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More Shaw Advice to the Players of Major Barbara

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Extract

No subsequent production of Major Barbara commanded Bernard Shaw's attention as fully as did the original one in 1905 at the Royal Court Theatre, in which he served as director as well as author. Nonetheless, revivals and contemplated revivals elicited from him lively suggestions about how to stage and perform this complex drama; and in a few of these he again became an active participant in rehearsals. The surviving comments, however incomplete, afford a useful supplement to his earlier counsel. They also add valuable details to Shaw's own commentary on the play and to our knowledge of him as peerless director of his own dramas.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1970

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References

NOTES

1. See “Shaw's Advice to the Players of Major Barbara,” Theatre Survey, X, No. 1 (May 1969), 1–17, of which this article is a continuation.

2. Ibid., p. 3.

3. Quoted in Purdom, C. B., Harley Granville Barker (London, 1955), pp. 72–3.Google Scholar Purdom does not give the date of the letter.

4. Shaw letter, Academic Center Library, University of Texas. All the quotations in this article from the writings of Bernard Shaw, including both published and unpublished letters, appear by generous permission of The Society of Authors, for the Bernard Shaw Estate. For permission to quote from its numerous manuscripts cited herein, I also wish to express my gratitude to the Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

5. Bernard Shaw's Letters to Granville Barker, ed. C. B. Purdom (London 1956), p. 86.

6. Letters of September 18 and 23,1907, Shaw's Letters to Barker, pp. 105, 108. Joy and Waste were the plays by John Galsworthy and Granville Barker, respectively. The actor Kennedy is not further identified.

7. Letters, Vedrenne to Shaw, November 16, 1907, and Shaw to Vedrenne, November 17, 1907, Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

8. Shaw letter, November 1, 1909, Henry W. and Alberta A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

9. Program, Major Barbara, Kammerspiele des Deutschen Theaters, Montag, den 6. Dezember 1909, Academic Center Library, University of Texas. The actress also writes of her trepidation about the press reception of her performance in the company's prospective presentation of “Nan” on Friday (December 10), when compared with artists of such resource and finish as those she has observed in Major Barbara. She is greatly relieved that they had not undertaken to do Candida there.

No reference to productions of Major Barbara in Vienna or Berlin appears in Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, Theatrical Companion to Shaw (London, 1954), or in the various biographies of Shaw. Nor is this play included in a published record of productions at the Vienna Burgtheater: Das Burgtheater: Statistischer Rückblick, ed. Otto Rub (Vienna, 1913).

10. Trebitsch, Siegfried, Chronicle of a Life, trans. Wilkins, Eithne and Kaiser, Ernst (London, 1953), p. 171.Google Scholar Trebitsch presents two somewhat discrepant reports of the leading performers of the play in Berlin (pp. 171, 204). The name of Eugen Klôpfer, whom he identifies in both places as the Undershaft, does not appear at all on the Berlin program cited in the previous note, but Lucie Hôflich, whom he recalls uncertainly (on p. 204) as the original Barbara, does.

11. Shaw, Bernard, Advice to A Young Critic, ed. West, E. J. (New York, 1955), p. 188.Google Scholar See also the terse notes of June 19, 1909 and August 16, 1910 for Shaw's other refusals to allow performances of Major Barbara, the first of these withholding the play from amateurs (pp. 187, 189). Early in 1907 he had thought it improbable that amateurs would even apply, the play being beyond their capabilities (p. 176).

12. Letter of May 8, 1910, Shaw's Letters to Barker, p. 166. Purdom incorrectly dates the letter (now at the University of Texas Academic Center Library) May 9.

13. Burton, Percy, Adventures Among Immortals, as told to Lowell Thomas (London, 1938), pp. 146–7.Google Scholar This extract appeared earlier, with minor variations in language and punctuation, in an article by Percy Burton, R., “George Bernard Shaw,” Cassell's Weekly, II, No.’ 32 (October 24, 1923), 166.Google Scholar The ellipsis is Burton's.

14. Pogson, Rex, Miss Horniman and the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester (London, 1952), pp. 169, 185, 205.Google Scholar

15. Calvert cablegram, October 8, 1915, Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

16. Letter from Harley Granville Barker, November 29, 1915, British Museum, Add. MS 50534, fol. 137.

17. Letters from Barker, February 5 and 26, 1915, British Museum, Add. MS 50534, foll. 122, 125.

18. Shaw letter of December 19, 1915, in Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence, ed. Alan Dent (London, 1952), p. 183.

19. She made her plea in an undated letter, now in the Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

20. Letter from William A. Brady, December 15, 1915, Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

21. Shaw letter of December 19, 1915, Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 182.

22. See Derwent, Clarence, The Derwent Story (New York, 1953), esp. pp. 117–19.Google Scholar Derwent, who played Stephen in this production, erroneously reports the opening date as December 19.

23. On Brady's December 15, 1915 letter Shaw noted that he answered it on December 30th.

24. Calvert cablegrams, November 18 and 22, 1915, Academic Center Library, University of Texas.

25. This note on the play appeared as an article headed “Facts About ‘Major Barbara’; From a Friend of the Author of that Comedy” in the New York Sun, December 26, 1915, VI, 7:5–8. It has been reprinted, with some variation in de tails, as “To Audiences at Major Barbara” in Shaw on Theatre, ed. E. J. West (New York, 1958), pp. 118–121. West's version lacks the references to Calvert in the passages quoted here.

26. The Rovsing letter with Shaw's shorthand draft is in the Academic Center Library, University of Texas. I wish to express my special thanks to Barbara Smoker for this and the other shorthand transcriptions included in this article. Miss Smoker believes that Shaw probably drafted this reply on a train or bus journey because of indications of jolting in it. As a result she is uncertain about the word “ruffian” in the first sentence, but believes it is what Shaw intended.

27. Among those to whom he granted licenses for performances were: the Pasadena (California) Browning Society, for a single amateur performance at Pasadena High School (for which he waived his royalty fee in return for a promised prospective Browning Concordance) in the spring of 1921; the Mansfield House University Settlement in Canning Town (a locale mentioned in the play) for performances on February 11 and 18, 1922; and the Play and Pageant Union of London, for performances on April 24, 26, and 28, 1924.

28. In a letter to this writer, January 9, 1967. See also Mander and Mitchenson, pp. 292–3.

29. Shaw to Esmé Percy, Academic Center Library, University of Texas. The Macdona Players (whose Shaw repertory productions were directed by Esme Percy) did present a revival of Major Barbara at the Regent Theatre, London, as early as Friday, December 11, 1925. Mander and Mitchenson (pp. 293–5) report. that Major Barbara was in the repertoire of the Macdona Players by 1924, but do not include it anywhere in their listing of specific productions by the company.

30. Quoted by permission of the Theatre Guild Collection, Yale University Library. The entire letter has previously been published in Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet (New York, 1932), pp. 808–9. In slightly abridged form, as it is here, it has been reprinted in Miss Helburn's autobiography, A Wayward Quest (New York, 1960), pp. 157–8, and in Langner's, LawrenceG.B.S. and the Lunatic (New York, 1963), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar All three previously printed versions contain minor variations from the original, the most remarkable being Langner's substitution of “never” for “ever” in the sentence about Cusins being easy for any actor who has ever seen Professor Murray. The production opened at the Cuild Theatre, November 20, 1928.

31. Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, pp. 272, 273. Mander and Mitchenson, pp. 105, 333, give March 5th as the opening date, as does Shaw's secretary, Blanche Patch, in her Thirty Years With G.B.S. (London, 1951), p. 127. She reports Shaw “busy with rehearsals” throughout February.

32. Quoted by permission of the Fales Library, Division of Special Collections, New York University.

33. The Best of Friends: Further Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, ed. Viola Meynell (London, 1956), p. 40. I follow the original letter (Academic Center Library, University of Texas) in not italicizing “Major Barbara.” In her book (p. 127) Blanche Patch reports that the press had decided Shaw was dying, until he contradicted the story over the telephone.

34. British Museum, Add. MS 50644, foll. 213–220. Also preserved are some rehearsal notes Shaw took at the dress rehearsal of the later revival at the Old Vic on March 1, 1935, foll. 297–299.

35. Consider Shaw's own words on this subject: “People sometimes wonder what is the secret of the extraordinary knowledge of women which I shew in my plays. They very often accuse me of having acquired it by living a most abandoned life. But I never acquired it. I have always assumed that a woman is a person exactly like myself, and that is how the trick is done.” “Woman–Man in Petticoats,” Speech, May 20, 1927, in Platform and Pulpit, ed. Dan H. Laurence (London, 1962), p. 174.

36. Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 273. Quoted by permission of the Trustees to the late Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

37. See Mander and Mitchenson, pp. 302–4. Miss Pollock later repeated this and other Shavian roles at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, for five months, until halted by the German bombing of London. Her encounter with Shaw's work as a director had come earlier: in the first British production of Too True to be Good (1932), and in the original production of On the Rocks (1933). In the latter she created the role of Aloysia Brollikins; in the former she played Sweetie.

38. Quoted with the kind permission of Ellen Pollock.

39. Theatre Arts XXXIII, No. 7 (August, 1949), 7. Reprinted in Shaw on Theatre, p. 281. Originally published as “Shaw's Rules for Play Producers,” The Strand CXVII (July, 1949), 19.

40. London,. 1922, pp. 27–8 Bache Matthews account is to be found in his A History of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (London, 1924), p. 108.

41. Shaw to Beatrice Stella Campbell, September 23, 1939, Academic Center Library, University of Texas. Although mentioned by the editor, who quotes its last sentence (p. 332), this note is not included in Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Shaw clearly dated the note erroneously since Mrs. Campbell's reply and his next letter were written in June and August respectively.

42. Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 333.

43. Quoted with the kind permission of Ronald Gow. Most of the letter has been quoted, with several inaccuracies, in Minney, R. J., Recollections of George Bernard Shaw (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1969), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar The British edition of this book bears the title, The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw (London, 1969).

44. The Suspended Drawing Room (New York, n.d.), p. 77.

45. “G. B. S. in Filmland,” Esquire. LXII (December, 1964), 289. See also Donald P. Costello, The Serpent's Eye: Shaw and the Cinema (Notre Dame and London, 1965), pp. 84–5.

46. Patch, p. 127.

47. Shaw added this postscript: “Somebody told me the other day that Love on the Dole has been filmed with Jenny Hill [Deborah Kerr] as the heroine. Is this true? If so, what were you and Ronald thinking of to let it happen. Of course the part is actress-proof up to a point: nobody could fail in it. But what you did beyond that point made all the difference. Has Pascal driven you mad?” Love on the Dole had been adapted to the stage by Ronald Gow. The entire letter quoted with the kind permission of Wendy Hiller.

48. “Bernard Shaw as Producer,” The, Listener, August 16, 1956, p. 230.

49. “Shaw's Rules for Directors,” Foreward, 6; Shaw on Theatre, p. 279.