Exposing Inequity

Evidence that Shaw was interested in virtually everything can be found in the many volumes collecting his pronouncements on topics including politics, religion, theater, music, and literature (one volume each in the 2016 Critical Shaw series), and on Shakespeare, Dickens, language, art, photography, Ireland, war, women, and cinema, all of them separate monographs. Surprisingly, there are (as yet) no volumes of "Shaw on History" or "Shaw on Science." Nor is there a "Shaw on Crime." Fortunately, however, Crimes and Punishments and Bernard Shaw more than remedies that omission.

Bernard Dukore has extensively mined Shaw's writings—from prefaces and plays and speeches to letters and journalism and nondramatic writings—to provide almost a catalogue raisonné of Shaw's views on and stage treatments of adultery, capital punishment, child molestation, copyright infringement, divorce, felonies, flogging, homosexuality, imprisonment, income tax, insider trading, misdemeanors, police brutality, prostitution, reform of criminals, slum landlords and sweatshops, spousal abuse, transmission of venereal disease, treason, and wartime pressures—among a great many other topics. Offenders run the gamut from professional criminals, businessmen, and believers in a cause (most notably the Pankhurst suffragettes) to the police, prison officials, even the government itself. Shaw spent a lifetime in pursuit of justice—individual, social, political—and Crimes and Punishments illustrates, eloquently and rigorously, his perennial struggle to reform a world that he believed was sorely lacking in fair play.

Given the exhaustive list of titles in the "references" sections following each of the book's ten chapters, Dukore's research must have been daunting. Formidable detective work was clearly needed to ascertain and summarize the history of a crime's evolving legislation, and to provide extensive historical, social, and literary background information to contextualize a topic in relation to Shaw's discussions or dramatizations of it. Take, for example, copyright—more controversial than ever in an age pitting "intellectual property" against cyberspace theft. As the victim of countless copyright infringements (and, to his irritation, lost royalties!), Shaw was keenly aware that writers (and composers) needed protection, and consequently "refused to assign copyrights of [his works] to anyone or to any business organization." Dukore traces Shaw's views and practice from his years as a fledgling novelist—Cashel Byron's Profession was an early victim of copyright piracy—to the Arms and the Man versus The Chocolate Soldier debacle of the 1920s. "Fairness," Dukore concludes, "was one of his yardsticks."

Or take same-sex intimacy, another volatile issue today despite quantum leaps in legal rights and social tolerance. Dukore follows its evolution from the 1553 Buggery Act via Krafft-Ebing to the 1873 Comstock Law, the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885, Havelock Ellis, Radclyffe-Hall's The Well of Loneliness, and the trials of Oscar Wilde (for whose release Shaw drafted a petition). All of this forms the backdrop to Shaw's ultraliberal (for his day) views on homosexuality and his 1932 opinion that it is a condition for which a man "is no more morally responsible than for color blindness." (My legal-ese is a nod to Shaw frequently assuming the role of judge in handing down "opinions"—often dissenting ones.)

Other crimes and offences are similarly and thoroughly treated. Through close scrutiny of W. T. Stead's influential (and often disturbing) exposé, "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," published in four issues of the Pall Mall Gazette in July 1885, Dukore traces the nefarious impact of prostitution, an evil that Shaw viewed as the result of the poverty and low wages stemming from a socioeconomic system that the prominent and wealthy (from businessmen to politicians) were complicit in supporting. Dukore examines its prominent role in Mrs. Warren's Profession and its more subtle one in Pygmalion. Treason is discussed in relation to The Devil's Disciple and Sir Roger Casement, for whom Shaw wrote a (discarded) defense that Dukore convincingly relates to Saint Joan, written seven years after Casement's execution. "The Unprotected Child and the Law," which focuses on offenses to children, evinces Shaw's familiarity (aptly illustrated by Dukore) "with the complexities...