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| == '''SHAKES VERSUS SHAV''' == | | {{TextQuality|75%}}{{title |
| xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| | |author = George Bernard Shaw |
| | |title = Shakes versus Shav |
| | |notes = 1949. |
| | }} |
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| |
|
| '''PREFACE'''<br />
| | <div class="text"> |
| This in all actuarial probability is my last play and the | | === Preface === |
| climax of my eminence, such as it is. I thought my career | | |
| as a playwright was finished when Waldo Lanchester of | | This in all actuarial probability is my last play and the climax of my eminence, such as it is. I thought my career as a playwright was finished when Waldo Lanchester of the Malvern Marionette Theatre, our chief living puppet master, sent me figures of two puppets, Shakespeare and myself, with a request that I should supply one of my famous dramas for them, not to last longer than ten minutes or thereabouts. I accomplished this feat, and was gratified by Mr. Lanchester's immediate approval. I have learnt part of my craft as conductor of rehearsals (producer, they call it) from puppets. Their unvarying intensity of facial expression, impossible for living actors, keeps the imagination of the spectators continuously stimulated. When one of them is speaking or tumbling and the rest left aside, these, though in full view, are invisible, as they should be. Living actors have to learn that they too must be invisible while the protagonists are conversing, and therefore must not move a muscle nor change their expression, instead of, as beginners mostly do, playing to them and robbing them of the audience's undivided attention. |
| the Malvern Marionette Theatre, our chief living puppet | | |
| master, sent me figures of two puppets, Shakespear and | | Puppets have also a fascination of their own, because there is nothing wonderful in a living actor moving and speaking, but that wooden headed dolls should do so is a marvel that never palls. |
| myself, with a request that I should supply one of my | | |
| famous dramas for them, not to last longer than ten | | And they can survive treatment that would kill live actors'. When I first saw them in my boyhood nothing delighted me more than when all the puppets went up in a balloon and presently dropped from the skies with an appalling crash on the floor. |
| minutes or thereabouts. I accomplished this feat, and was | | |
| gratified by Mr. Lanchester's immediate approval. | | Nowadays the development of stagecraft into film-craft may destroy the idiosyncratic puppet charm. Televised puppets could enjoy the scenic backgrounds of the cinema. Sound recording could enable the puppet master to give all his attention to the strings he is manipulating, the dialogue being spoken by a company of first-rate speakers as in the theatre. The old puppet master spoke all the parts himself in accents which he differentiated by Punch-and-Judy squeaks and the like. I can imagine the puppets simulating living performers so perfectly that the spectators will be completely illuded. The result would be the death of puppetry; for it would lose its charm with its magic. So let reformers beware. |
| I have learnt part of my craft as conductor of rehearsals | | |
| (producer, they call it) from puppets. Their unvarying | | Nothing can extinguish my interest in Shakespeare. It began when I was a small boy, and extends to Stratford-upon-Avon, where I have attended so many bardic festivals that I have come to regard it almost as a supplementary birthplace of my own. |
| intensity of facial expression, impossible for living actors, | | |
| keeps the imagination of the spectators continuously | | No year passes without the arrival of a batch of books contending that Shakespeare was somebody else. The argument is always the same. Such early works as Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Love's Labour's Lost, could not possibly have been written by an illiterate clown and poacher who could hardly write his own name. This is unquestionably true. But the inference that Shakespeare did not write them does not follow. What does follow is that Shakespeare was not an illiterate clown but a well read grammar-schooled son in a family of good middle-class standing, cultured enough to be habitual playgoers and private entertainers of the players. |
| stimulated. When one of them is speaking or tumbling | | |
| and the rest left aside, these, though in full view, are | | This, on investigation, proves to be exactly what Shakespeare was. His father, John Shakespeare, Gent, was an alderman who demanded a coat of arms which was finally granted. His mother was of equal rank and social 'pretension. John finally failed commercially, having no doubt let his artistic turn get the better of his mercantile occupation, and leave him unable to afford a university education for William, had he ever wanted to make a professional scholar of him. |
| invisible, as they should be. Living actors have to learn | | |
| that they too must be invisible while the protagonists are | | These circumstances interest me because they are just like my own. They were SL considerable cut above those of Bunyan and Cobbett, both great masters of language, who nevertheless could not have written Venus and Adonis nor Love's Labour's Lost. One does not forget Bunyan's "The Latin I borrow." Shakespeare's standing was nearer to Ruskin's, whose splendid style owes much more to his mother's insistence on his learning the Bible by heart than to his Oxford degree. |
| conversing, and therefore must not move a muscle nor | | |
| change their expression, instead of, as beginners mostly do, | | So much for Bacon-Shakespeare and all the other fables founded on that entirely fictitious figure Shaxper or Shagsper the illiterate bumpkin. Enough too for my feeling that the real Shakespeare might have been myself, and for the shallow mistaking of it for mere professional jealousy. |
| playing to them and robbing them of the audience's | |
| undivided attention. | |
| Puppets have also a fascination of their own, because | |
| there is nothing wonderful in a living actor moving and | |
| speaking, but that wooden headed dolls should do so is | |
| a marvel that never palls. | |
| And they can survive treatment that would kill live | |
| actors'. When I first saw them in my boyhood nothing | |
| delighted me more than when all the puppets went up | |
| in a balloon and presently dropped from the skies with | |
| an appalling crash on the floor. | |
|
| |
|
| Nowadays the development of stagecraft into film-
| |
| craft may destroy the idiosyncratic puppet charm. Televised
| |
| puppets could enjoy the scenic backgrounds of the cinema.
| |
| Sound recording could enable the puppet master to give
| |
| all his attention to the strings he is manipulating, the dialo-
| |
| gue being spoken by a company of first-rate speakers as
| |
| in the theatre. The old puppet master spoke all the parts
| |
| himself in accents which he differentiated by Punch-and-
| |
| Judy squeaks and the like. I can imagine the puppets
| |
| simulating living performers so perfectly that the specta-
| |
| tors will be completely illuded. The result would be the
| |
| death of puppetry; for it would lose its charm with its
| |
| magic. So let reformers beware.
| |
| Nothing can extinguish my interest in Shakespear. It
| |
| began when I was a small boy, and extends to Stratford-
| |
| upon-Avon, where I have attended so many bardic festivals
| |
| that I have come to regard it almost as a supplementary
| |
| birthplace of my own.
| |
| No year passes without the arrival of a batch of
| |
| books contending that Shakespear was somebody else. The
| |
| argument is always the same. Such early works as Venus
| |
| and Adonis, Lucrece, and Love's Labour's Lost, could
| |
| not possibly have been written by an illiterate clown and
| |
| poacher who could hardly write his own name. This is
| |
| unquestionably true. But the inference that Shakespear
| |
| did not write them does not follow. What does follow is
| |
| that Shakespear was not an illiterate clown but a well
| |
| read grammar-schooled son in a family of good middle-
| |
| class standing, cultured enough to be habitual playgoers
| |
| and private entertainers of the players.
| |
| This, on investigation, proves to be exactly what Shake-
| |
| spear was. His father, John Shakespear, Gent, was an
| |
| alderman who demanded a coat of arms which was
| |
| finally granted. His mother was of equal rank and social
| |
| 'pretension. John finally failed commercially, having no
| |
| doubt let his artistic turn get the better of his mercantile
| |
| occupation, and leave him unable to afford a university
| |
| education for William, had he ever wanted to make a
| |
| professional scholar of him.
| |
| These circumstances interest me because they are just
| |
| like my own. They were SL considerable cut above those of
| |
| Bunyan and Cobbett, both great masters of language,
| |
| who nevertheless could not have written Venus and
| |
| Adonis nor Love's Labour's Lost. One does not forget
| |
| Bunyan's "The Latin I borrow." Shakespear's standing was
| |
| nearer to Ruskin's, whose splendid style owes much more
| |
| to his mother's insistence on his learning the Bible by
| |
| heart than to his Oxford degree.
| |
| So much for Bacon-Shakespear and all the other fables
| |
| founded on that entirely fictitious figure Shaxper or Shag-
| |
| sper the illiterate bumpkin.
| |
| Enough too for my feeling that the real Shakespear might
| |
| have been myself, and for the shallow mistaking of it
| |
| for mere professional jealousy.
| |
| AYOT SAINT LAWRENCE, 1949 | | AYOT SAINT LAWRENCE, 1949 |
| ---- | | ---- |
| '''''[Shakes enters and salutes the audience with a flourish of his hat.]''''' | | '''''[Shakes enters and salutes the audience with a flourish of his hat.]''''' |
| ---- | | ---- |
| SHAKES. Now is the winter of our discontent | | SHAKES. Now is the winter of our discontent<br /> |
| Made glorious summer by the Malvern sun. | | Made glorious summer by the Malvern sun.<br /> |
| I, William Shakes, was born in Stratford town, | | I, William Shakes, was born in Stratford town,<br /> |
| Where every year a festival is held | | Where every year a festival is held<br /> |
| To honour my renown not for an age | | To honour my renown not for an age<br /> |
| But for all time. Hither I raging come | | But for all time. Hither I raging come<br /> |
| An infamous impostor to chastize, | | An infamous impostor to chastize,<br /> |
| Who in an ecstasy of self-conceit | | Who in an ecstasy of self-conceit<br /> |
| Shortens my name to Shav, and dares pretend | | Shortens my name to Shav, and dares pretend<br /> |
| Here to reincarnate my very self, | | Here to reincarnate my very self,<br /> |
| And in your stately playhouse to set up | | And in your stately playhouse to set up<br /> |
| A festival, and plant a mulberry | | A festival, and plant a mulberry<br /> |
| In most presumptuous mockery of mine. | | In most presumptuous mockery of mine.<br /> |
| Tell me, ye citizens of Malvem, | | Tell me, ye citizens of Malvern,<br /> |
| Where I may find this caitiff. Face to face | | Where I may find this caitiff. Face to face<br /> |
| Set but this fiend of Ireland and myself; | | Set but this fiend of Ireland and myself;<br /> |
| And leave the rest to me. | | And leave the rest to me.<br /> |
| ''[Shav enters.]'' Who are thou? | | ''[Shav enters.]'' Who are thou? |
| That rearst a forehead almost rivalling mine? | | That rearst a forehead almost rivalling mine? |
| Line 228: |
Line 166: |
| :That flesh is heir to"?<br /> | | :That flesh is heir to"?<br /> |
|
| |
|
| SHAV. You were not the first | | SHAV. You were not the first<br /> |
| To sing of broken hearts. I was the first | | To sing of broken hearts. I was the first<br /> |
| That taught your faithless Timons how to mend them. | | That taught your faithless Timons how to mend them.<br /> |
|
| |
|
| SHAKES. Taught what you could not know. Sing if you can | | SHAKES. Taught what you could not know. Sing if you can<br /> |
| My cloud capped towers, my gorgeous palaces, | | My cloud capped towers, my gorgeous palaces,<br /> |
| My Solemn temples. The great globe itself, | | My Solemn temples. The great globe itself,<br /> |
| Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve— | | Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve— |
|
| |
|
| Line 249: |
Line 187: |
| SHAKES. These words are mine, not thine. | | SHAKES. These words are mine, not thine. |
|
| |
|
| SHAV. Peace, jealous Bard:<br /> | | SHAV. Peace, jealous Bard:<br /> |
| We both are mortal. For a moment suffer<br /> | | We both are mortal. For a moment suffer<br /> |
| My glimmering light to shine.<br /> | | My glimmering light to shine.<br /> |
| Line 258: |
Line 196: |
|
| |
|
| ::''[Darkness. The play ends.]'' | | ::''[Darkness. The play ends.]'' |
| | </div> |
|
| |
|
| From The Portable Bernard Shaw, Edited by Stanley Weintraub<br />
| | [[Category:1949]] |
| Penguin Books, 40 West 23rd Street, New York, NY (1977)
| | {{PD-pma|1950}} |
Preface
This in all actuarial probability is my last play and the climax of my eminence, such as it is. I thought my career as a playwright was finished when Waldo Lanchester of the Malvern Marionette Theatre, our chief living puppet master, sent me figures of two puppets, Shakespeare and myself, with a request that I should supply one of my famous dramas for them, not to last longer than ten minutes or thereabouts. I accomplished this feat, and was gratified by Mr. Lanchester's immediate approval. I have learnt part of my craft as conductor of rehearsals (producer, they call it) from puppets. Their unvarying intensity of facial expression, impossible for living actors, keeps the imagination of the spectators continuously stimulated. When one of them is speaking or tumbling and the rest left aside, these, though in full view, are invisible, as they should be. Living actors have to learn that they too must be invisible while the protagonists are conversing, and therefore must not move a muscle nor change their expression, instead of, as beginners mostly do, playing to them and robbing them of the audience's undivided attention.
Puppets have also a fascination of their own, because there is nothing wonderful in a living actor moving and speaking, but that wooden headed dolls should do so is a marvel that never palls.
And they can survive treatment that would kill live actors'. When I first saw them in my boyhood nothing delighted me more than when all the puppets went up in a balloon and presently dropped from the skies with an appalling crash on the floor.
Nowadays the development of stagecraft into film-craft may destroy the idiosyncratic puppet charm. Televised puppets could enjoy the scenic backgrounds of the cinema. Sound recording could enable the puppet master to give all his attention to the strings he is manipulating, the dialogue being spoken by a company of first-rate speakers as in the theatre. The old puppet master spoke all the parts himself in accents which he differentiated by Punch-and-Judy squeaks and the like. I can imagine the puppets simulating living performers so perfectly that the spectators will be completely illuded. The result would be the death of puppetry; for it would lose its charm with its magic. So let reformers beware.
Nothing can extinguish my interest in Shakespeare. It began when I was a small boy, and extends to Stratford-upon-Avon, where I have attended so many bardic festivals that I have come to regard it almost as a supplementary birthplace of my own.
No year passes without the arrival of a batch of books contending that Shakespeare was somebody else. The argument is always the same. Such early works as Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Love's Labour's Lost, could not possibly have been written by an illiterate clown and poacher who could hardly write his own name. This is unquestionably true. But the inference that Shakespeare did not write them does not follow. What does follow is that Shakespeare was not an illiterate clown but a well read grammar-schooled son in a family of good middle-class standing, cultured enough to be habitual playgoers and private entertainers of the players.
This, on investigation, proves to be exactly what Shakespeare was. His father, John Shakespeare, Gent, was an alderman who demanded a coat of arms which was finally granted. His mother was of equal rank and social 'pretension. John finally failed commercially, having no doubt let his artistic turn get the better of his mercantile occupation, and leave him unable to afford a university education for William, had he ever wanted to make a professional scholar of him.
These circumstances interest me because they are just like my own. They were SL considerable cut above those of Bunyan and Cobbett, both great masters of language, who nevertheless could not have written Venus and Adonis nor Love's Labour's Lost. One does not forget Bunyan's "The Latin I borrow." Shakespeare's standing was nearer to Ruskin's, whose splendid style owes much more to his mother's insistence on his learning the Bible by heart than to his Oxford degree.
So much for Bacon-Shakespeare and all the other fables founded on that entirely fictitious figure Shaxper or Shagsper the illiterate bumpkin. Enough too for my feeling that the real Shakespeare might have been myself, and for the shallow mistaking of it for mere professional jealousy.
AYOT SAINT LAWRENCE, 1949
[Shakes enters and salutes the audience with a flourish of his hat.]
SHAKES. Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by the Malvern sun.
I, William Shakes, was born in Stratford town,
Where every year a festival is held
To honour my renown not for an age
But for all time. Hither I raging come
An infamous impostor to chastize,
Who in an ecstasy of self-conceit
Shortens my name to Shav, and dares pretend
Here to reincarnate my very self,
And in your stately playhouse to set up
A festival, and plant a mulberry
In most presumptuous mockery of mine.
Tell me, ye citizens of Malvern,
Where I may find this caitiff. Face to face
Set but this fiend of Ireland and myself;
And leave the rest to me.
[Shav enters.] Who are thou?
That rearst a forehead almost rivalling mine?
SHAV. Nay, who art thou, that knowest not these features
Pictured throughout the globe? Who should I be
But G.B.S.?
SHAKES. What! Stand, thou shameless fraud.
For one or both of us the hour is come.
Put up your hands.
SHAV. Come on.
- [They spar. Shakes knocks Shav down with a straight left and begins counting him out, stooping over him and beating the seconds with his finger.]
SHAKES. Hackerty-backerty one, Hackerty-backerty two,
Hackerty-backerty three . . . Hackerty-backerty nine@
- [At the count of nine Shav springs up and knocks Shakes down with a right to the chin.]
SHAV [counting] Hackerty-backerty one, . . . Hackerty-
backerty ten. Out.
SHAKES. Out! And by thee! Never. [He rises.] Younger you are By full three hundred years, and therefore carry
- A heavier punch than mine; but what of that?
- Death will soon finish you; but as for me,
- Not marble nor the gilded monuments
- Of princes—
SHAV. —shall outlive your powerful rhymes.
So you have told us: I have read your sonnets.
SHAKES. Couldst write Macbeth?
SHAV. No need. He has been bettered
By Walter Scott's Rob Roy. Behold, and blush.
- [Rob Roy and Macbeth appear, Rob in Highland tartan and kilt with claymore, Macbeth in kingly costume.]
MACBETH. Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on without impediment. Shall I still call you Campbell?
ROB. [in a strong Scotch accent] Caumill me no Caumills. Ma fet is on ma native heath: ma name's Macgregor.
MACBETH. I have no words. My voice is in my sword.
- Lay on, Rob Roy;
- And damned be he that proves the smaller boy.
- [He draws and stands on guard. Rob draws; spins round several times like a man throwing a hammer: and finallycuts off Macbeth's head at one stroke.]
ROB. Whaur's your Wullie Shaxper the noo?
[Bagpipe and drum music, to which Rob dances off.]
MACBETH [headless] I will return to Stratford: the hotels
Are cheaper there. [He picks up his head, and goes off with
it under his arm to the tune of British Grenadiers.]
SHAKES. Call you this cateran
Better than my Macbeth, one line from whom
Is worth a thousand of your piffling plays.
SHAV. Quote one. Just one. I challenge thee. One line.
SHAKES. "The shardborne beetle with his drowsy hum."
SHAV. Hast never heard of Adam Lindsay Gordon?*
SHAKES. A name that sings. What of him?
SHAV. He eclipsed
Thy shardborne beetle. Hear his mighty lines.
[Reciting]
- "The beetle booms adown the glooms
- And bumps among the clumps."
SHAKES. [roaring with laughter] Ha ha! Ho ho! My lungs
like chanticleer
Must crow their fill. This fellow hath an ear.
How does it run? "The beetle booms—
SHAV. Adown the glooms—
SHAKES. And bumps—
SHAV. Among the clumps." Well done, Australia!
[Shav laughs.]
SHAKES. Laughest thou at thyself? Pullst thou my leg?
SHAV. There is more fun in heaven and earth, sweet
William,
Than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
SHAKES. Where is thy Hamlet? Couldst thou write King
Lear?
SHAV. Aye, with his daughters all complete. Couldst thou
Have written Heartbreak House? Behold my Lear.
[A transparency is suddenly lit up, shewing Captain
Shotover seated, as in Millais'picture called North-West
Passage, with a young woman of virginal beauty.
SHOTOVER. [raising his hand and intoning] I builded a house
for my daughters and opened the doors thereof
That men might come for their choosing, and their betters
spring from their love;
But one of them married a numskull: the other a liar wed;
And now she must lie beside him even as she made her bed.
THE VIRGIN. "Yes: this silly house, this strangely happy
house, this agonizing house, this house without foundations.
I shall call it Heartbreak House."
SHOTOVER. Enough. Enough. Let the heart break in silence.
- [The picture vanishes.]
SHAKES. You stole that word from me: did I not write
- "The heartache and the thousand natural woes
- That flesh is heir to"?
SHAV. You were not the first
To sing of broken hearts. I was the first
That taught your faithless Timons how to mend them.
SHAKES. Taught what you could not know. Sing if you can
My cloud capped towers, my gorgeous palaces,
My Solemn temples. The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve—
SHAV. —and like this foolish little show of ours
Leave not a wrack behind. So you have said.
I say the world will long outlast our day.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
We puppets shall replay our scene. Meanwhile,
Immortal William dead and turned to clay
May stop a hole to keep the wind away.
Oh that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!
SHAKES. These words are mine, not thine.
SHAV. Peace, jealous Bard:
We both are mortal. For a moment suffer
My glimmering light to shine.
- [A light appears between them.]
SHAKES. Out, out, brief candle! [He puffs it out.]
- [Darkness. The play ends.]
