592
PARTISAN REVIEW
dedicated to destruction. These platforms no doubt represent clarifi–
cations or schematizations of real attitudes in contemporary society.
In the play, the rationalized platforms, as they are debated and de–
veloped, constitute the brisk mental life which we enjoy; but the
relation of this life of the mind, this farce of rationalizing, to the
human reality, is no more defined than that of the paradoxical thesis
to truth. Thus the play is a parlor game, based upon the freedom of
the mind to name and then to rationalize anything, without ever
deviating from the concept to the thing-the British Empire and
Original Sin as light and portable as the blueprints of the social plan–
ners and human engineers. Shaw the moralist invites us into this brisk
exchange for therapeutic reasons, as gymnasium instructors instigate
boxing or softball: not to win, not to prove anything, but for the
sake of
.a
certain decent fitness in the moral void. But Shaw the clown
sees his and our agility as a rather frightening farce.
If
one thinks over these elements- the sentimental story, the
farcical-profound paradoxical thesis, and the complacency of the
audience--one may get spiritual indigestion. But if one sees a per–
formance, one may understand how it all hangs together for those
quick two hours: it is because its basis
in
the upholstered world of the
carriage trade is never violated. On this basis it is acceptable as
a string of jokes which touch nothing. And Shavian comedy of this
period still flatters and delights our prosperous suburbs. But Shaw
himself, .as the world changed and the London drawing room appeared
to be less than eternal, became dissatisfied with it. He first began
planning
Heartbreak House
about thirty-five years ago.
In
Heartbreak House
the perpetual-motion of the dialogue
is built on the same basis as in
Major Barbara:
each character has
a paradoxical platform to defend, with epithet and logic, in the
brisk free-for-all of the emancipated parlor. Hector, for instance, is
unanswerable as a vain, erotic housecat and heroic man of action;
Captain Shotover as omniscient, morally fit as a fiddle, and a futile
old man secretly sustained by rum. The Shavian farcical inspiration
is here to be found at its sharpest and deepest. But in this play Shaw
comes very close to presenting it with the integrity and objectivity of
art: to accepting the limited perspective afforded by his view of
action as rationalizing, and to finding the proper dramatic form for
its temporal development- neither the boulevard intrigue nor the
