MR. BERNARD SHAW

Shaw. By J. S. Collis. (Cape. es.) THIS clever monograph is written by an avowed disciple who has learned 'from his master a good technique as a' writer, and also the power to criticize from a detached point of view. Being also an Irishman, however, his detachment never succeeds in clearing his mind from the fine Demosthenic fumes of rhetoric.

The Irishman may be more clear headed than the English.' man—as Mr. Shaw is always pointing out—but he gets no further in the long run because he is always infatuated with his own clarity. The Englishnian struggles along bravely, battling his way through the clouds of his own insular sentiments ; but his usual modesty and sense of inferiority often prove his salvation, for he becomes detached by his very consciousness of a lack of. detachment. Mr. Shaw recognizes this in his picture of the Earl of Warwick—that apparently cold-blooded -monster who dared not trust him., - self to be present at the ordeal which he himself had-brought -

about. I

This Narcissus quality is the one- which prevents the Celt- from- beeoming-the leader of the white race-of -mankind, for-it generates in him= the-fatal-habit of consuming his own vitality. We have examples of such " ineffectual angels "-- Burke, Sheridan, George Moore, Wilde and Mr. Shaw. Goldsmith must be excepted because he did have that fortunate English inferiority complex—perhaps planted in him by his cruel' childhood and - his adult subjection to the Grand Cham. However he got it, it proved his sal: vation, for it made him suspicious of himself and his marl. vellous tongue) and in that condition a man opens the door) of douk by which the Angel of -Realiti may creep in and leave that gift which endows the man's work with a wealth over an above its face value. It seems an irrelevant,'

almorst ani immoral way of itieceeciink. But then that is typically English. One can imagine Mr. Shaw. striding down, slamming the door in the angel's face, and saying " 1..00k hele, I want no backstair charity from you. If I achieve universal truth at 'all, I will achieve it with an independent and completely conscious mind. Get out ! "

In consequence he has remained a utilitarian, an analyst ; and his grandeur, his austerity, and his asceticism are a refinement upon common sense. If ever a man has created and endowed his own God, it is Mr. Shaw. It is awe- inipiring to the spectatoi ; but for the Quixote himself it is profoundly exhausting. There is, however, something mbre tragic.. When he calls on that God to come to his aid, to support his noble human effort, and to raise a divine superstructure upon it ; alas ! he calls upon that God in vain, for the part cannot be greater than the whole. Such is the unhappy. fate of being master in one's own house.

One looks forward with a certain amount of dread to such moments of crisis in Mr. Shaw's plays, when he is left there alone, no fire coming down from heaven to alight upon that altar which is the finest intellectual erection themwiorid - has seen for many a long day—so finely proportioned, so graceful, so economical. The miracle of transfiguration

does not come ; the scenes which should find, the author suddenly snatched up out of himself into a universal and time-haunting personality are somehow. ,,betrayed by the Grkl, who says " Author, I am your creature. I can do no more than you."

In consequence, the most impressive scenes in the plays are those in which Mr. Shaw is supported only by his own mind and its tremendous dialectic—by far the most perfect instrument of its kind in the English language. In St. Joan for instance, the greatest scene in the play is that one where the Bishop of Beauvais and the Earl of Warwick face each other in the tent, pausing periodically to strop their razor- intelligences on that of the honest, 'sentimental, and man-in-the street chaplain._ Since he thinks that ideas matter most, Mr. Shaw will perhaps assert that this scene is rightly the most important. But it has no right to be. A man's ideas are not the first principle of his being, for they are derived-from his emotional character. The greatest scene, therefore, should be rooted in that self which is deeper than the mind. That scene, in St.' Joan, should be the one in the cathedral after the crown- ing of the Dauphin, where Joan suddenly learns that she is aldne in the whole world and that there is no difference between the friend's sense of obligations and the foe's rage at being opposed. This adversity reveals to her the source of her power. She sees why she has been able to do what she has done. She learns how much she can endure in the futhre. It prepares her for her conquest:in the trial scene, and is, in reality, the trial, of which the ,courtproceedings afterwards are but the legal vesture.

yet we are .dismayed when she proclaims her Voices in the bells. We feel a sense of flatness, as though the bells

were cracked ; and our minds run back for comfort and security to that great scene in-the tent where the Bishop of Beauvais is giving his masterly exposition of the cos- mology and ethics of the Roman Church.

And Mr. Collis has the courage to proclaim that Mr. Shaw is .

a mystic ! The Master has added no footnote-to this asser- tion by his disciple. • We are surprised that he has not pissed one of his verbal bombs underneath it. For in the bell scene, and in scenes of a like spiritual crisis in the other plays, we feel always that the author has reached an impasse, but that he will not surrender. - - .

He says in effect, " Ha ! Here is an emotional situation which my mind cannot encompass. Shall I disperse myself here, and give place to an outside power in which I cannot have faith until I have mastered it with my mind ? Circumstances force me ; but I do it under protest." We feel that it was under such compulsion that he wrote the bell scene in. St. Joan, and the Sphinx scene in Caesar and Cleopatra.

Here too, we think, is the Shaw who is reported to have said " I like Dean Inge, for we are of Me same religion ! " This is—profoundly -and mercilessly -true, -though the- two mew-:.

move in quite different intellectual spheres. They are alike in this, that neither will surrender his intellectual integrity and allow it to dispere before the vigour of some greater external Informant. The result of this is a pride, and an aristocratic attitude towards every problem 'which life pre- sents. - Dean Inge may aspire towards the Christian mystery, with its assertion of faith in place of philosophic detachment'; and its sanctification of the democratic ideal in the ordering of society. But his aspiration is half-hearted, and no one is deceived by it. Does he believe that every man, woman, and child may be redeemed by Christ ? We feel that Dean Inge, too, would persuade people that Joan had her Voices ; and he, too, would reserve his belief in them. That is where the Dean of St. Paul's may be classed with the world-renowned dramatist.

Though so little has been said about the great man, we have left ourselves no room to do justice to Mr. Collis's excellent monograph. Never for one moment is it pretentious and dull: The writing has a rich Irish tang, and sparkles with wit and irony. Here is an example of the latter.

" Life is cheap, Death is harmless, Time is long. We will gO" on evolving all the same—for revolution cannot stop evolution: It is nonsense to -say that we may exterminate one another in the meantime. All the women must be killed first : and we may count it as fairly certain that that will never happen."

That is worthy of Siiift. Altogether, the essay convinces us that we have not heard the last of Mr. Collis as both a provot cative and an. appreciative critic. It is long, for instance, since anyone has had the courage to proclaim that rhetoric has a right and important place in the writer's technique. Hia defence of it is real and spirited.

RICHARD Cnuacw.