[148] From Shaw's preface to Mr. Archer's The Theatrical World of 1894, pp. xxvii-xxviii. In view of the interest manifested in Arms and the Man at the time of its first production in 1894, Mr. Archer requested Mr. Shaw to say something about it in this preface.
[149] Arms and the Man has, most appropriately, furnished the “book” for a comic opera, entitled The Chocolate Soldier, written by Bernauer and Jacobson, music by Oscar Straus, the popular composer. It was to be expected that there would be many “comic” attractions in the adaptation of Mr. Shaw's play. Of course, all the complications, such as the incident of the incriminating photograph, are multiplied by three: Nicola disappears and Louka makes way for Mascha, now the cousin of Raina. In the end all are happily mated. In consequence of the “comic variations” from the original play, Mr. Shaw insisted that the programme contain a frank apology for this “unauthorized parody of one of Mr. Bernard Shaw's comedies.” First successfully produced at the Theater des Westens, Berlin, 1909, The Chocolate Soldier, both for the borrowed, if parodied, cleverness, and the delightful music, has since won great popularity through the productions of Mr. F. C. Whitney (English version by Mr. Stanislaus Stange), in New York (May, 1910) and London (September, 1910).
[150] Shaw has been charged with indebtedness, not only to W. S. Gilbert, but to earlier topsy-turvyists. In April, 1906, there appeared in the New York Tribune a “deadly parallel” between Arms and the Man and Used Up, adapted from the French by Charles Mathews in 1845. As a matter of fact, the passage cited—Bluntschli's proposal for the hand of Raina (compared with Sir Charles Coldstream's for the hand of Lady Clutterbuck)—is neither an imitation of Mathews, nor a triumph of eccentric invention, but a paraphrase, Shaw unqualifiedly asserts, of an actual proposal made by an Austrian hotel proprietor for the hand of a member of Mr. Shaw's own family.
[151] Mr. Bernard Shaw's Plays, in Frames of Mind (Grant Richards, London, 1889), p. 47.
[152] By this method of treatment, chronology is of necessity sacrificed to logic.
[153] Preferring to see Shaw fail seriously rather than succeed farcically, Mr. Archer sternly admonished him to “quit his foolishness”; and Mr. Shaw's former champion of Independent Theatre days, Mr. J. T. Grein, gently but firmly advised him never again to send up any more such ballons d'essai.
[154] The Haymarket Theatre (Grant Richards, London, 1903). Chapter XIV. (from which the above and following quotations are taken), Mr. Maude says, “was sent to me as an aid to the completion of this work. It professes to deal with that period of our management when we rehearsed a piece by the brilliant Mr. Bernard Shaw. The writer, I am assured, is well fitted to deal with that period. I leave it to the reader to judge, and to guess its authorship.” Needless to say that the author was Bernard Shaw himself!
[155] The Court Theatre, 1904-1907, by Desmond MacCarthy (A. H. Bullen, London, 1907), p. 57.
[156] Post-Express (Rochester, N. Y.), December 3d, 1904.
[157] Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction; or the Fatal Gazogene; originally appeared in Harry Furniss's Christmas Annual for 1905 (Arthur Treherne and Co. Ltd., Adelphi, London), pp. 11-24, with illustrations by Mr. Harry Furniss.