THEATER CHRONICLE
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he grew selfish, and his private sympathies dried up; he did not like to
be bothered. When he died, he left his house at Ayot St. Lawrence for
a museum, but it has had to be closed down since so few paying visitors
came to see it.
There is something about Shaw that compels one's admiration and
at the same time elicits pity. He was a world figure, the most gifted
and original playwright of his day, the best English playwright since
Congreve. His plays "entertain." They also provoke thought. But he
ought to have been better. He missed greatness while playing the great
man. The sudden deflation of his fame, after his death, like the air go–
ing out of a tire, was both unjust and inevitable. He was one of those
gods of his period, like the "Copeys" and "Kitties" of the seminar room,
whose function was to disturb and subvert the youth of the middle
classes. But the "educational" side of Shaw is dated, like health clothing.
The sensible, spare, schoolmasterish, whiskered figure in knickerbockers
no longer has the power to terrorize with a conundrum or a paradox.
His own mystifications misled him. He took his intelligence and common
sense for genius, even while he knew better; indeed, he depreciated
genius when he discovered he had what passed for it. "Is this all?" he
appears to say to himself in bewilderment, like Jennifer at the death of
Dubedat. "Is this all there is to it?"
Mary McCarthy
