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Shaw's Debt to Scribe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Stephen S. Stanton
Stephen S. Stanton*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

It is now generally known that Bernard Shaw had no love for Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), father of the French pièce bien faite (“well-made” play), or Scribe's well-known disciple Victorien Sardou, whose technical bravura Shaw scornfully dubbed “Sardoodledom.” Perhaps his most outspoken recorded condemnation of the prolific playwright and his factory of collaborators is this (undated) outburst to Archibald Henderson: “Why the devil should a man write like Scribe when he can write like Shakespeare or Molière, Aristophanes or Euripides? Who was Scribe that he should dictate to me or anyone else how a play should be written?” To be sure, a good many literary critics of the past century have disparaged this form of drama, combining a complex plot with a maximum of theatrical ingenuity and an absolute minimum of thought. But Shaw's call to arms against the well-made play and its popular and successful founder echoed so loudly over so long a period that it could not help but arouse many disinterested spectators. No quarter would be, nor could be, given to this mountebank, this cheap magician of the stage.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 1961 , pp. 575 - 585
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 575 Saturday Review (London), 27 May 189S; reprinted in Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties, Standard Edition (London, 1948, 1954), I, 133–140. Future Shaw quotations from the Saturday Review are from this work—cited hereafter in my text as OTN. Except where otherwise indicated, I have used the Standard Edition of Shaw's works (Constable, 1932) in documentation throughout. Since all volumes of this edition have been reprinted in the past dozen years, I give the date of reprinting for individual volumes, not date of copyright.

Because of space limitations I refer the reader for a review of Scribe and his school to S. S. Stanton, ed., “Introduction to the Well-Made Play” in Camille and Other Plays, Drama-book edition (New York, 1957)—hereafter cited as Camille. Although Alexandre Dumas fils, Emile Augier, and Sardou wrote pièces bien faites, the special pattern of theatrical effects which comprises the genre was established by Scribe.

Note 2 in page 575 Henderson, Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet (New York, 1932), p. 595. Henderson comments, “As a matter of fact Shaw was full of the great dramatists, knew nothing about Scribe, and cared less.”

Note 3 in page 575 (London, 1893), p. xiii; quoted in Irving McKee, “Bernard Shaw's Beginnings on the London Stage,” PMLA, Lxxiv (September 1959), 470.

Note 4 in page 575 “My Way with a Play,” The Observer, London, 29 September 1946; reprinted in Shaw on Theatre, Dramabook edition, ed. E. J. West (New York, 1958), pp. 267–273. See, e.g., pp. 268–270. Future quotations from Shaw's essay are from this edition—cited hereafter in my text as ST.

My demonstration of Shaw's use of Scribe's dramatic method appeared originally in my “English Drama and the French Well-Made Play” (unpubl. diss., Columbia, 1955)— cited hereafter as “English Drama.” The present essay is a revision of that demonstration. See also my Introduction to Camille, pp. ix-x, xxxvii-xxxix. Eric Bentley has drawn upon some of this material in his recent essay, “The Making of a Dramatist (1892–1903),” Tulane Drama Review, v (September 1960), 3–21.

Note 5 in page 575 A History of Late Nineteenth-Century Drama: 1850–1900 (Cambridge: University Press, 1946), I, 90 and 194.

Note 6 in page 576 (London, 1952), pp. xxxv-xxxvi.

Note 7 in page 576 “The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Now Completed to the Death of Ibsen,” in Bernard Shaw, Major Critical Essays (London, 1955), p. 146. Future quotations from this work are from this edition—hereafter cited in the text as QI.

Note 8 in page 576 Ibsen directed more than 70 plays, 21 by Scribe himself, during his apprenticeship at Bergen from 1851 to 1856. See William Archer and C. H. Herford, eds., Introduction to The Works oj Henrik Ibsen, Viking Edition, i (New York, 1911), 16.

Note 9 in page 576 One should remember, however, that Scribe did not actually invent the technique of the well-made play, but, with a skill and resourcefulness unique in the history of the drama, developed this technique from the elements common to comedy in the classical tradition, to which Terence, Moliere, and Beaumarchais belonged.

Note 10 in page 576 M. A. Franc, Ibsen in England (Boston, 1919), Appendix B.

Note 11 in page 577 For a detailed account of the similarities see my “English Drama,” pp. 54–59.

Note 12 in page 577 Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York, 1956), p. 39.

Note 13 in page 577 Most of the technical terms included in this essay are discussed in detail in William Archer's Playmaking; A Manual of Craftsmanship (New York, 1928), pp. 85–110, 225–259, 260–274.

Note 14 in page 578 I discuss the likeness of The Philanderer and Arms and the Man to this play in my “English Drama,” pp. 120–124, 134–153. I am now preparing a study of Shaw's use of Bataille de Dames in Arms and the Man.

Note 15 in page 578 A translation by Charles Reade was performed at the Olympic on 7 May; another by T. W. Robertson was produced at the Haymarket on 18 November. Both performances are recorded in Nicoll, Late Nineteenth-Century Drama, ii, 535, 546.

Note 16 in page 578 See, e.g., “The ever-delightful The Ladies' Battle [sic], played through the years by so many clever actresses, and, on this occasion, in the T. W. Robertson version, was the choice offering of April 16th and 17th” (1891 at Palmer's Theatre). George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, xiv (New York, 1945), 525.

Note 17 in page 578 Widowers' Houses (1892), The Philanderer (1893), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), and Arms and the Man (1894).

Note 18 in page 578 William Irvine, in The Universe of G. B. S. (New York, 1949), pp. 174–177, refers to this misunderstanding as “a very old dramatic device,” but nowhere in his analysis of Candida does he mention the well-made play or its characteristics.

Note 19 in page 581 Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw: 1856–1950, amended edition (New York, 1957), p. 110.

Note 20 in page 583 Though perhaps indirectly, by way of Ibsen. In the nineteenth century the main line of descent seems to be: Scribe, Le Manage d'Argent (1827); Bertrand et Raton (1833); Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni (1842); Dumas père, Chevalier (1847); Scribe, Bataille de Dames (1851); Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Boucicault, Arrah-na-Pogue (1864). One of the earliest examples of this theme in literature occurs in the Captin of Plautus.