A Bulletin for
George Bernard Shaw
October 2006
With the new
series of THE OSCHOLARS, Shavings (which began as a section within THE OSCHOLARS and then became one of it supplementary pages) further emancipated
itself and became one of the Irish Literary Bulletins hosted by www.irish.diasporanet, the site for
Irish and other diaspora studies owned by Patrick O’Sullivan (University
of Bradford). Responsibility for its
content, however, remains with the editorial team of THE OSCHOLARS. We cannot yet see how this will
develop but the main thrust of Shavings
will continue as before to explore the world of Shaw during the lifetime of
Wilde, but clearly we will not turn our backs on such later Shaw material as
presents itself. Contributions and ideas
from readers will be welcome. That said,
we are here only to complement the excellent work done on Shaw elsewhere,
notably by the Shaw associations and their publications, and these will be
given their due measure in our columns.
We regret very much that Dr Julie A. Sparks, who was Associate Editor for Shavings, has no longer been able to continue as such. We thank her for her enthusiasm and support.
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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 Two Paris productions and an essay |
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2. Shawlines a. Conferences b. Shaw at 150 c. Lectures d. Publications e. The Shrines f. 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 c. 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 Festival
at
The 2005 season included You Never Can Tell and Major Barbara while the 2004 season included Pygmalion and Man and Superman, with Wilde represented by The Importance of being Ernest (and Synge by The Tinkers’ Wedding).
The
Shaw Season in Chicago
O’Flaherty V.C. and The
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet 26th July 2006 Claudia Cassidy Theatre, Chicago Cultural Center
You Never Can Tell 14th October to 6th -
Arms and The
Man
The Women of Shaw
Candida
This was broadcast by the wireless station BBC7 on 24th June, compressed into ninety minutes.
Hannah Gordon played Candida, and Edward Petherbridge played Morell. Eugene Marchbanks was played by Christopher Gard, Burgess by Ray Smith, Lexy Mill by Neville Jason and Miss Garnett by Irene Sutcliffe. Directed by Ronald Mason.
Mrs
Warren’s Profession
15th
November to
http://www.centuriontheatre.co.uk
Twentieth Century clippings:
Two
Paris
Pygmalion,
adapted by Claude-André Puget, directed by Nicolas Briançon. Théâtre Comedia, 4 boulevard de
Sainte-Jeanne, adapted from
the French text by Anika Scherrer, directed by Marie Véronique Raban for the
Compagnie de Marchepied. Théâtre du Nord-Ouest, 13 rue du Faubourg
Cast in alphabetical order: Pygmalion
Mrs Eynsford Hill : Catherine Alcover
Alfred Doolittle : Jean-Claude Barbier
Colonel Pickering : Henri Courseaux
A man : Bruno Henry
Clara Eynsford Hill : Fleur Houdinière
Mrs Higgins : Danièle Lebrun
Freddy Eynsford Hill : Pierre-Alain Leleu
A sarcastic man : Jean-Paul Lopez
Mrs Pearce : Odile Mallet
A young girl : Maurine Nicot
Maidservant : Maurine Nicot
Eliza Doolittle : Barbara Schulz
Henry Higgins : Nicolas Vaude
Crew
Costumes : Michel Fresnay
Lighting : Gaiëlle de Maiglave
Choreography : Karine Orts
Set design : Jean-Marc Stehlé
Cast in alphabetical order: St Joan
St Joan : Odila Caminos
The Dauphin : Jean-Christophe Clément
Father de Stogumber : Pascal Daubias
La Hire and the English soldier : Thibault Dudin
The Earl of
La
Trémouille, d’Estivet and the
Dunois : Loïck Hello
Archbishop of
De Poulengy and de Courcelles : Romain Lévi
Robert de Baudricourt : Pierre
Maurice
Father Martin : Alexandre
Moriset
Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais : Rémy
Oppert
Inquisitor : Marie
Véronique Raban
Crew:
Set and costume design : Anna-Lise Galavelle
Sound : Bertrand Durand
Light : Loïck Hello
.
Inspired by this production, Lou
Ferreira (Université de Paris X –
Notes on the play Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw
1.
Understanding the body in Shaw’s Saint Joan
This interpretation of Shaw’s play, deriving from its first impact, offers a means of understanding the relationship between the actions and the bodies (down to the burned body of Joan of Arc) by taking the body from the outset as the central factor of the actions, with the opinions and sentiments as secondary to this. That is to say, it is through the actions, to which the body is subject, that the great message of the play is carried. The actors were for their part almost static, and insofar as speech was separated from obvious gesture, the power of Shaw’s text, denuded of all sensuality, was thus given full presence almost to the point of being hypnotic.
The director completely respected Shaw’s ascetic intention in privileging deeds as the carrier of ideas rather than these being sentimentalised states derived from the soul. Here it is Joan (excellently portrayed by Odila Caminos) who personifies an ideology, dear to Shaw: the power of action and the commonsense of the Maid are not encumbered by the sentimentality that he abominated. Addressing this, the actress made us forget very quickly her youth and prettiness by fascinating us with her political and personal drive. In parallel it is both necessary to remember that the historical Joan existed, and that the depiction of her in Shaw’s text removes her sensuality. The audience will thus better appreciate that the actress has authoritatively succeeded in engaging it by her understanding of military strategy and power of expression, rather than by her womanly body. The body of Joan is made for battle, military authority and the defence of the French throne, not for love. It was through this interpretation, and that it seemed to us that Odila Caminos faithfully incarnated the Joan of Shaw’s words.
Bergson used to say that a living being was primarily a doing being: ‘I perceive through activity’ – although one can say that over the voices that Joan listens to, one can hear that above all she personifies commonsense as Bernard Shaw understood it. This commonsense and the power to do things possessed by Joan, confer upon her a degree of liberty that neither King Charles nor the clergy, and the nobility even less, either have or can achieve. In short, Joan’ s strength and willpower make her a free agent right up to the flames. That is why this play, in all its great æsthetic severity, spotlights the clarity and liberty of being with which Joan of Arc faces her accusers.
2.
Concerning the freewill
of St Joan in the work of Shaw and the production by Marie Véronique Raban
Nietzsche said ‘My wishes always arrive as a liberating force, bringing me pleasure. To wish is to be liberated: that is the true doctrine of will and liberty’ (Thus Spake Zarathustra). We have chosen to quote Nietzsche and Bergson because they were Shaw’s contemporaries and because St Joan represents the active ideal that they advocated. In this production it became clear how the very minimalist set and the costumes appropriate to each protagonist were made to bring out to an extraordinary degree the problem of will in the person of Joan, and the power of a hypothesis where there were no sets or costumes to disguise an inadequate idea. The adaptation was faithful to a certain ‘protestant’ rigour in Shaw; the decor (or absence of décor?) left the audience in control of their own imagination, because made to ‘invent’ the colouring of each event.
Joan’s words were themselves forcefully and freely expressed and bore her spontanæous and free decisions. This vigour never weakened throughout the production and very time it appeared it conveyed the assertiveness of Shaw as much as that of Joan.
Nietzsche would say to this that the will always reveals itself before the process of command in which the ‘I’ is only the superficial expression of a complex play of interactive forces. That is what leads us to give priority to the necessity of will power, and it is this that manifests itself in the determination of Joan of Arc. This has the effect of making her enforce the dictates of her urge to dominance contrary to her instincts, to those of the king, those of the English or even those of the Church. To be clear, Bernard Shaw, in honouring this willpower in Joan, has perceived in the role of the Maid a destiny not only beyond the ordinary, but one which overcomes her personal interests, and counter to the all the policy of her age. And it is this alone that makes of her a personage ‘superior’ in both historical and human terms.
In this production, the meticulous and precise adherence to Shaw’s text allows one to understand the level at which Shaw understood the pointlessness and stupidity of putting Joan to death: each actor evoked with intelligence to what degree the nobles, the great men and the religious had been opportunists, cowards without any effective political strategy. The will and the beliefs of Joan called up on the spot (and four hundred years later!) the greatness of her military and political design. Shaw pays homage to the woman as much as to the genius, and foregrounds the rightness of her orders in serving the course of French history.
Her trial in this reading appeared strange and terrifying at the same time. The silences were impressive because it is thus that Shaw underlines how much this trial for heresy is itself out of order, and if the actors carried complete conviction it is because they respected one of the wishes most dear to Shaw: that each among them should understand the meaning of the play, that they understand for themselves so that in its turn the public can make out the game of all the interactions played out on stage…
3.
The question of Morality in Saint Joan
Putting on stage the struggles and putting to death of Joan of Arc demands that those responsible put the question of an ultimate ‘moral lesson’ in Shaw’s work. There should be no mistaking this: the moral is often a collection of tenets which allow the escape of reality, of clearcut responsibilities through the distortion of lies ready to be digested without considering. Thus Shaw puts into action the decision by Joan to compel the people to take upon themselves so serious a deed and verdict as the death penalty. He likes to question the origins of value judgments, to detect the motives hidden from one another, to the gain of Life itself! Shaw demonstrates perfectly that the story of the Maid is a looking glass, in which every human being is right to question him or herself on the foundations of Power as established in all its forms and in every age.
In this sense, Shaw’s play does not encumber itself with coded discourse: it is crystal-clear and orchestrated by the hand of a master. When Joan is brought back to life, she is at peace with herself and shows no hatred towards the cowards who forsook her. It is left to each to question himself on his own life-denying instincts, to each to seek to ‘increase himself’, as Nietzsche put it.
This was ably considered by Shaw, not to play the game of the moralisers by contenting himself to indicate what was ‘good or bad’ in the fate of the Maid of France. That was the intention of the Inquisitors and the sophists who surrounded her. What was important to Bernard Shaw was not the well-meant thoughts but the reality of good actions.
The king in his bed who hides himself in his blue sheet becomes automatically ridiculous, and both the Inquisitor and his abrupt discourse are the embodiment of what is both arbitrary and absurd. Only the soldier who has been at ease with himself for his simple gesture of offering Joan some sort of cross when facing the pyre will explain himself in simple reasoning:
‘They were going to burn her. She had as good right to a cross as they had; and they had dozens of them. It was her funeral, not theirs. Where was the harm in it?’
In this way, Shaw pays tribute to acts of commonsense and denounces in no uncertain manner the power of ‘great’ men; but above all he invites us to be aware that the story of Joan of Arc demonstrates the cruelty and lack of intelligence in those who govern, not that this report has ceased to correspond with actuality…
One leaves this play by Shaw, sad, but somewhat more enlightened.
Remarques
sur la pièce « Sainte Jeanne » de Bernard Shaw
« Sainte Jeanne » et le rapport au corps dans la pièce de Shaw :
La première impression
qui ressort de l’interprétation de cette pièce de Bernard Shaw, est que
la façon d’appréhender les actes et les corps, (jusqu’au corps
brûlé de Jeanne D’Arc), suppose que le corps est d’abord un centre
d’action où les sentiments ont une place secondaire, c’est-à-dire
que les actes auxquels obéit le corps sont porteurs d’une grande mission.
Les comédiens étaient à leur place, presque statiques et pourtant une force
évidente se dégageait de leur phrasé , la force du
texte de Shaw, dénuée de toute sensualité, était pourtant bien présente, quasi
hypnotique.
Le metteur en scène a
parfaitement respecté l’ascétisme et l’importance des faits vus par
Shaw, qui admire avant tout la portée des idées et des actes s’y
rapportant, plus que les états d’âmes sentimentalistes. C’est
Jeanne (excellente Odila Camino) qui porte en elle une
« idéologie » chère à Bernard Shaw : la force d’agir
et le bon sens qui ont motivé la Pucelle ne s’embarrassent pas de cette sentimentalité
qu’il exécrait. A ce sujet, la comédienne, nous fait très vite oublier
son jeune âge et sa joliesse pour nous fasciner par sa détermination politique
et physique. Dans un même mouvement il faut alors se souvenir que le personnage
ayant existé et la description qu’en fait Shaw dans son texte était dénué
de sensualité : le spectateur aura donc pu apprécié le fait que la
comédienne aura magistralement réussi à nous fasciner par ses convictions de
stratégie militaire et sa diction parfaite davantage que son corps de femme. Le
corps de Jeanne était fait pour la bataille, l’autorité militaire et la
défense du trône de France ; pas pour l’amour. Dans cette
interprétation et dans les mots de Shaw, c’est une évidence, c’est
pourquoi Odila Camino nous semblait
être une fidèle incarnation.
Bergson disait
qu’un être vivant est d’abord un être agissant : « je
perçois en vue d’agir », et quoi que l’on puisse dire sur les
voix qu’entendait Jeanne, elle relève avant tout du bon sens selon
Bernard Shaw. Ce bon sens que possédait Jeanne et sa puissance agissante lui
confèrent un degré de liberté que ni le roi Charles, ni le clergé et
encore moins les notables n’auront saisi ni possédé. En un mot, la force
et la détermination de Jeanne font d’elle un être libre au-delà des
flammes. C’est pourquoi, cette pièce, dans sa grande sobriété esthétique
met en lumière exclusivement la lucidité et la liberté d’être de Jeanne
D’Arc face à ses détracteurs.
De la volonté de Jeanne
D’Arc dans l’œuvre de Shaw et la pièce de Marie Véronique
Raban :
Nietzsche disait :
« Mon vouloir me vient toujours comme ce qui me libère et m’apporte
la joie. Vouloir libère : telle est la véritable doctrine de la volonté et
de la liberté. » (Ainsi parlait
Zarathoustra).
Nous choisissons de citer
Bergson et Nietzsche parce qu’ils sont des contemporains de Bernard Shaw,
et que « Sainte Jeanne » est représentative de leur idéal actif. En
clair, le décor très minimaliste de la pièce et les propos tenus par
chaque protagoniste fait ressortir à merveille la question de la volonté chez
Jeanne D’Arc, et la force d’un propos sans que le décor, les tenues
n’aient à masquer l’insuffisance d’une idée. Le texte était
fidèle à une certaine rigueur « protestante » chez Bernard Shaw, le
décor (ou l’absence de décor ?) laissait les spectateurs maîtres
de leur imagination parce qu’ils devaient inventer les couleurs de
chaque évènement.
Les mots de Jeanne
étaient eux-mêmes violents, volontaires et porteurs de décisions libres
instantanées. Cette vigueur n’a jamais faibli tout au long de la pièce et
chaque intervention était à la hauteur de la virulence de Shaw, tout comme
celle de Jeanne.
Nietzsche disait à ce
propos que la volonté révélait avant tout un processus de commandement dont le
« moi » n’est que l’effet superficiel d’un jeu
complexe de rapports de force. Ce qui l’amènera à privilégier la
nécessité d’une volonté de puissance, celle qui se fait jour dans
le commandement de Jeanne D’Arc.
En effet, elle doit affronter des rapports de
domination contraires à ses intuitions ; celles du Roi, des Anglais ou
même du Clergé. En clair, Bernard Shaw, en honorant cette « volonté de
puissance » chez Jeanne D’arc, a perçu dans le rôle de la pucelle,
un destin hors du commun mais qui dépasse ses intérêts personnels, à
l’inverse de tout politique de son époque. Et cela seul fait d’elle
un être « supérieur » historique et humain.
Dans la pièce,
l’interprétation méticuleuse et précise du texte de Shaw permet de
réaliser à quel point Bernard Shaw comprenait l’absurdité et la
stupidité de la mise à mort de Jeanne : chaque comédien rappelait avec
intelligence à quel point les nobles, les notables et les religieux avaient été
opportunistes, lâches et sans stratégie politique efficace. La volonté
et les convictions de Jeanne feront apparaître sur –le- champ (et quatre
cent ans plus tard !) la grandeur de son dessein militaire et
politique. Bernard Shaw rend hommage à la femme en tant que génie et met
en lumière la justesse de ses ordres au service de l’histoire de France.
Son procès parait alors
insolite et terrifiant à la fois. Les silences sont imposant parce que
Shaw souligne combien ce procès pour hérésie est dérangeant, et si les
comédiens ont été si convaincants c’est parce qu’ils ont respecté
un des vœux les plus chers de Bernard Shaw : que chacun d’entre
eux comprennent le sens de leur jeu, se comprennent entre eux
pour que le public à son tour
entrevoie le jeu de tous les rapports de force mis en scène…
La question de la Morale dans
« Sainte Jeanne »
Mettre en scène les
combats et la mise à mort de Jeanne D’Arc demande à ce que l’on se
pose la question d’une éventuelle leçon de « morale » chez
Bernard Shaw. Pourtant, on ne doit pas se tromper : La morale est souvent
un ensemble de préceptes qui permettent
d’échapper à une réalité, à des responsabilités claires par le biais de mensonges
prêts à être digérés sans réflexion.
Or, Bernard Shaw met en évidence la volonté de Jeanne de contraindre
plutôt les humains à assumer un acte et une décision aussi grave que la
condamnation à mort. Il préfère interroger l’origine des jugements
de valeur, détecter les pulsions cachées des uns et des autres, au
profit de la Vie ! Bernard Shaw démontre parfaitement que l’histoire
de la pucelle est un miroir face auquel tout humain est en droit de
s’interroger sur les fondements du pouvoir établi sous toutes ses formes
et à toutes les époques.
En ce sens, la pièce de
Shaw ne s’embarrasse pas de discours codés : son expression est limpide
et orchestré de main de maître. Lorsque Jeanne « ressuscite », elle
est apaisée, en paix avec elle-même et ne manifeste pas de haine envers les
lâches qui l’ont abandonnée. C’est à chacun de s’interroger
sur ses propres instincts négateurs de la vie, à chacun de chercher à
« s’augmenter soi-même » comme dirait Nietzsche.
Ce qui est donc judicieux
de la part de Shaw, c’est de ne pas avoir fait le jeu des moralisateurs
en se contentant d’indiquer ce qui est bien ou mal dans le sort de
la pucelle de France. Cela était le propos des inquisiteurs et des sophistes
qui les entouraient. Ce qui importait Bernard Shaw, ce n’était pas les
bons sentiments, mais davantage l’action réelle bonne.
Le roi qui se couche et
se cache sous son drap bleu, le ridiculise automatiquement et
l’inquisiteur et son discours péremptoire sont l’incarnation de
l’absurde et de l’arbitraire. Seul le garde qui s’est contenté
d’un acte simple en offrant à Jeanne un semblant de croix face au bûcher
expliquera dans un raisonnement simple :
« Ils allaient la
brûler, elle avait autant le droit d’avoir la croix qu’eux. Eux ils
en avaient à la pelle. Et puis c’était ses funérailles à elle, pas les
leurs. Où était le mal ? »
Bernard Shaw rend alors
hommage aux actes de bon sens, fustige certes le pouvoir des
« grands » de ce monde, mais invite surtout à prendre conscience que
l’histoire de Jeanne D’Arc est révélatrice de la cruauté et de
l’absence d’intelligence des gouvernants, comme si ce constat ne
cessait pas d’être d’actualité…
On quitte la pièce de
Shaw, triste, mais un peu plus lucide.
Shaw
Season in Richmond, Surrey
18th October to 11th November and 27th November to
9th December: Major Barbara directed by Sam
Walters at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond
13th to 25th November The Shaw Triple Bills: Programme 1 Augustus Does His Bit;
O’Flaherty VC; Press Cuttings Programme 2: How He Lied to Her Husband; Overruled; Village
Wooing The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond
11th to 16th December Shaw Readings The Orange Tree Theatre,
Richmond.
For further details see website http://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
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. Calls for Papers and Conferences
‘Bernard Shaw at 150: Theater, Criticism,
Contemporaneity’
The ISS at
the Modern Language Association Meeting, 27th to
Calls for papers has concluded for 2006.
In
acknowledgment of Bernard Shaw’s sesquicentennial, the International Shaw
Society is sponsoring a special session at the 2006 MLA December meeting that
will explore Shaw's writings, both dramatic and non-dramatic, in a contemporary
context. Since Shaw often figured himself as a prophet, in what ways did
Shaw anticipate twenty-first century approaches to drama, theater, performance,
social reform, politics, and critical and literary theory? How does Shaw's theatrical-critical project
still speak to us today? Approaches grounded in either
current events and mass culture (e.g., "Creative Evolution,"
“Creationism,” and “Intelligent Design” in
MLA members
can discover how to register for the 2006 MLA convention by going to http://www.mla.org/convention.
An ISS-Sponsored Special Session on ‘Shaw as Playwright’
at The 31st Annual Comparative Drama Conference, 29th,
30th &
Deadline for abstracts, c.v., and covering letter:
Send 300 word abstracts (with title)
preferably by email attachment to tstaffor@utep.edu
or tnyorzb@sbcglobal.net or by mail
to Dr. Tony Stafford, Department of English,
Conference Location: Marina Del Rey (
Sponsoring Institution:
Shaw Session Sponsored By: The International
Shaw Society, www.shawsociety.org
Conference
Director: Dr. Kevin Wetmore, Department of Theater Arts, Loyola Marymount
University, 311 Foley Theatre, 1 LMU Drive, MS 8210, Los Angeles CA
For details about this conference,
email Dr. Wetmore at kwetmore@lmu.edu or
check the CDC website at https://myweb.lmu.edu/compdrama
(when it’s up in July). Check www.shawsociety.org for links.
To register for this conference, send
email to compdram@lmu.edu and a
registration form will be sent to you.
Conference Fee: If pre-registered,
$89 for faculty and $79 for graduate students, $69 for session chairs, $59 for
guests. Add $10 if registering at the
conference.
The
Comparative Drama Conference originated in 1976 at the
2007
Shaw Symposium at the Shaw Festival in
Shaw Session at the 2007 MLA Meeting. Date and
deadline to be announced.
For abstracts and photos from the June 2006
Shaw Conference at
Bertolni, John:
‘Shakespeare’s Shadow and Wilde’s Art in Shaw’s You
Never Can Tell’
Conolly, Leonard: ‘GBS Televised’
Dehnert,
Amanda: ‘Staging Shaw’ panel
Dailey, Jeff: ‘Opposite Ends of
the Spectrum: Shaw and Sullivan (with a
little bit of Gilbert)’
Del Dotto,
Charles Joseph: ‘Beyond Shakes
Versus Shav: Shaw’s
Medievalism and the Great War’
Doody,
Noreen: ‘When
George met Oscar: Wilde, Women and Shaw.’ (not delivered)
Emigh, John: ‘Undershaft’s
Ancestry: A Connecticut Yankee on the Court Theatre’s Stage’
Fountain, Michael: ‘Shaw’s
Vision of a National Theatre: Reading the Cultural Politics of the Location of
the National Theatre in London (1909-1942) ‘
Gahan,
Peter: ‘Set Design
in Shaw’s Poetic Structures’
Gaines, Robert: ‘Shaw and Barker
After Their Divorce’
Gibbs, Anthony: ‘GBS
and ‘The Law of Change’: A Birthday Salute’ (entire paper online)
Grene,
Nicholas: ‘Shaw and Conversion’
Hadfield, Dorothy: ‘Shaw and the Women in His/story’
Harding, Desmond: ‘‘Tightening Hearts’: Heartbreak House and the
Trauma of War’
Jahan, Husne: ‘Colonial Control of
Irish Land: Unromancing the Romantic
Irish Scenery in John Bull’s
Other Island’
Jenckes,
Norma: ‘Red Faces, Green Masks; A Fanonian
Reading of John Bull’s Other Island’
Kable, Gregory: ‘Terminating the
Twenties: Predicting Posthumanism in Shaw’s ‘Metabiological
Pentateuch’’
Kubly, Jenna: ‘Idyll in the
Garden: The Great War and Heartbreak House’
Largess, Bill:
‘Editing Shaw for Performance: Passion, Pragmatism, and Peril’
Largess, Bill:
‘Staging Shaw’ panel
Leahey, Kristin: Making Shaw Accessible
to Young Audiences’
Li, Kay: ‘The Pygmalion Effect:
China With A Mind Of Its Own’
Luber, Steve:
‘‘Bizarre’ Major Barbara: Shaw, Kabuki, and
Language’
MacDonald,
John: ‘Staging Shaw’ panel
Macki,
Adrienne: ‘Bernard Shaw and the Modern ‘New Woman’: Transgressing Types and Staging Gender’
McCarty,
Megan: ‘The Answer to Irish Identity: Androgyny in the Works of Shaw and
Joyce’
Meier, Inga: ‘Heartbreak House as
a Template for Framing 9/11 Discourse in Rebeck’s and
Gersten-Vassilaros’ Omnium Gatherum’
Meisel, Martin: ‘Passing
the Word: Shaw, Stoppard, and ‘Audible Intelligibility’
Merriman,
Victor: ‘Prophetic Metadramatist and Public Intellectual: A Postcolonial
Reading of John Bull’s Other Island’ (not delivered)
Metz, Allison: ‘Bernard
Shaw’s Child Alliance: Victorian Ideology and Youth Culture in ‘A
Treatise on Parents and Children’’
Miller,
Brook: ‘Shaw’s
Newsreel ‘Greeting’ and the Paradoxes of Critique’
Papreck, Annie: ‘Shakespeare’s
Cleopatra: More Shavian than Shaw’s Cleopatra?’
Pharand, Michel: ‘My Familiar Green Volumes: Bernard Shaw.s
Publishing (Ad)ventures’
Pfeifer, Barbara: ‘A Dramatist for All Seasons: Shaw in
Price, Ted: ‘Shaw’s & Shakespear’s Dark Lady of the
Sonnets’
Ritschel, Nelson: Shaw, Connolly, and the Irish Citizen Army’
Ryan, Vanessa:
‘Considering the Alternatives . . . ‘: Shaw and the Death of the
Intellectual’
Saddlemyer,
Ann: ‘Shaw’s (Un)finished Symphonies’
Saslav, Isidor:
Shaw’s Letters in Other People’s Books: A Survey’
Senelick, Laurence: ‘`More Looked
at Than Listened to’: Shaw on the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Stage’
Smith,
Susan Harris: ‘Everybody’s
Shaw’
Sri, P. S.: ‘Shaw, Gandhi, and
Vegetarianism’
Stafford, Tony: ‘Mad About
Reading’ and the Glassed-Framed Garden: The Presentation of Higher
Consciousness in Misalliance’
Switzky,
Larry: ‘The Last Word on Last Words: Shaw and the Catastrophic
Drama’ (not delivered)
Weintraub, Stanley: ‘King Magnus
and King Minus: A Play and a Playlet’
Webb, Eric:
‘‘Styles in Shavian Sainthood: The Gendered and Ungendered
Transfigurations of Barbara and Joan’ (not delivered)
Weintraub, Rodelle: ‘Cunninghame
Graham: The Real Black Paquito’
Wilde, Lisa: ‘Absent
Fathers, Headstrong Daughters’
Williams, Walter: ‘Setting the
World on Fire Merely to see it Burn? The Censoring of Shaw’s Testimony in
the 1909 Parliamentary Hearings on the Censoring of Stage Plays’
Wilmeth, Don:
‘Staging Shaw’ panel
b. Shaw at 150
For photos of the Shaw birthday celebrations
in
c. Lectures
On 23rd August 2006 Ivan Wise gave a lecture to the William Morris Society of Canada on ‘Shaw's Debt to Morris’, at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ontario. On 5th October at the National Portrait Gallery in London, continuing the series of talks celebrating the anniversaries of renowned literary figures, the writer and biographer, Michael Holroyd, author of an acclaimed biography on Shaw, was ‘in discussion’ with Roy Foster, Professor of Irish History at Oxford University.
d. Publications & Papers
We hope readers will draw our attention to their publications and papers on Shaw,
We note the paper given at the
fin-de-siècle Conference at
e. The Shrines
Shaw’s Corner at
© NTPL
/ Matthew Antrobus
The Shaw Birthplace in
f. Exhibition
An exhibition devoted to GBS runs until the
end of the year in the National Gallery,
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 ‘the 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 drew 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.
4. Bibliographies & Links
a. GBS for Wildeans: A Bibliography of 19th century Shaw.
This will be a cumulative bibliography as references come to hand.
Beerbohm, Max: Around Theatres.
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) (‘
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.
This volume opens with three squibs
against Shaw ‘G.B.S. Oblige’ (
There are further references to Mrs Warren’s Profession (p.70), Arms and the Man (p267), Cæsar & Cleopatra (p.271),
The volume also contains a review of Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (
Borsa, Mario: The English Stage of
To-day. Translated
from the original Italian and edited with a prefatory note by Selwyn Brinton
M.A.
Chapter IV: G.B.S.
Boyd, Ernest A.:
Appreciations and Depreciations, Irish Literary
Portraits.
Chapter V: An Irish Protestant, Bernard Shaw.
Broad, C. Lewis & Broad,
Violet M. (George Bernard Shaw). Dictionary
to the Plays and Novels of Bernard Shaw With
Bibliography of His Works and of the Literature Concerning Him With a Record of
the Principal Shavian Play Productions. ill.
Dietrich, Richard: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Superman: A
Study of Shaw’s Novels.
Innes, Christopher (ed.): The
Gordon, David J.: Shavian Comedy and the Shadow of Wilde;
Kelly, Katherine E.: Imprinting the Stage: Shaw and the Publishing
Trade
Marker, Frederick J.: Shaw’s early plays;
Powell, Kerry: New Women, new plays, and Shaw in the 1890s
Green, Benny. Shaw’s Champions: G.B.S. and Prize Fighting from
Cashel Byron to Gene Tunney.
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
Chapter VI: George Bernard Shaw.
Laurence, Dan H.: Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters
Laurence, Dan H: Bernard Shaw, Collected
Letters
McBriar, A.M.: Fabian Socialism & English Politics
Meisel, Martin: Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater. Princeton University Press 1963; new
edition
Morgan, A.L.: Tendencies of Modern English Drama.
Chapter VI. Shaw the Iconoclast– Iconoclast
Chapter VII: Shaw the Iconoclast–Social Iconoclast
Chapter VIII: Shaw the Philosopher.
Nicoll, Allardyce: British Drama, An
Historical Survey from the Beginning to the Present Time.
Part VII: The Revival in the Drama (1890-1920)
Chapter IV: The Revival of Comedy and the Theatre of G.B. Shaw.
(i) Wilde and the Comedy of Manners
(iii) George Bernard Shaw.
Peters, Sally: Bernard
Shaw, The Ascent of the Superman. New Haven
& London:
This is chiefly concerned with the first half of Shaw’s life, and includes some notable ‘queer’ reading.
Scott,
– 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.
Weintraub,
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
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.
Beckson, Karl: ‘Oscar Wilde’s Celebrated
Remark on Bernard Shaw.’ Notes and Queries 41(239): 3
Gollin, Richard M.: ‘Beerbohm, Wilde, Shaw and
‘The Good-Natured Critic’.’
Bulletin of the
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde, including My Memories of Oscar
Wilde by George Bernard Shaw. Carroll:
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.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde: His Life &
Confessions. Together with Memories of Wilde by Bernard
Shaw. The author.
Harris, Frank: Oscar Wilde: His Life &
Confessions. Together with Memories of Wilde by Bernard
Shaw.
Hill, John Edward: ‘Dialectical Æstheticism —
Essays on the Criticism of Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, James, Shaw and
Yeats’.
Jordan, John: ‘Shaw, Wilde, Synge and Yeats: Ideas,
Epigrams, Blackberries and Chassis’ in The Irish Mind; Exploring
Intellectual Traditions
Koritz, Amy E.: ‘Gendering Bodies, Performing Art:
Theatrical Dancing and the Performance Æsthetics of Wilde, Shaw &
Yeats’. Dissertation Abstracts International 50 :
3 [
Lee, Josephine D.: ‘Language & Action in the
Plays of Wilde, Shaw & Stoppard.’ Dissertation Abstracts
International 48 : 7
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.
Nassaar, Christopher Suhal:
‘Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan and Shaw’s Mrs
Warren’s Profession’. Explicator 56
pp.137-8.
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
Roy, Emil: British Drama Since
Shaw [Chapter on The Importance of Being Earnest]
Ruff, William: ‘Shaw on Wilde and Morris, A Clarification’ Shaw Review 11 : 1 January 1968.
Sherard, Robert Harborough: Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris
& Oscar Wilde.
Sherard, Robert Harborough: Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris
& Oscar Wilde. T. Werner Laurie
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
Weintraub, Stanley: Shaw’s People:
Wisenthal, J. L.:
‘Wilde, Shaw and the Play of Conversation Modern Drama’ (U. of
· We welcome additions and corrections, and would much like to hear from any of the writers.
b. Websites and a newly added blog
A list of websites kindly provided
by Richard Dietrich (
BERNARD SHAW SOCIETY WEB SITE (see below):
http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawsociety.html
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA SHAW SERIES WEBSITE:
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
Other websites include
http://www.infography.com/content/272906973619.html
v Note added October 2006: this is a
bibliography, or, rather, a guide to further reading but lists nothing later
than Jean Reynolds: Pygmalion’s Wordplay: The
Postmodern Shaw. The
http://www.therightside.demon.co.uk/quotes/shaw/ which has 123 quotations from Shaw, but irritatingly does not source them.
v Note added October 2006: this has now moved to http://www.funthingies.com/quotes.php?QuoteFile=george-bernard-shaw but no new quotations have been added.
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.
v Note added October 2006: The link no longer brings up the BSIRS but a page of diverse links to other sites, one of these being a list of other Shaw references on the web… Dame Wendy died some years ago.
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.
v Note added October 2006: Our first attempt to reconsult this site caused our computer to crash; and our second attempt brought a dialogue box saying that the site could not be found.
http://www.shawchicago.org is the site of the Shaw Chicago Theatre Company, specialising in Shaw’s plays.
v Note added October 2006: worth a visit.
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/notable%20houses/shaws%20corner.htm has two pictures of Shaw’s house and a brief account.
v Note added October 2006: Only one picture is now given of the house here described in the following terms: ‘For the past 50 years, this quite unremarkable, dreary vicarage building, has provided a cosy, welcoming atmosphere in which visitors are given the opportunity to delve more deeply into the life of this literary genius.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/centurions/shaw/shawbiog.shtml gives a biography of Shaw as it appeared to the BBC compilers.
v Note added October 2006: This page can no longer be found; but Maureen O’Connor has found for us
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2006/07/shavian_travels.html. This was the first ‘blog’ we have
ever looked at. If you like this sort of
thing, this
is the sort of thing you like…
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.’
v Note added October 2006: Rather to our surprise this site still exists, now called the ‘Bernard Shaw and Saint Joan Lecture Hall’. The Chat Session has the preface
‘Welcome to the Bernard Shaw
Live Recitation Chat. Every day, on the
hour, fans of the Great Books from around the world gather here to participate
in a live recitation centered about Bernard Shaw. Generally this chatroom is
most active from
We found it difficult to get past this somewhat unlikely introduction to GBS. Clicking on the Bernard Shaw Lecture Hall merely brought us back to the home page. We may try again later…
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.
v Note added October 2006: The home page of this useless site is called Chuckle Corner, a Cornucopia of Giggle. Best avoided.
5. SHAW ASSOCIATIONS
a. The International Shaw Society
The early days of the ISS were chronicled in Shavings as the Society was being formed. It created a website at http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/international_shaw_society/index.html, but this was not updated after 2003 (ah, me! We sigh, in our own glass house) and thus remains in the words of its leading article ‘strictly experimental and illustrative’, being replaced by The International Shaw Society Newsletter and Bulletin Board first at http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/iss.htm and now at www.shawsociety.org. This is a fully developed website, partly restricted to members of the iss but with much information on open access. The Society’s current executive is
R. F. Dietrich, President
Don Wilmeth, Vice President
Lagretta Lenker, Treasurer
Norma Jenckes,
Recording Secretary
Lori
Ruse-Dietrich,
Membership Secretary
We will carry news of the activities of the ISS as it comes to hand.
b. The Shaw
Society of England
We will be carrying news from the English
Society for the first time and are pleased to be in contact with them. Their website at http://www.shawsociety.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
has been redesigned and moved to http://www.shawsociety.org.uk. The Shaw Society was founded on
The society meets in
Coming events:
At Conway Hall,
27th October Mad, Bad and Mediocre. The speaker’s views of the plays around him by Dr Peter Shaw
24th November Rehearsed reading of a less than flattering play about Shaw by John Spurling (who will attend)
Membership costs £15 per annum and for two people at the same address there is a family rate of £22 per annum. For overseas members US$30 or the equivalent. For further details contact Evelyn Ellis, Membership Secretary, The Shaw Society, 1 Buckland Court, 37 Belsize Park, London NW3 4EB +(0)20 7794 7014. Tel/Fax: 020 7794 7014. Email: shawsociety@blueyonder.co.uk.
c. The Bernard Shaw Society
This may be reached at
The website (at http://independentshavian.org/independentshavian2.htm)
no longer reproduces the cover, but a Table of Contents is given for the most
recent number current
number, volume 43, volumes 1-2, 2005:
Shaw's Remarkable Lecture on Religion
The House of Bernard Shaw by Rhoda Nathan
One Hundred Years of Shaw by Richard Nickson
Bernard Shaw: Past, Present, Future by Rosalie Rahal Haddad
Letter from
The
Septuagenarian versus the Siren: Shaw and Molly Tompkins by Sally Peters
(click here to view this article)
Is Too True To Be Good Good at All? by Shannon Muklewicz
GBS on Dirty Factory Chimneys, Mr. Bernard Shaw (Laughing and Applause)
For prior issues, click here. 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. To subscribe to the journal or to order this number, click here.
c. The Dublin
This maintains
no website but maybe contacted through the Hon. Chairman, Brian Mc Grath
<bricar@gofree.indigo.ie>.
The Society meets on the third Wednesday of every month in the United Arts
Club,
6. TAILPIECE
‘I do not altogether accept [Shaw’s] statement that it was about himself that Wilde made his celebrated remark about the man who had no enemies but was cordially disliked by his friends [...] But of course if Shaw likes to think that Wilde originally said it about him, there is no reason at all why he should be denied the satisfaction of claiming it.’
–Lord Alfred Douglas: Oscar
Wilde, A Summing Up.
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