Bernard Shaw, Preacher.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 6, 9 February 1910, Page 15

Bernard Shaw, Preacher.

“THE SHEWING UP OF BLANCO POSNET.” (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, December 10. It is rather sad to think that three of the most interesting and stimulating plays performed in London this week had to be produced privately by the Stage Society, instead of to crowded audiences at public performances. I refer to Mr. Bernard Shaw’s “Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet.” W. B. Yeats’ “Kathleen ni Houlihan,” and Lady Gregory’s “Workhouse Ward.” All three are oneact plays, and together they formed the opening programme of the Stage Society’s winter season.

The trouble is that these are not commercial plays, and so do not appeal to the managers of the great commercial theatres. "Blanco Posnet” is a dramatic sermon, Mr. Yeats’ little play is a delicate allegory of the spirit of Ireland. The censor banned- the former because the existence of a God was recognised in it! The managers fight shy of the latter because, presumably, there is "no money in it.” Why Lady Gregory’s delightful comedy “The Workhouse Ward,” has Lever been produced at a commercial theatre I am at a loss to understand, for its drollery and its homely sentiment would, I am sure, strike home to any audience.

All this gives point to the question “Why have you no institution like the Comedie Franeaise in Paris?” M. Maeterlinck, the famous Belgium dramatist, who is visiting London just now, asked the question this week, in a tone of great surprise. And the answer he received abandoned men and women, and turn was “It is all commerce.” Some day, perhaps, London will have its National Theatre, devoted to the best drama of all lands, without reference to the dividends of greedy shareholders; but that day is not yet, though the present is not without encouraging signs. Banned by the Censor.

Interest centres this week on Mr. Shaw’s latest play. The Stage Society audience were keen to see in what way the genius and pungent wit of Shaw had fallen foul of the stodgily respectable and unimaginative censorship. Ami the general verdict, not only of the audience, but the critics, appears to be that ever, within the limits of the leading strings upon British drama, there was no justification for refusing this play a license. So far from being immoral in its tendencies, it is as sternly moral a play as I remember ever to have seen. It is indeed a sermon to the teaching of which no Christian minister could take exception. It is Mr. Shaw in his Puritan pulpit, preaching the power of the Almighty to change the hearts of the most

them Hum evil ways to g«»o<f one*. Ong seems to trace in it the influence of Shaw s greatest literary hero. John Bunyan, and he preaches the same doctrine of 'conversion by a sqdden Hash of insight, and expounds it in the homely language of a converted horse-thief. If the horse-thief’s references to the Deity shock conventional church-goers, it must be remembered that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” shocked the orthodox religious people of Bunyan’s day. If Bunyan suggested the inspiration, to Bret Harte is clearly due the setting of “Blanco Posnet.” Here you have the old familiar desperadoes of the wild and woolly West, capable of shooting a man like a dog at one moment, and melting at the sight of a little child at the next. But the working out of the story is pure Shaw. How Blanco Escaped. Blanco, the dissolute, reckless cow-boy, steals a horse, and while making his escape he meets a woman with a sick child, to whom, with a sudden impulse of generosity and pity, he hands over the horse to enable her to ride to the dootor s. This “softness’’ on his part Blanco attributes to the malicious cleverness of the Deity. Unable now to escape the horse-thief s doom—a halter—he sees in the dying child a trap laid by a Higher Power to “get back on him.” Staring stupidly at a rainbow in the sky, Blanco seems to see written there “I've got the cinch on you this time. Blanco Posnet.” Then he is captured, and tried in the Town Hall by the sheriff and a jury of cowboys for stealing the horse. No one saw him take the horse, no one has found it, but Feemy Evans, the bad girl of the town, is easily persuaded to perjure herself by declaring that she saw Blanco riding oil that morning. But Blanco got off after all. for the woman he helped is found, and the horse is found, and the woman's story of how the horse thief helped her dying child, touches the hearts of the wild desperadoes, of the rough sheriff, of Feemy Evans herself. Feemy confesses her perjury, and Blanco, is triumphantly acquitted. And then Blanco jumps on the table and delivers a sermon about the “rotten' human game and the Deity’s superior winning game. Henceforth, he is goin to play the Deity’s game. Meanwhile, h will stand drinks all round in the salooi next door! And on this typically JShav ian anti-climax the little sermon ends. The play is delightfully acted by a talented company of Irish players from the Abbey Theatre. Dublin. The rollicking dare-devil Blanco finds a brilliant exponent in Mr. Fred O'Donovan, who has already made his name as an actor in the comedies of J, M. Synge. As for the dialogue, it is as witty and as human as any that Mr. Shaw has written »■