Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Shakespeare’s Romances since 1958: A Retrospect
- Puzzle and Artifice: The Riddle as Metapoetry in ‘Pericles’
- ‘Pericles’ in a Book-List of 1619 from the English Jesuit Mission and Some of the Play's Special Problems
- George Wilkins and the Young Heir
- Theatrical Virtuosity and Poetic Complexity in ‘Cymbeline’
- Noble Virtue in ‘Cymbeline’
- Directing the Romances
- Shakespeare and the Ideas of his Time
- The Letter of the Law in ‘The Merchant of Venice’
- Shakespeare’s Use of the ‘Timon’ Comedy
- Re-enter the Stage Direction: Shakespeare and Some Contemporaries
- The Staircases of the Frame: New Light on the Structure of the Globe
- Shakespeare in Max Beerbohm’s Theatre Criticism
- A Danish Actress and Her Conception of the Part of Lady Macbeth
- Towards a Poor Shakespeare: The Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford in 1975
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
Shakespeare in Max Beerbohm’s Theatre Criticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Shakespeare’s Romances since 1958: A Retrospect
- Puzzle and Artifice: The Riddle as Metapoetry in ‘Pericles’
- ‘Pericles’ in a Book-List of 1619 from the English Jesuit Mission and Some of the Play's Special Problems
- George Wilkins and the Young Heir
- Theatrical Virtuosity and Poetic Complexity in ‘Cymbeline’
- Noble Virtue in ‘Cymbeline’
- Directing the Romances
- Shakespeare and the Ideas of his Time
- The Letter of the Law in ‘The Merchant of Venice’
- Shakespeare’s Use of the ‘Timon’ Comedy
- Re-enter the Stage Direction: Shakespeare and Some Contemporaries
- The Staircases of the Frame: New Light on the Structure of the Globe
- Shakespeare in Max Beerbohm’s Theatre Criticism
- A Danish Actress and Her Conception of the Part of Lady Macbeth
- Towards a Poor Shakespeare: The Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford in 1975
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
In May 1898 Bernard Shaw gave up his post of theatre critic of The Saturday Review. He was ill. His doctor, he explained, had discovered that ‘for many years [he had] been converting the entire stock of energy extractable from [his] food . . . into pure genius’. He was ‘already almost an angel’, and would complete the process if he wrote any more articles. So, on 21 May, he wrote an essay headed ‘Valedictory’. He cannot justify the fact that he has spent four years on dramatic criticism. He has
sworn an oath to endure no more of it. . . . Still, the gaiety of nations must not be eclipsed. The long string of beautiful ladies who are at present in the square without, awaiting, under the supervision of two gallant policemen, their turn at my bedside, must be reassured when they protest, as they will, that the light of their life will go out if my dramatic articles cease. To each of them I will present the flower left by her predecessor, and assure her that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 133 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1976