IBSEN AND SHAW

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 26

IBSEN AND SHAW

It is generally accepted that in his public utterances George Bernard Shaw takes special delight in expressing the opposite views to anyone else. In this respect, Mr. J. Beresford Fowler told members of the Old Players' and Playgoers' Association, in Melbourne recently, Shaw in his earlier years had been wholeheartedly in-' fluenced by Ibsen, the Shakespeare of Norway, who died early this century. Mr. Fowler quoted passages from Ibsen which showed that they were identical in manner with Shaw's war on idealism, conventionalities, and timeworn institutions. But Shaw had accepted these ideals, at first only as a publicity stunt, while Ibsen—a poet, dramatist, and realist—was aiming at social reforms. As a playwright Shaw had now surpassed Ibsen, and his works were great enough to stand on their own. Today Shaw probably kept up his leg-pulling utterances as a guard against his inner self becoming known to his public, or possibly tc keep up, under his clever veneer, his youthful head-over-heels reputation.