• A relatively short run for a Shaw play is
not unprecedented ; but happening nowadays, when Mr. Shaw is old and in the enjoyment of a renown so extraordinary, it is a disturbing event. Most people do not realize the uniqueness in England of Bernard Shaw as playwright: We must go back two centuries to find a dramatist who affords a partial parallel, and Dryden gave . up- the stage when his years were far fewer than those now borne by the author of Too True to be Good. But surely the reasons for the partial failure do not admit of dispute. Apart from Mr. Hardwicke, the casting is poor ; the performance contains chunks of bad acting. Our present- day stage training is near_y useless for long speeches, and these late examples have not the quality of the superb series of Shavian harangues stretching all the way from The Man of Destiny to The Apple Cart. And there is one reason which makes all the rest of no account. The public will not take defeatism from Mr. Shaw— that amazing fighter, as Mr. Chesterton put it long ago, whose spear was never bent. In this play almost every utterance is disillusion, surrender, and despair. The famous red beard, Mr. St. John Ervine declares, was once the red- flag. It is now the white flag.
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