Theme and Structure in Bernard Shaw's Political
THEME AND STRUCTURE IN BERNARD SHAW'S POLITICAL
PLAYS OF THE 1930'S
Jeffery Alvin Williams
B.A., The University of British Columbia,
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
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Master of Arts
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Department nf (^yj i > S
The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada
Date Ayr'A 3o y ii
ABSTRACT
The political extravaganzas dominate Shavian drama of the 1930' s,
Shaw's last really productive decade. They form a fairly large and coher• ent group, but their topicality and their abstract, seemingly non-dramatic techniques have prevented most critics from examining the plays on their own merits. This thesis attempts to show how Shaw, in his political plays, not only chronicles his very close involvement with the urgent social prob•
lems of the interwar years, but also how he develops special artistic devices
to embody his themes.
Shaw's political plays offer a continual flow of analysis and criticism
of an age which he thought was heading for disaster and war. In Too True to
be Good (l93l); he analyzes modern man's sense of directionlessness and In•
dicates that he must re-evaluate his aims and goals, his morality and econ•
omics, and discard worn out values which no longer describe either human
nature or contemporary problems. This play introduces a theme which pre•
vails in all Shaw's political extravaganzas of the period: that men must
overcome their limited frames of reference and must cultivate an open-mind-
edness in their search for meaning and direction in a complex world. In On
the Rocks (1933), he investigates governmental problems In England and im•
plies that in a world of selfish insularity, democratic government founders,
needing more than ever a strong leader to impose a direction on the country.
Recognizing the sinister implications of even an interim dictatorship, Shaw
is almost driven to despair. In The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (193^),
Shaw retreats from the ugly and almost insoluble problems of the immediate
world, to define and examine in abstract and symbolic terms the problems dis- Iii
cussed in the earlier plays. Shaw reaffirms his faith in the Life Force,
again stresses that life -will continue to evolve, and asserts that if man
•wants to he the vanguard of evolution he must he able to adapt to the un•
expected .
Having expressed his ultimate thoughts and allegiances in The Simple•
ton, Shaw seemed to abandon his concern "with political problems in his plays,
until the urgency of world developments in the late thirties brought the
preacher in Shaw to the pulpit of the stage again in Geneva (1938)- But in
this play Shaw's inability to maintain an aesthetic distance from world
events interfered with his artistry so that he produced a play lacking the
unity of theme and structure found in the earlier plays of the period.
But while the political plays of the thirties chronicle Shaw's very
close involvement with complex social problems, they also reveal Shaw's
attempt to develop special dramatic techniques to render an artistic ex•
pression of his thoughts. The seemingly chaotic structures, weak charac•
ters , and garrulous speeches really are in many ways well suited to the
topical themes. Shaw utilizes a symposium type of discussion, which is ap•
propriate for the searching for direction, the open investigation of all
aspects of a complex problem. But perhaps the most characteristic and
least understood technique in these plays is Shaw's use of structure as a
major thematic device. Once understood, the seemingly random structures
are not evidence of "imitative fallacy", of using negative techniques to
express negative themes, hut of an artistic handling of technique to en•
hance thematic comment on the chaos. In the best of Shaw's political
plays there is a well integrated mating of theme and structure which be•
lies any idea that these plays are the products of a man in his dotage. iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION • • • 1
TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD » • • 10
ON THE ROCKB 37
THE SIMPLETON OF ME IMEXPECTED
ISLES 59
GENEVA 78
CONCLUSION 99
SELECTED LIST OF ¥ORKS CONSULTED 101 I PRODUCTION
The var has been a fiery forcing house in which we have grown with a rush like flowers in a late spring following a terrible winter. And with what result? This: that we have outgrown our religion, outgrown our political system, outgrown our strength of mind and character. Too True to be Good
The major problem facing modern critics of Bernard Shaw is the evalu• ation of his career as a whole, but there is so much in Shaw that deserves
the strongest praise that critics have tended, until very recently, to focus
almost exclusively on earlier "standard" plays. If one were to judge from
much of the criticism, Shaw's career as a dramatist effectively ended with
Saint Joan (1923). But since approximately one quarter of his total dra•
matic output dates from 1929, any adequate evaluation of Shaw's dramatic
career must give more than a cursory glance at the late plays. The polit•
ical extravaganzas dominate Shavian drama of the 1930's, Shaw's last really
productive decade. They form a fairly large and coherent group, but their
topicality and their abstract, seemingly non-dramatic techniques have pre•
vented critics, with, a few notable exceptions, from examining the plays on
their own merits. This thesis attempts to show how Shaw, in his political
plays, not only chronicles his very close involvement with the urgent social
problems of the Interwar years, but also develops special artistic devices
to express his themes. One of the most characteristic and least appreciated
techniques in these plays is what Martin Meisel calls "structural analogue,""1
1Shaw and the Ninete enth-Century Theater (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 19^3), P- ^28. 2 a use of structure as an important thematic device. Shaw exploits allegory, fantasy, and symbolism in his plots and characters, hut he also uses struc•
ture to carry his themes home to the minds of his audience. An understanding
of the function of the loose structures is essential to appreciating Shaw's
special artistry in his political extravaganzas of the 1930's.
" Most critics recognize that World War I marked a turning point in
Shaw's career. Heartbreak House and the plays that follow it are different
in tone and dramatic method from the plays before 1919- The war seems to
have had a decisive effect on Shaw and his plays. It provided traumatic
evidence of mankind's patent aversion to acting rationally. Never very
confident about the common mass of humanity, Shaw became increasingly con•
cerned and perturbed with the crucial problems of governing in a technolog•
ically advanced but spiritually stagnant world. As aids to providing dir•
ection in the modern chaotic world, the old social, economic, religious
and moral values were hopelessly outmoded because they more than ever
negated or ignored the facts of life. Yet countries in the west tried to
muddle on using the old touchstones, with the result that the world seemed
to be headed inevitably for disaster. Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah,
and Saint Joan deal with some of the complex problems facing man at the time:
the problem of existence in a morally and spiritually chaotic world, the
problem of obtaining truly responsible government in such a world, and the
problem of effecting urgently needed real human progress. Having written
three major plays on these problems, Shaw spent most of his time preparing
the enormous compilation of his thoughts on politics in The Intelligent
Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928).
With the thirties came a series of world events which ominously 3
seemed to prognosticate disaster and another world war. It was during this period that Shaw wrote the plays that many of his zealous admirers would
like to ignore, that unsympathetic critics point to as the fantastic rarnb-
lings of a senile man, and that even otherwise appreciative critics dismiss
as Important only to Shavian scholars. Yet Too True to be Good (1931), On
the Rocks (1933), The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (193U), and Geneva
(1938) all reveal Shaw's vital concern with major contemporary political
and philosophical issues, and all utilize new departures in dramatic tech•
nique, which once understood show that Shaw could produce under the pres•
sures of the times some very well conceived and provocative drama.
Because most critics feel obliged to say something about the late
plays, the surface characteristics of these plays are fairly well known.
In fact many have said that these plays are nothing but surface. Their
topicality, their "formless" structures, their weak characters and their
extravagant fantasy are often considered evidence of Shaw's dramatic de•
cline. In the words of A. C. Ward: "The grand old tree was parting with
its leaves; the organism was losing its Impulse to coordinate and unify....
By.the time Shaw wrote Too True to be Good he had ceased to concern himself ..0
with the formalities of playwriting . . . . ^ Many critics have condemned
Shaw for not integrating his techniques into an artistic whole. Desmond
MaeCarthy argues that Shaw's theory of dramatic art was wrong in the late
plays because he supposedly "overlooked the fact that the function of art
is to embody ideas so that they become lastingly memorable, and effect men
2A.C. Ward, Bernard Shaw (London: Longman's, Green & Co., 1951), pp. 173-174. k
•without their even defining them."3 Shaw's late plays are too desultory, he says, and do not value economy of means and compactness of the whole. It is true that Shaw was more concerned in these plays with philosophical and political issues than with the fortunes of individuals, that the characters frequently are not fully rounded, and that the structures are more abstract than "those of many of Shaw's successful earlier plays. But if one considers that Shaw wrote these plays as interpretations of the chaotic interwar per• iod, his techniques assume a vital role in augmenting the themes.
The strong topicality and the seemingly irresponsible artistry of the political plays have been the two major impediments to appreciating the plays for their own particular and considerable merits. Hot only has the immediate concern with contemporary political problems tended to "date" these plays, but Shaw's dogmatic and obviously partisan opinions on dic• tatorship and extermination have also obscured many of his valid and more universal comments in the plays. Shaw's search for viable solutions to the complicated social problems of the time undeniably led him to abstractions which ignored human values in his proposals, and this concern with political
and philosophical issues is reflected in the abstract and frequently sym•
bolic or allegorical caricatures in the plays. But the de-emphasis of
personality in these plays may well have been deliberate as part of Shaw's
attempt to highlight the essential issues by abstracting them. Viewed
from this perspective, the plays are in fact more compact statements on
the modern world than other plays which use more conventional dramatic
^Desmond MacCarthy, Shaw's Plays in Review (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1951), P- 189- 5
techniques. If Shaw seemed more than ever to he discounting personality, it was not, as Desmond MacCarthy suggests, hecause he no longer could "feel anything much."^ On the contrary, Shaw was vitally concerned with exploring the problems confronting modern man, so much so that he tried to expose the issues without the encumbering and possibly diverting or confusing ambigu• ities" complex characters inevitably bring to the stage.5 Shaw's attempt to use more cerebral and less "dramatic" devices represents both a faith or at least a wishful belief in the rationality of men, and an urgent appeal for men to exercise their minds in examining the world's problems. Many of the characters in the plays do not use their minds, but Shaw's methods indicate that he thought men capable of doing so. Although Shaw had "said it all so many times before" in other plays, the repetition in the political plays of his ideas may not be evidence of Shaw's garrulous senility, as MacCarthy
6 7 suggests, or of mere weariness, as Fred Mayne thinks,1 but of Shaw's con• tinuing though desperate belief that what he had to say was important and needed saying.
The major weakness of most criticism of the late plays has been the
inability to relate adequately themes and techniques. Critics who have
concentrated on topical allusions for explicating the themes of the plays
have had to face the problem of differentiating between what Shaw says in
^Shaw's Plays in Review, p. 197•
^Compare Shaw's renunciation of "distractions and embellishments" In the preface to Methuselah. Again the reason given was to present in less adulterated form pure ideas. (II, Ixxxix)
*%haw's Plays in Review, p. 196.
^The Wit and Satire of Bernard Shaw (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), p. 138T 6 his prefaces and other non-dramatic -work, and what he says in the plays themselves. Shaw often deliberately exaggerated and distorted arguments against the establishment and for unpopular causes in order to shock his audiences into looking carefully at their own inadequate assumptions about religion, politics and economics. But while the political plays invite thematic analysis because they are so concerned with topical ideas, the artistic techniques have caused more difficulty in appreciating the polit•
ical extravaganzas than the themes have.
These plays cannot be judged effectively by the more conventional
dramatic criteria. As one of the more perceptive recent critics says:
The disregard of realistic canons in these cerebral fantasies can be deplored as evidence of Shaw's declining abilities only from the standpoint of doctrinaire dramatic naturalism. Other• wise it must be seen as Shaw's enrichment of a theatre rather too limited by naturalistic predilections.
Yet writing in the same year, another critic9 chastises Shaw for his old
love of strangeness found in "the bizarre setting, the odd and fantastic
persons," and maintains that Shaw cannot make his grotesqueries even mo•
mentarily real. And C. B. Purdom complains that all the characters in
Too True are mouthpieces, types rather than individuals
^Martin Meisel, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. ^28.
^Horner Woodbridge, George Bernard Shaw: Creative Artist (Carbondale Southern Illinois University Press, 1963), p- l^+lT
1°A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw (London: Methuen and Co., 1963 pp. 292-293. 7
Of course not all critics feel negatively about the extravaganzas.
Eric Bentley feels that political extravaganza is "Shavian form" because it is "definite enough and free enough, fantastic enough and realistic enough, uproarious enough and serious enough.""'""'" Like Bentley, Martin Meisel ex• plains very convincingly some of the special techniques used in the late plays" in terms of Shaw's personality and temperament. Meisel sees the ex• travaganzas as symptomatic of Shaw's final "crystallization" of his "passion
IP and intellect." In fact Meisel hits upon the key to understanding the structures of the extravaganzas when he says: "They are the most advanced of Shaw's plays in their invention , . . , in their thematic structures and use of structural analogue, in their use of open allegory and frankly sym- 13 bolic action and setting." But the nature of Meisel's book prohibits him from making any detailed analysis of these techniques in specific plays.
In short, appreciation of structure as a thematic device has escaped most
critics. William Irvine finds only "bits of comedy" and "no carefully built-
up scenes""^ in Too True. A. C. Ward thinks that nearly all the late plays
show evidence of the "dwindling of what in terms of the playwright's craft
may be called structural ability," and that The Simpleton "is like a muddled
though not unpleasant nightmare after much reading of newspapers . "15 And HEric Bentley, The Playwright as Thinker (Cleveland: World Publish• ing Co., 1955), P- 120.
12Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater, p. k-h-3•
^Ibid., pp. i+27-^28.
^William Irvine, The Universe of G.B.S. (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw Hill, 19^9), P- 370. 15A. C. Ward, Bernard Shaw (London: Longman's Green and Co., 1951), pp. 173, 180. 8
C. B. Purdom finds the structure of the same play "inconsistent" because the tension is "either merely amusing and satirical or -balked about and abstract."-^ Frederick P. W. McDowell has tried to dispel misconceptions about the late plays in a series of articles in which he consistently makes reference to the importance of the last part of Shaw's career. McDowell maintains that the best structure in drama results from "the use of firmly wrought characters in psychologically dynamic situations,""^ but that a
looser kind of structure is possible:
that of presenting a full analysis of central intellectual themes with variations being adroitly played upon them. Upon examination, Shaw's late plays do possess a firmness of intellectual line which their apparent concern with contemporary chaos at first tends to obscure.18
McDowell generally sees the structures of the extravaganzas as composed of
blocks of conversation which work together to build an intellectual struc•
ture with principles of its own. But while McDowell's criticism is per•
ceptive and revealing, it does not fully establish the relationship between
structure and theme. Structure in the best Shavian extravaganzas is more
than an intricate intellectual- pattern. As Meisel suggests, it often serves
as an important thematic device. This thesis attempts to show how the struc•
tures of the political extravaganzas function thematically and how these en•
igmatic plays chronicle Shaw's urgent reactions to the ominous chaos of the
interwar years. Once understood, these plays are sensitive indicators of
1% Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw, p. 302.
-^"Spiritual and Political Reality: Shaw's The Simpleton of the Un• expected Isles," Modern Drama, III (Fall, I960), 196.
l8lbid. 9
Shaw's own ambivalent involvement with political, spiritual, moral and economic forces which seemed to be leading the world inexorably to destruc• tion. An awareness of this trend impelled the seventy-five year old drama•
tist to examine publicly through his plays how modern man had outgrown his
religion, outgrown his political system, outgrown his strength of mind and
character. TOO TRUE TO EE GOOD
Too True to be Good (1931) has drawn a wide range of opinions ranging from those which condemn the play as a "desultory conversation of the twen• tieth century universe""L to those which laud its improvisation as "infin• itely more impressive than a host of more carefully or convincingly con-
2 structed plays." Obviously much of this disagreement stems from the very loose structure of the play. Even the discussion plays, which had provoked much criticism of Shaw as a writer of non-drama, had a more easily recog• nized line of argument which gave them a form of their own. Shaw compounds the problem of understanding this play by introducing several streams of argument, none of which Is thoroughly resolved. Desmond MacCarthy, a critic usually sympathetic to Shaw, complained that after seeing Too True to be
Good he could not tell what it was about because the play contained "dozens of subjects" and "because there was no focus to group them around."3 Still another stumbling block to understanding the play is the apparent inconsis• tency in the use of the extravagant fantasy, both in the organization of the "plot" and in the depiction of the characters. No longer does there seem to be any logical development and resolution of the action or of the characters. There is certainly no clear hero with whose position one can identify Shaw. Yet these characteristics, which are the ones most often
^William Irvine, The Universe of G.B.S. (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 19^9), p. 370.
2john Gassner, Masters of the Drama (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 195^), p. 613.
3pesmond MacCarthy, Shaw's Plays in Review (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1951), p. 190. 11 criticized, are used consciously for a specific purpose--to give a meaning• ful depiction of the contemporary -world. Although this play does have some weaknesses of form, It does have a unity of purpose and execution that has not been appreciated fully.
The play offers an almost kaleidescopic view of the spiritual and moral" chaos that characterized the late twenties and early thirties. The component parts of the play work independently and yet also cumulatively to reveal the social ills in a stark, almost expressionistic light. The play tries to create an effect similar to that of Heartbreak House; in fact Heartbreak House provides a clear foreshadowing not only of theme but also of technique for Too True to be Good and other late plays. In both plays the main character progresses from the position of extremely romantic idealism, through a series of disillusionments to a position of hard real•
ism. And in both plays the hope exists that the young woman who has found
her strength will use it in a constructive and socially beneficial way,
though there remains also the possibility that neither Ellie Dunn nor the
Patient will succeed. Too True to b_e Good also shares with Heartbreak
House what McDowell calls the symposium technique of organizing dialogue.^
As the term suggests, the symposium technique has several characters
on stage at once to discuss some topic. Such a situation Inevitably places
a premium on verbal dexterity and eliminates ordinary action altogether.
Shaw proved that this kind of drama could be exciting in the Hell Scene of
Man and Superman, and many passages in the late plays bear a resemblance
Frederick P. W. McDowell, "'The Pentacostal Flame' and the 'Lower Centers': Too True to be Good," Shaw Review, II, 9 (Sept., 1959), 27. 12 to this earlier -work. A few other plays also used this form, notably the two disquisitory plays, Getting Married, and Misalliance. All these plays are formal inquiries Into complicated issues and present in a fairly com• pact form many -views of a topic. Shaw evidently thought that this technique had qualities which could be adapted to his purpose in the plays of the thirties. First of all it offered a means of presenting many sides of an
Issue more or less simultaneously. It also was suited to a situation where no clear-cut solution existed, or at least where any point of view was arguable. Open discussion need not be linear, and its effectiveness depends upon neither character development nor ordinary action. Nor is it necessary that there be a dominant character when the interest lies in the interplay of ideas.
Shaw, in the late plays, turned his attention to philosophical and political problems and de-emphasized the role of the individual. The political plays after The Apple Cart suggest that Shaw attempted to present
as directly as possible the main issues as he saw them. He chose to express
the interplay of ideas and the chaotic mood of the time in abstract terms.
The situation seemed to call for an intelligent airing of many views, and
a repression of personal interests. Shaw used the symposium type of dis•
cussion in most of those plays to show that open discussion was a possible
way to new insights into very difficult problems.
Shaw also used elements of fantasy extensively in the late plays.
He had tried highly unusual settings in some of the earlier plays, almost
invariably not simply to arrest the audience's attention, but to instill
in his plays an aspect of the visionary or the mystic. The plays which
stand out as prime examples, the Hell Scene in Man and Superman, and Back 13 to Methuselah, are significantly concerned, with postulating Shaw's religion of creative evolution. In these plays it was necessary to remove the action from the immediate world so that Shaw could develop a thesis which demanded an extremely long range view of mankind. In the plays of the thirties Shaw extends his use of fantasy. He undoubtedly intended these plays to be in• structive and provocative. One of the most persistent themes running through most of the plays of this period is the need for western man, es• pecially the Englishman, to re-evaluate his position in the modern world, to free himself from his old and largely invalid frames of reference in order to gain a new perspective and direction to his life. The bizarre distortions of character and setting represent an attempt by Shaw to effect such a re-evaluation. As Aubrey says at the end of Too True, something new
Is needed to reach the younger generation.
Naked bodies no longer shock us: our sunbathers, grinning at us from every illustrated summer number of our magazines, are nuder than shorn lambs.... You may even throw away the garments of your souls: the manners, the morals, the decencies. Swear; use dirty words; drink cocktails; kiss and caress and cuddle until girls who are like roses at eighteen are like battered demireps at twenty-two. (IV, 718)
Actions which would have been shocking and bizarre a few years earlier had
become commonplace. Fantasy allowed Shaw to continue to remove his plays
from ordinary reality and yet express the essence of reality on stage.
Often the unusual scenes in their purposeful distortions reveal more about
life than a more strict verisimilitude would. Too True to be Good reveals
both the strengths and the weaknesses of these techniques.
Shaw opens the play on a note of extravagant fantasy with a monster,
really an innocent microbe, lamenting the fact that it has been infected Ik
"with measles from the Patient. The monster carries on a series of asides depreciating the doctor "who Is attending the Patient. At first the play seems to he a fantastic farce on one of Shaw's favorite scapegoats--the medical profession. The doctor, though "saner than most," allows an over- solicitous and superstitious mother to change the prescription (for the third time) and to inoculate her daughter who is already infected because he knows that honesty would ruin him financially. The impression that the play
is mere farce is furthered when the doctor and the monster have an open dis•
cussion of the ethics of society doctors. But this scene takes on a char•
acteristically symbolic significance which relates to the rest of the play
much more closely than the surface action might suggest. The social ill•
ness that is incapacitating large segments of the population is not correct•
ly diagnosed by the official "healers" of society. The illness is not due
to nebulous outside influences, invented by the political doctors to mask
their ignorance, but to a kind of hypochondria which insidiously infects
society from within and is aided by the so-called healers. It is very
probable that this scene is meant to be a political allegory since Shaw
originally called the play a political fantasy. Shaw seems to be suggest•
ing that politicians are looking in the wrong places for the causes of
ill-health in a society whose whole moral code is based on pretense and
lies; that the scapegoats politicians blame for the social ills are nothing
but the monstrous figments of uninformed imaginations. Such a situation
is bound to result in chaos. As long as people continue to Ignore reality,
stifle their souls in an unnatural environment of outdated rigid class
distinctions, and refuse to allow the fresh air of change to blow through
the whole social structure, society will lie helpless and smothered like 15 the Patient. People must not lie back apathetically -while their vitality is sapped by an environment of their own making. A positive purpose must be instilled in a lazy population if Its interests are to be diverted from a suicidal selfishness.
The Patient demonstrates a latent vitality in her violent defense of her jewels. But the jewels soon become of secondary interest as she real• izes that she has been stirred out of her debilitating existence. The difference seems so great to her that on waking from her swoon she thinks she must be dreaming a glorious and romantic dream: "Oh, this is ridicu• lous. I'm dreaming. . . . But it's delicious, because I'm dreaming that
I'm perfectly well." (TV, 650) Aubrey demonstrates his ability to ser• monize in his speech which persuades the Patient to be an accomplice in the theft: "Have you no conscience, that you waste God's gifts so shamefully?
You think you are in a state of illness. Youre not: youre in a state of
sin. Sell the necklace and buy your salvation with the proceeds." (TV, 651)
Standard moral codes are useless and restricting when applied to the con•
temporary world where even an antimorality seems more valid. The Patient
goes off with the burglar because she thinks that only through her "dream"
will she be able to escape her old way of life. She has yet to find out
that her picture of a dream world, which has been shaped by the romance
of the films, will turn out to be in many ways too true to be good, and
that Aubrey's antimorality, because it is negative, is not the final answer
to society's problem. But even in the first act her "unexpectedly powerful
mind" begins to assert itself and it becomes clear that she will become the
forceful one of the trio.
The first act ends with the enigmatic words of the mo,nster who tells 16 the audience that the play is virtually over, hut that the characters -will discuss It at great length for t"wo acts more. Throughout this act the mon• ster sounds suspiciously like G. B. S. In his denunciation of doctors, and this final adieu also sounds as if Shaw is teasing the audience. No doubt this is true, and like many of Shaw's statements, this one carries a grain
of truth with it. The first act is an allegorical representation of society which ends with the message that the idle must exert themselves and that so•
ciety must free itself from its outworn ideas regarding class barriers. As
such it is a miniature picture of society. It briefly and abstractly sums
up the problems which the rest of the play discusses at length. It is
characteristic of the later plays that the connections between acts or
scenes are much looser than in previous plays. The techniques in the three
acts of this play are distinct, but the themes are related and in fact stead•
ily progress. In other words, while the play may seem to be completely dis•
jointed, it presents a progressive development not only of the Patient's
awareness, but also of other themes which contribute to the pattern defining
the main problems of the time. The first act plays an important part in
creating the picture of chaos that the play examines, not only thematically
but also in the very loose structure of the act itself.
Shaw's handling of fantasy in Too True is unusual. He uses two rad•
ically different types of fantasy which seem to be basically incompatible
with any kind of artistic unity. The monster microbe, representative of one
kind of fantasy, is conspicuous because it seems totally out of keeping with
the rest of the play. Nowhere else in the play Is an inanimate object per•
sonified. Fantasy in the rest of the play is restricted to the incongruous
settings and purposely foreshortened characters. While the microbe is use- 17
ful for understanding the allegory, he sets up an expectation for a partic• ular kind of fantasy; an expectation that is not fulfilled in later acts.
Furthermore, the monster, by addressing the audience directly at the end of
Act One, removes himself from the illusionary -world of the other characters.
Even Aubrey's final speech is part of his sermon to the other characters,
although they have all retreated from his oratory. The problem is not that
Shaw used the kind of fantasy which produced the microbe--the German ex•
pressionists and other avant-garde dramatists of the twenties had used it--
but that he was not consistent throughout the play in his use of fantasy.
Shaw does make use, however, of the monster in another way which par•
tially mitigates the inconsistent fantasy of the play. Mr. Cedric Hard-
wieke, who played Aubrey in the original production, tried to explain the
play's lack of success in terms of its lack of careful design. He criti•
cized the order of the comedy in which the first act is "light comedy,"
the second "brilliant comedy," and the last act serious preaching.5 The
audience, he said, became too tired by the third act. Be that as it may,
Shaw did arrange Too True this way for a specific purpose. The action is
calculated to build up the audience's involvement progressively and almost
imperceptibly until the climactic scene at the end of the play. The first
act with its monster and its outrageous slapstick action puts the audience
off guard for the seriousness of-'-.the play as a whole. The structure of the
play parallels the sequence of disillusionments that the interwar generation
underwent during the twenties and early thirties. Indulging in almost
^Quoted from an interview in The Observer, October 9, 1932, by Stanley Weintraub, Private Shaw and Public Shaw (New York: George Braziller, 1963), p. 228. 18 senseless frivolity, people were oblivious to the cataclysm to come In the next decade. But in the grey dawn of the thirties they could no longer ig• nore the fact that their values had been as empty as their laughter. The play's structure likewise carries the audience along with the apparent lightness until suddenly the horrible consequences of the chaos behind the action in the first two acts are revealed in the third. Each act is pro• gressively longer and more serious. If this view of Shaw's intention is accepted, then the monster, which helps to create the initial impression of lightness, is more integrated in the play; certainly more than if the microbe is viewed merely as Shavian clowning. Nevertheless, it should have been possible for Shaw to create this cumulative effect and the delightful little allegory without having to resort to such an inconsistent use of fantasy.
Act Two builds on the impressions left by Act One, but not in the conventional way. The kidnapping plot ostensibly is the unifying force be• tween the two acts, but, as many critics have pointed out, in fact it offers a minimal link. What Act Two does is to give a shift in perspective in the analysis of the contemporary world . It starts with hilarious farce in the confrontation between Colonel Tallboys V.C., D.S.O., the new commanding officer of the British patrol sent to rescue the Patient from her brigand
"kidnappers," and Private Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek, the military
Jack-of-all-trades who really runs the expedition. But the act ends with the Colonel's ominous reply to the accusation, by the Countess, that he wastes his time painting: "Countess: I paint pictures to make me feel
sane. Dealing with men and women makes me feel mad, Humanity always fails
me: Nature never." (IV, 687) Thus in one way the second act forms a tran•
sition between the other two, since it begins light-heartedly and ends with 19 a foreshadowing of the seriousness to come.
Act Two also develops a theme that was latent in the first act and which becomes one of the major concerns of the play. The main obstacle to the Patient's leaving her unhealthy home was the rigidity of her class con• sciousness:
If I wake up I shall never get loose from my people and my social position. It's all very well for you two criminals: you can do what you like. If you were ladies and gentlemen, youd know how hard it is not to do what everybody else does. (IV, 652)
The same kind of artificial code is stifling Colonel Tallboys. Shaw expands
this idea in the second act. The incongruous setting is obviously unlike
the efficient and utilitarian camps usually associated with the army in
romantic circles. In fact one of the purposes of this act is to show the
disparity between reality and the rose-colored substitute that the majority
of the people not only accept as real but upon which they base their whole
moral code.
The only sign of hostilities in the opening scene of Act Two is the
Colonel's holstered revolver; otherwise he is revealed reading The Times in
a deck chair beside a particolored canvas bathing pavilion. This is not
merely Shavian anti-military satire or whimsy; it is a very slightly ex•
aggerated picture of the absurdity of a highly class-conscious organization.
Shaw uses the army to indict a society which bases its hierarchy on purely
arbitrary social classifications and ignores the ability of an individual
to work outside his prescribed area. The army episode is an example of
Shaw's artistic technique in combining a vision of reality with a conscious
distortion of character and setting in order to make valid comments on 20
society. The bizarre setting and. the comic exaggeration of character in
Tallboys and Meek effectively hold the audience's attention even while the weak foundations of such a world are gradually being exposed. The farce at the beginning of Act Two becomes the tragedy of western society in Act Three.
But it is typical of the later plays that a major theme is not primarily ad• vanced through the actions of any one central character. Rather, all the characters, each in his own way, demonstrate the effects of artificial class consciousness on morality, religion, and character. As the play de• velops, characters who represent various attempts to cope with the chaotic universe, define the problem and suggest a possible course of action which may offer some hope. The first vignette in the second act presents Tall• boys and Meek.
At the beginning of Act Two, Tallboys is a staunch advocate of a rig-
Id social and military code. He sums up the ethics of the system of which he is a product:
If you treat a private soldier as a human being the result is disastrous to himself. He presumes. He takes liberties. And the consequence of that is that he gets into trouble and has a very bad time of it until he Is taught his proper place by ap• propriate disciplinary measure. ... If you have occasion to speak to him, make him feel by your tone that the relation be• tween you is one of a superior addressing a very distant infer• ior. (IV, 66V 665)
As long as the Colonel continues to operate by this code he appears foolish
beside Meek, who is by his behavior an advocate of a system of command based
upon merit rather than rank. He operates quietly behind the scenes effic•
iently carrying on the business of the expedition, because, unlike an
officer, he can move freely among all classes of society, and can ignore
the artificial protocol, which like the parliamentary system, makes ten 21
minutes' -work take ten months. While the Colonel "blusters over the missing maroons -which he uses as signals to call him from his watercoloring to din• ner, Meek has planted them strategically to give the impression to attacking natives that the hills are bristling with British cannon. Nevertheless, at the end of the act when Meek has demonstrated his military genius at the
"Battle of the Maroons," Tallboys is .not taken aback at all. Shaw continues his series of reversals of expectation when Tallboys admits with aplomb that
the symptoms of a military genius and a half-wit are the same and that, since
the secret of command is never to do anything that can be done by a subord•
inate, he will henceforth delegate all the work of command to Meek, the man
he cannot speak to socially. He turns his full attention to his water-colors,
which are the only things preventing his going mad in dealing with humanity
in such a system. Tallboys reacts to the unnatural pressures of the system
by retreating from them. He neither attacks the system nor attempts to rem•
edy the situation whose absurdity has been demonstrated by Meek. The colo•
nel is content to take advantage of the refuge offered by Meek and the
water-colors. But he has progressed enough to be able to free himself from
the complete rigidity of mind that his advice to the Countess indicated
earlier.
Private Meek, modelled after Shaw's friend T. E. Lawrence, very nearly
dominates the second act. Shaw knew Lawrence well and admired his remark•
able ability to get things done--an ability that Shaw always regarded high•
ly. Shaw frequently drew upon his personal acquaintances for inspiration
for his characters, and Lawrence, who was a fascinating and enigmatic per•
son, and who had repeatedly challenged Shaw to "do" him in a play, provided
an excellent model. Lawrence even advised Shaw on several technical and 22 stylistic points in the play, and thought that it was one of Shaw's best.^
Yet Lawrence realized that his portrait was not completely flattering. Al• though the dramatist liked Lawrence, and could appreciate his ability to operate as a free agent in a military world, Shaw also realized that Law• rence dreaded the day he would have to retire from the service. While he was always searching for more challenging duties suited to his intellect and organizing skill, both G.B.S. and T.E. doubted if "Lawrence of Arabia" could be happy in civilian life. Shaw incorporates this aspect of Lawrence in Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek.
Meek is a man of action who quietly permeates the system and uses it for the common good. He is thoroughly capable and his efficiency and the dependence of others on him demonstrate the absurdity of class distinc• tions . Thus in many ways he is like King Magnus: a capable and tolerant man smoothly manipulating the less able for their own good. But his manipu• lating Is of a different order from Magnus', and establishes Meek as a per• son of inferior social conscience. Magnus tried to improve the rough dia• monds in his cabinet by polishing them. He tried to make them into
socially useful beings even when doing so would probably jeopardize his
own position as king. Meek merely manipulates the colonel tactfully out
of direct command so that the routine business of the army can be smoothly
completed. He does not try to improve anyone: he only takes over their
chores when difficulty arises. He is always close behind the scenes ready
to act whenever necessary whether it be to win the "Battle of the Maroons"
or to pick up the "Countess's" six boxes of luggage. But Meek's dominance
in Act Two is largely qualified in the next act where he appears in a slight-
6weintraub, p. 215• 23
ly different light.
Meek's behavior serves as a foil to the petty preoccupations of the
other characters who seem to he able to do nothing but talk about them•
selves. Nevertheless, if Meek is not a talker, neither is he a philoso• pher. He does not see that his actions, though obviously beneficial, are
in fact perpetuating the very system he seems to reject. Like Magnus he
is reduced to maintaining the status quo, but unlike Magnus he is quite
content to do so. He is aware of the limitations of absurd class conscious•
ness, but he seems unperturbed by this knowledge. Near the end of Act Three,
after the others have more or less awakened to the prospect that they have
all been leading misguided lives, mostly because of paralyzing snobbery,
the crucial question of whether or not England can return to her senses
comes up. As usual anything of importance is referred to Meek, who seems
at first to answer with the depth of a Shotover: "No use, sir: all the
English privates want to be colonels: there's no salvation for snobs."
(IV, 716") England cannot return to her senses because she never was in
them--snobbery being indigenous to her. But this is not what is in Meek's
mind; at least not in the positive sense that he is advocating a renuncia•
tion of snobbery and the formation of a new social structure based on his
own example. Meek's cheerful buoyancy is philosophically empty, and he
is easily busied with the routine business of repatriating the expedition.
He knows and accepts the fact that though Tallboys has a chance to fulfill
his manifest destiny as a water-color painter, he will be prevented from
doing so by his snobbish wife. Meek's role is reduced to that of an ami•
able and efficient house servant of people with whose faults he is thorough- 2k
ly familiar.
Nowhere in the play does Shaw condemn Meek, in spite of his limita• tions. In a time of such chaos, Meek supplies a much needed stability and common sense. While he lacks the largeness of mind that is essential to a
Shavian hero, he does not possess the hidebound mind of Shaw's villains. He is content to work within the system, but he does so with a flexibility and efficiency that unnerves ordinary bureaucrats. His name suggests a blending of several qualities. He is undoubtedly a military genius in a world of water-colorist colonels. He also seems to be a believer in a classless society, or at least one in which occupations are delegated to the people most able and willing to perform them. His behavior certainly suggests a disdain of the English class system. And he has the meekness to work quiet• ly behind the scenes where he is most efficient without thirsting for the approbation of his fellowmen. Yet like the products of another blending of desirable qualities in The Simpleton, he is not the expected ideal. He Is lacking in a true social conscience and a positive philosophy of life. Had he taken a more positive stand at the end, his effort to repatriate the ex• pedition could have been a hopeful symbol of a beneficial program of social reconstruction. Although he seems content to maintain the status quo and to interest himself in the intricacies of the bureaucratic system, he performs a useful role at a time which indecision and dobt plague so many people.
If Meek fails to supply the positive force necessary to create a
modicum of moral order in the chaotic world, perhaps some of the other
characters are more promising. The kidnapping escapade becomes an alle•
gorical depiction of modern times. The three adventurers who sought ref•
uge in an orgy of pleasure find out that their expectations are futile. 25
In spite of the fact that they have lived lavishly, sparing no expense to please their every -whim, they find themselves ill-tempered and "bored . They are forced to reconsider their motives for their adventure and in so doing re-evaluate their way of life. In the face of such disappointment only the
Patient really grows in stature. Sweetie is content to live a wandering life a-s long as she can throw over the repressing codes of a lady and can have a new male companion every few days. She shows herself to be a true philistine in her tastes and instincts. Shaw does not condemn her because
she at least has the honesty to live openly according to her "lower centres," and does not negate a vital aspect of her being. Aubrey is tired of drag•
ging two "damn silly women" about when he wants to bask in the splendors of
-nature and preach sermons whose doctrine is "beautiful and subtle and ex•
quisitely put together." He is an idealistic intellectual whose higher
centres have been severely jarred by Sweetie's shouting lower centres. His
ideals have crumbled under the impact of a vital nature and he voices the
anxiety felt by the "lost generation" which finds "no place to live, no
certainties, no workable morality, no heaven, no hell, no commandments, and
no God." (IV, 676) Under such circumstances he can find solace in sermon•
izing on the vacuity of the age, but he cannot do anything to fill up the
void. Only the Patient revolts against this multifarious slackness.
Miss Mopply, the Patient, has reacted violently to her stultifying
life as a pampered young lady. In her growth as a vital individual, she
has far surpassed Aburey, who initiated her rescue from respectability.
Posing as a native girl she has "lived the life of a mountain goat" with
the result that she has perfect health and great strength. In short, she
has become fit. But the horrible question which the others never face and 26
•which nearly drives her mad is, fit for what? She cannot hear the idleness the others enjoy. To a decently active person the glories of nature do not last a week. She longs to do something positive, something "sensible." She cannot, like Aubrey, comtemplate the universe, because there is so much evil in it that she would go mad. She pushes to the logical extreme Aubrey's and
Sweetie's advocacy of supposed straightforwardness with the result that she ends by shocking her shockers. She shows that their bohemianism is in the end futile. The realization of this causes her to release her frustration in pure physical violence. She turns the tables on Aubrey by exercising the freedom he preached in a form he never contemplated in his limited musings.
If, as he says, Sweetie has a low vitality, Mops has an exceedingly high
vitality—a vitality long repressed which releases Itself like a tightly wound spring. Her new austere life has made available the Patient's latent
energy which must be expelled in some way, hopefully on "something sensible."
Coming to realize that fitness Is not an end in itself, she begins to re•
examine the world for a sense of purpose. Her dilemma is similar to the
one faced by the denizens of heartbreak house. Bohemianism, while offering
temporary advantages of freedom from rigidity, does not offer anything pos•
itive to combat the general sense of chaos and purposelessness. Something
more than mere awareness of the situation is required if there is to be any
hope for real improvement. But in Act Two the Patient does not yet see any
constructive course of action, in the absence of which her latent energy is
expelled in futile violence. Shaw again softens the implications of such
negative action in the modern world by dissolving the scene into farce. The
problem does not appear in its full intensity until the last act. There the
masks are successively ripped away and the interwar generation stands openly 27
•with its soul stripped naked.
It is in Act Three that Shaw uses the symposium technique. Two more characters are introduced and they join all the previous ones in a fantas• tic discussion "which reveals the main spiritual, moral and philosophical dilemmas that undermine the spring -which followed the terrible winter of
World War I. It soon becomes abundantly clear that the first two acts have been only glimpses of what happens in a world that has "outgrown
[its] religion, outgrown [its] political system, outgrown [its] strength of mind and character." (IV, 719) The dream of Act One rapidly disinte• grates into an expressionistic nightmare chorus of voices all shouting from different directions until after a crescendo the sound dies away leaving a solitary voice trailing off into nothingness. Shaw shows that these characters, who seem fantastic, unreal, perverse and unsatisfactory, are not fictions but representative examples of real segments of society.
The discussion merely brings into the open and analyzes the forces and attitudes which define interwar society. The third act intensifies the feeling of uneasiness that lurked Into the two previous acts. Shaw intend• ed visual effects to be used extensively in conjunction with the actors to achieve the proper feeling of a chaotic world. The amorphous grottos ap• pear and disappear as speakers in them contribute to the picture. But it
is important to notice that the third act has a much tauter structure than
the rest of the play because it is here that the mood intensifies, that the
various threads of the discussion are brought together and a possible res•
olution attempted.
The keynote of the last act is the unexpected. Like the chaos that
the play examines, the characters find that nothing is firmly predictable 28
according to any of the old tenets. The act opens with a duet between
Sergeant Fielding and Sweetie on sex and religion. Sweetie has acted on her resolve in the previous act to exercise her lower centres on the ser• geant who seemed to be the only man in the camp with a suitable animal vitality. She throws off her restricting code of a lady and approaches
Fielding hoping to arouse a reciprocal feeling. But the ruggedly hand• some soldier turns out to be struggling with a difficult moral problem: he is trying to resolve the conflict between his old religious beliefs and his experience with modern warfare. As a reasonable man with a limited but realistic vision of the world, he finds himself in a mess. As he says to Sweetie: "I used to be a religious man; but I'm not so clear about it as I was." (IV, 691) He carries with him the Bible and Pilgrim's
Progress, but the stories which seemed to be so uplifting because they had nothing to do with real life have come to be frighteningly real since the war; they have become God's truth in which the only advice offered is the admonition to flee from the wrath to come. The question which emerges louder and louder is, Where? The scriptures no longer give any direction to modern man. Sweetie's enforced contact with them also resulted in a negative reaction. She could only see that she was put in jail for spoiling the Egyptians. Fielding does not reject religion but only the old format for it. "No: damn it, we're civilized men; and though it may have gone down with those old Jews it isnt religion. And, if it isnt, where are we?
That's what I want to know." (IV, 693) The chaplains are no help in this spiritual quagmire since they either neglect the truly spiritual matters altogether or do not believe "any of the old stuff." The Fieldings have to puzzle their own problems out for themselves. One of the facts that any 29
viable religion must make room for is the sexual attraction he can feel for
Sweetie. She cares nothing for his top storey as he calls it. She only
wants a bit of fun in a joyless world. This scene indicates the lack of
responsibility at one end of the scale among the so-called leaders who re•
fuse to offer or are unable to offer the necessary spiritual guidance, and
at the other end of the scale, among the individuals who care only for their
own gratification and shirk the consequences of Ignoring the spiritual or
intellectual aspects of mankind.
The sudden appearance of Aubrey's atheist father introduces yet an•
other facet of modern history, as Shaw progressively examines various
attempts to cope with life. The Elder represents the pre-Einstein rational
determinists, who had placed their faith in a perfectly ordered and predict•
able universe as described by Newtonian mechanics and mathematics. The
seemingly infallible "laws" of nature had bred a sense of well-being and awe
in the Elder whenever he contemplated the infinite patterns of the universe.
But Einstein's discovery of relativity and the new quantum mechanics shat•
tered the Elder's faith in his impersonally ordered universe. The old
patterns suddenly were revealed to be as capricious and changeable as any
fallible human. The natural history museums, his former solace, now only
remind him of some Zeus-Mephistopheles playing at making the grotesque crea•
tures of the world. His speech, which captivates Fielding, ends with the
gloomy thought that the world is falling down into a bottomless abyss. The
Elder demonstrates a rigidity of mind, which once it has lost its frame of
reference, can no longer function. He comes to realize that his old stand•
ards, which led to purely destructive criticism of others, are themselves
faulty, but he cannot find anything positive to take the place of his dis- 30 carded ethics. The result is that he is completely unable to cope with his son's behavior.
Aubrey, with his more flexible approach, can easily overpower his father's rigid argument. Aubrey is the second generation rebelling against the debilitating codes of the nineteenth century. The moral tyranny that the father exerted over his son thwarted Aubrey's manifest destiny as surely as Mrs. Mopply's social tyranny stifled her daughter's growth. But even more destructive was the grotesquely distorted values of the atheist moraIT
ist who condoned war atrocities and yet balked at the relatively petty theft
of a necklace. In spite of his obvious faults Aubrey does render some very
valid criticism of the war morality: "You cannot divide my conscience into
"a war department and a peace department. Do you suppose that a man who
will commit murder for political ends will hesitate to commit theft for per•
sonal ends?" (IV, 699) Aubrey is clever enough to realize how the system
of behavior works, and is forthright enough to operate openly by the ob•
served rather than the mouthed standards. His self-acknowledged program of
unscrupulous materialism reigns supreme over the negative mongering of his
father and the gentleman-soldier code of Fielding, but it too falls before
the Patient's refusal to accept things as they are and her determination to
instigate some radical and fundamental changes in the social structure.
Having discovered how her old way of life was nothing but a negation
of her vitality, and having discovered also that her dream-world life only
made her self-knowledge more terrible to bear, the Patient longs to create
a new life, one that would have some real purpose and that would exercise
her new-found strength fruitfully. She rebels against all tyrannies which
seek to restrain her vitality. She longs for a "sisterhood" where the pri- 31
mary requisite would "be that all members, including men, would be free, strong and, since the chill of poverty blights all higher aspirations, in• dependently wealthy. Membership in her sisterhood would be compulsory and those who were unwilling or unable to meet the standard would be killed.
Parents are the epitome of dingers to the Patient at this moment. Her imagined world without them is her way of advocating a classless society in which each member must pull his own weight or be eliminated. In her fit of anger she is impatient with all the others who seem to thwart her. Her vio• lence prompts the Elder to observe that even the strong, young, rich and beautiful are falling down into the abyss of chaos. But if Mops is thrash• ing around for a grip on reality, she is not yet sinking. She is somehow managing at least to remain afloat from the sheer energy of her thrashing.
The Patient shows signs of the necessary growth from a pathetic social debit to an active social asset. She has not the instincts of a lady, but
of a good house-keeper who wants "to clean up this filthy world and keep it
clean." She is not content to tolerate snobbery and respectability which
starve the soul. The others, though mostly aware of the truth, have not the
courage or the energy to revolt. Mops' glimpse of reality in her "dream"
has wakened her to her responsibility as a member of the human race. Her
new sense of well-being after this violent purge prompts Miss Mopply's op•
timism and curiously her new-found benevolence towards her fellow creatures.
She is suddenly almost mellow in her attitude towards her mother and seems
to lose sight of her goal when she tries to comfort the old lady in her
shock.
Mrs. Mopply is also violently awakened to reality by the whack on her
head. Recovering from the blow she throws away the pretense that has plagued 32
her life. Her first reaction is to disbelieve everything, hut she soon sees that such an attitude is even more hopeless because she does not know how to behave in a chaotic world where all the old values are useless. It is here
that the Patient steps in to try to comfort her mother in the old terms. She
refuses to believe that others are capable of rapid change. Her mother re•
jects "the filial feeling just as the Patient had. She takes the initiative
in proposing a liaison with the strong young woman who is not a bit like
her daughter. The basis of the union will be natural compatibility and
not any artificial relationship dictated by society. They agree to "forget
that there are such miserable things in the world as mothers and daughters."
The union between youth and age may be a variation on the ending of Heart•
break House where a union was also the main basis for a hopeful reform.
But as in the earlier play, Shaw artistically manipulates the final scene
so as to produce an uneasy feeling that while the seeds for reform are pres•
ent in the positive characters, there is also the possiblity that they will
not continue to grow in the hopeful direction.
The Patient is still unsure of her Immediate future course of action
when she agrees to her mother's suggestion. She had previously felt the
need to form a universal sisterhood but did not pursue this. The mother
evidently has some kind of spree in mind because she says, "I have lots of
money, and sixty years of a misspent life to make up for; so you will have
a good time with me." (IV, 715) The Patient, like other people, had wanted
to escape the chaos of life and emigrate to The Union of Federated Sensible
Societies, a communist Utopia, but all Englishmen are rejected as mad. She
has no alternative but to turn back to her own country, where her services
are very much in need if she will only exert herself. 33
Shaw partially undercuts the hope vested in the Patient -when he por•
trays her as an impetuous young -woman -whose fits of indignant rage alter•
nate -with extremely flippant conversation. It may he a symptom of a larger
failing in Shaw that nearly all his younger generation characters in his plays are bumptious iconoclasts who are prone to jargon. They become too
stylized to act as fully drawn characters. Shaw misuses this device in
Too True to be Good not only with Miss Mopply but also with Aubrey. It is
especially harmful with the Patient who is supposed to carry Shaw's hope in
the play. She is the one who utters the most telling criticism of society and who seems most likely to do something about it. But her serious speech•
es are made ridiculous by her impetuous nature. For example, immediately after her most moving speech on the nightmare quality of her dream and her
determination to kill all dingers, the Elder drones from his platform with
his ubiquitous voice, "There is great comfort in clinging, and great loneli•
ness in standing alone." (IV, 703) Mops cannot resist the temptation to
tease the old man. She forgets her imprecations to the dingers of the world and peers into the cell with, "HalloI a sententious anchorite! Who
is he?"
At times then the general flippant tone of the dialogue in this and
other late plays detracts from their theme. When the major spokesmen for
Shaw are most guilty of it the impact of the message is diminished. It is
hard to say how much of this Is intended as an artistic device and how much
is Shaw's clowning. It may be part of Shaw's message that such flippancy
can be detrimental to progress. The Patient has much potential, she even
has many good ideas, but if she allows her impetuous nature and her tend•
ency to cavort to deter her from her purpose, she too will fail to fulfill 3h
her potential.
At the end of the play when Aubrey rises "to improve the occasion,"
Mops shows her mischievous characteristics again. She urges Aubrey to speak, knowing it will annoy the others. She has debunked Aubrey's "gift" before, so she evidently does not think he can have anything worthwhile to say. "When he starts to speak the others all sneak off, glad to escape his lecture. But what he says starts to captivate Mops, almost in spite of her• self. He says she and her mother are going off to found an unladylike sis• terhood like Teresa, with Mrs. Mopply as cook-housekeeper. At this sug• gestion the mother drags Mops off. It is to be remembered that Mrs. Mopply wanted to have a good time for the first time in her life. She could hardly have had in mind being a cook-housekeeper in some strict order. But the
Patient has by this time thrown off much of her frivolity, as her stringent diet and daily routine suggest. Up to this point she has not committed her• self to any definite course of action and she is impressed by Aubrey's suggestion. Perhaps his gift is furthering the purpose of the Life Force in spite of his rascality. Viewed in this light he has sown the seeds of an active idea in Mops' mind and the still limited mother tries 'to prevent her daughter's further growth. Thus Mops does go offstage with a new opti• mism. Aubrey spouts his despair to the audience not to the characters, and especially not to Mops.
Although Shaw depreciates Aubrey as a scoundrel windbag at the end of the play, it is undeniable that much of what is said in the final speech of
the play is an eloquent summation of Shaw's views of the interwar years. It
is not surprising that even such well-known critics as John Gassner saw this
play as evidence of clear despair in Shaw.1 The distinct Shavian ring of
TMasters of Drama, p. 6l3- 35
this speech combined with the ambiguous strength of the main positive char• acter tempt the reader to come to this conclusion. But when viewed within the larger context of not only this play but also the other late plays, it becomes clear that Aubrey's speech is meant to qualify the optimism of the
Patient. It is a dramatic way of issuing a warning to the audience. It is only too easy for any realistic observer of mankind to succumb to Aubrey's kind of despair. It is not enough merely to cry out that negative mongering prevails in the world if the search for viable affirmations is given up.
Shaw, through characterization and structure, leaves the "resolution"
of the play open. Allegorically he has chronicled the gradual but shocking process that people experienced in the late twenties and early thirties, as they began to see in the grim light of reality the terrible chaos that en•
gulfed the old and new generations alike. The structure and fantasy of
the play help to underline this process. The play shows how people must
first wrench themselves from their old values which are no longer valid,
and then consciously seek new directions which do not negate the real human
or social facts. Although this process is painful and frustrating, It is
essential. Shaw does not at this time indicate specifically what directions
the new values will take, only that people must begin with an awareness of
the real problems facing society. It is the vital person who must be the
pioneer--the person strong enough to face the naked truth. Shaw says the
women are most likely to be able to do this, but he does not elaborate on
this in Too True. He does, however, suggest that an open and critical look
at reality will benefit most people. Nearly all the characters break from
their old paths, hopefully not to leave their problems, but to re-explore
them. None of the characters can avoid facing his own problems by fleeing 36 to the communist Utopia; they all must return to England, and most of them have gained a new perspective, if not a new direction to their lives. If this is the real message of the play, Shaw was neither bleakly pessimistic nor jubilantly hopeful about the outcome of the world events in 1931, but was calling for a sane re-evaluation of the many problems facing England.
"This play, once understood, assumes a satisfying artistic unity not found in many other less troublesome plays. Shaw developed, in Too True, some techniques which he continued to use for the next decade. When used with skill the loose structures, fantastic settings, and symbolic charac• ters can express more compactly and more abstractly the chaos in the thir• ties . But by the same token, these techniques can easily undercut the dramatist's message If it is not well suited to these devices. Shaw used these techniques to create some of his most intellectually satisfying plays, but when he attempted to deal with specific political problems, the very techniques he had developed to portray the chaos undercut any positive message he may have had. ON THE ROCKS
The post World War I society, as analyzed In Too True to he Good, lacked, above all, a positive sense of purpose. The var not only disrupted the vhole political and economic structure of Europe but also threatened many of the old religious and moral standards. The result vas the spirit• ual and moral chaos eloquently described by Aubrey. But vhile Too True clearly has political overtones, Shav explores In On the Rocks (1933) his deep concern vith the void in the political sphere vhich corresponded to the general mental chaos. This vas the absence in the vest, and particu• larly in England, of an able and strong leader vho could give the country the much needed sense of direction. On the Rocks presents the political side of this chaos, deftly exposing the many veaknesses in England's polit• ical situation vithout offering any concrete solution to the complicated problem of achieving effective and responsible leadership.
The years betveen 1929 and 1933 sav many changes in the world situa• tion. In England a Labor government, the hope of the socialists, not only failed to provide any improvement over previous governments, but also failed to stay in office more than two years. The world economy had collapsed, and the western countries were in the depth of depression with millions of unem• ployed depleting national budgets. Furthermore, while England lacked posi•
tive leadership, other countries rallied under dictators, implemented social
improvments and enjoyed a new sense of purpose in a discordant world. Eng•
lish socialists were very bitter with Ramsay MacDonald for his failure to
introduce any socialist legislation. Though Prime Minister, he was reduced
to a mere figurehead leader in a cabinet which was predominantly conserva- 38
tive. Shaw was particularly critical because strong men like Mussolini were ignoring the painfully slow parliamentary system and were replacing
civil inefficiency with organized public works programs. To Shaw, parlia• ment was nothing but a "talk shop," designed to impede the execution of any authority, and dominated by eloquent wind-bags saying nothing."^ Never very confident in the ability of the voting mob to govern itself, Shaw turned his attention more and more towards the possibility of a benevolent dictator with a social conscience as a more effective means of government.2
That there are in Shaw's plays important shifts in attitude and technique which reflect the changes in the world situation during the last years of the twenties and early years of the thirties can be seen in a brief com• parison of three plays: Saint Joan (1923), The Apple Cart (1929), and On
the Eocks (1933).
One of the most noticeable changes in Shaw's attitudes which becomes apparent in the thirties is the absence of a consistent and clearly defined
Shavian position in the plays. The variety and the extremity of the opin•
ions he expressed attests to a very probable lack of certainty in Shaw's mind regarding the solutions to the social problems in these years. Shaw's
preference is still fairly clearly discernible in his characters, but they
have none of the strength of earlier heroes with whom the Shavian position was associated. The Apple Cart, though clearly a later play, Is in some
A good example of Shaw's attitude toward such parliamentary speakers appears in "In Praise of Guy Fawkes," (One in a course of lectures under the auspices of the Fabian Society, delivered in Kingsway Hall, 25 November 1932.) Platform and Pulpit, ed. Dan H. Laurence (London, 1961), p. 237. 2Many times in his non-dramatic writings of the period Shaw expressed his interest in dictators. See, for example, the preface to Too True to be Good, IV, 626-627. 39
ways a transition from Saint Joan to the plays of the thirties. King Magnus demonstrates a strength of character and a largeness of spirit which is not present in any of the figures in the later plays, not even in King Charles.
But even Magnus, who is an example of the intelligent and voluntary conserv• atism Shaw implicitly advocated in Saint Joan, is not dramatically as force• ful as Joan. The shift from the clearly defined positions with concomitant
strong central figures of the powerful earlier plays to the more tentative proposals and ambiguous characters of the enigmatic later ones is adumbrated
in The Apple Cart, in which Shaw explores the possiblity of resolving the qonflict depicted in Saint Joan by combining vision and intelligent con•
servatism in a contemporary leader.
Shaw suggests both in the preface to Heartbreak House, where he dis•
cusses Nature's long overdue accounts, and in the preface to Saint Joan where he discusses toleration, that evolution is likely to proceed in vio•
lent fits and starts. A social institution becomes outmoded, and if it is
ignored or perpetuated by ignorance, indifference or doctrinaire conserva•
tism, it is suddenly and violently destroyed. The kind of genius which could
perhaps prevent an extravagant eruption such as World War I, Shaw implies,
is even rarer than Joan's kind. Shaw had to exaggerate Cauchon's and War•
wick's social perceptiveness, but he did not have to exaggerate Joan's
naive inspiration. What might be preferable would be someone with an in•
formed conservatism, with a true value of originality, someone who would
neither impede real progress nor totally destroy society with too rapid
change. Saint Joan eloquently dramatizes the tragedy, both personal and
social, that arises when genius and conservatism clash. The play presents
a lucid analysis of a historical conflict with obvious implications for the hi
resolution common in the later plays. On the Rocks represents a further de•
velopment of trends in The Apple Cart, hut also utilizes a dramatic action
•which is peculiar to the plays of the thirties.
While Proteus in The Apple Cart is a thinly disguised Ramsay MacDonald,
Sir Arthur Chavender is a composite of the undesirable qualities of English prime ministers, including Ramsay MacDonald. Nethercot is probably right
•when he criticizes William Irvine for categorically indentifying Chavender 3 with MacDonald, but Chavender does possess many characteristics of Ramsay
MacDonald, and the political situation in the play was undoubtedly calcu•
lated to invite comparison with contemporary National Government of England.
Shaw abstracts from the English social picture In the early thirties, the
qualities which seemed to be causing or at least perpetuating the terrible
political chaos. In The Apple Cart Proteus is a crafty man who is reduced,
by the parliamentary system and the haphazard democratic method of select•
ing rulers, to hysterics and tantrums in handling his cabinet. Bat in the
later play, Chavender shows no ability to lead at all. In the first act he
is the "safest man in England," which means that he can be "trusted to talk
and say nothing, to thump the table and do nothing." (V, 569) Shaw, an em•
inent public speaker himself, became increasingly critical of talkers in the
thirties when action was needed.^ Accordingly Chavender's "golden voice,"
that was to unite the disparate segments of the National Government (V, 569);
^Arthur H. Nethercot, Men and Supermen (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), p. 255-
Vor a condemnation of public speakers, and especially of Ramsay Mac• Donald, see "In Praise of Guy Fawkes," Platform and Pulpit, p. 237. ko
contemporary "world. Dramatically what is significant for our purposes is that when Shaw's viewpoint is well defined, he usually develops a positive dramatic conflict with the central character at least sharply outlined, and the discussion strongly polarized. The heart of the play is the trial scene where Joan clashes with the inquisitors, but the dialogue is ordered rhetor• ic. We are certain that Shaw's sympathy Is with Joan, the Shavian genius saint, inspired by the Life Force to precipitate the fall of feudalism in the Middle Ages. Joan's strength shines out in her trial when she must stand alone against her kindly but adamant accusers. Saint Joan is one of Shaw's best plays and its dramatic strength comes from the qualities enumerated: a strong central character, a clearly defined conflict, and an eloquent rhetorical dialogue. The Apple Cart represents the turning towards elements of the late plays.
King Magnus, having an abundant realistic imagination and a highly de• veloped social conscience, is also thoughtfully conservative in his outlook.
These qualities make Magnus the main bulwark against the very powerful
forces which if left unimpeded would quickly ruin the country. But Magnus'
virtue of savoir-faire and his respect for a legality of methods lead to his downfall; he is not brutal enough to lead an all-out offensive against Break• ages. While the ideological conflict is between Magnus' values and those of
Breakages, it is presented only obliquely; the overt confrontation is be•
tween Magnus and his reactionary cabinet. Of course this effective satire
of parliamentary government as a hindrance to progress is one of the pur•
poses of the play, but Shaw still constructs a clear dramatic conflict be•
tween two positions with the dialogue and action displaying a similar po•
larity. Shaw obviously favors Magnus, but the play ends with an ambiguous k2 is especially satirized in Act One. The speech he is preparing is nothing hut "bunk," the inevitable content of any stateman's speech if he is to a- void making trouble for himself. This demonstration of the most naive mis• conceptions about Socialism is aimed at curtailing a movement in the church towards "Christian Communism"'. The mere mention of communism to Chavender conjures up pictures in his mind of the terrible "Bolshies," of nationali•
zation of everything, including women. This naive, self-contented man is chosen to head the government because he can be depended upon to do nothing while the Mangans and other members of the "Blackguardocracy" exploit the country. Chavender's buoyant ignorance is a quality common to many of Shaw's
later characters. It is one of the reactions to the overwhelming problems
of the time. It Is really a defensive reaction to avoid insanity in the
face of chaos. But it is a sign of weakness and is fatal In a man who should
have the courage and the Insight to face the problems squarely. England did
not have such a leader in the early thirties, and Shaw's plays with their
abundance of weak characters reflect this grave lack.
Act One of On the Rocks is devoted to the gradual building up of a
mood of accelerating madness which ends in a kind of apocalyptic mysticism.
The structure of the act with one scene rushing into the next, each intro•
ducing another aspect of society's lack of direction is calculated to rein•
force the mood and theme. It is significant that although Sir Arthur is on
stage at all times, he is unable to do anything: he is merely buffeted ever
more rudely by the gusts of discord. As each new problem presents itself,
Arthur is shown to be more and more incompetent and unable to cope with
even the simplest of domestic imbroglios, not to mention the ever-present
confusion outside his window. His solution to the unemployment problem is h3
to ban the demonstrators from the streets and squares, and to wait for a revival of foreign trade. He must be manipulated by Basham, who at least has a soldier's knowledge of crowd psychology. Hilda handles the main bus• iness of the office while Chavender's mind is progressively deranged with interminable trivia and minutiae. He sits up until three in the morning for a "full dress debate on whether Jameson or Thompson was right about what Johnson said in the Cabinet." (V, 532) Chavender is proud of his position and resents others who hint at the futility of his life. His reply to Hilda underscores the urgent need for a real leader: "I wish I could persuade you to remember occasionally that I happen to be the leader of the House of Commons." (V, 533) Shaw wished he could too.
The domestic scenes which seem irrelevant to the action of the play reinforce the feeling of disorder and demonstrate the absurdity of Sir Ar• thur's platitudes. His family is a microcosm of his country. The children react violently to the stifling atmosphere of the home; they damn their father's "paralyzing decency." But what they are unconsciously seeking is not more freedom but more guidance. David and Flavia are the products of a spurious liberalism in the home, which has its counterpart in Sir Arthur's political attitude. The parents show little interest in their children, allowing them to bring themselves up instead of offering a steady hand.
Such an attitude, which was a reaction to the strict Victorian codes of behavior, has produced a confused and directionless generation of children just as a weak policied liberalism In politics, which was a reaction to nineteenth century conservatism, has produced a politically confused and directionless government. The children, like the country, are not governed; they just "slummock along anyhow." The violence which has erupted in both kk
domestic and political behavior is a measure of the frustration that stems from the general sense of disorder.
If David and Flavia represent one segment of the younger generation's disgust -with the aimlessness of the time, the deputation from the Isle of
Cats represents the frustration of the helpless English working man in the economic depression. They come to the Prime Minister in desperation, hoping to find some solution to the problem. Not understanding the business his life depends on, knowing only that he is out of work and starving while food is destroyed "for want of a market," caring nothing for manners—good or bad, the English working man looks to the leader of the country for help only to find assurances that the export of Spanish onions is back to the
1913 level. The delegation leaves with the ominous warning to Sir Arthur that "more crockery than windows will have to be broken if you gentlemen can do nothing to get us out of our present mess." (V, 5^7) Sir Arthur cannot understand that he is no longer dealing with a rational mind, but with the desperation of starving people. His cheerful platitudes no longer placate. Old Hipney is the first to undertake the awakening of Chavender's sense of responsibility as a leader of his country, and to start a chain reaction which culminates in Sir Arthur's mystical conversion to revolu• tionary socialism.
Hipney is one of the most memorable characters in the play because he is more fully developed than the others. It is typical of the late plays that the few characters who do shine for brief moments are those with a positive outlook. In a world of irresolution, Hipney's quiet conviction stands out. Like many other Shavian creations, Hipney Is a limited realist, but unlike most, he knows it. Hipney is a sad and prophetic comment on the h5
turbulent thirties. He can see the folly in the exaggerated and futile aggressiveness in people like Blee, and he can also see that Sir Arthur is hopelessly naive about the whole business of government. In fact, Hipney's keen vision and his piercing criticism of English working men, proletarian intellectuals, and gentlemen statesmen suggest that he voices Shaw's real opinions more faithfully than any of the other characters. He blesses Sir
Arthur's innocence, yet knows that it has allowed the country to drift onto the rocks. Like Shaw he blames Capitalism for World War I, and sees that another war is likely to erupt if Sir Arthur's uninformed policies set the unemployed to violence again. Yet he also sees that Marxism causes a con• ceit "that beats anything you ever felt for cocksureness and despising the people that havent got it. . . . The labor movement is rotten with book learning; and your people dont seem ever to read anything." (V, 553-55*0
Neither group seems to offer the solution to the problem, and the realiza• tion of this causes Hiprtey to pledge his support, at the end of the play, to any
Napoleon or Mussolini or Lenin or Chavender that has the stuff in him to take both the people and the spoilers and oppressors by the scruffs of their silly necks and just sling them into the way they should go with as many kicks as may be needful to make a thorough job of It. (V, 605)
Hipney, the clear-sighted realist who can analyze the social problems best, cannot or will not try to solve them himself. Though he is the one revolu• tionist who really means business, he is reduced to waiting for any leader who will lead.
Having shown in a series of scenes that the social chaos which is re• ducing the country to anarchy is the result of a dearth of knowledge, vision k6
and strength of purpose in the so-called leaders, Shaw postulates what would happen if suddenly Sir Arthur were brought up-to-date politically and in•
fused with a real sense of responsibility. The mystical final scene of Act
One brings the issue to a suitable apocalyptic climax. Sir Arthur, whose
eyes have been partly opened in his exposure to Hipney, the first person who
ever spoke sensibly and openly to the Prime Minister, undergoes the second
stage of his conversion under the guidance of the enigmatic Lady in Grey.
She announces herself as a messenger of death and a healer of the sick.
When Arthur thinks she is a ghost, she replies that she is a ghost from the
future, that she is ahead of her time just as Arthur is behind his time.
The mysterious, even religious tone of this scene is not mere Shavian horse•
play or whimsy. The Lady undertakes the second and more important part of
Sir Arthur's conversion. Whereas Hipney had planted in Arthur's mind the
seed of new knowledge that would make him realize that his old ideas about
economics and socialism were out of date, the Lady furnishes the incentive
necessary to make Arthur act. She instils in him an inner drive, a sense
of seriousness and responsibility which he had lacked. The change she ef•
fects in him is the essential one which transforms him from an Ineffectual
simpleton to a conscientious world betterer. Shaw always invested such
drive with a spiritual and even religious significance. He frequently
satirized the English for being able to be serious only about their games,
and for being frivolous at heart. When frivolity prevails in the leaders,
chaos is inevitable. Before any real progress can be made, a basic change
of heart is necessary--a change no less far-reaching than a religious con•
version. This is why Shaw deliberately gives the Lady religious overtones.
She Is able to cure Chavender's frivolity and to advance him until there is hi
a gulf bet-ween his and Sir Dexter Rightside's view of the -world, but this in itself is not enough to make a good leader of a country.
The second act presents the consequences of Sir Arthur's three month stay in the Ladyrs sanatorium. The Prime Minister has been converted to the ideal of Socialism; the man -who had formerly believed in the idealistic glory of his profession without reference to the ugly facts around him, has had his eyes opened to the desirability of a communistic state without ap• preciating the consequences of the tremendous social upheaval such a change would bring. Chavender still believes in the rationality of mankind and does not fully reckon with the ignorance and selfish prejudice of his coun• trymen. His enthusiasm moves him to outline publicly, without consulting the rest of the government, a complete socialization of England. The list of changes that Arthur suggests sounds like a paraphrase, with a few minor changes, of Shaw's own Intelligent Women's Guide to Socialism and Capital• ism. A clash between a character having what were largely Shaw's own con• victions and the reactionary English government holds promise as one of
Shaw's more scintillating dramatic situations, but he does not present the clash directly in this play. For reasons which we may infer, Shaw used a- gain a symposium type of discussion with the dramatic presentation of Chav• ender 's Socialism reported at second hand. The Prime Minister does not play the role of chief advocate of the positive ideas, but merely throws them to the public between the acts and watches the reaction in the second act.
Shaw, as a dramatist, was committed to the task of presenting reality on the stage. For him, reality in the thirties meant a clear-sighted vision of the essential issues facing communal man in a discordant world and of h8
man's foolish reactions to them. Act Two of On the Rocks is a picture of
Democracy in action. The first act satirizes the weak administration which entirely neglected the business of government, hut the second act strikes more deeply at the basic roots of the democratic ideal.
Most of Act Two is devoted to presenting the country's reaction to
Chavender's revolutionary proposals. The scene is structured to resemble the democratic process. The arrival of each new character brings another representative section of the country on stage to discuss the proposals.
The dramatic situation becomes an open symposium which has none of the dialectic polarity of Magnus* conflict with his cabinet. There one man stood against the group; here every man, except Sir Arthur, is for himself and for the group he represents. Glenmorison is a small businessman, the
Duke Is a landowner, Sir Jafna is a plutocrat, Hotspot is a sailor, and
Basham a policeman. Since everyone except Sir Dexter and the Labor dele• gation can find something in the proposal beneficial to them, they decide, for different reasons, at first to support Sir Arthur. Glenmorison Is In favor of the speech because the national and municipal banks will provide small loans for small businesses, the Duke because death duties will be abolished, Sir Jafna because land nationalization will help his develop• ments, and Hotspot and Basham because the navy and police will receive more men and pay. They each ignore whatever in Sir Arthur's speech does not im• mediately concern them.
Only Sir Arthur is free from the self-Interest that mars the others.
He is concerned with improving his country, and has no tangible benefit to
gain if his proposal is accepted. But the whole scheme breaks down when
Sir Dexter stirs up recalcitrance, hatred, racial prejudice, and party al- k9 legiance in the others. They finally support Sir Dexter, not when he has produced any substantial arguments against the plan , but when he has ap• pealed to British snobbery. His violent outburst of personal invective against Sir Arthur's would-be supporters and his threat to abandon the coal• ition cabinet suddenly disrupts the group and ends the discussion. Sir Jaf- na withdraws his support of a country which despises him. Glenmorison and
Sir Bemrose, faced with the prospect of a truly radical stand, yield to the pressures of conformity. Glenmorison cannot sanction any political action outside the laborious parliamentary procedures, and Hotspot rises to the heat of Dexter's British supremacy.
The development of this scene underlines Shaw's increasing pessimism about the Innate goodness in man, particularly in the common man. The Labor delegation in the second act is no longer merely the unemployed seeking some means to alleviate its plight; it has become an expression of the prejudices and hatreds of the common herd. The members of the deputation (significant• ly, Hipney is absent) are not merely representative caricatures of English
Socialists too obstreperous to agree to any good ideas not coming from them; they are the representatives of the British public who pass "the verdict of democracy" on Sir Arthur's program. It becomes clear that until Chavender's change of heart becomes universal, until men evolve true social consciences,
"the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get
out of it and those who are In the world to make it a better place for every• body to live in" (V, 559) will reduce his approach to nothing. Beneficial
social changes, which Shaw did not regard as real human progress, but only material advances, must be enacted forcibly. The desperate situation drama• tized in Act One justified the use of force for Shaw. The realization of 50
this is the final stage of Chavender's political education.
As noted earlier, Sir Arthur emerges from his retreat a new kind of idealist. He seems to have embraced the communist doctrine, not only in economic matters but also in certain tactical respects, but when faced with the real possibility of blood-shed, he shrinks back. When Sir Dexter de• mands that Chavender put his cards on the table and disclose how he expects to effect his program, Sir Arthur says he does not intend to consult the people but to prorogue Parliament and then do it with police backing. It will be remembered that one of the proposals in Chavender's plan was to pro• vide vrtually unlimited funds for the police and navy. As Sir Bemrose said of the new program:
What the country wants is straight orders, discipline, character pluck, a big navy, justice for the British sailor, no sham dis• armaments, and absolute command of the sea. . . . But mind, Ar• thur, I must have twelve new aeroplane-carrying battleships. (V, 573)
Arthur readily agrees to double that number if the Admiral wishes. Thus
Arthur's optimism seems to be tempered with a realization that force may well be necessary if his plan is to work. He is of course delighted to find that nearly everyone enthusiastically accepts his program. But as the discussion progresses, Basham begins to explain that such a program will probably lead to a civil war of extermination if Sir Dexter does not support it. When Sir Dexter and the others abandon the Prime Minister, Shaw des• cribes Sir Arthur as "a cleaned-out gambler." (V, 602) Chavender was gam• bling that they all would follow him and his plan for social betterment and improved discipline, but he was never really ready to force the Issue. Wot even his conversion to true Socialist doctrine is enough to transform the 51
•weakling of Act One to a dynamic and ruthless leader. At the end of the first scene Arthur knows what has to be done, but he also knows that he is not the man to do it. The second stage of the discussion with Arthur, the
Duke, Basham, and Hipney explores the seemingly only remaining possibility for order in such a world.
The realists in Act Two, the Duke, Basham, and Hipney, understand Sir
Arthur's problem and sympathize with his attempt to lead, but they also realize that he does not have the necessary qualities. At first Arthur is frustrated by the fact that though English politics will not bear thinking about and the English nation has lost the trick of thinking, the great political Ideas came from England. The conclusion that they each come to is that until the thinkers are numerous enough to prevail, an interim dic• tator seems to be the only answer to the desperate situation. As the JMke says, "The job needs a man with nothing to lose, plenty of hard driving courage, and a complete incapacity for seeing any side of a question but his own." (V, 602-603) Hipney, whose experience with Parliament has con• vinced him that ordinary politicians will never do anything, puts his hope in any strong man who can give him a good lead. Even Basham, who is part
of the established system, knows that "Blackguardocracy" works only up to a point and that men of action must clear the way for the thinkers. But although they know what is required, they also know that none of them can do it. The Duke "is not built that way," Basham has not ambition enough,
and Hipney is a follower not a leader. Faced with this gloomy picture of
reality, Sir Arthur suffers a heartbreak reminiscent of Ellie Dunn's: "I
am enjoying the enormous freedom of having found myself out. . . . That
looks like despair; but it is really the beginning of hope, and the end 52 of hypocrisy." (V, 6l8) But the hope is faint indeed. It is true that Ar• thur as an individual has progressed in self-awareness and social conscience, hut like Magnus' victory over his cabinet in The Apple Cart, the individual's advance is over-shadowed by the unchanged general social context. While
Domesday, Basham, and Hipney wait for a leader to appear, they do try to keep in the meantime some rationality intact. Hipney accompanies unemploy• ment deputations, Basham tries to keep order, and the Duke tries to be helpful in his cultured way, but until there is a positive direction given to the country, their efforts seem futile.
The ending of On the Rocks, like those of the other plays under con• sideration, is slightly puzzling. Several passages seem to be ambiguous and to leave the play unresolved. Just when the action of the play seems to lead to the gloomy conclusion that nothing can be done about unemployment and blackguardocracy until someone cruel enough and single-minded enough ar• rives to force the country into socialism, Hilda rushes into the office to announce that the unemployed are rioting in Downing Street, At last some kind of action is happening, but the unemployed have no leaders and can only break the wrong windows, while the mounted police, with their splendid horses and military discipline, break the rioters' heads. Both Sir Arthur and Lady
Chavender turn their backs on the unpleasantness, knowing that rioting is futile. But Hilda, enraged at the brutality of the police, is furious with the crowd: "Oh, why dont they make a stand, the cowards." (V, 619) The violence which had seemed so remote in the newspapers is suddenly real and horrible to Hilda. She wants to throw stones at the police. But when the unemployed are given a chance to break out of the cul-de-sac and they at• tempt to rally their spirit with a song, Hilda can no longer remain a spec- 53
tator; she rushes out to join them.
If the play had ended at this point, then Shaw would have implied a more optimistic outlook for England. Hilda, while a minor character, is a
capable person. Wot only does she handle most of the bureaucratic business
of the Prime Minister in Act One, she also knows about Marx and the more modern proponents of Communism. (V, 567) Thus her final action could have been a symbolic hint for the future. Shaw frequently placed his hope on capable and determined young heroines in his plays. But he did not end the play with Hilda's action. Sir Arthur calms his wife, who fears for Hilda's
safety. Hilda is well-known and will not be hurt by the police; she will be back for tea. She will have no effect on the riot, but Sir Arthur wonders what would happen if others like Hilda also were to arise. The play ends with Arthur's musing, but as usual Shaw has the last word. In the after• word he cynically undercuts any hope he had displayed through Hilda: "Un•
employed England, however, can do nothing but continue to sing, as best it
can to a percussion accompaniment of baton thwacks." (v, 620) What then was Shaw's position?
In 1932^ Shaw could see almost no way of avoiding the "catastrophe"
facing Capitalist England when the massive unrest of the unemployed would
explode into violence. If the property system was defended with violence
it would be overthrown eventually with violence. Thus the socialist, even
the Fabian, should not want to forestall the clash. Violence was a desper• ate but necessary remedy. Shaw really saw little hope for a peaceful sol-
^For Shaw's most complete statement at this time see "in Praise of Guy Fawkes," pp. 257-258. 54
lotion, but if a peaceful settlement was to be possible, it could only be
effected through a younger generation which would be educated in socialism.
This possibility, while desirable, seemed remote to Shaw at the time, but he
did not fail to include it in On the Rocks. The domestic scenes which served
in Act One to underline the political situation, in Act Two offer a remote, but possible alternative to the grim prospect of a dictatorship. The younger generation assumes a more important role in the play than has gener•
ally been supposed.
Clearly England in On the Rocks needs capable leaders, but Shaw does
not state overtly where they will come from. He does, however, offer hints
of two possible sources—both from a younger generation. At first glance
the marriages which are proposed in Act Two seem out of place. Yet through
them Shaw may be suggesting a possible way of averting the dictatorship
that the rest of the play seems to endorse. Shaw particularly stresses the marriage between David and Aloysia. They cut across class boundaries and
form a new alliance which may prove beneficial. They openly confront class
prejudice--one of the forces which disrupted Sir Arthur's plan. Aloysia is
efficient and well-educated in Socialism, but her arrogance prevents her
from exercising her abilities fruitfully. Until she meets David she auto•
matically hates all members of the upper class. But David, who is strug•
gling to escape an effete society, seems to be able to spark a new drive in
Aloysia. Together they may be symbolic in the younger gneration of a new
development, which if it becomes widespread could avert the violent cata•
clysm facing England by initiating a "Socialist movement . . . overwhelming
enough to put out of countenance the propertied resistance." Yet because
6"ln Praise of Guy Fawkes," p. 258. 55
Shaw does not at this time place very much hope on such a solution, he does not put the marriage in a strong dramatic position. Still showing vestiges of her old arrogant belief in the superiority of her modern education, Al• oys ia appears ridiculous when she explains her feelings for David in doctrin• aire Life Force terms. Aloysia and David symbolically represent the possi• bility that a new alliance between elements of a younger generation can over• come the hatred and ignorance that will erupt into violence, but that possi• bility is faint.
Hilda seems to offer another alternative--one that explains the neces• sity of rioting and violence. The unemployed can do nothing by themselves to remedy the situation because the country needs intelligent leaders, not angry masses. But the riots may serve a purpose. If England is to arise, it must be the capable young people represented by Hilda who may be inspired by the shocking violence to abandon the old system and forge out a new one.
In On the Rocks Shaw places more hope on the ability of violence to chasten a younger generation into providing the necessary leadership than on any peaceful solution. But the play suggests that both solutions are little more than fanciful hopes. The prevailing mood of the play, reinforced by the structure, is one of uneasiness.
We have seen how the structure of Act One reinforces the theme in its calculated and chaotic looseness; the structure of Act Two also gives sup• port to its theme. The disorderly discussion of Chavender's speech is an effective satire on actual parliametnary debate, ending inconclusively and dissolving in selfishness and prejudice even when the issues at hand promise massive benefits to society as a whole. Since England had no strong leader to deliver the country out of its chaos, the abscence of a 56
strong central character in the play reflects reality. Shaw presents the ideological conflict in the play obliquely. Sir Arthur's new found commun• ist ideology may be confronting the other reactionary points of view, but
Shaw does not arrange the conflict in terms of Chavender's personal struggle with his coalition cabinet. Although on the stage most of the time, he act• ually participates in the extended discussion very little. The discussion is not between the prime minister and the others, but is a chaotic and dis• cursive wrangling among various representative segments of society. The result is a dramatic chaos which expresses the political situation more vividly than a more orderly structure, .might.
But symposium discussion fulfils another function in the play. Act
Two is a symposium not only where the various problems are examined from various perspectives, but where possible solutions are too. Thus symposium discussion serves a double purpose in this play. On the one hand it por• trays England's chaos, and on the other, examines many sides of the complex problems causing the chaos.
Despite his shocking statements praising dictatorship and mass exter• mination in Stalinist Russia, Shaw was not fully reconciled in his own mind about such extreme measures. At first glance the preface to On the Rocks
seems to give full support to the Russian experiment, but that Shaw was
uneasy about many severe restrictions on what he had always considered es•
sential liberties is apparent in the many contradictory statements. In•
censed at the ability of social parasites and exploiters to wreck society,
Shaw favored centralized compulsion to conformity. Yet he knew that all
dynamic advances are first preluded by inspired criticism of the old system.
Thus Shaw found himself in the conundrum of demanding conformity and toler- 57
ation at the same time. This is the problem -which provided the intellect• ual drama in Saint Joan, and -which Shaw never was able to solve satisfact•
orily except in mystical creative evolutionary terms. The realization that man had not yet evolved enough to make the practical problems of govern• ment obsolete, and that the complexity of world government made the problems ever more urgent, drove Shaw, in the political plays, to suggest desperate interim remedies which he hoped might work. But his Instinctive reticence to accept unhesitatingly measures which he must have known would have si• lenced his own writing, appears not only in the ambiguous resolution of On the Rocks but also In the structure and characterization.
In Aet One, Hipney most closely expresses Shaw's ideas. In this act,
Hipney is the realist who criticizes the existing system with carefully controlled satire and keen insight. Because Shaw is always at his best when he is a critic, Hipney sparkles as the most lively character in the act. But in Act Two when Shaw tries to present a solution to the problem, he consciously or otherwise shares his thoughts among four characters, and no, one of them stands out as clearly or as strongly as Hipney in Act One.
Since no character dominates, the ideas the Duke, Sir Broadfoot, Hipney, and Arthur express remain unresolved dramatically and intellectually.
Domesday's description of the kind of man necessary for the job of dictator
is hardly a list of admirable qualities. His admission that he will support
such a man only as far as he can without committing himself dangerously, in• dicates his realization that such a dictatorship is dangerous. Basham coun•
sels Sir Arthur not to run his head up against the system until some workable
substitute plan is ready, even though he says he would support anyone who
looked like a "winner." Even Hipney, who most openly advocates the need 58
for a strong leader to make the people do what was good for them, and who voices many of Shaw's views, including the need to choose only from among qualified leaders, offers only passivity at the end. Sir Arthur also re• verts to passivity after his enlightenment. It is indeed a sad situation when the enlightened must wait for brute force to lead the way; yet this is what the play suggests. But Shaw's refusal to give any single charac• ter his unanimous support, or to allow any single character to triumph in any but a most limited way, indicates at least a subconscious reticence in accepting a proposal which starts with the intellectual extermination of social parasites and ends in mass murder and civil war. THE SIMPLETON OF THE UNEXPECTED ISLES
As the -world events continued to become increasingly ominous in the thirties, Shaw alternated between the desire to treat specific political problems, and the realization that a more general, more widespread change in basic human nature was essential if civilization was to survive at all.
Of course, this duality of approach, involving two very different time schemes, was not new to Shaw. It stems from his committment to socialism and his belief in Creative Evolution. Both doctrines sought the betterment of man; socialism by changing man's immediate environment, and Creative Ev• olution by providing the means to evolve a superman. One critic suggests
"that Creative Evolution was Shaw's attempt, as a philosopher, to overcome
"the shortcomings of our finite lives and our corrupt society through a higher synthesis . . . which was by its remoteness in time, a doctrine of
immediate despair."-'- While this "immediate despair" is not very clear in
the earlier plays which deal with Creative Evolution, it is suggested in the late plays, respite his praise of Stalinist communism, Shaw is clearly uneasy about dictatorship in On the Rocks. The tone at the end of this play
is far more despairing than at the end of Too True. His next play may be
Shaw's reaction to the chaos that seemed to be engulfing humanity In On the
Rocks. The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (193*0 continues to explore
the problems facing modern man, but Shaw abandons the Immediate political
scene in England, and withdraws to a Sarcastic world where he can examine the
-'-Fred Mayne, The Wit and Satire of Bernard Shaw (New York: St. Mar•
tin's Press, 1967), p. 101. 60
problems in more fundamental and abstract terms through symbolism and alle• gory.
One of the major themes of The Simpleton develops from the Lady in
Grey. Appearing only briefly in On the Rocks, she nevertheless represents an important concept •which Shaw develops, more fully in the next play: that what is absolutely essential to any social progress is a revolution in social attitude no less fundamental and far-reaching than a religious reformation.
The Simpleton is perhaps one of Shaw's most intellectually satisfying at• tempts to define the nature of this reformation.
The Lady in Grey effected a miraculous change in Sir Arthur Chavender, but the nature of the miracle is sometimes blurred by Chavender's total con- versionto "boiling socialism." It will be remembered that Chavender does not get his socialist ideas from his mysterious lady doctor, but something far more important: a social conscience. This comes as he casts off his
"bad case of frivolity" and takes on a new seriousness. It becomes obvious in the second act of On the Rocks that until Chavender's new sense of respon•
sibility becomes universal, no social progress can be made with Democracy.
Sir Arthur is finally beaten down, however, not only by the selfishness of his cabinet members, but also by the sudden outbreak of narrow-minded prej• udice that Sir Dexter arouses in the others. Thus the two major blocks to
social progress lie not so much in the political realm'as in the realm of
human nature. In The Simpleton, Shaw not only deals with these two problems,
but extends these ideas into a jubilant statement of faith in the ultimate
principle of life: the need to be able to adapt to the totally unexpected.
Upon analysis, this play reveals a unity that belies its seeming desultory
thematic and structural content. The many little scenes all are variations 61 upon the unexpected and are arranged "with an artistic, though intellectual orchestration.
Shaw tried In The Simpleton to encompass a wide range of themes. In fact the play has been criticized as a random collection of warmed-over Sha-
p vianisms. But if the play does contain a wealth of familiar Shavian ideas, it does so with a calculation that contributes to the central theme. Shaw actually uses his audience's familiarity with his other plays to build up a sequence of events which move to the unexpected conclusion. The play Is structured In four, nearly equal sections, each purposely brief, almost ab• stract. Shaw achieves a conciseness which at first glance may seem like poor workmanship, but which is a mature handling of his elements in an in• tellectual drama.
The play contains a series of "conversions" which are frequently pre• sented only symbolically. They are meant to be accepted intellectually by the audience so that a whole sequence can be rapidly established and a con• clusion reached within the one play. In other words, Shaw is primarily con• cerned with his ideas In this play and uses a dramatic shorthand which relies on previous knowledge of Shavian thought and therefore could not have been used early in his career. He does not dwell on the drama of the conversions, but focuses on their significance within the play itself--something Shaw was unable to do in the earlier plays. If this technique removes some of the
"drama" from the play, it also intensifies the intellectual response that
Shaw hoped to generate. The Simpleton is only partly a "Vision of Judgment." In spite of its
2John Gassner, Masters of the Drama (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 195^), p. 615. 62
"hieratic" subtitle, the play spends only the last part of the second act on the judgment theme. The rest of the play deals -with the contemporary life
-which not only -warrants a vision of judgment, but desperately needs one if civilization is to escape total extinction. Shaw does not, however, present the immediate workings of the real world, but comments on them from an in• creasingly fantastic other world, a remote and unexpected tropical island.
He develops in allegorical terms a larger picture of the need for an exten• sive re-evaluation of the entire social creed. In the process several themes emerge, all of which relate to the major theme: that salvation can only come from a conscious expanding of the mind, and a flexibility towards the unex• pected. The whole play, in fact, aims at defining the unexpected.
The Prologue to the play has been criticized as superfluous and awk• ward in conception because it seems to have so little relation to the rest of the action. But while the Prologue, particularly the first scene, does little to launch ordinary action in the play, it does provide an essential overture to the mood and fantasy of the following two acts. Shaw is more consistent in his use of fantasy in The Simpleton than in Too True to be
Good. In the earlier play fantasy is used mainly to create a mood of chaos.
But although it is an important structural device in the play, It is subord• inate to other techniques. The fantasy is not consistent in each of the three acts, but shifts to show other aspects of the bizarre world. But the fantasy gradually increases in the Prologue to The Simpleton and is contin• ued throughout the play. In fact the fantasy which defines the unexpected
is one of the major unifying devices in the play. It is the unexpected which
3st. John Ervine, Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work and Friends (London: Constable and Co., 1956), p. 557- 63 is not only the main educating force in the world, hut is also the chief manifestation of the vital principle. The Prologue establishes the tone of the unexpected for the play.
The three scenes which make up the Prologue display a steady increase in both the unexpected and the fantastic. The opening scene, set in an em• igration office at a tropical port in the British Empire, presents very briefly two products of British Imperialism and mental Insularity--the emi• gration officer, "an unsatisfactory young man of unhealthy habits," and his shabbily attired clerk. The climate of the "earthly paradise" breeds unhap- piness, despair, and suicide, but it is not the tropical climate so much as the climate of Imperialism, the spiritual, moral and intellectual stagnancy that produces creatures like Hyering and Wilks. Under the thin veneer of apparent calm and well-being there lies the continual hate and snobbery which erupts in such men who have not the spiritual sustenance necessary to live without all the artificial props of civilization. Like Sempronius' father in The Apple Cart, the Imperialists find themselves amid life and and loveliness and want only to die to escape the "horrors." Shaw uses Wilks to represent the doom of such people if left to their own devices. Wilks is a victim of the same moral chaos that Shaw depicted in Too True to be Good and he reacts to the tedious frustration of his life with a violence akin to that of Harry Smiler who also resorted to killing as "a sort of fulfilment."
(IV, 677) Yet the incongruity and unexpectedness of such a slovenly person being a frustrated Cecil Rhodes who will attempt anything to gain some kind
of recognition, is but a prelude to the fantastic conversion that Hyering
undergoes in the next scenes.
The emigration officer is saved from the same fate as befell Wilks by Gk
his removal from the atmosphere of Imperialsim and the rigidity of mind it involves. The native priest introduces the first suggestion of the unusual to the play. His pseudo-mystical religious jargon and the obviously allegor• ical symbolism of the cliffs of life and death take the scene further and further from immediate reality and yet provide cryptic comment on the Eng• lish and the world just seen in the opening scene. Looking for death,
Hyering is kicked over the cliff of life instead of the nearby cliff of death and undergoes a literal and spiritual cleansing in the resulting bap• tismal dunking in the ocean. The regeneration is typically Shavian. Hyering loses his morbid preoccupation -with personal trifles and his consequent un- happiness and despair, and he gains a new open-mindedness. His racial prej• udice disappears and he is obviously attracted to the dark Prola. The young lady tourist who had been manifestly healthier than Hyering in her cheerful acceptance of life is seen nevertheless to possess an innate English narrow- mindedness with respect to religion and sexual morality. She too needs the regenerative baptism in the Influence of the East that so transformed Hyer• ing.
Shaw had briefly foreshadowed his increased interest in Eastern moral and cultural superiority in the third section of Back to Methuselah, but not until after his tour to the Orient and India*4" do his dramas explore more ex-
^The Shaws visited the Orient in January 1933 on their first world tour. Although Shaw disliked guided tours, and consistently avoided the efforts of his admirers to show him the local sights, he expressed interest In the Jain temples in India and visited some while his ship was anchored at Bombay. For an account of the visit see Hiralal Amritaal Shah, "Bernard Shaw in Bombay," Shaw Bulletin, I (November, 1956), 8-10. Shaw displayed an int• erest in eastern religion and mysticism in his writing after this time. Apart from Pra and Prola in The Simpleton(l934), Shaw introduced in Buoyant Billions (1948), the oriental priest who ministers to Bill Buoyant's spiritual needs in a "Chinese temple on a domestic scale." (I, 771) The "Revised Screen Version" of Major Barbara (19^5) includes a lengthy description of a Jain temple which 65
tensively the need to enlarge the West's insularity, possibly with the vast
cultural heritage of the East. Shaw had long criticized the inflexible Brit•
ish mini on many matters and the bulk of his plays depend for their drama upon
the conflict between "free thinkers" and representatives of die-hard conserv•
atism. The Simpleton is his major dramatic Inquiry into the possibility of
enriching the impoverished Western mind with the views of the East. Pra
and Prola are the symbolic representatives of the mysterious East, but in
enlightening the Westerners they serve a purpose similar to that of the mys•
terious Lady in On the Rocks. The influence of Pra and Prola is undeniably
beneficial to the various Westerners who come to the cave temple. The change
is expressed symbolically by the baptisms, but it is clearly a result of the widening influence of the East. Hyering, the once slovenly and ill-mannered
emigration officer, becomes "disciplined, responsible and well groomed."
Lady Farwaters, formerly "a gaunt and affected tourist visiting cave temples
and distributing tracts to the heathen" becomes "a bland and attractive ma•
tron. "
The immediate result of the oriental influence is to remove many of the
prejudices and life-denying inhibitions from the four English visitors. Hav•
ing been cleansed, they decide to join Pra and Prola in a Utopian communal
family. The main action of the play proper revolves around this experiment
and the consequences of it. The scene moves to a tropical Pacific island
has a mysterious atmosphere of peacefulness that impresses all who enter. Shaw wrote In the Preface to Farfetched Fables (1950) that eight thousand years ago the Jainists had carried religion to the utmost reach of the human mind. (VI, 467) And in 1935 Shaw wrote to Fame Laurentia McLachlan that in the Jain temples "you escape the frightful parochiality of our little sects of Protestants and Catholics, and recognize the idea of God everywhere .... " "The Nun and the Pramatist," Cornhill Magazine, 3rd ser., CLXVIII (1951), 453- 66 which had risen unexpectedly out of the sea at about the time of the action
in the Prologue. Sir Charles and Hyering have become the Governor and po•
litical secretary of the Isle, and seem to be far more capable than other
British Imperialists. But while their main objective is the establishment
of a unique eugenic experiment to blend the flesh and spirit of the West with the flesh and the spirit of the East, the experiment has another important
objective, again typically Shavian. As Sir Charles explains to Iddy:
It is part of our plan to open people's minds on the subject of eugenics and the need for mixing not only western and eastern culture but eastern and western blood. ... We want to set the the intelligent people talking, and to strike the stupid people dumb. (VI, 570)
Thus an important aspect of the project is to create an expanding influence among others of the world to re-evaluate their whole moral system and to cut across their narrow national and racial boundaries in the process.
It is with the introduction of Pra and Prola that Shaw begins to pre• pare for the apparent rejection of Creative Evolution. He does this by assigning to these representatives of mysticism many of his well-known
ideas. They are vegetarians and they are clearly superior to the unconverted
Englishmen in their criticism of the more obvious faults. Many of Shaw's
quips about religion, marriage and sex come from their mouths. Shaw care•
fully prepares his audience, who thinks it knows and understands his ideas, by
suggesting that Pra and Prola are his mouthpieces. They easily overcome the
standard kinds of idealism and Philistinism in the others. The young woman,
at first the most vital of the English representatives, is shocked by the
strange logic of her mysterious hosts in the cave. She is really very con•
ventional in her whole outlook despite her motto. She cannot understand how 67 priestesses can marry or how any woman can be married and be anything other than mere wife. Lady Farwaters confronts the "heathens" with the most in• vidious kind of Christianity. Her narrow stereotyped conception of God is exposed in her vulgar tour of the cave. Sir Charles represents English aristocratic snobbishness, but like the others, he easily capitulates before the charm of the East. Tt is Ironic that each of the English tourists must be actually seduced from his old ways. But this last twist in the plot be• fore Act One is simply one more of the unexpected happenings.
Act One opens upon an incongruous setting. It is the garden of a stately house, government house in fact, but dominating the view are four hieratic shrines containing very life-like but oriental "gods." At first
Shaw appears simply to be continuing his exposure of English religion when the shy and very timid young clergyman is confronted by the exotic beauty of the garden and the two female "gods." But Iddy's importance in the play does not depend primarily on his religion. Prola even accepts his attitude toward Christianity. To him it just means "everything that is good and lovely and kind and holy." (VI, 565) While his religion is very naive, it at least does not include the sinister aggression and violence that is found in more militant dogmatists. Iddy Hammingtap is more important as a repre• sentative of English insularity whose whole code of being is utterly shat• tered by the impact of a foreign idea. Of course the proposal offered to him is a little bizarre! The "super family" offers to take him in as an• other husband to all the ladies, and to make him the bishop of the island to give a proper air of moral uprightness to the experiment. The excessive moral conscience with which Pra hopes to nourish the conscienceless Vashti and Maya rises up in Iddy in a sudden childish negation of all his feelings. 68
He makes a final attempt to strengthen his moral starch hy concentrating on
England:
They want me to disgrace my cloth; hut I wont. I wont relax: I wont disobey my conscience: I wont smell those flowers: I wont look at the sky. Nature is not good for me here. Nature is eastern here: its poison to an Englishman. I will think of Eng- _ land and tighten myself up and pull myself together. England'. . . . England that is me: I am that England. (VI, 576)
Nevertheless he collapses before the beauty of the two lovely "phantasms" and the first act ends with them all embracing with interlaced arms and chanting the jargon of love that the girls have coined. Iddy's simple mind gives up rather than worry over the confusion.
The eugenic experiment which is elaborately explained in Act One is more, however, than a contrivance to upset English moral complacency. It serves other major functions, one of which lies within the structure of the fantasy which informs the play. As already noted, the Prologue launches a sequence of increasingly extravagant fantasy. The four westerners, by the end of the Prologue, are physically attracted by the two orientals, and in the next act the six have formed an experimental family whose express pur• pose is to breed and educate superior children. Shaw suddenly springs the results of the experiment on the audience in Act One. The "superior" child• ren are even more unusual than their multiple parents. They have completely divorced themselves from reality. They live, in an artificial world manu• factured from fantastic distortions of childhood fairy tales. They do not even speak an ordinary language, but a specially devised kind of mystical jargon.
The four children are probably meant to be a warning to the audience.
Shaw complicates the issue somewhat in the Preface when he casually dis- counts the "whole eugenic experiment as a mere dramatic trifle intended only to introduce the four "phantasms" -which never really existed. (VI, 5^-1) It is part of Shaw's point that the eugenic experiment is a mistaken attempt to further Creative Evolution. Obviously many people thought that in debunking
•what appeared to be a dramatization of his own ideas Shaw was rejecting some of his dogma. But this is where such people failed to understand the unex• pected. Shaw often criticized those who perverted or distorted his ideas.
Hipney's criticism of the book-fed socialists In On the Rocks is one example.
In The Simpleton, Shaw uses the eugenic experiment and the phantasms in a more subtle satire of the misuse of his Ideas.
In Act One Lady Farwaters explains to Iddy why the children are so un• usual. They are the product of an attempted blending of the desirable qual• ities of the East and West, not only genetically but culturally as well.
But the result Is a futile potpourri instead of a harmonious blend. At one level of allegorical interpretation the children represent those who per• vert good ideas, perhaps Shaw's ideas. Prola, in an attempt to infuse an open-minded idealism into the children, taught them a special game called the heavenly parliament. This may be symbolic of Shaw's discussions of political questions. But the children used their imaginations not to seek new truths, but to create a great institution more hide-bound by rituals than any actual government. The result is a kind of perverted ultimate communism in which the people are communal to the point of being one an• other. The children refuse to accept any other alternative, insisting that the world be modeled after their artificial plan. This can be interpreted as Shaw further criticizing those who distort his ideas by either taking
some of his examples literally or by failing to use a truly open mind in 70 evaluating them. While this kind of interpretation of Shaw's allegory may seem extreme in itself, Shaw, by resorting to symbolic devices, invites us to explore his ideas. He shifts his stance repeatedly in this play, allow• ing his fantasy seemingly to wander how it will, but he always relates it to his central themes.
Act Two divides naturally into two major sections--the four short scenes up to the judgment, and the two scenes including the judgment and Pra and Prola's conversion. Divided this way the play has four nearly equal sec• tions. Throughout each part Shaw carries his two central themes simultaneous• ly. The theme of insularity in all its ramifications is overtly handled, be• ing the subject matter of each scene. The second and ultimately more im• portant theme for Shaw, is handled more subtly through the play's fantasy and structure, both of which serve to define the unexpected. Only In the final scene do the two themes come together openly, where they are fused in the triumphant exultation and affirmation of faith. As we shall see, the ending of The Simpleton is not a disjointed manipulation as some have thought, but is the keystone to the whole play.
The first half of Act Two consists of four short scenes which start the final rushing together of the major themes. Shaw quickly marshals with an almost kaleidescopic effect the evidence, both religious and political, which warrants the apocalyptic ending of the play. The many notes struck seemingly at random earlier begin to sound like the final chord of doom for all the narrow-minded people of the world.
The act opens with the totally incongruous result of Iddy's joining the family. As Pra says:
It would be impossible to conceive a human being of less conse- TI
quence In the world. And yet, look! There is the Imperial Ar• mada, in which every petty province insists on its separate fleet, every trumpery islet its battleship, its cruiser, or at least its sloop or gunboat! Why are they here . . . ? Solely on account of the simpleton. (VI, 58I-582)
Once the shock of the discrepancy between the cause and the effect has sub•
sided, the Unexpected Islanders realized that the fleet is not so much rep•
resentative of "every petty province" as of every petty idea in religion.
Shaw has returned to the Imperialism theme of the Prologue only to extend the significance of insular thinking to another realm. Much of the dis•
cord of the world, in politics and religion, is the direct result of mili•
tant dogmatism. Typical of the fanciful distortion in this play is Shaw's
-equating of each gunboat with some arrogant religious sect. Sanctions which used to mean the approval of the gods now mean bombs full of poison gas. On•
ly by tricking the squabbling factions into thinking the island is infested with smallpox can Pra avert a major naval battle over minuscule details of
ritualism.
The mood suddenly shifts from the tension in the threatening harbor
scene to a contrasting one of utter languor in the peaceful garden. Yet out
of this atmosphere comes another unexpected revelation, again with Iddy as
the principal character. Iddy becomes the focal point for all the failures
of the eugenic experiment. From the beginning, the four "phantasms," the products of the experiment, have been raised-in religious and social en•
lightenment. Told that they should love one another, they find themselves
hating Iddy, the most recent addition to the family. But even the simpleton
can expand his outlook and produce two sporadically cogent "sermons" on
eternity and love which make even Prola listen. It will be remembered that 72
both subjects of the sermon have appeared earlier in the play, but -were un• developed. We first saw Lady Farwaters trying to "save" Pra from his heath• enism by giving him a pamphlet on eternity, and it was also she who told the children that they should love one another. Of course she, "with ber English ladylike bring-up," was also a product of the same religious insularity that threatened to rain destruction on the island only minutes earlier. It is typical of Shaw's skill in handling so many little themes when he picks up almost forgotten threads and weaves them into the pattern later.
Iddy's sermons Ironically give new perspectives on conventional Eng• lish religious ideas. While he cannot fully develop his sermons he can show that the concept of eternity as a timeless and fixed state is unsatis• factory, especially if pleasure is eternal. The experiment has proven, even to his feeble mind, that one can have too much of a good thing—even love.
"Nothing is lovelier than love, up to a point. But it is my belief that some day we'll have to try something else. If we dont we'll come to hate one another." (VI, 5^5) When Iddy further realizes that love is good only for the lover not the beloved, he is in fact turning away from himself to find himself—a parallel to the expansion of personal and cultural horizons that is part of Shaw's major theme.
Having briefly shown the results of insularity in religion, Shaw re• turns to the area of politics. Just as insularity, hostility and jealousy prevail in religion, so they do in contemporary politics. Again Shaw re• sorts to fantasy to show the disintegrating effect of closed-mindedness and selfishness. The British Empire breaks up because England herself withdraws!
England strikes for independence and declares for a "right little tight little island." Ireland will lead the attack on treason and disruption. 73
But the dominions instantly embark on an embroglio over petty details and
"rights" just as the Imperial Armada had. Wearily the Unexpected Islanders face the problem of government in such a -world. Again it is Iddy who has a new insight into the problem. In a small organization, such as the family or the little colony on the Unexpected Isle, government is possible. Prola can rule because she knows what is happening In her house, but no one can know the real political facts in a larger organization, because people are incapable of perceiving ideas different from their own. As Iddy says people
"dont live in a world of truth: they live in a world of their own ideas."
They are isolated from reality by their own ideas.
Since no human being is capable of the omniscience necessary for a really just central government, Iddy and Pra suggest that perhaps govern• ment is impossible, that no one should try to force his own ideas on others.
Each person or each group small enough for true homogeneity, should concern itself only with itself, with establishing the beautiful and the good in accordance with its own original Ideas, created by itself out of its own nature. But Prola knows that such enlightened parochialism is also impos• sible since the great majority of people do not have any original ideas.
These people have to be told what to do and what to think. In other words, government is absolutely necessary in such a world. But immediately the question of how to enforce the desired conformity arises. Iddy, still very much an English curate, replies that the problem is very simple, that one only need to convince the masses of the propriety of the ideas. Real• izing that this solution neglects to account for those people who are in• capable of feeling the propriety, Prola asks what is to be done with them.
To this question there is no answer except from the "antiphonal quartet," •which chants "Kill." (VI, 591)
The four lovely phantasms serve as a constant reminder during this scene of the terrible latent violence and dogmatism that is ever liable to erupt. They are part of the ubiquitous insularity of the -world, Shaw uses them to provide a rising crescendo of ominous thunder while the others are analyzing the problems and trying to find some earthly solution. Their staccato thoughtless platitudes increase the sense of tension and frustra• tion in the world. Violence and force, cupidity and idolatry seem to pre• vail by sheer strength of numbers and loudness of voice. Thus the enigma is insoluble until the judgment provides a solution which does not .rely upon any one person or group of persons to rule, but upon a sudden and mass in• culcation of real responsibility on pain of extinction.
Looking back over the development of the play up to this point we can see that all the many scenes have led inexorably to the necessity of the judgment day. The individual events and people have each contributed to the disintegration of world society into the chaos that is symbolically portrayed in the first part of Act Two. While it is easy to see why the petty and the frivolous, the selfish somebodies and the noisy nobodies fall victim to the weeding process, the failure of the eugenics experiment and by implication its originators seems at first glance to be a retraction by Shaw of many of his well-known ideas. By showing that Pra and Prola's plans were futile, he seems to be recanting all his earlier ideas on evolving the super-race, all his ideas on the biological reason for marriage. While Pra and Prola seem to be spokesmen for Shaw in more than one way, especially when earlier in the play they expose the stuffy, unhealthy ideas of the English, they still are guilty of a species of narrow-mindedness, and do not stand en- 75
tirely for Shaw's position. There are numerous instances when Pra and even
Prola appear ridiculous. They have become complacent in their little colony
of avant-garde breeders, even when they see the obvious failure of the child•
ren to advance evolution. The judgment then is not a judgment of Shaw, but
of all those who still display an insularity of mind. In conducting the
eugenics experiment, Pra and Prola took a far too limited view of evolution.
Uo matter how enlightened they seemed compared to the other characters, they nevertheless were unable to see in advance the actual steps the Life Force would take in evolving a better race. Like Shaw they could see how the many forms of insularity were leading the world to destruction, but unlike
Shaw they failed to see that any plans on an individual and isolated level
of action are bound to fail or change in the long range process of evolu• tion.
The vision of judgment Shaw affords in the play is a fanciful and ar•
tistic way not only of continuing his theme of the unexpected, but also of
restating a theme found in many of his earlier plays. Following the pattern
of reversing or distorting conventional ideas to suit his purpose, Shaw conceives of a modern "last judgment" to be executed by angels and announced by trumpets. But the purpose of this judgment is to enforce arbitrarily a
real sense of responsibility in all human beings. Such a judgment involves a true and continuous evaluation of each person's worth in the world. As
Hyering says, "the day of judgment is not the end of the world but the be•
ginning of a real human responsibility." (VI, 607) Shaw reaffirms in The
Simpleton what the Lady in Grey stood for, and again he uses pseudo mystical
religious terms, but this time he links his theme with his Life Force ideas.
In doing so he avoids the problem of dealing with the immediate unpleasant 76
possibilities in world events and can achieve an artistic unity if not a
more satisfying solution to world tensions.
The judgment effects a final "education" of the Easterners who had ed•
ucated so many of the Westerners. Pra and Prola are forced to realize the
failure of their experiment. Of course they had known for a long time that
Maya, Vashti, Kanchin, and Janga were hopeless nonentities who were incap•
able of dealing with reality and who had no sense of responsibility or moral
conscience whatever. But the new dispensation suddenly throws a harsh new
light on all people and their actions, and causes Pra and Prola to look at
the fundamental problems of their experiment. At first Pra feels a complete
failure: "Meanwhile we are face to face with the fact that we two have made a precious mess of our job of producing the coming race by a mixture of east and west. We are failures. We shall disappear." (VT, 6l0) But Prola, al• ways the more perceptive, realizes that the insurance for survival does not lie in any one human scheme, but in the ability to achieve an ultimate open- mindedness, a true flexibility to adapt to whatever the changing conditions may be. She is a citizen of the Unexpected Isles and is only at home with the unexpected. For her and for the human race the only real security is in an undespairing acceptance of life and all its unexpected vagaries. She de•
fies the mood of defeat the others feel, and rises to a jubilant hymn of faith in the life process. Her strength inspires Pra to see his role in
evolution too. He must strive for more power and knowledge while Prola
creates new life. Thus Shaw ends this play with an affirmation reminiscent
of the ending of the Hell Scene in Man and Superman. There is, however, a
significant difference between Prola's and Dona Anna's quest for the super•
man. Dona. Anna gives evolutionary meaning to Ann Whitefield's capture of 77
Tanner. Creative Evolution -works in Man and Superman through specific
couplings of individuals. But in The Simpleton Creative Evolution is more
remote and abstract. While Prola seems to glory in her woman's capacity for
giving birth, she really finds strength in her ability to "wrestle with life as it comes." Only in this way will the evolutionary process be stimulated.
Shaw finds solace in Creative Evolution, but the remoteness of the vision
of a better life suggests the depth of his despair after On the Rocks.
The Simpleton is nevertheless a reaffirmation of Shaw's belief in
Creative Evolution as well as a fanciful but cogent analysis of world prob• lems . What distinguishes this play from some of the others of the same per• iod Is not the extravagant fantasy, the weak characters or the very loose structure, but the integration of theme and technique that Shaw manages here. The play is a fantasia on the unexpected. The ending of the play is not a patched up affair to save the Shavian "mouthpieces", but the log•
ical culmination of the whole play. Shaw has used the fantasy and the loose structure all along to prepare for this ending and this is what makes this play intellectually at least one of the most satisfying of the late plays. GENEVA
Geneva (1938) is the last Shavian play to deal with urgent contempor•
ary social problems. It is the culmination of Shaw's effort to provide
astute social criticism while the world, situation became increasingly omin•
ous in the thirties. In Geneva Shaw continues to probe the question of how
to provide proper government, not just for an individual country, but for
the whole world. Paced with the severe limitations of even the most en•
lightened people, Shaw could not solve the basic problems of government in
The Simpleton; he had to resort again to life force evolutionary ideas for
hope. But under the pressure of the increasing threat of war Shaw reopens
in Geneva the problem of governing a world of ignorant, narrow-minded and prejudiced people. He shows how insular thinking in world politics defeat•
ed the potential tool of effective government--the League of Nations. But while the play examines how ignorance disrupted the world of 1938, Shaw
does not use the structural patterns of the play to reinforce his theme.
He seems to have abandoned his careful dramaturgy in his concern for pre• senting an urgent comment on an even more urgent world situation. Shaw can
no longer maintain his aesthetic distance from his subject. His own close
involvement with the very topical events and people he portrays in the play weakens rather than strengthens his theme. In spite of Shaw's attempts to
improve Geneva in his many revisions, some after the war was over, he could not achieve the fine artistic mating of theme and structure that he had in earlier plays of the period when the artist controlled the preacher.
As time passed Shaw came to feel that the real impediment to social progress and political enlightenment was gross ignorance of political "facts." 79
In the preface to Geneva Shaw says that "since the dawn of history there has
been no change in the natural political capacity of the human species." (V,
636) But this is not reason to despair because enlightenment should be pos•
sible even with an undeveloped political capacity. The real problem with
the average citizen, Shaw says, is his "ignorance of facts, creating a vac• uum into which all sorts of romantic antiquarian junk and cast-off primitive
religion rushes." (V, 635) Shaw says he no longer tries to convert anyone
to any "ism," but merely tries to open his readers' eyes to all the political
facts under which they live (V, 637) Geneva is Shaw's attempt to present
some of the "political facts" and to show how ignorance of them afflicts nearly everyone and leads to the chaos and war that enveloped Europe again
in 1939-
Undoubtedly Shaw wrote Geneva under a sense of great urgency. He felt that the play, more than any of his others, was needed at a specific time and that it probably would never be produced after the immediate contempor• ary events had passed. On the title page of the text used for the first production of Geneva at Malvern, Shaw wrote: "Press 50 copies (unless we go to war on Sunday next, in which case Geneva will be waste paper.)
G.B.S. 28/9/38." The implication is not that Shaw thought the play triv• ially topical, but, to the contrary, seriously topical. After The Simpleton, 2 in which Shaw said he had gone "far afield" for a topic, Geneva goes right
-'-Quoted from Gerard A. Pilecki, Shaw's Geneva: _A Critical Study of the Evolution of the Text in Relation to Shaw's Political Thought and Dramatic Practice. "TThe Hague: Mouton & Co., 1965), p. 31- Pilecki also gives the most complete and detailed discussion of Geneva's many revisions.
2"Shaw for Shawns Sake," Malvern Festival Book, 1935, reprinted in Shaw on Theatre, ed. P. J. West (New York, I958), p. 239. 8o into the "very depths of politics."' The method Shaw chose to strike into the minds of people whose thoughts were confusedly on the threat of war with the fascist countries of Europe was to use obvious caricatures of the dic• tators themselves. In fact Shaw's technique is in some ways reminiscent of
Saint Joan. In both plays Shaw used purposive distortions of real events of current interest to comment on more universal problems. But the important difference is that Joan's history, though recently in vogue because of her canonization, was nevertheless four hundred years old. Shaw could distort
Warwick and Cauchon without arousing violent objections. But Hitler, Mus• solini and Franco occupied a very different place in the minds of English• men in 1938. Any representation of them as rational and even somewhat ben• evolent would obscure whatever message, however valid, Shaw was trying to convey. In trying to show how ignorance was the basic impediment to world peace, Shaw had to gloze over many obvious faults of the dictators, and in so doing weakened the message with the inevitable topical overtones. Shaw undoubtedly chose to use topical events so that people would be sure to apply the message, but he failed to overcome, even in the later revisions, the distraction of placing caricatures of political leaders on stage, while their real counterparts were making history outside the theatre.
In spite of the fact that Shaw dissolves the "enlightened" trial into a farcical scene at the end of the play, he is not satirizing the League of
Nations in Geneva. Shaw did believe that Geneva was an important advance in world government, but not for the common reasons. The play echoes statements Shaw made as early as 1919 about the League of Nations, but in
1938 he could not demonstrate convincingly Its ability to solve the world problems when mankind was ignorant of the potential of the League and, 81
more important, was a victim of the blind prejudice called patriotism, which
itself was only another form of ignorance. Geneva exposes several related
misconceptions about the League, world government, the European dictators,
and patriotism, but Shaw's own close involvement with world events intro•
duces, in the fourth act, many obvious errors and misinterpretations which weaken the artistic integrity of the play. Shaw finally was unable to main•
tain a necessary aesthetic distance from his subject.
Shaw never felt that the League could operate properly if it were open
to all countries of the world. Only those countries which were fundament•
ally agreed on several basic Issues could be expected to agree on even the
smallest problemsShaw was realist enough to know that the Federation of
Man was not likely to suddenly appear at Geneva, but he did see great po•
tential in the League when other disillusioned idealists reacted vocifer•
ously against the farce of the League. He visited the annual Assembly in
1928 and returned with a real optimism for the "spirit of Geneva." He
criticized the gross ignorance in the national governments and their
"deciduous" representatives of the charter and purpose of the League.
The big Powers were particularly determined to sabotage the League, accord•
ing to Shaw. Each country merely tried to use the League for national
advancement. Even though members were ignorant or indifferent to their
obligations to the League, Shaw thought that Geneva was actively disinte•
grating national patriotism, and was moving towards world government.
^See What I Really Wrote About the War (New York: Brentano's, 1931), p. 291.
5what I Really Wrote, p. 355. 82
The really great thing that is happening at Genera is the growth of a genuinely international public service, an incipient in• ternational Government. In the atmosphere of Geneva patriotism perishes: a patriot there is simply a spy who cannot he shot.^
A naive patriot like Sir Austen Chamberlain, was a joke to the young Hons of the secretariat who were exhilarated by the spirit of Geneva. Shaw felt that a new young kind of international official would force the governments old fashioned delegates out of the League if it could continue to develop and train permanent Geneva officials. But for Shaw, one of the big uses of the League even in 1928 lay in its ability to apply moral pressure on the big Powers . ETo longer could blatant refusals to honor mandate promises be hidden in Geneva's open forum. It was in this openness and in the new gen• eration of dedicated internationalists that Shaw placed his hope for Geneva
The potential of the League was not drained as some critics said, but un• tapped. People were ignorant of the real value of the League. For Shaw, the League justified itself ten times over without the question of war and peace. "Take into account the incipient international court of justice at the Hague, with the body of international law which will grow from it, and the case for maintaining the League becomes irresistible."''7
Shaw knew that the great potential of the League might never be de• veloped . Ten years before he wrote Geneva Shaw warned that If the League were to fulfill Its promise, the big Powers would have to give it their full support. Shaw maintained that the big Powers, by sending anyone but
the very best diplomats to the Assembly, were seriously jeopardizing the
6what I Really Wrote, p. 357-
Twhat I Really Wrote, p. 360. 83
League and any progress it might effect:
Geneva is not the place for the man in the street. The street is full of persons with parochial minds: jingo minds, imperial minds, foreigner-hating minds, senselessly pugnacious minds, and sense• lessly terrified minds. A League representing such people would wreck civilization in ten years .... Our salvation in these days depends on the small and unrepresentative percentage of per• sons who can see farther than the end of their noses.8
This resume from Shaw's non-dramatic work of his attitudes toward the
League may help to clarify the play. By 1938 Shaw had seen the potential of
the League wasted, ignored or perverted. He still felt that the spirit of'
Geneva was alive, hut among far too few people. Even though Hitler had in•
vaded Poland, and World War II had begun before Shaw had finished revising
9
Geneva, the play does not, as John Gassner suggests, satirize the League
itself, but the ignorance that defeated It. Shaw chose to demonstrate how the League had been misused by postulating what would happen if suddenly the
idle machinery of the international court were activated.
The structure of Geneva up to the end of the second act is fairly lin•
ear, more so in fact than any found in the other plays considered. Act One
initiates the plot to try the responsible leaders of various countries for
"crimes" committed against some universal principle of justice. Act Two
shows the immediate effects on the League of the proposition, and intro• duces the judge who will preside over the trial. At first the play con•
tained only three acts with the present third act not included. Thus Shaw
originally intended the play to move quickly and directly to the trial it-
^What I Really Wrote, p. 362.
^Masters of the Drama (New York: Dover, 19^5), p. 615. 84
self. In such a scheme there was no room for lengthy digressions or open symposium discussions as he used in some of the earlier plays. In any case
Shaw apparently wanted to emphasize the very topical final act. He contin• ually revised this act In order to keep apace with rapidly changing world events. Not only did the play undergo at least five revisions before 194-0, hut the final act was also televised separately in 1939- For this perform• ance Shaw merely attached a synopsis of the first two acts. "At the begin• ning of the synopsis Mr. Shaw implicitly admits the need for economy in time in dealing with Geneva, and accepts the opinion of the critics that the third act is the one that matters."10 Clearly Shaw was very concerned to present an up-to-date political comment in the final act. But after the war, when the United Nations was beginning to take permanent shape, and when
Shaw had survived the bombs, he again revised the play, adding the present
Act Three. In this act Shaw attempts to reshape the play in several ways.
He digresses on some of the ideas broached but not developed in Act Two, and in so doing, Shaw not only attempts to modify the force of the events in Act Four, but also to introduce a more unified artistic purpose into the whole play. The final result, however, is a structural inconsistency which adds to the other weaknesses already found in Act Four.
Much of the structural problem with Geneva stems from the many revi•
sions it underwent. Pilecki, who has done the most exhaustive study of the
revisions, classifies them into three categories: those which smoothe the
language; those which keep apace with the rapidly changing world; and those which reflect a change in Shaw's attitude--a reinterpretation of his mater-
10The (London) Times, April 22, 1939, P- 10. 85
ial.11 The first category need not concern us here. The second kind of
revisions indicate Shaw's commitment to a very topical approach. He re•
vised Geneva whenever some major development in world conditions arose.
Thus he revised the text to include Bomhardone's (Mussolini's) conversion
to anti-semitism, and Battler's (Hitler's) invasion of Poland. These changes
did not really improve the play, hut were necessary since Shaw used very con•
temporary events in the play, and any major discrepancy would reduce the play
to "waste paper." But after the war, when Shaw no longer thought Geneva would he performed, he made his most substantial revisions. These reflect both his artistic awareness and his new mood of quiet optimism.
Pilecki attributes the insertion of the present Act Three into the play
to Shaw's desperate attempts to avoid despair over man's political capabil- 12
ity. After World War II had begun, Pilecki says, Shaw turned toward the
explanation of the world's folly by saying that man is not inherently bad,
just ignorant. Some of Shaw's letters to Beatrice Webb in 19^1 and 19^2
-1 o support this idea. In one Shaw wrote: "No statesman can ever know the facts of the moment at which he must act .... The wisdom of people is a Ik
myth." Shaw does not say that the goodness of human nature is myth. By
the time he wrote the preface to Geneva (19^5), Shaw even felt that the
stifling ignorance of the world could be cured with education. (V, 635-637)
Act Three attempts to overcome partly the mood of despair which hangs over
llShaw's Geneva, pp. 70-71-
12Shaw's Geneva, p. 132.
-^See A. Henderson, Man of the Century, pp. 385, 387.
l^Ibid., p. 385. 86
the play, and. also to diagnose more clearly the world's main problem as ig•
norance and insular thinking.
Geneva exhibits another variation of the ambivalence Shaw felt during
the thirties. Many of his plays reveal a duality and tension because of
Shaw's own commitments to a very practical and often limited realism on one hand, and to a very powerful idealism on the other. In Geneva this conflict
is clearly between hope and despair. We have seen how the mounting urgency
of world affairs during the thirties seemed to drive Shaw to alternate be•
tween advocating limited but practical social and political reforms, and
voicing the need for man to evolve into a more advanced political animal.
The threat of a world war was the most immediate cause for despair in Shaw.
He even wrote another ending for Geneva in which the Judge reinforced the
Secretary's bitterness and pessimism. In this ending, when Battler's troops
invade Ruritania, the Judge condemns man as a failure and bids the people of
Europe to go off and kill one another until they have learned how wicked and
foolish they are.^ But this ending was never used. Pilecki says Shaw could
not stand to face pessimism squarely, and therefore dropped the alternative
ending.^ In any case Shaw appears to have mellowed somewhat after he had
survived the bombing. With immediate causes of despair removed, Shaw turned
to a quiet optimism, thinking, as we have seen in the preface, that man need
not evolve a higher political capacity, but only use his political ability
to its full potential. This is the view expressed by the Judge in Act Three.
l^Shaw's Geneva, p. 166.
l6Ibid., p. I69. 87
Act Three is an extended symposium discussion in -which all the charac• ters so far introduced explain their problems. With the exception of the
Secretary and the Judge, the other characters demonstrate ho-w all kinds of insular thinking lead to animosity. The Creole lady hates Jews because they killed her savior. Sir Orpheus and Begonia hate "Bolshies" because they steal property and nationalize women. Posky is contemptuous of all Capital• ists because they are bourgeois. In fact they each hate whatever is "for• eign." They each proclaim the sanctity and eternity of political bounda• ries . They prompt the Secretary to explode in a fit of frustrated anger to say that he hates the lot of them, because he hates all nations and all frontiers;
You are all enemies of the human race. You are all armed to the teeth and full of patriotism. Your national heroes are all brig• ands and pirates. When it comes to the point you are all cut• throats . ... I am not going to argue with you: you are all too damnably stupid. (V, 701)
But the Judge, echoing Shaw in the preface, disagress. The people are not stupid, they are just ignorant of the facts. "None of you seem to have any idea of the sort of world you are living in." (V, 706) Believing sav• age superstitions and falsehoods of all kinds, they become more ferocious and cruel than any beast. Begonia and Posky have similar sympathies and intentions, says the Judge, but they do not know this' because both have been told so many lies about Communists and Capitalists. If people would only bring their economics, religion, history and political philosophy up to date, there would be no reason to despair of human nature. If the Judge disagrees with the Secretary as to the basic cause of the hate, he does agree that the artificial barriers must be demolished. "You are all hopeless mongrels pre- 88
tending to be thoroughbreds. Why not give up pretending?" (V, 707) The
Secretary despairs because "we still go on binding our heads and making
fools of ourselves for life." (V, 708) But the Judge is still optimistic.
The Chinese, once thought to be incapable of change, are now the most rev•
olutionary of all the revolutionists. It is this optimism in human nature
that sustains the Judge in his attempt to bring the dictators to trial.
The Secretary says the trial will be a farce because the dictators will
not come. He believes in the spirit of Geneva which gradually breaks down
all the artificial boundaries between people and nations, but not in such
esoteric schemes as the Judge's.
Since both the Secretary and the Judge represent enlightened atti•
tudes towards the world problem, they both are, in some respects, spokes•
men for Shaw. Together they represent Shaw's ambivalent attitude towards
the League in particular, and to any kind of world parliament in general.
Shaw undoubtedly was very sceptical about the League in 1938, but even
after World War II, he still seemed to have faith in what he called the
spirit of Geneva. And if the League had developed its potential, such an
organization could have developed a new code of international justice. The
Judge can pin-point better than the Secretary what the real issue is ulti•
mately- -Ignorance, but he is too idealistic when he thinks rationality will
prevail at the Court. The Secretary relies on the cosmopolitanism, not the
councils, of Geneva. But as he partially suspects, it is too limited and
too late to do the necessary job. But Act Three ends with an implied dem•
onstration of the ability of the spirit of Geneva to bring together people
who have felt animosity for each other: the Creole lady agrees to dine with
the Jew, Sir Orpheus with Commissar Posky, the Judge with Begonia, and the 89
Secretary with the American journalist.
The addition of Act Three suggests that Shaw's attitude toward man• kind and its political future may have changed after the war. Certainly a note of hope is stressed here. Shaw used this act to make more explicit the ignorance theme (through the Judge's analysis), and the power of the spirit of Geneva (through the Secretary). Both ideas are based on optim• ism. But what may have also moved Shaw to add this act was the realization that the topical dictator's trial was an inherently weak device. Shaw may have realized that the dictators obscured the more universal issues in the play. Before the war, Shaw wanted Geneva to be a critical up-to-date anal• ysis of pressing current issues. But the ignorance theme (which was still implicit in the earlier versions) is more tenable when divorced from some of Shaw's other remarks about Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. Act Three, a kind of interlude, which elaborates on some of the ideas not fully de• veloped in the earlier acts, also makes clearer Shaw's intention that we should view the events in Act Four as examples of what happens when Ignor• ance on all sides prevails.
Pilecki feels that if the trial had not been promised in Act One and
If it had not been the highlight when performed, Shaw might have dropped
Act Four altogether, since Act Three is a more satisfying conclusion to the 17 play with respect to the basic issues in it. ' Act Four does not ignore the basic issues as Pilecki suggests, but they are obscured because of the topi• cality of the act. Without the final act, Geneva would have a familiar
Shaw's Geneva, p. 170. 90
Shavian structure of exposition, complication and discussion, hut the add• ition of Act Three vas not meant to he a nev ending, hut an attempt to in• still in the reader's mind the proper frame of reference with vhich to view the final act. Shaw seems to have realized that neither he nor the audience could achieve a proper distance from the contemporary events to see the true patterns at work. Ironically, this is exactly the problem enunciated in The
Simpleton.
Act Four is the climax to which the rest of Geneva looks forward.
Nearly twice as long as any other act, Act Four dominates the play. The trial does not accomplish what it set out to do. In fact the specific charges made in Act One, with the exception of the Jew's, are never made in the court. The "trial" is an open forum in which the most pressing topical questions are vehemently discussed. The action breaks into a series of mutual accusations and finally into a fantastic announcement of the end of the world. The whole act demonstrates how ignorance and super• stitions breed pugnacity and war, but In treating the dictators Shaw can neither disguise his own partisan spirit nor prevent it from intruding into the play.
One of the major artistic problems with Geneva is the introduction, in Act Four, of the three dictators. Up to the end of Act Three Shaw ab• stracts the issues from the contemporary scene. He uses the League of
Nations as a topical device to discuss some of the problems of world gov• ernment, but the topicality does not obscure what Shaw says. He can simp•
lify and can use the fantasy to postulate interesting uses of the League without upsetting the discussion with the force of the real personages
the characters represent. Of course the Secretary is probably modelled on 91
Sir Eric Drummond, and Sir Orpheus Midlander on Sir Austen Chamberlain, but
their identities are not so vitally linked to what they say as characters.
But as soon as Shaw brings Ernest Battler, Signor Bombardone and General
Flanco de Fortinbras onto the stage, the technique of characterization
changes. The issues become more complicated because the characters are ob•
viously Hitler, Mussolini and General Franco, and Shaw inevitably becomes
Involved not only with specific arguments associated with these men, but also with Shaw's own specific and sometimes ambivalent attitudes toward them. The theme of ignorance is still present, but is diluted becaus,e of the extra complexity of other issues. Although Shaw, through his implicit praise of the dictators and his explicit criticism of democracy and the
English, is undoubtedly trying to show how insular thinking, based on ig• norance, is common in all countries, he necessarily distorts blatantly at times obvious facts about the dictators, and an awareness of these errors detracts from Shaw's major theme.
Shaw deliberately portrays the dictators in their best light and the
English in their most foolish. To Shaw, nine-tenths of what the dictators say about England and their own exploits is true, whereas nine-tenths of what English parliamentary favorites say is "emotional brag, bunk, and non- 18
sense." Thus the English contingent to the trial appears generally naive and even weak-minded. Whenever they talk to the dictators, they reveal their inability to deal with anything "un-English." Sir Orpheus continu• ally diverts attention from the issues at hand by quibbling over some mean-
l8Bernard Shaw, "The Unavoidable Subject," in Platform and Pulpit (New York, I961), p. 289. 92
ing or the "correct" pronunciation of a -word. When confronted with the difference between his own parliamentary oratory and the highly charged and moving rhetoric of the dictators, Sir Orpheus protests that Battler in•
sults his old school by pronouncing Cicero with hard "c's." But Shaw is also guilty of diversionary tactics. He has the Judge accuse Sir Orpheus of war crimes--of bombing innocent civilians. He does not charge the dic• tators with similar crimes. Shaw makes Sir Orpheus "defend" war when it is
Battler who has ordered his army to invade Ruritania (Poland). Of course
Shaw does not exclude Bombardone and Battler from the discussion of war; they both try to defend war as necessary at times. Shaw was trying to show that England was not as pure in its own dealing with war as she might feel.
All the arguments for war are spurious, hut under the current circumstances,
Shaw's treatment of the dictators seems unduly biased in their favor.
In the course of the trial most of the topical problems arise. War is not the only institution openly discussed and defended by all the bel• ligerents . The dictators inevitably argue for dictatorship as more practical than the effete "democracy" in England. They flaunt their prowess as modern world leaders, as men of action instead of mere talkers. Bardo, when ac• cused of destroying liberty and democracy in Europe, says he cannot destroy what never existed. He is only concerned with giving his people good gov• ernment, "as far as their folly and ignorance permit. . . . Half a dozen such obstructionists as you [the Newcomer] could spin out to two years the work I do in ten minutes. The world can endure you no longer. Your place is in the dustbin." (V, 731) Bardo also argues, like Shaw in the preface to The Millionairess, that he is a democratic institution because he is far more popular in his country than any elected government in England. Battler 93
claims to have effected real progress in Germany:
I have stretched out my hand and lifted my country from the gutter into -which you and your allies -were trampling it, and made it once more the terror of Europe, though the danger is in your own guilty souls and not in any malice of mind. (V, 739)
-Wot only does Shaw put strong arguments (arguments he used himself in
his speeches, plays and prefaces) into the mouths of Bombard one and Battler
when they criticize the weaknesses of democracy, but he also tones down their
anti-semitism. Now Shaw was not an anti-semite. In fact he ultimately (in
19^0) was in favor of forcefully opposing Hitler's "pernicious nonsense" that
19
could persecute a genius like Albert Einstein because he was Jewish. But
"when the Jew accuses Battler of trying to "exterminate the flower of the
human race," the dictator defends himself by saying he only exercises the
same priviledge as the British who exclude the Chinese in Australia and the
Americans who exclude the Japanese in California. "Every State chooses its
population and selects Its blood. We say that ours shall be Nordic, not
Hittite: that is all." (V, 732) When the Jew says that he has been beaten
and robbed by German police, Battler tenders an apology for the violence.
All his agents are not angels and he cannot be everywhere at once! If the
Jews will only keep away they will not suffer. "The world is wide enough
for both of us. My country is not." With this piece of blatant sophistry
the question is dropped. There is evidence elsewhere in the play that
Battler is not as calm and rational about "the Jewish question" as he
appears in this scene, but Shaw never allows the horrible implications to
19"The Unavoidable Subject," p. 290. 94
20 emmerge into the open. Instead he tries to demonstrate that Hitler's anti semitism is only another form of the wide-spread sense of racial superiority that nearly everyone feels--another form of ignorant closed-mindedness, and no worse than Begonia's belief that Camberwell produces better people than
Peekham, or Sir Orpheus' belief in the natural superiority of the English, or Bombardone's contempt, for anyone born below a certain altitude. They each think their own kind is superior and destined to rule the world. Shaw' point is that they are all foolish, and that such hatred for the "other man" or the "other country" is what prevents peaceful coexistence in the world.
The contrast Shaw invites the audience to make between Sir Orpheus' position and those of Battler and Bombardone is that the dictators are more frank in expressing themselves. All three agree that the most advanced race must eventually govern the world, although they cannot agree on which is the superior race and who is the divinely chosen leader. Sir Orpheus char• acteristically tries to conceal his real stand by quibbling over the term• inology when the others arrogantly state their beliefs. But the difference,
'^Ironically, the early rehearsal versions of the play portrayed Hit• ler as a blind anti-semite, who hurled venomous epithets at the Jew. Shaw, according to Lawrence Langner, revised these parts of the play at his sug• gestion. To Langner, Shaw was countenancing anti-semitism by allowing Hit• ler to. voice his views on stage. But the result has in fact even more brutal suggestions because Battler in the revised versions appears more rational than Hitler was. The revisions also suggest, however, that Shaw was trying to show the basic sameness of all countries' policies--not to vindicate Hitler's but to condemn all such insular thinking. This point is nevertheless obscured by the knowledge of what Hitler's policies really were. See Larence Langner, The Magic Curtain, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1951). Appendix II, pp. 45CT58, and G.B.S. and the Lunatic, (Hew York: Atheneum, I963), PP- l6l-173. 95
Shaw implies, is only one of degree. The result is inevitably the same— war.
The Judge, after witnessing the seemingly endless circular arguments, is forced to come to the gloomy conclusion that the situation Is hopeless.
His plan to build up a body of international law by judicial precedent is frustrated because although there is no reason why they all should not be good neighbors, they perniciously refuse to act reasonably:
You have reduced one another to such a condition of terror that no atrocity makes you recoil and say that you will die rather than commit it. You call this patriotism, courage, glory. There are a thousand good things to be done in your countries. They remain undone for hundreds of years; but the fire and poison are always up to date. If this be not scoundrelism what is scoundrel- ism? I give you up as hopeless. Man is a failure as a politi• cal animal. (V, 750)
At the end of Act Four Shaw again attempts to abstract the major issue from the specific problems In Europe. The Judge announces the latest news flash from Greenwich via three American observatories that the earth is jumping to its next quantum and that humanity Is doomed to freeze. This announcement dissolves the scene into farce, as a scientific last judg• ment threatens all of humanity. The war is forgotten as everyone reacts characteristically. None of the people question the verdict of science, for the Astronomer Royal Is a man of science, and must speak with oracular truth. Even Sir Orpheus, who urges them all to deny the announcement, be• lieves It. His automatic response, as an English politician, to any un• pleasant truth is to "do his duty"-- lie about it. None of the various dogmas can accommodate the quantum theory: Flanco awaits the decision of
the Pope, Posky must consult Moscow, and Sir Orpheus' classical education is equally useless as a guide. The farce reduces the whole scene to ab• surdity, which in turn is caused hy ignorance. Shaw attempts to reinforce his theme, that ignorance reduces the world to absurdity and then destroys it, with this concluding scene. The trial Itself becomes a farce because of the ignorance, superstition and credulity of people. The final con• clusion of the play is then indicative of Shaw's pessimism at the end of the thirties. For him,the real enemy to social and political progress is the deeply entrenched ignorance that is nearly impossible to dislodge before it exterminates humanity. Both the Judge and the Secretary, the two en• lightened people in the play, and the two most consistent representatives of Shaw's views, are defeated by the world's ignorance, and the pugnacity that it breeds.
It is the bitterness and pessimism implied in this ending that ulti• mately defeat Geneva, according to Pilecki, because they "cripple Shaw's efforts to give the work an agreeable tone."^- Certainly the ending does
little to justify either the hope Shaw expressed in the preface, or that the Judge expressed in Act Three. But the play has more serious faults than the ones Pilecki ascribes to it. Basically Shaw committed an artistic blunder in choosing to use extremely controversial topical events to exemp•
lify a general theme. Pilecki admits that the method involved a gross ex•
aggeration of facts because Shaw was trying to show that both sides were to 22
blame. But he also says Geneva is not entirely defeated by the topicality
of the subject matter. If Battler and Bombardone were not obviously Hitler
and Mussolini, Shaw might have succeeded in a more fanciful political com-
2-LShaw 's Geneva, p. l8l.
22Ibld., p. 180. 97
edy in the manner of Aristophanes. But this only underlines Shaw's lapse as a critical artist. He evidently did not want to risk the audience's misidentifying the caricatures. Ironically, the method leads to more mis• understanding of the real theme.
The play, however, also suffers from a lack of structural unity. As we have seen, much of this problem is a result of Shaw's post-war revision.
In trying to rectify some of the thematic ambiguities in Act Four, Shaw introduced a structural weakness in Act Three. Before the war Geneva did have a kind of structure analogous to its message. The play, with its two short and very linear first acts, rushed the audience to the massive final act. Shaw seemed to be concerned to waste no time in hitting his audience with the "political facts." But with the introduction of the digressive
third act--undoubtedly intended as a commentary on Act Four—Geneva becomes
structurally weak. Designed to clarify the final act, Act Three sets up more tensions and ambiguities. Short of scrapping Act Four entirely, Shaw
could not overcome the inherent weaknesses involved In his very topical
approach.
When Geneva is carefully analyzed, it reveals much about Shaw at the
end of his last very productive period. In a way It is the logical develop•
ment of the trend of the plays in the thirties. The play represents Shaw's
last attempt, before the war, to analyze the political chaos that was rapid•
ly bringing the world to ruin. In it Shaw tries to use the most topical
events and people to Illustrate his argument. But the very topicality with
which he tries to give force to his plea, finally defeats that aim. Shaw's
main thesis In Geneva is valid and still relevant today, but his unhappily
chosen examples weaken the play. No matter how valid the analysis in gen- 98
exal, Shaw's own close involvement with the events prevented him from seeing some of the consequences of them. Inevitably his underestimation of the dic• tators' perversion mars the rest of a very imaginative play. CONCLUSION
Shaw's political plays of the 1930's represent his attempt to offer a continual flow of analysis and criticism of an age which he thought was head• ing rapidly for disaster and war. In Too True to he Good (1931), he ana - • ityzes modern man's sense of directionlessness and indicates that he must re-evaluate his aims and goals, his morality and economics, and discard worn out values which no longer describe either human nature or contempor• ary problems. This play introduces a theme which prevails in all Shaw's political extravaganzas of the period: that men must overcome their limited frames of reference and must cultivate an open-mindedness in"'-their search for meaning and direction in a complex world. In On the Rocks (1933), he investigates governmental problems in England and implies that in a world of selfish insularity, government founders and needs more than ever a strong leader to impose a direction on the country. Recognizing the sinister imp• lications of even an interim dictatorship, Shaw is almost driven to despair.
In The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934), Shaw retreats from the ugly and almost insoluble problems of the immediate world, to define and
examine in abstract and symbolic terms the problems discussed in the ear•
lier plays. Shaw reaffirms his faith in Life Force, again stresses that
life will continue to evolve, and asserts that if man wants to be the van•
guard of evolution he must be able to adapt -to the unexpected.
Having stated his ultimate thoughts arid allegiances in The Simpleton,
Shaw seemed to abandon his concern with political problems in his plays,
until the urgency of world developments in the late thirties brought the
preacher in Shaw to the pulpit of the stage again in Geneva (1938). But 100
in this play Shaw's inability to maintain an aesthetic distance from world events interfered with his artistry so that he produced a play lacking the unity of theme and structure found in the earlier plays of the period.
But while the political plays of the thirties chronicle Shaw's very close involvement with complex social problems, they also reveal Shaw's attempt to develop special dramatic techniques to render an artistic ex= pression of his thoughts. The seemingly chaotic structures, weak charac• ters and garrulous speeches really are in many ways well suited to the topical themes. Shaw utilizes a symposium type of discussion, which is appropriate for the searching for direction, the open investigation of all aspects of a complex problem. But perhaps the most characteristic and least understood technique in these plays is Shaw's use of structure as a major thematic device. Once understood, the seemingly random structures are not evidence of "imitative fallacy", of using negative techniques to express negative themes, but of an artistic handling of technique to en• hance thematic comment on the chaos. In the best of Shaw's political plays there is a well integrated mating of theme and structure which be•
lies any idea that these plays are the products of a man In his dotage. SELECTED LIST OF SOURCES CONSULTED
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The Playwright As Thinker. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1955-
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Weintraub, Stanley. Private Shaw and Public Shaw. New York: George Braziller, 1963-
Winsten, S. ed. G.B.S. 90. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1946.
Wilson, Colin. Religion and the Rebel. London: Victor Gollanez, 1957-
Woodbridge, Homer E. George Bernard Shaw: Creative Artist. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19~trf.
Secondary Sources: Periodicals
Austin, Don. "Comedy Through Tragedy: Dramatic Structure in St. Joan." Shaw Review, VIII, 52-62.
Earzun, Jacques. "G.B.S. in Twilight." Kenyon Review, V (1943), 321-345-
Corrigan, Robert W. "Heartbreak House: Shaw's Elegy for Europe." Shaw Review, II, 9 (September, 1959), 2-6. •
Gatch, Katherine Haynes. "The Last Plays of Bernard Shaw: Dialectic and Despair," English Stage Comedy, ed. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955-
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Hummert, Paul A. "Bernard Shaw's Marxist Utopias." Shaw Review, II, 9 (September 1959), 7-26.
. "Bernard Shaw's On the Rocks." Drama Critique, II, 1 (February, 1959), 34-41.
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. "''The Eternal Against the Expedient': Structure and Theme in Shaw's The Apple Cart." Modern Drama, 2 (September, 1959), pp. 99- 113.
. "Heaven, Hell-, and turn-of.-the-century London: Reflections upon Shaw's Man and Superman." Drama Survey, 11:3 (Winter, 1963), 2^5" 268.
. "'The Pentecostal Flame' and the 'Lower Centers': Too True to be Good." Shaw Review, II, 9 (September, 1959), 27-38.
. "Shaw's Increasing Stature." Drama Survey, III (1964), i+23-440.
. "Spiritual and Political Reality: Shaw's The Simpleton of the Un• expected Isles." Modern Drama, III (Fall, 196757, 196-210.
. "Technique, Symbol and Theme in Heartbreak House." PMLA, LXVIII (June, 1953), 335-356.
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Nickson, Richard. "The World Betterer: Shav versus Shav." Shaw Review, II, 9 (September, 1959), 39-44.
Park, Bruce R. "A Mote in the Critic's Eye': Bernard Shaw and Comedy." University of Texas Studies in English, XXXVII (1958), 195-210.
Schlauch, Margaret. "Symbolic Figures and the Symbolic Technique of George Bernard Shaw." Science and Society, XXI (1957), 210-221.
Shah, Hiralal Amritlal. "Bernard Shaw in Bombay." Shaw Bulletin, I (Nov• ember, 1956), 8-10. 105
Spencer, T. J. "Annotated Checklist of Criticism of the Post Saint Joan Plays." Shaw Re-view, II (1959), 45-48.
Stanhrook, A Nun of. "The Nun and the Dramatist: Dame Laurentia McLachlin and George Bernard Shaw." Cornhill Magazine, 3rd ser., CLXVTII (1951), 415-468.
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Miscellaneous Sources
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Anchor Books, 1961.
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Sokel, Walter H. ed. An Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: A Prelude To The Absurd. New York: Doubleday Anchor Original, 1963.