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Man and Superman

A COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY

By George Bernard Shaw





EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO ARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY

My dear Walkley:

You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play。 The levity
with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably
by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning
has arrived: here is your play! I say your play; because qui
facit per alium facit per se。 Its profits; like its labor; belong
to me: its morals; its manners; its philosophy; its influence on
the young; are for you to justify。 You were of mature age when
you made the suggestion; and you knew your man。 It is hardly
fifteen years since; as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of
that time; we two; cradled in the same new sheets; made an epoch
in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it
a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life。 So you
cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in
motion。 Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests;
I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party。

I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility;
I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your
taste。 The fifteen years have made me older and graver。 In you I
can detect no such becoming change。 Your levities and audacities
are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they
increase; even as your days do grow。 No mere pioneering journal
dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone
sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even
the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not
produced every day; since after each such event its gravity is
compromised; its platitude turned to epigram; its portentousness
to wit; its propriety to elegance; and even its decorum into
naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do
not allow you to sign at the end; but which you take care to sign
with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines。 I am not
sure that this is not a portent of Revolution。 In eighteenth
century France the end was at hand when men bought the
Encyclopedia and found Diderot there。 When I buy the Times and
find you there; my prophetic ear catches a rattle of twentieth
century tumbrils。

However; that is not my present anxiety。 The question is; will
you not be disappointed with a Don Juan play in which not one of
that hero's mille e tre adventures is brought upon the stage? To
propitiate you; let me explain myself。 You will retort that I
never do anything else: it is your favorite jibe at me that what
I call drama is nothing but explanation。 But you must not expect
me to adopt your inexplicable; fantastic; petulant; fastidious
ways: you must take me as I am; a reasonable; patient;
consistent; apologetic; laborious person; with the temperament of
a schoolmaster and the pursuits of a vestryman。 No doubt that
literary knack of mine which happens to amuse the British public
distracts attention from my character; but the character is there
none the less; solid as bricks。 I have a conscience; and
conscience is always anxiously explanatory。 You; on the contrary;
feel that a man who discusses his conscience is much like a woman
who discusses her modesty。 The only moral force you condescend to
parade is the force of your wit: the only demand you make in
public is the demand of your artistic temperament for symmetry;
elegance; style; grace; refinement; and the cleanliness which
comes next to godliness if not before it。 But my conscience is
the genuine pulpit article: it annoys me to see people
comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on
making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin。 If
you don't like my preaching you must lump it。 I really cannot
help it。

In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I explained the
predicament of our contemporary English drama; forced to deal
almost exclusively with cases of sexual attraction; and yet
forbidden to exhibit the incidents of that attraction or even to
discuss its nature。 Your suggestion that I should write a Don
Juan play was virtually a challenge to me to treat this subject
myself dramatically。 The challenge was difficult enough to be
worth accepting; because; when you come to think of it; though we
have plenty of dramas with heroes and heroines who are in love
and must accordingly marry or perish at the end of the play; or
about people whose relations with one another have been
complicated by the marriage laws; not to mention the looser sort
of plays which trade on the tradition that illicit love affairs
are at once vicious and delightful; we have no modern English
plays in which the natural attraction of the sexes for one
another is made the mainspring of the action。 That is why we
insist on beauty in our performers; differing herein from the
countries our friend William Archer holds up as examples of
seriousness to our childish theatres。 There the Juliets and
Isoldes; the Romeos and Tristans; might be our mothers and
fathers。 Not so the English actress。 The heroine she impersonates
is not allowed to discuss the elemental relations of men and
women: all her romantic twaddle about novelet…made love; all her
purely legal dilemmas as to whether she was married or
〃betrayed;〃 quite miss our hearts and worry our minds。 To console
ourselves we must just look at her。 We do so; and her beauty
feeds our starving emotions。 Sometimes we grumble ungallantly at
the lady because she does not act as well as she looks。 But in a
drama which; with all its preoccupation with sex; is really void
of sexual interest; good looks are more desired than histrionic
skill。

Let me press this point on you; since you are too clever to raise
the fool's cry of paradox whenever I take hold of a stick by the
right instead of the wrong end。 Why are our occasional attempts
to deal with the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary
that even those who are most determined that sex questions shall
be held open and their discussion kept free; cannot pretend to
relish these joyless attempts at social sanitation? Is it not
because at bottom they are utterly sexless? What is the usual
formula for such plays? A woman has; on some past occasion; been
brought into conflict with the law which regulates the relations
of the sexes。 A man; by falling in love with her; or marrying
her; is brought into conflict with the social convention which
discountenances the woman。 Now the conflicts of individuals with
law and convention can be dramatized like all other human
conflicts; but they are purely judicial; and the fact that we are
much more curious about the suppressed relations between the man
and the woman than about the relations between both and our
courts of law and private juries of matrons; produces that
sensation of evasion; of dissatisfaction; of fundamental
irrelevance; of shallowness; of useless disagreeableness; of
total failure to edify and partial failure to interest; which is
as familiar to you in the theatres as it was to me when I; too;
frequented those uncomfortable buildings; and found our popular
playwrights in the mind to (as they thought) emulate Ibsen。

I take it that when you asked me for a Don Juan play you did not
want that sort of thing。 Nobody does: the successes such plays
sometimes obtain are due to the incidental conventional melodrama
with which the experienced popular author instinctively saves
himself from failure。 But what did you want? Owing to your
unfortunate habityou now; I hope; feel its inconvenienceof
not explaining yourself; I have had to discover this for myself。
First; then; I have had to ask myself; what is a Don Juan?
Vulgarly; a libertine。 But your dislike of vulgarity is pushed to
the length of a defect (universality of character is impossible
without a share of vulgarity); and even if you could acquire the
taste; you would find yourself overfed from ordinary sources
without troubling me。 So I took it that you demanded a Don Juan
in the philosophic sense。

Philosophically; Don Juan is a man who; though gifted enough to
be exceptionally capable of distinguishing between good and evil;
follows his own instincts without regard to the common statute;
or canon law; and therefore; whilst gaining the ardent sympathy
of our rebellious instincts (which are flattered by the
brilliancies with which Don Juan associates them) finds himself
in mortal conflict with existing institutions; and defends
himself by fraud and farce as unscrupulously as a farmer defends
his crops by the same means against vermin。 The prototypic Don
Juan; invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish monk; was
presented; according to the ideas of that time; as the enemy of
God; the approach of whose vengeance is felt throughout the
drama; growing in menace from minute to minute。 No anxiety is
caused on Don Juan's account by any minor antagonist: he easily
eludes the police; temporal and spiritual; and when an indignant
father seeks private redress with the sword; Don Juan kills him
without an effort。 Not until the slain father returns from heaven
as the agent

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