A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

TABLE TALK OF G.B.S.

[COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE

New York Times.]

Table-Talk of G.B.S. Conversation on Things in General Between Bernard Shaw and his Biographer. By Archi- bald Henderson. (Chapman and Hall. 5s. net.) WE have a fine tradition in the matter of table talk in English literature. There is scandal-loving Ben Jonson ; there is the wise and sardonic Seldon .; there is Dr. Johnson in a hundred forms ; there is Coleridge, and scattered up and down the Victorian memoirs hundreds of pregnant sayings by Carlyle. Now we get a contribution to what I hope will some day be a very big book—the table-talk of Bernard Shaw. The little book in band, though it is called Conversations on Things in General, does not cover a very wide field. All the same, it has many admirable things in it, and gives good instances to prove how able, stimulating, and creative a dialectician is the last of the old dramatists and the first of the new. The American author, Mr. Henderson, who taps, and draws from, Mr. Shaw's well-filled cask of Amontillado, lni-s done his work very well. In the first place, he evidently does not care " tuppence " whether his questions look silly, or empty, or snobbish, or ridiculous, provided only that they will sting his interlocutor into saying good things in a good way. Mr. Shaw is not much like a bull, and Mr. Henderson not very much like a toreador, yet there area a 'good many of the arts of the bull- ring employed. Sometimes the red silk cloak is shaken in front of the bull, sometimes he is pricked with a lance, and sometimes a cracker is exploded in the hope that he may get his head down and really charge "all out."

Very properly Mr. Henderson has set a scene and given a generous supply of local colour for each of his dialogues. For example, Dialogue I., "On Things in General," begins :—

" A rco-n at 10 Adelphi Terrace, London. Time: February 1, 1924. Shaw's biographer, ARcHIBALD HENDERSON. tall, smooth-shaven, of blond complexion, is examining intently a magnificent photograph of Einstein on the bookcase. On a chair lie two volumes of the Italian translation of Shaw's plays. Against one wall Mrs. Shaw's writing bureau, roofed like a motor-car, beans Rodin's bust of Shaw in bronze. Around are portraits of Nietzsche, Strindberg and Descartes, Shavian cartoons by Max Beerbohm, landscapes by Fiend rim and Sartori°, drawings by Rodin, Sargent and Rothenstein, a Whistler etching, and some reproductions of work by Philip Webb and Albrecht Diirer. Enter hurriedly, briskly rubbing his hands, his face wreathed in friendly smiles, a tall man dressed in brown—unmistakably the great dramatist and critic of world affairs, GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. The two men greet each other heartily."

As may be imagined, Things in General very soon come to be reflections on the War and Socialism. In answer to the breezy question from Mr. Henderson, "As a matter of fact, did the World War mark the end of a literary era?" Mr. Shaw makes a very stimulating and amusing series of answers— answers full of truth dressed in fantastic clothes. As one may imagine, Mr. Shaw is vehement in his declaration that "the war made an end of nothing but the things it was meant to aggrandize or preserve, and of a good many of the people who wished to aggrandize and preserve them." "Art and litera- ture and morals," he goes on, "were simply knocked back by it half a century " :—

" Long-dead fashions, were blown out of their graves and sent dancing round, rattling their mouldy bones in a ghastly; manner for the amusement of soldiers on leave from the front who had never seen civilized cities before. It was impossible to rake up stuff crude enough for these innocents and the squealing flappers who came with them to the theatres and variety shows. InsI of inaugurating a new era, the war let loose a new audience which was fifty years behind the time' and until this new audience catches up, say fifty years hence, it will eat up all the capital available-for the theatre, leaving the highbrows more starved than ever. The good side of this setback is that it is a promotion in culture for the new audience, and also that the new audience is less Sophisticated than the old experienced playgoers, and, in forcing the drama back to more primitive forms, may actually improve it. Art, like life, has to renew itself by returning repeatedly to its childhood and burying its dead. A revival of Pink Dominoes would be a public nuisance ; but a revival of Maria Martin or the Murder. in the Red Barn or of George Barnwell, or of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (the dialogue of which is classic compared to the stuff written to-day), would be a quite hopeful sign."

After this follows a remarkably shrewd piece of criticism of the Drama which should be noted by all dramatists, managers and young gentlemen ambitious to write a play and get it performed.

When Mr. Shaw comes to his own play, Saint Joan, he is Specially candid and illuminating. For example : "Besides, pious as Joan was, she was an anti-clerical, devoted to the Church Triumphant in heaven, but with a deep mistrust of lee gene d'Eglise." After that remark follow some brilliant touches about the former writers on Joan. Andrew Lang saw her as "a border-ballad beauty." Mark Twain made her "an amalgam of a Victorian schoolmarm with the Duke of Wellington" :—

"Both he and Lang made her the heroine of a melodrama with the Catholic Church as the villain, which is utter nonsense ; her trial and sentence were quite as legal as, and much fairer than, most modern political trials. Anatole France was disabled by his Anti. Feminism ; he could not credit Joan with mental superiority to the Statesmen and Churchmen and Captains of her time • and as her superiority is the simple explanation of the whole affair, he makes very good shooting at the Church, but misses the bull's-eye."

The dialogue ends with a demand that the Drama should be taken seriously, a demand which, owing to its form of presen- tation, at first looks topsy-turvy. Yet in fact it is "horse- sense." It is quite true that Congreve and Sheridan did not take the Drama seriously, though I differ from Mr. Shaw when he puts Dryden under the same condemnation. That was true of a great deal of Dryden's plays, and true of parts of all his plays ; but again, there are other parts in which I think Dryden does' treat the Drama seriouslyand so throws back to the Elizabethan Age. Aurungzebe is a good example. Dry- den probably thought this himself, for it was in the prologue to this play that he described himself as standing with a leg in each camp :

"Let him retire, betwixt two Ages cast, The first of this, and hindmost of the last."

Goethe took the Theatre seriously, Mr. Shaw tells us, and so did Ibsen, Wagner and Moliere ; but Shakespeare only made a few attempts, notably in Hamlet, and then gave it up I The chapter which describes Mr. Shaw's views on the films is well worth reading. It contains among other things one or two delicious gibes at modern journalism. For example, "literary work is entrusted to men and women so illiterate that the mystery is how they ever learned their alphabet. They know next to nothing apparently." After that he goes on to say, of course with perfect truth, that "Movie plays should be invented expressly for the screen by original imaginative visualizers." That is unquestionably the law and the prophets in that art. "But," continues Mr. Shaw, "you must remember that just as all our music consists of permutations and com- binations of twelve notes, all our fiction consists of variations on a few plots ; and it is in the words that the widest power of variation lies. Take that away and you will soon be so hard up for a new variation that you will snatch at anything—even at a Dickens plot—to enable you to carry on." It may amuse Mr. Shaw, if he should chance to see this page, to know that Milton forestalled him here. Milton, in Paradise Lost aspires

to give a list of the evils caused by the love of women, which is, in fact, a list of love plots, shown from the man's side it Innumerable Disturbances on earth through female snares,

And straight conjunction with this sex ; for either Ho never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake ; Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain

Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld

By parents : or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame ; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound."

And did not Esdras say, in a similar mood, that there was only one plot—the plot of woman?

"By " By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you : do ye not labour and toil, and give and bring all to the woman Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers ; and looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness ; and when he bath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love. Wherefore a man loveth his wife better than father or mother. Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women. And now do ye not believe me I Esdrae in. 14.) The wasteful folly of those who produce the millionaire films

in America suffer a well-deserved rebuke. Mr. Shaw would have the United States Government put a limit of twenty-five thousand dollars to the expenditure on any single non- educational film. Then the film magnates would be forced to rely on dramatic imagination instead of on mere spectacle.

"Oh, those scenes of oriental voluptuousness as imagined by a whaler's cabin boy 1 They would make a monk of Don Juan. Can you do nothing to stop them ? " Add to this his

protest against "hideous make-ups, close-ups that an angel's face would not bear," " over-exposed faces against under- exposed backgrounds, vulgar and silly sub-titles, impertinent lists of everybody employed in the film from the star actress to the press agent's office boy."

Towards the end of this dialogue Shaw turns serious and touches upon what is the most interesting thing in literature, and indeed in life—inspiration—" The play develops itself.

I only hold the pen" :—

" I avoid plots like the plague. I have warned young playwrights again and again that a plot is like a jigsaw puzzle, enthralling to the man who is putting it together, but maddeningly dull to the looker. on. Stories are interesting, the exhibition of character in action is very much more interesting and, for stage purposes, is the source of the story's interest ; but plots are the deadest of dead wood. My procedure is to imagine characters and let them rip, as you suggest ; but I must warn you that the real process is very obscure; but the result always shows that there has been something behind all the time of which I was not conscious, though it turns out to be the real motive of the whole creation."

All who have tried to create have realized that "something behind "—that something which, though probably not recog-

nized at the time, turns out to be the true motive force, the causa causans.

As is only right and natural, Mr. Shaw is at his best when he is discussing the Theatre and actors and actresses. Very characteristic and very sound is his answer to the question. Why do actresses, taken as a whole, do so much better in

their profession than actors ? The Stage, he replies in effect, get the pick of the women. In the case of men, the tank has been half-emptied by the other professions before the Stare gets to it. J. Si. LOE STRACHEY.