Six Talks on "The Life and Work of Bernard Shaw"

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 15, 23 October 1931, Page 10

Six Talks on "The Life and Work of Bernard Shaw"

By the

Rev.

William A.

Constable

MAS

Synopsis No. 3-Satirist. To be broadcast from 1YA, Tuesday, October 27, at 7.30 p.m. HAW first entered the drama as a Socialist propagandist. Whilst he wisely refrains from preaching any particular panacea in his plays, his aim is definitely to make people think about social problems. His first plays are "Plays Unpleasant," dealing in "Widowers’ Houses" with slum property, and in "Mrs. Warren’s Profession" with prostitution (the latter was stupidly banned by the censor). He deals with the general problem of poverty and man’s responsibility for it in "Major Barbara," in the preface to which he says:-‘We must share the world’s guilt or go to another planet; we must save the world’s honour if we are to save our own." Here we have Shaw as a destructive critic of social evils in the drama. We next turn to his more definite work as a satirist, where his task is to lash the evils and follies of our age with the whip of ridicule. This is first revealed in "Arms and the Man," where romantic militarism is satirised. Military stupidity again catches it in the person of Major Swindon in the brilliant court-martial scene of "The Devil’s Disciple," with its fine characterisation of General Burgoyne. "The Doctor’s Dilemma" is throughout laughable satire of the medical profession, which has always tended to be the butt of the comic dramatists even before the classic satire of Moliere. Political satire is very common in Shaw’s plays from the characterisation of Tom Broadbent "the Gladstonised Englishman" in "John Bull’s Other Island" to the whole theme and treatment of "The Apple Cart." In his popular play "Pygmalion" we have a richly humorous satire of "middle class morality" in the dustman, Alfred Doolittle, who describes himself as "a member, of the undeserving poor." Whilst moral priggishness and respectability are more seriously criticised by Undersheft, the million- | aire armament manufacturer in "Major Barbara,’ who says:-"You are all alike, you respectable people. You can’t tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter, but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren’t handle high explosives, but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game." Question for discussion :- . In his endeavour for social betterment, does Shaw achieve more by his satirical ridicule of social evils, or by his more serious criticism? .