George Bernard Shaw | Page 2

whole plan of these pages,
for if there is one thing that Shaw is not, it is irresponsible. The
responsibility in him rings like steel. Or, again, if I simply called him a
Puritan, it might mean something about nude statues or "prudes on the
prowl." Or if I called him a Progressive, it might be supposed to mean
that he votes for Progressives at the County Council election, which I
very much doubt. I have no other course but this: of briefly explaining
such matters as Shaw himself might explain them. Some fastidious
persons may object to my thus putting the moral in front of the fable.
Some may imagine in their innocence that they already understand the
word Puritan or the yet more mysterious word Irishman. The only
person, indeed, of whose approval I feel fairly certain is Mr. Bernard
Shaw himself, the man of many introductions.
* * * *
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION THE PROBLEM OF A
PREFACE THE IRISHMAN THE PURITAN THE PROGRESSIVE
THE CRITIC THE DRAMATIST THE PHILOSOPHER
* * * *
The Irishman

THE English public has commonly professed, with a kind of pride, that
it cannot understand Mr. Bernard Shaw. There are many reasons for it
which ought to be adequately considered in such a book as this. But the
first and most obvious reason is the mere statement that George
Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. At least one reason why
Englishmen cannot understand Mr. Shaw is that Englishmen have
never taken the trouble to understand Irishmen. They will sometimes be
generous to Ireland; but never just to Ireland. They will speak to Ireland;
they will speak for Ireland; but they will not hear Ireland speak. All the
real amiability which most Englishmen undoubtedly feel towards
Irishmen is lavished upon a class of Irishmen which unfortunately does
not exist. The Irishman of the English farce, with his brogue, his
buoyancy, and his tender-hearted irresponsibility, is a man who ought
to have been thoroughly pampered with praise and sympathy, if he had
only existed to receive them. Unfortunately, all the time that we were
creating a comic Irishman in fiction, we were creating a tragic Irishman
in fact. Never perhaps has there been a situation of such excruciating
cross-purposes even in the three-act farce. The more we saw in the
Irishman a sort of warm and weak fidelity, the more he regarded us
with a sort of icy anger. The more the oppressor looked down with an
amiable pity, the more did the oppressed look down with a somewhat
unamiable contempt. But, indeed, it is needless to say that such comic
cross-purposes could be put into a play; they have been put into a play.
They have been put into what is perhaps the most real of Mr. Bernard
Shaw's plays, John Bull's Other Island.
It is somewhat absurd to imagine that any one who has not read a play
by Mr. Shaw will be reading a book about him. But if it comes to that it
is (as I clearly perceive) absurd to be writing a book about Mr. Bernard
Shaw at all. It is indefensibly foolish to attempt to explain a man whose
whole object through life has been to explain himself. But even in
nonsense there is a need for logic and consistency; therefore let us
proceed on the assumption that when I say that all Mr. Shaw's blood
and origin may be found in John Bull's Other Island, some reader may
answer that he does not know the play. Besides, it is more important to
put the reader right about England and Ireland even than to put him
right about Shaw. If he reminds me that this is a book about Shaw, I

can only assure him that I will reasonably, and at proper intervals,
remember the fact.
Mr. Shaw himself said once, "I am a typical Irishman; my family came
from Yorkshire." Scarcely anyone but a typical Irishman could have
made the remark. It is in fact a bull, a conscious bull. A bull is only a
paradox which people are too stupid to understand. It is the rapid
summary of something which is at once so true and so complex that the
speaker who has the swift intelligence to perceive it, has not the slow
patience to explain it. Mystical dogmas are much of this kind. Dogmas
are often spoken of as if they were signs of the slowness or endurance
of the human mind. As a matter of fact, they are marks of mental
promptitude and lucid impatience. A man will put his meaning
mystically because he cannot waste time in putting it rationally.
Dogmas are not dark and mysterious; rather a dogma is like a flash of
lightning--an instantaneous lucidity that opens