Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
How He Lied to Her Husband By: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) |
---|
![]()
By George Bernard Shaw
PREFACE Like many other works of mine, this playlet is a piece d'occasion. In
1905 it happened that Mr Arnold Daly, who was then playing the part of
Napoleon in The Man of Destiny in New York, found that whilst the play
was too long to take a secondary place in the evening's performance, it
was too short to suffice by itself. I therefore took advantage of four
days continuous rain during a holiday in the north of Scotland to write
How He Lied To Her Husband for Mr Daly. In his hands, it served its turn
very effectively. I print it here as a sample of what can be done with even the most
hackneyed stage framework by filling it in with an observed touch of
actual humanity instead of with doctrinaire romanticism. Nothing in the
theatre is staler than the situation of husband, wife and lover, or the
fun of knockabout farce. I have taken both, and got an original play
out of them, as anybody else can if only he will look about him for his
material instead of plagiarizing Othello and the thousand plays that
have proceeded on Othello's romantic assumptions and false point of
honor. A further experiment made by Mr Arnold Daly with this play is worth
recording. In 1905 Mr Daly produced Mrs Warren's Profession in New York.
The press of that city instantly raised a cry that such persons as Mrs
Warren are "ordure," and should not be mentioned in the presence
of decent people. This hideous repudiation of humanity and social
conscience so took possession of the New York journalists that the
few among them who kept their feet morally and intellectually could do
nothing to check the epidemic of foul language, gross suggestion,
and raving obscenity of word and thought that broke out. The writers
abandoned all self restraint under the impression that they were
upholding virtue instead of outraging it. They infected each other with
their hysteria until they were for all practical purposes indecently
mad. They finally forced the police to arrest Mr Daly and his company,
and led the magistrate to express his loathing of the duty thus forced
upon him of reading an unmentionable and abominable play. Of course the
convulsion soon exhausted itself. The magistrate, naturally somewhat
impatient when he found that what he had to read was a strenuously
ethical play forming part of a book which had been in circulation
unchallenged for eight years, and had been received without protest by
the whole London and New York press, gave the journalists a piece of his
mind as to their moral taste in plays. By consent, he passed the case
on to a higher court, which declared that the play was not immoral;
acquitted Mr Daly; and made an end of the attempt to use the law to
declare living women to be "ordure," and thus enforce silence as to
the far reaching fact that you cannot cheapen women in the market for
industrial purposes without cheapening them for other purposes as well.
I hope Mrs Warren's Profession will be played everywhere, in season and
out of season, until Mrs Warren has bitten that fact into the public
conscience, and shamed the newspapers which support a tariff to keep
up the price of every American commodity except American manhood and
womanhood. Unfortunately, Mr Daly had already suffered the usual fate of those who
direct public attention to the profits of the sweater or the pleasures
of the voluptuary. He was morally lynched side by side with me. Months
elapsed before the decision of the courts vindicated him; and even then,
since his vindication implied the condemnation of the press, which was
by that time sober again, and ashamed of its orgy, his triumph received
a rather sulky and grudging publicity. In the meantime he had hardly
been able to approach an American city, including even those cities
which had heaped applause on him as the defender of hearth and home when
he produced Candida, without having to face articles discussing whether
mothers could allow their daughters to attend such plays as You Never
Can Tell, written by the infamous author of Mrs Warren's Profession, and
acted by the monster who produced it... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
Comedy |
Literature |
Play |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Bernard Shaw |
Wikipedia – How He Lied to Her Husband |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|