No one who was alive at the time and interested in such matters will ever forget the first acting1 of Arms and the Man. It was applauded by that indescribable element in all of us which rejoices to see the genuine thing prevail against the plausible2; that element which rejoices that even its enemies are alive. Apart from the problems raised in the play, the very form of it was an attractive and forcible innovation. Classic plays which were wholly heroic, comic plays which were wholly and even heartlessly ironical4, were common enough. Commonest of all in this particular time was the play that began playfully, with plenty of comic business, and was gradually sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos6. A commonplace little officer, the butt7 of the mess, becomes by the last act as high and hopeless a lover as Dante. Or a vulgar and violent pork-butcher remembers his own youth before the curtain goes down. The first thing that Bernard Shaw did when he stepped before the footlights was to reverse this process. He resolved to build a play not on pathos, but on bathos. The officer should be heroic first and then everyone should laugh at him; the curtain should go up on a man remembering his youth, and he should only reveal himself as a violent pork-butcher when someone interrupted him with an order for pork. This merely technical originality9 is indicated in the very title of the play. The Arma Virumque of Virgil is a mounting and ascending10 phrase, the man is more than his weapons. The Latin line suggests a superb procession which should bring on to the stage the brazen11 and resounding12 armour13, the shield and shattering axe14, but end with the hero himself, taller and more terrible because unarmed. The technical effect of Shaw’s scheme is like the same scene, in which a crowd should carry even more gigantic shapes of shield and helmet, but when the horns and howls were at their highest, should end with the figure of Little Tich. The name itself is meant to be a bathos; arms—and the man.
It is well to begin with the superficial; and this is the superficial effectiveness of Shaw; the brilliancy of bathos. But of course the vitality15 and value of his plays does not lie merely in this; any more than the value of Swinburne lies in alliteration16 or the value of Hood17 in puns. This is not his message; but it is his method; it is his style. The first taste we had of it was in this play of Arms and the Man; but even at the very first it was evident that there was much more in the play than that. Among other things there was one thing not unimportant; there was savage18 sincerity19. Indeed, only a ferociously20 sincere person can produce such effective flippancies on a matter like war; just as only a strong man could juggle21 with cannon22 balls. It is all very well to use the word “fool” as synonymous with “jester”; but daily experience shows that it is generally the solemn and silent man who is the fool. It is all very well to accuse Mr. Shaw of standing23 on his head; but if you stand on your head you must have a hard and solid head to stand on. In Arms and the Man the bathos of form was strictly24 the incarnation of a strong satire25 in the idea. The play opens in an atmosphere of military melodrama26; the dashing officer of cavalry27 going off to death in an attitude, the lovely heroine left in tearful rapture28; the brass29 band, the noise of guns and the red fire. Into all this enters Bluntschli, the little sturdy crop-haired Swiss professional soldier, a man without a country but with a trade. He tells the army-adoring heroine frankly30 that she is a humbug31; and she, after a moment’s reflection, appears to agree with him. The play is like nearly all Shaw’s plays, the dialogue of a conversion32. By the end of it the young lady has lost all her military illusions and admires this mercenary soldier not because he faces guns, but because he faces facts.
This was a fitting entrance for Shaw to his didactic drama; because the commonplace courage which he respects in Bluntschli was the one virtue34 which he was destined35 to praise throughout. We can best see how the play symbolises and summarises Bernard Shaw if we compare it with some other attack by modern humanitarians36 upon war. Shaw has many of the actual opinions of Tolstoy. Like Tolstoy he tells men, with coarse innocence37, that romantic war is only butchery and that romantic love is only lust38. But Tolstoy objects to these things because they are real; he really wishes to abolish them. Shaw only objects to them in so far as they are ideal; that is in so far as they are idealised. Shaw objects not so much to war as to the attractiveness of war. He does not so much dislike love as the love of love. Before the temple of Mars, Tolstoy stands and thunders, “There shall be no wars”; Bernard Shaw merely murmurs39, “Wars if you must; but for God’s sake, not war songs.” Before the temple of Venus, Tolstoy cries terribly, “Come out of it!”; Shaw is quite content to say, “Do not be taken in by it.” Tolstoy seems really to propose that high passion and patriotic40 valour should be destroyed. Shaw is more moderate; and only asks that they should be desecrated42. Upon this note, both about sex and conflict, he was destined to dwell through much of his work with the most wonderful variations of witty43 adventure and intellectual surprise. It may be doubted perhaps whether this realism in love and war is quite so sensible as it looks. Securus judicat orbis terrarum; the world is wiser than the moderns. The world has kept sentimentalities simply because they are the most practical things in the world. They alone make men do things. The world does not encourage a quite rational lover, simply because a perfectly44 rational lover would never get married. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational army, because a perfectly rational army would run away.
The brain of Bernard Shaw was like a wedge in the literal sense. Its sharpest end was always in front; and it split our society from end to end the moment it had entrance at all. As I have said he was long unheard of; but he had not the tragedy of many authors, who were heard of long before they were heard. When you had read any Shaw you read all Shaw. When you had seen one of his plays you waited for more. And when he brought them out in volume form, you did what is repugnant to any literary man—you bought a book.
The dramatic volume with which Shaw dazzled the public was called, Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant. I think the most striking and typical thing about it was that he did not know very clearly which plays were unpleasant and which were pleasant. “Pleasant” is a word which is almost unmeaning to Bernard Shaw. Except, as I suppose, in music (where I cannot follow him), relish45 and receptivity are things that simply do not appear. He has the best of tongues and the worst of palates. With the possible exception of Mrs. Warren’s Profession (which was at least unpleasant in the sense of being forbidden) I can see no particular reason why any of the seven plays should be held specially46 to please or displease47. First in fame and contemporary importance came the reprint of Arms and the Man, of which I have already spoken. Over all the rest towered unquestionably the two figures of Mrs. Warren and of Candida. They were neither of them pleasant, except as all good art is pleasant. They were neither of them really unpleasant except as all truth is unpleasant. But they did represent the author’s normal preference and his principal fear; and those two sculptured giantesses largely upheld his fame.
I fancy that the author rather dislikes Candida because it is so generally liked. I give my own feeling for what it is worth (a foolish phrase), but I think that there were only two moments when this powerful writer was truly, in the ancient and popular sense, inspired; that is, breathing from a bigger self and telling more truth than he knew. One is that scene in a later play where after the secrets and revenges of Egypt have rioted and rotted all round him, the colossal49 sanity50 of C?sar is suddenly acclaimed51 with swords. The other is that great last scene in Candida where the wife, stung into final speech, declared her purpose of remaining with the strong man because he is the weak man. The wife is asked to decide between two men, one a strenuous52 self-confident popular preacher, her husband, the other a wild and weak young poet, logically futile53 and physically54 timid, her lover; and she chooses the former because he has more weakness and more need of her. Even among the plain and ringing paradoxes55 of the Shaw play this is one of the best reversals or turnovers57 ever effected. A paradoxical writer like Bernard Shaw is perpetually and tiresomely58 told that he stands on his head. But all romance and all religion consist in making the whole universe stand on its head. That reversal is the whole idea of virtue; that the last shall be first and the first last. Considered as a pure piece of Shaw therefore, the thing is of the best. But it is also something much better than Shaw. The writer touches certain realities commonly outside his scope; especially the reality of the normal wife’s attitude to the normal husband, an attitude which is not romantic but which is yet quite quixotic; which is insanely unselfish and yet quite cynically59 clear-sighted. It involves human sacrifice without in the least involving idolatry.
The truth is that in this place Bernard Shaw comes within an inch of expressing something that is not properly expressed anywhere else; the idea of marriage. Marriage is not a mere8 chain upon love as the anarchists60 say; nor is it a mere crown upon love as the sentimentalists say. Marriage is a fact, an actual human relation like that of motherhood which has certain human habits and loyalties62, except in a few monstrous63 cases where it is turned to torture by special insanity64 and sin. A marriage is neither an ecstasy65 nor a slavery; it is a commonwealth66; it is a separate working and fighting thing like a nation. Kings and diplomatists talk of “forming alliances” when they make weddings; but indeed every wedding is primarily an alliance. The family is a fact even when it is not an agreeable fact, and a man is part of his wife even when he wishes he wasn’t. The twain are one flesh—yes, even when they are not one spirit. Man is duplex. Man is a quadruped.
Of this ancient and essential relation there are certain emotional results, which are subtle, like all the growths of nature. And one of them is the attitude of the wife to the husband, whom she regards at once as the strongest and most helpless of human figures. She regards him in some strange fashion at once as a warrior67 who must make his way and as an infant who is sure to lose his way. The man has emotions which exactly correspond; sometimes looking down at his wife and sometimes up at her; for marriage is like a splendid game of see-saw. Whatever else it is, it is not comradeship. This living, ancestral bond (not of love or fear, but strictly of marriage) has been twice expressed splendidly in literature. The man’s incurable68 sense of the mother in his lawful69 wife was uttered by Browning in one of his two or three truly shattering lines of genius, when he makes the execrable Guido fall back finally upon the fact of marriage and the wife whom he has trodden like mire33:
“Christ! Maria! God,
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?”
And the woman’s witness to the same fact has been best expressed by Bernard Shaw in this great scene where she remains70 with the great stalwart successful public man because he is really too little to run alone.
There are one or two errors in the play; and they are all due to the primary error of despising the mental attitude of romance, which is the only key to real human conduct. For instance, the love making of the young poet is all wrong. He is supposed to be a romantic and amorous71 boy; and therefore the dramatist tries to make him talk turgidly, about seeking for “an archangel with purple wings” who shall be worthy72 of his lady. But a lad in love would never talk in this mock heroic style; there is no period at which the young male is more sensitive and serious and afraid of looking a fool. This is a blunder; but there is another much bigger and blacker. It is completely and disastrously73 false to the whole nature of falling in love to make the young Eugene complain of the cruelty which makes Candida defile74 her fair hands with domestic duties. No boy in love with a beautiful woman would ever feel disgusted when she peeled potatoes or trimmed lamps. He would like her to be domestic. He would simply feel that the potatoes had become poetical76 and the lamps gained an extra light. This may be irrational77; but we are not talking of rationality, but of the psychology78 of first love. It may be very unfair to women that the toil79 and triviality of potato peeling should be seen through a glamour80 of romance; but the glamour is quite as certain a fact as the potatoes. It may be a bad thing in sociology that men should deify domesticity in girls as something dainty and magical; but all men do. Personally I do not think it a bad thing at all; but that is another argument. The argument here is that Bernard Shaw, in aiming at mere realism, makes a big mistake in reality. Misled by his great heresy81 of looking at emotions from the outside, he makes Eugene a cold-blooded prig at the very moment when he is trying, for his own dramatic purposes, to make him a hot-blooded lover. He makes the young lover an idealistic theoriser about the very things about which he really would have been a sort of mystical materialist82. Here the romantic Irishman is much more right than the very rational one; and there is far more truth to life as it is in Lover’s couplet—
“And envied the chicken
That Peggy was pickin’.”
than in Eugene’s solemn, ?sthetic protest against the potato-skins and the lamp-oil. For dramatic purposes, G. B. S., even if he despises romance, ought to comprehend it. But then, if once he comprehended romance, he would not despise it.
The series contained, besides its more substantial work, tragic83 and comic, a comparative frivolity84 called The Man of Destiny. It is a little comedy about Napoleon, and is chiefly interesting as a foreshadowing of his after sketches86 of heroes and strong men; it is a kind of parody87 of C?sar and Cleopatra before it was written. In this connection the mere title of this Napoleonic play is of interest. All Shaw’s generation and school of thought remembered Napoleon only by his late and corrupt88 title of “The Man of Destiny,” a title only given to him when he was already fat and tired and destined to exile. They forgot that through all the really thrilling and creative part of his career he was not the man of destiny, but the man who defied destiny. Shaw’s sketch85 is extraordinarily89 clever; but it is tinged90 with this unmilitary notion of an inevitable91 conquest; and this we must remember when we come to those larger canvases on which he painted his more serious heroes. As for the play, it is packed with good things, of which the last is perhaps the best. The long duologue between Bonaparte and the Irish lady ends with the General declaring that he will only be beaten when he meets an English army under an Irish general. It has always been one of Shaw’s paradoxes that the English mind has the force to fulfil orders, while the Irish mind has the intelligence to give them, and it is among those of his paradoxes which contain a certain truth.
A far more important play is The Philanderer92, an ironic3 comedy which is full of fine strokes and real satire; it is more especially the vehicle of some of Shaw’s best satire upon physical science. Nothing could be cleverer than the picture of the young, strenuous doctor, in the utter innocence of his professional ambition, who has discovered a new disease, and is delighted when he finds people suffering from it and cast down to despair when he finds that it does not exist. The point is worth a pause, because it is a good, short way of stating Shaw’s attitude, right or wrong, upon the whole of formal morality. What he dislikes in young Doctor Paramore is that he has interposed a secondary and false conscience between himself and the facts. When his disease is disproved, instead of seeing the escape of a human being who thought he was going to die of it, Paramore sees the downfall of a kind of flag or cause. This is the whole contention93 of The Quintessence of Ibsenism, put better than the book puts it; it is a really sharp exposition of the dangers of “idealism,” the sacrifice of people to principles, and Shaw is even wiser in his suggestion that this excessive idealism exists nowhere so strongly as in the world of physical science. He shows that the scientist tends to be more concerned about the sickness than about the sick man; but it was certainly in his mind to suggest here also that the idealist is more concerned about the sin than about the sinner.
This business of Dr. Paramore’s disease while it is the most farcical thing in the play is also the most philosophic94 and important. The rest of the figures, including the Philanderer himself, are in the full sense of those blasting and obliterating95 words “funny without being vulgar,” that is, funny without being of any importance to the masses of men. It is a play about a dashing and advanced “Ibsen Club,” and the squabble between the young Ibsenites and the old people who are not yet up to Ibsen. It would be hard to find a stronger example of Shaw’s only essential error, modernity—which means the seeking for truth in terms of time. Only a few years have passed and already almost half the wit of that wonderful play is wasted, because it all turns on the newness of a fashion that is no longer new. Doubtless many people still think the Ibsen drama a great thing, like the French classical drama. But going to “The Philanderer” is like going among periwigs and rapiers and hearing that the young men are now all for Racine. What makes such work sound unreal is not the praise of Ibsen, but the praise of the novelty of Ibsen. Any advantage that Bernard Shaw had over Colonel Craven I have over Bernard Shaw; we who happen to be born last have the meaningless and paltry97 triumph in that meaningless and paltry war. We are the superiors by that silliest and most snobbish98 of all superiorities, the mere aristocracy of time. All works must become thus old and insipid99 which have ever tried to be “modern,” which have consented to smell of time rather than of eternity100. Only those who have stooped to be in advance of their time will ever find themselves behind it.
But it is irritating to think what diamonds, what dazzling silver of Shavian wit has been sunk in such an out-of-date warship101. In The Philanderer there are five hundred excellent and about five magnificent things. The rattle102 of repartees between the doctor and the soldier about the humanity of their two trades is admirable. Or again, when the colonel tells Chartaris that “in his young days” he would have no more behaved like Chartaris than he would have cheated at cards. After a pause Chartaris says, “You’re getting old, Craven, and you make a virtue of it as usual.” And there is an altitude of aerial tragedy in the words of Grace, who has refused the man she loves, to Julia, who is marrying the man she doesn’t, “This is what they call a happy ending—these men.”
There is an acrid103 taste in The Philanderer; and certainly he might be considered a super-sensitive person who should find anything acrid in You Never Can Tell. This play is the nearest approach to frank and objectless exuberance104 in the whole of Shaw’s work. Punch, with wisdom as well as wit, said that it might well be called not “You Never Can Tell” but “You Never Can be Shaw.” And yet if anyone will read this blazing farce105 and then after it any of the romantic farces106, such as Pickwick or even The Wrong Box, I do not think he will be disposed to erase107 or even to modify what I said at the beginning about the ingrained grimness and even inhumanity of Shaw’s art. To take but one test: love, in an “extravaganza,” may be light love or love in idleness, but it should be hearty108 and happy love if it is to add to the general hilarity109. Such are the ludicrous but lucky love affairs of the sportsman Winkle and the Maestro Jimson. In Gloria’s collapse110 before her bullying111 lover there is something at once cold and unclean; it calls up all the modern supermen with their cruel and fishy112 eyes. Such farces should begin in a friendly air, in a tavern113. There is something very symbolic114 of Shaw in the fact that his farce begins in a dentist’s.
The only one out of this brilliant batch115 of plays in which I think that the method adopted really fails, is the one called Widower116’s Houses. The best touch of Shaw is simply in the title. The simple substitution of widowers117 for widows contains almost the whole bitter and yet boisterous118 protest of Shaw; all his preference for undignified fact over dignified119 phrase; all his dislike of those subtle trends of sex or mystery which swing the logician120 off the straight line. We can imagine him crying, “Why in the name of death and conscience should it be tragic to be a widow but comic to be a widower?” But the rationalistic method is here applied121 quite wrong as regards the production of a drama. The most dramatic point in the affair is when the open and indecent rack-renter turns on the decent young man of means and proves to him that he is equally guilty, that he also can only grind his corn by grinding the faces of the poor. But even here the point is undramatic because it is indirect; it is indirect because it is merely sociological. It may be the truth that a young man living on an unexamined income which ultimately covers a great deal of house-property is as dangerous as any despot or thief. But it is a truth that you can no more put into a play than into a triolet. You can make a play out of one man robbing another man, but not out of one man robbing a million men; still less out of his robbing them unconsciously.
Of the plays collected in this book I have kept Mrs. Warren’s Profession to the last, because, fine as it is, it is even finer and more important because of its fate, which was to rouse a long and serious storm and to be vetoed by the Censor122 of Plays. I say that this drama is most important because of the quarrel that came out of it. If I were speaking of some mere artist this might be an insult. But there are high and heroic things in Bernard Shaw; and one of the highest and most heroic is this, that he certainly cares much more for a quarrel than for a play. And this quarrel about the censorship is one on which he feels so strongly that in a book embodying123 any sort of sympathy it would be much better to leave out Mrs. Warren than to leave out Mr. Redford. The veto was the pivot124 of so very personal a movement by the dramatist, of so very positive an assertion of his own attitude towards things, that it is only just and necessary to state what were the two essential parties to the dispute; the play and the official who prevented the play.
The play of Mrs. Warren’s Profession is concerned with a coarse mother and a cold daughter; the mother drives the ordinary and dirty trade of harlotry; the daughter does not know until the end the atrocious origin of all her own comfort and refinement125. The daughter, when the discovery is made, freezes up into an iceberg126 of contempt; which is indeed a very womanly thing to do. The mother explodes into pulverising cynicism and practicality; which is also very womanly. The dialogue is drastic and sweeping127; the daughter says the trade is loathsome128; the mother answers that she loathes130 it herself; that every healthy person does loathe129 the trade by which she lives. And beyond question the general effect of the play is that the trade is loathsome; supposing anyone to be so insensible as to require to be told of the fact. Undoubtedly131 the upshot is that a brothel is a miserable132 business, and a brothel-keeper a miserable woman. The whole dramatic art of Shaw is in the literal sense of the word, tragi-comic; I mean that the comic part comes after the tragedy. But just as You Never Can Tell represents the nearest approach of Shaw to the purely133 comic, so Mrs. Warren’s Profession represents his only complete, or nearly complete, tragedy. There is no twopenny modernism in it, as in The Philanderer. Mrs. Warren is as old as the Old Testament134; “for she hath cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been slain135 by her; her house is in the gates of hell, going down into the chamber136 of death.” Here is no subtle ethics137, as in Widowers’ Houses; for even those moderns who think it noble that a woman should throw away her honour, surely cannot think it especially noble that she should sell it. Here is no lighting138 up by laughter, astonishment139, and happy coincidence, as in You Never Can Tell. The play is a pure tragedy about a permanent and quite plain human problem; the problem is as plain and permanent, the tragedy is as proud and pure, as in OEdipus or Macbeth. This play was presented in the ordinary way for public performance and was suddenly stopped by the Censor of Plays.
The Censor of Plays is a small and accidental eighteenth-century official. Like nearly all the powers which Englishmen now respect as ancient and rooted, he is very recent. Novels and newspapers still talk of the English aristocracy that came over with William the Conqueror140. Little of our effective oligarchy141 is as old as the Reformation; and none of it came over with William the Conqueror. Some of the older English landlords came over with William of Orange; the rest have come by ordinary alien immigration. In the same way we always talk of the Victorian woman (with her smelling salts and sentiment) as the old-fashioned woman. But she really was a quite new-fashioned woman; she considered herself, and was, an advance in delicacy142 and civilisation143 upon the coarse and candid48 Elizabethan woman to whom we are now returning. We are never oppressed by old things; it is recent things that can really oppress. And in accordance with this principle modern England has accepted, as if it were a part of perennial144 morality, a tenth-rate job of Walpole’s worst days called the Censorship of the Drama. Just as they have supposed the eighteenth-century parvenus145 to date from Hastings, just as they have supposed the eighteenth-century ladies to date from Eve, so they have supposed the eighteenth-century Censorship to date from Sinai. The origin of the thing was in truth purely political. Its first and principal achievement was to prevent Fielding from writing plays; not at all because the plays were coarse, but because they criticised the Government. Fielding was a free writer; but they did not resent his sexual freedom; the Censor would not have objected if he had torn away the most intimate curtains of decency146 or rent the last rag from private life. What the Censor disliked was his rending147 the curtain from public life. There is still much of that spirit in our country; there are no affairs which men seek so much to cover up as public affairs. But the thing was done somewhat more boldly and baldly in Walpole’s day; and the Censorship of plays has its origin, not merely in tyranny, but in a quite trifling148 and temporary and partisan149 piece of tyranny; a thing in its nature far more ephemeral, far less essential, than Ship Money. Perhaps its brightest moment was when the office of censor was held by that filthy150 writer, Colman the younger; and when he gravely refused to license151 a work by the author of Our Village. Few funnier notions can ever have actually been facts than this notion that the restraint and chastity of George Colman saved the English public from the eroticism and obscenity of Miss Mitford.
Such was the play; and such was the power that stopped the play. A private man wrote it; another private man forbade it; nor was there any difference between Mr. Shaw’s authority and Mr. Redford’s, except that Mr. Shaw did defend his action on public grounds and Mr. Redford did not. The dramatist had simply been suppressed by a despot; and what was worse (because it was modern) by a silent and evasive despot; a despot in hiding. People talk about the pride of tyrants152; but we at the present day suffer from the modesty153 of tyrants; from the shyness and the shrinking secrecy154 of the strong. Shaw’s preface to Mrs. Warren’s Profession was far more fit to be called a public document than the slovenly155 refusal of the individual official; it had more exactness, more universal application, more authority. Shaw on Redford was far more national and responsible than Redford on Shaw.
The dramatist found in the quarrel one of the important occasions of his life, because the crisis called out something in him which is in many ways his highest quality—righteous indignation. As a mere matter of the art of controversy156 of course he carried the war into the enemy’s camp at once. He did not linger over loose excuses for licence; he declared at once that the Censor was licentious157, while he, Bernard Shaw, was clean. He did not discuss whether a Censorship ought to make the drama moral. He declared that it made the drama immoral158. With a fine strategic audacity159 he attacked the Censor quite as much for what he permitted as for what he prevented. He charged him with encouraging all plays that attracted men to vice160 and only stopping those which discouraged them from it. Nor was this attitude by any means an idle paradox56. Many plays appear (as Shaw pointed161 out) in which the prostitute and the procuress are practically obvious, and in which they are represented as revelling162 in beautiful surroundings and basking163 in brilliant popularity. The crime of Shaw was not that he introduced the Gaiety Girl; that had been done, with little enough decorum, in a hundred musical comedies. The crime of Shaw was that he introduced the Gaiety Girl, but did not represent her life as all gaiety. The pleasures of vice were already flaunted164 before the playgoers. It was the perils165 of vice that were carefully concealed166 from them. The gay adventures, the gorgeous dresses, the champagne167 and oysters168, the diamonds and motor-cars, dramatists were allowed to drag all these dazzling temptations before any silly housemaid in the gallery who was grumbling169 at her wages. But they were not allowed to warn her of the vulgarity and the nausea170, the dreary171 deceptions172 and the blasting diseases of that life. Mrs. Warren’s Profession was not up to a sufficient standard of immorality173; it was not spicy174 enough to pass the Censor. The acceptable and the accepted plays were those which made the fall of a woman fashionable and fascinating; for all the world as if the Censor’s profession were the same as Mrs. Warren’s profession.
Such was the angle of Shaw’s energetic attack; and it is not to be denied that there was exaggeration in it, and what is so much worse, omission175. The argument might easily be carried too far; it might end with a scene of screaming torture in the Inquisition as a corrective to the too amiable176 view of a clergyman in The Private Secretary. But the controversy is definitely worth recording177, if only as an excellent example of the author’s aggressive attitude and his love of turning the tables in debate. Moreover, though this point of view involves a potential overstatement, it also involves an important truth. One of the best points urged in the course of it was this, that though vice is punished in conventional drama, the punishment is not really impressive, because it is not inevitable or even probable. It does not arise out of the evil act. Years afterwards Bernard Shaw urged this argument again in connection with his friend Mr. Granville Barker’s play of Waste, in which the woman dies from an illegal operation. Bernard Shaw said, truly enough, that if she had died from poison or a pistol shot it would have left everyone unmoved, for pistols do not in their nature follow female unchastity. Illegal operations very often do. The punishment was one which might follow the crime, not only in that case, but in many cases. Here, I think, the whole argument might be sufficiently178 cleared up by saying that the objection to such things on the stage is a purely artistic179 objection. There is nothing wrong in talking about an illegal operation; there are plenty of occasions when it would be very wrong not to talk about it. But it may easily be just a shade too ugly for the shape of any work of art. There is nothing wrong about being sick; but if Bernard Shaw wrote a play in which all the characters expressed their dislike of animal food by vomiting180 on the stage, I think we should be justified181 in saying that the thing was outside, not the laws of morality, but the framework of civilised literature. The instinctive182 movement of repulsion which everyone has when hearing of the operation in Waste is not an ethical183 repulsion at all. But it is an ?sthetic repulsion, and a right one.
But I have only dwelt on this particular fighting phase because it leaves us facing the ultimate characteristics which I mentioned first. Bernard Shaw cares nothing for art; in comparison with morals, literally184 nothing. Bernard Shaw is a Puritan and his work is Puritan work. He has all the essentials of the old, virile185 and extinct Protestant type. In his work he is as ugly as a Puritan. He is as indecent as a Puritan. He is as full of gross words and sensual facts as a sermon of the seventeenth century. Up to this point of his life indeed hardly anyone would have dreamed of calling him a Puritan; he was called sometimes an anarchist61, sometimes a buffoon186, sometimes (by the more discerning stupid people) a prig. His attitude towards current problems was felt to be arresting and even indecent; I do not think that anyone thought of connecting it with the old Calvinistic morality. But Shaw, who knew better than the Shavians, was at this moment on the very eve of confessing his moral origin. The next book of plays he produced (including The Devil’s Disciple187, Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, and C?sar and Cleopatra), actually bore the title of Plays for Puritans.
The play called The Devil’s Disciple has great merits, but the merits are incidental. Some of its jokes are serious and important, but its general plan can only be called a joke. Almost alone among Bernard Shaw’s plays (except of course such things as How he Lied to her Husband and The Admirable Bashville) this drama does not turn on any very plain pivot of ethical or philosophical188 conviction. The artistic idea seems to be the notion of a melodrama in which all the conventional melodramatic situations shall suddenly take unconventional turns. Just where the melodramatic clergyman would show courage he appears to show cowardice189; just where the melodramatic sinner would confess his love he confesses his indifference190. This is a little too like the Shaw of the newspaper critics rather than the Shaw of reality. There are indeed present in the play two of the writer’s principal moral conceptions. The first is the idea of a great heroic action coming in a sense from nowhere; that is, not coming from any commonplace motive191; being born in the soul in naked beauty, coming with its own authority and testifying only to itself. Shaw’s agent does not act towards something, but from something. The hero dies, not because he desires heroism192, but because he has it. So in this particular play the Devil’s Disciple finds that his own nature will not permit him to put the rope around another man’s neck; he has no reasons of desire, affection, or even equity193; his death is a sort of divine whim194. And in connection with this the dramatist introduces another favourite moral; the objection to perpetual playing upon the motive of sex. He deliberately195 lures196 the onlooker197 into the net of Cupid in order to tell him with salutary decision that Cupid is not there at all. Millions of melodramatic dramatists have made a man face death for the woman he loves; Shaw makes him face death for the woman he does not love—merely in order to put woman in her place. He objects to that idolatry of sexualism which makes it the fountain of all forcible enthusiasms; he dislikes the amorous drama which makes the female the only key to the male. He is Feminist198 in politics, but Anti-feminist in emotion. His key to most problems is, “Ne cherchez pas la femme.”
As has been observed, the incidental felicities of the play are frequent and memorable199, especially those connected with the character of General Burgoyne, the real full-blooded, free-thinking eighteenth century gentleman, who was much too much of an aristocrat200 not to be a liberal. One of the best thrusts in all the Shavian fencing matches is that which occurs when Richard Dudgeon, condemned201 to be hanged, asks rhetorically why he cannot be shot like a soldier. “Now there you speak like a civilian,” replies General Burgoyne. “Have you formed any conception of the condition of marksmanship in the British Army?” Excellent, too, is the passage in which his subordinate speaks of crushing the enemy in America, and Burgoyne asks him who will crush their enemies in England, snobbery202 and jobbery and incurable carelessness and sloth203. And in one sentence towards the end, Shaw reaches a wider and more genial204 comprehension of mankind than he shows anywhere else; “it takes all sorts to make a world, saints as well as soldiers.” If Shaw had remembered that sentence on other occasions he would have avoided his mistake about C?sar and Brutus. It is not only true that it takes all sorts to make a world; but the world cannot succeed without its failures. Perhaps the most doubtful point of all in the play is why it is a play for Puritans; except the hideous205 picture of a Calvinistic home is meant to destroy Puritanism. And indeed in this connection it is constantly necessary to fall back upon the facts of which I have spoken at the beginning of this brief study; it is necessary especially to remember that Shaw could in all probability speak of Puritanism from the inside. In that domestic circle which took him to hear Moody206 and Sankey, in that domestic circle which was teetotal even when it was intoxicated207, in that atmosphere and society Shaw might even have met the monstrous mother in The Devil’s Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately208 wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal209 wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was a Christian210 virtue. It is possible that among Puritans there were people who thought a heart was a kind of heart disease. But it is enough to make one tear one’s hair to think that a man of genius received his first impressions in so small a corner of Europe that he could for a long time suppose that this Puritanism was current among Christian men. The question, however, need not detain us, for the batch of plays contained two others about which it is easier to speak.
The third play in order in the series called Plays for Puritans is a very charming one; Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. This also turns, as does so much of the C?sar drama, on the idea of vanity of revenge—the idea that it is too slight and silly a thing for a man to allow to occupy and corrupt his consciousness. It is not, of course, the morality that is new here, but the touch of cold laughter in the core of the morality. Many saints and sages211 have denounced vengeance212. But they treated vengeance as something too great for man. “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.” Shaw treats vengeance as something too small for man—a monkey trick he ought to have outlived, a childish storm of tears which he ought to be able to control. In the story in question Captain Brassbound has nourished through his whole erratic214 existence, racketting about all the unsavoury parts of Africa—a mission of private punishment which appears to him as a mission of holy justice. His mother has died in consequence of a judge’s decision, and Brassbound roams and schemes until the judge falls into his hands. Then a pleasant society lady, Lady Cicely Waynefleet tells him in an easy conversational215 undertone—a rivulet216 of speech which ripples217 while she is mending his coat—that he is making a fool of himself, that his wrong is irrelevant218, that his vengeance is objectless, that he would be much better if he flung his morbid219 fancy away for ever; in short, she tells him he is ruining himself for the sake of ruining a total stranger. Here again we have the note of the economist220, the hatred221 of mere loss. Shaw (one might almost say) dislikes murder, not so much because it wastes the life of the corpse222 as because it wastes the time of the murderer. If he were endeavouring to persuade one of his moon-lighting fellow-countrymen not to shoot his landlord, I can imagine him explaining with benevolent223 emphasis that it was not so much a question of losing a life as of throwing away a bullet. But indeed the Irish comparison alone suggests a doubt which wriggles224 in the recesses225 of my mind about the complete reliability226 of the philosophy of Lady Cicely Waynefleet, the complete finality of the moral of Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. Of course, it was very natural in an aristocrat like Lady Cicely Waynefleet to wish to let sleeping dogs lie, especially those whom Mr. Blatchford calls under-dogs. Of course it was natural for her to wish everything to be smooth and sweet-tempered. But I have the obstinate227 question in the corner of my brain, whether if a few Captain Brassbounds did revenge themselves on judges, the quality of our judges might not materially improve.
When this doubt is once off one’s conscience one can lose oneself in the bottomless beatitude of Lady Cicely Waynefleet, one of the most living and laughing things that her maker228 has made. I do not know any stronger way of stating the beauty of the character than by saying that it was written specially for Ellen Terry, and that it is, with Beatrice, one of the very few characters in which the dramatist can claim some part of her triumph.
We may now pass to the more important of the plays. For some time Bernard Shaw would seem to have been brooding upon the soul of Julius C?sar. There must always be a strong human curiosity about the soul of Julius C?sar; and, among other things, about whether he had a soul. The conjunction of Shaw and C?sar has about it something smooth and inevitable; for this decisive reason, that C?sar is really the only great man of history to whom the Shaw theories apply. C?sar was a Shaw hero. C?sar was merciful without being in the least pitiful; his mercy was colder than justice. C?sar was a conqueror without being in any hearty sense a soldier; his courage was lonelier than fear. C?sar was a demagogue without being a democrat229. In the same way Bernard Shaw is a demagogue without being a democrat. If he had tried to prove his principle from any of the other heroes or sages of mankind he would have found it much more difficult. Napoleon achieved more miraculous230 conquest; but during his most conquering epoch231 he was a burning boy suicidally in love with a woman far beyond his age. Joan of Arc achieved far more instant and incredible worldly success; but Joan of Arc achieved worldly success because she believed in another world. Nelson was a figure fully5 as fascinating and dramatically decisive; but Nelson was “romantic”; Nelson was a devoted232 patriot41 and a devoted lover. Alexander was passionate233; Cromwell could shed tears; Bismarck had some suburban234 religion; Frederick was a poet; Charlemagne was fond of children. But Julius C?sar attracted Shaw not less by his positive than by his negative enormousness. Nobody can say with certainty that C?sar cared for anything. It is unjust to call C?sar an egoist; for there is no proof that he cared even for C?sar. He may not have been either an atheist235 or a pessimist236. But he may have been; that is exactly the rub. He may have been an ordinary decently good man slightly deficient237 in spiritual expansiveness. On the other hand, he may have been the incarnation of paganism in the sense that Christ was the incarnation of Christianity. As Christ expressed how great a man can be humble238 and humane239, C?sar may have expressed how great a man can be frigid240 and flippant. According to most legends Antichrist was to come soon after Christ. One has only to suppose that Antichrist came shortly before Christ; and Antichrist might very well be C?sar.
It is, I think, no injustice241 to Bernard Shaw to say that he does not attempt to make his C?sar superior except in this naked and negative sense. There is no suggestion, as there is in the Jehovah of the Old Testament, that the very cruelty of the higher being conceals242 some tremendous and even tortured love. C?sar is superior to other men not because he loves more, but because he hates less. C?sar is magnanimous not because he is warm-hearted enough to pardon, but because he is not warm-hearted enough to avenge243. There is no suggestion anywhere in the play that he is hiding any great genial purpose or powerful tenderness towards men. In order to put this point beyond a doubt the dramatist has introduced a soliloquy of C?sar alone with the Sphinx. There if anywhere he would have broken out into ultimate brotherhood244 or burning pity for the people. But in that scene between the Sphinx and C?sar, C?sar is as cold and as lonely and as dead as the Sphinx.
But whether the Shavian C?sar is a sound ideal or no, there can be little doubt that he is a very fine reality. Shaw has done nothing greater as a piece of artistic creation. If the man is a little like a statue, it is a statue by a great sculptor245; a statue of the best period. If his nobility is a little negative in its character, it is the negative darkness of the great dome75 of night; not as in some “new moralities” the mere mystery of the coal-hole. Indeed, this somewhat austere246 method of work is very suitable to Shaw when he is serious. There is nothing Gothic about his real genius; he could not build a medi?val cathedral in which laughter and terror are twisted together in stone, molten by mystical passion. He can build, by way of amusement, a Chinese pagoda247; but when he is in earnest, only a Roman temple. He has a keen eye for truth; but he is one of those people who like, as the saying goes, to put down the truth in black and white. He is always girding and jeering248 at romantics and idealists because they will not put down the truth in black and white. But black and white are not the only two colours in the world. The modern man of science who writes down a fact in black and white is not more but less accurate than the medi?val monk213 who wrote it down in gold and scarlet249, sea-green and turquoise250. Nevertheless, it is a good thing that the more austere method should exist separately, and that some men should be specially good at it. Bernard Shaw is specially good at it; he is preeminently a black and white artist.
And as a study in black and white nothing could be better than this sketch of Julius C?sar. He is not so much represented as “bestriding the earth like a Colossus” (which is indeed a rather comic attitude for a hero to stand in), but rather walking the earth with a sort of stern levity251, lightly touching252 the planet and yet spurning253 it away like a stone. He walks like a winged man who has chosen to fold his wings. There is something creepy even about his kindness; it makes the men in front of him feel as if they were made of glass. The nature of the C?sarian mercy is massively suggested. C?sar dislikes a massacre254, not because it is a great sin, but because it is a small sin. It is felt that he classes it with a flirtation255 or a fit of the sulks; a senseless temporary subjugation256 of man’s permanent purpose by his passing and trivial feelings. He will plunge257 into slaughter258 for a great purpose, just as he plunges259 into the sea. But to be stung into such action he deems as undignified as to be tipped off the pier96. In a singularly fine passage Cleopatra, having hired assassins to stab an enemy, appeals to her wrongs as justifying260 her revenge, and says, “If you can find one man in all Africa who says that I did wrong, I will be crucified by my own slaves.” “If you can find one man in all the world,” replies C?sar, “who can see that you did wrong, he will either conquer the world as I have done or be crucified by it.” That is the high water mark of this heathen sublimity261; and we do not feel it inappropriate, or unlike Shaw, when a few minutes afterwards the hero is saluted262 with a blaze of swords.
As usually happens in the author’s works, there is even more about Julius C?sar in the preface than there is in the play. But in the preface I think the portrait is less imaginative and more fanciful. He attempts to connect his somewhat chilly263 type of superman with the heroes of the old fairy tales. But Shaw should not talk about the fairy tales; for he does not feel them from the inside. As I have said, on all this side of historic and domestic traditions Bernard Shaw is weak and deficient. He does not approach them as fairy tales, as if he were four, but as “folk-lore” as if he were forty. And he makes a big mistake about them which he would never have made if he had kept his birthday and hung up his stocking, and generally kept alive inside him the firelight of a home. The point is so peculiarly characteristic of Bernard Shaw, and is indeed so much of a summary of his most interesting assertion and his most interesting error, that it deserves a word by itself, though it is a word which must be remembered in connection with nearly all the other plays.
His primary and defiant264 proposition is the Calvinistic proposition: that the elect do not earn virtue, but possess it. The goodness of a man does not consist in trying to be good, but in being good. Julius C?sar prevails over other people by possessing more virtus than they; not by having striven or suffered or bought his virtue; not because he has struggled heroically, but because he is a hero. So far Bernard Shaw is only what I have called him at the beginning; he is simply a seventeenth-century Calvinist. C?sar is not saved by works, or even by faith; he is saved because he is one of the elect. Unfortunately for himself, however, Bernard Shaw went back further than the seventeenth century; and professing265 his opinion to be yet more antiquated266, invoked267 the original legends of mankind. He argued that when the fairy tales gave Jack268 the Giant Killer269 a coat of darkness or a magic sword it removed all credit from Jack in the “common moral” sense; he won as C?sar won only because he was superior. I will confess, in passing, to the conviction that Bernard Shaw in the course of his whole simple and strenuous life was never quite so near to hell as at the moment when he wrote down those words. But in this question of fairy tales my immediate270 point is, not how near he was to hell, but how very far off he was from fairyland. That notion about the hero with a magic sword being the superman with a magic superiority is the caprice of a pedant271; no child, boy, or man ever felt it in the story of Jack the Giant Killer. Obviously the moral is all the other way. Jack’s fairy sword and invisible coat are clumsy expedients272 for enabling him to fight at all with something which is by nature stronger. They are a rough, savage substitute for psychological descriptions of special valour or unwearied patience. But no one in his five wits can doubt that the idea of “Jack the Giant Killer” is exactly the opposite to Shaw’s idea. If it were not a tale of effort and triumph hardly earned it would not be called “Jack the Giant Killer.” If it were a tale of the victory of natural advantages it would be called “Giant the Jack Killer.” If the teller273 of fairy tales had merely wanted to urge that some beings are born stronger than others he would not have fallen back on elaborate tricks of weapon and costume for conquering an ogre. He would simply have let the ogre conquer. I will not speak of my own emotions in connection with this incredibly caddish doctrine274 that the strength of the strong is admirable, but not the valour of the weak. It is enough to say that I have to summon up the physical presence of Shaw, his frank gestures, kind eyes, and exquisite275 Irish voice, to cure me of a mere sensation of contempt. But I do not dwell upon the point for any such purpose; but merely to show how we must be always casting back to those concrete foundations with which we began. Bernard Shaw, as I have said, was never national enough to be domestic; he was never a part of his past; hence when he tries to interpret tradition he comes a terrible cropper, as in this case. Bernard Shaw (I strongly suspect) began to disbelieve in Santa Claus at a discreditably early age. And by this time Santa Claus has avenged276 himself by taking away the key of all the prehistoric277 scriptures278; so that a noble and honourable279 artist flounders about like any German professor. Here is a whole fairy literature which is almost exclusively devoted to the unexpected victory of the weak over the strong; and Bernard Shaw manages to make it mean the inevitable victory of the strong over the weak—which, among other things, would not make a story at all. It all comes of that mistake about not keeping his birthday. A man should be always tied to his mother’s apron280 strings281; he should always have a hold on his childhood, and be ready at intervals282 to start anew from a childish standpoint. Theologically the thing is best expressed by saying, “You must be born again.” Secularly283 it is best expressed by saying, “You must keep your birthday.” Even if you will not be born again, at least remind yourself occasionally that you were born once.
Some of the incidental wit in the C?sarian drama is excellent although it is upon the whole less spontaneous and perfect than in the previous plays. One of its jests may be mentioned in passing, not merely to draw attention to its failure (though Shaw is brilliant enough to afford many failures) but because it is the best opportunity for mentioning one of the writer’s minor285 notions to which he obstinately286 adheres. He describes the Ancient Briton in C?sar’s train as being exactly like a modern respectable Englishman. As a joke for a Christmas pantomime this would be all very well; but one expects the jokes of Bernard Shaw to have some intellectual root, however fantastic the flower. And obviously all historic common sense is against the idea that that dim Druid people, whoever they were, who dwelt in our land before it was lit up by Rome or loaded with varied287 invasions, were a precise facsimile of the commercial society of Birmingham or Brighton. But it is a part of the Puritan in Bernard Shaw, a part of the taut288 and high-strung quality of his mind, that he will never admit of any of his jokes that it was only a joke. When he has been most witty he will passionately289 deny his own wit; he will say something which Voltaire might envy and then declare that he has got it all out of a Blue book. And in connection with this eccentric type of self-denial, we may notice this mere detail about the Ancient Briton. Someone faintly hinted that a blue Briton when first found by C?sar might not be quite like Mr. Broadbent; at the touch Shaw poured forth290 a torrent291 of theory, explaining that climate was the only thing that affected292 nationality; and that whatever races came into the English or Irish climate would become like the English or Irish. Now the modern theory of race is certainly a piece of stupid materialism293; it is an attempt to explain the things we are sure of, France, Scotland, Rome, Japan, by means of the things we are not sure of at all, prehistoric conjectures294, Celts, Mongols, and Iberians. Of course there is a reality in race; but there is no reality in the theories of race offered by some ethnological professors. Blood, perhaps, is thicker than water; but brains are sometimes thicker than anything. But if there is one thing yet more thick and obscure and senseless than this theory of the omnipotence295 of race it is, I think, that to which Shaw has fled for refuge from it; this doctrine of the omnipotence of climate. Climate again is something; but if climate were everything, Anglo–Indians would grow more and more to look like Hindoos, which is far from being the case. Something in the evil spirit of our time forces people always to pretend to have found some material and mechanical explanation. Bernard Shaw has filled all his last days with affirmations about the divinity of the non-mechanical part of man, the sacred quality in creation and choice. Yet it never seems to have occurred to him that the true key to national differentiations is the key of the will and not of the environment. It never crosses the modern mind to fancy that perhaps a people is chiefly influenced by how that people has chosen to behave. If I have to choose between race and weather I prefer race; I would rather be imprisoned296 and compelled by ancestors who were once alive than by mud and mists which never were. But I do not propose to be controlled by either; to me my national history is a chain of multitudinous choices. It is neither blood nor rain that has made England, but hope, the thing that all those dead men have desired. France was not France because she was made to be by the skulls297 of the Celts or by the sun of Gaul. France was France because she chose.
I have stepped on one side from the immediate subject because this is as good an instance as any we are likely to come across of a certain almost extraneous298 fault which does deface the work of Bernard Shaw. It is a fault only to be mentioned when we have made the solidity of the merits quite clear. To say that Shaw is merely making game of people is demonstrably ridiculous; at least a fairly systematic299 philosophy can be traced through all his jokes, and one would not insist on such a unity284 in all the songs of Mr. Dan Leno. I have already pointed out that the genius of Shaw is really too harsh and earnest rather than too merry and irresponsible. I shall have occasion to point out later that Shaw is, in one very serious sense, the very opposite of paradoxical. In any case if any real student of Shaw says that Shaw is only making a fool of him, we can only say that of that student it is very superfluous300 for anyone to make a fool. But though the dramatist’s jests are always serious and generally obvious, he is really affected from time to time by a certain spirit of which that climate theory is a case—a spirit that can only be called one of senseless ingenuity301. I suppose it is a sort of nemesis302 of wit; the skidding303 of a wheel in the height of its speed. Perhaps it is connected with the nomadic304 nature of his mind. That lack of roots, this remoteness from ancient instincts and traditions is responsible for a certain bleak305 and heartless extravagance of statement on certain subjects which makes the author really unconvincing as well as exaggerative; satires306 that are saugrenu, jokes that are rather silly than wild, statements which even considered as lies have no symbolic relation to truth. They are exaggerations of something that does not exist. For instance, if a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy307 kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives308, then he says something which is not so much false as startlingly and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings. Or again, take the case of nationality and the unit of patriotism309. If a man said that all boundaries between clans310, kingdoms, or empires were nonsensical or non-existent, that would be a fallacy, but a consistent and philosophical fallacy. But when Mr. Bernard Shaw says that England matters so little that the British Empire might very well give up these islands to Germany, he has not only got hold of the sow by the wrong ear but the wrong sow by the wrong ear; a mythical311 sow, a sow that is not there at all. If Britain is unreal, the British Empire must be a thousand times more unreal. It is as if one said, “I do not believe that Michael Scott ever had any existence; but I am convinced, in spite of the absurd legend, that he had a shadow.”
As has been said already, there must be some truth in every popular impression. And the impression that Shaw, the most savagely312 serious man of his time, is a mere music-hall artist must have reference to such rare outbreaks as these. As a rule his speeches are full, not only of substance, but of substances, materials like pork, mahogany, lead, and leather. There is no man whose arguments cover a more Napoleonic map of detail. It is true that he jokes; but wherever he is he has topical jokes, one might almost say family jokes. If he talks to tailors he can allude313 to the last absurdity314 about buttons. If he talks to the soldiers he can see the exquisite and exact humour of the last gun-carriage. But when all his powerful practicality is allowed, there does run through him this erratic levity, an explosion of ineptitude315. It is a queer quality in literature. It is a sort of cold extravagance; and it has made him all his enemies.
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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alliteration
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| n.（诗歌的）头韵 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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ferociously
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| 野蛮地，残忍地 | |
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21
juggle
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| v.变戏法，纂改，欺骗，同时做；n.玩杂耍，纂改，花招 | |
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22
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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23
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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24
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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25
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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26
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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27
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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28
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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29
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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30
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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31
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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32
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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33
mire
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| n.泥沼，泥泞；v.使...陷于泥泞，使...陷入困境 | |
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34
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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35
destined
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|
| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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36
humanitarians
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|
| n.慈善家( humanitarian的名词复数 ) | |
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37
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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38
lust
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|
| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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39
murmurs
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|
| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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40
patriotic
|
|
| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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41
patriot
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|
| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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42
desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
witty
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|
| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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44
perfectly
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|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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45
relish
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|
| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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46
specially
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|
| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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47
displease
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| vt.使不高兴，惹怒；n.不悦，不满，生气 | |
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48
candid
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|
| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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49
colossal
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|
| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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50
sanity
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|
| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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51
acclaimed
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| adj.受人欢迎的 | |
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52
strenuous
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|
| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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53
futile
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|
| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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54
physically
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|
| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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55
paradoxes
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|
| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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56
paradox
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|
| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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57
turnovers
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| n.营业额( turnover的名词复数 )；失误（篮球术语）；职工流动率；（商店的）货物周转率 | |
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58
tiresomely
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|
| adj. 令人厌倦的，讨厌的 | |
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59
cynically
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|
| adv.爱嘲笑地，冷笑地 | |
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60
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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61
anarchist
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|
| n.无政府主义者 | |
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62
loyalties
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|
| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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63
monstrous
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|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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64
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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65
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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66
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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67
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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68
incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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69
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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70
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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71
amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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72
worthy
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|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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73
disastrously
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| ad.灾难性地 | |
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74
defile
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|
| v.弄污，弄脏；n.(山间)小道 | |
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75
dome
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|
| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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76
poetical
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|
| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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77
irrational
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|
| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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78
psychology
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|
| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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79
toil
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|
| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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80
glamour
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|
| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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81
heresy
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|
| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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82
materialist
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|
| n. 唯物主义者 | |
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83
tragic
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|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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84
frivolity
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|
| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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85
sketch
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|
| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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86
sketches
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|
| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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87
parody
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|
| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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88
corrupt
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|
| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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89
extraordinarily
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|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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90
tinged
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|
| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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91
inevitable
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|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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92
philanderer
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| n.爱和女人调情的男人，玩弄女性的男人 | |
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93
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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94
philosophic
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|
| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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95
obliterating
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|
| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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96
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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97
paltry
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|
| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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98
snobbish
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|
| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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99
insipid
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|
| adj.无味的，枯燥乏味的，单调的 | |
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100
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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101
warship
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| n.军舰，战舰 | |
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102
rattle
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|
| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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103
acrid
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|
| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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104
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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105
farce
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|
| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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106
farces
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| n.笑剧( farce的名词复数 )；闹剧；笑剧剧目；作假的可笑场面 | |
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107
erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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108
hearty
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|
| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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109
hilarity
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| n.欢乐；热闹 | |
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110
collapse
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|
| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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111
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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112
fishy
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|
| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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113
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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114
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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115
batch
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| n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量 | |
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116
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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117
widowers
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| n.鳏夫( widower的名词复数 ) | |
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118
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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119
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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120
logician
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| n.逻辑学家 | |
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121
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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122
censor
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| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
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123
embodying
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| v.表现( embody的现在分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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124
pivot
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| v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的 | |
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125
refinement
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|
| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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126
iceberg
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| n.冰山，流冰，冷冰冰的人 | |
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127
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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128
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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129
loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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130
loathes
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的第三人称单数 )；极不喜欢 | |
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131
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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132
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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133
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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134
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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135
slain
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|
| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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136
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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137
ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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138
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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139
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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140
conqueror
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|
| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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141
oligarchy
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|
| n.寡头政治 | |
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142
delicacy
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|
| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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143
civilisation
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|
| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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144
perennial
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|
| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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145
parvenus
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|
| n.暴富者( parvenu的名词复数 )；暴发户；新贵；傲慢自负的人 | |
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146
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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147
rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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148
trifling
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|
| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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149
partisan
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|
| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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150
filthy
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|
| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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151
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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152
tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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153
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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154
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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155
slovenly
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| adj.懒散的，不整齐的，邋遢的 | |
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156
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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157
licentious
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| adj.放纵的，淫乱的 | |
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158
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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159
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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160
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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161
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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162
revelling
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| v.作乐( revel的现在分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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163
basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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164
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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165
perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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166
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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167
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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168
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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169
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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170
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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171
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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172
deceptions
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| 欺骗( deception的名词复数 )； 骗术，诡计 | |
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173
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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174
spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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175
omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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176
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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177
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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178
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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179
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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180
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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181
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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182
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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183
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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184
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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185
virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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186
buffoon
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| n.演出时的丑角 | |
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187
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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188
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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189
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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190
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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191
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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192
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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193
equity
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| n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票 | |
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194
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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195
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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196
lures
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| 吸引力，魅力（lure的复数形式） | |
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197
onlooker
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| n.旁观者，观众 | |
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198
feminist
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| adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的 | |
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199
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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200
aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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201
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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202
snobbery
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| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
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203
sloth
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| n.[动]树懒；懒惰，懒散 | |
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204
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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205
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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206
moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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207
intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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208
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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209
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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210
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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211
sages
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| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
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212
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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213
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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214
erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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215
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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216
rivulet
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| n.小溪，小河 | |
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217
ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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218
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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219
morbid
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|
| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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220
economist
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| n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人 | |
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221
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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222
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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223
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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224
wriggles
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| n.蠕动，扭动( wriggle的名词复数 )v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的第三人称单数 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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225
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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226
reliability
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| n.可靠性，确实性 | |
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227
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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228
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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229
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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230
miraculous
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|
| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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231
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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232
devoted
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|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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233
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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234
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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235
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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236
pessimist
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|
| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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237
deficient
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|
| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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238
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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239
humane
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|
| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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240
frigid
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|
| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
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241
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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242
conceals
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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243
avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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244
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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245
sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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246
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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247
pagoda
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| n.宝塔（尤指印度和远东的多层宝塔），（印度教或佛教的）塔式庙宇 | |
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248
jeering
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| adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
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249
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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250
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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251
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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252
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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253
spurning
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| v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的现在分词 ) | |
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254
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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255
flirtation
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| n.调情，调戏，挑逗 | |
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256
subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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257
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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258
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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259
plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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260
justifying
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|
| 证明…有理( justify的现在分词 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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261
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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262
saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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263
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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264
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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265
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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266
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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267
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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268
jack
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|
| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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269
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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270
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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271
pedant
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| n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人 | |
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272
expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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273
teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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274
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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275
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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276
avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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277
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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278
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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279
honourable
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|
| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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secularly
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| 现世的，俗界的； 长期的，长久的； 不朽的； 一世纪一次的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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omnipotence
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| n.全能，万能，无限威力 | |
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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extraneous
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| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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skidding
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| n.曳出，集材v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的现在分词 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区 | |
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nomadic
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| adj.流浪的；游牧的 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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satires
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| 讽刺，讥讽( satire的名词复数 )； 讽刺作品 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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clans
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| 宗族( clan的名词复数 )； 氏族； 庞大的家族； 宗派 | |
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mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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ineptitude
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| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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