VIII
One might profitably compare Mr. Shaw to Cassius in "Julius Cæsar." Marcus Brutus, in that play, is surely the prototype of all muddlers and gentlemanly idiots. It was he who, against the pleas of Cassius, insisted that the life of Mark Anthony should be spared. It was he who, disregarding the dissuasions of Cassius, permitted Anthony to speak in the forum. It was he who, over-ruling the arguments of Cassius, ordered the disastrous march to Phillipi. Cassius was the wise man of the two, though his heart was made impotent by his asperities. The resemblance between him and Mr. Shaw must not be drawn too closely, but it is sufficient, as stated in Shakespeare's terms, to be interesting:
He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men.
Cassius, of course, loved no plays and heard no music and smiled with difficulty; and these disabilities prevent him from complete ancestry to Mr. Shaw; but, if, like Cassius, Mr. Shaw sometimes feels that he has lived "to be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus," he can, like Cassius again, comfort himself with the thought that he was in the right when Brutus was in the wrong, and that he told him so. His Cassius mood is plainest in "Heartbreak House." This play is described as "a Fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes," and was written, presumably, after Mr. Shaw had witnessed performances of plays by Chekhov. That is not to say, however, that there is any resemblance between the work of Mr. Shaw and the Russian dramatist. There isn't. Mr. Shaw is as talkative as Chekhov was reticent. Chekhov's purpose is to make his people say as little as possible: Mr. Shaw's purpose is to make his people say a great deal more than necessary. Chekhov suggests inactivity through dialogue: Mr. Shaw suggests through argumentativeness. Chekhov writes drama: Mr. Shaw debates. No receptive person can come away from a performance of "The Cherry Orchard" unimpressed by a vision of life. A moderately-intelligent person, having seen this play with eyes of understanding, could write a true summary of the state of Russia in the last hundred years. I doubt whether as much can be said of "Heartbreak House," the whole action of which (though action is an inappropriate word to use about it) takes place in the course of an afternoon and evening, inside six or seven hours, in England soon after the outbreak of the War. There is, however, no mention of the War in the play, and the only link between them is the sudden interruption of the conversation in the last act by an air-raid, as a result of which two of the characters are blown to pieces. There is some clumsiness in the use of this device for ending the play, artistically at all events, though that is a consideration which is unlikely to move Mr. Shaw much, but, ethically and socially, it is not clumsy at all, for "Heartbreak House" is less a play than a parable. The bombs drop as suddenly, and with as little warning, on the gifted conversationalists sitting in the dusky garden as the War burst upon Europe in 1914. There we were, all of us, living pleasantly, as Burke begged us to live, and committing our affairs into the hands of men concerning whose abilities to conduct them we had no certificates—and suddenly the ship ran on to the rocks, the train went off the rails, the ceiling fell. "I'm always expecting something," says Ellie Dunn in the last act. "I don't know what it is; but life must come to a point some time." And while she and her companions are arguing about the responsibility for the mess in which the world is, bombs drop out of heaven and life comes to a full stop:
Hector: And this ship that we are all in? This soul's prison we call England?
Captain Shotover: The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forcastle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you were born in it?
Hector: Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to do?
Captain Shotover: Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman.
Hector: And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray?
Captain Shotover: Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and be damned.
In other words of Mr. Shaw's, if you do not help God to perfect Himself, He will scrap you. This play, in some respects the best that Mr. Shaw has written, is full of mad laughter, of bitter, self-mocking, torturing laughter. I knew a man who burst into shrieks of laughter when he saw a comrade blown into the air by a German shell; but if any one imagines that that man's terrible mirth came from an unkindly heart, he imagines without understanding; for "even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." I feel about "Heartbreak House" exactly as I felt about my friend who laughed when his comrade was blown up and dismembered: that here is a depth of feeling which cannot be fathomed. Like Job, Mr. Shaw cries out, "changes and war are against me," but, unlike Job, he finds no comfort in the end. "If men will not learn until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, their own for preference." As for him, he throws up the sponge. Our culture is but the plaything of fribbles; our democracy is merely government of fools by fools. "The question is," said Boswell to Dr. Johnson and Mr. Cambridge, "which is worst, one wild beast or many?" And the answer, in Mr. Shaw's terms, is "Both!" He sees man, according to this play, refusing to help God to perfect Himself, deliberately thwarting God, and he almost sees him already on the scrap-heap.
In "Back to Methusaleh," he seems to me to have suffered a spiritual set-back, and to be preoccupied by material considerations. We are no longer concerned with Man's destiny and God's purpose, but with matters of mere longevity. "So much to do—so little time in which to do it!" If man could live for three hundred or three thousand or thirty thousand years, he would then have time in which to profit by his experience—so Mr. Shaw's argument seems to run. But would he? Do any of us profit by our experience? If we could go back to the beginning of our lives and start again with the knowledge we had acquired in the previous existence, we might be able to avoid this or that mistake. But we cannot do that. Each experience is a new one, and the wisdom we have gained from those through which we have passed is of little help to us in dealing with the new one, particularly if it comes upon us, as most of the critical events of life do come upon us, unexpectedly, without warning. There is not much difference, except physically, between the Mr. Shaw who wrote "Candida" and the Mr. Shaw who wrote "Back to Methusaleh," and I do not believe that he would be much, if any different, at the age of three hundred or thirty thousand from what he now is. Man may develop this or that aspect of himself more than another, but essentially he remains the same. It is not length of years that is important to us, but what we do in them. Keats and Shelley were young when they died: Tennyson was old; but the length of their years seems immaterial to their reputation. Mr. Shaw tells us that if we will hard enough, we can achieve longevity, but, apart from the fact that longevity first happens in his play to people who have not willed it, but had it thrust upon them, I am puzzled to understand how Mr. Shaw expects mankind to will a state of existence which, portrayed by him, is extraordinarily repellent. I do not wish to be born at the age of seventeen out of an egg so that I may become a He-Ancient and live for thousands of years in a state of inactive ratiocination. And if a life of thought without action does not attract my fancy, how can I be expected to aspire to it? I cannot find anything in the long lives of Mr. Shaw's characters which seems to me likely to excite the desire and hope of mankind. The He-Ancients and the She-Ancients are morose and sterile, ugly and unsociable, hairless and unhappy, liable to death by discouragement, long, lean and hopeless. I would rather be scrapped!... Nor is there any greater virtue in the long-lived than there is in us. In "The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman" (the fourth act of "Back to Methusaleh") where mankind is divided into two classes, the long-lived and the short-lived, we discover that the long-lived spend their three hundred years of existence in humbugging the short-lived.... Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one place; but, in spite of his misery and the shortness of his life, he gets more fun and satisfaction than are likely to be enjoyed by man that is born out of an egg.