GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
By
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
NEW YORK
JOHN LANE COMPANY
MCMIX
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
JOHN LANE COMPANY
THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS.
| BY THE SAME AUTHOR HERETICS. ORTHODOXY. THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL: A Romance. Illustrated by W. Graham Robertson. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. THE BALL AND THE CROSS. |
CONTENTS
Introduction to the First Edition
Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they donot understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I donot agree with him.
G. K. C.
The Problem of a Preface
A peculiar difficulty arrests the writer of this rough study at the verystart. Many people know Mr. Bernard Shaw chiefly as a man who wouldwrite a very long preface even to a very short play. And there is truthin the idea; he is indeed a very prefatory sort of person. He alwaysgives the explanation before the incident; but so, for the matter ofthat, does the Gospel of St. John. For Bernard Shaw, as for the mystics,Christian and heathen (and Shaw is best described as a heathen mystic),the philosophy of facts is anterior to the facts themselves. In due timewe come to the fact, the incarnation; but in the beginning was the Word.
This produces upon many minds an impression of needless preparation anda kind of bustling prolixity. But the truth is that the very rapidity ofsuch a man's mind makes him seem slow in getting to the point. It ispositively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded. A quickeye for ideas may actually make a writer slow in reaching his[Pg 8] goal,just as a quick eye for landscapes might make a motorist slow inreaching Brighton. An original man has to pause at every allusion orsimile to re-explain historical parallels, to re-shape distorted words.Any ordinary leader-writer (let us say) might write swiftly and smoothlysomething like this: "The element of religion in the Puritan rebellion,if hostile to art, yet saved the movement from some of the evils inwhich the French Revolution involved morality." N