The Devil's Disciple is the fourth and last play in the category of authentically dramatic pieces, ranking just below Candida in the subtlety of its character-delineation and the magnetic force of its appeal. The play had its genesis in a conversation between Shaw and that remarkable romantic actor, William Terriss. In Shaw's words:
“One day Terriss sent for me, and informed me that since witnessing the production of Arms and the Man he regarded me as one of the 'greatest intellectual forces of the present day.' He proposed to combine my intellect with his knowledge of the stage in the construction of a play. Whereupon he gave me one of the most astounding scenarios I ever encountered.... When I endeavoured with all my reasoning powers to convince this terrible Terriss that such a scenario contained far too much action and far too little delineation of character, he declared firmly: 'Mister Shaw, you have convinced me.' With these words, and without the slightest hesitation, he threw the whole scenario into the fire with the attitude and decision of a man who well knows that he has another draft lying in his desk. Nevertheless, the fact that he greeted me as a great intellectual force and yet had implied that I was incapable of writing a popular melodrama delighted me beyond words, and I resolved to get together all the trite episodes, all the stale situations, which had done such good service in the last ten years in trashy plays, and combine them in a new melodrama, which should have the appearance of a deeply thought-out, original modern play. The result of it all was The Devil's Disciple.”[179]
The spontaneity and naturalness which characterize the dialogue of Shaw's plays are the results, in part, of his habit of writing his plays on scraps of paper at odd times. And in the case of The Devil's Disciple, Shaw achieved the incomparable feat of writing a brilliant play and “looking pleasant” at one and the same time! “A young lady I know,” relates Shaw, “wanted to make a portrait of me, sitting on the corner of a table, which is a favourite attitude of mine. So I wrote the play in a notebook to fill up the time.”
In that mock-modest preface, On Diabolonian Ethics, Shaw has confessed his indebtedness to literary history and openly acknowledged his thefts from the past. But in one place he quietly asserts that he has put something original into this play. “The Devil's Disciple has, in truth, a genuine novelty in it. Only, that novelty is not any invention of my own, but simply the novelty of the advanced thought of my own day.” How can one express more succinctly the end and aim of the modern dramatist? Goethe once said that the great aim of the modern intelligence should be to gain control over every means afforded by the past, in order thereby to enable himself to exhibit those features in which the modern world feels itself new and different and unique. A remarkably subtle travesty upon melodrama, The Devil's Disciple is a picture of life seen through the refractory temperament of a thoroughly modern intelligence.
The veiled satire underlying The Devil's Disciple is found in the fact that, whilst speciously purporting to be a melodrama, by individual and unique treatment the play gives the lie to the specific melodramatic formula. The comprehension of the dual rôle made this play as presented by Richard Mansfield peculiarly appreciated by American audiences; in England, the play was absurdly misunderstood, as related in one of Shaw's prefaces.
If we consider the crucial moments of the play, we observe the brilliant way in which Shaw has combined popular melodrama for the masses and Shavian satire upon melodrama for the discerning few. How the hardened old playgoer chuckles over his prevision of the situation that is to result after Dick is arrested and led off to prison! Of course, the minister will come back, Judith will waver between love for her husband and desire to save the noble altruist, the secret will be torn from her at last, her husband will prepare to go and take Dick's place. She will adjure him to save himself, but he will remain firm as adamant. What a tumult of passions, what a moving farewell, every eye is moist—the genuine scène à faire! What a sense of exquisite relief when Shaw has the minister take the natural, the business-like, and not the melodramatic course! Again, in the third act, when Judith, like a true Shakespearean heroine, disregards the convention of feminine fastidiousness in order to penetrate to the profoundest depths of Dick's heart, the melodramatic formula is clear: Dick will kneel at Judith's feet, pour out his burning love for her, the two will revel in the ecstasies of la grande passion. Reality is far subtler and more complex than melodrama—not a game of heroics, but a clash of natures, says Shaw.
“You know you did it for his sake,” charges Judith, “believing he was a more worthy man than yourself.”
“Oho! No,” laughs Dick in reply; “that's a very pretty reason, I must say; but I'm not so modest as that. No, it wasn't for his sake.”
Now she blushes, her heart beats painfully, and she asks softly: “Was it for my sake?” “Perhaps a little for your sake,” he indulgently admits; but when, emboldened by his words, she romantically charges him to save himself, that he may go with her, even to the ends of the earth, he takes hold of her firmly by the wrists, gazes steadily into her eyes, and says:
“If I said—to please you—that I did what I did ever so little for your sake, I lied as men always lie to women. You know how much I have lived with worthless men—aye, and worthless women too. Well, they could all rise to some sort of goodness and kindness when they were in love. That has taught me to set very little store by the goodness that only comes out red-hot. What I did last night, I did in cold blood, caring not half so much for your husband or for you as I do for myself. I had no motive and no interest: all I can tell you is that when it came to the point whether I would take my neck out of the noose and put another man's into it, I could not do it. I don't know why not: I see myself as a fool for my pains; but I could not, and I cannot. I have been brought up standing by the law of my own nature; and I may not go against it, gallows or no gallows. I should have done the same thing for any other man in the town, or any other man's wife. Do you understand that?”