N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are notby me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor GilbertMurray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramaticliterature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortlybefore Major Barbara was begun. The play, indeed, stands indebted tohim in more ways than one.
G. B. S.
Before dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me, forthe credit of English literature, make a protest against an unpatriotichabit into which many of my critics have fallen. Whenever my viewstrikes them as being at all outside the range of, say, an ordinarysuburban churchwarden, they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer,Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch innorthern or eastern Europe.
I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in myaccomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a philosopher. But Icannot tolerate the assumption that life and literature is so poor inthese islands that we must go abroad for all dramatic material that isnot common and all ideas that are not superficial. I therefore ventureto put my critics in possession of certain facts concerning my contactwith modern ideas.
About half a century ago, an Irish novelist, Charles Lever, wrote astory entitled A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. It was published byCharles Dickens in Household Words, and proved so strange to the publictaste that Dickens pressed Lever to make short work of it. I readscraps of this novel when I was a child; and it made an enduringimpression on me. The hero was a very romantic hero, trying to livebravely, chivalrously, and powerfully by dint of mere romance-fedimagination, without courage, without means, without knowledge, withoutskill, without anything real except his bodily appetites. Even in mychildhood I found in this poor devil's unsuccessful encounters with thefacts of life, a poignant quality that romantic fiction lacked. Thebook, in spite of its first failure, is not dead: I saw its title theother day in the catalogue of Tauchnitz.
Now why is it that when I also deal in the tragi-comic irony of theconflict between real life and the romantic imagination, no critic everaffiliates me to my countryman and immediate forerunner, Charles Lever,whilst they confidently derive me from a Norwegian author of whoselanguage I do not know three words, and of whom I knew nothing untilyears after the Shavian Anschauung was already unequivocally declaredin books full of what came, ten years later, to be perfunctorilylabelled Ibsenism. I was not Ibsenist even at second hand; for Lever,though he may have read Henri Beyle, alias Stendhal, certainly neverread Ibsen. Of the books that made Lever popular, such as CharlesO'Malley and Harry Lorrequer, I know nothing but the names and some ofthe illustrations. But the story of the day's ride and life's romanceof Potts (claiming alliance with Pozzo di Borgo) caught me andfascinated me as something strange and significant, though I alreadyknew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and manyanother romantic hero mocked by reality. From the plays of Aristophanesto the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to allwho are properly saturated with letters.
Where, then, was the novelty in Lever's tale? Partly, I think, in a newseriousness in dealing with Potts's disease. Formerly, the contrastbetween madness and sanity was deemed comic