PLAYS OF SHAW

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 147, 21 May 1930, Page 2

PLAYS OF SHAW

THE MAN AND HIS ART. ADDRESS TO LUNCH CLUB. An appreciation of the famous dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, and a summary of tho attributes that had brought him so forcibly before the notice of the British public, were given bv Mr M. H. Oram in an address to the Citizens’ Lunch Club yesterday. Mr J. A. Nash, M.P.,. presided The two greatest difficulties to lie met when speaking of Shaw s works were their wideness and vastness, saul Mr Oram. A tall, elderly man slight of build, with white head and long white beard, with a twinkle in his eye “G. 8.5.” was altogether different from the descriptions of him given in the Press. He was naturally benevolent and it was such attributes that had enabled him to come t-o the fore in later years. YYhen he first appeared in the limelight the drama had been iu a very bad state for 100 years. It could be said that no other man had ever been so written about abused, anathematised, condemned and praised. He had certainly received more criticism and more praise than any other dramatist. Many of Ins commentators compared Shaw with the great dramatist, Euripides. G. K. Chesterton, in his appreciation of Shaw’s work, likened him to Plato. Shaw was born in Ireland, of parents who were by no means flourishing. His father was a lackadaisical man "ho cared little for the affairs of the world. Shaw entered first into a land agent’s office, later joining his mother in London. He set himself up as a professional man of genius, determined to foist himsclt on the British public. He started writing novels and articles, most of these being criticisms. He became a great debater, and joined every society that was open to him, particularly those with revolutionary tendencies. Concerning himself Shaw wrote; “The English do not know what to think until they are coached, laboriously and insistently for years, in the proper and becoming opinion. l’or ten years past, with ail unsuspected obstinacy and pertinacity, I have been dinning into the public head that 1 am an extraordinarily, witty, brilliant, and clever man. That is now part of tho public opinion of England; and no power in heaven or on earth will ever change it. I may dodder and dote; I may potboil and platitudinise; 1 may become tho bull and chopping block of all the bright, original spirits of the rising generation; but my reputation shall not suffer; it is built up fast and solid, like Shakespeare’s on an impregnable basis of dogmatic reiteration.” Everything was “new” in Shaw’s time, the speaker continued. There was the new woman, the new journalism, and the new literature. Nothing was better suited to Shaw. He became the dramatic critic of the Saturday Review, and east around him for something new to attack, with the object of calling down whatever abuse ho could. He picked on William Shakespeare and effectively brought down on himself the invective and abuse of the thinking, public. In 1892 he wrote his first drama. In his works there was a certain virginity of thought which came from his Irish ancestry, also a trenchant style and wit that came from the same source. At heart he was a deeply religious man; in fact, he was accused by Chesterton of being a Puritan. The third influence on his works was that he was progressive. He was certainly a vegetarian, and was certainly a Socialist, as every man in the street knew. He always denied that any question of sentiment influenced him. He opposed the killing of animals as he said it was wasteful. Contending that poverty was wasteful he took up the cudgels of Socialism. He approached each subject from the point of view of economics. In all liis 36 plays Shaw dealt with some wrong that wanted righting. His first three plays were a series called “Plays Unpleasant.” “A Widower’s Houses,” his first, was a somewhat sordid story of the slums of London. In the second, “The Philanderer,” Shaw gave play to his opinion of Ibsen, of whom he was an apostle. The third play was “Mrs Warren’s Profession,” in which Shaw gave an indication of his powers of debate. This was immediately barred by the censor and Shaw did not lose the opportunity to enter into a spirited controversy with the censor. The dramatist’s next three works, “Plays Pleasant,” were among the pick of his early plays. Shaw would always live in the annals of British dramatists, Mr Oram concluded. His plays could be read as. easily as they could be acted as his writings were so lucid and so attractive. A vote of thanks was returned by Mr J. Davidson.