Shaw: A Rave
Today's NY Times has a long article about George Bernard Shaw, which reminds me I've been meaning to write my "read GBS" rave for a while now.
So, Shaw. Irishman who spent most of his time in England, committed Socialist who married an Irish millionairess, master of witty epigramms who sometimes wrote prefaces longer than the plays they went with, passionate admirer of Wagner and Marx (when a celebrity of the day spotted the young redhead reading the score of Tristan und Isolde side by side with Das Kapital on the British Library, it got his attention), long term correspondant of beautiful actresses whom he in one case only ever met once and in the other never as much as kissed, writer who went from penniless critic to most successful playwright of his day. Today known mostly for the musical based on his play Pygmalion, "My Fair Lady", and thus associated with quaint Edwardian costume drama. I can't decide whether that would have amused or appalled him. You can find a lot of his plays and essays online here. But why should one even try?
Simply put, because the man is a wordsmith of the first calibre and his dialogue sings. There is also a great humanity in him, both in the man and the plays. Shaw lived a long, long life. When he was young and had already written his first, none too successful plays but was mainly known as a critic, the most successful, dazzling playwright of the day was his countryman Oscar Wilde. (And considering they were both great letter writers, it's infinitely frustrating they never corresponded, except for a few notes.) Shaw had reviewed Wilde (positive, save for The Importance of Being Earnest, which he didn't like), and happened to be present, more or less by accident, during that fateful occasion in the Café Royal when getting heated arguments from Frank Harris on the one hand and Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas on the other, Wilde decided to sue Bosie's father for slander. During Wilde's subsequent fall from grace, imprisonment and later exile, Shaw was one of the few British writers who never joined in the public shunning and/or bloodsport but continued to write well of Oscar, when it would have been easy to indulge envy or schadenfreude. (Shaw remained on the periphery of the melodrama the lives of Wilde's surviving friends formed, supporting Harris' widow financially and getting into a correspondance with Bosie Douglas, of all the people, when they were both cranky old men during WWII.)
In Shaw's plays, he tackled the issues of the day which he wanted to bring to the public's attention but as opposed to many authors of "topical" drama through the ages, he never did so by making characters with world views opposing his own into one dimensional, let alone stupid villains. In fact, it's a bit tricky to apply to the term "villain" to any Shaw character, because they're not really. Take one one of his lighter, fluffier plays, Arms and the Man, in which no-nonsense Swiss soldier Bluntschli who isn't into showy heroics is contrasted with Byronic Sergius, the fiance of the heroine. Any other playwright would have made Sergius in to the despicable establishment villain who has to be exposed so that Raina can choose modern man Bluntschli. Instead, Shaw is fond of Sergius, too, shows him no less entrapped and yearning for freedom than Raina is, and gives him a happy end, too. Or take the closest thing he ever wrote to a tragedy, Saint Joan. Every other version of the Jeanne d'Arc story - except Shakespeare's, naturally, where she's an evil witch - has Bishop Cauchon, who conducted her trial, as your archetypical corrupt and sadistic priest. Shaw? Has Cauchon as a well-meaning man who honestly wants to save Joan, or at least her soul. Even the English chaplain de Stogumber who does want to see her burn is not "evil" - his English patriotism is the mirror image of Joan's French patriotism, and when he is confronted with the reality of the burning girl as a consequence of said patriotism, this changes him forever. There is a point in Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers, or maybe it's just in the tv version starring Alan Rickman, where the Archdeacon frustratedly tells his father-in-law, "will you stop always seeing the other fellow's point of view?"
Shaw never did that. He was quite firm about what he wanted, but he never demonized the other side. And he always made sure his heroes were shown to be fallible as well. He could do snappy dialogue as well as great rethorical monologues. Allow me to illustrate, from Caesar and Cleopatra, in a scene where Caesar has just asked the Egyptian court for some money:
POTHINUS. The King's taxes have not been collected for a whole year.
CAESAR. Yes they have, Pothinus. My officers have been collecting them all the morning.
POTHINUS (bitterly). Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?
CAESAR. My friend: taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.
And now from earlier in the same play an example of Shaw doing the grandiose monologue thing and undercutting it at the same time with the conclusion, a great, humanizing punchline. This is Caesar in front of the sphinx:
THE MAN. Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought. In the little world yonder, Sphinx, my place is as high as yours in this great desert; only I wander, and you sit still; I conquer, and you endure; I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I look up and am dazzled, look down and am darkened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your eyes never turn from looking out--out of the world--to the lost region--the home from which we have strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of men, are no strangers to one another: have I not been conscious of you and of this place since I was born? Rome is a madman's dream: this is my Reality. These starry lamps of yours I have seen from afar in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, signalling great secrets to some eternal sentinel below, whose post I never could find. And here at last is their sentinel--an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed mountains at night to hear in the distance the stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your sands in forbidden play--our invisible children, O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God--nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?
THE GIRL (who has wakened, and peeped cautiously from her nest tosee who is speaking). Old gentleman.
Shaw's version of Caesar might be the smartest person in the play, but he's also very touchy about his age, lack of hair, and sometimes just a tad too caught up in posing for posterity. In other words, he's a believable human being. "I might like great men better if they were like that," wrote a friend to Shaw about the play. What made Shaw notorious - aside from his genius for self promotion - weren't those of his plays concerned with history, though. His first big clash with censorship came over Mrs. Warren's Profession, the profession in question being prostitution. Bear in mind this was still the age of Victoria. "Fallen women" were allowed on stage, sure, but only if they came to a sad end and/or repented in endless tears. Moving forward to the present day, you could say that the cliché of the prostitute ending dead via suicide or murder has been joined by the cliché of the whore with the heart of gold, the fun good time girl, but nonetheless, whores with a heart of gold tend to end up married to the hero as well. Shaw's Mrs. Warren (who isn't the heroine, that would be her daughter Vivie), on the other hand, doesn't see her profession as anything to be ashamed of. She sees herself as a successful business woman in a capitalist world. Here is the crucial scene of the play, Mrs. Warren telling Vivie the truth:
MRS WARREN. (...) She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man: mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I dont know. The other two were only half sisters: undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadnt half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week--until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasnt it?
VIVIE [now thoughtfully attentive] Did you and your sister think so?
MRS WARREN. Liz didnt, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went to a church school--that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere--and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I know the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie'd end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That
was considered a great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.
VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!
MRS WARREN. Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too. She's living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there. Chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman--saved money from the beginning--never let herself look too like what she was--never lost her head or threw away a chance. When she saw I'd grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar "What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as a partner. Why shouldnt I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of the girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?
VIVIE [intensely interested by this time] No; but why did you choose that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.
MRS WARREN. Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could y o u save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if youre a plain woman and cant earn anything more; or if you have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing: thats different. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things at all: all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely.
VIVIE. You were certainly quite justified--from the business point of view.
MRS WARREN. Yes; or any other point of view. What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing! Oh, the hypocrisy of the world makes me sick! Liz and I had to work and save and calculate just like other people; elseways we should be as poor as any good-for-nothing drunken
waster of a woman that thinks her luck will last for ever. [With great energy] I despise such people: theyve no character; and if theres a thing I hate in a woman, it's want of character.
VIVIE. Come now, mother: frankly! Isnt it part of what you call character in a woman that she should greatly dislike such a way of making money?
MRS WARREN. Why, of course. Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same. I'm sure Ive often pitied a poor girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man that she doesnt care two straws for--some half-drunken fool that thinks he's making himself agreeable when he's teasing and worrying and disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for putting up with it.
But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone else. It's not work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness knows; though to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses.
VIVIE. Still, you consider it worth while. It pays.
MRS WARREN. Of course it's worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist temptation and is good-looking and well conducted and sensible. It's far better than any other employment open to her. I always thought that it oughtnt to be. It c a n t be right, Vivie, that there shouldnt be better opportunities for women. I stick to that: it's wrong. But it's so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the best of it. But of course it's not worth while for a lady. If you took to it youd be a fool; but I should have been a fool if I'd taken to anything else.
VIVIE [more and more deeply moved] Mother: suppose we were both as poor as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite sure that you wouldnt advise me to try the Waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory?
MRS WARREN [indignantly] Of course not. What sort of mother do you take me for! How could you keep your self-respect in such starvation and slavery? And whats a woman worth? whats life worth? without self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing
floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Dont you be led astray by people who dont know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him she cant expect it: why should she? it wouldnt be for her own
happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. Thats all the difference.
In case anyone thinks this is a dated problem, something that was an issue in Victorian England but not today: check out the occasional article on the "white slave" traffic of Eastern European women. Shaw doesn't have to be performed in costumes; you can use the contemporary clothes just fine.
Not that he couldn't do the costume thing. For all his championing of Ibsen and Strindberg GBS had a secret fondness for the grand operatic costume drama he had seen as a boy in Ireland, and I suspect that's one reason why he kept interspersing his contemporary dramas with historical ones, deliberately no-nonsense as he made those to be. His Saint Joan remains my favourite version of the Jeanne d'Arc story to this day, and you've got to love how G.B.S., arch-sceptic, dealt with a heroine who firmly believes not just in God but in saints talking directly to her:
JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
ROBERT. They come from your imagination.
JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
POULENGEY. Checkmate.
The way he ends his drama, written when he was nearly 70 years and had seen the word transformed in so many ways, yet had seen much of what he had hoped for not come true, sums up his mixture of wit, optimism and acknowledgement of an imperfect reality, his humanism which saw the flaws in humans and refused to hate them for it while being frustrated with what they meant for other humans. The last act of Saint Joan is set about 25 years after Joan has been burned. It's a dream, a dream the king she helped on the throne, Charles, has, after he made sure there was no stain on his coronation by organizing another trial that cleared Joan of all charges. Since this is a dream, Charles does not only encounter Joan but all the other people involved in her life and death, and at least, a visitor from the 20th century arrives and announces Joan has just been canonized by the Vatican. All characters kneel down and praise her. This, however, leads to the following conclusion:
JOAN. Woe unto me when all men praise me! I bid you remember that I am a saint, and that saints can work miracles. And now tell me: shall I rise from the dead, and come back to you a living woman?
A sudden darkness blots out the walls of the room as they all spring to their feet in consternation. Only the figures and the bed remain visible.
JOAN. What! Must I burn again? Are none of you ready to receive me?
CAUCHON. The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic. Spare them. [He goes out as he came].
DUNOIS. Forgive us, Joan: we are not yet good enough for you. I shall go back to my bed. [He also goes].
WARWICK. We sincerely regret our little mistake; but political necessities, though occasionally erroneous, are still imperative; so if you will be good enough to excuse me--[He steals discreetly away].
THE ARCHBISHOP. Your return would not make me the man you once thought me. The utmost I can say is that though I dare not bless you, I hope I may one day enter into your blessedness. Meanwhile, however--[He goes].
THE INQUISITOR. I who am of the dead, testified that day that you were innocent. But I do not see how The Inquisition could possibly be dispensed with under existing circumstances. Therefore--[He goes].
DE STOGUMBER. Oh, do not come back: you must not come back. I must die in peace. Give us peace in our time, O Lord! [He goes].
THE GENTLEMAN. The possibility of your resurrection was not contemplated in the recent proceedings for your canonization. I must return to Rome for fresh instructions. [He bows formally, andwithdraws].
THE EXECUTIONER. As a master in my profession I have to consider its interests. And, after all, my first duty is to my wife and children. I must have time to think over this. [He goes].
CHARLES. Poor old Joan! They have all run away from you except this blackguard who has to go back to hell at twelve o'clock. And what can I do but follow Jack Dunois' example, and go back to bed too? [He does so].
JOAN [sadly] Goodnight, Charlie.
CHARLES [mumbling in his pillows] Goo ni. [He sleeps. The darkness envelops the bed].
JOAN [to the soldier] And you, my one faithful? What comfort have you for Saint Joan?
THE SOLDIER. Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves. What I say is, you have as good a right to your notions as they have to theirs, and perhaps better. [Settling himself for a lecture on the subject] You see, it's like this. If--[the first stroke of
midnight is heard softly from a distant bell]. Excuse me: a pressing appointment--[He goes on tiptoe].
The last remaining rays of light gather into a white radiance descending on Joan. The hour continues to strike.
JOAN. O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?
So, Shaw. Irishman who spent most of his time in England, committed Socialist who married an Irish millionairess, master of witty epigramms who sometimes wrote prefaces longer than the plays they went with, passionate admirer of Wagner and Marx (when a celebrity of the day spotted the young redhead reading the score of Tristan und Isolde side by side with Das Kapital on the British Library, it got his attention), long term correspondant of beautiful actresses whom he in one case only ever met once and in the other never as much as kissed, writer who went from penniless critic to most successful playwright of his day. Today known mostly for the musical based on his play Pygmalion, "My Fair Lady", and thus associated with quaint Edwardian costume drama. I can't decide whether that would have amused or appalled him. You can find a lot of his plays and essays online here. But why should one even try?
Simply put, because the man is a wordsmith of the first calibre and his dialogue sings. There is also a great humanity in him, both in the man and the plays. Shaw lived a long, long life. When he was young and had already written his first, none too successful plays but was mainly known as a critic, the most successful, dazzling playwright of the day was his countryman Oscar Wilde. (And considering they were both great letter writers, it's infinitely frustrating they never corresponded, except for a few notes.) Shaw had reviewed Wilde (positive, save for The Importance of Being Earnest, which he didn't like), and happened to be present, more or less by accident, during that fateful occasion in the Café Royal when getting heated arguments from Frank Harris on the one hand and Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas on the other, Wilde decided to sue Bosie's father for slander. During Wilde's subsequent fall from grace, imprisonment and later exile, Shaw was one of the few British writers who never joined in the public shunning and/or bloodsport but continued to write well of Oscar, when it would have been easy to indulge envy or schadenfreude. (Shaw remained on the periphery of the melodrama the lives of Wilde's surviving friends formed, supporting Harris' widow financially and getting into a correspondance with Bosie Douglas, of all the people, when they were both cranky old men during WWII.)
In Shaw's plays, he tackled the issues of the day which he wanted to bring to the public's attention but as opposed to many authors of "topical" drama through the ages, he never did so by making characters with world views opposing his own into one dimensional, let alone stupid villains. In fact, it's a bit tricky to apply to the term "villain" to any Shaw character, because they're not really. Take one one of his lighter, fluffier plays, Arms and the Man, in which no-nonsense Swiss soldier Bluntschli who isn't into showy heroics is contrasted with Byronic Sergius, the fiance of the heroine. Any other playwright would have made Sergius in to the despicable establishment villain who has to be exposed so that Raina can choose modern man Bluntschli. Instead, Shaw is fond of Sergius, too, shows him no less entrapped and yearning for freedom than Raina is, and gives him a happy end, too. Or take the closest thing he ever wrote to a tragedy, Saint Joan. Every other version of the Jeanne d'Arc story - except Shakespeare's, naturally, where she's an evil witch - has Bishop Cauchon, who conducted her trial, as your archetypical corrupt and sadistic priest. Shaw? Has Cauchon as a well-meaning man who honestly wants to save Joan, or at least her soul. Even the English chaplain de Stogumber who does want to see her burn is not "evil" - his English patriotism is the mirror image of Joan's French patriotism, and when he is confronted with the reality of the burning girl as a consequence of said patriotism, this changes him forever. There is a point in Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers, or maybe it's just in the tv version starring Alan Rickman, where the Archdeacon frustratedly tells his father-in-law, "will you stop always seeing the other fellow's point of view?"
Shaw never did that. He was quite firm about what he wanted, but he never demonized the other side. And he always made sure his heroes were shown to be fallible as well. He could do snappy dialogue as well as great rethorical monologues. Allow me to illustrate, from Caesar and Cleopatra, in a scene where Caesar has just asked the Egyptian court for some money:
POTHINUS. The King's taxes have not been collected for a whole year.
CAESAR. Yes they have, Pothinus. My officers have been collecting them all the morning.
POTHINUS (bitterly). Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?
CAESAR. My friend: taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.
And now from earlier in the same play an example of Shaw doing the grandiose monologue thing and undercutting it at the same time with the conclusion, a great, humanizing punchline. This is Caesar in front of the sphinx:
THE MAN. Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought. In the little world yonder, Sphinx, my place is as high as yours in this great desert; only I wander, and you sit still; I conquer, and you endure; I work and wonder, you watch and wait; I look up and am dazzled, look down and am darkened, look round and am puzzled, whilst your eyes never turn from looking out--out of the world--to the lost region--the home from which we have strayed. Sphinx, you and I, strangers to the race of men, are no strangers to one another: have I not been conscious of you and of this place since I was born? Rome is a madman's dream: this is my Reality. These starry lamps of yours I have seen from afar in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, in Thessaly, signalling great secrets to some eternal sentinel below, whose post I never could find. And here at last is their sentinel--an image of the constant and immortal part of my life, silent, full of thoughts, alone in the silver desert. Sphinx, Sphinx: I have climbed mountains at night to hear in the distance the stealthy footfall of the winds that chase your sands in forbidden play--our invisible children, O Sphinx, laughing in whispers. My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God--nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?
THE GIRL (who has wakened, and peeped cautiously from her nest tosee who is speaking). Old gentleman.
Shaw's version of Caesar might be the smartest person in the play, but he's also very touchy about his age, lack of hair, and sometimes just a tad too caught up in posing for posterity. In other words, he's a believable human being. "I might like great men better if they were like that," wrote a friend to Shaw about the play. What made Shaw notorious - aside from his genius for self promotion - weren't those of his plays concerned with history, though. His first big clash with censorship came over Mrs. Warren's Profession, the profession in question being prostitution. Bear in mind this was still the age of Victoria. "Fallen women" were allowed on stage, sure, but only if they came to a sad end and/or repented in endless tears. Moving forward to the present day, you could say that the cliché of the prostitute ending dead via suicide or murder has been joined by the cliché of the whore with the heart of gold, the fun good time girl, but nonetheless, whores with a heart of gold tend to end up married to the hero as well. Shaw's Mrs. Warren (who isn't the heroine, that would be her daughter Vivie), on the other hand, doesn't see her profession as anything to be ashamed of. She sees herself as a successful business woman in a capitalist world. Here is the crucial scene of the play, Mrs. Warren telling Vivie the truth:
MRS WARREN. (...) She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man: mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I dont know. The other two were only half sisters: undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadnt half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week--until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasnt it?
VIVIE [now thoughtfully attentive] Did you and your sister think so?
MRS WARREN. Liz didnt, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went to a church school--that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere--and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I know the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie'd end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That
was considered a great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.
VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!
MRS WARREN. Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too. She's living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there. Chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman--saved money from the beginning--never let herself look too like what she was--never lost her head or threw away a chance. When she saw I'd grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar "What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as a partner. Why shouldnt I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of the girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?
VIVIE [intensely interested by this time] No; but why did you choose that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.
MRS WARREN. Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could y o u save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if youre a plain woman and cant earn anything more; or if you have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing: thats different. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things at all: all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely.
VIVIE. You were certainly quite justified--from the business point of view.
MRS WARREN. Yes; or any other point of view. What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing! Oh, the hypocrisy of the world makes me sick! Liz and I had to work and save and calculate just like other people; elseways we should be as poor as any good-for-nothing drunken
waster of a woman that thinks her luck will last for ever. [With great energy] I despise such people: theyve no character; and if theres a thing I hate in a woman, it's want of character.
VIVIE. Come now, mother: frankly! Isnt it part of what you call character in a woman that she should greatly dislike such a way of making money?
MRS WARREN. Why, of course. Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same. I'm sure Ive often pitied a poor girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man that she doesnt care two straws for--some half-drunken fool that thinks he's making himself agreeable when he's teasing and worrying and disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for putting up with it.
But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone else. It's not work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness knows; though to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses.
VIVIE. Still, you consider it worth while. It pays.
MRS WARREN. Of course it's worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist temptation and is good-looking and well conducted and sensible. It's far better than any other employment open to her. I always thought that it oughtnt to be. It c a n t be right, Vivie, that there shouldnt be better opportunities for women. I stick to that: it's wrong. But it's so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the best of it. But of course it's not worth while for a lady. If you took to it youd be a fool; but I should have been a fool if I'd taken to anything else.
VIVIE [more and more deeply moved] Mother: suppose we were both as poor as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite sure that you wouldnt advise me to try the Waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory?
MRS WARREN [indignantly] Of course not. What sort of mother do you take me for! How could you keep your self-respect in such starvation and slavery? And whats a woman worth? whats life worth? without self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing
floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Dont you be led astray by people who dont know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him she cant expect it: why should she? it wouldnt be for her own
happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. Thats all the difference.
In case anyone thinks this is a dated problem, something that was an issue in Victorian England but not today: check out the occasional article on the "white slave" traffic of Eastern European women. Shaw doesn't have to be performed in costumes; you can use the contemporary clothes just fine.
Not that he couldn't do the costume thing. For all his championing of Ibsen and Strindberg GBS had a secret fondness for the grand operatic costume drama he had seen as a boy in Ireland, and I suspect that's one reason why he kept interspersing his contemporary dramas with historical ones, deliberately no-nonsense as he made those to be. His Saint Joan remains my favourite version of the Jeanne d'Arc story to this day, and you've got to love how G.B.S., arch-sceptic, dealt with a heroine who firmly believes not just in God but in saints talking directly to her:
JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
ROBERT. They come from your imagination.
JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
POULENGEY. Checkmate.
The way he ends his drama, written when he was nearly 70 years and had seen the word transformed in so many ways, yet had seen much of what he had hoped for not come true, sums up his mixture of wit, optimism and acknowledgement of an imperfect reality, his humanism which saw the flaws in humans and refused to hate them for it while being frustrated with what they meant for other humans. The last act of Saint Joan is set about 25 years after Joan has been burned. It's a dream, a dream the king she helped on the throne, Charles, has, after he made sure there was no stain on his coronation by organizing another trial that cleared Joan of all charges. Since this is a dream, Charles does not only encounter Joan but all the other people involved in her life and death, and at least, a visitor from the 20th century arrives and announces Joan has just been canonized by the Vatican. All characters kneel down and praise her. This, however, leads to the following conclusion:
JOAN. Woe unto me when all men praise me! I bid you remember that I am a saint, and that saints can work miracles. And now tell me: shall I rise from the dead, and come back to you a living woman?
A sudden darkness blots out the walls of the room as they all spring to their feet in consternation. Only the figures and the bed remain visible.
JOAN. What! Must I burn again? Are none of you ready to receive me?
CAUCHON. The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic. Spare them. [He goes out as he came].
DUNOIS. Forgive us, Joan: we are not yet good enough for you. I shall go back to my bed. [He also goes].
WARWICK. We sincerely regret our little mistake; but political necessities, though occasionally erroneous, are still imperative; so if you will be good enough to excuse me--[He steals discreetly away].
THE ARCHBISHOP. Your return would not make me the man you once thought me. The utmost I can say is that though I dare not bless you, I hope I may one day enter into your blessedness. Meanwhile, however--[He goes].
THE INQUISITOR. I who am of the dead, testified that day that you were innocent. But I do not see how The Inquisition could possibly be dispensed with under existing circumstances. Therefore--[He goes].
DE STOGUMBER. Oh, do not come back: you must not come back. I must die in peace. Give us peace in our time, O Lord! [He goes].
THE GENTLEMAN. The possibility of your resurrection was not contemplated in the recent proceedings for your canonization. I must return to Rome for fresh instructions. [He bows formally, andwithdraws].
THE EXECUTIONER. As a master in my profession I have to consider its interests. And, after all, my first duty is to my wife and children. I must have time to think over this. [He goes].
CHARLES. Poor old Joan! They have all run away from you except this blackguard who has to go back to hell at twelve o'clock. And what can I do but follow Jack Dunois' example, and go back to bed too? [He does so].
JOAN [sadly] Goodnight, Charlie.
CHARLES [mumbling in his pillows] Goo ni. [He sleeps. The darkness envelops the bed].
JOAN [to the soldier] And you, my one faithful? What comfort have you for Saint Joan?
THE SOLDIER. Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves. What I say is, you have as good a right to your notions as they have to theirs, and perhaps better. [Settling himself for a lecture on the subject] You see, it's like this. If--[the first stroke of
midnight is heard softly from a distant bell]. Excuse me: a pressing appointment--[He goes on tiptoe].
The last remaining rays of light gather into a white radiance descending on Joan. The hour continues to strike.
JOAN. O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?