Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF PYGMALION ANDTHREE OTHER PLAYS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  THE WORLD OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND HIS PLAYS

  Introduction

  MAJOR BARBARA

  PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA - FIRST AID TO CRITICS

  THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT

  THE SALVATION ARMY

  BARBARA’S RETURN TO THE COLORS

  WEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY

  CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM

  SANE CONCLUSIONS

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA

  PREFACE ON DOCTORS

  DOUBTFUL CHARACTER BORNE BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

  DOCTOR’S CONSCIENCES

  THE PECULIAR PEOPLE

  RECOIL OF THE DOGMA OF MEDICAL INFALLIBILITY ON THE DOCTOR

  WHY DOCTORS DO NOT DIFFER

  THE CRAZE FOR OPERATIONS

  CREDULITY AND CHLOROFORM

  MEDICAL POVERTY

  THE SUCCESSFUL DOCTOR

  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-RESPECT IN SURGEONS

  ARE DOCTORS MEN OF SCIENCE?

  BACTERIOLOGY AS A SUPERSTITION

  ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES OF IMMUNIZATION

  THE PERILS OF INOCULATION

  TRADE UNIONISM AND SCIENCE

  DOCTORS AND VIVISECTION

  THE PRIMITIVE SAVAGE MOTIVE

  THE HIGHER MOTIVE. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

  THE FLAW IN THE ARGUMENT

  LIMITATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE

  A FALSE ALTERNATIVE

  CRUELTY FOR ITS OWN SAKE

  OUR OWN CRUELTIES

  THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CRUELTY

  SUGGESTED LABORATORY TESTS OF THE VIVISECTOR’ S EMOTIONS

  ROUTINE

  THE OLD LINE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST

  VIVISECTING THE HUMAN SUBJECT

  “THE LIE IS A EUROPEAN POWER”

  AN ARGUMENT WHICH WOULD DEFEND ANY CRIME

  THOU ART THE MAN

  WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS AND WILL NOT GET

  THE VACCINATION CRAZE

  STATISTICAL ILLUSIONS

  THE SURPRISES OF ATTENTION AND NEGLECT

  STEALING CREDIT FROM CIVILIZATION

  BIOMETRIKA

  PATIENT-MADE THERAPEUTICS

  THE REFORMS ALSO COME FROM THE LAITY

  FASHIONS AND EPIDEMICS

  THE DOCTOR’S VIRTUES

  THE DOCTOR’S HARDSHIPS

  THE PUBLIC DOCTOR

  MEDICAL ORGANIZATION

  THE SOCIAL SOLUTION OF THE MEDICAL PROBLEM

  THE FUTURE OF PRIVATE PRACTICE

  THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM

  THE LATEST THEORIES

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  ACT IV

  ACT V

  PYGMALION

  PREFACE TO PYGMALION - A PROFESSOR OF PHONETICS

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  ACT IV

  ACT V

  HEARTBREAK HOUSE

  HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL

  WHERE HEARTBREAK HOUSE STANDS

  THE INHABITANTS

  HORSEBACK HALL

  REVOLUTION ON THE SHELF

  THE CHERRY ORCHARD

  NATURE’S LONG CREDITS

  THE WICKED HALF CENTURY

  HYPOCHONDRIA

  THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO LIVE MUST MAKE A MERIT OF DYING

  WAR DELIRIUM

  MADNESS IN COURT

  THE LONG ARM OF WAR

  THE RABID WATCHDOGS OF LIBERTY

  THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SANE

  EVIL IN THE THRONE OF GOOD

  STRAINING AT THE GNAT AND SWALLOWING THE CAMEL

  LITTLE MINDS AND BIG BATTLES

  THE DUMB CAPABLES AND THE NOISY INCAPABLES

  THE PRACTICAL BUSINESS MEN

  HOW THE FOOLS SHOUTED THE WISE MEN DOWN

  THE MAD ELECTION

  THE YAHOO AND THE ANGRY APE

  PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES!

  HOW THE THEATRE FARED

  THE SOLDIER AT THE THEATRE FRONT

  COMMERCE IN THE THEATRE

  UNSER SHAKESPEARE

  THE HIGHER DRAMA PUT OUT OF ACTION

  CHURCH AND THEATRE

  THE NEXT PHASE

  THE EPHEMERAL THRONES AND THE ETERNAL THEATRE

  HOW WAR MUZZLES THE DRAMATIC POET

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  ENDNOTES

  INSPIRED BY PYGMALION AND THREE OTHER PLAYS

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  FROM THE PAGES OF

  PYGMALION AND

  THREE OTHER PLAYS

  I am, and have always been, and shall now always be, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or malexperienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and weaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.

  (from Shaw’s preface to Major Barbara, pages 43—44)

  “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” (from Major Barbara, page 127)

  “You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.” (from Major Barbara, page 132)

  If you cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have.

  (from Shaw’s preface to The Doctor’s Dilemma, page 166)

  “I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything.” (from Pygmalion, page 394)

  “The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”

  (from Pygmalion, pages 451 -452)

  “The surest way to ruin a man who doesn’t know how to handle money is to give him some.” (from Heartbreak House, page 568)

  “His heart is breaking: that is all. It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.” (from Heartbreak House, page 596)

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  Major Barbara was first published in 1907, Doctor’s Dilemma in 1909,

  Pygmalion in 1916, and Heartbreak House in 1919.

  Published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,

  Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,

  and For Further Reading.

  Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

  Copyright @ 2004 by John Bertolini.

  Note on George Bernard Shaw, The World of George Bernard Shaw and His Plays,

  Inspired by Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, and Comments & Questions

  Copyright © 2004 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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  Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-078-5 ISBN-10: 1-59308-078-6

  eISBN : 978-1-411-43300-7

  LC Control Number 2003112512

  Produced and published in conjunction with:

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  Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

  Printed in the United States of America

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  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  Dramatist, critic, and social reformer George Bernard Shaw was born on July 26, 1856, into a poor yet genteel Dublin household. His diffident and impractical father was an alcoholic disdained by his mother, a professional singer who ingrained in her only son a love of music, art, and literature. Just shy of his seventeenth birthday, Shaw joined his mother and two sisters in London, where they had settled three years earlier.

  There he struggled—and failed—to support himself by writing. He first wrote a string of novels, beginning with the semi autobiographical Immaturity, completed in 1879. Though some of his novels were serialized, none met with great success, and Shaw decided to abandon the form in favor of drama. While he struggled artistically, he flourished politically; for some years his greater fame was as a political activist and pamphleteer. A stammering, shy young man, Shaw nevertheless joined in the radical politics of his day. In the late 1880s he became a leading member of the fledgling Fabian Society, a group dedicated to progressive politics, and authored numerous pamphlets on a range of social and political issues. He often mounted a soapbox in Hyde Park and there developed the enthralling oratory style that pervades his dramatic writing.

  In the 1890s, deeply influenced by the dramatic writings of Henrik Ibsen, Shaw spurned the conventions of the stage in “unpleasant” plays, such as Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and in “pleasant” ones like Arms and the Man and Candida. His drama shifted attention from romantic travails to the great web of society, with its hypocrisies and other ills. The burden of writing seriously strained Shaw’s health; he suffered from chronic migraine headaches. Shaw married fellow Fabian and Irish heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend.

  By the turn of the century, Shaw had matured as a dramatist with the historical drama Caesar and Cleopatra, and his master-pieces Man and Superman and Major Barbara. In all, he wrote more than fifty plays, including his antiwar Heartbreak House and the polemical Saint Joan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Equally prolific in his writings about music and theater, Shaw was so popular that he signed his critical pieces with simply the initials GBS. (He disliked his first name, George, and never used it except for the initial.) He remained in the public eye throughout his final years, writing controversial plays until his death. George Bernard Shaw died at his country home on November 2, 1950.

  THE WORLD OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND HIS PLAYS

  1856 George Bernard Shaw is born on July 26, at 33 Upper Synge Street in Dublin, to George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.

  1865 George John Vandeleur Lee, Mrs. Shaw’s singing instructor, moves into the Shaw household. Known as Vandeleur Lee, he has a reputation as an unscrupulous character.

  1869 Embarrassed by controversy and gossip related to his mother’s relationship with Vandeleur Lee, young “Sonny,” as Shaw was called by his family, leaves school.

  1871 He begins work in a Dublin land agent’s office.

  1873 Shaw’s mother, now a professional singer, follows Van deleur Lee to London, where they establish a household that includes Shaw’s sisters, Elinor Agnes and Lucille Frances (Lucy). Shaw’s mother tries to earn a living per forming and teaching Vandeleur Lee’s singing method.

  1876 Elinor Agnes dies on March 27. Shaw joins his mother, his sister Lucy, and Vandeleur Lee in London. Although he tries to support himself as a writer, for the next five years Shaw remains financially dependent on his mother.

  1877 Shaw ghostwrites music reviews that appear under Van deleur Lee’s byline in his column for the Hornet, a London newspaper. This first professional writing “job” lasts until the editor discovers the subterfuge.

  1879 Shaw completes and serializes his first novel, Immaturity. He works for the Edison Telephone Company and later

  will record his experience in his second novel, The Irrational Knot. Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House premieres.

  1880 Shaw completes The Irrational Knot.

  1881 He becomes a vegetarian in the hope that the change in his diet will relieve his migraine headaches. He completes Love Among Artists. The Irrational Knot is serialized in Our Corner, a monthly periodical.

  1882 Shaw hears Henry George’s lecture on land nationaliza tion, which inspires some of his socialist ideas. He attends meetings of the Social Democratic Federation and is intro duced to the works of Karl Marx.

  1883 The Fabian Society—a middle-class socialist debating group advocating progressive, nonviolent reform rather than the revolution supported by the Social Democratic Federation—is founded in London. Shaw completes the novel Cashel Byron’s Profession, drawing on his experience as an amateur boxer. He writes his final novel, An Unsocial Socialist.

  1884 Shaw joins the fledgling Fabian Society; he contributes to many of its pamphlets, including The Fabian Manifesto (1884), The Impossibilities of Anarchism (1893), and Socialism for Millionaires (1901), and begins speaking publicly around London on social and political issues. An Unsocial Socialist is serialized in the periodical Today.

  1885 The author’s father, a longtime alcoholic, dies; neither his estranged wife nor his children attend his funeral. Shaw himself never drinks or smokes. He begins writing criticism of music, art, and literature for the Pall Mall Gazette, the Dramatic Review, and Our Corner. Cashel Byron’s Profession is serialized in the periodical Today.

  1886 Shaw begins writing art and music criticism for the World. Cashel Byron’s Profession is published.

  1887 Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg’s play The Father is performed. The Social Democratic Federation’s

  planned march on Trafalgar Square ends in bloodshed as police suppress the protesters; Shaw is a speaker at the event. His novel An Unsocial Socialist is published in book form.

  1888 Shaw begins writing music criticism in the Star under the pen name Corno di Bassetto (“basset horn,” perhaps a ref erence to the pitch of his voice).

  1889 He edits the volume Fabian Essays in Socialism, to which he contributes “The Economic Basis of Socialism” and “The Transition to Social Democracy.”

  1890 Ibsen completes Hedda Gabler.

  1891 Ibsen’s Ghosts is performed in London. Shaw publishes The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a polemical pamphlet that cele brates Ibsen as a rebel for leftist causes.

  1892 Sidney Webb, a founder and close associate of Shaw, is elected to the London City Council along with five other Fabian Society members. Widowers’ Houses, Shaw’s first “unpleasant” play, is performed on the London stage.

  1893 Shaw writes The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, his two other “unpleasant” plays. The latter is refused a license by the royal censor because its subject is prostitution; as a result, the play is not performed until 1902. Widowers’ Houses is published.

  1894 Seeking a wider audience, Shaw begins a series of “pleas ant” plays with Arms and the Man, produced this year, and Candida, a successful play about marriage greatly influ enced by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

  1895 Shaw writes another “pleasant” play, The Man of Destiny, a one-act about Napoleon, and drama criticism for the Saturday Review.


  1896 Shaw completes the fourth “pleasant” play, You Never Can Tell. He meets Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a wealthy Irish heiress and fellow Fabian. The Nobel Prizes are established for physics, medicine, chemistry, peace, and literature.

  1897 Candida is produced. The Devil’s Disciple, a drama set dur ing the American Revolution, is successfully staged in New York. Shaw is elected as councilor for the borough of St. Pancras, London; he will serve in this position until 1903.

  1898 Shaw writes Caesar and Cleopatra and publishes Mrs. Warren’s Profession and The Perfect Wagnerite. His first anthology of plays, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, is published. He falls ill and, believing his illness fatal, marries his friend and nurse Charlotte Payne-Townshend; his wife’s fortune makes Shaw wealthy.

  1899 You Never Can Tell premieres. Shaw writes Captain Brass bound’s Conversion.

  1900 The Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation join forces to form the Labour Representation Party, which is politically allied to the trade union movement. The party wins two seats in the House of Commons. Captain Brasshound’s Conversion is pro duced. Three Plays for Puritans collects The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.

  1901 Strindberg’s Dance of Death is completed. The Social Revo lutionary Party, instrumental in the Bolshevik Revolution, is formed in Russia. Shaw writes about the eternal obsta cles in male-female relations in his epic Man and Superman, which he subtitles “A Comedy and a Philosophy.” He also publishes The Devil’s Disciple and sees Caesar and Cleopatra produced for the first time.

  1902 A private production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession is staged at the New Lyric Theatre in London.