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Victorian Stage Pulpiteer: Bernard Shaw's Crusade by Alan P. Barr (review)
- Modern Drama
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 1975
- pp. 121-122
- 10.1353/mdr.1975.0007
- Review
- Additional Information
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BOOK REVIEWS 121 some discomfort. But then the Diary as a whole is an uncomfortable document. It will not satisfy those who would enshrine Bertolt Brecht in a parthenon of Marxist orthodoxy and it most definitely will not please those critics who seek Brecht purged of his deep commitment to open Marxist experimentation. The diary will please those willing to take Brecht on his own difficult and challenging terms. Werner Hecht is to be congratulated on making this Brecht available to us. JOHN FUEGI University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee VICTORIAN STAGE PULPITEER: BERNARD SHAW'S CRUSADE, by Alan P. Barr. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1973. xiv & 188 pp. $8.50. Ever since Chesterton began discussing Shaw, all but the densest critics have recognized the strong religious bent of Shaw's mind. Some - notably Eric Bentley, a quarter-century ago - have attempted to summarize Shaw's religious creed and explain its origins; some have taken it into account in discussing certain of his plays. Nevertheless, as Alan P. Barr notes in the Introduction of his book, one of the two principal tasks beckoning Shaw scholars (the other being a fulllength treatment of Shaw as a dramatic artist) is the investigation "of Shaw as a religious dramatist, (which) is the subject of this enquiry." Unhappily, Victorian Stage Pulpiteer does not realize the expectations thus invited. Barr's investigation begins with an account of Christianity in the Victorian period that he himself calls, with regrettable accuracy, superficial. He follows it with a chapter on Shaw's "particular religious upbringing" that invites the same adjective, and a chapter on the religious elements in the childhood of Yeats and Joyce, the relevance of which to a study of Shaw is by no means clear. There follows a chapter on the "need" for religion and religious education, and one on "the failure of existing religions," the latter comprising an account of Shaw's criticisms of Christianity, with brief references to certain of the plays. One is now half-way through the book, and virtually nothing has been said about Shaw as a religious dramatist. There follow an account of Creative Evolution (again, with nothing new for readers of G.B.S. or Eric Bentley), a chapter on Shaw's development and use of the persona "G.B.S.," brief discussions of Shaw's views of Bunyan, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wagner and Nietzsche; then - at last - two short chapters in which Shaw's dramatic presentation of his religious views is given a limited examination. It is all too cursory, too slight. The hard questions are not raised: for example, in what sense is Creative Evolution a religious faith rather than a scientific hypothesis with social implications - or even, as Robert Brustein calls it, an "amiable fiction"? Was Shaw, as he liked to claim, a mystic? Does he indeed have anything in common with those religious figures to whom that word is commonly applied? What element informs the plays that is discernibly religious, other than the sermonising that they contain? Does their "religious" content change, from The Devil's Disciple to Too True to be Good? Professor Barr quotes in a footnote, with evident approval, a remarkable 122 BOOK REVIEWS comment of J.W. Krutch: "Though he never wrote it down in systematic form Shaw has at one time or another propounded the parts of what is probably the most inclusive body of doctrine since Thomas Aquinas"(p.49). Krutch's observation supports Barr's introductory statement about the need of studying Shaw as a religious dramatist. Yet I am left with an uncomfortable feeling that Barr has not clearly decided whether to take Shaw seriously, whether he regards him as a religious dramatist at all. My discomfort is made acute by the tone of condescension (or is it simple embarrassment?) that emerges from time to time - as, for example, in the final paragraph of the book: Shaw can ... be seen as a product of the Victorian age, who, propelled by a profound humanitarianism and religiosity, attempted-to grapple with its problems. The result of his artistic and philosophical efforts is a basically religious system, solemnly, comically affirming that, if we will, we can survive and even flourish...