And lo! they are even there—and all agree that as papers bearing the gristly finger-prints of a witch, they must be burnt. Cæsar’s wife must be above suspicion.
“I read them the first thing....” whispers the witch’s alter ego; “So you see I know what’s in them; and you don’t.”
“Excuse me,” replies Napoleon blandly. “I read them when I was out there in the vineyard ten minutes ago.”
It would be impossible to exaggerate the humor and delicacy of this little play. Napoleon, it must be remembered, is still a youngster, who has scarcely dared to confess to himself the sublime scope of his ambitions. But the man of Austerlitz and St. Helena peeps out, now and then, from the young general’s flashing eyes, and the portrait, in every detail, is an admirable one. Like Thackeray, Shaw is fond of considering great men in their ordinary everyday aspects. He knows that Marengo was but a day, and that there were thousands of other days in the Little Corporal’s life. It is such week-days of existence that interest him, and in their light he has given us plays that offer amazingly searching studies of Cæsar and of Bonaparte, not to speak of General Sir John Burgoyne.
“THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE”
The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Rewarded,” a blank verse farce in two tableaux, is a dramatization by Shaw of certain incidents in his novel, “Cashel Byron’s Profession.” Cashel Byron, the hero of the novel, is a prize-fighter who wins his way to the hand and heart of Lydia Carew, a young woman of money, education and what Mulvaney calls “theouries.” Cashel sees in Lydia a remarkably fine girl; Lydia sees in Cashel an idealist and a philosopher as well as a bruiser. The race of Carew, she decides, needs an infusion of healthy red blood. And so she marries Byron—and they live happily ever after.
Bashville is Lydia’s footman and factotum, and he commits the unpardonable solecism of falling in love with her. Very frankly he confesses his passion and resigns his menial portfolio.
“If it is to be my last word,” he says, “I’ll tell you that the ribbon round your neck is more to me,” etc., etc.... “I am sorry to inconvenience you by a short notice, but I should take it as a particular favor if I might go this evening.”
“You had better,” says Lydia, rising quite calmly and keeping resolutely away from her the strange emotional result of being astonished, outraged and loved at one unlooked-for stroke. “It is not advisable that you should stay after what you have just——”