Shaw's People: Victoria to Churchill by Stanley Weintraub, and: Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman by Sally Peters, and: George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre by Tracy C. Davis (review)

Reviews297 inclusiveness, diversity, and fluidity ofthe medieval theater, which cries out for a holistic approach, a new poetics that will enable us to explore once more this complex world called theatrum" (278). The author of this well-written book is not afraid of theoretical complexity, nor does she try to simplify for the sake ofpotential readers unaware ofmedieval nuances. The highly specialized information which forms the core ofher argument, including those aspects which might be considered paradoxical and have no easy answers, is handled with a lively analytical style very far from stiff academicism. Perhaps Stern's aims are not fully achieved in this book, especially in relation to the hermeneutics that might allow us to bring Renaissance, baroque, or even contemporary performance within the orbit of medieval drama. But it may also be argued that this was not her aim and that doing so would require a completely different book, a book that might now be written in response to Stern's splendid work. This work undoubtedly fills a gap since it contains the latest findings on Castilian medieval drama, discusses them intelligently, and also presents the material in a way that will inspire other researchers. MANUEL J. GOMEZ-LARA University of Seville Stanley Weintraub. Shaw's People: Victoria to Churchill. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Pp. iii + 255. $29.50. Sally Peters. Bernard Shaw: The Ascent ofthe Superman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi + 328. $28.50. Tracy C. Davis. George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre. Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1994. Pp. xxii + 184. $29.95. Almost fifty years have passed since the death of George Bernard Shaw. In that time his fortunes—literary, theatrical, and otherwise— have fluctuated on that imaginary stock exchange T. S. Eliot created for the evaluation of writers: up and down, or down and up on that odd scale of fashions or tastes, a curious movement unknown to followers of Dow-Jones, something hopefully made to deal with the bothersome problem of how to explain, describe, or place a writer to friend and foe alike. Shaw, of course, is a difficult problem for students of his works and days. Where do we put him? Is he perhaps best forgotten? Was he or is he the Grand Old Man of English letters after the likes of say, Hardy, Galsworthy, or lesser worthies? The sheer mass of his writings, the length of his life, his bothersome tendency to have opinions on every subject under the sun make him troublesome, or even, for some, not worth the trouble at all. Probably dated, perpetually obverse, cantankerous , often just plain grouchy, or just another loquacious Irishman 298Comparative Drama blessed or cursed with the gift of gab, reveling in paradox—he may very well be that "sewing machine" Yeats insisted he was: someone who simply would not stop writing, shut up, and just sit down. Both a Victorian and an Edwardian, presumably lost or uneasy in the madness and disbelief of the twentieth century, he is best consigned by his detractors to a cultural and critical scrap heap, left there to languish in the outer darkness of neglect or outright contempt. For his enemies he is no longer a Great Man, but only another mere mortal of perhaps no more than passing historical interest. Those who subscribe to that peculiar, deprecatory, or even wrongheaded opinion about Shaw should perhaps reread the lovely arias he composed for Joan ofArc. There is a surprise in store for the disbelievers. She sounds like—indeed in fact is—a practicing existentialist whom Camus would have recognized on the spot. It is a play (his only tragedy and for some his greatest theatrical achievement) which places the author smack into the middle of the modern drama, where his most thoughtful advocates insist he belongs. But Shaw of course will not go away. He is in fact not dead. In a very real sense he is still a vibrant presence: the eponymous festival in Canada, the constant productions ofhis major pieces at regional theaters across America, and the academic society and journal which bear his name offer vivifying proof of his ongoing vitality. The elan with which he entertains...