Customer Reviews

Bernard Shaw's Plays : Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, and Too True to Be Good

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Having read the criticism by another online reviewer that "Saint Joan" is misleading, I wondered if we had read the same play. So I had a look at this book and the problem is obvious: no prefaces! Shaw's plays are meant to be read with his prefaces and they shouldn't be separated. Shaw himself intentionally wrote in that mode, noting at one point, "I would give six of the plays that Shakespeare did write for one of the prefaces he ought to have written." That's a little extreme, but the point is taken, and I believe that the general reasoning is valid. Shaw's complete plays with prefaces run to six volumes or so. Take that kind of route if you can; you'll be well rewarded with edification and entertainment.

I think that Shaw is generally misread in this part of the twentieth century. In particular, Too Good to be True, is highly outdated, and therefore highly incomprehensible. That makes it even funnier, and more enjoyable to think about. In every one of these plays, Shaw more or less, in different ways, concludes that the world is coming to an end. The death in the Doctors Dilema, the Dynamite in Major Barbara, The depression and outright declaration that "The world...is falling down, down, into the abyss" in Too Good to be True, and the war and sort of joke of war in Saint Joan, not to mention the portrayal of a Saint, all relate to that dire, but humorous topic. I especially recommend Too Good to be True. Featuring a measles microbe and the Union of Socially Federated States, this is an excellent read.

A bundle of baffling contradictions, G. B. Shaw is a dogmatist's nightmare. Anyone expecting to mimic this sometimes-feminist, sometimes-philosophical playwright has bought one ticket to a wild ride.

"The Doctor's Dilemma," "Major Barbara" and "Heartbreak House" are good examples -- particularly when peppered by his own commentary, appendices and introductions. Without discussing the literary merits of his work - each play is a good read, a thrilling suspense and a small surprise - Shaw's best asset is not his politics, but his sense of humor.

Example:

"That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity." [from the introduction to "The Doctor's Dilemma"]

Sure, Shaw thinks he's God's gift to philosophy. And believe you me, he's no Nietzsche. However, it's a lot better bet that he'll make you laugh.

While Shaw may have been a gifted playwright, his "Saint Joan" did an enormous disservice to the subject: the view it presents of Joan of Arc conflicts with the historical evidence on nearly every point, echoing instead the propaganda of her enemies. In truth, her trial was orchestrated by the English and their clerical allies (and even Shaw admits that the Inquisition overturned the verdict in 1456, shortly after the English were finally driven out of Rouen); nor was Joan a "rebel" except in the minds of her political opponents. By dredging up this fraudulent view of La Pucelle, Shaw's play was among the first popular works to undermine the efforts of countless scholars whose research had brought a more truthful view of the issue to light.