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СКАЧАТЬ April 1895

      My dear Janet

      I have played my last card, and am beaten, as far as I can see, without remedy. I have done what I could; I have scamped none of the work, stinted none of the minutes or sixpences; I have worked the press; I have privately flattered Mansfield and abused you; I have concentrated every force that I could bring to bear to secure you a good show with Candida. Can I do anything more? And how long must I keep my temper with these rotten levers that break in my hands the moment the dead lift comes? It is the distance that has defeated me. If only I were in New York, with one hand on his throat, and the other on the public pulse through the interviewers, I would play him a scene from the life of Wellington that would astonish him. Never has man yet made such a sacrifice for a woman as I am making now in not letting fly at him by this mail. But I have so laid things out to force him for his own credit to keep faith with me, that I cannot be certain that he may not tomorrow realize that he had better do Candida after all. He will get letters of mine that are on their way, and may guess from them that my smile has a Saturday Review set of teeth behind it. He may lose heart over whatever other play he intends to open with. He may receive a visit from an angel in the night warning him that Charrington is on the seas after his scalp. If I fire a shot now that cannot strike him for eight days, it may strike you by upsetting some new arrangement made in the meantime. I am tied hand and foot—not a bad thing for a man in a rage—and can only grind my teeth to you privately. If this were a big misfortune I should not mind: if you had dropped all the existing copies of the play accidentally into the Atlantic, it would have wrinkled my brow less than it would have wrinkled the Atlantic: the infuriating thing is that it is an annoyance, and no misfortune at all. I have my play; I have you for the part; I have a huge extra advertisement; I have not a single false step to regret all through. But this only sets my conscience perfectly free to boil over with the impatience of the capable workman who finds a trumpery job spoiled by the breaking of the tool he is using. Besides, my deepest humanity is revolted by his skulking in his throne room and refusing to see you and treat with you as one artist of the first rank with another. The compromise he has made is simply a payment to you to give him the power of preventing you from appearing in New York this season. —But this is waste of time: let me talk sense.

      By this mail I write to Miss [Elisabeth] Marbury, my agent (Empire Theatre Building, 40th St. and Broadway), instructing her to get the script and parts of Candida, and the script of The Philanderer from Mansfield, if he has not changed his mind by the time my letter arrives. I have further instructed her to give the parts to you, and to send me back the script. You will therefore have the set of parts as well as a prompt copy in your possession, in case of need. But as I still think Candida a valuable chance for you, I will not let you throw away the first performance of it except on a thoroughly serious occasion. C. C. [Charles Charrington] starts tonight for Liverpool to join the Cunarder which sails tomorrow. He insists on going as an emigrant; and as there seems to me to be something in his contention that he will be too seasick to care where or how he travels—oh, here he is; and he is not going after all: your cablegram has stopped him. . . .

      GBS

      17/ Bernard Shaw’s interview with Lady Colin Campbell née Gertrude Elizabeth Blood published by her newspaper Realm “Candida: a Talk with Mr Bernard Shaw”

      5th April 1895

      Now, Mr Shaw, as himself avers, writes plays more by accident than design. An idea occurs to him on a bus; and presently the idea has—quite fortuitously—spread itself into a play. It was about the latest accident—Candida—that we were talking—and about its author.

      ‘I am the most conventional of men,’ sighed Mr Shaw, somewhat regretfully.

      ‘And yet,’ I suggested, ‘there is an impression abroad that any work of yours is likely to be unconventional.’

      ‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ said Mr Shaw, ‘that the conventional play has never been written?’

      ‘I suppose the conventional reply would be that the conventional play is “all over the stage”.’

      ‘Not at all. The play “all over the stage” is the play in which the convention is violated. It is not the convention, but the violation of it, which is the subject of the play. That is what the playwright and the public wallow in. The convention is really only an assumption that what the characters are doing is extremely wrong. It is never explained or argued for a moment why it’s wrong, or what the conventional position really is. The author assumes it, the public assumes it, all for the sake of a bit of tragedy—and there you are. Now, it occurred to me that, as the really conventional play remained to be written, I was just the sort of man to write it.’

      It was a hard saying. I pleaded for more light.

      ‘In Candida,’ explained Mr Shaw, ‘the convention is the subject of the play.’

      ‘What convention?’

      ‘I beg your pardon—the wife-and-mother convention. The strongest and best position a woman can occupy, you know, is that of a wife and a mother.’

      ‘Then, you accept the convention as valid?’

      ‘Of course, there is a truth in that, as in every other convention. Not that every woman is in her right place as a wife and a mother. Some women in that predicament are in a hopelessly wrong position. They are married to the wrong man; they have no genius for motherhood; there are a thousand and one ways in which they may be out of their plane. But my heroine happens to be precisely in the right position. That, you perceive, is an absolutely original and yet a completely conventional situation for a heroine.’

      ‘But do you find it a thrillingly dramatic one?’

      ‘That’s a home question, in more senses than one. And a question that must be answered by the public. For myself, I have found it, as a dramatist, a sufficiently dramatic situation. I have found in it a motive which completely satisfies my dramatic sense.’

      ‘And what of the plot? Does the heroine never get out of this original and conventional situation?’

      ‘If I told you the plot, you would think it the dullest affair you had ever heard. There is a clergyman and his wife—who is Candida, the heroine.’

      ‘Who is the villain of the piece?’

      ‘I never deal in villainy. The nearest thing I have got to it is a minor poet, who falls in love with the heroine.’

      ‘Ah! And then what happens?’

      ‘Some conversations. That’s all.’

      ‘Absolutely nothing more than that?’

      ‘No more than that. But such conversations!’

      ‘Doesn’t the heroine even run away with the minor poet—or—or anything?’

      ‘No—nothing. She stays at home with her husband. Rather a good idea—isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes—conventional in real life, and novel on the stage. Really, I suppose lots of wives stay with their husbands. Only, it’s a point that the modern drama has missed.’

      Thereupon it struck me that I might clear up a matter which has been bothering people a good deal for the last few years. There is no category for Mr Bernard Shaw. We like to be able to stick a СКАЧАТЬ