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tt.rl tt.rl •U. •U. Date Date

Clyde A. Enroth A. Clyde

Irving McKee, Chair McKee, Irving

Approved: Approved:

COLLEGE COLLEGE STATE STATE SACRAMENTO SACRAMENTO

THE THE ' ' .A.T

ARTS OF OF ARTS MASTER MASTER

of of the for for the degree degree requirements requirements the the

of of satisfaction satisfaction partial in in partial Submitted Submitted

THESIS THESIS

1952 1952 College) College) State State (Sacramento (Sacramento B. A. A. B.

Rudisill Rudisill Richard Richard

by by

PRIMER PRIMER SHAW-COURT SHAW-COURT THE THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1

II. THE SETTING. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2

III. WHAT THE WAS • • • • • • • • • 3

IV. WHAT THE COURT DID • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 14

v. WHAT IT ALL MEANT. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 42

BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 49

APPENDIX •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 52 caPTERI

INTRODUCTION

This paper proposes to collect in one convenient location those elementary matters which chronicle the mutually advantageous work of Bernard Shaw and the Royal Court Theatre. Since Shaw as company writer exerted the greatest single influence on the Vedrenne-Barker experiment in intellectual theatre, he has served as a central figure round which the story may be told of the Court 1 s aims, actions, and results. Certain limitations have been imposed to prevent wandering: so much has been written about Shaw that the paper presumes readers will come equipped with awareness of Shaw and the nineteenth century British drama. Despite the large amount of material already published on Shaw, there exists nowhere a clear statement or his con­ nections with the Court Theatre. Critics, biographers, and historians of the drama all tell part of the story, but no one has told all of the story in one place. As a result, this paper is the first to offer a reasonably complete pic­ ture or this theatrical revolution as it took place. Enough writers have noted the value or the Court's accomplishments, proolaiming them the most revisionary forces in drama in centuries, that a gathering of these details is necessary to understand the cause or much in modem theatre.

_, CHAPTERII

THE SETTING

They were pleasant days when the upper classes of England were disportive in the reign of Edward VII. The vogue was life as one might find it in a time or relative prosperity and certain enough , and the statement of the age was frequently made by its theatres. The day was cluttered with ornament, sentimental in outlook, and indefi­ nite in the intellect, and theatre followed the pattern. As one looks back upon the extent and variety of entertainment offered to the theatre-goer in the early days of the century the prospect appears fair enough. Every taste seems to have been catered for and to an ample extent. The theatre could boast or ••• active popular playwrights; many others of promise were coming along; ••• frequent homage was done to Shakespeare and the lighter stage provided no end of musical comedy •••• l'he7 leading actor-managers ••• were at the height of their powers, all providing the kind or play that ­ suited the wide tastes of the general public. Problem plays, ••• witty comedies; ••• amusing farces; ••• handsome displays of gallantry and heroics; •• • melo­ drama; ••• musical comedies; ••• spectacular pieces of scenic splendour--everything, it seemed, was there to satisfy the popular taste •••• 1 But every age eventually aspires to produce a nmnber of its members with a desire for something better than the popular taste. It ls with such an aspiration that this primer is concerned.

1 Albert F.d.wardWilson, Edwardian Theatre (London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1951}, p. 163.

•' CHAPTERIII

WHATTHE ROYALCOURT THEATRE WAS

Physically, of course, the Royal Court Theatre was merely a playhouse, a small London playhouse, built next door to the Sloane Square Municipal Railway Station, with a frequent potential business in timetables and train tickets for misdirected riders. The house was built in 1888 to succeed an earlier theatre or the same name. The building seated 602--206 stalls, 64 pit, 113 dress circle, 65 upper 2 circle, 150 gallery, and 4 private boxes --to make a theatre large enough to deserve good productions and still inti.mate enough to sustain delicate effects. All told, a modest hall several miles outside the commerical theatre area of the city. In ways beyond the physical, the Court, as it came to be called, was something again: the Royal Court Theatre as a venture in daring theatrical management was a surprise that grew straight out of dissatisfaction. London's commercial theatres of the West End were specialty houses. Each more or less tended to make its own presentations of a particular type, putting great effort and

2 C. B. Purdom, Harle! Granville Barker: Man of the Theatre, Dramatist and Scho ar (Cambridge, Massachusetts:" ~ress, 1956), p. 27. 4 cost toward a series of similar productions. Several houses were managed by noted actors as showplaces for their particular abilities--such as the Lyceum, occupied by Sir and his company. With brilliant and erratic actors driving large theatres into the competition of specialty with specialty for public favor, the natural effort was to bend all the theatre's resources toward large, striking effects. Audiences were treated to tremendous spectacles, elaborate scenery, and stories of matters grander th.an life. The basic order of the

time was Be Impressive. However, to be impressive on such a scale cost a large sum of money. Producers seldom ventured beyond dramatic types that were safe investments, and most plays were mounted for long runs, in they would outlast their initial cost, followed by long tours to create a pro~it. A new Pinero wonc or an Irving revival of Shakespeare was expected to go at least a year even to make its own expenses: the public had to be impressed. There was the situation; there too was the reaction: There was an under-current of feeling that all was not well with the British stage, that it was not intellectually as good as it should be, that it had not kept pace with the progress o~ thought ••• since the ini'luence o~ Ibsen had begun •••• There were those who thought the organisation of the theatre ••• was all wrong. The actor-q.nager system and long runs were held to be detrimental.,

3 Wilson, 2£• cit., p. 163. 5 Despite the popular success of London's theatres, there grew many voices sounding complaint as to the ills of the day. Some critics were well-meaning, some silly, but few were lost for words: "The regular stage within itself is crippled by its intractable methods.• ••• "It has sacrificed itself to the long run and the long tour, and it is paying the penalty today in its lack of plays and its impoverished acting powers •••• There must be a simpler means, with greater attention to sound acting and altogether less reliance on meretricious adornment."4 When the various views on the problems of Edwardian theatre were collected and studied, four matters stood out for correction: 1) The vicious circle was present in the expensive productions. A play had to go well for months to break even, but expenses were increased by long runs and tours. This situation also tended to concentrate acting into the control of a limited group of players established enough to command long run contracts. The new actor had poor opportunities, and the old actor played to the public for survival. 2) The actor-manager system slanted production toward those plays adaptable for "star" performances. So long as a play gave ground for brilliance by the leading player, it mattered no whit how trite its lines, how hackneyed its story, how vacant its thought, nor how slovenly its sentimentality.

4 The Stage, 1906, quoted in Wilson, .2.E.•cit., p. 164. 6 Plots were frequently predictable, and star turns were inevi­ table. Success could generally be forecast, with each new production closely emulating the one before it. Even Shakes­ peare was further respected for his brilliantly playable characters than for any other quality. In practice almost anything could do well so long as the leading role took remarkable doing. 3) '!he frivolity and stupidity or the public was bruited about .by every force of criticism. - Near unanimous agreement berated the trash-worship of popular taste. Now this might have been quite as unjust as it may have been in every other era that thinking people have scorned the average populace tor trying to enjoy life cheaply without mental tax, but such was the battle cry. It can be admitted that many of the plays popular at the time were spectacular, romantic, clever, even witty, but few of them reached a notable l'evel of concern with real life. 4) There was some reasonable dislike for the dis­ parity between lavish efforts to create grand stage design and the indifference given to training and preparing or actors. Clearly problems such as these were a lengthy develop­ ment, and large reforms were called for to amend them. Lec­ turing in America, recommended that British drama look to the excellence of French craft, also 7 urgi:cg English writers to make definite statements on morality.5 Ibsen• s translator commended more direct improve­ ments such as foundation of a national school of acting and a National Theatre which could function without recourse to the long-run star system. In the period from 1890 to 1905 much was said of theatre, and some little was done for it. Two experiments made before the nineteenth century ended are noteworthy examples of the devotion of a few people among the many. Enough live spirits did exist in London to create a theatre of sorts to challenge their own attention. In short, early efforts were made less for the well-being or drama in general than for personal satisfaction of a small audience. One of the two experiments began in 1891. Jacob T. Grein, Dutch consul and drama critic for the Sunday Times, formed a group called the . His desire was to offer limited-resource performances of worthy foreign plays and to encourage some notice of native authors when they were otherwise neglected by the public. Grain's first production was Ibsen's , a play involving inherited syphilis: predictably a dangerous theme for its day. Critical outrage was nearly unanimous, and condemnation was

5Henry Arthur Jones, The Foundations of a National Drama (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1913),pp7 26-31. 8 violent in every way. The press led the public to conclude that here was the most wretchedly immoral proceeding to occur in years. Grein himself was not much disturbed but did once estimate that more than 500 vituperative articles had been written against his first run. The only real change in Grain's small group was that it became a small group under attack. Any gains made would be earned, and in that spirit the Independent Theatre con­ tinued for six years to produce plays by such dramatists as

Ibsen, Zola, and George Moore. The finances were limited, and the membership was small--though it included the novelists George Meredith and , and and Henry Arthur Jones, the leading playwrights of the time. When the experiment ended in 1897, there was a record of twenty-six new productions. Despite small finances all the way, and scandalous abuse, the Independent did create some respect for its productions, did create awareness of a non­ commercial type of drama, and did give the first perfonnance of a play by Bernard Shaw: Widowers' Houses in 1893. The second experiment was The Stage Society. This group came together in 1899. After considering the work of the Independent, the Society proposed to"• •• promote the dramatic art; to serve as an experimental theatre, and to form an organization such as may eventually profit by every opportunity for the creation in London of a permanent 9 R~pertoire Theatre •••• 116 Plays were to be presented on Sunday evenings and Monday afternoons to audiences limited to Society members and guests. The actors served without pay, and most of the productions were distinctly amateur despite the quality a few showed. Under the system several new actors came to notice including Harley Granville Barker and c. Aubrey Smith. After an opening production on November 27, 1899, the Society continued to offer play after play taken from the sharpest edge of contemporary drama. English plays included works by Shaw, Olivier, Thomas Hardy, , , Somerset Maugham, St. John Hankin, , and Harley Granville Barker.

To give European craft its credit, plays were offered from Ibsen, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Heijermann, Gorky, Brieu.x., Sudermann, Gogol, and Tolstoy. Obviously enough, names such as these indicate a propensity for literary and social drama in deliberate con­ trast to the stuff of the day in commercial playhouses. The Stage Society was consciously a club for intellectuals who demanded more on a stage than gleaming entertainment. To a very limited degree West End theatres recognized the Society and its plays, but amateur standing ruled out real accomplishments

6 Quoted in Mario Borsa, The ~lish Sta~e of To-Day [translated and edited by Selwyn~rnto.riJ {Lon on: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1908), p. 103.

I 10 in changing public theatre. In one of its members, however, the ' Stage Society gave the movement for better drama a leader: Harley Granville Barker. Barker was, at twenty-seven, a man who could no more stay out of theatre than a bird might find it distasteful to fly. From childhood he recited and played for audiences. He joined the Stage Society at its beginning because he felt an aim for intellectual drama. His training as an actor was to underplay; his usual demeanor was intense and serious; no other type of drama suited him so well as that making strong mental demand. In 1900 Barker met William Archer and worked enthusiastically with him for a National Theatre and a school of acting. The two drew up extensive plans for the Theatre, but the difficulty was money. Archer tried to develop the needed 1350,000 from his fellow Scotsman , but without success, and the wonderful idea came to nothing. Barker defined a plan to lease the Royal Court Theatre in 1903 for a subscription series of non-commercial plays, but, again, money failed him, and he gave up the thought. Later the same year J. H. Leigh took the Court lease for a series of Shakespeare. He ran two productions and liked neither. Following advice from Archer, he asked Barker to produce~~ Gentlemen of Verona. Barker agreed a:rter arranging with John E. Vedrenne, Leigh's manager, to use the house for six matinees of Bernard Shaw's , which 11 had much impressed him in its earlier performances by the Stage Society. Tb.us., on April :i,6., 1904, Bernard Shaw had for the .first time in England an experimental repertory company totally devoted to making success of one of his works--at least for six matinees. Partly in _jest, partly in the seriousness of experience, Shaw warned that the endeavor would be a "hideous .folly," but it was a success, paying Shaw ~31.3s. (GBS was guaranteed some return because the play was partially backed by his wife, but she didn't tell him that. ) Shaw was particularly pleased with Granville Barker's playing of the poet Marchbanks. Satis.fied with their one step into experimental theatre, Barker, Vedrenne, and Leigh set upon a series of regular performances. Leigh guaranteed the house and its

l . condition, Vedrenne functioned as manager, and Barker produced and directed. Leigh stayed something of a silent f-igure in the arrangement, and the venture was announced as "The Vedrenne-Barker Management." John Eugene Vedrenne was a remarkable figure in the theatre o.f his day. He had started as a success.ful business­ man with almost desperately economical views. At one time he had been a vice-consul in Cardiff, Wales, be.fore drifting into actor management. Once involved in theatrical affairs, he proved so keenly aware of .financial matters that a career 12 in management was naturally open to him. It really isn't quite clear why he chose experimental theatre--perhaps there he found a place to exercise his acuteness for details and penny-scraping since he ha.d little more to operate with. The man was always working on a schedule, using extreme punctuality as a psychological tool. He frequently made appointments for odd times such as 12:31, and his upset was mighty if a visitor came at 12:32. By thus being dis­ turbed--even to sending away his lunch on a plea of "no time" --he could start a deal with the other person so coni'used in embarrassment that he often got agreement on anything he proposed.

But mostly Vedrenne 1 s method was that of the open hand, open heart and complete confidence. He would almost weep when terms were being discussed. You gathered from what he said that he had no margin of profit and the demand you had made would make all the difference to him between solvency and bankruptcy. He would take you into his confidence--he would, in his own phrase, 111ay his cards on the table." He would speak gently and pityingly of risks, of the terrible gem.ble of a production, of the mutability of human affairs, and his strange voice carried a covert hint of tears. He would offer you--if you were an actor--what was known as "summer terms& __ salaries taken at a time when most theatres were closed. But he would stress his fairness. He would decl~re he would not bind you, he would not stand in the way. As soon as a better offer came along--if any--you could have your release and take that salary which you now began to regard yourself as extortionate. Far be it from him to hold you up, to prevent you get­ ting what he knew was your real worth, but which he, a poor man taking such risks, could not afford. You took his terms and very seldom did you leave that

■ 13 play before the end of the run. Those cards on the table were mostly trumps.7 One of Vedrennets abilities beyond finance was recog­ nizing young talent. His custom was to sign a new actor to a long-term contract at a thrifty but slowly rising salary, then turning a profit by farming the player out to other managers "By Permission." The procedure seemed like trucing advantage until an actor considered the security that resulted and the improved bargaining position that accompanied him after employment with Vedrenne. The man wasn't stupid, but, equally, he wasn't unjust.

7w. J. Macqueen-Pope, Carriaffes at Eleven: The Story of the Edwardian Theatre (London: u tcEinson & Co. ---r:t°d., 1"9"49l:-P . 19!/-.-

I CHAPTERIV

WHATTHE COURTDID

The was clearly, from the outset, an experimental playhouse run by three novel principles. The first was that of beginning production exclusively with matinees. Thia was a practical approach to obtaining actors at the low rate of one guinea a performance. By working on days other than those of usual theatre circuit matinees, the Court management could appeal to interested players while still leaving them free for regular roles at other theatres. The second guiding plan was use of the limited budget and the short run. By holding costs to £200 a production and emphasizing quality acting and adequate play preparation, Barker hoped to focus attention on the play and the acting ensemble rather than on costly sets and distracting stars. Play runs of six to nine performances with a revival if merited meant new work was constantly up for audience notice; short runs also meant that plays and actors had a better chance of remaining fresh. Third was the question of purpose. The entire venture was made for artistic considerations. Realism compels the remark that artistry remained possible to the end only because Vedrenne kept the company geared to commerce well enough to pay its way, but Barker's chief aim was to establish 15 intellectual theatre in London on a working basis of short­ run, well-done repertory. He learned his ideals at the Stage Society; then he bettered the instruction. During the three years of the Vedrenne-Barker Manage­ ment the Court Theatre presented works by sixteen authors. Several, such as , offered plays for the first time; others, such as Shaw, were more experienced but almost as little performed. The plays produced were remarkable for variety as much as for uniform quality--there were contrasts between the effusive dialectics of Shaw on the one date and the pastoral delicacy of Hewlett on another, both alternating on the boards amicably with Greek and Norwegian Ibsen. Did the Court prove nothing else with its productions, it certified intellectual drama to have quite as much range and novelty as any commercial theatre could offer. 8 As original success with a Shaw play had set the Court system into being, another Shaw work was desired to begin the repertory series. Granville Barker wanted to begin with

Shaw's most ambitious play, ~ and Superman. GBS turned down the plan on ground there was no actress in sight who could play Ann Whitfield. In his whole time with the Court, Shaw continued to display this keen insight into casting--he knew whom he needed in each part, and he held off plays

8see Appendix for a full list of authors and plays produced at the Court. 16 till he could get his players. So effective was his sense or 9 cast, that his plays were easily the best acted in London. Shaw's direct connections with the Royal Court were limited to active interest in the venture in general and active labor when his own plays were produced, but he denied responsibility otherwise. Despite his denial, however, he contributed much of benefit from his knowledge of plays and production, and there is evidence that he ventured some silent financial backing. Alternative to Barker's choice of~ and Supenna.n, Shaw wanted to open with in Captain Brassbound's Conversion, but she was committed to an exten- sive tour at the time. Shaw offered the possibility of a new play,~, Britannia, which he described as "a vecy advanced and earnest card in the noble game of elevating the British public. ulO The play wasn't finished, and, since it was of political appeal on the Irish question, it was held for a premiere after the winter session of Parliament began. The Vedrenne-Barker Management of the Royal Court Theatre opened its series of matinees on October 18, 1904, with Gilbert Murray's translation of by Euripides. The six performances met with modest success.

9Max Beerbohm, Around Theatres {New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), PP• 520-521. 10 Shaw, quoted in Purdom, .2.E.•cit., p. 27. 17 With the production of John Bull's Other Island(~, Britannia renamed) on November 1, 1904, the Court Theatre became finnly established as a newsworthy power in drsma, and Bernard Shaw attained his first major drsmatic success. He produced his own plays with extreme care, contributing al.most as much to their success by sound directing as by brilliant writing. 11 A. B. Walkley, critic for , struck a note generally echoed by the London press when he de.mned the play with faint praise: ••• in the first place, the play is not all rot. Further, it has some other qualities than mereorilliancy. It is at once a delight and a disappointment. The play delights us ••• by its able dialectic. Its interlocutors never shirk a point or swerve from it; every side gets a fair hearing, and though, in the end, all parties are dismissed with costs, we have a conviction justice has been done. Englishmen and Irish­ men alike get credit for their qualities as well as their defects. As an Irishman Mr. Shaw, perhaps, permits him­ self to tell us more than any English writer could venture to say •••• Add that Mr. Shaw has, for once, succeeded in depicting a natural and delightful woman. On the other hand the play is a disappointment because of its wilful, perverse disregard of anything like construction • • • • '!here is no reason whatever why the play should end when it does--except that Mr. Shaw has had enough of it. We wish he had got tired a little sooner • • • • of course, not a play but a thoroughly charac­ teristic Shavian farrago.

11Sir , "G. B. s. at Rehearsal," Theatrical Companion !£ Shaw (Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, compilers; London: Rockl1ffPublishing Corporation, 1954i PP• 10-18. 18 12 There is some capital acting •• • • The charge that Shaw wrote things that were not plays is one he had to face from many London critics for years, and the word "farrago" proved to be one ot Walkley' s stock tenns in Shaw reviews. However,~ Times represented a middle view of the day's critics, having neither the penetration of 's reviews nor the virulence of writers after the pattern of who had completely damned Grain's project. Therefore we shall usually be well aware of critical outlook if we heed the thoughts of The Times. Prime Minister Arthur Balfour attended the play on the advice of Mrs. Sidney Webb, wife of the notable Socialist, and was so enthusiastic he returned for three more viewings. He brought with him other Parliamentary leaders, including Herbert Asquith and Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and was in.f'luential in arranging a command perfonnance for King Edward on March 11, 1905. Shaw commented in a typical manner to Vedrenne, "Short of organizing a revolution I have no remedy." No remedy proved necessary from Vedrenne's point of view. The weighty monarch laughed so hard he broke the chair he sat in, thereby breaking also any reserve about Shaw and the Court on the part of theatre-going society. When the king laughed, Vedrenne rubbed his hands.

12Review in~ /f,ondo°!!7 Times, November 2, 19o4. 19 The next Shaw production was a careful preparation of

Candida, w1 th Barker again playing the poet. The play has been one of Shaw's most popular with its curious three­ cornered romance among a Socialist clergyman, his most indi­ vidual wife, and a palpitating poet. Despite . remnants of Victorian convention about such matters, Candida's offer of herself and her affections to the best bidder was appealing to contemporary audiences. 'lhe production opened November 29, 19o4, and proved so successful that several extra per­ formances were given, including two in the evening, a new departure for the Court. Critical opinion of this and the earlier production was widely varied as always, running from the ecstatic: "Candida" is genuine Shaw, but wonderful to say-­ without a trace of impishness •••• The dialogue is strong and true, often witty, often poignant, some­ times truly poetic; the action of the plot is simple and natural; what more can be demanded ? Yes, 11Candida" is a great play.13 to the doubtful: ••• Candida was given Tuesday to the manifest entertainment of a somewhat puzzled audience. In this as in others of his varied efforts, Mr. Shaw's extremely original humour is undeniable, but its super subtlety and the apparent aimlessness of its social satire must, we fancy, always prevent its full appreciation by the average playgoer •••• 14

l3Review in The ff,ondori/ Academy, May 7, 1904. 14 Review in The ff,ondori/ Observer, May 1, 1904. 20 Generally the outlook was favorable with reservations: Mr. Shaw, as a rule, is too personal, too self­ conscious to be a complete and consistent artist. His egoism is obtrusive and injurious •••• Yet Candida is well worth considering, and everyone should see it ••• ,15 But there were some harsh words tied to a little favor: ••• The real object of Candida is to enable Mr. Bernard Shaw to expound his cynicai philosophy and satirise the foibles of humanity at large •••• To speak of the dialogue as amusing would be to do it far less than justice, for it is frequently as bril­ liant as it is bitter in its scarification of con­ ventionality and contempt for feeble followers in trodden grooves •••• Candida may not be for all audiences but those who do enjoy it will enjoy it heartily. 16 Sir Desmond Maccarthy, noted critic of the London stage, summed up critical reaction to the various Court productions of Candida in this way: ••• The most striking feature in the Court per- formance was Mr. Granville Barker's acting of the poet •••• The play is among the best Mr. Shaw has written • • • • It is the first play to show • •• that, in addition to the rationalistic point of view from which he criticises conventions and social institutions, he looks on the world from another, which is defiantly and ruthlessly idealistic.17 After Candida, the Court ran into difficulties with London's climate. Shaw, a life-long letter-writer, addressed

15 "Candida's Behavior Incredible," The Lf,ondoi/ Era, April 30, 1904. 16 Review in~ Lf,ondop/ Standard, April 27, 1904. 17sir Desmond Maccarthy, Shaw's Plays.!,!! Review (New York: Tb.runes and Hudson, 1951), p. 23. 21 remarks to Vedrenne pointing out the increasing discomfort of the audiences. He cited as evidence of the situation various statements in the press such as the comment of the elegant Max Beerbohm: ••• It seemed natural that the auditorium had not been warmed on the bitterly cold day I found myself there. But the temperature made me feel rather anxious; for in England, a country.whose natural breed is dullards, any intellectual activity--and it is only the actively intellectual persons who go out of their way to special matinies--generally carries with it some grave physical delicacy; and we cannot spare aught of such intellectual activity as is going on among us. A man ~ight die worse than in seeing a play by Mr. Shaw. But it seems a pity he should not live to tell the tale. Moreover, I am quite sure that if Mr. Shaw's plays were more seductively produced, they would appeal even to the dullards at large. In a warm theatre ••• these plays would soon take the town. ltS The theatre was closed for three weeks. Vedrenne and Leigh saw to the installation of a new heat~ng system, at the same time working over the stage, the lighting, and the public rooms, and building a new scene dock and dressing rooms. With the physical attributes of the house now equal to the artistic, the theatre reopened, billed as "one of the cosiest and warmest in London." Following productions of plays by Granville Barker and Gilbert Murray, Shaw appeared again on February 28, 1905, as part of a triple bill: .!!£.!_H_e~ _t_o_H_e_r _H_u_s_b_a_n_d by Shaw,.!!!~ Hospital by Schnitzler, and The~_£! Broth by

18 Beerbohm, 2£· ~-, p. 453. 22 William Butler Yeats. As a one-act reaction to Candida, presenting the alternative course open to the lover of a married woman, Shaw's play evoked little notice from The Times on its first performance in England: This we have called a "Shavian" anecdote, and if any one asks us why, we can only answer as the cricket pro­ fessional answered an anxious inquirer who wanted to know why a certain kind of ball was called a yorker--"What else could you call it?" Some people in their innocence may mistake it for a covert advertisement of Candida, to which play it makes liberal allusion; but we prefer to seek refuge in the harmless opinion that it is only a piece of Mr. Shaw's .run.19 · While this bill was still running, the royal perform­ ance of Jolm Bull's Other Island paved the ground for Shaw to create one of the most noteworthy seasons any small English theatre ever had. The next Shaw production came on May 2, 1905, after Shaw had worked almost to exhaus .tion preparing what he viewed as the most difficult work he staged at the Court. The Times critic misplaced Shaw's labor when he sunnned up his criticism in commenting, "The play was exceedingly well produced by Mr. Granville Barker, and on the whole very finely acted." But,while he missed recognizing directoral styles, Walkley wrote extensively of the play itself: ••• Sometime ago the present writer read You Never Can Tell in a book, and remembers th.at he. sucoeedea in

19 Times, March 1, 1905. 23 hunting down, as he supposed, after much thought, a main idea in the play. What that idea was he completely for­ gets. Was it the reciprocal duties of husband and wife, the relations of parents and children, the duel of sex, woman and her rights, the education of girls, or the effect of love on dentists? There is no telling now, after seeing the play acted. It might well have been any one or them, for each in turn ••• takes the first place, and is, for the moment, the most important thing in the world. And after three and a half hours ••• of amusement, it is tedious and ungrateful to ask a man what he meant by it all •••• The ideas behind the rhetoric, very shrewd ideas, with all the appearance of stern logic and no little genuine feeling, only make it good rhetoric instead of bad; the impression remains that it all springs from the inspiration of the moment • • • • Mr. Shaw's fun, those clear, sudden flashes of logical :tun, are too much for any gravity; but at the same time, when a man sees human nature so entirely from the outside as this, it is hard if he has not something to say that will leave you wiser than it found you.20 One day early in the year a young actress called on GBS in his London flat to ask for a part. Shaw was working at his desk when she came in, and he looked up to exclaim, 11Why, here's Ann Whitfield t" When Lillah McCarthy met Bernard Shaw, the circumstances became right for the Court to produce , the play that was not only to revolutionize the drama generally, but was to direct a force­ ful impact on the manners and morals of contemporary society. Shaw remarked on the comparative ease of production of the play as against You Never Can~: !!:! and Superman practically played itself. As produced, the play did not include Act III, Scene 2-- 11A Dream of Don Juan in Hell,"

20Times, May 3, 1905.

■ for the very practical reason that the play would otherwise run nearly five hours. Granville Barker, made up as a youth­ ful version of Shaw himself, and Lillah McCarthy headed a cast so carefully chosen by Shaw that it is still (1957) regarded as ideal. The first two performances were closed playings sponsored by the Stage Society; then Man and Superman opened on May 23, 1905, for twelve matinees. It became the greatest success of all Shaw's Court plays, running 176 per­ formances in the next two years. Man and Superman was Shaw's gift to the long tradition of literature about Don Juan. By reversing the hunter-hunted roles in the chase of mating, he offered "love interest." By modernizing the story and setting it in England around a Don Juan with rational rather than romantic views, he constructed a framework which he filled in the Dream sequence with the high-voltage illtnnination of philosophy as he used it for his own design. With concepts from Nietzche and Schopenhauer, and a fantastic display of mental power, Shaw set on stage an embodiment of his approving concept of creative evolution, joyously greeting its force as able to ignore laws and morals: his picture is that of man existing to serve the need of woman for illpregnation in answer to the stirrings of the "Life-force" as it strives to realize itself by developing super-humanity. Even without the full third act, as previously published, the play proved such a monument of

• 25 intellect that critics felt its comedy was submerged and that the play could not really be well produced. Walkley, in his second Times review, echoes earlier doubts as to how the piece would play: ••• the play ••• acts much better ••• than might have been expected, exhibits the true "Shavian" characteristics, and may be cordially commended to the attention of all playgoers who do not leave their brains along with their wraps in the cloak-room.21 The uncertainty of Shaw's actability crops up in another critic's opinion adorned with a striking statement when one recalls how near was 1905 to the time of Victoria and how novel was Shaw's approach to conventions of sex and marriage: When once, after some natural hesitation and delay, the experiment of detennining the value of Mr. as an acting dramatist has been essayed, no long time has been lost in bringing it to a definite conclusion. The result is demonstrably favourable • • • • With the production, yesterday afternoon, of Man and Superman, against the morality of which nothing­ whatever is to be urged, Mr. Shaw take~ definitely his place among the actable and the acted. 2 2 Either this was a progressive critic or Shaw was merely speaking aloud ideas that others already held and practiced in silence and desired to shout. The usual critical view that Shaw was sparkling and humorous but non-dramatic still persisted. As the Daily Telegraph put it:

21 Times, May 24, 1905. 22 Review in The /J,ondo!.i7 Globe, quoted in Harold Hobson, Verdict at Mianight: Sixty Years of Dramatic Criti­ cism (London: Longmans, Green anaCo., 19~), PP• 69-70. 26 Of course, the title has little or nothing to do with the play •• • Nor, indeed, is there a play at all •••• Nor yet again are we right in calling it a story. It is a comedy or a sort, comedy that consists of brilliant utterances, of contrasted characters, or episodes which ••• are not indissolubly connected in a plot, of fragments or ••• social ethics which meet and cancel each other •••• And now, ••• let ua frankly admit that it is one of the moat amusing pieces of work which even the Court Theatre has ever put on the stage.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Whatever else Mr. Shaw may do, he enables our actors and actresses to do themselves abundant justice, and that is no slight boon.23 Sir Desmond Maccarthy put the verdict of history: Man and Superman is one of the peaks in Bernard Shaw's dramatic work.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The play is one of Shaw's most brilliant pieces of creative work.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Shaw's skill in drawing types and making them speak out with point is at its best. What an eye he has always had for types which were instantly recognisable and yet new to the stage •••• The last moment of the first act LJihen Violet proves to be married to her expected child's rathe!7 ••• i~ one of the most amusing th'W'l.der-claps in modern comedy. 4 Shaw was in.

23 Quoted in Hobson, £.P..•cit., pp. 67-69. 24 Maccarthy, .£!2.• cit., pp. 32-35. 27 Through Man and Superman, most of Shaw's plays had been published before they were produced. There was usually no element of uncertainty in a Shaw opening night beyond the question of how the play 1 s text would fare when acted. But to round out the successes of John Bull and Man ~ Superman, he wrote an entirely new play for the fourth Shavian offering of the year. Shaw had become intrigued with the workings of the Salvation Army through reading critical letters in the press. After giving the Army a treasured testimonial on the eloquence of their band concerts, he attended some of their large revival rallies in London. Shaw tried to urge General Booth to turn to dramatic presentations to carry the organization's message, offering to write some brief plays for the purpose, but the gesture was declined with thanks on grounds of objections to theatrical morals by the stricter members of the Army's leader­ ship. Shaw's mental force was such, however, that so fertile a dramatic idea could not be discarded. The result was , a play expressing in social and religious terms Shaw's hatred of poverty and the conditions which cause it, even though prevention of poverty must be accomplished by making use of other social ills such as war. Shaw's second premiere as a major playwright was a brilliant occasion with the Prime Minister and high society

I 28 in attendance and the command of the Salvation Army well represented in a playhouse for the first time in history-. Despite an unquestioned success, Major Barbara found the usual division among the critics. Walkley of The Tim.es persisted in the widely held press views of the day: ••• Here is a dramatist who knows no other way of expressing himself in drama than the essentially undramatic way of speeoh-making.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Now Mr. Shaw has no dramatic instinct, but he is a thinker who from first to last deals with things worth thinking about. And so we tum with relief, nay, with positive joy, from the intellectual commonplaces of the average English playwright to the intellectual eccentri­ city of Mr. Shaw. We do it against our own better judgement. We feel that the dramatic medium is being wasted and abused •••• • • • A dramatist he is not, but he is a splendid pleasure-monger. This is why he has become the fashion in a pleasure-seeking world •••• Amusing as he is, he is not amusing for quite so long as he thinks he is •••• Before the end of Major Barbara was reached we caught ourselves yawning.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • What a farrago 1 Mr. Shaw has certainly justified his sub-title of 11disoussion," and he has discussed every­ 11 thing under the sun •••• It is all very Shavian 11, very be~ildering, very suggestive in its flashes of shrewd sense, ve-ry amusing in its long stretches of March-hare madness (until they become too long), and absolutely undramatic throughout. The acting is excellent, as always in Mr. Shaw's plays •••• ~5

25 Times, November 29, 1905. 29

But ff the incomparable Max" spoke !'or those who really appreci­ ated the quality of what Shaw was doing and saw what he was attempting with his new discursive drama: • • • During the third act of 11Maj or Barbara", I admit I found my attention wandering. But this aberration was not due to any loosening of Mr. Shaw's grip on his material. It was due simply to the !'act that my emotions had been stirred so much in the previous act that my cerebral machine was not in proper working order. Mr. Shaw ought to have foreseen that effect. In not having done so, he is guilty of a technical error. But to deny that he is a dramatist merely because he chooses, for the most part, to get drama out o!' contrasted types of character and thought, without action, and without appeal to the emotions, seems to me both unjust and absurd. His technique is peculiar because his purpose is peculiar. But it is not the less technique.26 Shaw's methods in this play began to strain the physi­ cal limits of stage production, but in practically every detail the performance came o!'f well, even to uniforms and technical advice o!'fered by the Salvation Army itself. The Army also helped Shaw over a rough passage with his old difficulty, the Censor. The Crown refused licence for the play until the Army had declared itsel!' rather pleased than of!'ended. A secondary issue, over Barbara's use o!' the words, "My God, why hast Thou !'orsaken me?" was quashed when Barker offered evidence the phrase was a quotation from the Psalms. Always there were problems. The year 1905 represented a high point at the Court in many ways. Shaw at last won English recognition to match

26Beerbohm,~•.£!_!., PP• 533-53.4 30 his popularity in Germany and America. The Court's approach to production was resoundingly approved, and intellectual theatre could no longer be ignored. In addition to native plays by Barker, Yeats, and Hankin, there were productions of Ibsen's Wild Duck and works by Hauptmann and Schnitzler. Gilbert Murray also contributed a new translation of~ Trojan Women by Euripides to the series of Greek drama that Shaw viewed as the finest work of the Royal Court players. After extensive correspondence on the subject, Shaw persuaded the great actress Ellen Terry to visit the Court as Lady Cicely Waynflete in Captain Brassbound's Conversion. He had written the play for her, and Lady Cicely was designed around her characteristic fearless kindness. The production pleased Shaw though it was not at all up to usual Court standards. Miss Terry was fifty-eight when she first appeared in the Shaw play, and she had spent fifty years in the theatre as it had developed at the hands of Macready and Irving. With her appearance at the Court, the torch of tradition passed from the hands of players in the grand manner to the grasp of the realists and the thinkers. She played in Captain Brassbound during 1906 and 1907 and later took the play on successful tour in America. She never appeared in another Shaw work, but she had legitimized the coming of the new style in the theatre. 31 Sir Desmond Maccarthy gave a rewarding view of the work as Ellen Terry played in it on March 20, 1906: The rare merit of the play lies in making you think most seriously of the relations of men to each other and laugh at the same time. Since Swift no such insistent preacher has so leavened his lesson with laughter. The humour in this play hovers perpetually on the edge of that tender emotion which the sight of great kindness and reasonableness stir. Nowhere else, except in the second act of Major Barbara, is Mr. Shaw's emotional asceticism so perfectly justified by the results. This distrust of the melting mood is one of his moat marked characteristics as a writer, and in a hortatory artist it is a sound instinct •••• The Court Theatre per.rormance was below the usual mark •••• It lacked those qualities of proportion and completeness which they have attained in almost every other case. The cast did not pull the play well togetherr. Miss Ellen Terry contributed s;2.me delightful touches to the character of Lady Cecily LsiiJ and all her own charm; but there was a hesitation in her acting some­ times, which robbed it of effect.27 In a footnote to his impression, Maccarthy went further into the difficulty she had with the play: Her hesitations were due to the difficulty she was experiencing at this time in remembering her lines. Granville Barker told me afterwards they had to write out passages of her part Qn pieces of paper which were stuck about the scenery.2~ The great lady had been having trouble with her eyes over a period of years, making it hard for her to study her parts, and she also felt she really never would be able to

27 Maccarthy, .2P.· cit., pp. 61-62. 28 ~., footnote on p. 62. 32 satisfy Shaw in the role which was ao different in style from her usual Lyceum Theatre work with Henry Irving. The com­ bined strain evidently made her uncertain to a surprising degree for one ao experienced at plays. Letters she exchanged with Shaw at the time give an inner view of the emotions which bore on the production, as they show her sometimes agonizing efforts to do it · right. 29 Shaw offered only two new plays at the Court during 1906. Captai~ Brasabound ran a total of eighty-nine per­ formances during that year and the next. The play was well viewed generally despite its inadequate performance, but Shaw must have felt the need for another striking work when he began thinking about a new piece. At the outset no ideas came readily until he followed a reminder from Mrs. Shaw

that he had once seen dramatic possibilities in a.n incident he witnessed in a London hospital. He had become acquainted with Sir Almwroth Wright, discoverer of the opsonic method of treating such difficult diseases as tuberculosis. While Shaw was chatting with the doctor at his experimental clinic, an interne came in with

the story of a man wanting to be admitted for treatment.

2 9Christopher St. John, editor, Ellen Te~ and Bernard Shaw: A Corres~ondence (New York: G. P. Putnems Sons, 1931), PP• 2967 303, 3 8-313. . 33 Since the new method was limited and e~ensive, Wright's quick answer was, "Is he worth it?" Shaw combined the incident with a challenge from William Archer that he wasn't a serious enough playwright to deal convincingly with a death scene. He stirred in a particle from a story- by Richard Wagner--the death of an amoral musician while he repeated an artist's transcription or the Apostle's Creed--and seasoned the elements with a problem in relative human values: the problem or which or two contrasted men a doctor should allow to die. Such were the materials from which Shaw constructed~ Doctor's Dilennna for a premiere on November 20, 1906. The play must have been impressive, to say the least, since even the Times man had favor for it despite its Shaw­ logic discourse. The review provided one of the first critical placings of Shaw in comparison with the immortals of comedy:

nI've lost the thread of my remarks," says one of Mr. Shaw's physicians; nwhat was I talking about?" Mr. Shaw himself might say this •••• True, he does not helplessly lose the thread of his play. But he is continually dropping it, in order that he may start a fresh topic. This foible of discursiveness has been steadily gaining on him •••• Needless to point out that this discursiveness is not a new method, but a "throwing back" to a very old method. It was, for instance, the method of Shakespeare. A certain \Ulity of ideas does, however, \Ulderlie Mr. Shaw's new play, and that is to be fo\Uld in its satire on the medical profession •••• ,But of course the theme belongs, as of right, to Moliere. Is there not something piquant in the spectacle of Mr. Shaw applying Shakespearean treatment to a Molierean1 theme? After all, there is no such thorough-going classicist as your professed iconoclast.30 Walkley continued his review to react in a manner to prove the effectiveness of Shaw's answer to Archer on stage death: Amateurs of the morbid will revel in this realistic death-scene. Other people will dislike it as bad taste and cheap art. Bad taste in its punctuation o~ solemnity by jokes L3'hakespearean treatment?? •••• Cheap art in its employment of such a fact as death (realistic death, not poetized death) to secure an emotional thrill which, from the very constitution of human nature, is bound to come without any reference to the skill of the artist ~beda,Y. Mr. Shaw made a like mistake in the face bashing" scene of Major Barbara. But it is useless to argue with him over these thin gs. He will do them. All we can do is to be aorry.30 But while one may sometimes wonder it the critic understood why Shaw "will do them", he did certainly enough recognize the quality of the production: A thoroughly "Shavian" play., this, stimulating and diverting for the most part, occasionally distressing, now arid then bewildering •••• But you are left in no two moods about the playing. There is no such all­ round acting in London as is nowadays to be seen at the Court Theatre •••• 30 The Times critic was sufficiently taken with the play to seek it again for review of January of 1907, a double review being something uncommon after he had once said his say: ••• Part of the play improves upon acquaintance; indeed we doubt whether Mr. Shaw has ever done anytlw1ing better, anything of a higher comedy, than that Molierean first act •••• And the second act, too, ••• is little

30T1mes, November 21, 1906. 35 short of perfect in construction, humour, and character • • • • Act III. is, perhaps, the most typically Mr. Shaw's • • • • And after that ••• the play ceases to interest in anything like the measure of the fitst three acts. Dubedat is doomed to die, and Dubedat dies.) 1 Walkley still didn't care for the death scene, calling it "tedious and unpleasant" with "its old-fashioned aesthetic cant.n3l At least the critic did not .feel, as did others, that Dubedat's dying creed was any more radical or new than Shaw had when he borrowed the .fifty-year old Wagnerian idea. In Walkley's mind there was still a word to be said on the acting of the play:

••• It was an acute stroke on the author 1 s part to make Jenni.fer a Cornishwoman, a woman from the land of enthusiasms, religions and morals; but, even so, and even when the part is acted as beautifully as Miss Lillah McCarthy acts it, it is a little difficult to believe in her. Never, perhaps, has ever the management of this theatre cast a play better, and never have the players done themselves more credit.31 The connnent on the role of Jenni.fer bore out Shaw's own warn­ ing to Lillah McCarthy be.fore the play began that Jennifer was a type of woman he disliked and she would require extreme acting to make her credible. The Doctor's Dilemma was the last new play Shaw wrote .for the Court management. EVen at that, the year 1907 found three Shaw works receiving their first performances in public.

31 Times, January 1, 1907. The first of these was~ Philanderer,' a story of people led to grotesque sexual arrangements to evade absurd marriage laws, written in 1893, the oldest Shaw play done at the Vedrenne-Barker house. The play showed its age and the relative strangeness of some early Shaw characters which made them all but unplayable. Sir Desmond Maccarthy commented: This play is a queer piece of work, and finds its place very properly among the "Unpleasant" plays. It was not very successful at the Court because to make the play intelligible, Charteris [the Philandere!l must be acted by some one who understands him perfectly, and such an actor probably does not exist...... The play, like all artistic work which has aimed primarily ~t being up-to-date, strikes us now as old­ fashioned.)2 There were several new works by lesser known writers in production around Shaw during 1907, including first plays by John Masefield and Elizabeth Robins. Ibsen gained a "look-in 11 with the appearance of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in . Her performance with the Court set another step in fusing the old theatre w1 th the "new drama 11 as had Ellen Terry's the previous season, and she thus prefigured her large success with Shaw in . The last new Shaw production the Court mounted was a double bill of and Don Juan in~•

32 Maccarthy, .2E.• cit., p. So. 37 Man of Destiny was a one act peep into the life of the younger Napoleon. Shaw had written it in 1895 with hope of persuad­ ing a production by Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. At the time Shaw, as drama critic for~ Saturday Review, felt the Lyceum pair were wasting their talents on star turns mish­ mashed from the classics by the egocentri c Irving, and Irving felt Shaw was a pasty critic. Ellen Terry liked the play and tried to bring Irving to do it, but even her charms failed there. Irving tried to tie the play up with a graveyard option to p revent other actors from having it; at the same time he hoped payment for the play might make Shaw a more kindly reviewer in the press. But Shaw was an incorruptible critic, and he withdrew the piece, correctly certain Irving would not be the person to lead the theatre into the new age. Shaw had kept three "stars" in mind when he wrote the play: Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and the American Richard Mansfield, whose portrait the figure of Napoleon was intended to be. Hence the play was not "pure" Shaw, nor was it strictly in the grand style either. The best Desmond Mac­ carthy could say was, 11T'.nis play was disappointing. ,.33 The other three-quarters of the double bill, Don Juan in~' was the first production of the two-hour dream

33 Ibid., P • 84. 38 sequence from Act III of ~ and Superman. Containing no action, and being a most extreme exercise in intellectual gymnastics, the play was performed with Robert Loraine as Don Juan. The staging was highly imagainative, with the actors, elaborately bejeweled like butterflies, poised against a black backing. Though this created a pleasant picture, the impression was of a still photograph with dia­ logue, and the critics took it rather severely:

11Phew1 What an afternoont The entertainment began at 2.30 and ended at 5.30. Three solid hours of George Bernard Shaw--and not Mr. Shaw at his best--was a burden which the audience found it exceedingly difficult to bear. "The first piece~ of Destinz came second on the bill, a location which by contrast didn't help it aniJ, Don Juan in Hell • • • is a long and rambling philo­ sophica.I' treatise on many subjects, carried on at almost interminable length •••• 110f course, it is not a play, nor anything approaching to one; it is a discussion, a debate, a dialogue, a conference, a sermon--anything and everything that is long-winded and solemn, lit, it is true, with occasional glimpses of wit, but without much humour. It is probably wrong to imagine that Mr. Shaw is a humorous man. He has abundance of wit, sometimes exceedingly bright and vivacious •••• But the worst of him is that he is so deadly in earnest. He is exceedingly serious about his own theories, and, as is usually the case, the determined and obstinate prophet is not remarkable for his sense of humour."34

34Review in The ~ondon7 Daily Telegraph, quoted in Hobson, 2£· cit., pp. 73-7'£(. 39 Shaw had caused the Court experiment, and he signaled the end of its phase in the small playhouse. After the double bill, matters went into a change. At the end of June 1907 Vedrenne and Barker ••• faced the fact that the Court Theatre was neither big enough nor central enough to hold the audience and the money they needed. Towards the close of that year they moved to the , where they added The Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra and Arms and~ M!!! to the Shavian repertory, besides taking theHaymarket Theatre for the production of a new Shaw play, .35 Obviously Shaw's success was as complete as that of the Court players. Few triumphs in theatrical history can match the progress or the Vedrenne-Barker-Shaw experiment in a three­ year period from flat obscurity in a 600-seat theatre to dominating critical respect while mounting plays in two of London's grandest prestige playhouses at once. Unfortunately, there was danger of overextending. While the Court group properly had reason to feel they might successfully challenge West End theatres on their own commercial ground, they over­ looked something Shaw had said several times about Court playgoers, that they constituted "not an audience but a congregation. 11 36 Audiences will move, congregations some­ times will not, and the Court people made too sudden a

35Hesketh Pearson, G. B. S.: A Full Length Portrait (New York: Harper & Brothers; 1~2),-p7"n6. 36 ~., P• 211. 4o transition from their loyal visitors to the sort of connnon run audiences that attended commercial theatre. described the result: ••• A third theatre was taken for a new play by Laurence Houseman. Three west end the,atre rents broke the back of the enterprise, which had been pushed beyond its limits. "Vedrenne got out with nothing but a reputation," Shaw informed me: "Barker had to pawn his clothes; and I disgorged most of my royalties; but the creditors were paid in full." Honour was sav~d; and a great chapter in theatrical history was closed.)( While the end of the affair was much as described, Shaw was exaggerating in a typical manner. Great stnns of money did not turn as reward at the Court, but Vedrenne and Barker did come out with slight profits. Some of Shaw's "disgorged" royalties were on the benefit side of the account, and those he did turn back were sound enough investment in light of the success he attained from the venture in advancing frcm his "unpleasant" works to the first rank of intellectual comedy. Sir Desmond Maccarthy nicely summed up his outlook on Shaw as he stood at the close of the Court years: As a dramatist Mr Shaw's gift for caricature is a perpetual temptation to him, leading him often to destroy the atmosphere of reality which is so important to his plays. Though his caricatures are good in themselves, he has not always su:fficient artistic self-control to keep them in their places. Moreover, that emotional asceticism, which has been alreagy connnented upon /fn the review of Captain Brassbound/, is always tempting him to create in the spectator "the balance of mind and

37 Ibid., P• 216. 41 emotion he respects by alternately touching him and making him laugh •••• He relies ••• too much on an exceptional flexibility of emotion in his audience. His weakness as a philosopher is to judge human beings and emotions too exclusively by their usefulness towards furthering another end; as a propagandist~ to under­ rate the intelligence of the average man.JS Casting the total of Shaw's failings in no way prevented Maccarthy from recognizing exceptional merits at the same time: He has drawn more characters which are innnediately recognised and understood than any other English drama­ tist with the exceptlon of Shakespeare; he has chosen for his subjects situations which are really interesting; and he has made us laugh and think at the same time •••• The contagion that we catch from Mr Shaw's plays is an admiration for courage and intellectual honesty, and a spontaneity of character which is a blending of both.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • All his work is marked by a straightforward dexterity of execution, which is in itself an aesthetic merit; and almost every play he has written stimulates that social consciousness of communal t§sponsib i lity upon which the hopes of reformers depend.)

3!\iaeCarthy, .QE.• cit., pp. 86-89. CHAPTERV

WHAT IT ALL MEANT

The Royal Court Theatre was an experiment that suc­ ceeded when similar efforts had been little able to modify the current drama. The Barker approach to production, the Vedrenne method of management, and the Shaw design of plays were the factors combined in the small playhouse. Each partner in the arrangement made good his beginning hopes, and each contributed his fair share to innovations far larger than wishf'ul thinking might have predicted. Aside from any other achievements by the Court, it will inevitably be recognized by literary history as where Bernard Shaw became a leading figure in drama. Even the overall criticism the Court faced of becoming a "Shaw Theatre" serves to show the size of the presence of GBS in the changing drama. Of 988 performances given in the Royal Court Theatre, 701 were devoted to works by Shaw as contrasted to 287 to plays by other writers. Clearly the Vedrenne-Barker management realized a good thing while it had it, and, equally clearly, few people exerted themselves as did Shaw toward improvements in the theatre. In spite of the bulk of Shaw, the Court plays brought new writers into contact with the theatre. A new drama needed new playwrights as well as new audiences and keen actors. The Court saw first productions by Galsworthy, Masefield, and Robins, and it encouraged the reputations of Hankin, Barker, and Murray. In his enthusiasm for the literary quality of Court plays, Shaw tried to persuade many of the day's leading writers to enter playcraft. While he got nothing from notables such as Chesterton and Kipling, he did enlist Maurice Hewlett, and he did create an interest in the worth of the theatre which had been missing among literary men for decades. Historically speaking, it can go almost as a rule of thumb that when challenging things are done in the theatre, young people will take part in them. Vedrenne was at work securing talented beginners such as Lillah McCarthy, , Lewis Casson, and Dorothy Minto, and Shaw was creating plays which youth could appreciate as a challenge and then casting those plays so as to bring the best out of each actor. These factors gave Barker a solid base for per­ formance of near-miracles by inspired direction and high standards of devotion to the design of any play he touched. Actors might come to the Court as amateurs, but they were never amateurs when they left, a situation which made it possible for Max Beerbohm to explain ••• why acting at the Court Theatre seems so infinitely better than in so many other theatres where 44 the same mimes are to be seen. I should have thought two reasons were obvious. One is that the mimes at the Court are very carefully stage-managed, every one of them being kept i n such relation to his fellows as is demanded by the relation in which the various parts stand to one another--no one mime getting more, or less, of a chance than the playwright has intended him to have. The other reason is that at the Court Theatre are pro­ duced only plays written by clever persons who have a sense of character, and who are thus enabled to create characters which are human, and which, therefore~ repay the trouble that the mimes take in playing them.)9 During its runs the Court management placed proper accent on young actors, but careful attention was paid to connecting the project with those leading players of the day who showed interest in original ideas: Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Robert Loraine, Louis Calvert, , Luigi Lablache, , and the melo­ dra.matist Dion Boucicault. In frequently working major success with established actors as well as new, the Court offered a forceful example to the commercial managements of the value of new means to an end. Along with its lessons on acting and plays, the Court showed commercial theatre much in methods of production under the short-run repertory system Barker pioneered. The concept of mounting a well-prepared play inexpensively and gaining popularity with it was a matter for big producers to ponder and small theatre groups to hail with joy. While shift was

39 Beerbohm, Q.E.• cit., pp. 520-521. 45 being made from the situation of a brilliant star playing in a background cast poorly gotten up, serious inquiry was also made into settings and sta ge design. The Royal Court attracted considerable notice by following models contributed elsewhere by the erratic Gordon Craig, Ellen Terry's son, who was in aesthetic rebell i on against the massive photographic set designs of Irving's Lyceum. Whether by sets, plays, acting, or finance, the Court aimed its efforts toward art and intellect rather than commerce. In artistic quality and intellectual force, the venture was a remarkable success, and it created its own enlightened audience, but the Court never could claim that it satisfied the public followers of West End drama. With success in the chosen area, no one in the endeavor felt sli ghted because of a limited return in money. In its effect, the Court Theatre became something of a social conscience as well as a playhouse. With people such as Shaw, Galsworthy, and Barker talking up the p roblems of the day, the public had to become aware of economics, prostitution, modes of marriage, prison laws, and politics to enjoy their theatre. One of Galsworthy's plays, Justice, produced at the Duke of York Theatre, so impressed Winston Churchill that he be g an a clamor in Parliament for prison reform. Morals and marriage demanded adjusting after~ 46 and Superman. Business uses caine under scrutiny in Barker's The Voysey Inheritance. Despite all the criticism urged on the Court, none but the fatuous could claim the plays were dull from failure to touch reality or that they were aes­ thetirally "art for art's sa ke. 11 By being thoroughly pro­ fessional, the Court held its place in the main stream of developing theatre; by demanding attention to the full range of intellectual substance, the Court held its place in life. As the Court had been influenced by Grein's Indepen­ dent Theatre and The Stage Society, so it passed its work on in ever widening effect over the British scene and across the history of drama. Commercial theatre was affected as Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree opened an "Afternoon Theatre Series" patterned after Barker's off-day matinees and tried to attract a ge neral audience for more thoughtful plays. The Court's Gertrude Kingston, at the Little Thea tre, and the independent , at the Kingsway , established repertory companies of their own. That intellectual drama did not at once, completel y become the staple of the theatre, however, was demonstrated when t he dean of .American showmen, , went on the rocks with a repertory venture at the Duke of York Theatre in 1910. Com.mercial London theatre might not have made a sudde n jump in to "new drama, 11 but p rovincial theatre was more than ready to do so. Except for inadequate amateur groups, the only drama to reach much of Britain crune from the lar ge London companies on tour. Outlying cities wanted professional theatre of their own, and the Court offered a way to afford it. Within a few years, small repertory companies developed in many parts of England, Scotland, and Wales . In 1907 Miss A. E . F. Horniman, an actress friend of Shaw's, established the first English repertory company in the modern sense in , later contributing to the Irish National Theatre in Dublin. Alfred Wareing carried on the move to found the Scottish Repertory Company in 1909.

By 1910 and several other cities had established resident companies all of which were having effect on com­ mercial theatre and popular taste by bringing new plays and . developing new methods of production. Carrying from this point on, the entire 11Little Theatre" movement in England and America may be said to have grovm directly out of the success of the Court Theatre. No person concerned with the value of drama in the human scheme can fail to appreciate the value of what the Vedrenne-Barker Management accomplished • • • • it brought into being elements that trans­ fonned not only the acting and the production of4-plays , but also changed public attitude to the theatre. O

4-oPurdom,££• cit., p . 2 6• 48 The Court experiment be g an at a ti me when the London theatre was controlled by the ex p ensive long-runs of the West End, and wndon led the commercial theatre of the English-speaking world. Shaw's plays were all but unknown, and no one had ever heard of Masefield and Galsworthy in the theatre. Intellectual drama had no home and was greeted by outrage from the critics when it tried to build one. Drama, as presented, was brilliant and varied within its sharp intellectual limits, and stars held the sta ge. Three years later play production was a revised method upon which new theatres could be founded, and art and thought had entered playhouses wi th the commercial and royal approval that made Shaw a world figure. Far from carrying out Henry Arthur Jones' gloomy su gg estion that British drama was dying, the theatre was well set toward the g reatest p ower it had known in hundreds of years: The Vedrenne-Barker mana gement of the Court Theatre ••• was without question the most noteworthy episode in English theatrical histo1l since Shakespeare and Burb ag e ran the Globe •••• 1

Pears on,££• cit., p . 204.

I 50 The /_f,ondoiJ Academy, May 7, 1904. Beerbohm, Max, Around Theatres. 2 vols., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. 749 PP• Borsa , Mario [translat ed and edited by Selwyn Brinto!!7, The English Stage of To-Day. London: John Lane, Tho Boaley Head, 1908. 3I7 PP• Broad, C. Lewis, and Violet M. Broad, Dictionart to the Plays and Novels of Bernard Shaw. London: A. & .7~'lack, Ltd., 1§29. 229 PP• -

"Candida's Behavior Incredible, 11 ~ [f,ondoi/ Era, April 30 , 1904. Henderson, Archibald, Bernard Shaw: Playbo~ and Prophet. New York : D. Appleton and Compa...~y, 193 .---S,2 PP• , George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. Ne\v York: --=A-p-pleton-Century-Cro7-Es; In'c'7;° 195~ 961 PP• Hobson, Harold, Verdict at Midnight: Sixty Years of Dramatic Criticism. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952. 199 pp. Jones, Henry Arthur, The Foundations of a National Drama. London: Chapman &liall, Ltd., 19!3'.- 358PP• Maccarthy , Sir Desmond, Shaw's Plays in Review. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1951. 216 PP• Macqueen-Pope, W. J., Carria g es at Eleven: The Sto(y of the Edwardian Theatre. London: Hutchinson ~o. Publishers) Ltd., 194 9. 232 PP• Mander, Raymond, and Joe Mitchenson, compilers, Theatrical Com anion to Shaw. London: Rockliff Publishing Corpo­ rat 1 on, 19'51r.---yJ:3 PP• McCarthy , Lillah (Lady Keeble), Myself and !1I_ Friends. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1933. 3Wpp. The ~ondoi/ Observer, May 1, 1904. Palmer, Samuel, editor, Palmer's Index to the Ltondon7 Times Newspaper. London: s. Palmer, 1904, 1905, 19067 1907. 51 Patch, Blanche, Thirty Years With G. B. S. New York: Dodd, Meade · & Company, 1951. 3Ibpp. Pearson, Hesketh, G. B. s.: ! Full Length Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers; 1°§1+2. 390 PP• Purdom, c. B., Harley Granville Barker: Man of the Theatre, Dramatist and Scholar. Cambrid ge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1956. 322 PP• Rattray, Robert Fleming, Bernard Shaw: A Chronicle. New York: Roy Publishers, 1951. 347 pp:-- St. John, Christopher, editor, Ellen Terry~ Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931. ".3'3tj.PP• The ffendo!!7' Standard, April 27, 1904. The /_'f.,ondonJ Times, 1904-1907, passim.

Walkley, Arthur Bingham, Drama and Life. London: Methuen & Co., 19oi 331. PP• Wilson, Albert Edward, Edwardian Theatre. London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1951. 256 PP• APPENDIX AUTHORSAND PLAYS PERFORMEDAT THE ROYALCOURT THEATRE

FROMOCTOBER 1904 TO JUNE 1907{}

Barker, Harley Granville The Veysey Inheritance (1905) Barker and Laurence Prunella (1904) . Houseman Fenn, Frederick ~e Convict on the Hearth (1906) Galsworthy, John The Silver Box (1906) Hankin, St. John The Return of the Prodigal (1905) The Charity that Began at Home (1906) Harcourt, Cyril The Reformer (1907) Harcourt, Robert Vernon A Question of Age (1906) Hauptmann, Gerhardt The Thieves' Comedy (1905) Hewlett, Maurice Pan and the Young Shepherd (1906) The Youngest of the Angels (1906) Ibsen, Henrik The Wild Duck (1905) Hedda Gabler (1907) Maeterlinck, Maurice Algavaine and Selysette (1904) Masefield, John The Campden Wonder (1907) Murray, Gilbert (trans­ Hippolytus (1904) lations of Euripides) (1905) (1906) Robins, Elizabeth Votes for Women (1907) Schnitzler, Arthur In the Hospital (1905)

Information from Appendix in Purdom, .2E.• cit. Shaw, Bernard Candida (1904) John Bull's Other Island (1904) How He Lied to Her Husband (1905) You Never Can Tell (1905 } Man and Superman (1905) Major Barbara (1905 ) Captain Brassbound 1 s Conversion (1906 } The Doctor's Dilennna (1906} (1907) Don Juan in Hell (1907 ) Man of Destiny (1907) Yeats, William Butler Where There is Nothing (1904) The Pot of Broth (1905)