The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics

Bernard Shaw and the Drama of Imperialism

Bernard Shaw and the Drama of Imperialism J. ELLEN GAINOR It should not be possible to read nineteenth-century British literature without remembering that imperialism, understood as England's social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural representation ofEngland to the English. The role of literature in the production of cultural representation should not be ignored. These two obvious "facts" continue to be disregarded in the reading ofnineteenth-century British literature. This itselfattests to the continuing success of the imperialist project, displaced and dispersed into more modern forms. -Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism" In recent years, analysts of British fiction and poetry have acknowledged Spivak's 1986 critique of literary scholarship and begun to incorporate her theoretical views into their work (along with those of Edward Said and others noted for their studies of imperialism and literature }.1 This understanding of the influence of imperialism on British literature has not spread to studies of the drama, however. Although many other aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought have been Shaw and the Drama of Imperialism : 57 explored in their theatrical contexts, scholarly attention has yet to focus on the connection between the imperial enterprise and the drama, not only as a theme, but also as a structuring force guiding setting, plot, and characterization. Bernard Shaw's dramas from the late I890S to I9I9 exemplify this incorporation of imperial issues in the theater; through an examination of plays from this period, I hope to show both the significance of this topic to his dramaturgy and the variety of modes through which he developed it. Closely engaged politically with the progress of imperialism abroad and its impact at home, Shaw included these concerns in his dramas. From the late Victorian era through the early years of World War I, Shaw's plays filled the English stage with images of empire, bringing before his audience a range of views on the colonies and on England 's role as an imperial power. I want first to locate this aspect of Shavian dramaturgy in two visual images-two elements of Shaw's set and costume designs for Misalliance (I9IO) and Heartbreak House (I9I9). In the opening stage description for Misalliance, Shaw carefully depicts the upstage area of John Tarleton 's country house in Hindhead, Surrey. He notes the supporting archway to be erected a bit off center, with more wall to the right than to the left, and then explains: "Just through the arch at [the right] corner stands a new portable Turkish bath."2 The details here are important; according to Shaw's design scheme, the Turkish bath lies directly upstage center, where it remains throughout the play, the visual focus of the scene.3 Midway through act II of Heartbreak House, Hector Hushabye appears dressed for dinner "in a handsome Arab costume,"4 which he wears throughout the entire second half of the drama, standing out markedly from the appearance of the rest of the cast, who sport elegant, English-country-weekend attire. Hector's outfit, like the Turkish bath, has both symbolic and dramatic functions within the play itself. Yet if we think of these design details as existing solely for their immediate plot functions, without considering their larger connotative and allusive potential as signs of imperial ideology, then we reproduce an obliviousness to the critique of imperialism that Shaw would preclude through his plays of this era. Edward Said's notion of the relation of empire to Oriental images in his study Orientalism is useful here for understanding this same connection in Shavian dramaturgy: 58 : Materialist Semiotics The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.... I doubt that it is controversial ... to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries that was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies.5 That Shaw should place two Oriental images so centrally in these plays suggests, albeit subtly, that his interest in British imperialism is likewise central to his work. Given the pervasiveness of this issue in Shaw's oeuvre (including such early novels as Cashel Byron's Profession, set partly in...