Rapid Reviews.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 22, 4 August 1911, Page 6

Rapid Reviews.

The Real Shaw. By R.S.R. 'Tis true that George Bernard Shaw •entured to criticise Shakespeare, but then he had to. Who else was there to 3d it? Clearj-"" the equilibrium in applanation had **o bo maintained, else •SKakespeare hac> Yen made sacrosanct. yJut beyond this, for what does Shaw t>xist*but to slay idols? For what other vrork was he born ? Like Marat, in tiie Iveign of Terror, he may be "a necessAvy evil," but necessary he is. Anyway I count it no heinous crime that Shaw considers Bunyan a greater writer than Shakespeare. This is the merest of "ide i^ues. > * * y yha,t does matter is that Shaw has fared, probably more than any other figure of his time, the realities and actualities of life. The popular estimate of Shaw may be that he is a clever coalition of clownishness and cynicism, but, as a matter of fact, he is one of the foremost forces of the ago. I nivin by this statement that in a revoh'tionary sense he hasn't a peer in the English-speaking world. Strip him of his flippancy and his trifling, his wit and his paradox, and behold a John the Baptist of a New Dispensation ! All his gifts and achievements are the garb of his scientific sociologyWriter of books, author of plays, critic, philosopher, and jester though he be, these are so much form of-for-mulae. The revolutionary gospel, according to Shaw, is, I think, admirably conveyed in his words:— "The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty. 1 All the other crimes are virtues beside it. . . . .Poverty ."blights:, whole cities. . . . What people call crime is nothing; a murder here and a theft there; a blow now and a curse then, what do they matter?: They are only, the accidents and illnesses of life; there are not 50 genuine professional criminals in London.. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people,, ill-fed, ill-clothed people." There! That's direct enough and ample enough, and all it implies is the very root of the Shavian system. Hell is with us. Hell is ugly and cruel. Hell must go. No voice is as insistent with; this message as the voice of one Shajv, crying amidst laughter and cant and hypocrisy and indecency and injustice.; ;; I mean to say that whatever Shaw sfloes hot mean he does mean Revolution. He knows things, too. Witness : — : J ■".No,fact has been more deeply stamped into us than that we can do nothing with an Engilish Governmeiit unless wo frighten it." ■....-, And he started out to frighten it, and with it the society and order in which we live, move, and have our being. That the Shavian pill was coated with sugar, and, therefore, came to be rather liked, by no means discounts the benefit of the pill. They.who nowadays laugh at the quips and the brilliance, the satire and the shout, either laugh uneasily or triumphantly. Needless to mention, that the upholders, or vested interests aiid their satellites 1 constitute the former. Of a verity the Shavian method has justified itself. Method is like madness —of many gradations and varieties. There could never be another madman like King Lear: there could never be another strategist like Shaw. In the domains of madness and' of method, originality alone _ works miracles, and a repeated miracle is only mediocrity. There is no absolute Jaw 'in methods. Shaw's was for him and his day—born into its right hour. What though its' creator himself despairs? It is but the impatience of a Messiah, the outlook of a Calvary. Profusely sententious is that natural law of. the darkest hour preceding the dawn. Thus Shaw in the bitterness of liis heart: — *'I, who have preached and" pamphleteered like any Encyclopedist, have Ito confess that my methods are no '. use. The problem being to make ' heroes out of cowards, we paper j apostles . and artist magicians have '■ succeeded only in giving cowards all the sensations of heroes. . Whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept every plunder, and submit to every oppression." Laugh, ye fools! —but under" thy feet iho earth trembles. » * * Though George Bernard Shaw has explained'" himself at considerable length, and with brilliant clarity, a, perverse generation has hitherto refused the unfolding. Shaw sought to mako himpelf a nuisance, and made instead a naif. This is the preponderating mien • —yet steadily Shaw marches to his own. His pictorial, dramatic and musical criticism, his novels, his essays and liis plays, arc getting themselves increasingly analysed, and out erf the process is emerging the weightiest voice

of revolt the century lias known. More and more.it is WHAT Shaw has said that counts, and less and less HOW ho has said it. The distinction is worthy of notice. As far as any man ma.y guide .his genius, Shaw deliberately and of malice aforethought, chose his style and his pose. It- was the manner of each which impelled recognition rather than the matter of -the message. To-day the tendency is all the other way. * * * In his "Dramatic Opinions and Essays" Shaw says, "It is an instinct with mc personally to attack every, idea which has been full grown for ten years, especially if it claims to bo the foundation of all human society." The policy has been pursued with'tremendous thunder. Back of the policy is the very pertinent alertness to the transient nature of social orders. Shaw sees that everything is motion ; that humanity m-vves along the line of antithesis- Savagery, cannibalism, civilisation, slavery, serfdom, : wagedom— herein is all history. Within each the germ of its successor, each in turn its

own destroyer. Ardently a re-maker of things that man has made, basically a reconstructionist of society, Shaw, began his career by advertising his purpose. This was the day of the "Fabian Essays." Later he dropped the advertisement of a purpose and applied it to his wares alone. He discarded the old weapon of proclamation in favour of suggestion, never mentioning Socialism, but presenting its viewpoint all the while. Thus the Shavian plays really take their place as Socialist litermature.- ; -■ •''•■• * * * . Challenger and iconoclast as he is, and with which I am here chiefly concerned, yet it would be folly to- ignore or deny the delightful artistry of Shaw as man of letters. And' art is admirably primed with philosophy in purposeful masonry when George Bernard Shaw constructs essays and. plays. Never prefaces so unique,- subtle, picturesque and propagandist have appeared as, Shaw's lengthy studies of life's problems.' His prefaces to his plays are a joy and a wonder. Attempted by another and their disproportionate size had evoked scornful laughter. In the. case of Shaw, they have added to his reputation' as phenomenal originalist and enigmatical satirist. Very slowly does the real Shaw—the revolutionist who would mak-o all-things NEW-^ —plough his way to understanding. That knowledge cometh with the Morrow. * * # Two things I -should like to do. The first, to tell the story of Shaw's life, and the second, to review his works. Neither is now possible. Let mc, however, commend to attention Hoibroqk Jackson's "Bernard Shaw" as a plain unvarnished tale by comparison with tile mystical and baffling \ work by Chesterton. Jackson has not got paradoxitis. His is an eminently sane biography plus an understandable estimate. The book is a presentation of Shaw as man, Fabian, playwright, and philosopher. The portraits are superb craftsmanship. The quotations are characteristically luminous. I cannot resist the temptation—'here is one of Shaw's passages from his "Valedictory," published in the "Saturday Review" of May 21, 1898:— Just consider my position. Do I receive any spontaneous recognition for the prodigies of skill and industry I lavish on an unworthy institution and a stupid public? Not a bit of it: half my time is spent in telling people what a clever man I am. It is no use merely doing clever things in England. The English do not know 'what to think until they are coached laboriously and insistently for years, in the proper and becoming «piriion. For ten. years past, with an unprecedented pertinacity andobstinatieii I have b*en driving into the

public head that I am ah extraordinary witty, brilliant, and'clever man. That is now part of the public opinion ol • lEngland; and no power in heaven or on earth will ever change it. I may dodder and dote;.. I may potboil and platitudinise; I may become the butt "and chopping block of all the bright, original spirits "of the rising generation ; but my - reputation shall not suffer; it is built up fast and ixdid, like Shakespeare's, on an impregnable basis of dogmatic xeitera- . tion." ■■■■•-.■ ••■.,...•■• . * • Whilst w© are among the quotations, let us have- regard to the fundamental view of Shaw according to his two biographers. Thus Jackson:—- 1 ' *'. ..'"'-'< : ... "We kneAV he was a force to-bo taken : imUo account;,we were unanimous in •our belief that only in. the vitalised action advocated by him was there ! any hope for the redemption of a isocial system which had become a chaos and a desolation." : Thus Chesterton :—. ,-..- _, .-| .; ;: "However hei-may. shout profanities or : seek to shatter .the shrines,'.there; is always something about him which suggests that in a sweeter and more solid civilisation he would have been a great saint/ "Such a man is comparatively, auda- , cidus iii theory, because he is cOm-. paratively clever in thought" "He is a daring pilgrim who has set out from the grave to find the cradle. He started from points of view which no one else was clever enough to discover, and he is at last discovering points of view no one else was ever stupid-enough to ignore." "Here was a man who could have enjoyed art among the artists, : who could have been the wittiest of all the .flaneurs,, who could have made epigrams like diamonds, and drunk music like wine. He has instead laboured in a mill of statistics and crammed his' mind with all the most dreary and:, most filthy details, so that he can argue on: the spur of the moment about , sewing machines or sewage, about typhus fever or twopenny tubes. The usual mean theory of .motives.', will'not cover the case; it is not ambition; for he could have been twenty times more prominent as a plausible and popular humorist. It is the real and ancient emotion of the sa-lus po'puli, almost'exSnct in our oligarchical chaos; nor will I, for one, as I pass on to ; many matters of argument or quarrel, neglect to salute a passion so implacable and so pure." At the risk, of lagging superfluous upon the.; stage, I want to point ,to "Major Barbara' 5 , as a play demoniacal in its mountainous satire of our commercial system., ''It all came back t& Bodger -" is '" the keynote of the play. ißodger,is'rich,:;and because he is rich •h«^'c■an' , Army and pretty well 'anything.' "Major Barbara'"' is terrific: worth a series of articles. Then "Mrs. I Warren's Profession" is indictment tragically true in its preference for prostitution to the white lead factory. Read these two plays':; and then you'll seek out the rest,arid next the Kingdom. of God, which is Socialism, which is Revolution. -Because, ho is for this, Shaw, is on the right side—our side. -