Shaw Improves Shaw

SHAW IMPROVES SHAW CHARLES H. SHATTUCK'S COMPARISON of the 1893 and the 1898 editions of Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses1-the first textual study of any of Shaw's plays-reveals the prodigious growth of Shaw's dramatic powers within these few years. As new editions of his plays were published, he quietly made revisions which, Professor Shattuck recognizes, were "pervasive, detailed, and sometimes drastic." The differences between early editions of early Shaw plays and the texts in the Standard Edition or reprints therefrom, are occasionally enormous. An example of this is his one-act play How He Lied to Her Husband, which he wrote in 1904 as a curtain raiser for Arnold Daly's American production of Man of Destiny. How He Lied to Her Husband has three characters: He, She, and Her Husband. The trio is also known as Henry Apjohn and Aurora and Teddy Bompas. The plot is simple, and in its early stages follows -purposely-the conventional lines of the husband-wife-Iover situation. He is in love with She. A poet, He has written heart-on-sleeve love poems to her in which He names her by name. Since She is exotically named Aurora, it is unlikely that anyone reading the poems will fail to identify their inspiration. She greets him with the announcement that She cannot find the poems. She suspects her sister-in-law Georgina of having taken them and shown them to Her Husband. He proposes that they admit the truth to Her Husband and then go off together. She, however, will have nothing of the sort, and persuades him to deny everything if and when Her Husband confronts them with the evidence. Enter Her Husband, who sends his wife out of the room and then confronts the young poet with the evidence. He promptly denies everything and fabricates the most outrageous lies to explain the poems' references to Aurora and how She came to be in possession of them. At this point, Shaw tosses aside the standard plot. When the poet denies that He is in love with the wife, Her Husband is insulted because He does not think She is good enough for him. He argues and eventually fights with the young poet. The wife enters, stops the brawl, and makes the poet take back the lies that He had promised He would swear to the husband. He 1 Charles H. Shattuck, "Bernard Shaw's Bad Quarto," The Journal Of English and Germanic Philology, LIV (October, 1955), 651-66!l. 26 1963 SHAW IMPROVES SHAW 27 then tells the truth to Her Husband, Her Husband is overjoyed, and family harmony is restored. How He Lied to Her Husband, written in 1904, was first published in England and in the United States in 1907. In 1931, it was republished in the Standard Edition (from which the later editions are reprinted ). There are considerable differences between the two. The major revisions concern references to another play by Shaw, Candida. In addition to being a spoof on the standard treatment of the husband -wife-Iover triangle, the early version of How He Lied to Her Husband is also a spoof on the Shavian treatment of that situation in Candida. In the revised version, however, all references to Candida are omitted. But we will return to this later. The first and most easily observable difference between the early edition2 and the Standard Edition3 is the Preface. In the early edition, it occupies four pages; in the later, two paragraphs. The deleted portion provides an interesting sidelight on the stage history of How He Lied to Her Husband. Shaw reminds us that when Arnold Daly produced Mrs. Warren's Profession in New York in 1905, the press of that city raised a hue and cry that the subject of the play should not be mentioned in the presence of decent people. The result of the newspapers' protests on behalf of what they publicly declared to be morality and virtue was that the police arrested Daly and his company . Although the courts finally declared that the play was not immoral and acquitted Daly, months passed before he and Shaw were vindicated. In order...