About the dramatic character, or how to do ideas with emotion

Motto: The Father. “He who has had the luck to be born acharacter can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, thewriter, the instrument of creation will die, but his creationdoes not die.”1

1.0. The atemporal dimension

One of the distinctive features which are part of the well-made characters seems to be permanence,2 their capacity topropagate themselves in time, irrespective of the artisticMentalities, fashions, caprices and requirements of a specificperiod; likewise, it is a fact that a character, a persona canwin its ‘immortality’, in which case one may argue thatcharacters have something in common with the fate and posterityof the gods or the civilizing heroes – by sapping the confines oftine – that is to say, verging on atemporality; in other words,they project themselves into eternity, in timelessmess – due tothe above-mentioned trends and currents of opinion. Certainly,the atemporal dimension of the dramatic character is not relatedin an aleatory, random manner to the cultural or historicalbackground against which it was created and / or launched, as thedramatic hoaracter is, above all, the symbolic embodiment of a(general) human type of existence; using a paraphrase of Goethe’swords, with his famoms dictum: “art is art because it is notlife”3, we could say that the character is a character preciselyon account of its / his not being a human creature. On the otherhand, characters are endowed with their own, be it secondary,life – when their part is performed on the stage, through theagency of the actors and, in accordance with the way they areimpersonated, they can diminish or augment their quality of‘permanence’. But, first of all, the dramatic author can conferhis dramatic character its / his atemporal dimension by his owncraftsmanship.

In a concrete way, in the English drama of the Victorianperiod there were countless failures on the plane of artisticachievement, just on account of various shortcomings in point of

dramatic mastery; there was even malicious demonstration ofGeorge Bernard Shaw’s success in the field of artisticachievement – and, implicitly, in so far as the delineation ofhis characters is concerned, as accountable for by the very factthat the drama of his day was lagging behind.4 The paradox isthat G. B. Shaw (himself a ‘personage’, and consequently apermanence in the spirit of his day and in the public image) hasnever intended to make an aegis of ‘immortality’ for hischaracters, not even for those ones whose dimensions were alreadyhistoric / classic, such as Caesar in his ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’,a consecrated myth of history – which he actually seems ratherwilling to “demythologise”; from this point of view, GBS seems totread on the same ground as Henri Bergson: “Art as a whole aimsat what is individual”.5 Shaw is not actually interested in whathuman existences share as universally valid, the constant part ofthen – he is rather concerned with the particular. This is not tosay that Bernard Shaw’s characters lack the atemporal dimension.The paradox – again (as paradoxes are part of his dramaticcraftsmanship) – is that by choosing his characters from thesphere of the individual, Shaw manages to attribute to themfeatures of permanence, thus raising them above the commonnumber. Alice Voinescu remarks, in Aspecte din teatrul comtemporan,that G. B. Shaw’s Caesar makes quite unexpected gestures, whichgo counter his stature as a sovereign, yet he does it in amajestic manner: “Publicul s-a indignat că Cezar mănâncă seminţe– şi Shaw e acuzat de lèse-majestate, dar gestul acesta devine,în Cezar, cezarian, fiindcă în loc să devină o mişcareinconştientă, un mecanism vulgar, el devine un acompamiament viual gîndului creator cezarian… Cezar singur se concentrează, înfiecare scuipătură zvîrle câte un gînd rutinier, câte oprejudecată militară, este un mecanism psihic care opreşte în locizbucnirea duhului său răscolitor.”

Also, his characters may originate in some of the mostshocking milieux: former prostitutes or procuresses, e.g. Mrs.Warren) or flower-girls (Eliza Doolittle), or as high as richladies of the genteel society, or even queens and empresses (e.g.Catherine the Great of Russia), from burglars and those whom G.B. Shaw calls, by a generalizing term, ‘the impecunious’(dustmen, unemployed people, etc.) up to tycoons of industry (e.g.

Andrew Undershaft), ministers (in both senses) or professors(Henry Higgins, Adolphus Cusins), members of the Cabinet or evenkings (e.g. King Magnus).

Their force lies in their capacity to discern reality andexpress their creeds boldly and peremptorily. Shaw’s characters,although selected out of the field of the individual with noclaim to self-assertion, become, by dint of their conception andideation, the exponents of a class, of a certain pattern orframework of behaviour. Shaw contradicts in all conscience acertain dramatic mentality while putting on an irreverent, non-conformist and sardonic attitude as to excessively romanticizingtendencies; he is utterly depressed at the idea of creatingcharacters that are out of the ordinary train of life, yet lack-ing the human touch. Naturalness6 is the factor which endowsGBS’s characters with life, and, at the same time, projects themunto the atemporal dimension. “He set himself fiercely againstthe remainders of Victorian stereotypes of human behaviour. Yethe was thoroughly ‘theatrical’ and he was also, in his own way,romantic and even sentimental – as, for example, the character ofEugene Marchbamks in ‘Candida’ fully reveals.”7

One could form a false image of Shaw’s alleged incapacity ofbringing forth characters of great historic scope, if oneobstinately had in mind the devices he has recourse to:debunking, de-romanticized view, anachronism8 – all these couldbe deemed as forcing the dramatic character into losing theirartistic ‘permanence’, yet – and here is another paradox out ofthe multitude Shaw professed: he does not contradict apersonality or a historical period, but only a number ofmodalities of delineation, of outlining them. With Shaw,Napoleon, Caesar, Catherine the Great or Joan of Arc, remain thesame Napoleon, Caesar, Catherine and Joan of Arc that we all(think we) know; the things that disappear are the romanticizingvision, the heroical view, the excess of the imposing or thepicturesque; permanence remains untouched, it is only theidealizing detail that vanishes. Shaw is manifestly preoccupiedwith the configuration and the presentation of reality in what ithas natural and essential, correcting historical overloading.That is the main purport of S. Iosifescu’s remark: “Shaw onlyrefuses a certain historical view, but not history. He eliminates

polychromy and the sheer show, yet preserves the necessary‘coloured patches’. He contradicts the historical background witha deliberate gesture by systematically exerted anachronism. Hecontests the hero who has been de-humanized through oversizingand rhetoric, but not the towering personality. The polemicalreply to romanticism presupposes a common language. For Shaw,very much as for the romantics, history does exist; yet it isimperative to change the lenses.”9

It will be clear from all the above facts why there is sucha wide multiplicity and unnevenness in the field of theconsiderations regarding the Shavian hero: Shaw’s characters haveby many been regarded as mere ‘puppets’10 and their author as amere clown, ‘the national clown’ in Papini’s words. Yet, mostcritics and theorists have described the Shavian character ashaving plenty of stregth and vitality, as taken out of the veryessence of real life, and then engrafted upon the substance ofthe plays, spiritually enriched through the divine spark of theartist’s genius, even when Shaw’s characters belong to thecategory of the commonest exponents (“the most ordinaryindividuals”11) of the social order.

Shaw himself believed in the idea of a character who shouldbe able to transcend the limitations of the individual, thusacquiring an atemporal dimension; the condition for that is, asthe dramatist noted in The Saturday Review, that one should go“straight to the core of humanity to get it and, if it is onlygood enough, why, there you have Lear or Macbeth.”12 Which isquite true, since “nothing can please many, and please long butjust representations of general nature”, in Dr. Johnson’s words.

1.1. What is the dramatic character?

Motto: “…every action (and every idea it contains) needs afree human personality if it is to appear live and breathingbefore us. It needs something that will function as its motorpathos, to use Hegel’s phrase – characters, in other words.”(Luigi Pirandello – Spoken Action)13

Martin Esslin, in his semiotic approach to drama, describesthe dramatic character as an ‘icon’, and his gestures as ‘index’signs. Here we quote his remarkably penetrating definitions: “Yetin drama, as far as the human characters are concerned, there isno abstraction: there a lady appears and she is a completelyconcrete lady who is being shown to us as the icon – the iconicsign – for a fictional lady. The director who shows us an actressportraying Juliet or Ophelia is telling us: this is what Julietor Ophelia looked like. The icon here at least aims at suggestinga complete identity in looks between ‘the signified’ (theactress) and the ‘signified’ (the fictional character)”14 and;“The gestures we use in real life, and which the actors imitate,belong to another category of signs: signs which point to anobject, like the arrows on street signs, or the movement I makewhen somebody asks me: ‘Where is he?’, and I point with my fingerin the direction of the person concerned. These are called‘index’ signs, or also (when the derivation is from the Greekword for ‘showing’), ‘deictic’ signs. These signs derive theirmeaning from a relationship of contiguity to the object theydepict.”15

The character is the linking bridge between the idea (theauthor) and the artistic emotion (the audience or the readers).The dramatist cannot directly address the audience or the readingpublic; hence, the character proves to be a kind of vehicleoperating between the dramatic author and his audience / public.Consequently, the idea engenders emotions through the sole agencyof the characters.

The dramatist has in stock certain scenic means and devicesin order to make his ideas known; the conveyance of the latter isprimarily based on a well-structured dialogue, which can succeedin turning the characters into credible ideas. We are using theword ‘ideas’ because, first of all, the characters represent theidea of what they are going to be, a set of intentions. There isa whole creative laboratory for the characters to come intobeing; it is this first step of the dramatic creation that Ibsenexplicitly mentions: “(in the first draft) I feel as though I hadthe degree of acquaintance with my characters that one requiresin a train: one has met and chatted, about this or that. With thenext … I know characters just about as one would know them after

a few weeks’ stay in a spa: I have learned the fundamental traitsof their characters as well as their little idiosyncrasies, yetit remains possible that I may be quite wrong in some essentialrespect. In the last draft, I finally stand at the limit ofknowledge: I know my people from close and long association, theyare my intimate friends, they will not disappoint me, I shallalways see them as I now do.”16 Gradually, the character-idea isfully outlined, so that: “Before I write down one word I have thecharacter in my mind through and through. I must penetrate to thelast wrinkle of his soul. I always proceed from the individual.The stage setting, the dramatic ensemble, all that comesnaturally and does not cause ae worry, as soon as I am certain ofthe individual in every aspect of his humanity.”17

Shaw had a similar confession; first of all, he has anintuitive discovery of the character: “At first I hardly know thespeakers and cannot find names for them. Then they become moreand more familiar, and I learn their names. Finally I come toknow them very well, and discover what it is they are driving at,and why they have said and done the things I have been moved toset down.”18

What are, in fact, the dramatic characters? What is it theauthor draws upon when starting to delineate a character? Thedramatic characters are symbols, artistically embodied /generated, inspired from the real life, usually carrying anamount of condensed life experience – as can be also inferredfrom Edwin Wilson’s definition: “Though they often seen like realpeople, dramatic characters are actually created in the mind ofthe playwright. By carefully emphasizing certain features of acharacter’s personality while eliminating others, the dramatistcan show us in two hours the entire history of a person, whom itcould take us a lifetime to know in real life.”19

Eric Bentley, in his turn, defines the character by analogywith the dramatic action: “If the raw material of plot is events,particularly violent events, the raw material of character ispeople, especially what are regarded as their cruder impulses.”20

The critic goes on to explicit the manner in which the ‘rawmaterial’ is refined through the ineffable means of creation, theway the character comes to be a ‘substitute’ for the model.Without the character, there is no possibility for the action to

unfold (“A human being is the best plot there is. The dramatistwho hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging his plotto his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin”, as John Galsworthysays).22

There is an intrinsic relationship between the idea, in itsgerminative stage, deep in the playwright’s mind, and thecharacter. S. W. Dawson even insists upon there existing arelationship of identity between the character and the idea.23

The character is given the empowerment of saying what the authororiginally thinks.

With Shaw, this intrinsic binding, ‘irrational knot’,between his thoughts and his characters becomes obvious in hisneed to make them the messengers of his concepts concerningscience, art, religion, sex, and so on,24 a process which isreflected in his vivid dialogues, full of spirit andargumentation. He becomes a preacher, and his dialogues are so tospeak ‘sermons’. The dialogue has to possess strength, force andeffectualness, so as to enable the dramatist to take support onthe power of his argumentation. It is according to the way thedialogue is construed and structured that the voices of thecharacters will be outlined and interwoven; the idea isunderlined in ‘The Play and the Reader’: “The dramatist’s ideasand attitudes can be articulated only through the voices of hischaracters, speaking in their own persons; on stage the dramatisthas no voice of his own. Since the dialogue is the dramatist’sprimary medium for revealing his characters to us, thecredibility of these characters as human beings is necessarilymeasured chiefly by their speech. The dramatist, knowing thatevery individual possesses his own distinctive personality, knowsalso that that personality finds expression in an individualisedtone of voice and in idiosyncrasies of vocabulary.”25

Still, the manner of delineating the portrait of hischaracters is of the dramatist’s choice – he may sketch it only,or insist on certain details, or merely suggest or imply it, orelse, maybe, ignore it altogether: “Also, the playwright has widelatitude in what to emphasise and how to present the character. Astage character can be presented in different ways: (1) drawnwith a few quick strokes, as a cartoonist sketches a politicalfigure, (2) given the surface detail and reality of a photograph,

or (3) fleshed out with the more interpretive and fully roundedquality of an oil portrait.”26

There are authors who avoid charactering their ‘personae’directly, making use of a different strategy: the charactersstand face-to-face and reciprocally expose their features.27

Obviously, the degree of success of this strategy is dependentupon the force of the dialogue.

In gifting his plays with life, Shaw is more interested inexpressing his ideas, with superior precision, under the form ofdialogues, rather than delineating his characters. They becomeinstruments carrying ideas. He explained to Tighe Hopkins:“Sometimes, in spare moments, I write dialogues and these are allworking up to a certain end (a sermon, of course), my imaginationplaying the usual tricks meanwhile of creating visionary persons…When I have a few hundred of these dialogues locked up andinterlocked, then a drama will be the result”.28 The result of itwas a rather harsh criticism aimed at Shaw.30 He was accused ofegotistically using his characters as mere mouthpieces for hisideation message. We have not considered it necessary to furtherdwell upon the other ideas representing major issues in theemergence (more from the scenic point of view) of the character –namely, the fundamental link between the character (this timeviewed under the angle of its achievement) and that tension –‘sensitiveness’ in E. M. Forster’s words, or ‘emotion’ in EricBentley’s terminology – which actually makes the character takehold of the spectators’ or the reader’s consciousness.o)o) Thismay be defined as ‘pathos’, with no equivalent in everyday life,which is a paroxistic intensity of feeling. Eric Bentley commentson E. M. Forster’s words, trying to account for this frame ofwind as equally related to the dramatic craftsmanship meant tobring it forth, to the actor’s stagecraft meant to impersonateit, to the reader’s ability to feel it: “…emotion is the elementwe live in as we read or watch or listen… The genius of the

o)o) Forster, Edward Morgan (1879–1970): English novelist, short-storywriter, essayist, and literary critic. His best-known novels, severalof which have been made into successful films, include A Room with a View(1908) Howard’s End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924); in all of them theauthor stresses the need for sincerity and sensitivity in humanrelationships and criticizes English middle-class values.

writer – in novel or play – will be found in the skill with whichhe projects and controls that constant sensitivity, thatceaseless readjustment, that endless hunger… He has to find theburied river of the emotions and then work as an engineer dammingit here, deflecting it there, but always making the fullest useof its natural power.”30

Shaw’s paradoxicalness is prolonged to the level of theidea-character-emotion. At first sight, his characters, bornunder the moral sign of ‘what-you-should-or-must-not-do’ seemfeelingless, arid, but, in a parallel to the unfolding of theaction, their other component / key-element is disclosed: theirpathos.31 Yet, in spite of all these determinations, the dramaticauthor (no less than the producer, actually) is no presence atall – they may remain hidden somewhere, or, more than that, theymay turn into the spectators of their own play; they can hearthemselves speaking through their characters, but unless theseexisted they could not even make themselves heard – and listenedto. But the playwright’s satisfaction can be doubled by the factthat, when (s)he succeds in captivating and fascinating theaudience, (s)he may find, among the rows of spectators, co-characters of the play being performed. This generous idea ispresented in ‘The Play and the Reader’: “Though [the dramatist’s]characters may be citizens of ancient Argos, or medieval Britain,or modern France, they will move across a three-dimensionalstage, where their words and deeds enlist our minds and emotionsas co-participants with the characters in the story. Further, aswe sit in a darkened auditorium, we take part in a communalexperience that has within it archetypal elements of ritual: inturn, we bring to this communal experience that psychological“set” which Coleridge described as our “willing suspension ofdisbelief”. We are, in fact, so eager to believe, to be enlistedas co-participants, that only the grossest ineptitude can destroyout willing suspension.”32

It seems that Shaw was fully aware of this power thedramatic author has to turn their own public or audience(s) intoa gallery including the most representative characters, sincethey had numberless instances of not being able to resist thetemptation of directly addressing the public – the readers, thatis – through the pages of his prefaces. From this point of view,

G. B. Shaw’s plays lend themselves quite easily to a semiotictext analysis. A dramatic text is imperfect, because it isunaccomplished. Roman Ingarden points out that drama stands for awhole world, realized by different means: (a) both verbal andvisual means (stage directions) for the readers; (b) only byvisual means (which is ‘decorum’, etc.), and (c) only by verbalmeans, apart from the spatial or temporal location /ambit of theaction, that is narration, prefaces, epilogue33 when the authorrenounces his character’s function of conveying their ideas andthey themselves become ‘preachers’ directly addressing thereaders with a view to transmitting the vibration of their ideasand rousing their artistic emotions, in an unmediated way.

When the playwright authorizes his character to convey theidea, (s)he engenders the dramatic action and, in a way, comes tobe de-personalised, ceasing to speak on their own behalf, butrather on behalf of a gallery of characters or even types. Theconsequence is that the dramatic action will take shape inaccordance with the character: the dialogue will automaticallyhelp to generate the dramatic development; the author has tosubmit himself / herself, and abide by the convention of thedramatic act: to detach himself/ herself, having no right toexpress options in his / her own name (as it frequently happensin novel-writing or in storytelling). “The meaning of verbalutterances by the characters in drama can never merely beanalysed in isolation from the dramatic context in which itoccurs and the action it represents. As action, however, alwayssprings from character, the meaning of a dramatic utterance mustalso always be understood in the light of the character from whomit emanates. A dramatist can never make a statement in his ownname, utter his own opinion within the dialogue.”34

Detachment can be effected to such an extent that theplaywright becomes at a certain moment incapable of mastering his/ her characters; the latter acquire total independence as totheir creator: “Once the characters are completely envisaged,they do things and utter opinions which may surprise the authoralmost as much as the reader or spectator who meets them for thefirst time between the covers of a book or on the stage…”35

The dramatic outlining of the character, theirindividualisation is effected not only by means of the dialogue;

actually, some fragments of the dialogue uttered by the characterdo not even have to be taken as such – Martin Esslin warns us:“Nor can any words spoken by a character in a drama (thus) betaken at their face value. They are always the product of thecharacter, the character’s motivations and the situation in whichhe finds himself. The audience is constantly compelled toquestion these motivations and to subject them to continuousanalysis in the light of the developing situations.”36

There are authors – and Shaw is surely included in thatgroup – who will do anything to clear up every doubt the publicmay have with regard to the characters’ essence as they appear onstage; they do it by presenting their own commentaries inconnection with the play and its protagonists; these commentariesmay come in the shape of prologues and epilogues, prefaces orafterwords, which makes the presence of narrative characters(story-tellers) necessary. Sometimes, the actors may be theperformers of songs, obviously stepping outside their characters;some other times, the comment(ary) is entrusted to ‘voice-overs’:personae which are exterior to the plot itself.

The conclusion of this section is that the author, like aDemiurge, is gifted with the power to provide with the ‘breath oflife’ the yet-non-created, the handful of clay, the idea,blessing them with the warmth of life, in the guise of acharacter; it is in its turn capable, like the Man / the CreatedOne, in the Book, of transmitting and prolonging the breath – i.e.the emotion; and if S. W. Dawson had not stated that “characteris the life”37 of any dramatic work of art, it is sure that weshould have done that in his stead.

As far as the modalities of individualizing the dramaticcharacters are concerned, there are essentially two differentdevices (corresponding to the distinction drawn by R. Ingardenbetween Haupttext and Nebentext38) used as means of delineating it:by the agency of the text itself, substantiated by the dramaticdialogue (verbal signs) or by the agency of the stage directions(non-verbal signs). Consequently, the character mutuallycompletes and is completed by the action; more than that, itcannot be otherwise delineated but in the process of its / hismanifestation. Santayana notices that the “data, which are the‘acts’, cannot exist without the ‘inferred principle’, which is

the character.” The character is the motive / motor force of theaction. Ideas trigger characters and characters trigger action.

With G. B. Shaw the characters are the exponents of a way ofthinking. The storm of the ideas is so strong, so incrediblypowerful, that the characters seem to withdraw in front of theaction rather than support it; and, by this sustained boycot ofthe characters against the action, the author creates for himselfa possibility to address the public / the reader much moredirectly, turning them into zealous co-participants in theaction, which greatly enhances the author’s credibility. In hispreface to Plays Unpleasant, Shaw declared: “I must, however, warnmy readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, notagainst my stage figures. They cannot too thoroughly understandthat the guilt of defective social organization does not liealone on the people who actually work the commercial makeshiftswhich the defects make inevitable, and who often, like Sartoriusand Mrs. Warren, display valuable executive capacities, and evenhigh moral virtues in their administration, but with the wholebody of citizens whose public opinion, public action, and publiccontribution as ratepayers alone can replace Sartorius’s slumswith decent dwellings, Charteris’s intrigues with reasonablemarriage contracts, and Mrs. Warren’s profession with honourableindustries guarded by a human industrial coat and a ‘moralminimum’ wage.39

1.2. A Typological Approach to Dramatic Characters

1.2. 0. ‘Round’ versus ‘Flat’

It is often said in relation to Shakespeare’s charactersthat they have allegedly acquired their shape as a result of theapplication of a compositional technique which is completelyspecific – a fact which ought to confer to ‘a certain roundnessand integrity’, or, in Maurice Morgan’s terms: “those charactersin Shakespeare, which are seen only in part are yet capable ofbeing unfolded and understood in the whole; every part being infact relative, and inferring the rest.”40

Eric Bentley defines the same type of characters as being“mysterious” and “great” characters, and provides a metaphysicalexplanation of their becoming: “…The enigmatic nature of greatcharacters also carries a cosmic implication: that life is but asmall light in the midst of a vast darkness. (…) They representthe life of the plays – so luminous at the centre, yet shadingoff toward the edges into a metaphysical mystery”, so that “thefinal effect of greatness in dramatic characterization is one ofmystery”. The result will be that “a mysterious character is onewith an open definition – not completely open, or there will beno character at all, and the mystery will dwindle to a muddle,but open as, say, a circle is open when most of the circumferencehas been drawn.”41

‘Round’ characters are mainly present in traditional dramaand they have an unmistakeable quality: they are free and theirmobility offers them the possibility to appear in originalpositions, hence being unpredictable and often surprising; theyalso utter frankly the great truths and ‘live’ as if they werepart of the real life. Racine has brought onto stage an entiregallery of ‘round’ characters, and, in the field of the novel,Emily Brontë.

E. M. Forster opposes ‘round’ characters to ‘flat’characters, as a counterpart of the distinction between individualsand types. In his definition, ‘flat’ characters are fixed andappear in foreseeable situations; ‘flat’ characters are immobileand, consequently, one can find out beforehand what they aregoing to do; since the element of surprise is absent. G. B.Shaw’s characters, like those of Dickens, are flat.

The type-character can be individualized through speech. “…It becomes clear that, within a coherent and recognizablesetting, a dramatic type character can, with a few individualtouches of speech, dress and manner, contributed by the actor oractress, become virtually a national figure. Many an indifferentplay has been rescued by an actor giving to a meagre and lifelesspart his own vigour and individuality. But the significant lifeof a dramatic character is independent of any particularperformance, of any identifiable physical presence. It is in thelanguage of the play, and the situations which that languagecreates (…).”42

Molière attained the ingenious combination of individualityand typicality, roundness and flatness. Alceste is intended to bethe type of the ‘misanthrope’, but he also aspires towards thelofty ideals of mankind; and proves capable of falling in lovemadly with Célimène; Harpagon, in his turn, insists that heshould be representative of the miser, but is eventuallyindividualized by means of language.

G. B. Shaw’s characters quite often start from thetraditional types (raisonneurs, cynics and realists, non-conformists, philistines) and they individualize themselveseither within the situations they are placed in, or by beingattributed a constant feature – e.g. Kitty Warren is cynical bythe impudence of her admitting the ways of her profit-making; butshe is endowed with the attributes of individualization due tothe fact that she is a generous, magnanimous mother, well-intentioned towards her daughter.

Characters like Price, Rummy, Shirley and Billy Walker in‘Major Barbara’ stand for the ‘impecunious’ type-character.

Traditional, and, nowadays, psychological drama givepreeminence to individuals over types, insisting upon the ideathat character should be placed above theme, plot and dialogue.In modern theatre – and Bernard Shaw is one of itsrepresentatives – idea (which means, theme, dialogue and plot)takes precedence over character. The character becomes a mereprolongation of the idea, to which, as a matter of fact, (s)heconfers emotional power.

1.2.1. Types, Archetypes, Prototypes, Stereotypes

Upon a closer character analysis, most characters prove tobe, in their essential nature, type characters, which means that– in a brief definition – their “motivation is clear andunambiguous”.42 One can speak of there being a number of typecharacters which have dominated the stage all through itshistory, ever since the Greek and Latin tradition, going onthrough the Commedia dell’Arte and reaching the contemporarydrama: the jealousy-ridden husband, the young man tortured bylove, the old man obsessesed by avariciousness, the scheming

servant, the nice-looking woman whose beauty is on the wane, etc.There have been periods when certain type characters prevailedover the others (the fop in the Restoration comedy, the revenge-ful type in Jacobean drama). Individual characters are oftenvariations of these basic types. Henri Bergson notices thatcomedy, as an art that aims at the general, is the only literaryspecies that gives general types.

In his study on character, Eric Bentley proposes a passagefrom typology to mythology, introducing, besides the category ofthe type, a new category – that of the archetype: “That thearchetypes plunge us deep into myth44 is obvious: they are myth,and their creators are among the great myth-makers.”45 MargeryMorgan noticed with Shaw: “…a predilection for myth or a wish toestablish the general validity and relevance of his fable byconforming it to a mythic pattern…”45

Henrik Ibsen, at the beginnings of his creation, tried tobring onto stage archetypal characters of great dimensions: PeerGynt, Julian the Apostate. It may also be alleged that Hjalmar,the hero in ‘The Wild Duck’, represents the archetype of lower-middle-class idealist. Along the same lines, it is also true tosay that the other colossus of European drama, Chekhov, madeevery effort, ever since the debut of his activity, to bring tolife Russian-like archetypes of Don Juan and Hamlet… Toarchetypes, Eric Bentley opposes another category of typecharacters: non-archetypes, which may also be characterized byfixity; originating in Roman tradition; they can form the basisof a new mythology.

Besides these categories, Edwin Wilson introduces a new one:the prototypical characters. Ordinary people, instead of thetraditional kings and queens, saints and other extraordinarycharacters; such examples of prototypical characters are ArthurMiller’s Willy Loman or Henrik Ibsen’s Nora Helmer: theirpersonality stands for the essence of a certain group: Loman isthe prototype of all salesmen, while Nora is the prototype of allemancipated housewives. E. Wilson gives an illustrativedefinition: “The ‘prototypical’ character is not a stereotype,but a fully rounded, three-dimensional figure. Rather than beingnotable as ‘worst’, ‘best’, or some other extreme, thesecharacters are notable in the way they embody the

characteristics of an entire group: not as a caricature, but as acomplete picture of a person”.47

G. B. Shaw is an excellent designer of types, which areoften endowed with individuality and wit. Critics are especiallyenthusiastic about his manner of delineating type characters,which is “Olympian, he presents them with the urbane detachmentand serene amusement of a Chinese philosopher; there is not atrace of arrogance, not a single spiteful reference, as he setshis pious people on their feets and puts them to their pre-determined places; he respects the individuality of his cardboardcreations even at their feeblest.”48

There will be no further dwelling on the types of charactersthat he conjures on the stage, as we shall deal with them in thecontent proper of the present paper. It will still be worthwhileunderlining Shaw’s preference for prototypes, those everyday lifecharacters representative of an entire category they belong to:burglars and pickpockets, no less than manufacturers, artists ormere street cleaners, brothel proprietors, etc. In his Caesar,Shaw even desired to bring onto scene the already existing ones;it is hard enough to destroy a myth and to replace it by anotherone, but if Shaw’s Caesar manages to compel recognition of hisbeing that reflexive and enlightened person who influences theothers, then he is the archetype of the visionary ruler /monarch.

Stock characters are not complete characters; they are notstructured according to the model / pattern of three-dimensionalcharacters: “…Rather they symbolize in bold relief someparticular type of person or some outstanding characteristic ofhuman behaviour to the exclusion of virtually everything else.They appear, particularly in comedy and melodrama, though theycan be found in almost all kinds of drama.”49

The most famous examples of stock characters come from thetradition cf the Commedia dell”Arte.50 Who fails to remember thetype of the blustering soldier (with whom we can go as far backin time as Plautus’ ‘Miles gloriosus’),p)p) nicknamed Capitano,

p)p) Miles gloriosus Latin: ['mi:leis gl:ri'usus], pl. milites gloriosi['mi:liteis gl:ri'usai] (in literature) a boastful / braggart soldier,especially as a stock figure in comedy (from the title of a comedy byPlautus); Plautus, Titus Maccius (c. 254–184 BC): Roman comic

or the lecherous elderly merchant nicknamed Pantalone (becausedressed in pantaloons, but maybe also because representing aninhabitant of Venice, cf. the local nickname for a Venetian,Pantalone, arguably derivable from San Pantaleone), the lawyernicknamed Dottore, who used to speak in pompous clichés, or amongthe serving persons – Harlequin? These characters have oneexaggerated characteristic trait: boastfulness, greed,gullibility, pedantism, scheming, jealousy, etc. Basically, thesestock characters can “be described as dramatic clichéscontrasting with those characters who have undeniableindividuality.”51 They developed as stereotypes52 since the time ofthe Italian comedy of the Renaissance.

Shaw openly confesses that he had based his characters uponthe tradition of these stereotypes: “My stories are the oldstories; my characters are the familiar Harlequin and Colombine,clown and pantaloon (note the harlequin’s leap in the third actof ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’); my stage tricks and suspenses, andthrills and jests are the ones in vogue when I was a boy, bywhich time my grandfather was tired of them. To the young peoplewho make their acquaintance for the first time in my plays, theymay be as novel as Cyrano’s nose to those who have never seenPunch; whilst to older playgoers the unexepectedness of myattempt to substitute natural history for conventional ethics andromantic logic may so transfigure the eternal stage puppets andtheir inevitable dilemmas as to make their identificationimpossible for the moment. If so, so much the better for me: Ishould perhaps enjoy a few years of immortality.”53 He does notdo that out of sheer bravado, but simply out of an inner penchantfor verisimilitude, out of his conviction that “a man’s heartseems to me much like a sponge: it sops up dirty water as well asclean.”54

Maybe, as the time passed, his conviction grew intoambition; the fact is, in ‘Fanny’s First Play’, we are informedby an alter ego of the author that he has never betrayed hisconvictions and the plays and characters he has created virtuallyreflect his most unflinching ideas: “Gunn: You’re going to say

dramatist. His 21 extant plays are modelled on Greek New Comedy,especially that produced by Menander, and include Menaechmi (the basisof Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors), Miles Gloriosus, Rudens, and Captivi.

that the whole thing seems to you to be quite new and unusual andoriginal. The naval lieutenant is a Frenchman who cracks up theEnglish and runs down the French: the hackneyed old Shaw touch?The characters are second-rate middle class instead of beingdukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the mud;real mud. There’s no plot. All the old stage conventions andpuppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And afeeble air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through topersuade you that if the author hasn’t written a good play it’sbecause he’s too clever to stoop to anything so commonplace.And you three experienced men have sat through all these, andcan’t tell me who wrote it! Why, the play bears the author’ssignature in every line.”55

It would be unjust to say that Bernard Shaw remains only theslave of a strict creed; beyond his attraction to the paradox,which verges on the implausible,56 even within to so intricateand complex domain of the characters’ world – a field in whichonly very few authors would dare to fool about, as Shaw does –there is a vocation for sympathy with his heroes, mainly for thesecond rank ones: stock characters, the stereotypes? J. P.Hackett observed a strong influence which the author conveys tohis characters, with whom he is in confederation: “…those touchesof human sympathy which flash out in delicious asides through theaction of his plays, particularly among the minor characters. Heis at home with everyone and even when he is going all out tomobilise humanity to march ahead with him under the banner ofCreative Evolution, he is turning his head to shout after thosegoing steadfastly in the opposite direction – Stick to it, boys,you are as just as I am (…)”57

It is precisely those stereotype characters that are closestto Shaw’s heart, as it seems; they teem in his dramatic worksfrom one end to the other. It is only natural, on the one hand,since the real world is made up rather of egotistic cynics andfrauds, philistines and non-conformists, philanderers andidealists, liberal women and the addicted to power, than ofcommonsensical persons of moral integrity.

1.2.2. Extraordinary Characters versus ExceptionalCharacters

The heroes in traditional drama (especially in tragedy) arepredominantly extraordinary characters, selected from among kingsand queens, with an uncompromisingly special destiny in a worldwhich is the inevitable place of cruelty and despair. But themain feature of this type of characters – that of being of nobledescent – makes them somehow impracticable for the moderntheatre. Arthur Miller believes that man in the modern worldlives the everyday tragedy of his victimisation in a society thatdestroys his feelings and will-power, making him the like ofgadgets in the industrial world. It is hardly necessary for oneto have the aura of grandeur and noble birth to see extremesituations; everything it takes is to have been born, as thedestiny has in stock for anyone, at any time, the possibility toface unexpected events. In his essay Tragedy and the Common Man, A.Miller argues that there is a necessary relation of contiguitybetween the heroes having an origin and destinies out of thecommon range in the traditional theatre and the characters ofobscure, despised origins, yet of special destinies, typical ofour time: “Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or theso-called nobility of his character, is really but a clinging tothe outward form of tragedy… I believe that the common man is asapt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. (…)The tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence ofa character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, tosecure one thing – his sense of dignity… Tragedy, then, is theconsequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himselfjustly.”58

The distinction between traditional and modern measuredagainst the scale of the dramatic character is operated in termsof extraordinary vs. exceptional. Here is E. Wilson’s apt definitionof extraordinary characters: “The heroes and heroines of mostimportant dramatic works of the past are extraordinary in someway. They are ‘larger than life’. Historically, major charactershave been kings, queens, bishops, members of the nobility orother figures clearly marked as holding a special place insociety. (…) Dramatic characters generally represent men and

women at their worst or best, at some extreme of human behaviour(…) In virtually every instance with extraordinary characters wesee men and women at the breaking point, at the outer limits ofhuman capability and endurance (…) [They] have been exceptionalnot only by virtue of their station in life, but because theypossess traits common to us all – ambition, generosity,malevolence, fear and achievement – in such great abundance.”59

A permanent feature of the extraordinary character is that“men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither” –in King Lear’s expression. There are countless examples ofextraordinary characters: Sophocles’ Oedipus, Euripides’ Medea,Aeschylus’ Prometheus.

In modern drama these characters are being replaced byordinary people, who, however, possess features of character asstrong as the former’s, and have a similar response to extremesituations. The difference consists in the fact that exceptionalcharacters reflect reality with much more verisimilitude.

G. B. Shaw seems to manifest even a certain predilection forcreating exceptional characters, and we specifically mean Joan ofArc, the heroine in his ‘Saint Joan’ – a French maiden who was tobe burned at the stake for her courage, places herself at thehead of the revolted people, believing that she had reallylistened to God’s words.

Shaw’s drama does not lack extraordinary figures, either:Caesar, Napoleon, Catherine the Great; but, as we were trying todemonstrate (in section 1.0.), the author prefers treating thiscategory of heroes from a much more realistic angle,demythologising and debunking them, unburdening them from theromanticizing and idealizing overload, giving up the impressionof grandeur in an attempt to present them as naturally aspossible, and at the same time managing to preserve their aura ofhistorical stateliness, so necessary for the individualization:“In Caesar…, however, he did initiate a new type of historicaldrama, in which historical characters were treated from anentirely modern angle.”60

1.2.3. Major versus Minor Characters; Protagonists versusAntagonists

Major characters are those who play the important part inthe overall action of the play, while minor characters come tosupport the major ones, or even stand in contrast to them; theyplay only a small role within the entire scenic development.Major characters are thoroughly delineated, set out in thefullness of their complex personality, while minor characters areonly sketched, only casually and fugitively shown, not being ableto disply more than a very restricted fragment of theirpersonalities. For instance, in ‘Pygmalion’ Higgins, Eliza andPickering are the major characters, while Mrs. Pearce, Doolittle,Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, Freddy and Clara are minorcharacters.

In tragedy61 minor characters may be reduced to mere types;they cannot be ‘round’, in E. M. Forster’s definition; Horatio,for instance, stands for the type of the devoted friend in‘Hamlet’.

Eric Bentley makes two commentaries meant as evaluativeassessments regarding the major and minor characters in a play,who, at the same time, represent type characters as well. Theconclusion to draw is that the minor characters in a play,although insufficiently outlined, seconding and backing up themajor ones, very much as in a ballet ensemble, complete thelatter; but for the minor characters, the major characters couldnot exist. On the other hand, the major characters, when theydraw upon certain types, can disclose unsuspected values, evenattaining to that degree of typification which confers them theright to enlist themselves in the category of the archetypes.62

Sometimes, in a play a main character as protagonist may beplaced in an antithesis to one of the secondary / subsidiarycharacters, who will function as his / her antagonist. In ‘TheDevil’s Disciple’ for example, Dick Dudgeon is set in contrast toJudith, very much like Candida in the play of the same name, whois opposed to Marchbanks.63 The aim is to better emphasize theindividual qualities of the characters, through the interplay ofthe contraries and their clashing.

Henri Bergson noted, as a particular, isolated case, thatthere are situations when a secondary character appearing inopposition to the protagonist tends to become the second

protagonist of the play, obviously on a comparatively smallerscale.

But the world of the play cannot possibly be understoodthrough the agency of only one character, say the protagonist;all the characters make their own contribution to outlining anddefining a whole universe – which comes to support the classicidea that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and womenmerely players”64 – in Shakespeare’s words.

1.2.4. The characters, images of the author and equally ourown symbols

1.2.4.0. Conclusions to the general section on characters:

Motto: “… art is the magic mirror you make to reflectyour invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirrorto see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.” (‘Backto Methuselah’)65

On most occasions, Shaw by no means tried to concede thefact that his characters could represent him, although he did nothave the courage to flatly deny it. In order to keep himself safefrom the intruders’ indiscretion, he imagined an outer image ofhimself, a new ‘persona’: G.B.S. The critics’ opinions and viewsare contradictory as to it, but the idea seems to have arousedmany people’s interest, in spite of the fact that there wererather diverging conclusions or proved utterly antagonistic. Somepeople reproached him with having allegedly been successful onlyin building symbols of characters impersonating real life people,with whom the author himself was said to have ‘electiveaffinities’; “Shaw’s chief failing as a dramatist was hisinability to portray types with whom he had no sympathy, all hismen and women betraying their blood relationship, just as hischief failing as a man was his inability to understand peoplewith whom he did not agree.”66

Yet, there are some other critics who appear to be morereserved: “A frequent kind of artistic self-expression is theidentification in ideal form of the artist and his heroes and

heroines. But, as Shaw remarked concerning Shakespeare, self-betrayal is one thing and self-portrayal is another. (…) He isprobably less identified with most of his fictitious charactersthan other great dramatists, and Shaw’s comparative aloofnessfrom most of the creatures of his imagination is, if anything,probably an artistic liability. It will be an interesting task totrace the relations between the artist and his most importantcharacters, to show their changes in the course of time, and, ifpossible, to explain the meaning of this development.”67

A majority of the critical instances treating Shaw’s workplainly affirm the fact that his characters are in fact hismouthpieces: “Shaw permits the characters, who are sometimes mereburlesques, to illustrate and comment upon the author’s theses.Often they are no more than his mouthpieces.”68

An honest man, as he always was, and a man true to himself,Shaw indirectly admits, through the agency of his characters –thus creating the image of the reflection of the character in thecharacter – that his own characters represent him, are hisdeputies and harbingers (obviously, considering it appropriate tointerpose a certain distance between him and the reader /spectator by using his ‘GBS’ mask): “Vaughan: …All Shaw’s cha-racters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw. It’sonly the actors that make them seem different. Bannal: There canbe no doubt of that: everybody knows it. But Shaw doesn’t writehis plays as plays. All he wants to do is to insult everybody allround and set us talking about him.”69

It would however be a rather limited vision if we tried tojudge characters in the drama by superimposing them on the imageof their author. The greatest truth we can say about the dramaticcharacter, and maybe the key to its / his permanence, is thepossibility to identify them with an entire spiritual universe.It is precisely what E. Wilson underlines: “When well drawn, theypresent us with a vivid, incisive picture of ourselves (…) Inshort, we see ourselves in the revealing and illuminating mirrortheatre holds before us. (…) But the dramatic charactersimpersonated by the performers are images of ourselves. In truth,therefore, the basic encounter of theatre is with ourselves.Sometimes, watching a theatre event, we see a part of ourselveson stage and realize for the first time some truth about our

lives. This confrontation is at the heart of the theatreexperience.”70

In a similar way, Shaw lets the reader know the same thing –through the agency of Tanner – underlining another great truth –namely, that the real artist’s task is to create charactersdelineated as closely to the real model as possible; that is tosay, to be as objective as he can: “Tanner: (…) The artist’s workis to show us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothingbut this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to thisknowledge creates a new mind as surely as any woman creates a newman.”71 And Shaw has never betrayed this compelling creed.

1.2.4.1. We have tried to point out in this chapter the factthat George Bernard Shaw succeds in committing to the stage avast typology of dramatic characters / personae, belonging to ahighly variegated, more often than not shocking, gamut ofmilieux. One should not also forgive that the author’s vitalityand communicative zest are transferred onto his characters, thusconferring them force and undeniable individuality. But we arenot trying to conceal his slight shortcomings. Basically, asAnthony Caputti remarked, Shaw appears as the type of the comicauthor, much more gifted for caricaturing characters in themonumental, genially spiritual manner of Dickens, one may say –yet, he was less bent on exploring, on sounding the tragicuniverse, the innermost depths of his characters, which by nomeans prevented him from being aware of his characters’ flaws andlimitations.

As a result of this native propensity towards the comicaspects, his characters can sometimes make an impression ofcapitalistic clowns, selected out of the roguish category of themainly uncultured, uncouth people or waggish impostors withswindling vocation – as deviating instances, opposed to thattradition: “In Shaw’s comedies, most of the clowns are not, as inShakespeare’s comedies, uneducated artisans, peasants orvagrants, but on the contrary, representatives of worldly powerand success… A sample of his ridiculous capitalists includes,among others, Burgess (‘Candida’), Crampton (‘You Never CanTell’), Broadbent (‘John Bull’s Other Island’) and Mangan

(‘Heartbreak House’)… His ridiculous elderly moralists, soldiersand diplomats, and, above all, his politicians whose practicalsuccess is matched only by their profound ignorance andstupidity.” 73

Another consequence of the author’s focusing more on theconcrete side – but not that kind of stale, lifeless, unrealisticcomic – is Shaw’s relative inability to implant his historicalcharacters in their natural, normal past.74 Such extraordinarycharacters as Caesar and Joan of Arc are tailored to the canonsand conventions of the contemporary drama (this is the conventionthat Shaw deliberately adopts – but not to the end of ‘destroy-ing’ history, quite on the contrary, to make it contemporary tous).

This is not to say that Shaw was a botching novice inoutlining his characters; on the contrary, after Shakespeare andup to the present, Shaw was the one who managed to successfullyraise the standard of English drama, proving himself equally amaster of the technique of the dialogue and the modalities ofportraying the dramatic character; and, what he arrogantly butalso clear-mindedly reproaches with Shakespeare, he imposes uponhimself: “…Shakespeare, unsurpassed as poet, storyteller,character draughtsman, humorist and rhetorician, has left nocoherent drama and could not afford to pursue a genuinelyscientific method in his studies of character and society.” 75

Criticism attributes to Shaw, as a rule, more merit for hisclear, unambiguous manner of debating ideas76 than the way inwhich he delineates his characters; for what can ideas representwithout the characters, or the characters void of the emotionwhich they are to convey to the audience / the reader? “The pointis simply that he, like most of the best of his contemporaries,resembles Shakespeare and the majority of other permanentlyinteresting dramatists in resting his claim to attention, not onthe basis of any new morality which he had invented, but upon hissuccess in creating characters and arousing passions.”77 TheRomanian novelist Liviu Rebreanu remarked that G. B. Shaw had“the gift to imbue (his heroes) with a symbolic, generalloftiness.”78

NOTES:

1. Luigi Pirandello, Naked Masks: Five Plays by Pirandello (Eric Bentley,editor), p. 266-267

2. E. Wilson, The Theater Experiment - chapter ‘The DramaticCharacter’, p. 227

3. Apud E. Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 384. It is J. W. Krutch who presents this idea: “Shaw happened to

possess a certain kind of mind and, also, perhaps moreimportantly, found the theater in a peculiar situation. Thattheater was behind the times, and the times themselves were atone of the cultural crises, which are a recurrent phenomenonin all cultures. It is not that the ideas of the man in thestreet can never furnish the basis of any drama. The ideas ofthe Elizabethan man in the street had done so (…)’ (The AmericanDrama since 1918. An Informal History, p. 20)

5. H. Bergson, apud E. Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 436. G. B. Shaw used to advise his friends to write as naturally as

possible; here is what he wrote Archibald Henderson in 1905:“Be as accurate as you can: but as to being just, who are youthat you should be just?… Write boldly according to your bent:say what you WANT to say and not what you think you ought tosay or what is right or just or any such arid nonsense. Youare not God Almighty; and nobody will expect justice from youor any other superhuman attribute. This affected,manufactured, artificial conscience of morality and justice

and so on if of no use for the making of works of art: forthat you must have the real conscience that gives a mancourage his will by saying what he likes. Accuracy only meansdiscovering the relation of your will to facts instead ofcooking the facts to save trouble.” (apud Anthony Caputti,Modern Drama. Authoritative texts of…, p. 404)

7. D. Daiches, A History of English Literature (The Present Age), p. 1508. On the issue of Shaw’s intentional anachronisms v. extensively

R. Lupan, G. B. Shaw, pp. 172-1739. S. Iosifescu, Reîntîlniri cu France şi Shaw, p. 18710. William Archer was the first to call Shaw’s characters

“puppets”, after the first night of ‘Widowers’ Houses’ (apudM. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw - vol. I: The Search for Love, p. 283;Holroyd paraphrases and completes Archer: “ingeniouslyanimated puppets, embarrassing in their love-scenes though otherwise as agile as monkeys.”

11. As they are called by J. P. Hackett – Shaw – George versusBernard, p. 151. This is an ample quotation from it: “All hisdramatic work has to do with the slaves and gods and theirpictures, but there is no prescription. There may be only oneClass II god as in ‘Arms and the Man’, or one Class I god asin ‘St Joan’, or there may be one of each as in ‘Man andSuperman’ and ‘The Millionairess’. And even the gods areliable to show slavish traits at times and the slaves to givea gleam of god-like quality. He makes a play by taking a groupof ordinary individuals Class I and Class II slaves – andturning them inside out. It is all done wittily, kindly,thoroughly, sometimes with the assistance af a Class II godand sometimes-but what’s the use of trying to take thatwonderful process apart when it is there to be revelled in atthe source, for two shillings a copy.”

12. G. B. Shaw apud M. Holroyd, op. cit., vol. I, p. 39413. L. Pirandello, apud E. Bentley – The Theory of the Modern Stage14. M. Esslin, The Field of Drama – chapter IV, ‘The Signs of Drama:

Icon, Index, Symbol’, pp. 47-4815. Ibidem, p. 4416. H. Ibsen apud E. Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 56

17. Ibidem, p. 5818. G. B. Shaw apud M. Holroyd, op. cit., vol. III, The Lure of

Fantasy, p. 7719. E. Wilson, op. cit., p. 21420. E. Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 3521. “The raw material of characters, then, is not very raw after

all. It has already been worked over. It has already beenturned into a kind of art: the art of fantasy. Life is adouble fiction. We do not see others so much as certainsubstitutions for others. We do not see ourselves so much asothers with whom we are identified. When Plato said we see notlife, but shadows of life flickering in the firelight on thewall of a cave, he was an optimist or perhaps he madeallowances for the extraordinary distorsions and suppressionsof shadow place.” – Ibidem, p. 36

22. J. Galsworthy, apud E. Bentley, op. cit., p. 5523. S. W. Dawson, Drama and the Dramatic, p. 6324. As J. P. Hackett extensively demonstrates: “He brings

characters on and off, fot the sole purpose of reviewing hisinterests discussing his problems and lecturing on hisconclusions; they deliver themselves in mighty conversationalmouthfuls two pages at a time (he must have loved pouring outhis opinions like this from the day he learnt to handle apen). He covers every ordinary human interest – sex, art andreligion predominating; science is treated with what mightalways be described as deference, and it would appear that thedoctrine of the man from the molecule has been accepted asbasic truth beyond discussion. He launches out early with anattack on evangelicalism: ‘there arose a young man, earnestand proud of his own story, who offered up a long prayer inthe course of which he suggested such modifications in thelaws of nature as would bring the arrangement of the universeinto conformity with his own tenets’, and thereafter sallieson similar lines dot the pages.” (op. cit., p. 86)

25. The Play and the Reader (S. Johnson, J. Bierman & J. Harteditors), chapter: ‘Introduction: the dramatic genre’, p. 6

26. E. Wilson, op. cit., p. 214

27. “Most characters reveal themselves through physicalinterraction and dialogue with other characters. It was easierto start with monologue, but unrepresentative. Because playsconcern interrelationship, character analysis is bogus justfor its own sake in isolation. You cannot discuss the partwithout seeing the whole. (M. Kelsall, Studying Drama -An Introduc-tion, p. 50)

28. G. B. Shaw apud M. Holroyd, op. cit., vol. I, p. 27829. “Shaw has frequently been reproached with the habit of using

all his stage characters simply as mouthpieces of his ownopinions. This has become so much of a standard criticism thathe has made fun of it in ‘Fanny’sFirst Play’, where he makes one of the critics say: “AllShaw’s characters are himself; mere puppets stuck up to spoutShaw’. This criticism is undoubtedly sometimes observed, andShaw certainly interferes frequently with his own plays…” (E.Strauss, G.B. Shaw – Art and Socialism, p. 11)

30. E. Bentley, The Life of Drama, pp. 36, 3831. Twentieth Century Drama (R. Cohn & B. F. Dukore editors), p. 432. The Play and the Reader, p. 533. R. Ingarden, Von der Funktionen der Sprache in Theaterschauspiel, p. 40534. M. Esslin – op. cit., chapter The Signs of Drama: The Words, p. 8435. This is also the observation E. Strauss makes (op. cit., p. 14)36. M. Esslin, op. cit., p. 8537. S. W. Dawson – Drama and the Dramatic, p. 6838. R. Ingarden, op. cit., p. 40339. G. B. Shaw, Plays Unpleasant, p. XXV40. M. M. Morgan, apud S. W. Dawson, op. cit., p. 4641. E. Bentley, The Life of Drama, pp. 68-6942. S. W. Dawson, op. cit., p. 5043. Ibidem, p. 4944. Drama, and especially tragedy, has the unique possibility to

offer a mythical perspective to the world it presents /‘recreates’, which is also the conclusion of F. Nietzsche’sstudy The Birth of Tragedy (in Works, vol. I, p. 92): “The myht byno means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken

word”… “The structure of the scenes and the visible imageryreveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to putinto words and concepts.’’

45. E. Bentley, op. cit., p. 5346. M. M. Morgan, Shavian Playground, p. 2947. E. Wilson, op. cit., p. 21648. J. P. Hackett, op. cit., p. 8649. E. Wilson, op. cit., p. 21850. E. Bentley (op. cit., p. 52) points out that: “…the commedia

dell’arte” was “the main carrier of the tradition of fixedcharacters… [through its] comic brio, verve and diablerie”.(Commedia dell’arte was an improvised kind of popular comedy inItalian theatres in the 16th-18th centuries, based on stockcharacters (Punchinello, Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon /Pantalone). The comic dialogue, action and situations wereimprovised, being adapted by the actors according to a fewbasic plot outlines (commonly love intrigues) and to topicalissues).

51. D. W. Dawson, op. cit., p. 5052. J. I. M. Stewart remarks that Shaw’s characters have a

relation with the “popular theatrical stereotypes of the age”particularly the characters in the melodrama) in Eight ModernWriters, p. 137

53. Prefaces by Bernard Shaw, Preface to Three Plays for Puritans, p. 72054. These are Mrs. Lynn’s words in ‘Overruled’, The Dramatic Works of

Bernard Shaw, vol. 17, p. 23855. Ibidem, ‘Fanny’s First Play’, pp. 107-10856. C. K. Chesterton (in G. B. Shaw) remarks Shaw’s ease in

reversing situations, changing modes and making everythingappear possible: “G. B. Shaw calls a landlord a thief; and thelandlord, instead of denying or resenting it, says, ‘Ah, thatfello hides his meaning so cleverly that one can never makeout what he means; it is all so fine spun and fantastical…’”

57. J. P. Hackett, op. cit., chapter VI, p. 15158. A. Miller, The Theater Essays of…, pp. 3-559. E. Wilson, op. cit., pp. 214-215

60. L. Hutson, The Twentieth Century Drama, p. 2261. D. W. Dawson noticed that there are certain plays – which

with just reason happen to be tragedies- in which “only one ortwo characters really matter – the main plot of ‘TheChangeling’ springs to mind, and there is the obvious case ofthe tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles” (op. cit., p. 36)

62. See below some of E. Bentley’s remarks to that effect: “…afictitious character is a force in a story. We are accustomedto admitting this, but querulously, in the case of minorcharacters, whom we can belittle as only cogs in the wheel ofplot. But it has always been legitimate for some characters ina play to be cogs of that kind. The messengers in Greek dramaare never any more. The minor characters in Shakespeare do notmore to meet the requirements of 20th century directors whowish them to have a ‘biography’ or ‘case history’ than projecta single quality (tone, colour). They exist less as themselvesthan as part of a group, gang or partnership. Such charactersresemble members of a ‘corps de ballet’ more than the peoplein a novel. Even the major Shakespearean characters are notwhat the modern novel reader might wish. They do not have alife story behind them… Many of Shakespeare’s personae are‘unreal’… (op. cit., p. 45); and: “That the major characters thatare types should be more complex than the minor ones is initself neither surprising nor revealing, but it is a pointertoward a much larger phenomenon: they tend, in the hands ofthe masters, to become architects.(…) the archetype ofcharacter typifies larger things and chatacteristics that aremore than idiosyncrasies.” (op. cit., p. 49)

63. This is A. Caputti’s observation (op. cit., p. 410)64. S. W. Dawson adds to this idea another one, inspired by

religion, “of the world as the theatre of God’s judgement”, withthe commentary that: “we, as audience, are in a position tounderstand and to judge as none of the inhabitants of the createdworld can be” (op. cit., chapter 2, p. 25). This idea has seenample expansion in European letters: on the frontis-pice of theGlobe one could read ‘Totus mundus facit histrionem’ (“All theworld plays the actor”). Calderon de la Barca speaks about ‘Elgran teatro del mundo’ (“the great theatre of the world”), and

gradually this idea reached the concept of ‘the world as astage / as drama’.

65. Apud G. B. Shaw, Aforisme, paradoxuri, cugetări, p. 9566. H. Pearson, B . Shaw – His Life and Personality, p. 16567. J. P. Hackett, op. cit., p. 1268. S. C. Chew, R. D. Altick, A Literary History of England, vol. IV,

p. 152569. Bernard Shaw, op. cit., ‘Fanny’s First Play’, p. 11070. E. Wilson, op. cit., pp. 227-22871. The Complete Plays of G. B. Shaw, p. 34172. “But he was always at bottom a comic artist, one who saw the

limitations of even his most intelligent, most Shaviancharacters, and the inevitable comedy of the human mindapplying itself to the intractable energy of life” (A. Caputti,op. cit., p. XX)

73. E. Strauss, op. cit., p. 2474. “But the humour aid vitality belong to the dramatist’s world

only, not to the world of his characters; Shaw had nothistorical imagination, and his way of making history live wasto make all its characters into his own contemporaries, just ashis way of putting the audience into sympathy with both sidesof the conflict in which Joan was caught up was to make themdebate questions of religion and politics in twentieth centuryterms.” (D. Daiches, op. cit., p. 151)

75. G. B. Shaw, Preface to Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant76. B. Ford – The Penguin Guide to English Literature, vol. 7, The Modern Age,

p. 212: “The dialogue in which Shaw’s characters discuss theideas about society and politics and justice which he wanted hisaudience to respond to, remains brilliantly clear? – D. Daiches,op. cit., pp. 149-150: “In his desire to shock rather than tolull, to provoke rather than to amuse, Shaw put into hiecharacters’ mouths discussions in which hip characteristic witand love of paradox were given full play.”

77. J. W. Krutch, op. cit., p. 2578. L. Rebreanu, Candida, in Opere alese, vol. 5, p. 492.

Published in 2004, in the volume THE SHAVIAN HERO, byMaria-Camelia Manea and Constantin Manea, atPitești University Press (Editura Universitățiidin Pitești), pp. 30-65.

CIP Description of Romanian National Library (BibliotecaNaţională a României):

MANEA, MARIA-CAMELIA

The Shavian Hero / Maria-CameliaManea, Constantin Manea – Piteşti: EdituraUniversităţii din Piteşti, 2004

Bibliogr.IndexISBN 973-690-354-0

I. MANEA, Constantin

Copyright © 2004 – Editura Universității din Pitești