The Conflict of Wills in Shaw's Tragicomedy

THE CONFLICT OF WILLS IN SHAW'S TRAGICOMEDY IN ONE OF IDS PLAY REVIEWS written in the 1890's, Bernard Shaw outlines the crises in the life of a play which will never become«dated." First of all, he says, a play inevitably dates in its costumes and manners. If its conception of moral problems is sufficiently profound , it will survive this test, only to be confronted much laterperhaps centuries later-by another day of judgment. On this day the question will be whether or not its portrayal of the "instincts and passions" of humanity is valid enough for it to take its place as an«antique classic" in an era in which its ethical assumptions have ceased to compel assent.l On the issue of the survival power of his own work, Shaw may be seen characteristically arguing with equal volubility on both sides. For one polemic purpose, he sees his plays as «petty tentatives" to be superseded by the work of some yet unborn Shakespeare-presumably because in the inevitable course of evolution their morality will become outdated. For another polemic purpose, he places his drama in a uniquely modem tradition of tragicomedy which makes the spectator «laugh with one side of his mouth and cry with the other"2no doubt because the plays deal not only with transitory and ultimately soluble ethical issues but also with the permanent, or nearly permanent, problems of the world of the instincts and passions.3 Responding to the invitation which his plays obviously offer, Shaw's interpreters have unanimously viewed them in the perspective of his abstract views of the social problems of our era. Shaw criticism has quite rightly been focused on the reflection in his work of a socialist's attack on our economic and political ethics, a vitalist's reaction against the suppression of valuable human impulses by the "artificial system of morality." However, what is to be said of the plays as portrayals of the instinctive and passionate nature of man and of his relations to other men? Are they frequently not only comic but, as Shaw thought, tragicomic? If one puts aside momentarily all of the witty social criticism which Shaw's drama contains, it becomes a portrayal of life in which the will is the key to human motives and all human relationships are, in 1. Our Theatres in. the Nin.eties (London, 1932), II, 167. 2. Archibald Hendersont Bemai'd Shaw, PlallbOU and Prophet (New York, 1932), p. 615. 3. If Back to Methusalen is not read simply as a fantasy for the sake of satirical comment on the present, it may be assumed to suggest that change takes place even in the world of the instincts and passions-but over a very long time span indeed. 413 414 MODERN DRAMA February one degree of intensity or another, conflicts of will. Since Pygmalion, as its title implies, is concerned with the creation of a human being, the clues which it offers to Shaw's conception of basic human nature and of human relationships are especially significant. Essentially Liza Doolittle is transformed from a subhuman flower girl into a truly human being because she shakes off her fears, develops a will of her own, and is able to meet Higgins as an equal in the strife of wills which is the human condition. After his lot in life is magically transformed by the Wannafeller bequest, Alfred Doolittle announces the psychological theme of the play when he proclaims that he can no longer assert his will to be one of the happy and "undeserving" poor because he is "intimidated"-bound by fear to a life he has not chosen. So also is Liza intimidated. At the beginning of the play, her famous cockney outcry expresses her mingled bewilderment and fear in the face of pressures on her which she cannot resist and does not understand. Even after she has successfully passed the test of the garden party, she is still not fully human-as is indicated by her attempting a "bargain in affection" with Higgins, trying to exact love from him in return for fetching his slippers and making herself generally as indispensable as possible. Her...