Standard edition of Shaw’s plays

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 10

Standard edition of Shaw’s plays

The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces. Edited by Dan H. Lawrence. Max Reinhardt, The Bodley Head. 803 PPShaw opens the 1898 preface to “Plays and Unpleasant,” a preface which he gave the characteristically Shavian title, “Preface, Mainly about Myself,” with the following: “There is an old saying that if a man has not fallen in love before 40, he had better not fall in love after. I long ago perceived that this rule applied to many other matters as well: for example, to the writing of plays; and I made a rough memorandum for my own guidance that unless I could produce at least half a dozen plays before I was 40, I had better let playwriting alone.” By 1898, Shaw could, of course, afford to enlighten the world as to his earlier resolve. He had, after all, produced seven plays, three unpleasant and four pleasant, and could count himself a successful dramatist, particularly successful if notoriety be accounted part of success. In this new edition of Shaw’s plays, complete with prefaces, critical articles and defences, interviews (usually written by Shaw himself) and the like, the notoriety comes very much to life. Reading "Widowers’ Houses” or “Mrs Warren’s Profession” now, we may wonder what all the fuss was about. Reading the accompanying material, we can get the feel of the age again, and also the feel of Shaw, fired with enthusiasm for Ibsen and Ibsenism, and willing to be unpopular in proselytising for it At first sight, this, the first of a projected seven volumes, may seem to be no more than a reprint of the Collected and Standard Editions of his plays which Shaw published in 1930 and 1931 respectively. In fact it is a definitive edition, drawing for its texts on the last revised version (Shaw was an inveterate reviser) of each play, prepared under the editorial supervision of one of the most distinguished Shaw scholars, Dan H. Lawrence, and offering such apparatus as is necessary to place the works in perspective. As such, it is certain to be the standard edition of Shaw’s plays for our generation.