THIS is a little handbook for the reading tables of Americans interested enough in the drama of the day to have some curiosity regarding the plays of George Bernard Shaw, but too busy to give them careful personal study or to read the vast mass of reviews, magazine articles, letters to the editor, newspaper paragraphs and reports of debates that deal with them. Every habitual writer now before the public, from William Archer and James Huneker to “Vox Populi” and “An Old Subscriber” has had his say about Shaw. In the pages following there is no attempt to formulate a new theory of his purposes or a novel interpretation of his philosophies. Instead, the object of this modest book is to bring all of the Shaw commentators together upon the common ground of admitted fact, to exhibit the Shaw plays as dramas rather than as transcendental treatises, and to describe their plots, characters, and general plans simply and calmly, and without reading into them anything invisible to the naked eye.
The order in which the plays are considered is not the chronological one, and some readers may think that it is not the logical one. Inasmuch as an exposition of the reasons that urged its adoption would waste a great deal of space, the point will not be argued. The brief biography of the dramatist is based upon the most accurate available eulogies, denunciations, reminiscences, and manuscripts. So, too, the historical data regarding the plays and other publications.
The reputation of Mr. Shaw as a playwright has so far exceeded his renown as a novelist, a socialist, a cart-tail orator, a journeyman reformer, a vegetarian, and a critic of literature and the arts, that his novels and other minor works have been noticed but briefly. But this is not to be taken as evidence that they do not merit acquaintance. Even the worst of Shaw is well worth study.