By permission of Frederick H. Evans
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
WHOSE PLAY, "CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION," WRITTEN FOR MISS TERRY, WAS PRODUCED BY HER IN 1906
When at last I was able to play in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" I found Bernard Shaw wonderfully patient at rehearsal. I look upon him as a good, kind, gentle creature whose "brainstorms" are due to the Irishman's love of a fight; they never spring from malice or anger. It doesn't answer to take Bernard Shaw seriously. He is not a man of convictions; that is one of the charms of his plays, to me, at least. One never knows how the cat is really jumping. But it jumps. Bernard Shaw is alive, with nine lives, like the cat.
Shakespeare's Rabelaisian Mood
On Whit Monday, 1902, I received a telegram from Mr. Tree saying that he was coming down to Winchelsea to see me on "an important matter of business." I was at the time suffering from considerable depression about the future.
The Stratford-on-Avon visit had inspired me with the feeling that there was life in the old 'un yet, and had distracted my mind from the strangeness of no longer being at the Lyceum permanently with Henry Irving. But there seemed to be nothing ahead, except two matinées a week with him at the Lyceum, to be followed by a provincial tour in which I was only to play twice a week, as Henry's chief attraction was to be "Faust." This sort of "dowager" engagement did not tempt me. Besides, I hated the idea of drawing a large salary and doing next to no work. So when Mr. Tree proposed that I should play Mrs. Page (Mrs. Kendal being Mrs. Ford) in "Merry Wives of Windsor" at His Majesty's, it was only natural that I should accept the offer joyfully. I telegraphed to Henry Irving, asking him if he had any objection to my playing at His Majesty's. He answered: "Quite willing if proposed arrangements about matinées are adhered to."
I have thought it worth while to give the facts about this engagement, because so many people seemed at the time and afterwards to think that I had treated Henry Irving badly by going on playing in another theatre, and that theatre one where a certain rivalry with the Lyceum as regards Shakespearian productions had grown up. There was absolutely no foundation for the rumors that my "desertion" caused further estrangement between Henry Irving and me.