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Mr Shaw Replies to His Critics

A written statement, presented as interview, Daily Mail, London, 21 August 1929.

Mr Bernard Shaw laughingly declined to discuss the Press notices of his new play, "The Apple Cart," when I saw him this evening. "Surely you have formed some opinion about it all?" I asked. He replied:

Well, I am very pleased with the nice notices, but what can I say on the subject? It is getting an extremely serious matter nowadays.

In the old days one used to write a play and have it produced and criticised and there was an end of it. But now the Press has been clamouring throughout the day for a statement of what I think about the critics' reviews.

One can only say that the people had better read the criticisms of the play and criticise the critics for themselves.

I am an old dramatic critic so that I know all about it.

Of course I read the criticisms, and if the critics say anything helpful I should be prepared to make use of it, but that does not usually happen.

Whatever they said, I should not rewrite the play. When I had finished writing it I had said exactly what I wanted to say.

Some of the criticisms might have been better done. There are different sorts.

A Walk and a Talk with Mr Shaw

Interview by G. W. Bishop, large portions of which were provided by Shaw in written statements, The Observer, London, 8 September 1929

No play, not even any other one of Mr. Shaw's, has been talked about so much as "The Apple Cart"; it is all so like the epilogue to "Fanny's First Play"! "Shaw—what I've always told you about Shaw." . . . "Let's talk about Shaw"—for the last three weeks has been the favourite occupation of everybody who saw the play at Malvern, and of a good many who didn't.

I enjoyed the play so much that I made a special journey to Birmingham on Monday last to see it again. I travelled up with Cedric Hardwicke (who plays King Magnus), and Charles Carson (the Prime Minister), and on the journey we talked about Shaw; at supper after the performance we met again and, until the early hours, again talked about Shaw. At another table there were two other members of the cast—also, I am certain, talking about Shaw, and when I met Miss Edith Evans, who takes the part of Orinthia, we plunged at once into the subject of the moment and started discussing the controversial second act.

Nobody, of course, talks more illuminatingly, more amusingly, more provocatively or more interestingly about Shaw than G. B. S. himself. And it was Cedric Hardwicke's idea that we should continue the discussion the following day at Malvern, where the author of "The Apple Cart" was staying on for a few days of recuperating from the excitement of watching his own plays for a fortnight. There was something that Hardwicke wanted to ask him; I had a hundred things I wanted to talk to Mr Shaw about.

Shaw is, of course, the kindest, gentlest, and most courteous person living. He finds it difficult to refuse anybody anything— except newspaper men seeking an interview—and even then, if he is without the protection of his secretary. . . .

Perhaps it was because I came clinging to Hardwicke's mudguard, as it were: I like to think, however, that it was for my own sake— sublime vanity!—that he said when we arrived: "I feel stuffy; will you let me take you for a walk while Hardwicke entertains Mrs. Shaw!"

Away we strode. With some difficulty I managed to keep up with his pace; it was with considerably more difficulty that I could keep up with his talk. We happened to pass a cinema poster and I mentioned the "talkies." "Of course the 'talkies' have come to stay," he said; "a producer can spend £50,000 on a talking film, and is often guaranteed most of what he has spent before it is released, and it is bound to take the place of an ordinary stage production, upon which £50 has been spent."

"But surely theatre-goers will still demand the three-dimensional actor?" I suggested.

"Certainly," he replied, "but not the same person. The ordinary actor—as such—is unsuitable for talking film work. It is an entirely different technique. I tested that for myself. When I was shown the first picture I made I said to the producer, 'This is ludicrous; it is all wrong; it isn't me at all.' He replied: 'The camera cannot lie.' To which I retorted: 'The camera can lie and it has.' I then realised that in order to present a talking picture of Shaw I had to master a new method of moving and talking. If one acts naturally the result is simply—fussy.

"Look at the pictures taken of street scenes in the animated gazettes. The people who are walking give the impression of moving their legs quickly and running like this"—here Mr. Shaw illustrated what he meant—"whereas a movie actor has to walk in this way"—a few solemn steps were then "registered" in the middle of Malvern—"and the result on the screen is the ordinary natural walk. The screen magnifies and intensifies, and the technique is an entirely different one from the stage. 'Movie' actresses like Mary Pickford are clever enough not to appear on the stage without the glorious intensification of the camera. She knows that her public would consider that the real Mary Pickford is an insignificant person. She isn't, of course, but having always seen her magnified it would be like looking at her suddenly through the wrong end of the telescope.

is the art of not moving at all! Then, along came the 'talkies,' and in rushed the ordinary 'movie' actor, and he has, on the whole, failed because he knows all about the reproduction of movement, but nothing about the voice. The stage actor, as such, is no good, and we shall have to breed a new race of 'talkie' actors and, what is more important, a race of intelligent producers."

"You will then allow your plays to be made into 'talkies'?"

"I know it is possible to reproduce dialogue, and it is now established that action can be reproduced on the screen. When it is as certain that the actual performers have mastered the technique and that there are some artistic producers who also understand the technique I shall consent."

"Don't you think that authors will have to write specifically for the screen?" I asked him as we finished our round and got back to the hotel.

"Possibly. I may write a 'talkie' myself, but I see no reason, given the conditions I have mentioned, that 'The Apple Cart' should not be reproduced exactly as it is written."

We had been out for nearly half an hour and I have only given the bare bones, a slight impression, of a talk which illuminated the whole subject as far as I was concerned. It gives little idea of the witty phrase, the apt illustration and Mr. Shaw's description of the banalities of the average moving picture.

Inside, Mrs. Shaw was waiting for us with tea and we plunged into the subject of "The Apple Cart" at once. I mentioned the criticisms.

"Critics rely very much on labels," Mr. Shaw said. "I was not shown a proof of the programme and therefore the sub-title which will be printed when the play is seen in London, was omitted. The full title should have read: 'The Apple Cart—A Political Extravaganza in Two Acts and an Interlude.' The word 'extravaganza' would have helped them and they might then have been less worried by the short second act."

"Although it is an 'extravaganza' the play has a serious background?" I said.

"So serious that I intend to tell Mr. MacDonald when he returns from Geneva that he must refuse to take any young man into his Cabinet who hasn't seen 'The Apple Cart' at least six times. It is intended as a salutary lesson, as I feel it is a state of things into which we could drift.

play is the recognition that there is no governing class. By which I mean the real governors are not a class, but are members of all classes. The King sees at once that Boanerges, who was picked out of the gutter by a policeman, is of the governing class. The great revelation that comes to Boanerges is that the King is also a member of the governing class. The 'plain-man' joke between the King and Boanerges has upset one or two people, but as a matter of fact it is a piece of tactful diplomacy on the part of the King. 'I'm a plain man,' boasts Boanerges. 'Not at all,' protests the King—the usual joke, it is asserted—but the King, after a pause, adds, 'you are anything but plain; in fact, to me, you have always been an enigma.' This flatters Boanerges, and puts him at his ease.

"Curiously, too, the Prime Minister has been called a dummy and a fool. But Proteus is really a very elaborate study of an able man. The King represents the classical example of the governing type; Proteus the womanly type—'I use the word woman,' Mr. Shaw added to his wife, 'in the stage sense'. He is hysterical and gets flustered, but he jumps at the true position of things at once, as I show at the end of the play, when he immediately grasps the fact that the King has beaten them. In the first act, too, Proteus and the King, in the two minutes they have alone together, arrive at a complete understanding. More is accomplished in that time than in the half an hour's previous talk."

Shaw said, "is the failure to grasp the significance of the fact that the King wins, not qua King, but qua potential Commoner. The tearing up of the ultimatum is almost a defeat for him. It is certainly a defeat for Lysistrata (the Power Mistress), whose depression the King shares when the shouting is over.

"The critics have also missed the point of Boanerges' refusal to listen to a word against the Democracy which he himself ridiculed as an instrument of popular government. The Strong Man is a democrat because Democracy places power within his reach. As Magnus expressly says, Democracy has destroyed responsible government and gives the power to (as Bunyan put it) 'him that can get it.' 'Yourself, sir, for instance?' says Lysistrata. 'I think I am in the running,' replies the King.' But the great point is that he thinks he is in the running as Able Man, not as monarch. Only once in the whole play does Magnus assume royal authority, and that is in the interlude when he cries, 'Orinthia, I command you.' And then both Orinthia and the audience laugh him to scorn.

"No serious student of how monarchy and democracy actually work will demur to my handling of them," Mr. Shaw added.

"The protests that have actually been made sound as if George Odger had risen from his grave. But you have probably never heard of George Odger*—"

• George Odger was born in 1820 and died in 1877. He was one of

the early trade-unionists who exercised remarkable influence on the labour movement. He became a member of the National Reform League and helped to organise a popular welcome to Garibaldi in 1862, and the great meeting in St. James's Hall in support of the Northern States of America against slavery. He made five unsuccessful attempts to get into Parliament as an independent labour candidate. His funeral was the occasion of a great demonstration by the London working men, who regarded him as their leader. [Note by G. W. Bishop]

A. Composers are permitted a slow second movement in their symphony; why shouldn't I be allowed one in my composition?" Mr. Shaw protested. Or, if you prefer it, the second act is a piece of relief, comic relief, if you like. What has the grave-diggers' scene to do with the character of Hamlet? But Shakespeare understood what I understand—if you put humour into a play it must be cheap humour!

The second act has, of course, a great dramatic significance, as great a significance as the porter's scene in 'Macbeth.' It completes the portrait of the King who in the middle of the crisis is seen, not merely as a statesman but as a human being with a domestic life.

[Here Mr. Hardwicke suggested that the King held the Cabinet in the third act with some of Orinthia's powder still on his uniform.]

"Symbolically, yes," Mr. Shaw said, "nevertheless, Hardwicke, I hope that you will always brush your coat before the third act. The King knows that in married life the important thing is the recognition of the other's limitations. There are some subjects he cannot talk about to Jemima, his wife, and, on the other hand, the beautiful Orinthia certainly has HER limitations. It is an important scene, and not there merely to amuse. I can only conclude that the critics who did not understand it are happily married to wives who combine in themselves Orinthia and Jemima. The average man is not so fortunate. There are hundreds of nice middle-class families who do not understand why they squabble. The scene between the King and Orinthia will serve as a dose of castor oil. Shakespeare suggested the same idea when Beatrice says, in reply to Don Pedro's proposal, 'No, my lord, unless I might have another for workingdays: your grace is too costly to wear every day.' Jemima, intellectually, is good for every-day wear, and Magnus knows this; Orinthia is the splendid Sunday relaxation. Married people will get on better after they have seen the second act of 'The Apple Cart.'"

suddenly remembered that in an hour or two he would be acting the King (instead of talking about him) on the stage of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

After he had waved us farewell it occurred to me that the author of "The Apple Cart" did not know that he was being "interviewed." When he sees this totally inadequate account of the talk in print he may blame Hardwicke for taking me over to Malvern. Mr. Shaw will not be too severe, I feel, because he admires the actor's performance as King Magnus tremendously.

Bernard Shaw's Denial

Statement to the press, The Star, London, 30 September 1929

The report of a conversation I had with a prominent Polish journalist which has been sent by Reuter and published in several papers, makes it necessary for me to offer one or two elucidations.

I seem to have conveyed to my distinguished foreign visitor that the Prime Minister discussed 'The Apple Cart' with me after the performance, and that I intended to base King Magnus on the personality of Marshal Pilsudski, but refrained lest it should be said that the Marshal had paid me to do so.

I also seem to have conveyed that the play has not been received here with the enthusiasm it evoked in Poland.

This is not precisely what I meant to say. I have not spoken to the Prime Minister since he was present on the first night, when we exchanged a few words before the rise of the curtain.

I cannot claim the privilege of personal acquaintance with Marshal Pilsudski. I never dreamt of using him, or any other living person, as a model, though every living ruler in the world will find a melancholy resemblance between his predicament and that of King Magnus.

I cannot avoid the suggestion that I have been paid by him, because it has already been made, and will probably be repeated, mutatis mutandis in every country where the play is produced.

Finally, as to the alleged more enthusiastic reception of 'The Apple Cart' in Poland than in London, all I can say is that the reception in London has reached its box-office limit, and that Polish enthusiasm, however frenzied, can go no further from the author's point of view.

Naturally I am glad to learn that King Magnus's Crown fits the heads of all the rulers and that his subjects in all lands vie with one another in appreciation of my picture of their political situation. That is all I need say at present.

Mr Shaw and Democracy

Interview by G. W. Bishop, based on written statement by Shaw, The Observer, London, 23 March 1930

Question. The Apple Cart is laid in the future. There seems to be confusion about the approximate date. Is it—as was suggested before the play was produced—at a time when all people now living are dead?

Answer. Yes.

Q. Do you seriously think that democracy may drift into the state of things shown in the play?

A. It has already drifted into it.

Q. Is not the tendency in this country towards a bigger percentage of voting and a more enlightened use of the franchise?

A. The tendency to disuse the franchise is so strong that in some countries it is a punishable offence not to vote. People vote in times of great social strain for which the government is blamed. The newly enfranchised (the women, for instance) vote whilst the novelty lasts. But in a condition of general satisfaction, or of general disgust at the failure of political parties to make good their promises, people will not vote. In the old vestries, for which anybody could vote, a little ring of men used to meet and elect one another without the interference of a single general elector. Shareholders' meetings are very much the same. Do YOU ever vote?

The Ideal Ruler

Q. You do not believe, I assume, that a benevolent monarchy is a better form of government than a democracy? Do you think the veto of a hereditary ruler is a valuable safeguard in any self-governing country? Is the ideal government when the two work smoothly together?

A. Benevolent monarchies and democracies are idealisations which have never been realised. Even government itself is a very imperfectly realised ideal. Benevolence is not a qualification for rulership at all: capable rulers have often been infernal scoundrels, and benevolent monarchs hopelessly incapable rulers.

The veto of a hereditary ruler has no value as a safeguard. The veto of a capable ruler, whether he be hereditary monarch, dictator, president, prime minister, or chief constable of a county, has the value of his capacity.

The desideratum is a method of government in which the governed choose their rulers and can change them, but in which only capable persons are eligible for choice or change. Hereditary monarchy obviously cannot supply this. The notion that adult suffrage can supply it has been reduced to absurdity by experience. It is worse than hereditary monarchy, which may accidentally and occasionally produce a capable ruler, whereas adult suffrage, through the general dislike of capable rulers, and the popularity of agreeable and extravagant ne'er-do-weels (compare William the Conqueror with King Stephen), positively prevents capable rulers from entering politics, and exalts Titus Oateses to commanding positions."

The English-Speaking Peoples

Q. Would the United States be better off with a hereditary monarchy?

A. What sort of monarchy? Constitutional or Autocratic. The question in a practical form would be, 'Are the United States better off than the British Commonwealth?' The useless but only possible answer is, 'In some respects, yes; in others, no.' Evidently the difference is not great enough to produce a demand in either country for the form of government used in the other.

Q. Is America gradually annexing Great Britain? Can you conceive that a day will come when there will be an Empire of the English— or American—speaking peoples?

A. America is certainly Americanising Great Britain more than Europe is Europeanising it. In fact, America is Americanising Europe, whilst remaining itself blatantly American. Asia and Africa are not in the running. Russia is America's only rival as a basic civilising influence.

Whether the United States will ever include all the States and Dominions in which English is the language of the people, is still a matter for speculation. It is not impossible. But, so far, it cannot be said that the bond of Western European civilisation is weaker than the bond of language. And do not forget that the Marxian dream of a world-wide proletarian revolution, though it is not now practical politics, may yet upset all our conceptions of international relations. The Reformation did not seem practicable in the Middle Ages; but it happened for all that.

German Objections

Q. You told me when we met a short time ago that the most violent objections to 'The Apple Cart' came from the Social Democrats in Germany. Would you care to reply to those objections?

A. I don't know what they are. The idea seems to be that as a democrat I should have made the King the villain of the piece. Even if I were a democrat in the sense of believing that good government is secured by giving Jack and Jill a vote, which I am not and have never pretended to be, the idea would still seem childish to me. My business is not to satirise the vices of an autocracy which does not exist, but those of the pseudo-democracy which does exist.

Q. Were the members of the Cabinet dressed in fancy dress in the English production to meet the requirements of the Lord Chamberlain?

A. No. The Lord Chamberlain made no requirements. The play was licensed without demur at the first asking, quite unconditionally. The fancy dresses, in so far as they are not purely decorative, were prescribed by the author to remove the play as far as possible from the Cabinet and Court of to-day.

Q. When I saw the play for the third time recently, I thought that the curtain should have come down when the King is left alone on the stage? I felt that the entrance of the Queen was an anti- climax.

A. Max Reinhardt, in Berlin, thought so, too, and did what you in your masculine idiocy suggest. Ask any woman what she thinks of your brains and Max's.

No New Play At Pesent

Q. Is it true that The Apple Cart is the first of a trilogy and that a new play by you may be seen at the Malvern festival this year?

A. No, there is no question of a trilogy. I will write another play for Malvern if I can; but as I am under contract to complete certain literary work involving prolonged labour this spring, it seems almost impossible that I can be in time for the Festival with a new play this year. It will have to be a very hasty one, in any case. I have not had time to give a thought to it yet.

Q. Has the play a special message for American audiences?

A. It has a special message for all audiences—even American ones.

The Apple-Cart Again

Replies to a questionnaire by John Rintoul Hunt, Courier, London, Autumn 1943

Q. In The Apple-Cart, Mr. Shaw, you dramatised in prophetic fashion the prospect of the British Empire and the United States of America re-uniting at no very distant date. That was in 1928-9, some fifteen years ago. Now, under the pressure of world catastrophes, and in spite of the handicap of a common history and a common language (more or less), the two countries are closer in spirit as well as in material matters than they have been for more than a century and a half. What do you imagine is the likeliest next move?

A. The imagined next move never takes place: so I do not waste my time imagining it. The situation in The Apple-Cart made a good last act for a comedy; but if I had wanted one for the first act of a tragedy I should have made England renew the old alliance with Japan made by the late Lord Lansdowne, followed by the immediate secession of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Canada from the British Commonwealth and their federation with the United States in a defensive combination against Japan. Nobody who has not been to the Pacific has the faintest notion of what Japan means there.

Q. Of course, as you realised at the time, some pretty constitutional problems would be set if ever the subject came up for debate by statesmen and lawyers, those wise but unpractical dreamers. Your "King Magnus" was put in the very devil of embarrassment when Vanhattan, the U.S. Ambassador, came bounding in with his demand, or ultimatum, that the U.S.A. be received back in the Empire and the Declaration of Independence and the Acts relating thereto be cancelled. Have you any idea how the lawyers would get round such difficulties as the American Constitution and the Statute of Westminster?

A. Not at all. There would be no trouble about that if both sides meant business. If they did not, then of course the lawyers and diplomatists would have no difficulty in proving that the thing is utterly impossible, or would take fifty years to work out. But if the two Governments were in earnest, they would just do it, and leave the rearrangements to follow the event, as they would have to, difficulties or no difficulties. The Statute of Westminster and the American Constitution are only scraps of paper; but facts are facts.

On the other hand, Americans—or quite a number of them—might prefer that the United Kingdom were admitted to the Union as the 49th State? And the self-governing Dominions as the 50th, 51st, 52nd and so on. With the Crown Colonies and India given a similar status to that of the Philippines.

The old nomenclatures need not be preserved. Why should they, seeing that they will only make trouble?

Q. Where would you fit Ireland into the new scheme of things, Mr Shaw? In The Apple-Cart, the Queen was so shocked at the whole proposal that she could only envisage the Court taking refuge in Dublin. That, I venture, was not suggested in all seriousness, was it? Would Belfast take Dublin's place? Or perhaps as a compromise the ancient glories of Tara or Galway be revived?

A. Eire will have to fit itself into any change as best it can. Its military forces are too small to be considered by the big powers who will dominate the situation. It owes its present neutrality to the Partition, which gives England a foothold in the island, that would otherwise have had to be taken by force by either England or America. Ireland must live by her wits, which means that she must have alliances; but as she cannot ally herself with Japan or Germany her choice is restricted practically to England and America. And England is much more easily humbugged or bullied or coaxed than America. As to Dublin, which is within half an hour of the most enchanting mountain and seaside scenery, it is in these days of air transit one of the pleasantest seats of Government in the world. There is nothing wrong with it except its slums with their shocking vital statistics, and the perpetual derisive gabble of its inhabitants.

Q. There is one aspect, referred to in The Apple-Cart, which we have not touched on here—the attitude of the British Dominions. On a Gallup Poll taken in Canada this year slightly more than 20 per cent. of those canvassed for their views opted for inclusion in the United States. Opinion in Australia seems to favour closer links with the U.S. and to feel that Britain is too distant to afford permanent protection against the Japs. South Africa, after Smuts, may experience a reaction and desire a change of allegiance. What do you think, Mr. Shaw?

A. These are talking points. The Dominions will have to take what they can get, which will be by no means all they want.

Q. Finally, what of Moscow? This is a little aside from the main discussion. My excuse for troubling you is not merely that Moscow cannot be left out of any discussion anyway but also that in your play Moscow through your character, Boanerges, came prominently into it. Our statesmen, willy-nilly, have blundered into cooperation with Soviet Russia as well as perilously close to Anglo-American reunion—ought we not to see they don't blunder out of it again?

A. When the war is over Moscow will be cock of the walk, but at the cost of internal damage that will keep her too busy at home to make trouble for herself abroad, provided always that her Western frontiers are accepted as they stood before the German attack. Stalin has been explicit and emphatic about that from the beginning. Moscow will be strong enough to impose that condition. The question of whether Hong Kong is to be British or Chinese may prove more troublesome.

(Boanerges in the play was not a Russian; he was a vivid caricature of the late John Burns.)

Q. Thank you, Mr. Shaw. The world has been transformed in the past 50 years, chiefly through your plays, and perhaps in another 50 years we shall all be good sensible Shavians. Isn't it true that history is made from the 50-year plans of poets and philosophers rather than the 5-year plans of sanitary engineers and production experts?

A. Until the poets know all about sanitary engineering and the sanitary engineers all about poetry and philosophy neither of them will be of any use as planners. Our present way of giving votes to ignorance and calling it democracy will upset any plan. Wisdom, knowledge, and energy can save civilisation; electioneering can only wreck it.