“Dona Ana, being a woman, is incapable both of the devil's utter damnation and of Don Juan's complete supersensuality. As the mother of many children, she has shared in the divine travail, and with care and labour and suffering renewed the harvest of eternal life; but the honour and divinity of her work have been jealously hidden from her by man, who, dreading her domination, has offered her for reward only the satisfaction of her senses and affections. She cannot, like the male devil, use love as mere sentiment and pleasure; nor can she, like the male saint, put love aside when it has once done its work as a developing and enlightening experience. Love is neither her pleasure nor her study: it is her business. So she, in the end, neither goes with Don Juan to heaven nor with the devil and her father to the palace of pleasure, but declares that her work is not yet finished. For though by her death she is done with the bearing of men to mortal fathers, she may yet, as Woman immortal, bear the Superman to the Eternal Father.”
[186] In W. B. Yeats's Collected Works, Vol. IV., p. 109 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908), appears a statement (dated 1903), with reference to “the play which Mr. Bernard Shaw has promised us.” The appended footnote reads: “This play was John Bull's Other Island. When it came out in the spring of 1905, we felt ourselves unable to cast it without wronging Mr. Shaw. We had no Broadbent, or money to get one.”
[187] In a subsequent volume, dealing with the dramatic movement inaugurated by Mr. Shaw, the production of his plays at the Court Theatre will be fully discussed.
[188] Bernard Shaw and His Mannikins, in the New York Sun, October 15th, 1905.
[189] George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation, in The Tatler, November 16th, 1904.
[190] George Bernard Shaw: A Conversation, in The Tatler, November 16th, 1904.
[191] Several years ago, in a public address, Mr. Andrew Carnegie made the remarkable statement: “You hear a good deal these days about poverty. People wish it abolished. The saddest day civilization will ever see will be that in which poverty does not prevail. Fortunately we are assured that the poor are always to be with us. It is upon the evil of poverty that virtue springs!”
[192] In the Fabian tract, Socialism for Millionaires, Shaw preaches much the same gospel to the millionaire. This paper was first published in the Contemporary Review, February, 1896.
[193] 'Major Barbara,' G. B. S., and Robert Blatchford, by Sir Oliver Lodge; in the Clarion (London), December 29th, 1905.
[194] Impressions of the Theatre.—XIV. Mr. Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara,' in the Review of Reviews (London), January 27th, 1906.