Shaw and Buchanan

99 SHAW AND BUCHANAN By Raymond S. Nelson (Mornlngside College) Shaw's Devil's Disciple thoroughly disconcerts the people who surround him in the play. His family and townspeople find him completely unaccountable because he does not believe In "getting on," the sentimental minister's wife cannot imagine a man who does not live for love, and the military machine Is quite unprepared to deal with a totally honest man. Unlike these figures who surround him, Dick Dudgeon is a fiercely Inner-directed man (to use David Riesman's phrase) who looks to "the law of his own nature" as a guide to life, not to other people. Like the later Shavian figure , Andrew Undershaft, Dick Instinctively does the right thing for apparently the wrong reasons, a mode of life which usually distracts and Infuriates conventional people. Shaw refers to his hero In the preface to the play as a Diabolonian and means by the term an "enemy of the gods, unterrlfieá champion of those oppressed by them." Prometheus, champion of man In his struggle with the tyrant Zeus, Is his obvious example; so Is Wagner's Siegfried, and a long line of outlaw-heroes between. The Dlabolonlan Idea depends therefore not so much on the tltanesque proportions of the hero as on his Indomitable will to defy "the gods," whatever form they take. In eighteenth-century New England, "the gods" were a repressive church well represented In the doctrinal correctness of Mrs. Dudgeon, the Insensitive rlthallsm of Brudenell, and the callous respectability of the townspeople. Dick's courageous opposition to such moral tyranny, therefore. Is unquestionably in the main stream of the Dlabolonlan tradition. His very nature pits him against such powers; he Instinctively recoils from inhumanity In any form, and he discovers that he Is self-elected to defy the rigid system. Dick Dudgeon Is significantly like Robert Buchanan's Devil, the humane hero of a long narrative poem called The Devil's Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude (1896), which Shaw says he read before he wrote The Devil's Disciple, but he Is obviously unlike him as well. Before a comparison of the two figures can be made, however, a brief synopsis of Buchanan's obscure poem becomes necessary. Buchanan encounters the Devil one summer evening on lonely Hampstead Heath. He first notices the Devil, dressed In clerical garb, reading the latest pink edition of The Star by moonlight. He Is depressed by its contents. He can see to read by moonlight, Buchanan learns, because he Is "blest with goodly eyesight, owing chiefly, like most blessings, to a strictly moral life." The allegorical Implications of such "seeing" are Immediately clear. The newspaper Is crammed with the most shocking accounts of human violence and of natural destruction: shipwreck (loss of every soul aboard); earthquake (twenty villages destroyed); floods (sleeping cities decimated); cholera (millions starving In the East); rail- 100 way accident In Texas (sickening details); shadowy armies (Cain still slaughtering his brother); Judges nodding (tedious trial oozes on); madmen (chasing bubbles: pleasure, honor, reputation); but all the while the "pious leader-writer vaunts the government of God." The Devil, the Prince of Pity, cannot tolerate such Jobbery. SIn and death are the creations of God, he declares; God Is the liar, the deceiver, not the devil; and, besides, God Is thoroughly played out, a sycophantic Idler. The Devil, by contrast. Is much maligned: he Is in actuality a devoted servant of man, draining marshes, cleaning cesspools, urging progress in the great cities. Faced with the undeniable fact of Hell, the crowded cities of earth, the Devil Invents movable type (his first Miracle) to convince man of his need to save himself. He teaches man useful, redemptive arts like medicine, hygiene, engineering, biology, and drama, all possible means for his salvation. The Devil takes Buchanan on a world-wide trip, somewhat reminiscent of Queen Mab*s guided tour In Shelley's poem, and reinforces the Impression of the dreary hopelessness of man's spiritual plight: Buddha, Osiris, Christ Mahomet, founders of the great religions, are all found to be misguided failures, unwitting servants of death and despair. Only the Devil serves Nature and her laws (Wisdom , Love, and Self...