Comedy and Philosophy in Man and Superman

Comedy and Philosophy in Man and Superman A.M. GIBBS • In the name of human vitality WHERE is the charm in that useless, dispiriting, discouraging fatalism which broke out so horribly in the eighteen -sixties at the word of Darwin, and persuaded people in spite of their own teeth and claws that Man is the will-less slave and victim ofhis environment? What is the use of writing plays? - what is the use of anything? - if there is not a Will that finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods with heaven for an environment, and if that Will is not incarnated in man, and if the hero (of a novel or play or epoch or what you please) does not by the strength of his portion in that Will exorcise ghosts, sweep fathers into the chimney corner, and burn up all the rubbish within his reach with his torch before he hands it on to the next hero? Shaw to Henry James, 17 January 1909 MAN AND SUPERMAN is sub-titled "A Comedy and a Philosophy." Shaw himself, in his discussion of the play and its antecedents in the Epistle Dedicatory addressed to A.B. Walkley, tends to encourage the notion that the comedy and philosophy are largely unrelated entities in the work. He refers to the dream-sequence as something "totally extraneous" 161 162 A. M. GIBBS to the "perfectly modern three-act play," and compares himself~ in his offering Walkley a glimpse of the Mozartian Don Juan and his antagonist in the Dream, to "the strolling theatrical manager who advertizes the pantomime of Sinbad the Sailor with a stock of second-hand picture posters designed for Ali Baba. He simply thrusts a few oil jars into the valley of diamonds, and so fulfils the promise held out by the hoardings to the public eye."l But the dramatic artist at work in Man and Superman brings the play and the philosophical Dream into a much more closely integrated relation than this comparison suggests. The play and the Dream are mutually modifying and mutually illuminating, and the "philosophy," that complex amalgam of views on politics, evolution, art, the relations of the sexes, and human nature in general which emerges from the work, is partly defined in its import and directions by the shape and development of the comic action. This essay explores the relations between the philosophical themes expressed in the discussions in the play and Dream, and the meanings inherent in the action and in Shaw's manipulation of dramatic conventions . One of the main contentions is that although Man and Superman as a whole contains profoundly sceptical and pessimistic ingredients, the more affirmative and optimistic views which are voiced by Don Juan/ Tanner in the Dream are, on the whole, aligned with the victorious forces in the action. In this account, Tanner's capitulation to Ann at the end of the play is seen as a defeat only in a very limited sense. In discussing the meanings inherent in the play's action, I have found it useful to compare the basic patterns of the main and sub-plots with an account of the classical New Comedy which Northrop Frye presented in his Anatomy of Criticism. An examination is also made of some of the changes which Shaw made to the Don Juan story as it is found in Mozart's opera. The Comic Pattern In his chapter on comedy in Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye provides us with the following description of the characteristic structure and import ofplays which belong to the Greek and Roman New Comedy: What normally happens [in these plays] is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero to have his will. In this simple pattern there are several complex elements. In the first place, the movement of comedy is usually a movement from one kind of society to another. At the beginning of the play the obstructing characters are in charge of the play's society, and the audience recognizes that they are...