SHELLEY ON SHAW.

Evening Star, Issue 21725, 21 May 1934, Page 3

SHELLEY ON SHAW.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Will yon allow mo to register one note of disagreement with Professor Shelley’s address on Bernard Shaw, as reported in your issue of May 19? In the course of what must have been a most .stimulating and informative address Professor' Shelley used the term ‘‘mush” to define the state of the drama in England before tho advent of Shaw, it seems to me that in his desire to give Shaw his due Professor Shelley erred on the side of over-em-phasis. This is a common foible with advocates of all kinds. In writing in praise of some new voice they feel compelled to deliver themselves of their disgust for other voices. . Shaw and Galsworthy were two great dramatists; but iu my humble opinion it is a mistake to suggest that they came, like two prophets, thoroughly to purge the decadent British drama. This is the view held by Mr St. John Ervine and others, who hold that the stage was given over to the exploitation of secondrate passion and hypocrisy before the coming, of the two dramatists I have named and of Ibsen and Strindberg. It is a view held by Mr Shaw himself and expressed in the preface to ‘ Back to Methuselah.’ Such plays as the ‘Tristram and Iseult ’ of J. Comyns Carr, ‘ The Virgin Goddess ’ of Mr Rudolph Besier, and the ‘ Paolo and Francesca ’ of Stephen Phillips are in my humble opinion equal in merit, in stage negotiability, and in literary grace to anything that Mr Shaw or Mr Galsworthy has written. Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones have written plays informed with a passion for justice equal to that which informs the plays of Shaw or Galsworthy. I would not suggest that W. S. Gilbert wrs a great dramatise. Without his Sullivan he will be found to be a rather heartless jester, who rings the changes on a few stock ideas, such as that of acidulated spinsterhood or topsy-turveydom. • Barrie had established himself as a dramatist before Shaw and Galsworthy, though Barrie has little to teach us. He is more cynical than Shaw, despite his wistfulness. But to describe any play of Barrie’s as “mush ” is beside the mark. He is a master of his medium. Oscar Wilde’s plays promise to wear as well as Sheridan’s; aucl there are other dramatists, such as R. C. Carton. Sidney Grundy, and Alfred Sutro. whose plays command the respect of the listener. All those writers may have been tarred to some extent with the brush of the commercial manager, but their plays are neither silly nor salacious. 1 submit this qualifying suggestion as a tribute to an extremely interesting discourse.—l am, etc., C. R. Allen. May 21.