Shaw and Aristophanes: How the Comedy of Ideas Works

Shaw and Aristophanes: How the Comedy of Ideas WorksAuthor(s): Robert R. SpeckhardSource: The Shaw Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (September, 1965), pp. 82-92Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40682067 .

Accessed: 05/09/2014 15:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The ShawReview.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 78.58.150.38 on Fri, 5 Sep 2014 15:01:44 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40682067?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Shaw and Aristophanes: How the Comedy of Ideas Works

by Robert R. Speckhard*

How do Shaw's comedies of ideas succeed in the theater? How do they work? In The Quintessence of Tbsenism, Shaw maintained that "discussion" was the mark of the then new drama, of which pre- sumably his own was a part. When he subtitled Major Barbara a "Discussion," the effect was to sanctify this term as an explanation of his own plays.

Since then critics have not abandoned "discussion," but they have noted patterns in what Eric Bentley has very helpfully defined as the "inner action" of the plays. Bentley has commented that Shaw's favor- ite action is to have a "vital" protagonist "disillusion and/or convert" a mechanical antagonist;2 Peacock says that an "unconventional character . . . impinges upon a group of conventional social animals";3 and Alan Reynold Thompson comments that "a character who at first seems to the audience perfectly sensible, honorable, right-minded" is confronted by "a character who embodies the Shavian contradic- tions."4 All of these explanations are truly helpful ways of under- standing Shavian comedy, but they are more helpful in illuminating the meaning than the actual working of it, for, as explanations of how Shavian comedy succeeded or succeeds in the theater, they are explanations after the fact. None explains how audiences were (and are) made to recognize "vital" characters and come to sympathize with them; how audiences were (and are) made to recognize "conventional social animals" and "their stock notions and reactions"; and how sympathies were (and are) diverted from these social animals who at first seem "perfectly sensible, honorable, and right-minded." We should remember that Shaw was not a coterie playwright who wrote plays for audiences equipped with the "correct" ideas; against a con- siderable part of his audiences he was advancing ideas not familiar or not congenial. To explain why the discussion of ideas in Shavian comedy is dramatically successful we must, I think, look at a basic dramatic pattern first used by Aristophanes. 1. Etron-Buffoon versus Alazon in Aristophanes' The Acharnians

Like Shaw, Aristophanes wrote comedies of ideas, and, though one finds no evidence that Shaw is indebted to Aristophanes, it is clear that in facing much the same dramatic problem that Aristophanes faced, Shaw came up with much the same solution. Because the comic

1 Dr. Speckhard is Supervisor for English, European Division, University College, University of Maryland.

3 Bernard Shaw (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions Books, 1947) This distinction between "vital" protagonist and a mechanical antagonist pervades the book.

1 Ronald Peacock, "Shaw," reprinted in Louis Kronenberger, George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Survey ¿Cleveland: World Publishing Company. 1953). d. 180.

* The Dry Mock: A Study of Irony in Drama (Berkeley: University of California Prest, 1948), p. 112.

- 82 -



machinery is easier to spot in Aristophanes (where there is no attempt, as in Shaw, to disguise it with any surface realism), what Aristophanes has done becomes a helpful point of reference from which to study what Shaw has done.

The play that makes the most illuminating parallel is Aristophanes' The Acharnians. In it we see a clear confrontation of the Eiron-Buf- foon, the fellow who ironically pretends to be less than he is, and the Alazon, the fellow who foolishly thinks he is more than he is.5 What makes this confrontation so dramatically effective are: (1) the almost immediate arousal of our sympathy for the Eiron-Buffoon and antipathy for the Alazon, and (2) the ironic reversal inherent in the confrontation. Opposite the Alazon, the Eiron-Buffoon (Ironical Buffoon) appears and pretends to be weaker than he really is; he is therefore the underdog who elicits almost immediate sympathy. The Alazon is soon revealed as an impostor in the comic sense (a fellow who mis- takenly believes he is stronger, better, wiser than he is), and therefore he soon elicits antipathy. The reversal of this initial situation we wish to see. Actively and partisanly engaged from almost the opening of the action, we relish the reversal which follows: the deflation of the pretentious Alazon and the victory of his opponent. How this confrontation and reversal makes discussion of ideas effective can best be seen as we follow a brief summary of the action of an Aristophanic comedy and then analyze it.

Soon after The Acharnians opens, the hero Dicaeopolis is attacked by the angry veterans of Acharnae for advocating peace when it is war they want, war and revenge against the Spartans who have rav- aged their lands. Nevertheless, Dicaeopolis does not answer force with force. He is one, and they are many; furthermore he has a better way. He replies with buffoonery: he lays his head upon a block of wood in mock submission. Upon the inflamed Archarnaeans the effect is disconcerting: how can they vent their anger upon a fool who lays his head upon a block? The heat of their anger is dissipated. To our relief and amusement, they listen to Dicaeopolis addressing them from his incongruous position.

Having won a few minutes of attention, Dicaeopolis eloquently argues against the war. Half of the Acharnaeans are converted, but the other half, super-patriots of the 5th Century, call in General Lamachus to rout the "fool" who talks so well. Dicaeopolis now faces a new problem. How is he, a good but unarmed citizen of Athens, going to combat an armed general? His solution is to run off to the dramatist Euripides and borrow the most pathetic, wretched, "tragic" rags that Euripides has in his theatrical wardrobe. Clothed in these rags borrowed from the "weeping" dramatist, Dicaeopolis returns to face Lamachus. "I must today have the look of a beggar," remarks Dicaeopolis, "be what I am, but not appear to be." Again his buffoon- 8 See Otto Ribbeck's essay in the Rheinishes Museum für Philologie (Frankfurt am Main,

1876), XXXI, 382. This essay presents a very fascinating discussion of the origin and use of the term Eiron in the Greek language. Also J.A.K. Thompson, Irony, An Historical In- troduction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927). Discusses the use of irony in Greek literature. Also Francis Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (Cambridge: Uni- versity Press, 1914). Cornford discusses the opposition of Eiron and Alazon in Aristoph- anic comedies and suggests that their confrontation echoes ritual combats in earlier religious mysteries. It was a reading of this book which suggested the analogy between the Eirons and Alazones of Aristophanes and Shaw.

- 83 -



ery has the same end: to make him appear to be ridiculously helpless and innocuous.

General Lamachus, the Alazon proper of the play, arrives fully armed, bellowing: "Whence comes this cry of battle? Where must I bring my aid? Where must I sow my dread?" The super-patriots of Achamae point to Dicaeopolis. There, they say, there is the enemy! General Lamachus cannot understand. This trembling beggar in rags is the foe? He, the great General Lamachus, is asked to fight such pitiable trash? Like air from a punctured tire, his warrior mood leaks away. When Dicaeopolis, feigning terror at the very sight of La- machus's armor, asks to borrow the General's helmet to vomit into, Lamachus retires in frustration and disgust.

Such are the bare bones of the comic confrontation in The Acharnians, an Aristophanic comedy of ideas in which the merits of peace and war are argued. Why did this comedy succeed on the stage? In part surely because this play, produced in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, was timely and controversial. But even timely ideas will not by themselves maintain our interest throughout the course of the play. Clearly, this play is something other than a "dramatized debate," the phrase used by Butcher to describe Aristo- phanic comedy. That which makes it succeed as drama is a formula which dramatically "charges" ideas. Associated with the war policy is an overbearing figure whose discomfiture can only delight us; associated with the peace policy is a mild, unassuming but clever person (a little something of a 5th Century Charlie Chaplin) whose success against his antagonist we will watch with pleasure. It is not the war policy that we wish to see defeated, but Lamachus; it is not the peace policy that we wish to see triumphant, but Dicaeopolis. Very soon after this play opens we know with whom our sympathies lie. 2. The Etron-Buffoon and Alazon in Shaw's Captain Brassbound's

Conversion Let us now see how the comic machinery we have reviewed

works in a Shavian comedy. Lady Cicely Waynflete is visiting Mor- occo with her brother-in-law Sir Howard Hallam, a British judge. There she encounters Captain Brassbound (actually Hallam's nephew) whose life has become an obsession: to wreck revenge upon Sir How- ard, whom he supposes "stole" his mother's inheritance in the West Indies. When Judge Hallam visits the interior of Morocco, Brass- bound seizes the opportunity to waylay him in the Atlas Mountains. But Hallam's sister-in-law, Lady Cicely, is there, and it is she who saves Judge Hallam from Brassbound and Brassbound from himself.

All the characters surrounding Lady Cicely in the Morocco of 1899 are male, and all of them are engaged in the business of shedding blood, legally or illegally. Judge Hallam is a "hanging" judge; Captain Kearney of the American Navy commands an armed cruiser; the Mor- occan sheiks are fanatics; Brassbound leads a band of brigands. In their midst Shaw places Lady Cicely, an English lady bred to good manners, Victorian lecture halls, and the directorship of Sunday Schools. Like Dicaeopolis about to be stoned by the Acharnaeans or confronted by the armed might of Lamachus, she appears hopelessly out of her element.

- 84 -



SIR HOWARD. What are those hills over there to the southeast? RANKIN. They are the outposts, so to speak, of the Atlas Mountains. LADY CICELY. The Atlas Mountains! Where Shelley's witch lived!

We'll make an excursion to them tomorrow, Howard. RANKIN. That's impossible, my leddy. The natives are verra dan-

gerous. LADY CICELY. Why? Has any explorer been shooting them?

However, Lady Cicely's naivete is deceptive. Before the First Act is finished we catch glimpses of the real self which her "inno- cence" conceals: The question falls ingenuously from her lips. However, beneath her innocuous female facade there lies an acutely critical mind. Like Dicaeopolis, Lady Cicely could say of herself: "be what I am, but not appear to be/' To succeed against the male arrogance of Kearney, Hallam and Brassbound, she must proceed ironically. If she openly and forcefully opposes them, they will become more obstinate, less amenable to reason. If, however, she appears to be the noodle-head that they assume women of her class are, she can disarm them, make them amenable to reason.

In the next act, Brassbound has trapped Hallam and proposes to avenge the alleged ruin of his mother by handing Hallam to hostile Arabs. While Sir Howard is damning Brassbound and Brassbound is feeding the flames of his own imagined wrongs, Lady Cicely sits busily sewing on buttons and mending torn trousers and jackets. Upon Brassbound the effect is most disconcerting. The contrast between his thoughts of vengeance (carried high on his passions) and the prosaic industry of Lady Cicely sets him on edge. Her calm and business-like application to such "trivial" tasks mocks his own taut emotions. One recalls the scene in The Acharnians in which the "meekness" and "terror" of Dicaeopolis mock the taut warrior mood of Lamachus:

(Brassbound walks up and down the room, nursing his indignation. In doing so he unconsciously enters upon an unequal contest with Lady Cicely, who sits quietly stitching. It soon becomes clear that a tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming. Further, it begins to dawn on Brassbound's wrath-blurred perception that Lady Cicely has at some unnoticed stage of the proceedings finished Marzos bandage, and is now stitching a coat. He stops; glances at his shirtsleeves; finally realizes the situation. ) BRASSBOUND. I have no recollection of asking you to take that

trouble. LADY CICELY. No. I don't suppose you knew it was torn. Some

men are born untidy. You cannot very well receive Sidi el - what's his name? - with your sleeves half out.

BRASSBOUND. (disconcerted) I - I don't know how it got torn. LADY CICELY. You should not get virtuously indignant with people.

It bursts clothes more than anything else, Mr. Hallam. BRASSBOUND. (flushing quickly) I beg you will not call me Mr.

Hallam. I hate the name. LADY CICELY. Black Paquito is your pet name, isn't it? BRASSBOUND. (huffily) I am not usually called so to my face.

7 - 85 -



LADY CICELY, (turning the coat a little) I'm so sorry. (She takes another piece of thread and puts it into her needle, looking placidly and reflectively upward meanwhile.) Do you know, you are won- derfully like your uncle.

BRASSBOUND. Damnation!

By quietly comparing him to his uncle (they both believe in force and vengeance) Lady Cicely completely deflates Brassbound's righteous belief in his own goodness and the black malice of his uncle.

Although Brassbound is not as crudely pompous as Lamachus and Lady Cicely not as "foolish" as Dicaeopolis, beneath the 20th century surface realism of this Shavian comedy we can see the stock figures of the Etron-Buffoon and Alazon. Lady Cicely, not a figure of farce like Dicaeopolis, is nevertheless ironical in the very same sense that he is, for (despite her real strength) her manner and person appear as innocuous to those about her as the manner and person of Dicaeopolis appear to those about him. Judge Hallam remarks to Rankin that his sister-in-law talks "nonsense." To all the males surrounding her, Lady Cicely appears to have no sense of reality - to them she is something of the fool. Of this illusion she does not openly disabuse them. To get what she wants (and she gets everything she wants) she masks her real perceptive personality beneath the "woman- ish" personality which Victorian males such as Hallam, Brassbound and Kearney willingly ascribe to Victorian women. For Dicaeopolis, buffoonery is a way to parry and frustrate his antagonists, to put them so out of countenance with his "foolishness" that they are momentarily stopped and quieted - and therefore receptive to his shafts of wisdom. This is exactly the function of Lady Cicely's apparent innocuousness and "nonsense."

The great difference between Lady Cicely and Dicaeopolis is that the one is drawn in the convention of realism, the other in that of farce. What Shaw does that Aristophanes does not do is to find a real social type which sufficiently approximates the theatrical type which he needs for his kind of comedy. All that Lady Cicely has to do to function under the mask of the Ironical-Buffoon is to act as others expect her to act.

The characteristics of the stock Alazon (Comic Impostor) are found in both of Lady Cicely's antagonists. Judge Hallam is overbearing in rather obvious ways: for example, he dismisses his sister-in- law as a noodlehead, although it is she who finally rescues him from Brassbound's vengeance. Brassbound is more subtly arrogant. Mis- takenly believing that his Uncle Hallam has swindled his mother and him, he has nursed his imagined wrong into all sorts of flattering illusions about himself: at times he is the injured little man fighting a demon called society; at other times he imagines himself the righteous avenging hero. Because he is deceived, we want to see him rescued from himself rather than merely ridiculed; nevertheless he is a type of the self-inflated Comic Impostor.

The progress of the play is the ironic reversal of Comic Impostors and Ironical-Buffoon. We are amused as Hallam's arrogance and Brassbound's arrogant self-righteousness are deflated. We are de-

- 86 -



lighted by the relevation of Lady Cicely's strength. In the course of the action the initial positions of the antagonists are exactly reversed: the apparent "fool" triumphs as the pretentious personalities are reduced. 3. The Eiron-Buïïoon and Alazon in other Shavian comedies

The reader at all familiar with Shaw will require no detailed guide to other Shavian Ironical-Buffoons and Alazones.6 The first of the Ironical-Buffoons is the hero of Arms and the Man, Bluntschli. Opposite him are Raina and Major Saranoff, both puffed up with their own importance: she expects men to idolize her and he thinks he's a hero out of a real melodrama. So diffident and unassuming is Blunt- schli that his very presence is enough to set Raina and Sarnoff on edge. To Saranoff, Bluntschli is a confusing antagonist, as much as Dicaeopolis was to Lamachus, for everything about Bluntschli mocks the taut martial egotism of Saranoff: the chocolate instead of bullets in his cartridge belt, his distaste for battles, his preference for retreats. In Saranoff's eyes (and this is how we must see the Ironical-Buffoon, for it is opposite the Comic Impostor that he functions) Bluntschli is something of a fool, for his behavior fits no normal pattern. And yet Bluntschli is not what he appears to be, for it is he who ends up managing Saranoff's troops and marrying the woman who first dis- dained him. Of Shaw's Ironical-Buffoons, Bluntschli is the one most obviously theatrical, approximating no social type, except perhaps the stereotype of the practical and non-romantic Swiss.

When Shaw wrote Candida he once more made the central action of his comedy a confrontation of Comic Impostor and Ironical-Buffoon, succeeding (as he did again in Captain Brassbound's Confession) in finding an actual social type whose innocuous appearance could con- ceal real strength. We have seen that, to Judge Hallam, Lady Cicely appears to be a typical, upper-middle-class, Victorian woman; he as- sumes that she is unworldly and empty-headed, as many women were in a society which did not grant them full rights and responsi- bilities as citizens. To the Reverend Morell, Eugene Marchbanks appears to be a dreamy poet of the pre-Raphaelite sort, exactly the unworldly "poetic" type in need of that practical moral wisdom upon which the Reverend prides himself. When Eugene complains that he cannot bear that Candida peels onions and polishes shoes, Morell attacks. He cannot resist the opportunity to display his wisdom and instruct this "weaker vessel." The good man prides himself upon his wisdom in marriage ('Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a 9 In Bernard Shaw, Eric Bentley has also noted the reappearance in Shavian comedy of the

Comic Ironist and Comic Impostor of Greek comedy. He remarks (p. 150) that "Shaw combines the old antithesis of amateur and professional with a yet older one which, we are told, is the oldest confrontation in all comedy. This is the confrontation in the earliest Greek comedy of the Ironist and the Impostor, the Ironist in Shaw being always the soft- spoken vital man in harmony with himself, the Impostor being the professional man who has ideologies and habits instead of ideas and impulses. Many of the greatest scenes in Shaw are duels between these two.*'

It is clear that Bentley does not consider th confrontation of Impostor and Ironist as central in Shavian comedy as we do, for he speaks of it only in scenes and finds that the central pattern of the plays is most often the conversion or disillusionment of a mechanical antagonist by a "vital" hero. As we have already noted, we do not find this explanation an adequate answer to the question we are considering: How did the comedies of ideas succeed so well in the theater? They succeeded so well because ideas were incorporated into a stereotyped action that quickly engages our partisan sympathies and antipathies and maintains them throughout the entire action of a play. With a few exceptions, the verbal duels one finds in the plays are a part of this larger stereotyped action.

- 87 -



happy man like me"). Marchbanks, however, has perceived Candida's dissatisfaction, and he will not accept Morell's complacent estimate of himself as an ideal husband. Slowly Morell's good opinion of himself is whittled away, until near the end of the action he who set out to instruct a "naive" Marchbanks in marital wisdom is on his knees desperately begging Candida to forgive and accept him.

In You Never Can Tell, Shaw created a most delightful Ironical- Buffoon in William the Waiter, an exaggeration of the Victorian- Edwardian butler who knows his place. Beneath his elaborately deferential manner there is a wise intelligence; sandwiched between the "Yes, Madam's" and the "Right away, Sir's" are shafts of pointed wisdom which help to save the Crampton family from itself. In Man and Superman we find Ann Whitefield, another "helpless" Victorian woman. When John Tanner patronizingly proposes to educate "helpless" Ann, she ends up educating him. Androcles of Androcles and the Lion appears so weak, so innocuous and simple that he becomes the prey of his overbearing wife and the Roman mob. But Androcles' radical Christian humility masks real strength when his loving care makes the Lion his ally. In the end, the reversal is complete: together Androcles and the Lion scatter the Roman mob.

Because the convention of realism precluded such an approach, Shaw's Ironical-Buffoons are less theatrical buffoons than Dicaeopolis. However, Shaw found an effective equivalent for ironical buffoonery in the appearance and manner of certain actual social types: the "helpless" Victorian woman, the diffident Swiss soldier, the dreamy pre-Raphaelite poet, the extravagantly deferential waiter, the radically humble Christian. All these types effectively deceive the Comic Im- postors opposite them. Because these Shavian Ironical-Buffoons are not what they appear to be, their antagonists become more complacently sure of their own superiority than usual and thus over- reach themselves, or their tautly conceited personalities are set on edge and put out of countenance. 4. Shavian Variations of the Ironical Hero: Polite Eirons & Ironical- Rogues

We have seen that the formula of the Eiron-Buffoon is real strength effectively masked by apparent "foolishness" or its equivalent: apparent ineptness, unworldliness, innocuousness. In three of Shaw's comedies, however, the central confrontation more nearly takes the form developed by Plato in those scenes of the Dialogues in which Socrates is confronted by over-confident Sophists, such as Protagoras. Because the Socratic version of the Eiron is so familiar, I will do no more than point to Shavian versions. General "Gentlemanly Johnny" Burgoyne of The DeviFs Disciple, Shaw's Caesar in Caesar and Cleo- patra, and King Magnus of The Apple Cart are all fine examples of the Polite Eiron. They do not appear innocuous or helpless or noodle- headed; like Socrates, the sharpness of their intelligence is made amusing by a show of civility. Restless arrogance in their antagonists is frustrated by the quiet, controlled intelligence of these Polite Eirons.

A delightful and wholly Shavian contribution to the tradition of the Eiron and JEiron-Buffoon is a type I have named the Ironical-

- 88 -



Rogue.7 Why did Shaw invent this new type of Ironist? In part, I think, because of the nature of the antagonists in some of his plays. In the plays so far considered the Shavian Comic Impostors are some- what restlessly overbearing. Like the Reverend Morell, they do not need much invitation, if any, to exhibit their superiority. However, Shaw encountered in life another type of arrogant personality - the complacently conceited. The complacently conceited are not less conceited than their more vocal cousins. Not at all. For conceit that is not expressed is often more dearly felt than that which is. But if Shaw were to dramatize such a type, he had to devise a plausible means of making its representatives exhibit their unspoken holy pretenses vivid- ly enough for the purposes of dramatic comedy. His solution was the Ironical-Rogue, ironical because apparent immorality masks real morality. Such an "immoral" type is the red flag that makes the complacently conceited articulate their cherished opinions.

In Man and Superman, John Tanner's "scandalous" socialism in- flames the old M anches ter ian Liberal, Roebuck Ramsden, who will not share the guardianship of Ann Whitefield with the "infamous" author of the Revolutionist's Handbook. Until he encounters Tanner, Roebuck Ramsden's prejudices are concealed - even from himself - by his conceit that he is an "advanced thinker." It requires a Rogue (in this case a Socialist) to excite Ramsden, make him define his opinions, and thereby expose their hollowness. In Major Barbara, the Ironical-Rogue is Undershaft, the munitions magnate who builds model communities with money earned from cannons and gunpowder, a fact that makes him appear scandalously "wicked" to those who recognize wickedness in cannons but none in poverty and slums. It is Undershaft's "immorality" that smokes out his son Stephen's holy pretences:

STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon business. UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! don't be so devilishly sulky; it's boy-

ish. ... I owe you a fair start in life. . . . Haven't you a turn for something? What about literature, art, and so forth?

STEPHEN. I have nothing of the artist about me, either in faculty " or character, thank Heaven! UNDERSHAFT. A philosopher, perhaps? Eh? STEPHEN. I make no such ridiculous pretensions. UNDERSHAFT. Just so. Well, there is the army, the navy, the

Church, the Bar. The Bar requires some ability. What about the Bar?

STEPHEN. I have not studied law. And I am afraid I have not the necessary push - I believe that is the name barristers give to their vulgarity - for success in pleading.

UNDERSHAFT. Rather a difficult case, Stephen, Hardly anything left but the stage, is there? ... Is there anything you know or care for?

7 The category of the Shavian Ironical-Kogue was suggested to me by a very interesting monograph by Stanley Marquis Holberg, in which the author discusses what he terms Shaw's Economic Rogues: Sartorius and Dr. Trench of Widower's Houses, Mrs. Warren, John Tanner, and Andrew Undershaft. These Economic Rogues are discussed as expressions of Shavian economic doctrines. I have tried to show that the Ironical-Rogue, a larger class which also includes Tanner and Undershaft, is Shaw's unique contribution to the dramatic tradition of the Eiron in comedy. Shaw's Ironical-Rogues are rogues because they are thought to be wicked; ironical because their supposed immorality proves to be superior to the morality of their antagonists. See No. 5 of Monographs in English, University of Buffalo Studies, 1953, II, No. 2, entitled The Economic Rogue in the Plays of Bernard Shaw.

7 * - 89 -



STEPHEN, (rising and looking at him steadily) I know the difference between right and wrong.

UNDERSHAFT. (hugely tickled) You don't say so! No capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy for art, no pretensions to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists, the secret of right and wrong! Why man, you're a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four too!

STEPHEN, (keeping his temper with difficulty) You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright.

In The Doctors Dilemma, the Shavian Rogue (here not entirely moral) serves to expose a serious shortcoming of conventional moral thinking: its sensitiveness to sins of commission and insensitiveness to sins of omission. When Louis Dubedat (a married man) admits that he ran off for a three-week holiday with a chamber-maid, the doctors are indignant. Each in turn vents his moral outrage. Then Louis asks the doctors what they have ever done for the likes of Minnie Tinwell: "Minnie Tinwell is a young woman who has had three weeks of glorious happiness in her poor little life, which is more than most girls in her position get, I can tell you. Ask her whether she'd take it back if she could. . . . What have you fellows done for her to com- pare with that?"

Shaw had to find a way to bring unspoken holy pretences out of hiding. He not only had to bring them out of hiding; in dramatic comedy they had to come out charging. The "wicked" Ironical-Rogue was his solution. "Wicked socialism" goads Roebuck Ramsden; "Moral heresy" arouses Stephen Undershaft; "infidelity" incites the Doctors; in You Never Can Tell, the gay irreverence of Dolly and Philip so angers Crampton that he articulates his smug egotism; in The DeviFs Disciple, it is the "immorality" of Dick Dudgeon that so arouses the moral righteousness of his mother that she reveals the sour resentment it contains.

4. Limitations of the single Eiron-Alazon confrontation; Shavian Solutions

Although Shaw revives with great skill the comic machinery first used by Aristophanes, as he develops, he wishes to deal in his plays with a reality more complex than can be contained in a single Eiron- Alazon confrontation. Such a confrontation violates reality because: 1) It suggests that clever,, ironical heroes and heroines are always right and don't require some education themselves; and 2) It opti- mistically suggests that the hero's sweetness, wittiness and light invariably triumph. Shaw's later comedies develop beyond both of these assumptions.

Having reduced the "advanced thinker" Ramsden to incoherence, John Tanner appears invincible. However, when Tanner presump- tuously turns to educate his ward Ann Whitefield, it is he who ends up educated and married. In this play Shaw has doubled the Eiron- Alazon confrontation: the delightful irony of this comedy is that the self-satisfied victor of the first confrontation becomes the humbled of the second. In Man and Superman, Shaw has transcended a major

- 90 -



limitation of the single confrontation, not by abandoning the confrontation, but by doubling it. The hero need not be infallible; the joke can fall on him too.

A different maneuver in Caesar and Cleopatra, John Bull's Other Island, The Apple Cart, and On The Rocks retains the single Eiron- Alazon confrontation, but transcends it. In doing so, Shaw escapes the second limitation of the confrontation: the assumption that it contains that the hero and his wisdom will invariably triumph. A brief analysis of this maneuver in John Bull's Other Island will suffice. In this play the object of mockery is Tom Broadbent, an English bus- inessman who flourishes without restraint, even when it means de- liberately loaning too much money to petty Irish landlords and then waiting until they cannot pay to foreclose. Shaw's hero is an Ironical- Buffoon, the unfrocked "mad" Irish priest, Father Keegan. The Ke- egan-Broadbent confrontation appears to be another typical Shavian comic confrontation: Keegan has endless fun at Broadbent's expense and Broadbent's activities are unmasked. However, unlike the typical Shavian Comic Impostor, Broadbent is not put out of countenance. He admits what he does to the petty Irish landlords, but he has a philosophy which justifies it: "modern efficiency." Aggressive self- seeking and unscrupulousness are not morally reprehensible because they belong to economic activities which are "efficient." Broadbent dismisses all of Keegan's criticisms as "chaff."

In this play the stereotyped outcome of the single comic confrontation is blunted. The ironical hero does not disconcert the complacent Comic Impostor, as Dicaeopolis disconcerts General La- machus, Lady Cicely disconcerts Hallam and Brassbound, as March- banks disconcerts Morell. Obtuseness, complacency, and arrogant selfishness are seen as invulnerable, as they are also viewed in Caesar and Cleopatra, The Apple Cart, and On the Rocks. Neverthe- less, though these plays are tragi-comedies and not comedies, they retain a good bit of the verve and wit of Shaw's pure comedies because in them Shaw was still able to make use of the successful Eiron- Alazon confrontation. At the same time, he opens the door to the real world in which intelligence, good sense, and verbal brilliance do not so often triumph. 5. Summary and conclusions

Without suggesting that Shaw is in any way indebted to Aristo- phanes, I have tried to show that in most of his plays the important "inner action" contains the same comic confrontation found in several Aristophanic plays,8 that the secret of their dramatic success is this simple formula or some version of it which immediately engages and maintains the partisan emotions of the audience. Because we in the audience want to see the ideas of the complacent Alazones punctured and those of the ironical heroes victorious, the ideas and arguments in Aristophanic and Shavian comedy become dramatically "charged." Because the Comic Impostors are distasteful personalities - smug, overbearing, self-righteous, arrogant - it follows that we want to • The clearest confrontation of Eiron and Alazon is found in The Acharnians, but one also

finds it in The Knights and The Wasps, although less developed.

- 91 -



see their opinions (conventional or not) appropriately demolished. We follow the exchange of ideas not only with intellectual interest, but also with partisan emotional interest. The Aristophanic and Shavian comedy of ideas is not a debate or discussion, but a confrontation of two different types of personalities in which ideas are weapons. And, as John Gassner would say, we know for what type we are rooting.

To what conclusions about the meaning of Shavian comedy does this analysis of structure lead? Above all, it should help to make it clearer that the quality of human beings is for Shaw a prime consider- ation and makes us aware of the inadequacy of such conclusions as that reached by Louis Kronenberger in Shaw: A Critical Survey that "there are only corrupt classes or intolerable social conditions or vicious laws" in Shavian comedy; or the conclusion of Ronald Peacock that (unlike Moliere) Shaw was interested in a concept of society, but not of man. One suspects that in the case of Kronenberger and Pea- cock the villain is the old habit (particularly sanctioned by Shaw himself) of thinking of the action of his plays as nothing more than discussion or debate of social problems. Our own analysis supports the conclusion of Eric Bentley that Shaw's central interest was an image of man, his hero a "vital" personality living with a minimum of comfortable, egotistic illustions to prejudice and cramp his natural goodwill and intelligence. Central in the comic confrontation of Ironist and Impostor is a contrast of personality and character. The Alazones, self-deceived impostors, are cramped and prejudiced personalities because they have adopted comfortable, flattering illustions about their own goodness and wisdom. The strength of Shaw's ironical heroes (Ironical-Buffoons, Polite Eirons, Ironical-Rogues) lies in their relative freedom from such egotistic illusions. Their intelligence is not warped by prejudice and their spirit is not cramped by conceit. They see things, including themselves, as they are, and they respond to life with goodwill.

SHAW REVIEW NOW AVAILABLE ON MICROFILM

Microfilm copies of current and back issues of The Shaw Review are now available, and new issues will become available on microfilm at the end of each volume year. For further information write Uni- versity Microfilms, 313 N. First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

- 92 -



Documents

Shaw and Aristophanes: How the Comedy of Ideas Works