MOST VOTED PLAYS

Here are the results of the poll I shared a couple of weeks ago. It will remain open until further notice, so you can still vote HERE. 

There seems to be a consensus among respondents that the five MVPs (Most Valuable Plays) in the Shavian canon are Man and Superman, Heartbreak House, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan. Even if these results are as valid as those of the Eurovision Song Contest, it is still a nice conversation starter, I guess. 

SHAW: "IT'S MY BEST PLAY"

A few days ago I discovered an article - whose author is a professor at the Erasmus School of Economics - on when Nobel Prize laureates in literature had peaked in their production. That is to say, "When did Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature Make Their Best Work?" The idea is simple - like most good ones - you take all the Nobel laureates in literature and determine how old they were (and how far into their life span) when they produced their finest work. The tables in the article speak for themselves, so I am not going to reproduce - let alone interpret - their data. What I found puzzling, though, is how one is supposed to determine what the best work of an author is. It may be obvious in a few odd instances, but not so much in the case of Shaw. To add fuel to the fire, the play that is taken as Shaw´s milestone to determine his peak productivity is Arms and the Man.  

So I took matters into my own hands and created a little survey (available here, and still accepting responses) to share among the Shavians I could forward the form to. The final results will be published in a few days. 

This, of course, led me to think about whether Shaw himself had ever said anything as to which play was his best. After all, this is a blog for Shaw quotations. Well, as usual, Shaw had something to say about that, too. Apart from other statements that were modalized in ways that are open to interpretation, I think three specific passages stand out among the rest. 

First, in a letter to Ellen Terry (dated May 28, 1897) he writes that Mrs Warren's Profession is "much my best play; but it makes my blood run cold: I can hardly bear the most appalling bits of it. Ah, when I wrote that, I had some nerve." Admittedly, the letter was sent long before he had written many of the other masterpieces of drama that can arguably be measured against Mrs Warren's Profession. 

Also, in an inscription to Frank Harris under a list of six of his plays (Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, O’Flaherty VC, The Inca of Perusalem, Augustus Does His Bit, and Annajanska), he highlights Heartbreak House and notes that it was "rightly spotted by the infallible eye of Frank Harris as My Best Play." This anecdote is quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 2001 , and duly annotated, as usual, by John R, Pfeiffer in the "Continuing Checklist of Shaviana" (SHAW 23). 

Finally, my favourite. As many of you probably remember, the preface to Shakes Versus Shav begins with the words: "This in all actuarial probability is my last play and the climax of my eminence, such as it is." Regardless of the obviously comic tone of the whole piece, it is interesting to note how little an author cares about posterity when he realizes that he is losing control over what his works mean and how they are represented. 

THE WORST SIN TOWARDS OUR FELLOW CREATURES IS NOT TO HATE THEM, BUT TO BE INDIFFERENT TO THEM.

The environmental website One Green Planet recently published a list of quotations on animal rights and against animal cruelty. Unsurprisinly, the list includes a quotation by Bernard Shaw. 

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them."

This quotation, taken from act II of The Devil's Disciple is not, however, directly related to animals, but rather to fellow human beings at large. Below is the larger context, a conversation between Judith and Anderson:  

 JUDITH. But Richard said— 
ANDERSON (goodhumoredly cutting her short). Pooh! Richard said! He said what he thought would frighten you and frighten me, my dear. He said what perhaps (God forgive him!) he would like to believe. It's a terrible thing to think of what death must mean for a man like that. I felt that I must warn him. I left a message for him.
JUDITH (querulously). What message?
ANDERSON. Only that I should be glad to see him for a moment on a matter of importance to himself; and that if he would look in here when he was passing he would be welcome.
JUDITH (aghast). You asked that man to come here!
ANDERSON. I did.
JUDITH (sinking on the seat and clasping her hands). I hope he won't come! Oh, I pray that he may not come!
ANDERSON. Why? Don't you want him to be warned?
JUDITH. He must know his danger. Oh, Tony, is it wrong to hate a blasphemer and a villain? I do hate him! I can't get him out of my mind: I know he will bring harm with him. He insulted you: he insulted me: he insulted his mother.
ANDERSON (quaintly). Well, dear, let's forgive him; and then it won't matter.
JUDITH. Oh, I know it's wrong to hate anybody; but—
ANDERSON (going over to her with humorous tenderness). Come, dear, you're not so wicked as you think. The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. After all, my dear, if you watch people carefully, you'll be surprised to find how like hate is to love. 

This quotation, of course, brings to mind two of the most popular topics of discussion among Shavians. The first, Shaw's concern for animal rights - including his vegetarianism - is often summarized in his famous words, reproduced in Hesketh Pearson's Bernard Shaw: A Biography: 

"My will con­tains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honour of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow-creatures. It will be, with the excep­tion of the procession into Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of the kind ever seen." 

The second idea, that of indifference being one of the worst feelings we can hold for others, even worse than hatred, is frequently found in Shaw's writings. For example, the preface to Heartbreak House reads: 

"It is difficult to say whether indifference and neglect are worse than false doctrine."

As usual, then, Shaw's words are multifaceted and hardly ever a straightforward message, but we must not be indifferent to them - lest we become indifferent to our fellow inhabitants of this planet we call Earth. 

LIVE IN CONTACT WITH DREAMS AND YOU WILL GET SOMETHING OF THEIR CHARM...

The official Facebook page of Shaw's Corner has recently updated its cover photo. It includes the above quotation together with the dates for the forthcoming performances of Heartbreak House on the now mythic lawn. 

The quotation, however, does not belong to that play but to John Bull's Other Island. It is part of a longer conversation between Doyle and Broadbent in which, as on several other occasions in the play, the characters discuss the Irish spirit. Specifically, Doyle tries to explain why he would never tell Nora what he feels for her, lest he ends up "spoiling the charm."

DOYLE. [...] You don't know what Irish pride is. England may have knocked a good deal of it out of me; but she's never been in England; and if I had to choose between wounding that delicacy in her and hitting her in the face, I'd hit her in the face without a moment's hesitation.

BROADBENT [who has been nursing his knee and reflecting, apparently rather agreeably]. You know, all this sounds rather interesting. There's the Irish charm about it. That's the worst of you: the Irish charm doesn't exist for you.

DOYLE. Oh yes it does. But it's the charm of a dream. Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country to live in where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not unreal.

This is perhaps one of the many seeming paradoxes of being Irish - Shaw being perhaps the most paradoxical of all Irish men. As Doyle once again succintly remarks a little earlier in the play, in another example of Shavian wisdom,  

BROADBENT. What! Here you are, belonging to a nation with the strongest patriotism! the most inveterate homing instinct in the world! and you pretend you'd rather go anywhere than back to Ireland. You don't suppose I believe you, do you? In your heart—

DOYLE. Never mind my heart: an Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination. [...]

Dreams, charms and imagination - on the one hand; facts, thoughts, and brutality - on the other. The Irish side of the parallelism is obvious, as Doyle's 'soliloquy' reminds us: "Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heartscalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!"

It doesn't get any more Shavian than this, don't you think?