The Essential G. B. Shaw: Celebrated Plays, Novels, Personal Letters, Essays & Articles. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman

       As Far as Thought Can Reach

       The War Indemnities (unfinished) (1921)

       Miscellaneous Works of G. B. Shaw:

       What do Men of Letters Say? - The New York Times Articles on War (1915)

       "Common Sense About the War" by G. B. Shaw

       "Shaw's Nonsense About Belgium" By Arnold Bennett

       "Bennett States the German Case" by G. B. Shaw

       Flaws in Shaw's Logic By Cunninghame Graham

       Editorial Comment on Shaw By The New York World

       Shaw Empty of Good Sense By Christabel Pankhurst

       Comment by Readers of Shaw To the Editor of The New York Times

       Open Letter to President Wilson by G. B. Shaw

       A German Letter to G. Bernard Shaw By Herbert Eulenberg

       On Socialism: A Speech (1885)

       Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891)

       The Impossibilities Of Anarchism (1895)

       The Perfect Wagnerite, Commentary on the Niblung’s Ring (1898)

       Letter to Beatrice Webb (1898)

       The Revolutionist’s Handbook And Pocket Companion (1903)

       Maxims For Revolutionists (1903)

       The New Theology (1907)

       How to Write A Popular Play: An Essay (1909)

       Memories of Oscar Wilde (1916)

       Essays on Bernard Shaw:

       George Bernard Shaw by G. K. Chesterton

       The Quintessence of Shaw by James Huneker

       Old and New Masters: Bernard Shaw by Robert Lynd

       George Bernard Shaw: A Poem by Oliver Herford

       Introduction by G. K. Chesterton

       Table of Contents

      In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities, when genial old Ibsen filled the world with wholesome joy, and the kindly tales of the forgotten Emile Zola kept our firesides merry and pure, it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood. It may be doubted whether it is always or even generally a disadvantage. The man who is misunderstood has always this advantage over his enemies, that they do not know his weak point or his plan of campaign. They go out against a bird with nets and against a fish with arrows. There are several modern examples of this situation. Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, is a very good one. He constantly eludes or vanquishes his opponents because his real powers and deficiencies are quite different to those with which he is credited, both by friends and foes. His friends depict him as a strenuous man of action; his opponents depict him as a coarse man of business; when, as a fact, he is neither one nor the other, but an admirable romantic orator and romantic actor. He has one power which is the soul of melodrama—the power of pretending, even when backed by a huge majority, that he has his back to the wall. For all mobs are so far chivalrous that their heroes must make some show of misfortune—that sort of hypocrisy is the homage that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the venerable affectation of Mark Antony—

      "I am no orator, as Brutus is;

       But as you know me all, a plain blunt man."

      It is the whole difference between the aim of the orator and the aim of any other artist, such as the poet or the sculptor. The aim of the sculptor is to convince us that he is a sculptor; the aim of the orator, is to convince us that he is not an orator. Once let Mr. Chamberlain be mistaken for a practical man, and his game is won. He has only to compose a theme on empire, and people will say that these plain men say great things on great occasions. He has only to drift in the large loose notions common to all artists of the second rank, and people will say that business men have the biggest ideals after all. All his schemes have ended in smoke; he has touched nothing that he did not confuse. About his figure there is a Celtic pathos; like the Gaels in Matthew Arnold's quotation, "he went forth to battle, but he always fell." He is a mountain of proposals, a mountain of failures; but still a mountain. And a mountain is always romantic.

      There is another man in the modern world who might be called the antithesis of Mr. Chamberlain in every point, who is also a standing monument of the advantage of being misunderstood. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always represented by those who disagree with him, and, I fear, also (if such exist) by those who agree with him, as a capering humorist, a dazzling acrobat, a quick-change artist. It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse. All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite of the truth; it is as wild as to say that Dickens had not the boisterous masculinity of Jane Austen. The whole force and triumph of Mr. Bernard Shaw lie in the fact that he is a thoroughly consistent man. So far from his power consisting in jumping through hoops or standing on his head, his power consists in holding his own fortress night and day. He puts the Shaw test rapidly and rigorously to everything that happens in heaven or earth. His standard never varies. The thing which weak-minded revolutionists and weak-minded Conservatives really hate (and fear) in him, is exactly this, that his scales, such as they are, are held even, and that his law, such as it is, is justly enforced. You may attack his principles, as I do; but I do not know of any instance in which you can attack their application. If he dislikes lawlessness, he dislikes the lawlessness of