Walkley was an English drama critic for the London Star, the Speaker, and the Times from 1888 through 1902, and a major contributor to the Times Literary Supplement after it was founded in 1902. He has been noted for his disciplined, urbane literary tastes; in fact, his criticism is generally considered to have primarily a literary, and not a theatrical, basis. In the following excerpt from a review of Man and Superman—the play that Shaw dedicated to Walkley and claimed was inspired by his suggestion —Walkley regrets that while the play serves as an effective vehicle for “the Shavian philosophy and the Shavian talent,” it is imperfect as a theatrical work.
Contents contributed and discussions participated by Taylor Collins
1More
31More
Walkley on "Man and Superman" by Shaw - 0 views
-
-
Shaw wrote a letter to Walkley, describing his take on a suggestion Walkley made for Shaw to write a 'Don Juan'. Shaw ultimately flips the whole concept of a 'Cassinova' on its head with a modern, feminist twist, but still credits Walkley as providing him with the challenge. In the letter Shaw expresses his 'lukewarm admiration' of Shakespeare for the strength of his female characters in a maternalistic world. In this regard Shaw finds a fresh opinion of Shakespeare as a playwrite, and a connection to the women in his own plays. Though Shaw sees Shakespeare as having put his own 'tissue' around the plots and ideas of earlier, successful works (which, we can all admit, was true-) it seems that he could still have a respect for the unique and insightfulness played out in the roles of his female characters.
-
-
For Mr. Shaw and Shakespeare have at least one conspicuous bond of fraternal relationship; they both use the same stage technique.
-
liaison des scènes
-
Roughly, the idea that the stage should never be empty during an act or a scene.
-
- ...18 more annotations...
-
Thus for the sake of something which may be very fine, but certainly is not drama, both dramatists cheerfully let the quintessential drama go hang.
-
We want a play that shall be a vehicle for the Shavian philosophy and the Shavian talent and, at the same time, a perfect play. Shall we ever get it? Probably not, in this imperfect world. We certainly do not get it in Man and Superman.
-
he is perpetually energizing outside the bounds of drama,
-
Since when does drama have bounds? Drama is not a formula, it is an art. Walkley says that there is a distinct form of art that he, and every other theater goer looks for in a play. Why, since Shaw's plays are entertaining, does it matter if this 'perfect' construction is not apparent? Is not a play perfect (as possible) if it is both entertaining and insightful? Literature is MEANT to convey ideas. No one creates works work taking note of unless he (or she) has something he (or she) wants to convey.
-
-
raison d'être
-
-
nexus
-
"1. a means of connection; tie; link. 2. a connected series or group. 3. the core or center, as of a matter or situation." -- Dictionary.com
-
-
the action-plot is well-nigh meaningless without the key of the idea-plot; that regarded as an independent entity it is often trivial and sometimes null; and that it is because of this parasitic nature of the action-plot, because of its weakness, its haphazardness, its unnaturalness, considered as a “thing in itself, ” that we find the play as a play unsatisfying.
-
We use the term action, of course, in its widest sense, so as to cover not merely the external incident but the psychologic and, more particularly, the emotional movement and “counterpoint” of the play.
-
The idea-plot we are not called upon to criticize. In the playhouse a dramatist's ideas are postulates not to be called in question. Theories of Schopenhauer about woman and the sex-instinct or of Nietzsche about a revised system of conduct are most assuredly open to discussion, but not by the dramatic critic. His business is, first and foremost, with the action-plot.
-
à propos de bottes
-
-
dans cette galère
-
-
For Miss Ann is the new Don Juan, the huntress of men—no, of one man (that is to say, no Don Juan at all, but for the moment let that pass)
-
In the previously mentioned letter from Shaw to Walkley, Shaw begins by telling him that he has taken up his challenge- to write a 'Don Juan story'. But, in Shaw's terms, the Don Juan is the one being pursued, rather than the pursuer. Walkley knows very well what Don Juan is doing 'in this mess'.
-
-
Tanner lectures poor mild milksopish Octavius about the devastating egoism of the “artist man”—how the “artist man” is (apparently) the masculine of the “mother woman,” how they are twin creators, she of children, he of mind, and how they live only for that act of creation, so that there is the devil to pay (examples from literary history) when they happen to become man and wife.
-
These ideas are also included in the letter, noted by Shaw as being his "character's, and for a time, also [his] own".
-
-
The properly dramatic development would have thrown all the onus upon Ann—we should have seen Ann energizing as the “mother woman,” and nothing else—and would have kept Tanner's mouth shut.
-
If Mr. Shaw's play were a real play we should have no need to explain the action-plot by laborious reference to the idea-plot. The one would be the natural garment of the other; or rather the one would be the flesh of which the other was the bones.
-
Ann would exhibit Mr. Shaw 's thesis “on her own,” instead of by the help of Mr. Jack Tanner's lecture wand and gift of the gab.
-
the action-plot, being as we have said a mere parasite of the other, is bound very rapidly to give out.
-
We must not forget two subordinate characters —Ann's mother, middle-aged, querulous, helpless in her daughter 's hands, and the cockney chauffeur, the fine fleur of Board school education, Henry Straker. These two small parts, from the point of view of genuine and fresh observation, are among the best things in the play. In them Mr. Shaw has been content to reproduce, instead of deducing.
-
Mr. Shaw, as we have tried to show, has conceived Ann not as a character, but as a pure idea, a walking theory;
-
I'm having some issues with the website, but I do have the analysis saved if you end up needing a hard copy :)
Taylor Collins
I am a writer and artist, and my goal is to become a novelist/fiction editor.