“My dear Count Tolstoy,—I send you herewith, through our friend, Aylmer Maude, a copy of a little play called The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet. 'Showing up' is American slang for unmasking a hypocrite. In form it is a very crude melodrama, which might be played in a mining camp to the roughest audience.
“It is, if I may say so, the sort of play you do extraordinarily well. I remember nothing in the whole range of drama that fascinated me more than the old soldier in your Power of Darkness. One of the things that struck me in that play was the feeling that the preaching of the old man, right as he was, could never be of any use—that it could only anger his son and rub the last grains of self-respect out of him. But what the pious and good father could not do, the old rascal of a soldier did as if he was the voice of God. To me that scene where the two drunkards are wallowing in the straw, and the older rascal lifts the younger one above his cowardice and his selfishness, has an intensity of effect that no merely romantic scene could possibly attain; and in Blanco Posnet I have exploited in my own fashion this mine of dramatic material which you were the first to open up to modern playwrights.
“I will not pretend that its mere theatrical effectiveness was the beginning and end of its attraction for me. I am not an 'Art-for-Art's sake' man, and would not lift my finger to produce a work of art if I thought there was nothing more than that in it. It has always been clear to me that the ordinary methods of inculcating honourable conduct are not merely failures, but—still worse—they actually drive generous and imaginative persons into a dare-devil defiance of them. We are ashamed to be good boys at school, ashamed to be gentle and sympathetic instead of violent and revengeful, ashamed to confess that we are very timid animals instead of reckless idiots, in short, ashamed of everything that ought to be the basis of our self-respect. All this is the fault of the teaching which tells men to be good without giving them any better reason for it than the opinion of men who are neither attractive to them, nor respectful to them, and who, being much older, are to a great extent not only incomprehensible to them, but ridiculous. Elder Daniels will never convert Blanco Posnet: on the contrary, he perverts him, because Blanco does not want to be like his brother; and I think the root reason why we do not do as our fathers advise us to do is that we none of us want to be like our fathers, the intention of the Universe being that we should be like God.”
It is inconceivable that this play should have been banned by the Censorship.[206] It is a story of religious conversion, told with sincerity and depth of conviction. So far is it from being irreverent that it may, with truth, be described as the most sincerely religious of all of Shaw's plays. “Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods,” says Shakespeare: “they kill us for their sport.” Like pawns in the great game of life are we to God, says Shaw; He uses us for His own great purpose. “There's no good and bad,” says Posnet in his puncheon-bench sermon; “but by Jiminy, gents, there's a rotten game, and there's a great game. I played the rotten game; but the great game was played on me; and now I'm for the great game every time. Amen.” It is the final expression in Shaw of that neo-Protestantism which had already found more or less adequate expression in The Devil's Disciple and Major Barbara. It needs no exposition here—especially after Shaw's expository letter to Tolstoy.[207] One word only as to the play's “crudity.” To an American, familiar with the scenes and conditions described, its pseudo-realism is grotesque in its unreality. Fortunately the import of the play is in no wise impaired by the fact that Shaw has been unsuccessful in assimilating Bret Harte.
During the latter part of March, and the month of April, 1909, Mr. Shaw, accompanied by Mrs. Shaw, went for his health on a motoring tour through Algeria. His next play, which he had been requested to write on the chosen subject by Mr. Forbes Robertson, was written at odd moments during this trip. The play, described by Mr. Shaw as an “ordinary skit,” was aptly entitled Press Cuttings: A Topical Sketch compiled from the Editorial and Correspondence Columns of the Daily Papers. In form, it is very like, though superior in characterization, to a Paris revue; Julius Bab has pronounced it vastly above the contemporary German Witzblatt. Its appearance just at the time when the activities of the “militant” suffragettes were at their height, was peculiarly à propos. Once again, the Censorship intervened to ban one of Shaw's plays—this time on the ground that Mr. Shaw was guilty, not of blasphemy, but of employing “personalities, expressed or implied.” The Civic and Dramatic Guild was immediately created to evade the interdict of the Censorship, and the play was produced for the first time at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on July 9th, 1909.[208] The indignation aroused among dramatic authors and critics by the banning of two of Mr. Shaw's plays in succession at last focussed the opposition to the Censorship; and the dissatisfaction with its operation, which had made itself felt vigorously, but more or less intermittently, for a number of years thitherto, finally crystallized. A special committee, from both Houses, was appointed by Parliament, to examine into and report on the operation of the Censorship, and, if necessary, to make recommendations as to its powers and functions for the future. Many sittings were held, and a large number of the leading men of letters in Great Britain, including Mr. Shaw himself, actors, theatre-managers, bishops, men of various shades of opinion, gave evidence before the committee. One result of the sittings of that committee[209] has been the establishment of an advisory board in connection with the Censorship. In many quarters hopes are expressed that a Bill will be passed by Parliament for the purpose of ameliorating the hardships of dramatic authors under the present operation of the Censorship, and of giving greater encouragement to the free development of a national English drama in the future.
Playbill of Press Cuttings.
The Kingsway Theatre, London. June 21st, 1910.
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Direction of Actresses' Franchise League.
Press Cuttings is the most perfectly amusing thing Shaw has written in many years. It recalls the days of delightful irresponsibility, which seemed to have passed for ever—the days of Arms and the Man and You Never Can Tell. The adverse decision of the Censorship is inconceivable, in the light of the sanction of Mr. Barrie's Josephine, in which Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour were “caricatured,” and even a number of their public utterances put in the mouths of the characters obviously impersonating them. Mr. Shaw's Balsquith (Balfour-Asquith) and Mitchener (Milner-Kitchener) bear not the faintest resemblance to any of the personages suggested by their names—representing merely, in a light of broadly farcical-comedy, a prime minister and a head of the army. From the situation arising from reversing the rôles of man and woman, due to the agitation of the “militant suffragettes”—woman developing all the “manly” qualities of pugnacity and overbearing insolence, man developing the “womanly” qualities of timidity and indecision—Shaw has extracted a comedy that is breezily, devastatingly comical. But, even in a topical sketch, Shaw from time to time “puts away childish things” and shows us the serious sides of several subjects. Those who indulge in the futile claim that men are more useful to the world than women will find food for serious reflection in the passage in Shaw's play in which General Mitchener tries to excuse himself for giving way to profanity. He is sternly reproved by the Irish charwoman, Mrs. Farrell—admirably played by that remarkable character-actress, Miss Agnes Thomas.
“When a man has risked his life on eight battlefields, Mrs. Farrell,” pleads the General in extenuation, “he has given sufficient proof of his self-control to be excused a little strong language.”