Arms and the Man, George Bernard Shaw [best classic novels TXT] 📗

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Arms and the Man

by George Bernard Shaw

INTRODUCTION

To the irreverent—and which of us will claim entire exemption from that

comfortable classification?—there is something very amusing in the

attitude of the orthodox criticism toward Bernard Shaw. He so obviously

disregards all the canons and unities and other things which every

well-bred dramatist is bound to respect that his work is really unworthy

of serious criticism (orthodox). Indeed he knows no more about the

dramatic art than, according to his own story in “The Man of Destiny,”

Napoleon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. But both men were

successes each in his way—the latter won victories and the former

gained audiences, in the very teeth of the accepted theories of war and

the theatre. Shaw does not know that it is unpardonable sin to have his

characters make long speeches at one another, apparently thinking that

this embargo applies only to long speeches which consist mainly of

bombast and rhetoric. There never was an author who showed less

predilection for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results.

He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the world and he

assumed the task of mundane reformation with a confident spirit. It

seems such a small job at twenty to set the times aright. He began as an

Essayist, but who reads essays now-a-days?—he then turned novelist with

no better success, for no one would read such preposterous stuff as he

chose to emit. He only succeeded in proving that absolutely rational men

and women—although he has created few of the latter—can be most

extremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.

As a last resort, he turned to the stage, not that he cared for the

dramatic art, for no man seems to care less about “Art for Art’s sake,”

being in this a perfect foil to his brilliant compatriot and

contemporary, Wilde. He cast his theories in dramatic forms merely

because no other course except silence or physical revolt was open to

him. For a long time it seemed as if this resource too was doomed to

fail him. But finally he has attained a hearing and now attempts at

suppression merely serve to advertise their victim.

It will repay those who seek analogies in literature to compare Shaw

with Cervantes. After a life of heroic endeavor, disappointment,

slavery, and poverty, the author of “Don Quixote” gave the world a

serious work which caused to be laughed off the world’s stage forever

the final vestiges of decadent chivalry.

The institution had long been outgrown, but its vernacular continued to

be the speech and to express the thought “of the world and among the

vulgar,” as the quaint, old novelist puts it, just as to-day the novel

intended for the consumption of the unenlightened must deal with peers

and millionaires and be dressed in stilted language. Marvellously he

succeeded, but in a way he least intended. We have not yet, after so

many years, determined whether it is a work to laugh or cry over. “It is

our joyfullest modern book,” says Carlyle, while Landor thinks that

“readers who see nothing more than a burlesque in ‘Don Quixote’ have but

shallow appreciation of the work.”

Shaw in like manner comes upon the scene when many of our social usages

are outworn. He sees the fact, announces it, and we burst into guffaws.

The continuous laughter which greets Shaw’s plays arises from a real

contrast in the point of view of the dramatist and his audiences. When

Pinero or Jones describes a whimsical situation we never doubt for a

moment that the author’s point of view is our own and that the abnormal

predicament of his characters appeals to him in the same light as to his

audience. With Shaw this sense of community of feeling is wholly

lacking. He describes things as he sees them, and the house is in a

roar. Who is right? If we were really using our own senses and not

gazing through the glasses of convention and romance and make-believe,

should we see things as Shaw does?

Must it not cause Shaw to doubt his own or the public’s sanity to hear

audiences laughing boisterously over tragic situations? And yet, if they

did not come to laugh, they would not come at all. Mockery is the price

he must pay for a hearing. Or has he calculated to a nicety the power of

reaction? Does he seek to drive us to aspiration by the portrayal of

sordidness, to disinterestedness by the picture of selfishness, to

illusion by disillusionment? It is impossible to believe that he is

unconscious of the humor of his dramatic situations, yet he stoically

gives no sign. He even dares the charge, terrible in proportion to its

truth, which the most serious of us shrinks from—the lack of a sense of

humor. Men would rather have their integrity impugned.

In “Arms and the Man” the subject which occupies the dramatist’s

attention is that survival of barbarity—militarism—which raises its

horrid head from time to time to cast a doubt on the reality of our

civilization. No more hoary superstition survives than that the donning

of a uniform changes the nature of the wearer. This notion pervades

society to such an extent that when we find some soldiers placed upon

the stage acting rationally, our conventionalized senses are shocked.

The only men who have no illusions about war are those who have recently

been there, and, of course, Mr. Shaw, who has no illusions about

anything.

It is hard to speak too highly of “Candida.” No equally subtle and

incisive study of domestic relations exists in the English drama. One

has to turn to George Meredith’s “The Egoist” to find such character

dissection. The central note of the play is, that with the true woman,

weakness which appeals to the maternal instinct is more powerful than

strength which offers protection. Candida is quite unpoetic, as, indeed,

with rare exceptions, women are prone to be. They have small delight in

poetry, but are the stuff of which poems and dreams are made. The

husband glorying in his strength but convicted of his weakness, the poet

pitiful in his physical impotence but strong in his perception of truth,

the hopelessly de-moralized manufacturer, the conventional and hence

emotional typist make up a group which the drama of any language may be

challenged to rival.

In “The Man of Destiny” the object of the dramatist is not so much the

destruction as the