Shaw Annual, Volume 12

BOOK REVIEWS Shaw Annual, Volume 12 Fred D. Crawford, ed. Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies: Volume 12. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. vi + 330 pp. $55.00 THE EDITORIAL POLICY of Shaw mandates that even-numbered volumes are designated as general collections of essays, while odd-numbered volumes are organized around a specific theme. Naturally, this presents something of a problem for the reviewer of the twenty-one rather random items in the current volume which range widely across Shaw studies. However, there is virtually something for most Shavians and all the articles maintain a good standard of scholarship and criticism . Two biographical snippets open the collection. The first is a memoir of Shaw's schooldays by his friend Edward McNulty, for which the eminent Shavian scholar, Dan Laurence, provides an introduction and annotations. The question here is why this memoir is worth reprinting because, as Laurence indicates, McNulty is frequently incorrect factually and distorts the overall picture. However, there is value in the new correspondence from McNulty to Shaw. T. F. Evans, another distinguished Shavian, contributes a suitably genial article on Shaw and cricket. This encompasses Shaw's knowledge of the game, his attitude towards it, references in his work to cricket, and cricket as a reflection of social ideas and conditions in contemporary England. Lu Xun, who was highly regarded by Mao Tse-tung, criticized society very similarly to Shaw, although he was nationalistic while Shaw was individualistic. Xun's six essays (dating from 1933), reprinted here with an introduction by Florence Chien, reveal mainly his admiration for Shaw without unfolding any profound insights. On the Rocks was a significant production in the 1938 season of the Federal Theatre Project and the play was also cited as evidence of Communist influence on that Project in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Michael M. 0"Hara discusses that production, including the negotiations with Shaw, casting, performance and reception. My only reservation about this article is that it could be much fuller and hence rewarding. Performance is again at the heart of Stephen Porter's "Discovering Shaw by Directing Shaw." Porter, as a practicing director, has several good insights. I was particularly impressed by his observation that 525 ELT 36:4 1993 Shaw's ground plans, using the proscenium arch stage, need to be adhered to strictly, otherwise visually powerful statements, which Shaw clearly intended, can be lost. And, in passing, it is a pleasure to note that many of the articles in this volume do show a sensitivity to the theatrical aspects of Shaw's plays (which has not always been true in the past). More geniality follows with Leon H. Hugo's interview with Shavian doyen Stanley Weintraub, who reveals his lifelong devotion and commitment to Shaw studies. Far more provocative and stern stuff is to be found in Edward R. Isser's "Bernard Shaw and British Holocaust Drama" which focuses on British Holocaust dramatists who are unsympathetic to the Jewish position Isser embraces; Shaw happens to be one such. However, Shaw's position, as described, appears rather nebulous and his influence on the later dramatists indirect. Stronger evidence of Shaw's attitude towards Jews is found in the stylistically opaque article by Bryan Cheyette, "Superman and Jew: Semitic Representations in the Work of Bernard Shaw" (which curiously appears much later in the volume rather than, logically, after Isser's piece). Cheyette concludes, having examined An Unsocial Socialist, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, and other plays, that Shaw's "Semitic representations... were, in the final resort, still estranged from the Life Force as racial 'others' and unreal romantics whose massive worldly presence was a monumental irrelevance." Shaw and music also get an airing in two articles: Josephine Lee's The Skilled Voluptuary: Shaw as Music Critic," and Richard Corballis's "Why the Devil Gets All the Good Tunes." Lee reveals Shaw's pride in his "passionate objectivity" and his view that music's ability to create feeling makes it superior to literature and drama. On the other hand, Shaw also valued the moral and educational value of music. Corballis discusses operatic analogues for Shaw's seers, the people who would redeem Man...