Free Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw

the newspaper. A perfectly adequate and successful stage representation of a play requires a combination of circumstances so extraordinarily fortunate that I doubt whether it has ever occurred in the history of the world. Take the case of the most successful English dramatist of the first rank, Shakespear. Although he wrote three centuries ago, he still holds his own so well that it is not impossible to meet old playgoers who have witnessed public performances of more than thirty out of his thirty-seven reputed plays, a dozen of them fairly often, and half a dozen over and over again. I myself, though I have by no means availed myself of all my opportunities, have seen twenty-three of his plays publicly acted. But if I had not read them as well as seen them acted, I should have not merely an incomplete, but a violently distorted and falsified impression of them. It is only within the last few years that some of our younger actor-managers have been struck with the idea, quite novel in their profession, of giving Shakespear’s plays as he wrote them, instead of using them as a cuckoo uses a sparrow’s nest. In spite of the success of these experiments, the stage is still dominated by Garrick’s conviction that the manager and actor must adapt Shakespear’s plays to the modern stage by a process which no doubt presents itself to the adapter’s mind as one of masterly amelioration, but which must necessarily be mainly one of debasement and mutilation whenever, as occasionally happens, the adapter is inferior to the author. The living author can protect himself against this extremity of misrepresentation; but the more unquestioned is his authority on the stage, and the more friendly and willing the co-operation of the manager and the company, the more completely does he get convinced of the impossibility of achieving an authentic representation of his piece as well as an effective and successful one. It is quite possible for a piece to enjoy the most sensational success on the basis of a complete misunderstanding of its philosophy: indeed, it is not too much to say that it is only by a capacity for succeeding in spite of its philosophy that a dramatic work of serious poetic import can become popular. In the case of the first part of Goethe’s “Faust” we have this frankly avowed by the extraction from the great original of popular entertainments like Gounod’s opera or the Lyceum version, in which the poetry and philosophy is replaced by romance, which is the recognized spurious substitute for both and is absolutely destructive of them. But the same thing occurs even when a drama is performed without omission or alteration by actors who are enthusiastic disciples of the author. I have seen some remarkably sympathetic stage interpretations of poetic drama, from the achievements of Mr. Charles Charrington with Ibsen, and Mr. Lugné Poe with Maeterlinck, under the least expensive conditions, to those of the Wagner Festival Playhouse at Bayreuth with the most expensive; and I have frequently assured readers of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, and pianoforte students of Wagner, that they can never fully appreciate the dramatic force of their works without sensing them in the theatre. But I have never found an acquaintance with a dramatist founded on the theatre alone, or with a composer founded on the concert room alone, a really intimate and accurate one. The very originality and genius of the performers conflicts with the originality and genius of the author. Imagine, for example, Shakespear confronted with Sir Henry Irving at a rehearsal of “The Merchant of Venice,” or Sheridan with Miss Ada Rehan at one of “The School for Scandal.” One can easily imagine the speeches that might pass on such occasions. For example: “As I look at your playing, Sir Henry, I seem to see Israel mourning the Captivity and crying, ‘How long, oh Lord, how long’? but I do not see my Shylock,