"BACK TO METHUSELAH"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 104, 3 May 1924, Page 20

"BACK TO METHUSELAH"

MR. SHAW'S FIVE-NIGHT PLAY

PERSONALITIES . AND , POLITICS

AUTHOR REPLIES. TO HIS CRITICS.

(FROM OOR O(Tn CORRESPONDENT.)

' LONDON, 3rd March. Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Back to Methuselah" has just run its five nights at the Court Theatre, and the critics have not trated it with the seriousness which Mr. Shaw would seem to desire it to be treated. In fact, it is said, that he has been complaining rather angrily. As someone points out, however, he has spent most of his life unmercifully "guying" the persons with whom he has happened to disagree, and most of them have taken it m good part. But this is a weapon, it seems, which is reserved for Mr. Shaw's own use, and which miist not be turned against him.

"The truth is," says a critic, "that people have been making fun of 'Back to Methuselah' because humour, is the natural form of defence against dullness and excessive length.' The play is (more on the stage than in print) in many parts extremely dull, and it is much too long lor the ideas expressed." rrACo? ldirlg to "The Daily Express," Mr. bhaw was thoroughly annoyed with those who regard his five-night play as a joke. 'It is unthinkable," said the author, in an interview, "that a man of my age would devote two whole years to a petty joke. I am only a leg-puller iv so far as I pull crooked lega straight. Ihe public are all mental cripples, and it they question the reasons that prompted me to write 'Back to Methuselah,' it only affords a striking illustration of my opinion expressed in that play that the -Jinglish race never becomes fully adult. Mr. Shaw docs not see why the mere fact that the play takes five nidits for its performance 'should bo regarded as surprising. "Was not Wagner's 'Ring' composed for four nights?" he asked. "If i felt Jikcit," ho said, "I would write a play that would take a month to perform. Why shouldn't11? The only objection is the purely technical one of the difficulty of rehearsing so many plays simultaneously, and paying for the large cast necessary." TREATED AS A GUTTERSNIPE. "When I wrote) my first play thirtytwo years ago,"' he said indignantly, "the critics and the whole town were in an uproar for a fortnight. Now people who see it cannot understand what all the fuss was about. It will be the same with 'Methuselah.' I wrote it because I meant it all. Why does Sargent paint pictures? Why did Shakespeare write plays? Why do I write plays? I have the specific talent for being a dramatist, and 1 choose to use the medium of the drama to say what I think. Many years ago perhaps there was some justification for calling some of' my work ridiculous. But now, after I have written for over thirty years, and my plays have been' produced in all parts of the world, it is absurd to treat me as though I were :i guttersnipe. Yet that is now the accepted way,of treating me. Either, that or saying that I am growing old and dull." A VERBAL SPATE. This is the sort of notice that the play received: "For three hours the verbal spate went on; long stretches of singularly dull rhetoric interspersed with jokes that, for Mr. Shaw, were incredibly i feeble. But even a feeble joke in that dismal flood of language shone with an unnatural and startling lustre. The audience laughed whenever they were given a chance." Much of the criticism is no doubt a pose. "Were the audience tired, jaded," ! asks another newspaper writer, "fatigued with argument, overwhelmed with rhetoric? Rubbish! Compared with the fabulous reports brought back by the first audience at Birmingham a few months ago, the play has been a picnic. But it has been a picnic to some purpose. What are we to make out of it? Only this; that Mr. Shaw has written a great allegory. That if we don't take his idea of living for 1000 years seriously, we must ■ take something else seriously. It is a reminder that, if we take no steps, modern civilisation, with, its slums in great cities and its corpse-strewn battlefields, will-run idelf upon the rocks and will perish.. We may. not like his particular solution. But it is a reminder that we .will have to find a solution of some kind or other if the race is not to die." . • ■-.■■■ "PARTING COMPANY WITH DECENCY." Mr. Edward Marsh, who in turn has been private secretary to several Premiers and other Cabinet Ministers, has evidently taken Mr. Shaw very seriously especially in regard to the allusions to Mr. ■•Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. Shaw makes one character say: "To me the awful thing about their political incompetence was that they had to kill their own sons'." In a letter to "Tho Times," Mr. Marsh makes reference to these personal allusions. "The most painful of these," he writes, "to Mr. Shaw's admirers was the passage in which (without any disguise of the persons aimed «it) he pours his especial scorn on tho 'Politician' who actually allowed his own son to get killed lin the war. At this point Mr. Shaw seems to part company not only with decency'but with sense; for somebody must be killed in a war, and surely the statesman who allows his own child to sacrifice himself is more, and not less, admirable than one who savca his family at the expense of others." This has drawn forth a reply : "Does Mr. Marsh really believe," writes Mr. Shaw, "that his "delicacy is greater and more consoling than mine, when he dismisses the son with the remark that 'somebody must be killed in a war,' and treats his fate as a mere personal episode in which a father 'allows his own child to sacrifice himself,' and is to be contrasted with 'one who saves his family at the expense of others' ? In the | framework of my play such phrases would be heartless nonsense; the case is bigger and deepor than that.

MR. SHAW OFFKUS HIS BLUE PENCIL.

"As In 'pouring scorn' on anyone, what 1 have done is to exhibit our Parliamentary politics in conti-asL with politics sub specia aelernitatis. If under this tost they shrink to :i ridiculous smallness and' reveal :i disastrous inadequacy, tliat is not a reason why the exposure should be spared; it is a most urjreTit reason for submitting them to it ruthlessly. And as the dramatic method requires that the politics should be expounded by politicians, and the test can ba valid only if the politicians are recognisably true to historic fact, the politicians must to some extent share the fate of the politics. This inevitable effect may scandalise critics who, being innocent of political lifo, imagine that statesmen approach elections with their minds wholly preoccupied with abstract principles, oblirloua of Ilia existence of such parcoiio as vot«B, wjd moist oudcwocialJcaUy iv-

different to their likes and dislikes. Such critics imagine that in representing two ex-Premiers, on the eve of a General Election, as keenly alive to such considerations, and only too bitterly aware of our electoral ignorance, folly, and gullibility, 1 am representing them as unprincipled scoundrels; but I can hardly be oxpeeted to defer to a judgment so ludicrously uninstructed. My play, as Far as it goes outside the public history of public men, contains not a word against the private honour of any living person; and if I do not share the delicacy as to equally public and politically active women which restrained Silas Wegg from going into details concerning the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, I can only say that my blue pencil is at the service of any lady who can find a single reference to herself which is not within the privilege of tile friendliest good humour." "SCANDAL FROM THE HOUSETOPS." The stage Lloyd George, it may here be remarked, is made to exclaim to the stage Asquith : "Have the goodness to confine yourself to your own character and your own wife; both of them need all your attention." "I have been accused," Mr. Shaw continues in his letter, "of 'shouting scandal from the housetops.'' Is it scandal to say of one statesman that he is happily married ? or of another. wln> has an almost embarrassingly clever and famous wife, and two daughters whose achievements in politics and literature threaten to eclipse his own, that he is in this fortunate condition? Surely my apology is due to these ladies for having given them minor and even mute parts in a drama in which they actually played much more important ones, and not to your critic, who grudges them any mention at all. It is true that in stage fiction many marriages are scandalous, and most of them triangular. The critic's mitid becomes at last like the dyer s hand : the wedding ring suggests nothing to him but the Divorce Court. But my plays are not theatrical plays in that sense; and I hope an honest woman may be mentioned in them" without a stain on her character."

A VULGAR PRONUNCIATION.

. Miss Beldon, one of the actresses fn the play, has been, taken to task for pronouncing'the word "isolate" with a short "j." Mr. Shaw comes to her rescue in the matter. "The critic," he says, "dares refer me to Murmv, knowing well that Murray gives issolat« as a received pronunciation, though ho has the bad taste to prefer eye-solate. Webster gives issolate, Ogilvie gives issolate. the invaluable Chambers, compared to whom, and to the others, Murray is tho merest upstart, gives issolate and izzolate, and the monumental AngloGerman Muret-Saunders gives issolate also. Is a lady with these masses of authorities at her back to be told that she mispronounces, and, when she is vindicated, to be propitiated by an assurance that she is young and charming, and that I have taken advantage of her innocence? Your critic now owes two apologies instead of one. "For the information of your readers let me say that iceolate is a vulgar pronunciation, which has forced its way into acceptance by general use so effectually that nobody can pretend that it is incorrect or objectionable in private conversation. But for platform and sta^e use, and in poetry, the .ambiguity and ugliness ol the long V make it impos e?r OifY! Spef ko" W? th a" diligent eai. On the stage; therefore, the received pronunciation is the old stand.ll d one of issolate; and your critic must reserve his I-so-late for the iit£ macies of the tea-table."1