Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion to Many Players by Vincent Wall (review)

92 Comparative Drama vant, and the great number of criteria undercuts precision and continuity. Within the context he postulates, Godshalk’s claim that Shakespeare’s patterning is constant rather than evolutionary is hard to disprove; but he overlooks the dramatist’s growth in what might be termed overall pat­ terning, which progresses from the conspicuous symmetry of The C om edy o f E rrors, T itu s A n dron icu s, R ich ard III, and L o ve’s L abou r’s L o st to the art that conceals art in the less overt yet more dynamically functional structuring of his greater plays. Despite this shortcoming, Godshalk’s book is well worth the reading; for its pages abound with excellent examples of various formative elements in Shakespeare’s plays. DONALD K. ANDERSON, JR. U n iversity o f M issouri, C olum bia Vincent Wall. B ern ard Shaw: P ygm alion to M a n y Players. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1973. Pp. xii + 171. $8.50. This work is a useful chronicle of Shaw’s encounters with people in the theatre world. By his own admission he was “incorrigibly didactic,” and this attribute was particularly noticeable when his own plays were in preparation. He sat through the rehearsals without offering criticism, but every night he sent letters of advice to the actors and actresses which they received with their breakfast mail. These entertaining scribbles are a valuable commentary by the playwright on his own plays. His instruc­ tions were practical, incisive, often insulting, and devastatingly witty. However odious these punctilious directions must have been to the recipi­ ents, one cannot be grateful enough to the players for saving them. And although I have reservations about this book, one should also be grate­ ful to Vincent Wall for putting these letters into the context of Shaw’s career. The sketches of Shaw’s tutelage of Janet Achurch, Florence Farr, Louis Calvert, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and Granville Barker are held together by a fast-moving account of the development of modem theatre. No exhaustive probing is required in the sections relating theatre history because Shaw’s fortunes are well known. Most of the material has been published before, in Shaw’s eight biographies, in the numerous letter col­ lections, and in such specialty studies as Bernard Dukore’s B ernard Shaw , D irector. What is new is Wall’s exploration of the reasons for saturating the players with advice. The nature of the plays demanded it, he contends, especially the unusual musical quality of a Shaw play. Some of his argu­ ments, however, do not prove an inherently musical quality in the plays, but only a speaker’s fondness for the vocabulary of music (“Now—down to pianissim o!’’). Wall’s position is stronger when he shifts from biograph­ ical anecdotes to critical analysis and (to cite one example) likens the Reviews 93 development of ideas in a particular play to “operatic structure.” It is an impressive chapter. He draws together a broad range of scholarship ef­ fortlessly. But for all the testimonials affirming the existence of musical form in the plays, it is not clear how the concept is useful. Is a play by Shaw any more “musical” than one by Yeats, Synge, or Maeterlinck? Are Pinter’s pauses rests? Sometimes one despairs that Pater ever wrote “All art constantly aspires to the condition of music.” The critical analysis of the music in Shaw’s plays is essential to Wall’s thesis: that Shaw was obsessed with instructing the actors and actresses because the musical qualities made extraordinary demands upon their skills. Every line had a precise aural shape in the mind of the playwright. The performers were drilled and harangued (in the privacy of a letter) about their phonetics, their intonation, their rhythmic pacing. But were the players truly deficient in musical intuition? Or merely unaccustomed to echoing the master’s voice? For there was a strain of tyranny in Shaw’s didacticism. Shaw’s firm position of authority in the production of his plays re­ sulted in a new conception of the director’s role. But his idea...