A Bulletin for George
Bernard Shaw
October 2003
The Associate Editor of THE OSCHOLARS with responsibility for helping with this issue of SHAVINGS is Julie A. Sparks of the Department of English, University of Arkansas-Monticello, to whom contributions should be submitted.
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'Oh, Shaw! That's the man who smokes Jaeger cigarettes!' Oscar
Wilde, quoted
by Richard Le Gallienne: The Romantic
Nineties. New edition. |
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1. The Plays c. Candida g. Misalliance |
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2. Shawlines a. Conference (1): Shaw in the Here and Now Conference (2): St Joan b. Lecture c. Publications d. The Shrines e. Exhibition |
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3. Anthology: Echoes of Oscar b. Candida e. Letters |
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b. Websites |
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a. The International Shaw Society b. The Bernard Shaw Society & The Independent Shavian |
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6. Tailpiece |
1. The Plays
In this section we 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 (
The Shaw Season
at
Arms and The Man
is having a number of outings:
29th September to 4th October: Richmond
Theatre,
|
Director |
Timothy Sheader |
|
Design |
Robert Jones |
|
Lighting |
Howard Harrison |
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Catherine Petkoff |
Gwen Taylor |
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Major Petkoff |
Duncan Preston |
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Bluntschli |
Barnaby Kay |
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Sergius |
Sam Callis |
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Raina |
Rachel Ferjani |
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Louka |
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Fred Ridgeway |
Nicola |
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Matt Zarb |
Officer |
Arms and the Man is also at the
Pendragon Theatre,
Candida
Taproot Theatre Company,
Mrs. Warren's Profession
Theatre Three,
Twentieth Century clippings:
Man and Superman opened at the Pitochry Festival,
Misalliance is at
the Germinal Stage,
John Bull's Other Island is at the Tricycle Theatre in
There is a reading of How
He Lied to Her Husband by Food for Thought
Productions in
Michael Friend has staged a number of
Shaw's plays at Shaw's Corner,
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.
a. Conferences
Conference (1): 'Shaw in the Here and Now’.
This is to announce a Shaw Conference on
Deadline for Abstracts: 1st October. Cash prizes for Best Papers by Students. Deadline for Student Papers: 1st December.
The conference will be headquartered at the Hilton Garden
Inn, near the
Paper sessions and panel discussions will take place on the campus.
Play productions, such as The Millionairess, Arms and The Man, Bernard and Bosie (starring Barry Morse), and perhaps one more, will take place there or at the nearby Asolo Theatre.
Everything is within walking distance.
For details and explanations, please visit the conference website at
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/USFShawConference2004-Sarasota/index.html
You can print out the registration form there and mail it in. Any questions not answered there please direct to Richard Dietrich at dietrich@chuma1.cas.usf.eduor to his co-director Lagretta Lenker at llenker@admin.usf.edu
It is also possible to register online with a credit card. Just go to or click on the following address and follow the instructions: https://registration.outreach.usf.edu/shaw.htm
The conference brochure and call for papers can be printed off and copies and posters made at:
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/USFShawConferenceBrochure.htm.pdf.
This requires Acrobat Reader to open.
. . .UPDATES WILL BE PUBLISHED HERE. . .
Conference (2): St Joan
The International Joan of Arc Society is
sponsoring a session of papers on 'The Life and Lives of Joan of Arc' at the
next International Medieval Congress, to beheld in
Abstracts should have been sent by 13th
September to Professor Ann W. Astell, Department of English,
b. Lecture
31st October: 'Morris,
Shaw, and Politics', lecture by David Rainger,
c. Publications
Linda Wong (
QIAN, Jiyang.
'The Symptom of Subconscious Suppression: On G.B. Shaw's Plays and the Image of
Woman in "Scholarly-Gentlemen-and-Beautiful-Ladies" Novels in
Gearóid O'Flaherty's article 'George Bernard
Shaw and
Other publications in prospect are noted below.
d. The Shrines
Shaw's Corner at
The Shaw Birthplace in
e. Exhibition
The
3. 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. |
a. Arms and the Man
Although it is difficult for even close reading to convince that this play is more than a trifle, a prelude to deeper plays in future, it can perhaps be given some added meaning by incorporating it into a Shaw/Wilde discussion. It is valuable, for example, to read Raina Petkova with Vera, Cicely and Gwendolen in mind, curious mix as she is of idealism both assumed and real, and artlessness, both real and assumed. Major Petkoff says of his daughter 'She always appears at the right moment', and his wife replies 'Yes; she listens for it. It is an abominable habit.' This is not necessarily to suggest influence, but it is to suggest affinity.
If The Manor House, Woolton, Hertfordshire is a sort of internal Ruritania, so the house in the 'small town near the Dragoman Pass' has its own status between prelapsarian innocence and the Fall itself, with the Tree of Knowledge ('the only library in Bulgaria'), about to give of its fruit. Such knowledge, in the form of self-awareness, is one of the more serious themes in Wilde: 'O Arthur,' says Lady Windermere, 'don't love me less, and I will trust you more. I will trust you absolutely. Let us go to Selby. In the Rose Garden at Selby the roses are white and red.' Act II in both The Importance of Being Earnest and Arms and the Man are each set in the garden of the respective houses. Raina tells Bluntschli 'You shewed great ignorance in thinking that it was necessary to climb up to the balcony because ours is the only private house that has two sets of windows. There is a flight of stairs inside to get up and down by.' The intertextual reading with Wilde here is in An Ideal Husband :'At the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty': we are again in the Balkans. One may also note that the rose 'Maréchal Niel' in the garden at Woolton is a climber.
The subplot between with servants Nicola and Louka is more eighteenth-century than Wildëan, but there is one exchange of significance in a conversation between Sergius (the officer formally betrothed to Raina) and her maid:
Sergius: If our conversation is to continue, Louka, you will please remember that a gentleman does not discuss the conduct of the lady he is engaged to with her maid.
Louka: It's so hard to know what a gentleman thinks is right. I thought from your trying to kiss me that you had given up being so particular.
This shifting of how a gentleman should behave is a constant theme in Wilde.
Lord Fermor: If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him. (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Lord Illingworth: If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him. (A Woman of No Importance)
Sir Robert Chiltern: You have lived so long abroad, Mrs. Cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realise that you are talking to an English gentleman.
Mrs Cheveley: I realise that I am talking to a man who laid the foundation of his fortune by selling to a Stock Exchange speculator a Cabinet secret. (An Ideal Husband)
Jack: It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case.
Algernon: Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Jack: Your duty as a gentleman calls you back.
Algernon: My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree. (The Importance of Being Earnest)
Being found out is almost an obsessive theme in Wilde (hardly surprisingly):
'No, Basil, you must tell me,' insisted Dorian Gray. 'I think I have a right to know.' His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery.
Algernon: The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean–so Bunbury died.
Jack: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
James Fane: If this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog.
Lady Chiltern: You have guessed it. After you left last night I found out that what she had said was really true. Of course I made Robert write her a letter at once, withdrawing his promise.
Lady Hunstanton: How charming you are, dear Lord Illingworth. You always find out that one's most glaring fault is one's most important virtue. You have the most comforting views of life.
Lady Stutfield: Do you really, really think, Lady Caroline, that one should believe evil of every one?
Lady Caroline: I think it is much safer to do so, Lady Stutfield. Until, of course, people are found out to be good. But that requires a great deal of investigation nowadays.
Lady Windermere: Have you found out at what time Lord Windermere came in last night?
Lady Windermere: I know where Arthur keeps his bank book–in one of the drawers of that desk. I might find out by that. I will find out.
Lady Windermere: You think it wrong that you are found out, don't you?
Lord
Lord Goring: So she has found out everything! Poor woman! Poor woman!
Lord Goring: That is the reason they are so pleased to find out other people's secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.
Lord Henry Wotton: But she would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for.
Lord Henry Wotton: I like to find out people for myself.
Mrs Allonby: I found out then that what he had told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so absolutely uninteresting.
Mrs Erlynne: Don't use ugly words, Windermere. They are vulgar. I saw my chance, it is true, and took it.
Lord Windermere: Yes, you took it–and spoiled it all last night by being found out.
Sir Robert Chiltern: If my wife found out, there would be little left to fight for.
It is clear enough that even in Edenic Bulgaria truth is a negotiable instrument:
Bluntschli: You said youd only told two lies in your whole life. Dear young lady: isnt that rather a short allowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but it wouldn't last me a whole morning.
Raina protests that she is being insulted, and then collapses. 'How did you find me out?'
But of course all is sham here: the heroism of Sergius, the social standing of Petkoff, the airs of Louka. Bluntschli, whom we meet as a sort of holy fool, is man of sense and decisiveness when required to be so. Yet the play ends on an ambiguous note, with Sergius's declaration about Bluntschli, which from its punctuation is a statement, but from its grammar is a question: 'What a man! Is he a man!'
b. Candida
In Candida, we find a number of references that draw us back to Wilde, not least in the two leading male characters, the Revd James Mavor Morell and Eugene Marchbanks. Morell (like the Revd Stewart Headlam, who went bail for Wilde, and is referred in the stage directions towards the beginning of Act I) is a Christian Socialist, but he also has something of a physical resemblance to Wilde at the height of his powers:
A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and good looking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty considerate manners [...] with a wide range and command of expression […] His well-spring of enthusiasm and sympathetic emotion has never run dry for a moment […] pardonably vain of his powers and unconsciously pleased with himself [...] good forehead [...] eyes bright and eager, mouth resolute but not particularly well cut [...]
Morell's books include Henry George's Progress and Poverty, Fabian Essays (to which GBS himself contributed), Morris's A Dream of John Ball, Marx's Capital 'and half a dozen literary landmarks in Socialism'. One would be hard put in 1898 to name half a dozen literary landmarks in Socialism that did not include Wilde's The Soul of Man. His admiration for his wife Candida, 'a good woman', is that of Robert for Gertrude Chiltern (although Candida's admiration for James is exactly the reverse of that of Gertrude for Robert). He also expresses himself aphoristically, although, as so often with Shaw, one feels that Wilde would have been less sententious: 'We have no more right to consume happiness without producing than to consume wealth without producing it'. We are told that he has addressed the Women's Liberal Federation on the theme of the Woman Question [Lady Chiltern: I have just come from the Woman's Liberal Association, where, by the way, Robert, your name was received with loud applause]. Candida can also express herself aphoristically 'How conventional all you unconventional people are!' (cp. Lord Windermere: How hard good women are! Lady Windermere: How weak bad men are!)
But it is Morell's foil, the poet
Marchbanks, who steps out of the world of the Rhymer's Club and the Café Royal. The nephew of an
earl (and Eugene of course means well-born, while Marchbanks,
in its form 'Marjoribanks', was the family name of
Lord Tweedmouth), he is 'a strange, shy youth of
eighteen, slight, effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted
tormented expression and shrinking manner that shew
the painful sensitiveness of very swift and accurate apprehensiveness [...]
Miserably irresolute, he does not know where to stand or what to do [...] His
nostrils, mouth, and eyes betray a fiercely petulant wilfulness'. It is
not difficult to give a queer reading to this description, nor
to discern there something of 'Bosie'
This strikes Morell as all too
high-falutin', but Candida reminds Morell that Marchbanks cleans the household's boots (Marchbanks:
'Oh don't talk about boots! Your feet should be beautiful on the mountains'),
and it will be recalled that Constance Wilde is said to have interrupted a
poetic discourse of Oscar's by referring to Cyril's boots. It is not necessary
to believe that she did so (Vyvyan
Morell's secretary is called Proserpine Garnett ('a brisk little woman of the lower middle class'), and acts to some extent as raisonneuse. Addressed as Miss Prossy, she may be a younger incarnation of Miss Prism, who also has a pretentious classical first name, Letitia. Shaw likes to play these little games with names: one thinks of 'Rummy' Mitchens, the broken down old woman in Major Barbara, who was named after George Eliot's Romola.
v
After writing the above, we
read Sally Peters: Bernard Shaw, The Ascent of the Superman. New Haven &
London:
c. Major Barbara
There is some scope for discussing most marvellous of all gospels, the gospel of gold', as expounded by Baron Arnheim to dazzle Robert Chiltern, and its use by Andrew Undershaft. Wildean echoes are frequent in Major Barbara.
. . .
Sir Robert Chiltern: Believe me, Mrs. Cheveley, it is a swindle. Let us call things by their proper names.
– An Ideal Husband, Act I
Undershaft: Pooh, Professor! let us call things by their proper names.
– Major Barbara, Act II
. . .
'I know how people chatter in
– The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lady Britomart: 'It is only in the middle classes that people get in a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world.
– Major Barbara, Act II
. . .
'Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.' (Lord Henry Wotton speaking)
– The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mrs Cheveley: Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, every one has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues.
– An Ideal Husband, Act I
Cecil Graham: But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.
– Lady Windermere's Fan, Act II
Lady Britomart: Just as one doesnt mind men practising immorality so long as they own they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn't forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while practising morality.
– Major Barbara, Act I
. . .
Gerald: Mother, this is Lord Illingworth, who has offered to take me as his private secretary. It is a wonderful opening for me, isn't it?
– A Woman of No Importance, Act II
Lady
Jack: I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
–The Importance of being Earnest, Act I
Undershaft: He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points to a political career. Get him a private secretaryship to some one who can get him an Under Secretaryship.
– Major Barbara, Act III
. . .
Lady
JACK: Between seven and eight thousand a year.
–The Importance of being Earnest, Act I
Lady Britomart: You know how poor my father he is: he has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were not the Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society.
– Major Barbara, Act I
. . .
One should also note that the career of Adolphus Cusins in Major Barbara turns on his being a foundling, while the future of Jack Worthing turns on his not being one.
d. Too True to be Good
Jack: 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.
e. Letters
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
f. Cashel Byron’s Profession
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.
g. Man and Superman
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.