April 2003

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.

‘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 (March 2003); click    for the Table of Contents of this issue; click  to return to the Shavings home page.

1. The Plays

2. Shawlines

3. G.B.S. & William Morris

4. Anthology : Echoes of Oscar

5. Bibliographies and Links

6.  Shaw Associations

7.  Tailpiece

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1. 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).

The Shaw Season at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has been announced.  The plays for 2003 will be Widowers’ Houses (15th May  to 4th October) and Misalliance (10th April to 2nd November) .

Mrs Warren’s Profession opened at the Irish Classical Theatre, Buffalo, NY on 25th April and continues until 18th May.

The Philanderer opened at the Chicago Cultural Center Studio Theatre on 26th April and continues to 19th May.

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.. Saint Joan will be produced in July.

Candida was produced at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 21st March  to 28th March.

2. 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.

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), The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), Love Among the Artists (1900), as well as other related material.

Shaw’s Corner at Ayot St Lawrence re-opens for the season on 2nd April.  It can be contacted at shawscorner@nationaltrust.org.uk

The Shaw Birthplace in Dublin re-opens on the 1st May.  It can be contacted at shawhouse@dublintourism.ie

.

ANNOUNCING THE ‘INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY’

Richard Dietrich writes

This is to announce the founding of the ‘International Shaw Society’ (ISS) and to invite your participation. 

This is the story.  On August 24th 2002, 21 people gathered at a ‘Shaw Summit’ at The Shaw Festival in Niagara–on–the–Lake, Ontario, and at the conclusion of a three–hour meeting, which I chaired, we agreed to the formation in principle of the ‘International Shaw Society,’ which will provide a means for those interested in the life, times, and career of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw to organize their activities and interests and exchange information.  We also agreed to meet again at the same place about a year hence and to invite anyone else interested to attend. 

Please consider this a formal invitation to meet with us at 9:30 a.m. in the  Market Room of the Court House (ground floor) in Niagara–on–the–Lake, Ontario, on  August 20th, 2003. 

Our principal task between now and next August 20th is to establish a database of addresses.  If you are interested in joining us, please fill out the poll form below, print it out, apply scissors, and return it to the address below as soon as possible (or just copy and paste it into a fresh e-mail).  You may have to save it to your hard drive first. 

For the time being, the ISS will operate as an informal, voluntary, non–dues–paying organization, but the chief item on the August 20th agenda will be to decide whether the ISS should or should not become a legally–incorporated, dues–paying, not–for–profit organization. 

 Regardless of whether the ISS is incorporated or not, at the August 20th meeting we will attempt to arrive at bylaws and procedures and elect officers and committees.  Until then, we will be guided by two starter committees: our Steering Committee (Alan Andrews, Leonard Conolly, Bernard Dukore, Anthony Ellis, John Pfeiffer, Gale Larson, Lagretta Lenker, Michel Pharand, Julie Sparks, Rodelle Weintraub, Don Wilmeth, and myself, Dick Dietrich) and our Advisory Board (Sidney Albert, Ronald Bryden, Charles A. Carpenter, T. F. Evans, Dan H. Laurence, Barry Morse, Rhoda Nathan, and Stan Weintraub). 

We hope to see you at the August 20th meeting (details to be announced in July).  In the meantime, please take a look at the ISS website at http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/ ~dietrich/iss.htm and give us feedback on it. 

Now, please copy, paste, print and fill out the form below and send it by snail mail to the address below or copy and paste it into a return e-mail.  Thank you.

Richard F. Dietrich
Chair, ISS Steering Committee

R. F. Dietrich
English Department
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620

PHONE: (813) 974–4025 or 920–2986.     FAX:  (813) 926–9814 
E-MAIL: dietrich@chuma1.cas.usf.edu
–  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  – 

POLL OF INTEREST IN THE ‘INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY’

NAME:

ADDRESS:

PHONE #:

E-MAIL ADDRESS:

INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS:

Please list other people who might be interested in the ISS that you think might have been overlooked in our mailing and, if possible, include their addresses (email preferred).  If you know of anyone interested in Shaw who has not received this announcement, please pass it on.

Will you be attending the August 20th meeting at the Shaw Festival in Ontario? (Yes    No    Maybe) 
(1/16/03) 

Please feel free to print out and copy this form, and please post it where it will do the most good and/or distribute it to whomever you think might be interested (such as graduate students in English and Theater).   Thank you, again. 

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The Dublin Writers Museum will hold an exhibition devoted to Shaw and to Sean O’Casey throughout March 2004.  If any readers have memorabilia that they are willing to lend, under the usual guarantees of security, insurance and proper curatorial care, please contact us.

Just published:

Wong, Linda Pui-ling.  ‘A New Reading of G. B. Shaw in a Chinese Context.’ Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities: Conference Proceedings.  CD-ROM.  Honolulu: University of Hawaii-West Oahu, 2003.
ISSN#1541-5899.

3. G.B.S. & William Morris

Shaw’s ‘Morris as I knew Him’, an extended essay, was printed in volume II of the two-volume supplement to the twenty-four volumes of Longmans edition The Collected Works of William Morris; which supplement was published in 1936 by the Shakespeare Head Press at Oxford, and reprinted as a pamphlet in the same year by Dodd Mead and Co of New York.

In 1966 this was again reprinted as a pamphlet by the Dolmen Press, Dublin, for the William Morris Society in London, with a foreword by Stanley Morison and an introduction by Basil Blackwell.

On p.5 Morison wrote ‘Its 14,000 words record for posterity the most intimate and observant biographical presentation of Morris that has proceeded from the pen of a contemporary observer.’

4. A Shaw Anthology

Echoes of Oscar

‘It is almost incredible that Oscar’s essays and novels and dramas should not have had an effect upon the mind and conceptions of a man like Shaw’.
– H.M. Hyndman: Further Reminiscences  London: Macmillan 1912 p.221

‘It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.’
                        –The Importance of being Earnest, Act III

‘Make any statement that is so true that it has been staring us in the face all our lives, and the whole world will rise up and contradict you.’
                    – Too True to be Good, Act II.

ALGERNON: I wish you would reform me.  You might make that your mission.
CECILY: How dare you suggest that I have a mission?
ALGERNON: I beg your pardon: but I thought every woman had a mission of some kind, nowadays.
CECILY:  Every female has! No woman.
                    –The Importance of being Earnest, Act II

‘No fascinating woman ever wants to emancipate her sex’
                    – G.B.S. to Clement Scott, January 1902

Cashel Byron’s Profession was written some years before the greater part of Wilde’s work was undertaken, but it reveals how Shaw was also dipping into the same pool as Wilde.  Here is Lydia Carew on railway trains:

A train is a beautiful thing.  Its pure white fleece of steam harmonises with every variety of landscape.

This was said at Clapham Junction, where in November 1895 Wilde had other things on his mind.

Cashel Byron’s Profession also has a prominent character called Lord Worthington.   Had it been written ten years later we would have seized on this compound of John Worthing and Lord Darlington, while Wilde’s Lady Roxton and Lady Plymdale seem to combine in Shaw’s Lady Roxdale (Widowers’ Houses).  Byron goes to a ‘scholastic establishment for the sons of gentlemen’ called Moncrief House.

John Cooper draws our attention to the following:

In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.
– Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
– Man and Superman, Act 4.

5. Bibliographies & Links

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.

Beerbohm, Max: More Theatres. London: Rupert Hart-Davis 1969. This volume contains Beerbohm’s pieces for the Saturday Review that he omitted from the first edition of Around Theatres (1924), an omission followed in the 1953 edition.

This volume opens with three squibs against Shaw ‘G.B.S. Oblige’ (9th April 1898, pp.17-21), ‘Mr Shaw’s Profession’ (14th May 1898, pp.21-4) and ‘Mr Shaw’s Profession II’ (pp.25-7, 21st May 1898).  These contain allusions to Arms and the Man (p.25), Candida (p.26), Mrs Warren’s Profession (pp.21-4, 25), Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (p.11), The Devil’s Disciple (pp.21, 335), The Philanderer (p.21), Widowers’ Houses (21, 25), You Never Can Tell (pp.25, 26).

There are further references to Mrs Warren’s Profession (p70), Arms and the Man (p267), Cæsar & Cleopatra (p.271).

The volume also contains a review of Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (29th December 1900, pp.335-7).  From beyond our period is The Admirable Bashville (pp.580-2).

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.

Boyd, Ernest A.: Appreciations and Depreciations, Irish Literary Portraits.  Dublin: Talbot Press & London: T. Fisher Unwin 1919.  This has one chapter on Shaw.

Chapter V: An Irish Protestant, Bernard Shaw.

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.

Jackson, Holbrook: The Eighteen Nineties. 1913.  Pelican Books 1939.  This contains a chapter devoted to Shaw.

Chapter XIV: Enter G.B.S.

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.

– and covering a later period than the pre-1901 Shaw, the following should be mentioned:

Hyde, Mary (ed.): Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas, A Correspondence.  London: John Murray 1982.
Weintraub, Stanley (ed.): The Playwright and the Pirate, Bernard Shaw and Frank Harris, A Correspondence.  Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania State University Press and Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982.

This covers not only Harris’s ‘biography’ of Shaw but the attempts of Harris to involve Shaw in his book on Wilde.  The first letter in this collection is Harris to Shaw 30th November 1898.  The second (Shaw to Harris 4th November 1900) gives Shaw’s views on Mr and Mrs Daventry.    There is one more letter from this period (Shaw to Harris 16th December 1900); the correspondence resumes in December 1904.

The following bring together Shaw and Wilde:

Bader, Earl Delbert:  ‘The Self-Reflexive Language: uses of Paradox in Wilde, Shaw and Chesterton .’ Ph. D. dissertation. Indiana University 1962.
Beckson, Karl:  ‘Oscar Wilde’s Celebrated Remark on Bernard Shaw.’  Notes and Queries 41(239): 3 Oxford 1994.
Gollin, Richard M.: ‘Beerbohm, Wilde, Shaw and "The Good-Natured Critic".’ Bulletin of the New York Public Library 68, New York February 1964.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde, including My Memories of Oscar Wilde by George Beranrd Shaw.   Carroll: New York 1997.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde: His Life & Confessions, with memories of Oscar Wilde by Bernard Shaw and Criticisms by Robert Ross.  The author, 2nd edition, the first with the pieces by Shaw and Ross. New York 1918.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde: His Life & Confessions.  Together with Memories of Wilde by Bernard Shaw. The author.  London 1918.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde: His Life & Confessions.  Together with Memories of Wilde by Bernard Shaw. New York: Crown Publishing Co  1930.
Hill, John Edward: ‘Dialectical Æstheticism — Essays on the Criticism of Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, James, Shaw and Yeats’.   University of Virginia Thesis Virginia 1972.
Jordan, John: ‘Shaw, Wilde, Synge and Yeats: Ideas, Epigrams, Blackberries and Chassis’ Wolfhound in The Irish Mind; Exploring Intellectual Traditions Dublin 1985.
Koritz, Amy E.: ‘Gendering Bodies, Performing Art: Theatrical Dancing and the Performance Æsthetics of Wilde, Shaw & Yeats’.  Dissertation Abstracts International 50 : 3 [North Carolina 1988] Ann Arbor 1989.
Lee, Josephine D.: ‘Language & Action in the Plays of Wilde, Shaw & Stoppard.’  Dissertation Abstracts International 48 : 7 Ann Arbor 1988.
Livermore, Ann:  ‘Goldoni, Wilde and Shaw: Co-Inventors of Comedy.’ Revue de la Littérature Comparée 53
pp.108-24  1979.
Loughney, Martin: Springs of Irish Wisdom: Shaw, Wilde, Swift, Yeats. Dublin: Infinity Books  1989.
Nassaar, Christopher Suhal: ‘Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan and Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession.’ Explicator 56
pp.137-8 Washington DC 1998.
Powell, Kerry: ‘Wilde, Shaw and Women of the Stage.’  William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Conference: Oscar Wilde and the Culture of the Fin-de-Siècle, Session II Los Angeles 5th March 1999.
Roy, Emil: British Drama Since Shaw [Chapter on The Importance of Being Earnest] Carbondale and London : Southern Illinois U.P. & Feffer and Simons  1972.
Ruff, William: ‘Shaw on Wilde and Morris, A Clarification’  Shaw Review 11 : 1  January 1968.
Sherard, Robert Harborough: Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris & Oscar Wilde.   New York 1936.
Sherard, Robert Harborough: Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris & Oscar Wilde. T. Werner Laurie  London 1937.
Sherard, Robert Harborough: Oscar Wilde ‘Drunkard & Swindler’: A Reply to George Bernard Shaw, Dr G.J. Renier, Frank Harris etc. Calvi: Vindex Publishing Co.   1933.
Weintraub, Stanley: ‘"The Hibernian School": Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw.’  SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 13  1993.
Weintraub, Stanley:   Shaw’s People: Victoria to Churchill. University Park, Pennsylvania: 1996.
Wisenthal, J. L.: ‘Wilde, Shaw and the Play of Conversation Modern Drama.’  (U. of Toronto Graduate Centre for Study of Drama) 37:1 Downsview, Ontario Spring 1994.

· We welcome additions and corrections, and would much like to hear from any of the writers still living.

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

BERNARD SHAW SOCIETY WEB SITE (see illustration below):
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawsociety.html

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA SHAW SERIES WEB SITE:
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

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SHAW CONFERENCE 2004 AT SARASOTA:
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/USFShawConference2004-Sarasota/index.html

BRITISH DRAMA 1890-1950:
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/britishdrama.htm

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 in a table.  The best use of it is to check all those sayings ascribed to Wilde that are in fact by Shaw.
http://www.shawchicago.org is 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.
http://mobydicks.com/lecture/BernardShawhall/wwwboard.html is a discussion group, with the somewhat brassbound greeting ‘Ahoy mate! Welcome to the new Bernard Shaw lecture hall!  The old Bernard Shaw lecture hall may be found at http://mobydicks.com/lecture/BernardShawhall/wwwboard23.html Visit the Bernard Shaw Live Chat, and use the forum below to schedule a chat session.’
http://www.lyfe.freeserve.co.uk/quoteshaw.htm is another site with Shaw quotations, again, irritatingly, unsourced.  Substitute wilde for shaw in the URL for an Oscar Wilde quotation site.

6. SHAW ASSOCIATIONS

The Bernard Shaw Society may be reached at

P.O. Box 1159,
Madison Square Station
New York, N.Y. 10159-1159

The Society publishes The Independent Shavian.  The image below is the latest one on their website.

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.

· What we have previously referred to as the The Irish Shaw Society should correctly have been called The Dublin Shaw Society.  This maintains no website but may be contacted through the Hon. Secretary.  Mary Casey has now succeeded Beda O’Brien in this post (no address as yet available).  The Society meets on the third Wednesday of every month in the United Arts Club, 3 Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2.  Membership is €15 p.a., for an individual, €35 for a couple.  The meeting on the 16th will feature a talk by Denis Minto on George Vandeleur Lee.

7. TAILPIECE

‘I always made a point of treating Wilde with great respect as a serious writer, scrupulously avoiding the current Oscar-Jimmy [Whistler] badinage in the fashionable weeklies.  Oscar made a point of doing exactly the same with me.  The consequence was that when we met, which was seldom, we put one another out absurdly until at least we met accidentally in an exhibition in Chelsea, when he entertained me with a first rate performance as a raconteur.  After his imprisonment I sent him all my books as they came out, thus keeping up my policy of distinguished consideration; and he sent me all his.  The only jar in our relations was when I denounced The Importance of being Earnest for the mechanical farce which it is.  But I don’t think that rankled for very long.  You must always remember that we were Irishmen, resenting strongly the English practice of making pets of Irishmen.  We understood one another on this point, and thereby made our relationship quite unintelligible in England.’

– George Bernard Shaw to Lord Alfred Douglas 24th April 1938; in Mary Hyde (ed.): Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas, A Correspondence.  London: John Murray 1982 pp.36-7.

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