george bernard shaw, man and superman

MAN AND SUPERMANA COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY

George Bernard Shaw

This public-domain (U.S.) text was producedby Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA.The Project Gutenberg edition (designatedmands10) was subsequently converted toLATEX using GutenMark software and re-edited by Ron Burkey. The text of theAppendix, The Revolutionists Handbook,which was omitted from the Project Guten-berg edition, has been restored from alter-nate online sources (www.bartleby.com). Re-port problems to [email protected]. RevisionB2 differs from B1 in that - was every-where replaced with .

Revision: B2Date: 02/02/2008

Contents

EPISTLE DEDICATORY TOARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY 1

ACT I 45

ACT II 107

ACT III 139

ACT IV 235

THE REVOLUTIONISTS HANDBOOKAND POCKET COMPANION 279PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279I. ON GOOD BREEDING . . . . . . . . . . . . 281II. PROPERTY AND MARRIAGE . . . . . . . 283III. THE PERFECTIONIST EXPERIMENT

AT ONEIDA CREEK . . . . . . . . . . . . 292IV. MANS OBJECTION TO HIS

OWN IMPROVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . 295V. THE POLITICAL NEED FOR

THE SUPERMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297VI. PRUDERY EXPLAINED . . . . . . . . . . 300VII. PROGRESS AN ILLUSION . . . . . . . . 303VIII. THE CONCEIT OF CIVILIZATION . . . 311IX. THE VERDICT OF HISTORY . . . . . . . 321X. THE METHOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS . . . . . . 330

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EPISTLEDEDICATORY TOARTHURBINGHAMWALKLEY

MY DEAR WALKLEY:You once asked me why I did not write a

Don Juan play. The levity with which you as-sumed this frightful responsibility has proba-bly by this time enabled you to forget it; butthe day of reckoning has arrived: here is yourplay! I say your play, because qui facit per al-ium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, be-long to me: its morals, its manners, its phi-losophy, its influence on the young, are foryou to justify. You were of mature age whenyou made the suggestion; and you knew yourman. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twinpioneers of the New Journalism of that time,we two, cradled in the same new sheets, madean epoch in the criticism of the theatre andthe opera house by making it a pretext for a

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propaganda of our own views of life. So youcannot plead ignorance of the character of theforce you set in motion. You meant me to pa-ter l bourgeois; and if he protests, I herebyrefer him to you as the accountable party.

I warn you that if you attempt to repudi-ate your responsibility, I shall suspect you offinding the play too decorous for your taste.The fifteen years have made me older andgraver. In you I can detect no such becom-ing change. Your levities and audacities arelike the loves and comforts prayed for by Des-demona: they increase, even as your days dogrow. No mere pioneering journal dares med-dle with them now: the stately Times itselfis alone sufficiently above suspicion to act asyour chaperone; and even the Times mustsometimes thank its stars that new plays arenot produced every day, since after each suchevent its gravity is compromised, its platitudeturned to epigram, its portentousness to wit,its propriety to elegance, and even its decoruminto naughtiness by criticisms which the tra-ditions of the paper do not allow you to sign atthe end, but which you take care to sign withthe most extravagant flourishes between thelines. I am not sure that this is not a portent ofRevolution. In eighteenth century France theend was at hand when men bought the Ency-clopedia and found Diderot there. When I buythe Times and find you there, my propheticear catches a rattle of twentieth century tum-brils.

However, that is not my present anxiety.The question is, will you not be disappointed

EPISTLE DEDICATORY 3

with a Don Juan play in which not one ofthat heros mille e tre adventures is broughtupon the stage? To propitiate you, let me ex-plain myself. You will retort that I never doanything else: it is your favorite jibe at methat what I call drama is nothing but expla-nation. But you must not expect me to adoptyour inexplicable, fantastic, petulant, fastidi-ous ways: you must take me as I am, a reason-able, patient, consistent, apologetic, laboriousperson, with the temperament of a schoolmas-ter and the pursuits of a vestryman. No doubtthat literary knack of mine which happens toamuse the British public distracts attentionfrom my character; but the character is therenone the less, solid as bricks. I have a con-science; and conscience is always anxiouslyexplanatory. You, on the contrary, feel that aman who discusses his conscience is much likea woman who discusses her modesty. The onlymoral force you condescend to parade is theforce of your wit: the only demand you makein public is the demand of your artistic tem-perament for symmetry, elegance, style, grace,refinement, and the cleanliness which comesnext to godliness if not before it. But my con-science is the genuine pulpit article: it annoysme to see people comfortable when they oughtto be uncomfortable; and I insist on makingthem think in order to bring them to convic-tion of sin. If you dont like my preaching youmust lump it. I really cannot help it.

In the preface to my Plays for Puritans Iexplained the predicament of our contempo-rary English drama, forced to deal almost ex-

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clusively with cases of sexual attraction, andyet forbidden to exhibit the incidents of thatattraction or even to discuss its nature. Yoursuggestion that I should write a Don Juanplay was virtually a challenge to me to treatthis subject myself dramatically. The chal-lenge was difficult enough to be worth accept-ing, because, when you come to think of it,though we have plenty of dramas with heroesand heroines who are in love and must accord-ingly marry or perish at the end of the play,or about people whose relations with one an-other have been complicated by the marriagelaws, not to mention the looser sort of playswhich trade on the tradition that illicit loveaffairs are at once vicious and delightful, wehave no modern English plays in which thenatural attraction of the sexes for one anotheris made the mainspring of the action. Thatis why we insist on beauty in our performers,differing herein from the countries our friendWilliam Archer holds up as examples of seri-ousness to our childish theatres. There theJuliets and Isoldes, the Romeos and Tristans,might be our mothers and fathers. Not so theEnglish actress. The heroine she imperson-ates is not allowed to discuss the elementalrelations of men and women: all her roman-tic twaddle about novelet-made love, all herpurely legal dilemmas as to whether she wasmarried or betrayed, quite miss our heartsand worry our minds. To console ourselveswe must just look at her. We do so; and herbeauty feeds our starving emotions. Some-times we grumble ungallantly at the lady be-


cause she does not act as well as she looks.But in a drama which, with all its preoccu-pation with sex, is really void of sexual inter-est, good looks are more desired than histri-onic skill.

Let me press this point on you, since youare too clever to raise the fools cry of paradoxwhenever I take hold of a stick by the rightinstead of the wrong end. Why are our occa-sional attempts to deal with the sex problemon the stage so repulsive and dreary that eventhose who are most determined that sex ques-tions shall be held open and their discussionkept free, cannot pretend to relish these joy-less attempts at social sanitation? Is it notbecause at bottom they are utterly sexless?What is the usual formula for such plays?A woman has, on some past occasion, beenbrought into conflict with the law which reg-ulates the relations of the sexes. A man, byfalling in love with her, or marrying her, isbrought into conflict with the social conven-tion which discountenances the woman. Nowthe conflicts of individuals with law and con-vention can be dramatized like all other hu-man conflicts; but they are purely judicial;and the fact that we are much more curiousabout the suppressed relations between theman and the woman than about the relationsbetween both and our courts of law and pri-vate juries of matrons, produces that sensa-tion of evasion, of dissatisfaction, of funda-mental irrelevance, of shallowness, of uselessdisagreeableness, of total failure to edify andpartial failure to interest, which is as familiar

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to you in the theatres as it was to me whenI, too, frequented those uncomfortable build-ings, and found our popular playwrights inthe mind to (as they thought) emulate Ibsen.

I take it that when you asked me for aDon Juan play you did not want that sort ofthing. Nobody does: the successes such playssometimes obtain are due to the incidentalconventional melodrama with which the ex-perienced popular author instinctively saveshimself from failure. But what did you want?Owing to your unfortunate habityou now, Ihope, feel its inconvenienceof not explain-ing yourself, I have had to discover this formyself. First, then, I have had to ask my-self, what is a Don Juan? Vulgarly, a liber-tine. But your dislike of vulgarity is pushedto the length of a defect (universality of char-acter is impossible without a share of vulgar-ity); and even if you could acquire the taste,you would find yourself overfed from ordinarysources without troubling me. So I took it thatyou demanded a Don Juan in the philosophicsense.

Philosophically, Don Juan is a man who,though gifted enough to be exceptionally ca-pable of distinguishing between good and evil,follows his own instincts without regard tothe common statute, or canon law; and there-fore, whilst gaining the ardent sympathy ofour rebellious instincts (which are flatteredby the brilliancies with which Don Juan as-sociates them) finds himself in mortal conflictwith existing institutions, and defends him-self by fraud and farce as unscrupulously as a


farmer defends his crops by the same meansagainst vermin. The prototypic Don Juan, in-vented early in the XVI century by a Spanishmonk, was presented, according to the ideasof that time, as the enemy of God, the ap-proach of whose vengeance is felt throughoutthe drama, growing in menace from minute tominute. No anxiety is caused on Don Juansaccount by any minor antagonist: he easilyeludes the police, temporal and spiritual; andwhen an indignant father seeks private re-dress with the sword, Don Juan kills himwithout an effort. Not until the slain fatherreturns from heaven as the agent of God, inthe form of his own statue, does he prevailagainst his slayer and cast him into hell. Themoral is a monkish one: repent and reformnow; for to-morrow it may be too late. Thisis really the only point on which Don Juan issceptical; for he is a devout believer in an ulti-mate hell, and risks damnation only because,as he is young, it seems so far off that repen-tance can be postponed until he has amusedhimself to his hearts content.

But the lesson intended by an author ishardly ever the lesson the world chooses tolearn from his book. What attracts and im-presses us in El Burlador de Sevilla is notthe immediate urgency of repentance, but theheroism of daring to be the enemy of God.From Prometheus to my own Devils Disciple,such enemies have always been popular. DonJuan became such a pet that the world couldnot bear his damnation. It reconciled him sen-timentally to God in a second version, and

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clamored for his canonization for a whole cen-tury, thus treating him as English journalismhas treated that comic foe of the gods, Punch.Molieres Don Juan casts back to the origi-nal in point of impenitence; but in piety hefalls off greatly. True, he also proposes to re-pent; but in what terms? Oui, ma foi! il fautsamender. Encore vingt o trente ans de cettevie-ci, et puis nous songerons a nous. AfterMoliere comes the artist-enchanter, the mas-ter of masters, Mozart, who reveals the herosspirit in magical harmonies, elfin tones, andelate darting rhythms as of summer lightningmade audible. Here you have freedom in loveand in morality mocking exquisitely at slav-ery to them, and interesting you, attractingyou, tempting you, inexplicably forcing youto range the hero with his enemy the statueon a transcendant plane, leaving the prudishdaughter and her priggish lover on a crockeryshelf below to live piously ever after.

After these completed works Byrons frag-ment does not count for much philosophically.Our vagabond libertines are no more inter-esting from that point of view than the sailorwho has a wife in every port, and Byrons herois, after all, only a vagabond libertine. Andhe is dumb: he does not discuss himself witha Sganarelle-Leporello or with the fathers orbrothers of his mistresses: he does not even,like Casanova, tell his own story. In fact heis not a true Don Juan at all; for he is nomore an enemy of God than any romantic andadventurous young sower of wild oats. Hadyou and I been in his place at his age, who


knows whether we might not have done ashe did, unless indeed your fastidiousness hadsaved you from the empress Catherine. By-ron was as little of a philosopher as Peter theGreat: both were instances of that rare anduseful, but unedifying variation, an energeticgenius born without the prejudices or super-stitions of his contemporaries. The resultantunscrupulous freedom of thought made By-ron a greater poet than Wordsworth just asit made Peter a greater king than George III;but as it was, after all, only a negative qualifi-cation, it did not prevent Peter from being anappalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon,nor did it enable Byron to become a religiousforce like Shelley. Let us, then, leave By-rons Don Juan out of account. Mozarts is thelast of the true Don Juans; for by the timehe was of age, his cousin Faust had, in thehands of Goethe, taken his place and carriedboth his warfare and his reconciliation withthe gods far beyond mere lovemaking into pol-itics, high art, schemes for reclaiming newcontinents from the ocean, and recognition ofan eternal womanly principle in the universe.Goethes Faust and Mozarts Don Juan werethe last words of the XVIII century on thesubject; and by the time the polite critics ofthe XIX century, ignoring William Blake assuperficially as the XVIII had ignored Hog-arth or the XVII Bunyan, had got past theDickens-Macaulay Dumas-Guizot stage andthe Stendhal-Meredith-Turgenieff stage, andwere confronted with philosophic fiction bysuch pens as Ibsens and Tolstoys, Don Juan

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had changed his sex and become Dona Juana,breaking out of the Dolls House and assertingherself as an individual instead of a mere itemin a moral pageant.

Now it is all very well for you at the begin-ning of the XX century to ask me for a DonJuan play; but you will see from the forego-ing survey that Don Juan is a full century outof date for you and for me; and if there aremillions of less literate people who are still inthe eighteenth century, have they not Moliereand Mozart, upon whose art no human handcan improve? You would laugh at me if atthis time of day I dealt in duels and ghostsand womanly women. As to mere libertin-ism, you would be the first to remind me thatthe Festin de Pierre of Moliere is not a play foramorists, and that one bar of the voluptuoussentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would ap-pear as a licentious stain on the score of DonGiovanni. Even the more abstract parts ofthe Don Juan play are dilapidated past use:for instance, Don Juans supernatural antag-onist hurled those who refuse to repent intolakes of burning brimstone, there to be tor-mented by devils with horns and tails. Ofthat antagonist, and of that conception of re-pentance, how much is left that could be usedin a play by me dedicated to you? On theother hand, those forces of middle class pub-lic opinion which hardly existed for a Span-ish nobleman in the days of the first DonJuan, are now triumphant everywhere. Civ-ilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no no-bleman dares now shock his greengrocer. The


women, marchesane, principesse, cameriere,cittadine and all, are become equally dan-gerous: the sex is aggressive, powerful: whenwomen are wronged they do not group them-selves pathetically to sing Protegga il giustocielo: they grasp formidable legal and socialweapons, and retaliate. Political parties arewrecked and public careers undone by a singleindiscretion. A man had better have all thestatues in London to supper with him, uglyas they are, than be brought to the bar of theNonconformist Conscience by Donna Elvira.Excommunication has become almost as seri-ous a business as it was in the X century.

As a result, Man is no longer, like DonJuan, victor in the duel of sex. Whether he hasever really been may be doubted: at all eventsthe enormous superiority of Womans naturalposition in this matter is telling with greaterand greater force. As to pulling the Non-conformist Conscience by the beard as DonJuan plucked the beard of the Commandantsstatue in the convent of San Francisco, that isout of the question nowadays: prudence andgood manners alike forbid it to a hero withany mind. Besides, it is Don Juans own beardthat is in danger of plucking. Far from re-lapsing into hypocrisy, as Sganarelle feared,he has unexpectedly discovered a moral in hisimmorality. The growing recognition of hisnew point of view is heaping responsibilityon him. His former jests he has had to takeas seriously as I have had to take some ofthe jests of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. His scepticism,once his least tolerated quality, has now tri-

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umphed so completely that he can no longerassert himself by witty negations, and must,to save himself from cipherdom, find an affir-mative position. His thousand and three af-fairs of gallantry, after becoming, at most, twoimmature intrigues leading to sordid and pro-longed complications and humiliations, havebeen discarded altogether as unworthy of hisphilosophic dignity and compromising to hisnewly acknowledged position as the founderof a school. Instead of pretending to read Ovidhe does actually read Schopenhaur and Niet-zsche, studies Westermarck, and is concernedfor the future of the race instead of for thefreedom of his own instincts. Thus his profli-gacy and his dare-devil airs have gone the wayof his sword and mandoline into the rag shopof anachronisms and superstitions. In fact,he is now more Hamlet than Don Juan; forthough the lines put into the actors mouth toindicate to the pit that Hamlet is a philoso-pher are for the most part mere harmoniousplatitude which, with a little debasement ofthe word-music, would be properer to Peck-sniff, yet if you separate the real hero, inar-ticulate and unintelligible to himself exceptin flashes of inspiration, from the performerwho has to talk at any cost through five acts;and if you also do what you must always doin Shakespears tragedies: that is, dissect outthe absurd sensational incidents and physicalviolences of the borrowed story from the gen-uine Shakespearian tissue, you will get a truePromethean foe of the gods, whose instinctiveattitude towards women much resembles that


to which Don Juan is now driven. From thispoint of view Hamlet was a developed DonJuan whom Shakespear palmed off as a rep-utable man just as he palmed poor Macbethoff as a murderer. To-day the palming off is nolonger necessary (at least on your plane andmine) because Don Juanism is no longer mis-understood as mere Casanovism. Don Juanhimself is almost ascetic in his desire to avoidthat misunderstanding; and so my attempt tobring him up to date by launching him as amodern Englishman into a modern Englishenvironment has produced a figure superfi-cially quite unlike the hero of Mozart.

And yet I have not the heart to disap-point you wholly of another glimpse of theMozartian dissoluto punito and his antagonistthe statue. I feel sure you would like to knowmore of that statue to draw him out whenhe is off duty, so to speak. To gratify you,I have resorted to the trick of the strollingtheatrical manager who advertizes the pan-tomime of Sinbad the Sailor with a stock ofsecond-hand picture posters designed for AliBaba. He simply thrusts a few oil jars into thevalley of diamonds, and so fulfils the promiseheld out by the hoardings to the public eye.I have adapted this simple device to our oc-casion by thrusting into my perfectly mod-ern three-act play a totally extraneous act inwhich my hero, enchanted by the air of theSierra, has a dream in which his Mozartianancestor appears and philosophizes at greatlength in a Shavio-Socratic dialogue with thelady, the statue, and the devil.

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But this pleasantry is not the essence ofthe play. Over this essence I have no con-trol. You propound a certain social substance,sexual attraction to wit, for dramatic distilla-tion; and I distil it for you. I do not adulter-ate the product with aphrodisiacs nor diluteit with romance and water; for I am merelyexecuting your commission, not producing apopular play for the market. You must there-fore (unless, like most wise men, you read theplay first and the preface afterwards) prepareyourself to face a trumpery story of modernLondon life, a life in which, as you know, theordinary mans main business is to get meansto keep up the position and habits of a gentle-man, and the ordinary womans business is toget married. In 9,999 cases out of 10,000, youcan count on their doing nothing, whether no-ble or base, that conflicts with these ends; andthat assurance is what you rely on as theirreligion, their morality, their principles, theirpatriotism, their reputation, their honor andso forth.

On the whole, this is a sensible and satis-factory foundation for society. Money meansnourishment and marriage means children;and that men should put nourishment firstand women children first is, broadly speak-ing, the law of Nature and not the dictate ofpersonal ambition. The secret of the prosaicmans success, such as it is, is the simplicitywith which he pursues these ends: the secretof the artistic mans failure, such as that is,is the versatility with which he strays in alldirections after secondary ideals. The artist is


either a poet or a scallawag: as poet, he cannotsee, as the prosaic man does, that chivalry isat bottom only romantic suicide: as scallawag,he cannot see that it does not pay to spungeand beg and lie and brag and neglect hisperson. Therefore do not misunderstand myplain statement of the fundamental constitu-tion of London society as an Irishmans re-proach to your nation. From the day I firstset foot on this foreign soil I knew the value ofthe prosaic qualities of which Irishmen teachEnglishmen to be ashamed as well as I knewthe vanity of the poetic qualities of which En-glishmen teach Irishmen to be proud. For theIrishman instinctively disparages the qualitywhich makes the Englishman dangerous tohim; and the Englishman instinctively flat-ters the fault that makes the Irishman harm-less and amusing to him. What is wrong withthe prosaic Englishman is what is wrong withthe prosaic men of all countries: stupidity. Thevitality which places nourishment and chil-dren first, heaven and hell a somewhat re-mote second, and the health of society as anorganic whole nowhere, may muddle success-fully through the comparatively tribal stagesof gregariousness; but in nineteenth centurynations and twentieth century empires thedetermination of every man to be rich at allcosts, and of every woman to be married at allcosts, must, without a highly scientific socialorganization, produce a ruinous developmentof poverty, celibacy, prostitution, infant mor-tality, adult degeneracy, and everything thatwise men most dread. In short, there is no fu-

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ture for men, however brimming with crudevitality, who are neither intelligent nor polit-ically educated enough to be Socialists. So donot misunderstand me in the other directioneither: if I appreciate the vital qualities of theEnglishman as I appreciate the vital qualitiesof the bee, I do not guarantee the Englishmanagainst being, like the bee (or the Canaanite)smoked out and unloaded of his honey by be-ings inferior to himself in simple acquisitive-ness, combativeness, and fecundity, but supe-rior to him in imagination and cunning.

The Don Juan play, however, is to deal withsexual attraction, and not with nutrition, andto deal with it in a society in which the seriousbusiness of sex is left by men to women, as theserious business of nutrition is left by womento men. That the men, to protect themselvesagainst a too aggressive prosecution of thewomens business, have set up a feeble ro-mantic convention that the initiative in sexbusiness must always come from the man, istrue; but the pretence is so shallow that evenin the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreal-ity, it imposes only on the inexperienced. InShakespears plays the woman always takesthe initiative. In his problem plays and hispopular plays alike the love interest is theinterest of seeing the woman hunt the mandown. She may do it by blandishment, likeRosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; butin every case the relation between the womanand the man is the same: she is the pursuerand contriver, he the pursued and disposed of.When she is baffled, like Ophelia, she goes


mad and commits suicide; and the man goesstraight from her funeral to a fencing match.No doubt Nature, with very young creatures,may save the woman the trouble of scheming:Prospero knows that he has only to throw Fer-dinand and Miranda together and they willmate like a pair of doves; and there is no needfor Perdita to capture Florizel as the lady doc-tor in Alls Well That Ends Well (an early Ib-senite heroine) captures Bertram. But themature cases all illustrate the Shakespearianlaw. The one apparent exception, Petruchio, isnot a real one: he is most carefully character-ized as a purely commercial matrimonial ad-venturer. Once he is assured that Katharinehas money, he undertakes to marry her beforehe has seen her. In real life we find not onlyPetruchios, but Mantalinis and Dobbins whopursue women with appeals to their pity orjealousy or vanity, or cling to them in a roman-tically infatuated way. Such effeminates donot count in the world scheme: even Bunsbydropping like a fascinated bird into the jawsof Mrs. MacStinger is by comparison a truetragic object of pity and terror. I find in myown plays that Woman, projecting herself dra-matically by my hands (a process over whichI assure you I have no more real control thanI have over my wife), behaves just as Womandid in the plays of Shakespear.

And so your Don Juan has come to birthas a stage projection of the tragi-comic lovechase of the man by the woman; and my DonJuan is the quarry instead of the huntsman.Yet he is a true Don Juan, with a sense of re-

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ality that disables convention, defying to thelast the fate which finally overtakes him. Thewomans need of him to enable her to carryon Natures most urgent work, does not pre-vail against him until his resistance gathersher energy to a climax at which she dares tothrow away her customary exploitations of theconventional affectionate and dutiful poses,and claim him by natural right for a purposethat far transcends their mortal personal pur-poses.

Among the friends to whom I have readthis play in manuscript are some of our ownsex who are shocked at the unscrupulous-ness, meaning the total disregard of mas-culine fastidiousness, with which the womanpursues her purpose. It does not occur tothem that if women were as fastidious as men,morally or physically, there would be an endof the race. Is there anything meaner then tothrow necessary work upon other people andthen disparage it as unworthy and indelicate.We laugh at the haughty American nation be-cause it makes the negro clean its boots andthen proves the moral and physical inferiorityof the negro by the fact that he is a shoeblack;but we ourselves throw the whole drudgery ofcreation on one sex, and then imply that nofemale of any womanliness or delicacy wouldinitiate any effort in that direction. Thereare no limits to male hypocrisy in this mat-ter. No doubt there are moments when manssexual immunities are made acutely humili-ating to him. When the terrible moment ofbirth arrives, its supreme importance and its


superhuman effort and peril, in which the fa-ther has no part, dwarf him into the mean-est insignificance: he slinks out of the way ofthe humblest petticoat, happy if he be poorenough to be pushed out of the house to out-face his ignominy by drunken rejoicings. Butwhen the crisis is over he takes his revenge,swaggering as the breadwinner, and speakingof Womans sphere with condescension, evenwith chivalry, as if the kitchen and the nurs-ery were less important than the office in thecity. When his swagger is exhausted he driv-els into erotic poetry or sentimental uxorious-ness; and the Tennysonian King Arthur pos-ing as Guinevere becomes Don Quixote grov-elling before Dulcinea. You must admit thathere Nature beats Comedy out of the field: thewildest hominist or feminist farce is insipidafter the most commonplace slice of life. Thepretence that women do not take the initia-tive is part of the farce. Why, the whole worldis strewn with snares, traps, gins and pit-falls for the capture of men by women. Givewomen the vote, and in five years there will bea crushing tax on bachelors. Men, on the otherhand, attach penalties to marriage, deprivingwomen of property, of the franchise, of thefree use of their limbs, of that ancient sym-bol of immortality, the right to make oneselfat home in the house of God by taking off thehat, of everything that he can force Woman todispense with without compelling himself todispense with her. All in vain. Woman mustmarry because the race must perish withouther travail: if the risk of death and the cer-

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tainty of pain, danger and unutterable dis-comforts cannot deter her, slavery and swad-dled ankles will not. And yet we assume thatthe force that carries women through all theseperils and hardships, stops abashed before theprimnesses of our behavior for young ladies.It is assumed that the woman must wait, mo-tionless, until she is wooed. Nay, she oftendoes wait motionless. That is how the spiderwaits for the fly. But the spider spins her web.And if the fly, like my hero, shows a strengththat promises to extricate him, how swiftlydoes she abandon her pretence of passiveness,and openly fling coil after coil about him untilhe is secured for ever!

If the really impressive books and otherart-works of the world were produced by or-dinary men, they would express more fear ofwomens pursuit than love of their illusorybeauty. But ordinary men cannot produce re-ally impressive art-works. Those who can aremen of genius: that is, men selected by Na-ture to carry on the work of building up an in-tellectual consciousness of her own instinctivepurpose. Accordingly, we observe in the manof genius all the unscrupulousness and all theself-sacrifice (the two things are the same)of Woman. He will risk the stake and thecross; starve, when necessary, in a garret allhis life; study women and live on their workand care as Darwin studied worms and livedupon sheep; work his nerves into rags withoutpayment, a sublime altruist in his disregard ofhimself, an atrocious egotist in his disregardof others. Here Woman meets a purpose as


impersonal, as irresistible as her own; and theclash is sometimes tragic. When it is compli-cated by the genius being a woman, then thegame is one for a king of critics: your GeorgeSand becomes a mother to gain experience forthe novelist and to develop her, and gobblesup men of genius, Chopins, Mussets and thelike, as mere hors doeuvres.

I state the extreme case, of course; butwhat is true of the great man who incarnatesthe philosophic consciousness of Life and thewoman who incarnates its fecundity, is truein some degree of all geniuses and all women.Hence it is that the worlds books get writ-ten, its pictures painted, its statues modelled,its symphonies composed, by people who arefree of the otherwise universal dominion ofthe tyranny of sex. Which leads us to theconclusion, astonishing to the vulgar, that art,instead of being before all things the expres-sion of the normal sexual situation, is reallythe only department in which sex is a su-perseded and secondary power, with its con-sciousness so confused and its purpose so per-verted, that its ideas are mere fantasy to com-mon men. Whether the artist becomes poetor philosopher, moralist or founder of a re-ligion, his sexual doctrine is nothing but abarren special pleading for pleasure, excite-ment, and knowledge when he is young, andfor contemplative tranquillity when he is oldand satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amor-ism and Puritanism are equally unreal in thegreat Philistine world. The world shown us inbooks, whether the books be confessed epics

22 MAN AND SUPERMAN

or professed gospels, or in codes, or in po-litical orations, or in philosophic systems, isnot the main world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal people whohave the specific artistic talent and tempera-ment. A serious matter this for you and me,because the man whose consciousness doesnot correspond to that of the majority is amadman; and the old habit of worshippingmadmen is giving way to the new habit oflocking them up. And since what we call ed-ucation and culture is for the most part noth-ing but the substitution of reading for experi-ence, of literature for life, of the obsolete ficti-tious for the contemporary real, education, asyou no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, bysupplantation, every mind that is not strongenough to see through the imposture and touse the great Masters of Arts as what theyreally are and no more: that is, patentees ofhighly questionable methods of thinking, andmanufacturers of highly questionable, and forthe majority but half valid representations oflife. The schoolboy who uses his Homer tothrow at his fellows head makes perhaps thesafest and most rational use of him; and I ob-serve with reassurance that you occasionallydo the same, in your prime, with your Aristo-tle.

Fortunately for us, whose minds have beenso overwhelmingly sophisticated by litera-ture, what produces all these treatises and po-ems and scriptures of one sort or another isthe struggle of Life to become divinely con-scious of itself instead of blindly stumbling


hither and thither in the line of least re-sistance. Hence there is a driving towardstruth in all books on matters where the writer,though exceptionally gifted is normally consti-tuted, and has no private axe to grind. Coper-nicus had no motive for misleading his fellow-men as to the place of the sun in the solar sys-tem: he looked for it as honestly as a shep-herd seeks his path in a mist. But Coperni-cus would not have written love stories sci-entifically. When it comes to sex relations,the man of genius does not share the com-mon mans danger of capture, nor the womanof genius the common womans overwhelm-ing specialization. And that is why our scrip-tures and other art works, when they dealwith love, turn from honest attempts at sci-ence in physics to romantic nonsense, eroticecstasy, or the stern asceticism of satiety (theroad of excess leads to the palace of wisdomsaid William Blake; for you never know whatis enough unless you know what is more thanenough).

There is a political aspect of this sex ques-tion which is too big for my comedy, and toomomentous to be passed over without cul-pable frivolity. It is impossible to demon-strate that the initiative in sex transactionsremains withWoman, and has been confirmedto her, so far, more and more by the suppres-sion of rapine and discouragement of impor-tunity, without being driven to very seriousreflections on the fact that this initiative ispolitically the most important of all the ini-tiatives, because our political experiment of

24 MAN AND SUPERMAN

democracy, the last refuge of cheap misgov-ernment, will ruin us if our citizens are illbred.

When we two were born, this country wasstill dominated by a selected class bred by po-litical marriages. The commercial class hadnot then completed the first twenty-five yearsof its new share of political power; and itwas itself selected by money qualification, andbred, if not by political marriage, at least bya pretty rigorous class marriage. Aristocracyand plutocracy still furnish the figureheadsof politics; but they are now dependent onthe votes of the promiscuously bred masses.And this, if you please, at the very momentwhen the political problem, having suddenlyceased to mean a very limited and occasionalinterference, mostly by way of jobbing pub-lic appointments, in the mismanagement ofa tight but parochial little island, with oc-casional meaningless prosecution of dynasticwars, has become the industrial reorganiza-tion of Britain, the construction of a practi-cally international Commonwealth, and thepartition of the whole of Africa and perhapsthe whole of Asia by the civilized Powers. Canyou believe that the people whose conceptionsof society and conduct, whose power of atten-tion and scope of interest, are measured bythe British theatre as you know it to-day, caneither handle this colossal task themselves,or understand and support the sort of mindand character that is (at least comparatively)capable of handling it? For remember: whatour voters are in the pit and gallery they are


also in the polling booth. We are all nowunder what Burke called the hoofs of theswinish multitude. Burkes language gavegreat offence because the implied exceptionsto its universal application made it a class in-sult; and it certainly was not for the pot tocall the kettle black. The aristocracy he de-fended, in spite of the political marriages bywhich it tried to secure breeding for itself,had its mind undertrained by silly schoolmas-ters and governesses, its character corruptedby gratuitous luxury, its self-respect adulter-ated to complete spuriousness by flattery andflunkeyism. It is no better to-day and neverwill be any better: our very peasants havesomething morally hardier in them that cul-minates occasionally in a Bunyan, a Burns, ora Carlyle. But observe, this aristocracy, whichwas overpowered from 1832 to 1885 by themiddle class, has come back to power by thevotes of the swinish multitude. Tom Painehas triumphed over Edmund Burke; and theswine are now courted electors. How manyof their own class have these electors sent toparliament? Hardly a dozen out of 670, andthese only under the persuasion of conspicu-ous personal qualifications and popular elo-quence. The multitude thus pronounces judg-ment on its own units: it admits itself unfitto govern, and will vote only for a man mor-phologically and generically transfigured bypalatial residence and equipage, by transcen-dent tailoring, by the glamor of aristocratickinship. Well, we two know these transfig-ured persons, these college passmen, these

26 MAN AND SUPERMAN

well groomed monocular Algys and Bobbies,these cricketers to whom age brings golf in-stead of wisdom, these plutocratic products ofthe nail and sarspan business as he got hismoney by. Do you know whether to laughor cry at the notion that they, poor devils!will drive a team of continents as they drivea four-in-hand; turn a jostling anarchy of ca-sual trade and speculation into an orderedproductivity; and federate our colonies intoa world-Power of the first magnitude? Givethese people the most perfect political consti-tution and the soundest political program thatbenevolent omniscience can devise for them,and they will interpret it into mere fashion-able folly or canting charity as infallibly as asavage converts the philosophical theology ofa Scotch missionary into crude African idola-try.

I do not know whether you have any illu-sions left on the subject of education, progress,and so forth. I have none. Any pamphleteercan show the way to better things; but whenthere is no will there is no way. My nursewas fond of remarking that you cannot makea silk purse out of a sows ear, and the more Isee of the efforts of our churches and universi-ties and literary sages to raise the mass aboveits own level, the more convinced I am thatmy nurse was right. Progress can do nothingbut make the most of us all as we are, andthat most would clearly not be enough even ifthose who are already raised out of the low-est abysses would allow the others a chance.The bubble of Heredity has been pricked: the


certainty that acquirements are negligible aselements in practical heredity has demolishedthe hopes of the educationists as well as theterrors of the degeneracy mongers; and weknow now that there is no hereditary govern-ing class any more than a hereditary hooli-ganism. We must either breed political ca-pacity or be ruined by Democracy, which wasforced on us by the failure of the older alter-natives. Yet if Despotism failed only for wantof a capable benevolent despot, what chancehas Democracy, which requires a whole pop-ulation of capable voters: that is, of politi-cal critics who, if they cannot govern in per-son for lack of spare energy or specific talentfor administration, can at least recognize andappreciate capacity and benevolence in oth-ers, and so govern through capably benevolentrepresentatives? Where are such voters to befound to-day? Nowhere. Promiscuous breed-ing has produced a weakness of character thatis too timid to face the full stringency of a thor-oughly competitive struggle for existence andtoo lazy and petty to organize the common-wealth co-operatively. Being cowards, we de-feat natural selection under cover of philan-thropy: being sluggards, we neglect artificialselection under cover of delicacy and morality.

Yet we must get an electorate of capablecritics or collapse as Rome and Egypt col-lapsed. At this moment the Roman decadentphase of panem et circenses is being inaugu-rated under our eyes. Our newspapers andmelodramas are blustering about our impe-rial destiny; but our eyes and hearts turn

28 MAN AND SUPERMAN

eagerly to the American millionaire. As hishand goes down to his pocket, our fingersgo up to the brims of our hats by instinct.Our ideal prosperity is not the prosperity ofthe industrial north, but the prosperity ofthe Isle of Wight, of Folkestone and Rams-gate, of Nice and Monte Carlo. That is theonly prosperity you see on the stage, wherethe workers are all footmen, parlourmaids,comic lodging-letters and fashionable profes-sional men, whilst the heroes and heroinesare miraculously provided with unlimited div-idends, and eat gratuitously, like the knightsin Don Quixotes books of chivalry.

The city papers prate of the competition ofBombay with Manchester and the like. Thereal competition is the competition of RegentStreet with the Rue de Rivoli, of Brightonand the south coast with the Riviera, forthe spending money of the American Trusts.What is all this growing love of pageantry,this effusive loyalty, this officious rising anduncovering at a wave from a flag or a blastfrom a brass band? Imperialism: Not a bit ofit. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity rousedby the prevailing smell of money. When Mr.Carnegie rattled his millions in his pockets allEngland became one rapacious cringe. Only,when Rhodes (who had probably been read-ing my Socialism for Millionaires) left wordthat no idler was to inherit his estate, thebent backs straightened mistrustfully for amoment. Could it be that the Diamond Kingwas no gentleman after all? However, it waseasy to ignore a rich mans solecism. The un-


gentlemanly clause was not mentioned again;and the backs soon bowed themselves backinto their natural shape.

But I hear you asking me in alarmwhetherI have actually put all this tub thumping intoa Don Juan comedy. I have not. I haveonly made my Don Juan a political pamphle-teer, and given you his pamphlet in full byway of appendix. You will find it at theend of the book. I am sorry to say that itis a common practice with romancers to an-nounce their hero as a man of extraordinarygenius, and to leave his works entirely to thereaders imagination; so that at the end of thebook you whisper to yourself ruefully that butfor the authors solemn preliminary assuranceyou should hardly have given the gentlemancredit for ordinary good sense. You cannot ac-cuse me of this pitiable barrenness, this fee-ble evasion. I not only tell you that my herowrote a revolutionists handbook: I give youthe handbook at full length for your edifica-tion if you care to read it. And in that hand-book you will find the politics of the sex ques-tion as I conceive Don Juans descendant tounderstand them. Not that I disclaim thefullest responsibility for his opinions and forthose of all my characters, pleasant and un-pleasant. They are all right from their sev-eral points of view; and their points of vieware, for the dramatic moment, mine also. Thismay puzzle the people who believe that thereis such a thing as an absolutely right pointof view, usually their own. It may seem tothem that nobody who doubts this can be in

30 MAN AND SUPERMAN

a state of grace. However that may be, it iscertainly true that nobody who agrees withthem can possibly be a dramatist, or indeedanything else that turns upon a knowledge ofmankind. Hence it has been pointed out thatShakespear had no conscience. Neither haveI, in that sense.

You may, however, remind me that this di-gression of mine into politics was precededby a very convincing demonstration that theartist never catches the point of view of thecommon man on the question of sex, becausehe is not in the same predicament. I firstprove that anything I write on the relation ofthe sexes is sure to be misleading; and then Iproceed to write a Don Juan play. Well, if youinsist on asking me why I behave in this ab-surd way, I can only reply that you asked meto, and that in any case my treatment of thesubject may be valid for the artist, amusingto the amateur, and at least intelligible andtherefore possibly suggestive to the Philistine.Every man who records his illusions is provid-ing data for the genuinely scientific psychol-ogy which the world still waits for. I plankdown my view of the existing relations of mento women in the most highly civilized societyfor what it is worth. It is a view like any otherview and no more, neither true nor false, but,I hope, a way of looking at the subject whichthrows into the familiar order of cause and ef-fect a sufficient body of fact and experience tobe interesting to you, if not to the play-goingpublic of London. I have certainly shown lit-tle consideration for that public in this enter-


prise; but I know that it has the friendliestdisposition towards you and me as far as ithas any consciousness of our existence, andquite understands that what I write for youmust pass at a considerable height over itssimple romantic head. It will take my booksas read and my genius for granted, trustingme to put forth work of such quality as shallbear out its verdict. So we may disport our-selves on our own plane to the top of ourbent; and if any gentleman points out thatneither this epistle dedicatory nor the dreamof Don Juan in the third act of the ensuingcomedy is suitable for immediate productionat a popular theatre we need not contradicthim. Napoleon provided Talma with a pit ofkings, with what effect on Talmas acting isnot recorded. As for me, what I have alwayswanted is a pit of philosophers; and this is aplay for such a pit.

I should make formal acknowledgment tothe authors whom I have pillaged in the fol-lowing pages if I could recollect them all. Thetheft of the brigand-poetaster from Sir ArthurConan Doyle is deliberate; and the metamor-phosis of Leporello into Enry Straker, motorengineer and New Man, is an intentional dra-matic sketch for the contemporary embryo ofMr. H. G. Wellss anticipation of the efficientengineering class which will, he hopes, finallysweep the jabberers out of the way of civiliza-tion. Mr. Barrio has also, whilst I am correct-ing my proofs, delighted London with a ser-vant who knows more than his masters. Theconception of Mendoza Limited I trace back to

32 MAN AND SUPERMAN

a certain West Indian colonial secretary, who,at a period when he and I and Mr. SidneyWebb were sowing our political wild oats asa sort of Fabian Three Musketeers, withoutany prevision of the surprising respectabilityof the crop that followed, recommended Webb,the encyclopedic and inexhaustible, to formhimself into a company for the benefit of theshareholders. Octavius I take over unalteredfrom Mozart; and I hereby authorize any ac-tor who impersonates him, to sing Dalla suapace (if he can) at any convenient momentduring the representation. Ann was sug-gested to me by the fifteenth century Dutchmorality called Everyman, which Mr. WilliamPoel has lately resuscitated so triumphantly.I trust he will work that vein further, and rec-ognize that Elizabethan Renascence fustian isno more bearable after medieval poesy thanScribe after Ibsen. As I sat watching Every-man at the Charterhouse, I said to myselfWhy not Everywoman? Ann was the result:every woman is not Ann; but Ann is Every-woman.

That the author of Everyman was no mereartist, but an artist-philosopher, and that theartist-philosophers are the only sort of artistsI take quite seriously, will be no news to you.Even Plato and Boswell, as the dramatistswho invented Socrates and Dr Johnson, im-press me more deeply than the romantic play-wrights. Ever since, as a boy, I first breathedthe air of the transcendental regions at a per-formance of Mozarts Zauberflte, I have beenproof against the garish splendors and alco-


holic excitements of the ordinary stage combi-nations of Tappertitian romance with the po-lice intelligence. Bunyan, Blake, Hogarth andTurner (these four apart and above all the En-glish Classics), Goethe, Shelley, Schopenhaur,Wagner, Ibsen, Morris, Tolstoy, and Nietzscheare among the writers whose peculiar sense ofthe world I recognize as more or less akin tomy own. Mark the word peculiar. I read Dick-ens and Shakespear without shame or stint;but their pregnant observations and demon-strations of life are not co-ordinated into anyphilosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dick-enss sentimental assumptions are violentlycontradicted by his observations; and Shake-spears pessimism is only his wounded hu-manity. Both have the specific genius of thefictionist and the common sympathies of hu-man feeling and thought in pre-eminent de-gree. They are often saner and shrewder thanthe philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was of-ten saner and shrewder than Don Quixote.They clear away vast masses of oppressivegravity by their sense of the ridiculous, whichis at bottom a combination of sound moraljudgment with lighthearted good humor. Butthey are concerned with the diversities of theworld instead of with its unities: they are soirreligious that they exploit popular religionfor professional purposes without delicacy orscruple (for example, Sydney Carton and theghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, andcannot balance their exposures of Angelo andDogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr. TiteBarnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or

34 MAN AND SUPERMAN

a worthy leader: they have no constructiveideas: they regard those who have them asdangerous fanatics: in all their fictions thereis no leading thought or inspiration for whichany man could conceivably risk the spoilingof his hat in a shower, much less his life.Both are alike forced to borrowmotives for themore strenuous actions of their personagesfrom the common stockpot of melodramaticplots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulatedby the prejudices of a policeman and Macbethby the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens,without the excuse of having to manufacturemotives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superflu-ously punt his crew down the stream of hismonthly parts by mechanical devices which Ileave you to describe, my own memory beingquite baffled by the simplest question as toMonks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parent-age of Smike, or the relations between theDorrit and Clennam families so inopportunelydiscovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. Thetruth is, the world was to Shakespear a greatstage of fools on which he was utterly bewil-dered. He could see no sort of sense in liv-ing at all; and Dickens saved himself from thedespair of the dream in The Chimes by tak-ing the world for granted and busying him-self with its details. Neither of them coulddo anything with a serious positive character:they could place a human figure before youwith perfect verisimilitude; but when the mo-ment came for making it live and move, theyfound, unless it made them laugh, that theyhad a puppet on their hands, and had to in-


vent some artificial external stimulus to makeit work. This is what is the matter with Ham-let all through: he has no will except in hisbursts of temper. Foolish Bardolaters make avirtue of this after their fashion: they declarethat the play is the tragedy of irresolution;but all Shakespears projections of the deep-est humanity he knew have the same defect:their characters and manners are lifelike; buttheir actions are forced on them from without,and the external force is grotesquely inappro-priate except when it is quite conventional, asin the case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vividthan any of these serious reflective charac-ters, because he is self-acting: his motives arehis own appetites and instincts and humors.Richard III, too, is delightful as the whimsicalcomedian who stops a funeral to make love tothe corpses widow; but when, in the next act,he is replaced by a stage villain who smoth-ers babies and offs with peoples heads, weare revolted at the imposture and repudiatethe changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus,Leontes are admirable descriptions of instinc-tive temperaments: indeed the play of Cori-olanus is the greatest of Shakespears come-dies; but description is not philosophy; andcomedy neither compromises the author norreveals him. He must be judged by those char-acters into which he puts what he knows ofhimself, his Hamlets and Macbeths and Learsand Prosperos. If these characters are ago-nizing in a void about factitious melodramaticmurders and revenges and the like, whilst thecomic characters walk with their feet on solid

36 MAN AND SUPERMAN

ground, vivid and amusing, you know thatthe author has much to show and nothing toteach. The comparison between Falstaff andProspero is like the comparison between Mi-cawber and David Copperfield. At the endof the book you know Micawber, whereas youonly know what has happened to David, andare not interested enough in him to wonderwhat his politics or religion might be if any-thing so stupendous as a religious or politi-cal idea, or a general idea of any sort, wereto occur to him. He is tolerable as a child;but he never becomes a man, and might beleft out of his own biography altogether butfor his usefulness as a stage confidant, a Hor-atio or Charles his friend what they call onthe stage a feeder.

Now you cannot say this of the works ofthe artist-philosophers. You cannot say it, forinstance, of The Pilgrims Progress. Put yourShakespearian hero and coward, Henry V andPistol or Parolles, beside Mr. Valiant and Mr.Fearing, and you have a sudden revelation ofthe abyss that lies between the fashionableauthor who could see nothing in the world butpersonal aims and the tragedy of their disap-pointment or the comedy of their incongruity,and the field preacher who achieved virtueand courage by identifying himself with thepurpose of the world as he understood it. Thecontrast is enormous: Bunyans coward stirsyour blood more than Shakespears hero, whoactually leaves you cold and secretly hostile.You suddenly see that Shakespear, with allhis flashes and divinations, never understood


virtue and courage, never conceived how anyman who was not a fool could, like Bunyanshero, look back from the brink of the riverof death over the strife and labor of his pil-grimage, and say yet do I not repent me; or,with the panache of a millionaire, bequeathmy sword to him that shall succeed me inmy pilgrimage, and my courage and skill tohim that can get it. This is the true joy inlife, the being used for a purpose recognizedby yourself as a mighty one; the being thor-oughly worn out before you are thrown on thescrap heap; the being a force of Nature insteadof a feverish selfish little clod of ailments andgrievances complaining that the world willnot devote itself to making you happy. Andalso the only real tragedy in life is the beingused by personally minded men for purposeswhich you recognize to be base. All the restis at worst mere misfortune or mortality: thisalone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and therevolt against it is the only force that offersa mans work to the poor artist, whom ourpersonally minded rich people would so will-ingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty mon-ger, sentimentalizer and the like.

It may seem a long step from Bunyan toNietzsche; but the difference between theirconclusions is purely formal. Bunyans per-ception that righteousness is filthy rags, hisscorn for Mr. Legality in the village of Moral-ity, his defiance of the Church as the sup-planter of religion, his insistence on courageas the virtue of virtues, his estimate of thecareer of the conventionally respectable and

38 MAN AND SUPERMAN

sensible Worldly Wiseman as no better atbottom than the life and death of Mr. Bad-man: all this, expressed by Bunyan in theterms of a tinkers theology, is what Nietzschehas expressed in terms of post-Darwinian,post-Schopenhaurian philosophy; Wagner interms of polytheistic mythology; and Ibsenin terms of mid-XIX century Parisian dra-maturgy. Nothing is new in these matters ex-cept their novelties: for instance, it is a nov-elty to call Justification by Faith Wille, andJustification by Works Vorstellung. The soleuse of the novelty is that you and I buy andread Schopenhaurs treatise on Will and Rep-resentation when we should not dream of buy-ing a set of sermons on Faith versus Works.At bottom the controversy is the same, andthe dramatic results are the same. Bunyanmakes no attempt to present his pilgrims asmore sensible or better conducted than Mr.Worldly Wiseman. Mr. W. W.s worst enemies,as Mr. Embezzler, Mr. Never-go-to-Church-on-Sunday, Mr. Bad Form, Mr. Murderer, Mr.Burglar, Mr. Co-respondent, Mr. Blackmailer,Mr. Cad, Mr. Drunkard, Mr. Labor Agitatorand so forth, can read the Pilgrims Progresswithout finding a word said against them;whereas the respectable people who snubthem and put them in prison, such as Mr.W. W. himself and his young friend Civility;Formalist and Hypocrisy; Wildhead, Incon-siderate, and Pragmatick (who were clearlyyoung university men of good family and highfeeding); that brisk lad Ignorance, Talkative,By-Ends of Fairspeech and his mother-in-law


Lady Feigning, and other reputable gentle-men and citizens, catch it very severely. EvenLittle Faith, though he gets to heaven atlast, is given to understand that it servedhim right to be mobbed by the brothers FaintHeart, Mistrust, and Guilt, all three recog-nized members of respectable society and ver-itable pillars of the law. The whole alle-gory is a consistent attack on morality andrespectability, without a word that one canremember against vice and crime. Exactlywhat is complained of in Nietzsche and Ib-sen, is it not? And also exactly what wouldbe complained of in all the literature which isgreat enough and old enough to have attainedcanonical rank, officially or unofficially, wereit not that books are admitted to the canonby a compact which confesses their greatnessin consideration of abrogating their mean-ing; so that the reverend rector can agreewith the prophet Micah as to his inspiredstyle without being committed to any com-plicity in Micahs furiously Radical opinions.Why, even I, as I force myself; pen in hand,into recognition and civility, find all the forceof my onslaught destroyed by a simple pol-icy of non-resistance. In vain do I redoublethe violence of the language in which I pro-claim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theisticcredulity of Voltaire, the amoristic supersti-tion of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsay-ing and idolatrous rites which Huxley calledScience and mistook for an advance on thePentateuch, no less than at the welter of ec-clesiastical and professional humbug which

40 MAN AND SUPERMAN

saves the face of the stupid system of violenceand robbery which we call Law and Indus-try. Even atheists reproach me with infidelityand anarchists with nihilism because I can-not endure their moral tirades. And yet, in-stead of exclaiming Send this inconceivableSatanist to the stake, the respectable news-papers pith me by announcing another bookby this brilliant and thoughtful writer. Andthe ordinary citizen, knowing that an authorwho is well spoken of by a respectable news-paper must be all right, reads me, as he readsMicah, with undisturbed edification from hisown point of view. It is narrated that in theeighteen-seventies an old lady, a very devoutMethodist, moved from Colchester to a housein the neighborhood of the City Road, in Lon-don, where, mistaking the Hall of Science fora chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Brad-laugh for many years, entranced by his elo-quence, without questioning his orthodoxy ormoulting a feather of her faith. I fear I shallbe defrauded of my just martyrdom in thesame way.

However, I am digressing, as a man with agrievance always does. And after all, the mainthing in determining the artistic quality of abook is not the opinions it propagates, but thefact that the writer has opinions. The old ladyfrom Colchester was right to sun her simplesoul in the energetic radiance of Bradlaughsgenuine beliefs and disbeliefs rather than inthe chill of such mere painting of light andheat as elocution and convention can achieve.My contempt for belles lettres, and for ama-


teurs who become the heroes of the fanciersof literary virtuosity, is not founded on any il-lusion of mind as to the permanence of thoseforms of thought (call them opinions) by whichI strive to communicate my bent to my fellows.To younger men they are already outmoded;for though they have no more lost their logicthan an eighteenth century pastel has lost itsdrawing or its color, yet, like the pastel, theygrow indefinably shabby, and will grow shab-bier until they cease to count at all, whenmy books will either perish, or, if the worldis still poor enough to want them, will haveto stand, with Bunyans, by quite amorphousqualities of temper and energy. With this con-viction I cannot be a bellettrist. No doubt Imust recognize, as even the Ancient Marinerdid, that I must tell my story entertaininglyif I am to hold the wedding guest spellboundin spite of the siren sounds of the loud bas-soon. But for arts sake alone I would notface the toil of writing a single sentence. Iknow that there are men who, having noth-ing to say and nothing to write, are neverthe-less so in love with oratory and with literaturethat they keep desperately repeating as muchas they can understand of what others havesaid or written aforetime. I know that theleisurely tricks which their want of convictionleaves them free to play with the diluted andmisapprehended message supply them with apleasant parlor game which they call style.I can pity their dotage and even sympathizewith their fancy. But a true original style isnever achieved for its own sake: a man may

42 MAN AND SUPERMAN

pay from a shilling to a guinea, according tohis means, to see, hear, or read another mansact of genius; but he will not pay with hiswhole life and soul to become a mere virtuosoin literature, exhibiting an accomplishmentwhich will not even make money for him, likefiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion isthe Alpha and Omega of style. He who hasnothing to assert has no style and can havenone: he who has something to assert will goas far in power of style as its momentousnessand his conviction will carry him. Disprovehis assertion after it is made, yet its style re-mains. Darwin has no more destroyed thestyle of Job nor of Handel than Martin Lutherdestroyed the style of Giotto. All the asser-tions get disproved sooner or later; and so wefind the world full of a magnificent debris ofartistic fossils, with the matter-of-fact credi-bility gone clean out of them, but the formstill splendid. And that is why the old mas-ters play the deuce with our mere suscepti-bles. Your Royal Academician thinks he canget the style of Giotto without Giottos beliefs,and correct his perspective into the bargain.Your man of letters thinks he can get Bun-yans or Shakespears style without Bunyansconviction or Shakespears apprehension, es-pecially if he takes care not to split his in-finitives. And so with your Doctors of Mu-sic, who, with their collections of discords dulyprepared and resolved or retarded or antici-pated in the manner of the great composers,think they can learn the art of Palestrina fromCherubims treatise. All this academic art is


far worse than the trade in sham antique fur-niture; for the man who sells me an oakenchest which he swears was made in the XIIIcentury, though as a matter of fact he made ithimself only yesterday, at least does not pre-tend that there are any modern ideas in it,whereas your academic copier of fossils offersthem to you as the latest outpouring of the hu-man spirit, and, worst of all, kidnaps youngpeople as pupils and persuades them that hislimitations are rules, his observances dexter-ities, his timidities good taste, and his empti-nesses purities. And when he declares thatart should not be didactic, all the people whohave nothing to teach and all the people whodont want to learn agree with him emphati-cally.

I pride myself on not being one of thesesusceptible: If you study the electric light withwhich I supply you in that Bumbledonian pub-lic capacity of mine over which you makemerry from time to time, you will find thatyour house contains a great quantity of highlysusceptible copper wire which gorges itselfwith electricity and gives you no light what-ever. But here and there occurs a scrap of in-tensely insusceptible, intensely resistant ma-terial; and that stubborn scrap grapples withthe current and will not let it through untilit has made itself useful to you as those twovital qualities of literature, light and heat.Now if I am to be no mere copper wire ama-teur but a luminous author, I must also be amost intensely refractory person, liable to goout and to go wrong at inconvenient moments,

44 MAN AND SUPERMAN

and with incendiary possibilities. These arethe faults of my qualities; and I assure youthat I sometimes dislike myself so much thatwhen some irritable reviewer chances at thatmoment to pitch into me with zest, I feel un-speakably relieved and obliged. But I neverdream of reforming, knowing that I must takemyself as I am and get what work I can outof myself. All this you will understand; forthere is community of material between us:we are both critics of life as well as of art;and you have perhaps said to yourself whenI have passed your windows, There, but forthe grace of God, go I. An awful and chas-tening reflection, which shall be the closingcadence of this immoderately long letter fromyours faithfully,

G. BERNARD SHAW.WOKING, 1903

ACT I

Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, openingthe morning letters. The study, handsomelyand solidly furnished, proclaims the man ofmeans. Not a speck of dust is visible: it is clearthat there are at least two housemaids anda parlormaid downstairs, and a housekeeperupstairs who does not let them spare elbow-grease. Even the top of Roebucks head is pol-ished: on a sunshiny day he could heliographhis orders to distant camps by merely nodding.In no other respect, however, does he suggestthe military man. It is in active civil life thatmen get his broad air of importance, his digni-fied expectation of deference, his determinatemouth disarmed and refined since the hourof his success by the withdrawal of opposi-tion and the concession of comfort and prece-dence and power. He is more than a highlyrespectable man: he is marked out as a pres-ident of highly respectable men, a chairmanamong directors, an alderman among coun-cillors, a mayor among aldermen. Four tuftsof iron-grey hair, which will soon be as whiteas isinglass, and are in other respects not atall unlike it, grow in two symmetrical pairs

45

46 MAN AND SUPERMAN

above his ears and at the angles of his spread-ing jaws. He wears a black frock coat, a whitewaistcoat (it is bright spring weather), andtrousers, neither black nor perceptibly blue, ofone of those indefinitely mixed hues which themodern clothier has produced to harmonizewith the religions of respectable men. He hasnot been out of doors yet to-day; so he stillwears his slippers, his boots being ready forhim on the hearthrug. Surmising that he hasno valet, and seeing that he has no secretarywith a shorthand notebook and a typewriter,one meditates on how little our great burgessdomesticity has been disturbed by new fash-ions and methods, or by the enterprise of therailway and hotel companies which sell you aSaturday to Monday of life at Folkestone asa real gentleman for two guineas, first classfares both ways included.

How old is Roebuck? The question is impor-tant on the threshold of a drama of ideas; forunder such circumstances everything dependson whether his adolescence belonged to the six-ties or to the eighties. He was born, as a matterof fact, in 1839, and was a Unitarian and FreeTrader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionistfrom the publication of the Origin of Species.Consequently he has always classed himself asan advanced thinker and fearlessly outspokenreformer.

Sitting at his writing table, he has on hisright the windows giving on Portland Place.Through these, as through a proscenium, thecurious spectator may contemplate his profileas well as the blinds will permit. On his left

ACT I 47

is the inner wall, with a stately bookcase, andthe door not quite in the middle, but some-what further from him. Against the wall op-posite him are two busts on pillars: one, tohis left, of John Bright; the other, to his right,of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Between them hangan engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; en-larged photographs of Martineau, Huxley, andGeorge Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr.G. F. Watts (for Roebuck believed in the finearts with all the earnestness of a man whodoes not understand them), and an impressionof Duponts engraving of Delaroches BeauxArtes hemicycle, representing the great men ofall ages. On the wall behind him, above themantel-shelf, is a family portrait of impenetra-ble obscurity.

A chair stands near the writing table forthe convenience of business visitors. Two otherchairs are against the wall between the busts.

A parlormaid enters with a visitors card.Roebuck takes it, and nods, pleased. Evidentlya welcome caller.

RAMSDEN. Show him up.The parlormaid goes out and returns with

the visitor.THE MAID. Mr. Robinson.Mr. Robinson is really an uncommonly nice

looking young fellow. He must, one thinks,be the jeune premier; for it is not in reasonto suppose that a second such attractive malefigure should appear in one story. The slimshapely frame, the elegant suit of new mourn-ing, the small head and regular features, thepretty little moustache, the frank clear eyes, the

48 MAN AND SUPERMAN

wholesome bloom and the youthful complex-ion, the well brushed glossy hair, not curly, butof fine texture and good dark color, the arch ofgood nature in the eyebrows, the erect foreheadand neatly pointed chin, all announce the manwho will love and suffer later on. And thathe will not do so without sympathy is guaran-teed by an engaging sincerity and eager mod-est serviceableness which stamp him as a manof amiable nature. The moment he appears,Ramsdens face expands into fatherly likingand welcome, an expression which drops intoone of decorous grief as the young man ap-proaches him with sorrow in his face as well asin his black clothes. Ramsden seems to knowthe nature of the bereavement. As the visitoradvances silently to the writing table, the oldman rises and shakes his hand across it with-out a word: a long, affectionate shake whichtells the story of a recent sorrow common toboth.

RAMSDEN. [concluding the handshakeand cheering up] Well, well, Octavius, its thecommon lot. We must all face it someday. Sitdown.

Octavius takes the visitors chair. Ramsdenreplaces himself in his own.

OCTAVIUS. Yes: we must face it, Mr.Ramsden. But I owed him a great deal. He dideverything for me that my father could havedone if he had lived.

RAMSDEN. He had no son of his own, yousee.

OCTAVIUS. But he had daughters; andyet he was as good to my sister as to me.

ACT I 49

And his death was so sudden! I always in-tended to thank himto let him know that Ihad not taken all his care of me as a matterof course, as any boy takes his fathers care.But I waited for an opportunity and now he isdeaddropped without a moments warning.He will never know what I felt. [He takes outhis handkerchief and cries unaffectedly].

RAMSDEN. How do we know that, Oc-tavius? He may know it: we cannot tell.Come! Dont grieve. [Octavius masters himselfand puts up his handkerchief ]. Thats right.Now let me tell you something to console you.The last time I saw himit was in this veryroomhe said to me: Tavy is a generous ladand the soul of honor; and when I see howlittle consideration other men get from theirsons, I realize howmuch better than a son hesbeen to me. There! Doesnt that do you good?

OCTAVIUS. Mr. Ramsden: he used to sayto me that he had met only one man in theworld who was the soul of honor, and that wasRoebuck Ramsden.

RAMSDEN. Oh, that was his partiality: wewere very old friends, you know. But therewas something else he used to say about you.I wonder whether I ought to tell you or not!

OCTAVIUS. You know best.RAMSDEN. It was something about his

daughter.OCTAVIUS. [eagerly] About Ann! Oh, do

tell me that, Mr. Ramsden.RAMSDEN. Well, he said he was glad,

after all, you were not his son, becausehe thought that someday Annie and

50 MAN AND SUPERMAN

you[Octavius blushes vividly]. Well,perhaps I shouldnt have told you. But he wasin earnest.

OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had achance! You know, Mr. Ramsden, I dont careabout money or about what people call posi-tion; and I cant bring myself to take an in-terest in the business of struggling for them.Well, Ann has a most exquisite nature; butshe is so accustomed to be in the thick of thatsort of thing that she thinks a mans characterincomplete if he is not ambitious. She knowsthat if she married me she would have to rea-son herself out of being ashamed of me for notbeing a big success of some kind.

RAMSDEN. [Getting up and planting him-self with his back to the fireplace] Nonsense,my boy, nonsense! Youre too modest. Whatdoes she know about the real value of menat her age? [More seriously] Besides, shesa wonderfully dutiful girl. Her fathers wishwould be sacred to her. Do you know thatsince she grew up to years of discretion, I dontbelieve she has ever once given her own wishas a reason for doing anything or not doing it.Its always Father wishes me to, or Motherwouldnt like it. Its really almost a fault inher. I have often told her she must learn tothink for herself.

OCTAVIUS. [shaking his head] I couldntask her to marry me because her fatherwished it, Mr. Ramsden.

RAMSDEN. Well, perhaps not. No: ofcourse not. I see that. No: you certainlycouldnt. But when you win her on your own

ACT I 51

merits, it will be a great happiness to her tofulfil her fathers desire as well as her own.Eh? Come! youll ask her, wont you?

OCTAVIUS. [with sad gaiety] At all eventsI promise you I shall never ask anyone else.

RAMSDEN. Oh, you shant need to. Shellaccept you, my boyalthough [here be sud-denly becomes very serious indeed] you haveone great drawback.

OCTAVIUS. [anxiously] What drawback isthat, Mr. Ramsden? I should rather say whichof my many drawbacks?

RAMSDEN. Ill tell you, Octavius. [Hetakes from the table a book bound in red cloth].I have in my hand a copy of the most in-famous, the most scandalous, the most mis-chievous, the most blackguardly book thatever escaped burning at the hands of the com-mon hangman. I have not read it: I wouldnot soil my mind with such filth; but I haveread what the papers say of it. The title isquite enough for me. [He reads it]. The Rev-olutionists Handbook and Pocket Companionby John Tanner, M.I.R.C., Member of the IdleRich Class.

OCTAVIUS. [smiling] But JackRAMSDEN. [testily] For goodness sake,

dont call him Jack under my roof [he throwsthe book violently down on the table, Then,somewhat relieved, he comes past the table toOctavius, and addresses him at close quar-ters with impressive gravity]. Now, Octavius, Iknow that my dead friend was right when hesaid you were a generous lad. I know that thisman was your schoolfellow, and that you feel

52 MAN AND SUPERMAN

bound to stand by him because there was aboyish friendship between you. But I ask youto consider the altered circumstances. Youwere treated as a son in my friends house.You lived there; and your friends could notbe turned from the door. This Tanner was inand out there on your account almost from hischildhood. He addresses Annie by her Chris-tian name as freely as you do. Well, while herfather was alive, that was her fathers busi-ness, not mine. This man Tanner was only aboy to him: his opinions were something to belaughed at, like a mans hat on a childs head.But now Tanner is a grown man and Anniea grown woman. And her father is gone. Wedont as yet know the exact terms of his will;but he often talked it over with me; and I haveno more doubt than I have that youre sit-ting there that the will appoints me Anniestrustee and guardian. [Forcibly] Now I tellyou, once for all, I cant and I wont have An-nie placed in such a position that she must,out of regard for you, suffer the intimacy ofthis fellow Tanner. Its not fair: its not right:its not kind. What are you going to do aboutit?

OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jackthat whatever his opinions are, he will alwaysbe welcome because he knew her dear father.

RAMSDEN. [out of patience] That girlsmad about her duty to her parents. [He startsoff like a goaded ox in the direction of JohnBright, in whose expression there is no sympa-thy for him. As he speaks, he fumes down toHerbert Spencer, who receives him still more

ACT I 53

coldly] Excuse me, Octavius; but there arelimits to social toleration. You know that I amnot a bigoted or prejudiced man. You knowthat I am plain Roebuck Ramsden when othermen who have done less have got handles totheir names, because I have stood for equal-ity and liberty of conscience while they weretruckling to the Church and to the aristoc-racy. Whitefield and I lost chance after chancethrough our advanced opinions. But I drawthe line at Anarchism and Free Love and thatsort of thing. If I am to be Annies guardian,she will have to learn that she has a duty tome. I wont have it: I will not have it. Shemust forbid John Tanner the house; and somust you.

The parlormaid returns.OCTAVIUS. ButRAMSDEN. [calling his attention to the

servant] Ssh! Well?THE MAID. Mr. Tanner wishes to see you,

sir.RAMSDEN. Mr. Tanner!OCTAVIUS. Jack!RAMSDEN. How dare Mr. Tanner call on

me! Say I cannot see him.OCTAVIUS. [hurt] I am sorry you are turn-

ing my friend from your door like that.THE MAID. [calmly] Hes not at the door,

sir. Hes upstairs in the drawing-room withMiss Ramsden. He came with Mrs. Whitefieldand Miss Ann and Miss Robinson, sir.

Ramsdens feelings are beyond words.OCTAVIUS. [grinning] Thats very like

Jack, Mr. Ramsden. You must see him, even if

54 MAN AND SUPERMAN

its only to turn him out.RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words

with suppressed fury] Go upstairs and ask Mr.Tanner to be good enough to step down here.[The parlormaid goes out; and Ramsden re-turns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position].I must say that of all the confounded piecesof impertinencewell, if these are Anarchistmanners I hope you like them. And Anniewith him! Annie! A [he chokes].

OCTAVIUS. Yes: thats what surprises me.Hes so desperately afraid of Ann. There mustbe something the matter.

Mr. John Tanner suddenly opens the doorand enters. He is too young to be describedsimply as a big man with a beard. But it isalready plain that middle life will find him inthat category. He has still some of the slim-ness of youth; but youthfulness is not the ef-fect he aims at: his frock coat would befit aprime minister; and a certain high chestedcarriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of thehead, and the Olympian majesty with whicha mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel col-ored hair is thrown back from an imposingbrow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. Heis prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, ex-citable (mark the snorting nostril and the rest-less blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inchtoo wide open), possibly a little mad. He iscarefully dressed, not from the vanity that can-not resist finery, but from a sense of the impor-tance of everything he does which leads him tomake as much of paying a call as other mendo of getting married or laying a foundation

ACT I 55

stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative,earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would belost without a sense of humor.

Just at present the sense of humor is inabeyance. To say that he is excited is nothing:all his moods are phases of excitement. He isnow in the panic-stricken phase; and he walksstraight up to Ramsden as if with the fixed in-tention of shooting him on his own hearthrug.But what he pulls from his breast pocket isnot a pistol, but a foolscap document which hethrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsdenas he exclaims-

TANNER. Ramsden: do you know whatthat is?

RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, Sir.TANNER. Its a copy of Whitefields will.

Ann got it this morning.RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean,

I presume, Miss Whitefield.TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann,

Tavys Ann, and now, Heaven help me, myAnn!

OCTAVIUS. [rising, very pale] What do youmean?

TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will].Do you know who is appointed Anns guardianby this will?

RAMSDEN. [coolly] I believe I am.TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!!

Both of us! [He flings the will down on thewriting table].

RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.TANNER. Its only too hideously true. [He

throws himself into Octaviuss chair]. Rams-

56 MAN AND SUPERMAN

den: get me out of it somehow. You dont knowAnn as well as I do. Shell commit every crimea respectable woman can; and shell justify ev-ery one of them by saying that it was the wishof her guardians. Shell put everything on us;and we shall have no more control over herthan a couple of mice over a cat.

OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldnt talklike that about Ann.

TANNER. This chaps in love with her:thats another complication. Well, shell eitherjilt him and say I didnt approve of him, ormarry him and say you ordered her to. I tellyou, this is the most staggering blow that hasever fallen on a man of my age and tempera-ment.

RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [Hegoes to the writing table and picks it up]. Icannot believe that my old friend Whitefieldwould have shown such a want of confidencein me as to associate me with [His counte-nance falls as he reads].

TANNER. Its all my own doing: thats thehorrible irony of it. He told me one day thatyou were to be Anns guardian; and like a foolI began arguing with him about the folly ofleaving a young woman under the control ofan old man with obsolete ideas.

RAMSDEN. [stupended] My ideas obso-lete!!!!!

TANNER. Totally. I had just finished anessay called Down with Government by theGreyhaired; and I was full of arguments andillustrations. I said the proper thing wasto combine the experience of an old hand

ACT I 57

with the vitality of a young one. Hang meif he didnt take me at my word and al-ter his willits dated only a fortnight af-ter that conversationappointing me as jointguardian with you!

RAMSDEN. [pale and determined] I shallrefuse to act.

TANNER. Whats the good of that? Ivebeen refusing all the way from Richmond; butAnn keeps on saying that of course shes onlyan orphan; and that she cant expect the peo-ple who were glad to come to the house in herfathers time to trouble much about her now.Thats the latest game. An orphan! Its likehearing an ironclad talk about being at themercy of the winds and waves.

OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She isan orphan. And you ought to stand by her.

TANNER. Stand by her! What danger isshe in? She has the law on her side; she haspopular sentiment on her side; she has plentyof money and no conscience. All she wantswith me is to load up all her moral responsibil-ities on me, and do as she likes at the expenseof my character. I cant control her; and shecan compromise me as much as she likes. Imight as well be her husband.

RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept theguardianship. I shall certainly refuse to holdit jointly with you.

TANNER. Yes; and what will she say tothat? what does she say to it? Just that herfathers wishes are sacred to her, and that sheshall always look up to me as her guardianwhether I care to face the responsibility or

58 MAN AND SUPERMAN

not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to ac-cept the embraces of a boa constrictor whenonce it gets round your neck.

OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind tome, Jack.

TANNER. [rising and going to Octavius toconsole him, but still lamenting] If he wanteda young guardian, why didnt he appointTavy?

RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded

me about it; but I refused the trust becauseI loved her. I had no right to let myself beforced on her as a guardian by her father. Hespoke to her about it; and she said I was right.You know I love her, Mr. Ramsden; and Jackknows it too. If Jack loved a woman, I wouldnot compare her to a boa constrictor in hispresence, however much I might dislike her[he sits down between the busts and turns hisface to the wall].

RAMSDEN. I do not believe that White-field was in his right senses when he madethat will. You have admitted that he made itunder your influence.

TANNER. You ought to be pretty wellobliged to me for my influence. He leaves youtwo thousand five hundred for your trouble.He leaves Tavy a dowry for his sister and fivethousand for himself.

OCTAVIUS. [his tears flowing afresh] Oh,I cant take it. He was too good to us.

TANNER. You wont get it, my boy, ifRamsden upsets the will.

RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in

ACT I 59

a cleft stick.TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the

charge of Anns morals, on the ground that Ihave already more money than is good for me.That shows that he had his wits about him,doesnt it?

RAMSDEN. [grimly] I admit that.OCTAVIUS. [rising and coming from his

refuge by the wall] Mr. Ramsden: I think youare prejudiced against Jack. He is a man ofhonor, and incapable of abusing

TANNER. Dont, Tavy: youll make me ill.I am not a man of honor: I am a man struckdown by a dead hand. Tavy: you must marryher after all and take her off my hands. And Ihad set my heart on saving you from her!

OCTAVIUS. Oh, Jack, you talk of savingme from my highest happiness.

TANNER. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If itwere only the first half hours happiness, Tavy,I would buy it for you with my last penny. Buta lifetime of happiness! No man alive couldbear it: it would be hell on earth.

RAMSDEN. [violently] Stuff, sir. Talksense; or else go and waste someone elsestime: I have something better

george bernard shaw, man and superman

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