The belief in a socialist alternative and in the real possibility of moral reform implied in Shaw’s definition of a “realist dramatist”, together with the stress on interpreting life expressed in his preface to Brieux’s plays, lead Shaw developing what has been called “the Drama of Ideas” within the naturalistic frame. As Bertolt Brecht, a dramatist who rejected Naturalism, recognized: “the reason why Shaw’s dramatic works dwarf those of his contemporaries is that they so unhesitatingly appealed to reason. His world is one that arises from opinions. The opinions of his characters constitute their fates” (Berliner Börsen-Courier, 25 July 1926).
These “Discussion Plays” still clearly conform to naturalistic principles. However, the effect of the First World War is directly measured in Shaw’s work. His approach changed radically, as indicated by subtitles for his later plays such as “A Political Extravaganza”, “A Johnsonian Comedy”, “A Vision of Judgement”. It was the critic and translator of Ibsen, William Archer, who lamented the change. It was Archer, the most effective promoter of naturalistic drama in England, who had first induced Shaw to write for the theatre; and indeed Widowers’ Houses had begun as a collaboration between Shaw and Archer. Now, responding to the “Metabiological Pentateuch” – as Shaw subtitled Back to Methuselah, the first play written after the war, which Shaw had begun in 1918 – Archer complained:
If this Bible of yours is ever going to have any effect, it will be 100 or 1,000 years hence; and it’s tomorrow that needs salvation …
I doubt if there is any case of a man so widely read, heard, seen and known as yourself, who has produced so little result on his generation. I am strongly under the impression (I may be wrong) that you have less of a following to-day than you had twenty years ago … It isn’t as if any newer prophet had arisen to oust you. You have no serious competitor; but your public (small blame to them) declines to take you seriously. Can’t you fix your will upon the high growing frondage of Practical Influence …
[Letter to Bernard Shaw, 22 June 1921]
The question of social effectiveness, raised by Archer’s letter, was a basic rationale for all naturalistic drama. The underlying aim in analyzing contemporary society was to produce reform, the need for which was demonstrated by the objectivity of the presentation.
3 MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION
The play
When Shaw began to write Mrs Warren’s Profession in 1885 prostitution was at the forefront of the news in England. The campaign for criminalization of the sex trade and closure of the brothels had been brought to a pitch of public fervor by inflammatory articles published in the Pall Mall Gazette by W. T. Stead. The first of these, tided “The Maiden Tribute of Ancient Babylon”, gives a good illustration of tone and moral attitudes of the debate.
In ancient times, if we may believe the myths of Hellas, Athens was compelled by her conqueror to send once every nine years a tribute to Crete of seven youths and seven maidens … This very night in London, and every night, year in and year out, not seven maidens only, but many times seven … Maidens they will be when this morning dawned, but tonight their ruin will be accomplished, and to-morrow they will find themselves within the portals of the maze of London brotheldom … this vast tribute of maidens, unwitting and unwilling, which is nightly levied in London by the vices of the rich upon the necessities of the poor. London’s lust annually uses up many thousands of women, who are literally killed and made away with – living sacrifices slain in the service of vice. That may be inevitable … But I do ask that those doomed to the house of evil fame shall not be trapped into it unwillingly, and that none shall be beguiled into the chamber of death before they are of an age to read the inscription above the portal – ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’.
(6 July 1885)
To illustrate the crimes of the “sale and purchase and violation of children” and the “procuration of virgins”, Stead included the story of a girl from Derbyshire, sold by her own mother to a procuress, who had her examined by a midwife to certify virginity and sold her on to a brothel keeper. “Notwithstanding her extreme youth” the girl is chloroformed and a man led to her room – “then there rose a wild and piteous cry …” Questions in Parliament about the possibility of prosecuting the Pall Mall Gazette (for supposedly corrupting the public by revealing such facts) led to threats by Stead of naming the clients of high-class London brothels, including royalty, from the witness box. Following mass demonstradons, in July a petition with 393,000 signatures was presented to Parliament by the Salvation Army.
Shaw was clearly responding to the demonization of brothel-keepers in his characterization of Mrs. Warren; and in his “Author’s Apology” to the Stage Society edition of the play he emphasizes that “my characters behave like human beings, instead of conforming to the romantic logic of the stage” (1902). His ex-prostitute turned sexual capitalist is presented as ordinary, humane, energetic, and “truly not one wee bit doubtful – or – ashamed” in sharp contrast to both Stead’s picture of brothel-keepers as “the most ruthless and abominable” criminals, and to the theatrical stereotype of the “fallen woman” driven to suicide by shame (like Pinero’s Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 1893). From a modern perspective Shaw’s picture of successful and self-assured prostitution is itself romanticized. As the programme to a National Theatre production asked: “Can Shaw’s play be written by a man who had ever known a prostitute? What would he have made of Bengali Rose and Jane the Urdu who relieve the total sexual deprivation of whole households of Pakistanis in a hour, for a pound a head?” In addition, the refusal of Shaw’s characters to name Mrs. Warren’s profession, which is only written on scraps of paper and torn up or passed round silently, leads to the accusation that “What is bad about Mrs. Warren’s Profession is as efficiently repressed as its unspeakable name. Shaw refrains from making his spectators desire his heroine, but the whole structure of the play relies on prurience for its interest” (Germaine Greer, “A Whore in Every Home”, 1985).
At the time Shaw wrote the play, however, even describing prostitution in print might be cause for criminal prosecution, as the Parliamentary reaction to Stead’s articles indicates; and the theatre was considerably more restrictive. When Shaw arranged for a copyright performance in 1898, the Lord Chamberlain’s office completely refused a licence for it to be staged, even when Shaw offered extensive cuts – including omitting the whole of the second act. When the Stage Society did perform it in 1902, even J. T. Grein, the founder of the Independent Theatre Club which had produced Widowers’ Houses, asserted that “the representation [of such a subject on the stage] was unnecessary and painful” (Sunday Special, 2 January 1902). Over a decade later mentioning the subject in middle-class society was still considered impossible, as Emma Goldman, the woman’s rights and socialist activist states in one of the earliest essays on the play:
it is not respectable to talk about these things, because respectability cannot face the truth … Indeed, no lady or gentleman would discuss the profession of Mrs. Warren and her confrères. Butthey partake of the dividends. When the evil becomes too crying, they engage in vice crusades, and call down the wrath of the Lord and the brutality of the police upon the Mrs. Warrens and her victims. While the [male] victimizers […] and the other patrons of Mrs. Warren’s houses parade as the protectors of woman, the home and the family.
(The Social Significance of Modern Drama, 1914)
Emma Goldman approaches Mrs Warren’s Profession as a naturalistic play – her discussion follows essays on Ibsen and Brieux – giving a completely realistic treatment of the issues. And in fact, although the subject of several conversations in Mrs Warren’s Profession, prostitution is not itself a target, but an example of Capitalism in action, and a metaphor for the whole capitalist system. As Shaw argues in the preface, “rich men without conviction are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity”. This is the last and most effective of Plays Unpleasant (and the moral outrage caused by the way Shaw presents pros
titution was perhaps a displaced refusal to recognize the wider attack on the system), but even a strong supporter of the play, such as William Archer, criticized the secondary theme of incest as diverting from the social commentary. Shaw’s letters to Archer on the subject, written after the furore that greeted the staging of Mrs Warren’s Profession in America, offer insights into the composition of the play and Shaw’s aims in writing it.
6.3.2 Letter to William Archer, 7 November 1905
Apart from the emergency created by the trial in America, I am glad to have the opportunity of making you reconsider your old explanation – that I cannot touch pitch without wallowing in it &c &c. The incestuous part of Mrs Warren is a’genuine part of the original plan because it is what you call an anecdote, or rather two anecdotes. I knew of a case of a young man who, on being initiated by a modern Madame de Warens (observe the name), was rather taken aback by her reproaching him for being “not half the man his father was.” I also watched the case of a man who was a friend of my mother in her young days. When my sister grew up he became infatuated about her and wanted to marry her. And there was, of course, the famous ——6 case, where a young married woman was seduced (in the street from which Mrs W’s name was taken) by a man who had formerly seduced her mother. A certain inevitability about these cases had struck me as being dramatic long before I wrote Mrs Warren, also a certain squalid comicality consisting partly, I think, in the fact that there was such an utter absence of any tragic consequences when there was no exposure. These and many confirmatory observations made the solid mass of “Mrs W’s P”—there is really no side issue.
Mrs Warren’s Profession: chronology of major early performances March 1898, Lord
Chamberlain refuses
permission to perform the
play for copyright purposes
5 January 1902 (repeated 6 The Stage Society Mrs. Warren; Fanny Brough
January 1902) New Lyric Club Frank: Harley Granville
London Private performance Barker
produced by Bernard Shaw Vivie; Madge McIntosh
1903
Stage edition is published
based on The Stage Society
production and includes
photographs of the actors
October 1905 Hyperion Theater Mrs. Warren: Mary Shaw
New Haven Producer: Arnold Daly Frank: Arnold Daly
Vivie; Chrystal Herne
October 1905 Garrick Theater Mrs. Warren; Mary Shaw
New York Producer: Arnold Daly Frank; Arnold Daly
Vivie: Chrystal Herne
December 1907 National Theatre
Prague
March 1918 Washington Square Players Mrs. Warren: Mary Shaw
New York Comedy Theater Frank: Saxon Kling
Vivie; Diantha Pattison
July 1925 Macdona Players Mrs. Warren; Florence
Birmingham Prince of Wales Theatre Jackson
Producer: Esmé Percy Frank; George Bancroft
Vivie; Valerie Richards
September 1925 Macdona Players Mrs. Warren: Florence
London Regent Theatre Jackson
Frank; George Bancroft
Vivie: Valerie Richards
February 1928 Macdona Players Mrs. Warren: Leah Bateman
London Little Theatre Frank: George Bancroft
Producer: Esmé Percy Vivie; Dora Macdona
Performance and reception
Shaw was a founding member of the Stage Society, which produced Mrs Warren’s Profession (for two performances) in 1902, and became its major dramatist. When the Stage Society took on its own theatre for the Granville Barker-Vedrenne seasons of 1904–7 at the Court, out of a total of 988 performances 701 were of plays by Shaw. Following practices that had become associated with naturalistic drama, the company was run as an ensemble, rejecting both the standard actor-manager structure and the star system. It also became known for a radical political programme. Many of the performers were active in the Actresses’ Franchise League, the theatrical wing of the woman’s suffrage movement; and Lillah McCarthy, who became a leading interpreter of Shaw’s female roles, described the Court Theatre as a “mission hall” in which Shaw was “the General Booth of this Salvation Army” (Myself and Friends, 1933).
Figure 6.1 Mrs Warren’s Profession, The Stage Society, London: 1902 (directed by Bernard Shaw, performed without scenery).
In rehearsal: Bernard Shaw with Vivie (Madge Mcintosh) and Mrs Warren (Fanny Brough)
Shaw was responsible for directing many of his own plays in the first decade of the century – even when the director of record was Granville Barker – and viewing the whole range of his surviving prompt books gives a fairly good picture of his theatrical principles. Unlike Stanislavsky, Shaw had no need to visualize character, motivation or relationships in advance, and these prompt books contain none of the novelistic description found in the director’s notes for the Moscow Art Theatre productions of The Seagull or The Cherry Orchard. Although Shaw prepared equally meticulously before the rehearsal period, his focus was almost entirely on moves and blocking. Actors’ positions, stage business and the location of furniture and props was worked out on a chessboard, then noted in color-coded ink on the margins of the text, providing an exact structure for the action that seems to have been followed precisely in performance. Shaw’s primary aim as a director was to create focal points for the spectators at each moment in the play; and there are few notations on characters’ emotion or state of mind. However, since so many of his early plays were printed before they could be performed and Shaw had to rely on published texts to reach an audience his stage directions already give an unusual amount of information about the characters, which also served as guidance for the actors.
Critics have frequently concluded that Shaw was not naturalistic, because of his insistence on technical acting skills, encouragement of theatricality or bravura performance, and emphasis on music (casting his plays according to the “voice” of the actor – tenor, bass or soprano for specific roles). In addition, as Shaw pointed out,
my plays require a special technique of acting, and in particular, great virtuosity in sudden transitions of mood that seem to the ordinary actor to be transitions from one ‘line’ of character to another. But, after all, this is only fully accomplished acting; for there is no other sort of acting except bad acting, acting that is the indulgence of imagination instead of the exercise of skill.
(The New York Times, 12 June 1927)
Linked with his characteristic technique of reversals in the dramatic action to disturb stock responses and make spectators question their conventional beliefs, this has led to suggestions that Shaw was moving towards a prototype of the “alienation” developed by Bertolt Brecht in his anti-naturalistic “epic” theatre. However these are also traditional comic techniques, and less evident in his social “problem” plays, while Shaw always maintained that his aim was to “make the audience believe that real things are happening to real people” (“The Art of Rehearsal”, 1922). The misinterpretation of Shaw is largely due to a limiting of focus, in which naturalistic drama had become identified solely with the type of pyschological naturalism developed by Antoine and associated – despite the evidence of the Moscow Art Theatre stagings of Chekhov (see above: Laurence Kitchin) – with Stanislavsky’s theories. The problems Shaw’s characters face are mainly social rather than internalized, requiring a more presentational performance; and both styles of acting were within the range of the Stage Society company. This can be seen in a comparison of Granville Barker’s direction of a play by Galsworthy (another of the major Court Theatre dramatists) to Misalliance, both performed in the same season. As a reviewer commented, the actors in Shaw’s play presented “a new convention of acting, rather formal, and tending a little towards caricature – the very opposite of the acting injustice” (The Spectator, 26 February 1910).
In addition to the prompt books, Shaw kept detailed notebooks on rehearsals, and wrote daily comments to the cast
– all evidence of the way Lillah McCarthy described his direction as “serious, painstaking, concentrated and relentless in the pursuit of perfection” (New York American, 18 September 1927). Most of these rehearsal notes concern intonation and vocal stress, or for the kind of interaction by other actors that would focus attention on particular points in a speaker’s words. As well as illustrating such detail, one of Shaw’s letters to Granville Barker (who had played Eugene Marchbanks in Candida and whose own play, The Marrying of Ann Leete, had been performed in January that year) during the rehearsals for Mrs Warren’s Profession provides insights into the characters and tone of the play.
6.3.3 Shaw’s staging for Mrs Warren’s Profession
In the margins of the prompt-script, Shaw the director blocked the action – transforming explicit movements in the text into pictorial patterns or reduced cues, elaborating and refining implicit movements, and inventing new movements that Shaw the author did not indicate. For the introduction scene at the end of the first act of Mrs Warren’s Profession, for example, the author provided few directions. In preparing the play for production, Shaw had to devise blocking that would accomplish several goals: as Reverend Samuel Gardner is introduced to the other characters, he must see and be seen by each person to whom he is introduced; Mrs Warren should have an unobstructed view of him; she should have time to observe him before crying out her recognition; and her movement should build to that recognition. As the dialogue begins, Mrs Warren and Crofts are upstage, Vivie and Frank stage-centre, Praed downstage right and Gardner downstage left. Vivie and Frank are designated by the initials of their first names, the others by the initials of their last names. Shaw blocked the scene in six movements:
A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre Page 31