003.

Director	Peter Hall
Mrs Warren	Brenda Blethyn
Vivie Warren	Rebecca Hall
Mr Praed	Peter Blythe
Sir George Crofts	Richard Johnson
Frank Gardner	Laurence Fox
The Revd Samuel Gardner	James Saxon
Design	John Gunter
Lighting	Peter Mumford

II. Shawlines

In this section we will print all the news that we find or, better still, are sent. We especially welcome news of Shaw on curricula.

Linda Wong (Hong Kong Baptist University) teaches a course on translation that includes Shaw.

We also wish to record articles and papers relating to the earlier Shaw, and news of new editions of Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886), An Unsocial Socialist (1887), The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), Love Among the Artists (1900), as well as other related material.

The image of Shaw that appears at the top of this page is from The Elizabeth Smily Virtual Gallery of Fine Art, a site created by Elizabeth Smily at http://www.elizabethsmily.com/

We attempted to contact Ms Smily at the e-address given, and received the following automatic reply: 550 <elizabeth@sunweaver.com>...User unknown.

We apologise therefore for any inadvertent infringement of copyright.

Publication

The Drama and Theater Arts catalogue of Insight Media for Fall 2002 announces

Two scenes from Man and Superman ‘staged with authentic Edwardian costumes and set design, show the unique aspects of Shaw’s theatrical style. The program features “Shaw” rehearsing his actors with lines taken from The Art of Rehearsal.’

NTSC / 38 min / 1984/ #25AD339 $159

PAL / 38 min / 1984/ #25AD339p $199

Saint Joan

This video contains excerpts from Shaw’s play of Joan’s imprisonment, trial, recantation, and decision to face execution. Julie Harris discusses her rôle as Joan and re-enacts a speech from the play

NTSC / 60 min / 1978/ #25AD308 $149

PAL / 60 min /1978/ #25AD308p $179

III. Review

Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship, by Anthony Wynn

Reviewed by Signy Henderson

Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship is adapted from the unpublished correspondence, stretching over nearly fourteen years, between George Bernard Shaw and Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. Anthony Wynn has had access to both sides of the correspondence and from these letters edits a two-act play, presented in a ‘staged, rehearsed reading’ at the monthly meeting of the Shaw Society of England, in association with Planet Productions Ltd, at Conway Hall, London, on the 25th October 2002.

The correspondence begins with Douglas’s efforts to obtain a Shavian preface for a new edition of his autobiography. The opening exchange of letters sets the tone for the correspondence as a whole. The 60-year-old Douglas is by turns wheedling, self-important, and ingratiating as he (unsuccessfully) claims the patronage and influence of the 74-year old Shaw; Shaw is forthright and sceptical, but not dismissive.

An epistolary play such as this inevitably has the characters write the script, representing themselves to an audience of one. Wynn allows these voices ― at different times rushed, pained, and playful ― to dominate. He edits the letters so as to suggest an ongoing dialogue, and in this staging the two writers sit side by side ― in the same visual field, although understood not to share physicals pace ― allowing the recipient of each letter to react to its contents as the writer reads it aloud. Wynn allows many of the letters to go on at length, so that much of the play is composed of very lengthy monologues. Other letters, either originally brief or judiciously edited, create the illusion of a flowing conversation.

There is little new to learn here about Shaw’s achievements and status. The letters used in the play touch on his atheism, socialism, and vegetarianism; on his views about poetry, and science; and on both his public and domestic life. Shaw is generally acknowledged to have been an active and charitable friend to the individuals and causes he took up, and these letters show his pragmatic interest in Douglas’s welfare. When Douglas needs an operation he cannot afford, Shaw acts as guarantor for an overdraft; when Douglas’s wife dies, Shaw writes a letter of genuinely moving sympathy and sensitivity. Shaw’s famous wit, at his own expense as well as at others’, makes frequent appearances in the letters, and as Shaw Barry Morse delivers these one-liners with effective understatement.

Even more than Shaw’s self-conscious wit, it is Douglas’s character that gives the play much of its comic appeal, while also being its greatest limitation. Douglas’s letters show him to be self-centred, sentimental, lonely, and hypochondriacal. Most of Douglas’s letters (as far as can be judged from those represented in the play) mention his fears for his own health, his poverty, and his grievances against figures ranging from the then Marquess of Queensberry, Douglas’s nephew, to Winston Churchill. He is shameless in asking for help, whether financial or emotional. Douglas declares himself ― without detectable irony, in Rodney Archer’s subtle performance ― England’s greatest living poet, and execrates T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Ezra Pound. He warns Shaw of his own impending death so often that his plaintive statement that ‘I don’t so much mind dying’ becomes, with slight variations, a refrain. The only evidence these letters give of Douglas’s living through most of the Second World War is his repeated complaining about the unavailability of unrationed, ‘pre-war’ food. Douglas writes, again without apparent irony, that he has been ‘shockingly treated by everyone . . . all [his] life’, and remains unwilling ― despite Shaw’s prompting ― to reflect on his role in the destruction of Oscar Wilde, except to fret over how he himself is to be represented in a play about Wilde’s life.

The letters show Shaw irascibly but gently trying to draw Douglas out of this self-absorption, and to engage him intelligently on such topics of mutual interest as poetry, religion, and science (including the new psychological understanding of homosexuality). On all these points Douglas, charming though his letters be, seems unable or unwilling to engage fully in the discussion. Shaw’s intellectual propositions are either dismissed or reduced by Douglas to the personal. Shaw’s patience runs out more than once – in one letter he calls Douglas a ‘monster of selfish ingratitude’ ― but the correspondence persists until Douglas’s death.

Even in this limited presentation, the play is compelling. There is little new insight here into Shaw’s politics or his aesthetics. What the play reveals about Douglas’s personality is on the whole not much to his credit. The play’s subtitle ― ‘A Most Unlikely Friendship’ ― gives a clue to its appeal; many of the play’s funniest moments arise from the incompatibility of the friends. Although Douglas’s interest is initially financial, Shaw has no such motivation; and money is not at the heart of the relationship at its end.

Shaw, finding ‘Lord’ too formal, takes to addressing Douglas as ‘Child Alfred’, while Douglas calls Shaw ‘St Christopher’. This use of nicknames acknowledges the development of a father-son relationship between the two men. Douglas, at once charmingly childlike and, as Shaw calls him, unappealingly ‘infantile’, finds in Shaw the affectionate and understanding father that the Marquess of Queensberry was not. The arrogant, self-pitying Douglas is redeemed in the eyes of the audience by the simple fact that Shaw considers him worth bothering with at all. Shaw, frequently represented as a humourless ideologue, is shown offering Douglas not only time, money, and patience, but also, most remarkably, the unconditional love of a father for his maddening son. Douglas, quick to take mortal, often litigious offence at others, sulks only occasionally at Shaw’s reproofs, and never lets the correspondence drop. The practice of personal letter-writing, so much the domain of women, has given us relatively few such portraits of a close friendship between men unrelated by blood or sexual connection. That both were gifted writers has enabled Anthony Wynn, in his unobtrusive adaptation of the material, to produce a funny, touching, engaging piece of theatre, revealing an extraordinary friendship convincingly in the friends’ own words.

©Signy Jane Henderson

November 2002

Signy Henderson is Theatre Arts Academic Group Programme Leader, MA Performing Arts School of Arts, Middlesex University

IV. Bibliographies

1. GBS for Wildeans: A Bibliography of 19th century Shaw.

This will be a cumulative bibliography as references come to hand.

Beerbohm, Max: Around Theatres. London: Rupert Hart-Davis 1953.

This carries reviews of plays published in the Saturday Review, namely The Devil’s Disciple (‘“G.B.S.” at Kennington’, 7th October 1899, pp.38-41; and the 1907 revival ‘Mr. Vedrenne’, 26th October 1907, pp.481-4); You Never Can Tell (12th May 1900, pp.78-9); the 1901 reprint of Cashel Byron’s Profession (‘A Cursory Conspectus of G.B.S.’, 2nd November 1901, pp.171-5); Mrs Warren’s Profession (‘Mr Shaw’s Tragedy’, 1st February 1902, pp.191-5); the 1907 revival of The Philanderer (9th February 1907 pp.449-51); and the 1908 revival of Arms and the Man(4th January 1908, pp.491-3). There is also a review of the published edition of Three Plays for Puritans (The Devil’s Disciple, Cæsar and Cleopatra and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion) (‘Mr Shaw Crescent’, 26th January 1901, pp. 118-22).

Outside our current range are reviews of The Doctors’ Dilemma, Getting Married, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Misalliance, and Pygmalion.

Borsa, Mario: The English Stage of To-day. Translated from the original Italian and edited with a prefatory note by Selwyn Brinton M.A. London: John Lane The Bodley Head 1908. This has one chapter on Shaw.

Chapter IV: G.B.S.

Innes, Christopher (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998. This contains four essays on the younger Shaw:

Gordon, David J.: Shavian Comedy and the Shadow of Wilde;

Kelly, Katherine E.: Imprinting the Stage: Shaw and the Publishing Trade 1883-1903;

Marker, Frederick J.: Shaw’s early plays;

Powell, Kerry: New Women, new plays, and Shaw in the 1890s.

Kennedy, J.M.: English Literature 1880-1905. London: Stephen Swift 1912. This contains one chapter on Shaw.

Chapter VI: George Bernard Shaw.

Laurence, Dan H.: Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters 1874-1897. London: Max Reinhardt 1965.

Laurence, Dan H: Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters 1898-1910. London: Max Reinhardt 1972.

Meisel, Martin: Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater. Princeton University Press 1963; new edition New York: Limelight Editions 1984 ISBN 0-87910-017-6.

Morgan, A.L.: Tendencies of Modern English Drama. London: Constable 1924. This contains three chapters on Shaw:

Chapter VI. Shaw the Iconoclast–Dramatic Iconoclast

Chapter VII: Shaw the Iconoclast–Social Iconoclast

Chapter VIII: Shaw the Philosopher.

2. Websites

A list of websites kindly provided  by Richard Dietrich (University of Southern Florida):

BERNARD SHAW SOCIETY WEB SITE (see illustration below):

http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawsociety.html

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA SHAW SERIES WEBSITE:

http://www.upf.com/shaw.html

http://www.upf.com/se-shaw.html

SHAW BIZNESS WEB SITE:

http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawbizness.html

INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY WEB SITE:

http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/international_shaw_society/index.html

THE SHAW FESTIVAL

http://www.shawfest.com

Other websites include

http://www.infography.com/content/272906973619.html (a bibliography)

http://www.therightside.demon.co.uk/quotes/shaw/ which has 123 quotations from Shaw, but irritatingly does not source them.

http://www.georgebernardshaw.com/ is The Bernard Shaw Information & Research Service, which has as its Patrons Dame Diana Rigg, Dame Wendy Hiller, Brian Cox, Richard E Grant and Jerry Hall, a remarkable list.

http://www.phnet.fi/public/mamaa1/shaw.html also gives an unsourced list of ‘quotes’ – ‘one-liners’ – presented ina table. The best use of it is to check all those sayings ascribed to Wilde that are in fact by Shaw.

http://www.shawchicago.orgis the site of the Shaw Chicago Theatre Company, specialising in Shaw’s plays.

http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/notable%20houses/shaws%20corner.htm has two pictures of Shaw’s house and a brief account.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/shaw/shawbiog.shtml gives a biography of Shaw as it appeared to the BBC compilers.

The Independent Shavian appears three times a year and is sent to all members of the Bernard Shaw Society at no charge as part of their membership dues.

V. Tailpiece

‘It was Shaw’s realism, his insistence of only recognising real values, that called forth Oscar Wilde’s epigram, which I must requote here. “Shaw,” he said, “hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.” ‘

— Frank Harris: Bernard Shaw, An Unauthorised Biography based on firsthand information, with a postscript by Mr Shaw. London: Victor Gollancz 1931. 3rd impression November 1931 p.129.

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