Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet
THE MAN of the MONTH
[Appleton, $7.50]
PROFESSOR ARCHIBALD HENDERSON of the University of North Carolina has devoted a large part of his life to collecting facts about G. B. Shaw and writing books and articles concerning that lively old gentleman. Naturally he does not think lightly of his chosen task. But unfortunately this leads him into declaring that he ‘discovered’ Shaw in 1904, when he saw one of the plays acted in Chicago, and that the publication of his ‘authorized’ Life in 1911 gave Shaw ‘a comprehensive reputation, revealing to each astonished section [of the public] three or four Shaws of whose existence it had no suspicion and combining them into a complete man.’ This bit of cock-a-doodle-doo has annoyed many reviewers of Professor Henderson’s new book, Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet, to such an extent that they have failed to do it, or its author, justice. Of course Henderson did n’t ‘discover’ Shaw, and a great number of people in 1911 knew or suspected a many-sided man. What Henderson did do in 1904 was to recognize the fact that Shaw represented his age in an extraordinary way, especially for a dramatist, and what the original Life did was to drive home the representative character of the man. In this sense he was a discoverer (of course Shaw always knew it!) and that is what Professor Henderson really means.
Professor Henderson’s biographical method is made possible by his Boswellian patience in taking down his subject’s conversation, his enormous collection of letters, interviews, and casual articles written by Shaw on every variety of topic, and his study of Shaw’s considered comment in plays, pamphlets, and prefaces. There were probably plenty of people in 1911 who did not regard Shaw as a genius. A. B. Walkley was one. Plenty regarded him as a clown, and he played up to those gleefully. But time has demonstrated the essential validity for this age of his artistic aims, — the destruction of the ‘well-made’ play and the creation of the unsentimental drama of ideas, — and demonstrated, too, the integrity of his intellect and the enormous fecundity of his inventive wit. A man who fights a battle ahead of his day and lives to see it won, who keeps and increases the respect of the world in spite of cap and bells, and who in all his work achieves so high a standard of style that the press of all nations delights to quote even his cablegrams and postcards, to say nothing of his plays, is unquestionably a genius. He deserves a Boswell, and future generations will bless his biographer.
The life of Shaw is a history of the artistic and social developments of our age. To see the process through Shaw’s eyes, discovering how large a part he played, and to share with him the excitement of battle, are, with all due respect to Frank Harris and the Freudians, more interesting and important than to discover the when and with whom of Shaw’s amours. Professor Henderson makes it clear that Shaw is abnormal only in the sense that he possesses a brain, and with that he dismisses the matter, one hopes forever. It is not so easy to dismiss the clowning, nor does he try. It is a part of the Aristophanic comedic genius of the man, perhaps of his Celtic heritage, and to most of us seems an integral part of his charm, perhaps even of his power. It greatly troubled Tolstoi, as this book shows. The imp in Shaw he could not forgive. Shaw’s kindness, his justness of spirit, his comprehensive sympathy, his forward look, are easy to show by a thousand examples. When a man s creed is Creative Evolution (see Back to Methuselah), the test of him is in action, and Shaw’s life has been a long battle for those changes in art and society which seemed to him progress. He emerges from this book a piquant and admirable man to whom literature is but another weapon for the Army of the Lord.
The book is packed with pictures, cartoons, playbills, and sparkles with Shavian anecdotes, letters, and wisecracks. Under such conditions, no book could be dull.
WALTER PRICHARD EATON