Read Online Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw - Free Book Online

the most expert and delicate sort of acting—high comedy acting—went quite beyond the resources then at the disposal of Mr. Grein. I had written a part which nobody but Mr. Charles Wyndham could act in a play which was impossible at the Criterion Theatre—a feat comparable to the building of Robinson Crusoe’s first boat. I immediately threw it aside, and, returning to the vein I had worked in “Widowers’ Houses,” wrote a third play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” on a social subject of tremendous force. That force justified itself in spite of the inexperience of the playwright. The play was everything that the Independent Theatre could desire—rather more, if anything, than it bargained for. But at this point I came upon the obstacle that makes dramatic authorship intolerable in England to writers accustomed to the freedom of the Press. I mean, of course, the Censorship.
    In 1737, the greatest dramatist, with the single exception of Shakespear, produced by England between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century—Henry Fielding—devoted his genius to the task of exposing and destroying parliamentary corruption, then at its height. Walpole, unable to govern without corruption, promptly gagged the stage by a censorship which is in full force at the present moment. Fielding, driven out of the trade of Molière and Aristophanes, took to that of Cervantes; and since then the English novel has been one of the glories of literature, whilst the English drama has been its disgrace. The extinguisher which Walpole dropped on Fielding descends on me in the form of the Queen’s Reader of Plays, a gentleman who robs, insults, and suppresses me as irresistibly as if he were the Tsar of Russia and I the meanest of his subjects. The robbery takes the form of making me pay him two guineas for reading every play of mine that exceeds one act in length. I do not want him to read it (at least officially: personally he is welcome): on the contrary, I strenuously resent that impertinence on his part. But I must submit in order to obtain from him an insolent and insufferable document, which I cannot read without boiling of the blood, certifying that in his opinion—his opinion!-my play “does not in its general tendency contain anything immoral or otherwise improper for the stage,” and that the Lord Chamberlain therefore “allows” its performance (confound his impudence!). In spite of this document he still retains his right, as an ordinary citizen, to prosecute me, or instigate some other citizen to prosecute me, for an outrage on public morals if he should change his mind later on. Besides, if he really protects the public against my immorality, why does not the public pay him for the service? The policeman does not look to the thief for his wages, but to the honest man whom he protects against the thief. And yet, if I refuse to pay, this tyrant can practically ruin any manager who produces my play in defiance of him. If, having been paid, he is afraid to license the play: that is, if he is more afraid of the clamor of the opponents of my opinions than of their supporters, then he can suppress it, and impose a mulct of £50 on everybody who takes part in a representation of it, from the gasman to the principal tragedian. And there is no getting rid of him. Since he lives, not at the expense of the taxpayer, but by blackmailing the author, no political party would gain ten votes by abolishing him. Private political influence cannot touch him; for such private influence, moving only at the promptings of individual benevolence to individuals, makes nice little places to job nice little people into instead of doing away with them. Nay, I myself, though I know that the Queen’s Reader of Plays is necessarily an odious and mischievous official, and that I myself, if I were appointed to his post (which I shall probably apply for some day), could no more help being