V
“The Devil’s Disciple,” the first of the “Three Plays for Puritans,” was written early in 1897. Richard Mansfield presented it in New York in the fall of that year and it made an excellent success. Like “Arms and the Man” it is still in his repertoire—pretty far down in the trunk, it may be mentioned in passing, with many other plays atop of it. In October, 1899, Murray Carson’s company played it for a few weeks at Kensington, near London. “Cæsar and Cleopatra” was written in 1898, and “Capt. Brassbound’s Conversion” the next year. The “Three Plays for Puritans” were published in 1900. “The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Rewarded” was given by the Stage Society at the Imperial Theatre in 1903. Shaw evolved it from the fragments of “Cashel Byron’s Profession” to protect his rights in the latter, an unauthorized dramatization having been made for an American pugilist-actor. The play was printed as an appendix to the second English edition of “Cashel Byron’s Profession.”
“Man and Superman” was written in 1902, and published the next year, with a gigantic preface, and “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion” as an appendix. Preface, play, and appendix make a volume of 244 closely-printed pages. The drama saw the light on the evening of May 23, 1905, at the Court Theater, London. Granville Barker, made up to resemble Shaw, played the role of John Tanner, and Miss Lillian McCarthy was the Ann Whitefield. May 21 and 22 there were special performances of the play by the Stage Society, and in September, 1905, Robert Loraine and his company presented it in New York. The third act with the scene of Don Juan in Hell was omitted. “John Bull’s Other Island” was completed in 1904, and presented at six special matinees at the Court Theater by the Stage Society in the fall of that year. “Major Barbara” was written in 1905.
Shaw’s two critical tracts, “The Perfect Wagnerite” and “The Quintessence of Ibsenism” were published in 1888 and 1891, respectively. His last scholastic manifesto, “The Common Sense of Municipal Training” was issued in 1904. A remarkable essay, “On Going to Church,” which appeared originally in the Savoy Quarterly—Arthur Symons’ journal—in 1896, was reprinted early in 1905, and attained a large sale. In the late ’80’s, in an English periodical, there appeared his celebrated answer to Max Nordau’s book, “Degeneration.” In the opinion of some of his admirers this is, by far, the best of his controversial works, but, unfortunately, it has not been reprinted in permanent form.
“When Arnold Daly visited Shaw,” says Gustav Kobbé, “he found several indications that cynicism and Fabian socialism are not unprofitable. Shaw lives in large apartments in the New Reform Club, overlooking the Thames embankment, and he has a country place at Welwin, too.... There is no sham in the interior of his places of abode. There is a complete absence of the cheap æsthetic or of superfluous ornamentation. Simplicity of outline distinguishes such ornaments as there are. Handles, incrustations and the like are eschewed. Shaw explained to Daly that he wished nothing in his abode that would collect dust. Even rugs are tabooed.... Daly did not find the author a poseur, but simply a man who was not an ordinary man....”
That Shaw has a keen eye to business a great many aspiring managers have discovered. He demands a royalty of 15 per cent. of the gross receipts of his plays—considerably more than all but the most famous dramatists receive—and is careful and unsentimental in his negotiations. That he is now basking in the sun of prosperity is very probable. Saving only Shakespeare, no English author was better represented in the productions of the winter of 1904–5. In addition Shaw is much in demand as a lecturer and has no difficulty in finding a publisher for whatever he chooses to write. In 1898 he inherited the entailed estate of his maternal grandfather, Walter Bagnall Gurley. He was married the same year to Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend.
“Who’s Who” says that Shaw’s favorite exercises are swimming and cycling and that his recreation is “anything except sport.” He is tall, lanky, and wears a shaggy, red beard. He affects loose fitting flannel shirts and heaps his curses upon the dress suit. He is a vegetarian, a socialist, and many other things of a heterodox, fearsome sort. He uses the typewriter in preference to a pen, even for correspondence. He has travelled in Europe and the Levant, and may soon come to America. He refuses to use apostrophes in such words as don’t and can’t, and affects thin spacing, after the German style, instead of italics, to emphasize words. “Last season,” says the sapient Mr. Daly, “he was a social freak; now he is a legitimate amuser (sic!) of the people.”
And so much for George Bernard Shaw.