TAVY [aside to TANNER, grasping his hand] Jack: be very happy.
TANNER [aside to TAVY] I never asked her. It is a trap for me. [He goes up the lawn towards the garden. OCTAVIUS remains petrified].
MENDOZA [intercepting MRS. WHITEFIELD, who comes from the villa with a glass of brandy] What is this, madam [he takes it from her]?
MRS. WHITEFIELD A little brandy.
MENDOZA The worst thing you could give her. Allow me. [He swallows it]. Trust to the air of the Sierra, madam. For a moment the men all forget ANN and stare at MENDOZA.
ANN [in VIOLET’s ear, clutching her round the neck] Violet: did Jack say anything when I fainted?
VIOLET No.
ANN Ah! [with a sigh of intense relief she relapses].
MRS. WHITEFIELD Oh, she’s fainted again.
They are about to rush back to her; but MENDOZA stops them with a warning gesture.
ANN [supine] No I havn’t. I’m quite happy.
TANNER [suddenly walking determinedly to her, and snatching her hand from VIOLET to feel her pulse] Why, her pulse is positively bounding. Come, get up. What nonsense! Up with you. [He gets her up summarily].
ANN Yes: I feel strong enough now. But you very nearly killed me, Jack, for all that.
MALONE A rough wooer, eh? They’re the best sort, Miss Whitefield. I congratulate Mr. Tanner; and I hope to meet you and him as frequent guests at the Abbey.
ANN Thank you. [She goes past MALONE to OCTAVIUS] Ricky Ticky Tavy: congratulate me. [Aside to him] I want to make you cry for the last time.
TAVY [steadfastly] No more tears. I am happy in your happiness. And I believe in you in spite of everything.
RAMSDEN [coming between MALONE and TANNER] You are a happy man, Jack Tanner. I envy you.
MENDOZA [advancing between VIOLET and TANNER] Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. Mine and yours, sir.
TANNER Mr. Mendoza: I have no heart’s desires. Ramsden: it is very easy for you to call me a happy man: you are only a spectator. I am one of the principals; and I know better. Ann: stop tempting Tavy, and come back to me.
ANN [complying] You are absurd, Jack. [She takes his proffered arm].
TANNER [continuing] I solemnly say that I am not a happy man. Ann looks happy; but she is only triumphant, successful, victorious. That is not happiness, but the price for which the strong sell their happiness. What we have both done this afternoon is to renounce happiness, renounce freedom, renounce tranquillity, above all renounce the romantic possibilities of an unknown future, for the cares of a household and a family. I beg that no man may seize the occasion to get half drunk and utter imbecile speeches and coarse pleasantries at my expense. We propose to furnish our own house according to our own taste; and I hereby give notice that the seven or eight travelling clocks, the four or five dressing cases, the salad bowls, the carvers and fish slices, the copy of Tennysoner in extra morocco, and all the other articles you are preparing to heap upon us, will be instantly sold, and the proceeds devoted to circulating free copies of the Revolutionist’s Handbook. The wedding will take place three days after our return to England, by special license, at the office of the district superintendent registrar, in the presence of my solicitor and his clerk, who, like his clients, will be in ordinary walking dress—
VIOLET [with intense conviction] You a r e a brute, Jack.
ANN [looking at him with fond pride and caressing his arm] Never mind her, dear. Go on talking.
TANNER Talking!
Universal laughter.es
EXCERPTS FROM
THE REVOLUTIONIST’S HANDBOOK AND POCKET COMPANION
BY JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C.
FOREWORD
A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.
MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS (SELECTED)
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for more than five minutes about either.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are.
Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child’s character.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
The essential function of marriage is the continuance of the race, as stated in the Book of Common Prayer.
The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the amoristic sentiment of mankind.
The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for marriage to fulfill its accidental function whilst neglecting its essential one.
Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celebacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under these conditions.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.
Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.
The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Decency is Indecency’s Conspiracy of Silence.
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones.
All men mean well.
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?
The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing; age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round
the ankles serves equally well.
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.
ENDNOTES
Acknowledgments: For many of the footnotes and endnotes of this edition, and especially when I have not been able to track a reference myself, I have relied mainly on two sources: the series of selected Shaw plays annotated by A. C. Ward, Candida, Man and Superman (1956), and The Devil’s Disciple (1958), and The Complete Prefaces, vols. I and 2, annotated by Dan H. Laurence and Daniel J. Leary, London and New York: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1993, 1995.
MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
1 (p. 29) Summer afternoon in a cottage garden.... He looks over the paling; takes stock of the place; and sees the young lady: Contemporary readers may note with surprise the length and elaborateness of Shaw’s stage directions. Shaw wanted the reading of his plays to be free from professional theater jargon. Hence, no technical stage directions (for example, crosses stage right). Instead he describes the action and introduces the characters somewhat in the manner of a novelist.
2 . (p. 30) THE GENTLEMAN: Shaw does not identify his speakers by name until they are so identified in the dialogue. Thus readers learn the characters’ names as audiences do. Shaw is trying to make the experience of reading the play replicate in the imagination the experience of attending a performance.
3 (p. 36) “I shall use that advantage over her if necessary”: Shaw generally depicts the struggle of children to become independent of their parents as ruthless and unsentimental, as is the case here. In his own life, he was more or less financially dependent on his mother until he was almost thirty. As he put it himself: “I did not throw myself into the struggle for life: I threw my mother into it” (Preface to The Irrational Knot, 1905).
4 (p. 62) “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them”: In reviews of the 2002 London revival of the play, some critics identified Vivie’s position here on self-help and choosing one’s destiny as “Thatcherite” (after the conservative prime minister of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher), assuming that all right-thinking persons would dismiss her views but thus displaying a political partisanship that Shaw himself eschewed vigorously.
5 (p. 65) “Yes, saving money.... Not likely”: Shaw gives Mrs. Warren a Marxist rationale to articulate—namely, that the essence of capitalism is to exploit the laborer without allowing him or her an equitable share in the profits.
6 (pp. 65-67) “Why, of course. Everybody dislikes having to work and make money.... That’s all the difference: Over the course of these three speeches, Mrs. Warren articulates a clear feminist position: Women are not allowed equal access to different ways of earning a living. Yet she does so while justifying prostitution. It is characteristic of Shaw not to let his audience smugly applaud a social principle—like equal access to jobs for men and women, which he himself espoused—but instead to make the audience think about it in a complex fashion.
7 (p. 75) ”The babes in the wood”: Frank refers to a legend in which a greedy uncle arranges for his orphaned nephew and niece to be murdered so that he may obtain the property they inherited from their father, his brother. Their would-be assassin abandons them in the wood, where they starve to death. In pity, the birds cover their bodies with strawberry leaves. (See the Introduction to this volume for discussion of this allusion.)
8 (p. 91) ”The Gospel of Art is the only one I can preach”: Praed is the first in a series of figures to whom Shaw attributes an allegiance to Aestheticism (a movement associated with Oscar Wilde and J. M. Whistler), a belief in the redemptive power of beauty and the autonomy of art, as an alternative to belief in religion.
9 (pp. 94-95) ”And he won’t die until he’s three score and ten: he hasn’t originality enough”: Frank’s observation echoes one spoken by Al gernon in act I of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): ”Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got ... the smallest instinct about when to die.”
10 (p. 103) Mrs. Warren goes out.... [Vivie] soon becomes absorbed in her figures: The language and imagery in these final stage directions—“goes buoyantly,” “dipping her pen in the ink,” “with a plunge”—suggest that by immersing herself in her actuarial calculations. Vivie may be drowning her humanity. On the other hand, she has become an independent woman, not dependent on family (she sends her mother away), not dependent on men (she sends Frank away).
CANDIDA
1 . (p. 108) the Guild of St. Matthew: Stewart Headlam, good friend of Shaw and fellow Fabian, founded this Christian Socialist organization in 1877, and as such has been put forth by Shaw scholars as a likely model for the Reverend James Morell.
2 (p. 110) ”writes like an angel and talks like poor Poll”: David Garrick, the leading actor of his time, devised this epitaph in 1774 for his friend, the playwright and novelist Oliver Goldsmith, in recognition of his talent for written expression, but also of Goldsmith’s poor conversation (he could only parrot what others said).
3 (p. 122) Browning’s poems and Maurice’s Theological Essays: The poet Robert Browning and John Frederick Denison Maurice were Victorian thinkers who grappled with issues of religious faith and doubt. Their presence in Morell’s library indicates that he thinks progressively.
4 (p. 123) Fabian Essays: Shaw is referring to a volume of economic, social, and political essays, Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), written by members of the Fabian Society, which advo cated the gradual adoption of socialism by peaceful, not revolutionary, means—hence the name of the society, after Fabius Cunctator (the Delayer), so called for his tactic of postponing battle with Hannibal. Shaw edited and contributed to this volume, and its presence on stage represents the first of several explicit self-references in the fictional world of his plays.
5 (p. 129) Woman Question: The issue of equal rights for women was becoming more urgent and would reach fruition in the suffrage movement of the following decade.
6 (p. 131) “Just as big a fool as ever, James?”: Morell’s recollection of this formulaic insult from three years ago both indicates his sensitivity to being called a fool and prepares for the way Eugene’s version of the same insult will deeply affect him. Shaw is usually—and unjustly—not credited for such attention to psychological nuance.
7 (p. 135) sits down in the chair Morell has just left: With this stage direction Shaw begins to play with the seating arrangements—that is, which characters sit in which chairs—as a way of helping to express shifts in power and changes in relationships.
8 (p. 136) “Say yes, James”: Candida makes a powerful entrance (similar to Tartuffe’s delayed entrance in Moliére’s play) as an offstage voice, which seems to make her mysterious, and therefore strong. Moreover, she asserts control over her husband’s language, the thing that makes him so influential in the public arena. Lexy copies Morell’s language by repeating things he says, and Prossy copies it by typing his sermons and letters, but Eugene offers a counter-language to Morell’s public speech, for Eugene speaks the private language of inner feeling, his true poetry. Candida—her name means truth, honesty—mediates between her husband’s public language and Eugene’s private language. She enters the play as a peacemaker between her husband and her father, and she ends the play by making peace between her husband and his would-be replacement.
9 (p. 137) “Igh Church pictur”: By referring to the mezzotint reproduction of Titian’s Assumption (which Eugene has given to Candida) as a High Church painting, Burgess means a style of representing religious subjects favored by the part of the Church of England that retained Roman Catholic rituals without retaining allegiance to the Bishop of Rome—that is, the Pope.
10 (p. 144) “It is easy ... to shake a man’s faith in himself. To take advantage of that... is devil’s work”: Shaw’s model for Eugene’s shaking of Morell’s confidence in himself and in his wife’s love for him is Iago�
�s shaking of Othello’s confidence in the nobility of human nature and in his wife’s fidelity to him—notable especially in the way Shaw follows Shakespeare in identifying such a process as the devil’s work.
11 (p. 153) “’Ev‘nly Twins”: The Heavenly Twins (1893), by Sarah Grand (Mrs. Frances McFall), was a feminist novel several times alluded to by Shaw and drawn on extensively by him for his 1896 “pleasant play” You Never Can Tell. In later editions of Candida, Shaw excised this reference to the novel.
12 (p. 158) “a tiny shallop to sail away in”: Shaw has given Marchbanks a self-consciously “poetic” vocabulary in this speech; it is meant to show his immaturity and the derivativeness of his style at this stage of his literary development.
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE
1 (p. 211) Buckstone’s Wreck Ashore: John Baldwin Buckstone (1802—1879) was yet another popular and prolific Victorian playwright with whose work Shaw was familiar from his youth. Readers who wish to understand both Shaw’s fondness for Victorian melodramas and farces and the uses to which he put that fondness in his own plays should consult Martin Meisel’s Shaw and the Nineteenth- Century Theater (see “For Further Reading”).
2 . (p. 216) a rack of pegs suggests to the deductive observer that the men of the house are all away, as there are no hats or coats on them: A skilled crafter of plays, Shaw here directs the reader’s attention to the presence or absence of men’s coats, clothing that will assume both practical and symbolic importance as the play unfolds.
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays Page 54