George Bernard Shaw

:: SHAW :: By
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX
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COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS.
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Introduction to the First Edition
MOST people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they
do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and
I do not agree with him.
G. K. C.
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The Problem of a Preface
A PECULIAR difficulty arrests the writer of this rough study at the
very start. Many people know Mr. Bernard Shaw chiefly as a man who
would write a very long preface even to a very short play. And there is
truth in the idea; he is indeed a very prefatory sort of person. He always
gives the explanation before the incident; but so, for the matter of that,
does the Gospel of St. John. For Bernard Shaw, as for the mystics,
Christian and heathen (and Shaw is best described as a heathen mystic),
the philosophy of facts is anterior to the facts themselves. In due time
we come to the fact, the incarnation; but in the beginning was the
Word.

This produces upon many minds an impression of needless preparation
and a kind of bustling prolixity. But the truth is that the very rapidity of
such a man's mind makes him seem slow in getting to the point. It is
positively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded. A quick
eye for ideas may actually make a writer slow in reaching his goal, just
as a quick eye for landscapes might make a motorist slow in reaching
Brighton. An original man has to pause at every allusion or simile to
re-explain historical parallels, to re-shape distorted words. Any
ordinary leader-writer (let us say) might write swiftly and smoothly
something like this: "The element of religion in the Puritan rebellion, if
hostile to art, yet saved the movement from some of the evils in which
the French Revolution involved morality." Now a man like Mr. Shaw,
who has his own views on everything, would be forced to make the
sentence long and broken instead of swift and smooth. He would say
something like: "The element of religion, as I explain religion, in the
Puritan rebellion (which you wholly misunderstand) if hostile to
art--that is what I mean by art-- may have saved it from some evils
(remember my definition of evil) in which the French Revolution--of
which I have my own opinion-- involved morality, which I will define
for you in a minute." That is the worst of being a really universal
sceptic and philosopher; it is such slow work. The very forest of the
man's thoughts chokes up his thoroughfare. A man must be orthodox
upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own
heresy.
Now the same difficulty which affects the work of Bernard Shaw
affects also any book about him. There is an unavoidable artistic
necessity to put the preface before the play; that is, there is a necessity
to say something of what Bernard Shaw's experience means before one
even says what it was. We have to mention what he did when we have
already explained why he did it. Viewed superficially, his life consists
of fairly conventional incidents, and might easily fall under fairly
conventional phrases. It might be the life of any Dublin clerk or
Manchester Socialist or London author. If I touch on the man's life
before his work, it will seem trivial; yet taken with his work it is most
important. In short, one could scarcely know what Shaw's doings meant
unless one knew what he meant by them. This difficulty in mere order

and construction has puzzled me very much. I am going to overcome it,
clumsily perhaps, but in the way which affects me as most sincere.
Before I write even a slight suggestion of his relation to the stage, I am
going to write of three soils or atmospheres out of which that relation
grew. In other words, before I write of Shaw I will write of the three
great influences upon Shaw. They were all three there before he was
born, yet each one of them is himself and a very vivid portrait of him
from one point of view. I have called these three traditions: "The
Irishman," "The Puritan," and "The Progressive." I do not see how this
prefatory theorising is to be avoided; for if I simply said, for instance,
that Bernard Shaw was an Irishman, the impression produced on the
reader might be remote from my thought and, what is more important,
from Shaw's. People might think, for instance, that I meant that he was
"irresponsible." That would throw out the