SOURCE: "The Art of Shavian Political Drama," in Modern Drama, Vol. XIV, No. 3, December, 1971, pp. 324-30.

[In the following essay, Nickson attempts to explain and correct readers' common misinterpretations of Bernard Shaw's political beliefs as expressed in his plays.]

England, arise! the long, long night is over. . .

The unemployed of the Great Depression of the thirties are singing these verses of Edward Carpenter outside number ten Downing Street at the close of Bernard Shaw's On the Rocks "to a percussion accompaniment of baton thwacks." Straightway, one critic on the Left observed that "the play ends with the marchers outside the window singing 'England Arise!' which I understand is the theme song of Mosley's Black Shirts."¹ The playwright's conservative biographer, St. John Ervine, propounded an equally ingenious but dissimilar interpretation based on the second line of Carpenter's song, "Faint in the east behold the dawn appear." According to Ervine, "For G. B. S. the east was Russia, and the dawn was a dictatordominated commune."²

At the age of seventy-seven the Good Gray Fabian was still provoking gross misinterpretations of the political content of his drama. For a long time he was even unable to get a theatre in London for his 1933 "Political Comedy," as he subtitled On the Rocks. Evidently Ervine was not the only one to believe that this play "marks Shaw's most extreme stand against democracy,"³ despite what should have been plainly observable—that Shaw was probing, as he had done four years earlier in The Apple Cart, for some sort of alternative to the rule of big business as manipulated by venal and inept politicians. He was bent on demonstrating dramatically the warning voiced by Captain Shotover in Act III of Heartbreak House: "One of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks." The Captain meant by "skippers" the political pilots of England—and by extension, of Western society. In The Apple Cart Shaw portrayed the capitalist quandary of the cabinet skippers getting patched up with a compromise effected by a superior man who happened to be a constitutional monarch. King Magnus just managed to avoid, or postpone, an upsetting of the cart. But in On the Rocks the aristocratic man who happens to be the Prime Minister fails to budge the ship of state from its position on the rocks. The change of metaphor in the two titles is ominously significant. Nevertheless, democracy is not the villain of either piece.

Two years after writing On the Rocks, Shaw in the preface to The Millionairess expressed with directness and scorn his opinions about adult suffrage and about the duly elected Labour and National governments. Although he there declared that he would favor "the most complete Communism and Democracy,"⁴ he recognized that no absolute (such as complete democracy) is possible of realization. What has come to pass in the actual world of the "sham-democracies" of the West, Shaw noted, is that "the financier and the soldier are the cocks of the walk; and democracy means that their parasites and worshippers carry all before them."⁵ It is, then, not democracy, but sham-democracy (government that always supports profiteering, as Shaw's Prime Minister describes it) which the playwright exposes in On the Rocks.

It was said of Shaw early in his career that he was attacking Shakespeare, despite the civilized understanding that only a boor would attack the Bard. Then it began to be more and more widely perceived that the real target of his missiles was "bardolatry." Shaw scored a point. Furthermore he attracted attention, with his levity and exaggeration, to what he was about. Just so, in his later years, he succeeded in attracting attention to his criticism of democracy—as it is perverted, in Shaw's socialistic view, under capitalist management.

Throughout his adult life Bernard Shaw plumped for exchanging the present social order for another, yet most of his lengthy career was dedicated to effecting gradual change in a strictly constitutional manner. He remarked, nevertheless, at the turn of the century, in his (John Tanner's) preface to "The Revolutionist's Handbook," that "all who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform."⁶ For his own faith in such methods had dwindled appreciably by the time of Man and Superman, and as he grew older this wisp of faith perished. But the cataclysm of World War I followed by revolutions and coups did not damage it so much as did the spectacle of Labour governments of Great Britain, fully staffed with Fabian socialists, putting parliamentary government through what seemed to Shaw to be the same ineffectual paces he had so long derided.

For the most part, the critics and the common readers have continued to misconstrue Shaw's treatment of political matters in his drama. Some of his later plays chiefly come to mind in this regard because in them Shaw dealt directly, for the first time as dramatist, with the problem of British government (in The Apple Cart as well as in On the Rocks) and with the problem of international government (in Geneva). Moreover, the misinterpretations which have ensued are by no means limited to cries of Fascist! from some or Bolshevist! from others (or even the omnifarious Totalitarian!). Indeed, much more frequent are the strictures leveled against The Playwright for not having the good sense to write always as The Polemicist.

Finding in his non-dramatic works an author who can be relied upon to express his opinions sharply, many readers turn away from Shavian dialogue with a feeling of being denied the bounty of a Viewpoint. Not for them Doctor Chekhov's prescription to the artist to state a problem correctly, as against solving it. Not for them a Nietzschean gaya scienza, let alone a willingness to agree with Wittgenstein that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious). Still, they might at least keep in mind Shaw's own earnest declaration: "All genuinely intellectual work is humorous."⁷

One person who did keep such matters, or manners, in mind was, as might be expected, a fellow dramatist, and an eminent one—hence another readily maligned one, Bertolt Brecht. Shaw as terrorist is the theme of the gallant Brechtian "Ovation for Shaw,"⁸ which certifies the weapon of the senior terrorist to be an unusual one—"that of humor." Shaw's "successful proof that in the face of truly significant ideas a relaxed (even snotty) attitude is the only proper one" apparently formed part of the heritage of the junior, German, terrorist.

But from certain of his non-terrorist friends Shaw the playwright always stands in need of rescue—especially from the friends who would praise the Thinker while apologizing for the Dramatist. A book titled Bernard Shaw, with the portentous subtitle A Reassessment, was published recently by a self-styled Shaw disciple, Mr. Colin Wilson, in which a kind of querulous tribute is paid the master on every other page. Seldom has praise been uttered with such lavish compunction. For, clearly, the Bernard Shaw of the plays has, time and again, failed to comport himself with that high degree of seriousness required by the no-nonsense disciple. According to the apostolic Word: "it is certainly true that all the plays of his last twenty years seem to go nowhere. And this is not because Shaw's brain was impaired, but because he was unfortunately underworking it."⁹

The simple truth about millions of readers is that they don't quite like drama. Colin Wilson's reservations encompass not just the later plays alone, but the entire repertory. As he condescendingly puts it (and I quote him as a spokesman for Colin Wilsons Limited the world over), "I have tried to show that no matter how successful Shaw's plays may appear to be dramatically, they remain oddly fumbling, journeyman works on their most interesting level—the level of the ideas they set out to dramatise."¹⁰ All such readers doubtless know very well how ideas should be dramatized, but meantime we must make do with the example of practicing dramatists. And it is at least possible that practitioner Shaw developed ways of dramatizing ideas—political ideas included—that are better than the descriptions of them by this or that dissatisfied commentator.

It is even altogether likely that the art of political drama, in particular, reached a subtly fine state of development in the hands of Shaw, and never more so than during his final decades, in a few of his most politicized plays. A close examination of them, of what he attempted and did not attempt, uncovers certain assumptions, intentions, and strategies worth remarking, at least for the sake of stressing what is still too lightly overlooked or heavily misinterpreted.

Despite an ever increasing absorption in politics, Shaw as dramatist continued to write, not propaganda, blunt and simple, but plays, elusive and complex: he remained fundamentally, and fortunately, an artist to the end of his days. As an artist he aimed at rendering the social system as he saw it, not as he would like to see it. Yet his plays were never dedicated merely to the recording of facts; they also insinuate a judgment on these facts. For the playwright observed society critically from a definite standpoint—a socialist standpoint, based on convictions which tended to increasing firmness with advancing years. But although a convinced socialist, Shaw never presumed to resolve—much less solve—the social problems explored in his drama. His personal convictions are seldom, if ever, imposed decisively on any of his plays, however much they may happen to be recorded incidentally.

Political solutions or resolutions are provided by society, not by playwrights. The playwright can only, at most, propose answers. Playwright Shaw, however, preferred in the main to pose questions and to dramatize situations so as to highlight the basic political matters of which they are a part. As a dramatist he tried to open his readers' eyes to the political facts under which they live—the avowed aim of Shaw the polemical writer.¹¹ A comparison between the direct expression of his political views in the prefaces and the necessarily indirect expression of them in the plays reveals, besides the marked differences one would expect, how deftly Shaw was able to maneuver within the confines of a rigorous art. Often, of course, the multi-voiced indirect admonition of the dramatist seems but a small echo of the direct advocacy of the polemicist.

All the same, the later plays sweepingly explore and expose contemporary political problems. As has been noted by E. Strauss, a canny observer of Shaw's political drama, they are also devoted to "the psychological effects of the failure to solve them."¹² Interpretations of this failure emphasizing the subjective have been urged more by other critics than by Strauss, who yet sensibly remarked that Shaw's "work is at least as much a document of doubt as of belief. Were it otherwise," he added, "Shaw would not be the great realist that he is; for it would be idle to pretend that the great hopes of his youth have been fulfilled."¹³ But while the later plays may be said to objectify, to some degree, a sense of the failure of Shavian ideas, the playwright, by dramatizing the psychological effects of society to solve its problems, also objectifies, on the one hand, the need for a solution and, on the other, a criticism of the society which fails to meet this need.

As a member of a capitalist society, writing about and speaking to this society, Shaw is largely concerned with the political problems which he believed to be of moment to such a society. And in the later plays, while posing these problems and criticizing the society under scrutiny for not facing them constructively, he seldom failed to imply—with both his choice of situations and his handling of them—a condemnation of society as it is and a need for its being changed. Without permitting his drama to propound doctrinal matter, and without letting it assume a dogmatic manner, Shaw nevertheless managed often enough to demonstrate the need for social reconstruction.

His detestation of capitalism only mounting with his declining years, Shaw's later plays are in essence a critique, or exposure, of capitalism, especially as it existed in the society he knew best, the British. And he sometimes succeeded brilliantly in pointing up the contradictions within this society. As a communist in theory and a playwright by profession,¹⁴ he received Marxist applause from R. Palme Dutt, who declared that Shaw "exposed capitalist society with a passionate intensity that has never been equalled by any writer of English."¹⁵ E. J. Hobsbawn has gone still further, stating that Shaw has produced "the most remarkable running critique of imperialist civilization from within, that has so far appeared."¹⁶

Shaw's concentration during his last decades on what he regarded as man's central problem, how to govern himself, led even this master of comedy to somber reflections and eventually to a new genre—apocalyptic comedy, as it might be called. Besides focusing on political predicaments and the failure of society to extricate itself from them, the later plays often proceed to show, or to hint at, the catastrophes to which the failure is leading. By evoking a fantastic, nightmarish atmosphere within the extravaganza medium that he fashioned for this sobering purpose, he was able to record, despite waning powers, the turbulent flux of contemporary life, the social restlessness, the political quandary. What is more, with these final, provocative ventures into new modes on the part of an artist in his seventies, eighties, and beyond, we are treated, paradoxically, to the additional surprise, remarked by James Bridie, of Shaw's artistry dissolving even his most pessimistic plays (Too True to Be Good and Geneva) in laughter.¹⁷ To characterize them as the fulminations of an old man disillusioned with his earlier convictions is to misrepresent them and their author utterly.

But Shaw did not succeed in dramatizing the efficacy of socialist solutions to social problems. He did not attempt to do this. Such an attempt would have but carried him away from his world—at least away from the particular society which he was observing and criticizing. That society failed to solve its problems, and Shavian drama accurately records this failure.

The failure is society's. It is not necessarily the failure of socialist or Shavian ideas, although these ideas must be viewed as at least involved in the failure. It is as sadly plain to his admirers as it was to the aged Shaw that he had failed to be influential in quite the way he had hoped to be. (Such a failure he shares, however, with legions of illustrious figures of history, legend, and myth.) Although many of his proposed reforms were in fact accepted during his lifetime, his socialist proposal for a fundamental change in the structure of society was not accepted. Consequently his plays cannot but reflect the failure of his convictions to prevail. Still, this "sense of failure" dramatically pinpoints as well the need for change and the failure of society to change itself. It is in this manner, however deviously, however negatively, that Shaw the dramatist expressed, or suggested, the nature and the strength of his political convictions. Throughout his entire playwriting career, but most especially during his later years, Bernard Shaw staunchly confronted society in the roles that have made him at once both famous and infamous—those of satirist, critic, terrorist!

¹ Robert Forsythe, "The Beauty of Silence," New Masses, 5 July 1938, p. 13. "Wolcott Gibbs in his review of On the Rocks in the New Yorker considers it a Communist play," according to Forsythe, who himself is certain that "without any doubt whatsoever, On the Rocks is a fascist play. In addition it stinks."

²Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work and Friends (New York: William Morrow, 1956), p. 553.

³Ibid., p. 355.

⁴The Simpleton, The Six, and The Millionairess (London: Constable, 1936), p. 130.

⁵Ibid., p. 123.

⁶Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (New York: Brentano's, 1909), p. 180.

⁷ In Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats: Letters, ed. Clifford Bax (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942), p. 10.

⁸ "Ovation for Shaw," trans. Gerhard H. W. Zuther, Modern Drama, 2 (1959), 184.

⁹Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 270. Yet, curiously, on page 264 Wilson states that "Shaw's later works have many virtues; there is not one of them of which we can say . . . that it would have been better for his reputation if he had never written it. One day, someone will write a detailed study of the plays from Too True to Be Good to Why She Would Not, and it will be an important addition to Shaw criticism."

¹⁰Ibid., p. 165.

¹¹ Preface to Geneva, in Geneva, Cymbeline Refinished, and Good King Charles (London: Constable, 1946), p. 16.

¹²Bernard Shaw: Art and Socialism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942), p. 13.

¹³Ibid., p. 126.

¹⁴Everybody's Political What's What? (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1944), p. 13.

¹⁵ "George Bernard Shaw: A Memoir," Labour Monthly Pamphlet, No. 1 (1951), p. 5.

¹⁶ "Bernard Shaw's Socialism," Science and Society, 11 (1947), 326.

¹⁷ "Shaw the Dramatist," in G. B. S. 90: Aspects of Bernard Shaw's Life and Work, ed. Stephen Winsten (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1946), p. 110.