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Bernard Shaw's Shakespeare Criticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Bernard Shaw's Shakespeare criticism is generally presented by his critics as something to be ashamed of, often as an expression of his ignorance or perversity. Even to critics who find Shaw generally admirable, his attack upon Shakespeare is solecistic and blindspotted, and is either wholly condemned or halfheartedly defended. Hesketh Pearson dismisses the whole matter, contending that Shaw wrongly assumes that Shakespeare's characters speak for Shakespeare. Thus, the pessimism that Shaw finds pervasive in Shakespeare is explained by Pearson as a picture of reality by an objective artist. Archibald Henderson believes that Shaw's Shakespeare criticism is either anachronistic thinking or an act of vengeance on the British critics who viciously attacked Ibsen. James Gibbons Huneker apologizes for Shaw's criticisms of Shakespeare, justifying them on the ground that Shakespeare was not hurt by them. None of these critics meets Shaw's criticisms head-on, and their reactions have little to recommend them above Henry Arthur Jones's angry denunciation of Shaw as a desecrator of graves and a traitor to England.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957
References
1 G.B.S.: A Full Length Portrait (New York, 1942), p. 143; Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet (New York, 1932), p. 320; “A Word on the Dramatic Opinions and Essays of Bernard Shaw,” Introd. to Shaw's Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 2 vols. (New York, 1906), pp. ix-xix.
2 Quoted by Henderson, p. 321.
3 Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence, ed. Christopher St. John (London, 1931), p. 149.
4 Bernard Shaw: A Reconsideration (Norfolk, Conn., 1947), pp. 100–101.
5 For many of the subsequent observations about Jonson, though not the comparisons with Shaw, I am indebted to Helena Watts Baum's The Satiric and the Didactic in Ben Jonson's Comedy (Chapel Hill, 1947).
6 Dedication to Volpone.
7 Prologue to Every Man in Bis Bumour.
8 The Quintessence of Ibsenism (New York, 1922), p. 198.
9 Discoveries 1641, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1923), p. 29.
10 The Poetaster might be a good example.
11 See the Prologues to Every Man in His Humour and Volpone, and the discussion of the “tomfooleries called action” in the chapter entitled “The Technical Novelty in Ibsen's Plays,” The Quintessence of Ibsenism.
12 Prologue to Cynthia's Revels.
13 “Mr. William Archer's Criticisms,” Sat. Rev. (London), lxxix (13 April 1895), 477.
14 Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (New York, 1936), particularly Ch. IV, “Social Theory,” Ch. V, “Drama and Society,” and the chapters on Jonson.
15 William Morris, Architecture, Industry, and Wealth (London, 1902), pp. 228–246.
16 In Men and Supermen (Cambridge, 1954), p. 304, Arthur Nethercot contends that Shaw re-evaluated Jonson in later years. Nethercot bases his view on this opening sentence of Shaw's “Preface on Bosses,” the Preface to The Millionairess: “Though this play of The Millionairess does not pretend to be anything more than a comedy of humorous and curious contemporary characters such as Ben Jonson might write were lie alive now, yet it raises a question that has troubled human life and moulded human society since the creation.” Admittedly, this reference to Jonson reflects Shaw's sense of identity with Jonson, as Nethercot says, but both the structure and meaning of this sentence emphasize the disparity between Jonson and Shaw. This is the only statement about form in the entire Preface; the rest is taken up with content. Formally, Shaw is saying, my play is nothing more than a Jonsonian comedy; yet, its content goes beyond the scope of Jonson's comedy of humours and raises a serious human question. In Shavian criticism content is everything, form nothing.
17 Preface, Saint Joan (New York, 1924), pp. Ixxiii-lxxiv.
18 Quoted by Henderson in a footnote, p. 327.
19 Preface to Eugene Brieux's Thru Plays, trans. Mrs. Bernard Shaw, St. John Hankin, and John Pollock (New York, 1911), p. xiv.
20 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 2 vols. (New York, 1919), Preface to The Pleasant Plays, II, xviii-xix.
21 The Quintessence of Ibsenism, pp. 208–212.
22 Ibid., pp. 226–227.
23 Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley, Man and Superman (New York, 1903), p. xxix.
24 Ibid., p. xxx.
25 “Mr. William Archer's Criticisms,” p. 477.
26 “ Eric Bentley, The Playwright As Thinker (New York, 1946), pp. 168–172.
27 Pen Portraits and Reviews (London, 1932), p. 232.
28 In Forecasts of the Coming Century by a Decade of Writers, ed, Edward Carpenter (London, 1897), p. 168.
29 Preface, Three Plays for Puritans, p. xxxvii.
30 Dramatic. Opinions, II, 142–143.
31 Ibid., pp. 143–145.
32 Preface, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets in Misalliance, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets and Fanny's First Play (New York, 1914), p. 138.
33 Dramatic Opinions, II, 318.
34 Ibid., I, 24.
35 Ibid., II, 214.
36 Prefaces to Shakespeare, Second Series (London, 1935), p. 186.
37 Buoyant Billions, Farfetched Fables, & Shakes Versus Shav (New York, 1949), pp. 137–138.
38 See Dramatic Opinions, II, 143.
39 Foreword to Cymbeline Refinished in Geneva, Cymbeline Refinished & Good King Charles (New York, 1947), p. 136.
40 The most elaborate survey, Augustus Ralli, A History of Shakespearian Criticism, 2 vols. (London, 1932), does not mention Shaw, although the Shakespeare bibliographies do. Shakespeare Survey refers to Shaw quite frequently, however. There have been only 2 major attempts to treat Shaw as a serious, though sometimes misguided, Shakespeare critic, both of these German: Josef Caro, “Bernard Shaw und Shakespeare,” Die Neueren Sprachen, xxii (1914), 433–448, 509–525; Wilhelm Rehbach, “Shaw's ‘Besser als Shakespeare’,” Shakespeare Jahrbuch, III (1916), 80–140.
41 Shaw is not a purist, however, and also argues for intelligent revision and deletion. (See Foreword and ending to Cymbeline Refinished.) His ideas on Cymbeline in this connection are outlined in letters to Ellen Terry (Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw, pp. 46, 53).
42 In 1884, however, Shaw apparently submitted a rather detailed and scholarly paper on Troilus and Cressida to the New Shakespeare Society. An account of this paper appears in the Society's Transactions and is quoted from by R. F. Rattray in his Bernard Shaw: A Chronicle (New York, 1951), p. 47.
43 Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1927), p. 113; Shakespeare (London, 1936), pp. 134–135.
44 Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949), p. 176.
45 Dramatic Opinions, II, 52.
46 Everybody's Political What's What? (London, 1944), p. 49.
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