Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World 3030974227, 9783030974220

Table of contents :
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction: Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World
References
Part I: Spanish-Speaking Countries in Shaw’s Writings
Chapter 2: Bernard Shaw and the Spanish Myth of Don Juan
Parallel Lives
Tirso’s burlador
Genealogy of Shaw’s Don Juan
Starry Autos
Creative Evolution
References
Chapter 3: The Influence of Cervantes’ Don Quixote on Shaw’s Literary World; or, the Quixotic Shaw
Don Quixote in Britain
Cervantes, Don Quixote, and Shaw
Cervantes and Don Quixote in Shaw’s works: The Eye of the Critic
Shaw’s Don Quixotes
References
Chapter 4: Shaw and Spanish Artists
Introduction: Shaw and Art
Spanish Art in Shaw’s Plays and Prefaces
Shaw as a Critic of Spanish Art
References
Chapter 5: Shaw and Spanish Plays in 1890s London
Introduction
The Son of Don Juan
Mariana Before Mariana
Echegaray’s Mariana Versus Robins’s Mariana
Was Shaw Wrong About Echegaray?
References
Chapter 6: Shaw and Spanish Music Criticism
Spanish Musicians and Composers in London
Spanish Singers
Spanish Singing Methods and Instruction
Operas Featuring Spanish Culture and Themes
Spanish Dancers
Conclusion
References
Part II: Shaw’s Reception in the Spanish-Speaking World
Chapter 7: The Reception of George Bernard Shaw’s Works and Ideas in Spain
Introduction
Bernard Shaw in Spain Until 1918
A Decade of Success: Bernard Shaw in the 1920s and Early 1930s
Pygmalion
Saint Joan
Candida
Other Successful Productions
Bernard Shaw’s Nobel Prize: The Definitive Recognition
The Reception of Bernard Shaw Between 1936 and 1950
References
Chapter 8: An Irishman in Mexico: Bernard Shaw in the Mexican Press (1900–1960)
Introduction
Some Prior Considerations
The Beginnings: 1900–1910
Shaw During Revolutionary Times, 1911–1920
Interest in Shaw’s Ideas and Works Is Born: 1921–1930
The Road to Consolidation: 1931–1940
From the Shaw Boom to Its Death: 1941–1950
Shaw After Shaw: 1951–1960
References
Chapter 9: Bernard Shaw’s Theatre in Uruguay (1930–1960)
Introduction
Foreign Companies
Shaw’s Plays Produced by the Comedia Nacional
Bernard Shaw Staged by Independent Theatre Companies
Radio Adaptations of Bernard Shaw Plays
References to Bernard Shaw in Marcha
References
Chapter 10: The Reception of Bernard Shaw’s Plays in Argentina
References
Part III: Influence and Relationship with Spanish-Speaking Authors
Chapter 11: Borges’s Admiration for George Bernard Shaw
References
Chapter 12: Shavian Shadows in Spanish Lands: Shaw’s Impact on the ‘Generation of 1898’
Interest Without Influence: The Cases of Benavente and Valle-Inclán
A Spanish Fabian: Ramiro de Maeztu
It’s a Generational Thing: Shaw and the 98ers as Seen by Younger Readers
Conclusions
References
Chapter 13: Bernard Shaw and Rodolfo Usigli: Where Playwrights Converge
The Devil’s Disciple
The Discovery of a Mentor
Crossroads
Usigli Interviews Shaw
References
Chapter 14: Bernard Shaw and the Literary Imagination of Nemesio R. Canales
References
Part IV: Shaw in Spanish Translation
Chapter 15: Julio Broutá’s Translations of Bernard Shaw
Introduction
Publication History9
The Translator at Work
References
Chapter 16: The Unauthorized Shaw: Non-official Translations in the Spanish-Speaking World
Introduction
Methodology and Scope
Plays
Non-dramatic Texts
A Note on the Quality of the Translations
References
Appendix A
Appendix B: Translations into Spanish Until the 1950s
Appendix C
Index

Citation preview

BERNARD SHAW AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín

Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries Series Editors Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel Massachusetts Maritime Academy Pocasset, MA, USA Peter Gahan Independent Scholar Los Angeles, CA, USA

The series Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries presents the best and most up-to-date research on Shaw and his contemporaries in a diverse range of cultural contexts. Volumes in the series will further the academic understanding of Bernard Shaw and those who worked with him, or in reaction against him, during his long career from the 1880s to 1950 as a leading writer in Britain and Ireland, and with a wide European and American following. Shaw defined the modern literary theatre in the wake of Ibsen as a vehicle for social change, while authoring a dramatic canon to rival Shakespeare’s. His careers as critic, essayist, playwright, journalist, ­lecturer, socialist, feminist, and pamphleteer, both helped to shape the modern world as well as pointed the way towards modernism. No one engaged with his contemporaries more than Shaw, whether as controversialist, or in his support of other, often younger writers. In many respects, therefore, the series as it develops will offer a survey of the rise of the modern at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subsequent varied cultural movements covered by the term modernism that arose in the wake of World War 1. More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14785

Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín Editor

Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World

Editor Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Extremadura Cáceres, Spain

ISSN 2634-5811     ISSN 2634-582X (electronic) Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries ISBN 978-3-030-97422-0    ISBN 978-3-030-97423-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Chari Caring mother, loving wife, faithful friend: Love of my life.

Foreword

There are a number of full-length monographs in Spanish on Bernard Shaw: Blas Raúl Gallo (1956, 1960), Enrique Anderson Imbert (1977), José J. Llopis (1981), and Antonio López Santos (1989) have examined Shaw’s Hispanic connections. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna’s Shaw en el Mundo Hispánico (1981) in particular has situated Shaw within a wider Spanish-speaking context. However, Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-­ Speaking World is the very first English-language study of its kind, and its many valuable cross-cultural perspectives are a welcome addition to Shaw scholarship. The 16 contributions to this volume reveal new, neglected, or updated (with online resources) affinities between Shaw and the Hispanic world. These include Shaw and Spanish art, theatre, and music criticism; the influence on Shaw of the Don Juan figure and of Don Quixote; Shaw’s reception in print and on stage in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and Uruguay; Shaw’s impact on famed Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, Mexican playwright Rudolfo Usigli, Puerto Rican journalist Nemesio R. Canales, and on Spain’s ‘Generation of 1898’; and Shaw’s works rendered into Spanish by numerous translators, especially Julio Broutá (his ‘official’ translator). Many of these connections will be new to those who have studied Shaw only from an Anglo-Irish perspective, as will be the excerpts from the countless reviews and critiques published in Spanish-language periodicals and newspapers. There is a great deal to discover in Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World!

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FOREWORD

Shaw’s oeuvre continues to fascinate and provoke, and this volume contains a wealth of new information that broadens our understanding and appreciation of one of the most controversial literary figures of his age. Editor Gustavo A.  Rodríguez Martín, in recent years a veritable dynamo of Shaw Studies, has assembled a stellar group of international scholars to explore Bernard Shaw’s relationships with Hispanic literature and culture. Sinceras felicitaciones to him and to all contributors: your exhaustive research will no doubt prove the impetus to even further Shavian discoveries. Kingston, ON, Canada 

Michel Pharand

Acknowledgements

A book like this is, by its very nature, a collaborative effort and, as such, I owe a great debt of gratitude to many people. First and foremost, to all the authors who have contributed their work in this volume. They have all invariably done their best to produce engrossing chapters and have managed to create a rich, coherent whole that integrates a wide variety of critical perspectives, cultural backgrounds, and literary traditions. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to them is the honest admission that, had I written this book on my own (as I initially had planned), the loss to Shaw studies would have been unforgivable. Also, I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to my friend Michel Pharand, who not only provided the foreword for this volume but, most importantly, generously shared his vast knowledge as a Shaw scholar and editor towards the completion of the manuscript as it has been published. The man who paved the way for this type of study with his Bernard Shaw and the French (2000) is also in many ways responsible for whatever good there is in these pages. Thank you, Michel. The genesis of this book began in 2016 when I was awarded a research fellowship at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Thanks to their generous sponsorship and the wealth of the archival material I had access to, the structure of this project took shape. I am immensely thankful to these institutions and their staff. The summer of 2016 also allowed me to visit the Isidor Saslav Shaw collection in his hometown of Overton, Texas. The late Anne Heiligman ix

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and her son David Saslav made me feel at home and gave me the warmest welcome. Their hospitality allowed me to search an invaluable Shaw library that also helped in the shaping of this book. I am truly indebted to them. Over the years, a number of people in the Shavian community have become mentors, collaborators, helpful correspondents…, and they have never failed to inspire my scholarly pursuits. These luminaries of Shaw studies deserve a prominent place in this modest acknowledgement. In no particular order, I would like to thank Christopher Wixon, Audrey McNamara, Jean Reynolds, Bob Gaines, Peter Gahan, Nelson Ritschell, Richard and Lori Dietrich, Leonard Conolly, Brad Kent, Charles del Dotto, Evelyn Ellis, Bernard F. Dukore, and many others who will forgive the omission of their names. I would also like to remember those who are no longer with us, like Stanley Weintraub and Charles Carpenter. This is a modest remembrance, but I hope they can also see how their ‘splendid torch’ still shines bright. Thank you.

Note on the Text

Shaw’s characteristic spelling and punctuation have been retained throughout the book. This accounts for the missing apostrophes and for the idiosyncratic use of colons and semicolons, for example. All translations from Spanish are the authors’, unless otherwise noted. In addition, all the chapters in section two (Shaw’s reception in different Spanish-­speaking countries) have been translated or adapted by the editor from manuscripts originally written in Spanish. References to the Collected Plays with Prefaces (The Bodley Head, edited by Dan H. Laurence, 7 vols.) are abbreviated as CPP, followed by the volume number in Roman numerals and the page number (e.g., CPP VI: 125). The same applies to the Collected Letters (Max Reinhardt and Viking Press, 4 vols.) and to the Music in London, 1890–1894 (Constable, 3 vols.) abbreviated as CL and CMC, respectively.

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Contents

1 Introduction: Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-­Speaking World  1 Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín Part I Spanish-Speaking Countries in Shaw’s Writings  17 2 Bernard Shaw and the Spanish Myth of Don Juan 19 Oscar Giner 3 The Influence of Cervantes’ Don Quixote on Shaw’s Literary World; or, the Quixotic Shaw 39 Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín 4 Shaw and Spanish Artists 61 José Luis Oncins-Martínez 5 Shaw and Spanish Plays in 1890s London 81 Miguel Cisneros Perales

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Contents

6 Shaw and Spanish Music Criticism101 Aileen R. Ruane Part II Shaw’s Reception in the Spanish-­Speaking World 121 7 The Reception of George Bernard Shaw’s Works and Ideas in Spain123 Guadalupe Nieto Caballero 8 An Irishman in Mexico: Bernard Shaw in the Mexican Press (1900–1960)143 Íñigo Fernández Fernández 9 Bernard Shaw’s Theatre in Uruguay (1930–1960)165 Cecilia Pérez Mondino 10 The Reception of Bernard Shaw’s Plays in Argentina187 Liliana B. López Part III Influence and Relationship with Spanish-Speaking Authors 203 11 Borges’s Admiration for George Bernard Shaw205 Jason Wilson 12 Shavian Shadows in Spanish Lands: Shaw’s Impact on the ‘Generation of 1898’219 David Jiménez Torres 13 Bernard Shaw and Rodolfo Usigli: Where Playwrights Converge239 Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora

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14 Bernard Shaw and the Literary Imagination of Nemesio R. Canales255 Asela R. Laguna Part IV Shaw in Spanish Translation 277 15 Julio Broutá’s Translations of Bernard Shaw279 Sílvia Coll-Vinent 16 The Unauthorized Shaw: Non-official Translations in the Spanish-Speaking World299 Pablo Ruano San Segundo Appendix A317 Appendix B: Translations into Spanish Until the 1950s321 Appendix C325 Index333

Notes on Contributors

Guadalupe Nieto Caballero  is a lecturer at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). Her main research interests are in twentieth-century Hispanic prose, in particular the avant-garde and Silver Age novel and literary criticism of this period. She has published a number of articles and chapters on Benito Pérez Galdós, Carmen Martín Gaite, Miguel Delibes, and several women writers from the 1920s and 1930s in Spain. Sílvia Coll-Vinent  has a PhD from Oxford University and BA in Catalan Philology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She teaches contemporary Catalan, French and English literature at the Faculty of Philosophy (Universitat Ramon Llull) and at the Faculty Antoni Gaudí of History, Archaeology and Christian Arts (Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià). She has researched on translation and reception of Victorian and Edwardian literature with particular attention to Catalan prose writers and intellectuals working during the inter-war period, and has contributed to Spanish and Catalan dictionaries of history of translation (DHTE: http://hte.upf.edu; Diccionari de la traducció catalana: http://www.visat.cat/diccionari/cat.html). She now coordinates the G.  K. Chesterton Study and Documentation Center based in Barcelona and a number of projects on cultural and documentary heritage of the early twentieth century. Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora  has published 130 books, and as playwright he has been cited as one of the most important Mexican playwrights in Felicia Hardson Londré’s The History of World Theatre, and in Cambridge Encyclopedia of World Theatre. He is a specialist in Mexican xvii

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theatre of the 20s and 30s. As an author he has been awarded, among others, the following prizes: the 1987 Letras de Oro for best work in Spanish in the United States (1987), the National Award of Theatre by the Mexican government (1980), and the Jalisco Award of Literature 2017. His works have been published in Argentina, France, Germany, Spain, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, the United States, and Mexico. He taught at the University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, and is now full professor at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. As a researcher, he discovered two previously lost texts of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; one of them, The Second Celestina, was published with a prologue by Octavio Paz. Iñigo  Fernández  Fernández  is Professor-Researcher at the School of Communication of the Universidad Panamericana (Mexico). His research topics include the history of Mexican journalism and the relationship between history and new technologies. He is the author of El debate fe-­ razón en la prensa católica y liberal de la capital mexicana (1833–1857). Oscar Giner  is a dramatic poet who has been working in the American Southwest and in his native Caribbean for over four decades. He is a graduate of Yale College and earned a Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1987. He is a professor at the Herberger College of Design and the Arts and the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. Giner is an actor, theatre director, playwright and translator, and his research focuses on myths and rituals of the Medieval Religious stage and Native American performance practices. Recently, Giner directed and performed his translation of Myrna Casas’ Summer, Summer at the Festival of Puerto Rican Theatre Voices produced by the Dramatists Guild at the Off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre. Asela R. Laguna  is Emerita Professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyNewark. She was chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures (2005–2011) and twice acting chair of what used to be the Department of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies. She has organized three major international conferences: Imagénes e identidades: el puertorriqueño en la literatura (1983); with Dr. Carlos Rodríguez, the First International Conference on the República Dominicana (1986) and in 1998 the First International Conference on

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Portugal and the Portuguese-Speaking literatures. Author of George Bernard Shaw en el mundo hispánico (1981) and editor of Imagénes e identidades: el puertorriqueño en la literatura (1985); Images and Identities: The Puerto Rican in Two World Contexts (1987), and The Global Impact of the Portuguese Language (2000). In addition, she has published and lectured on topics related to contemporary Spanish dramatists, Latin American and Puerto Rican literature, and the theme of Christopher Columbus in Literature. Liliana B. López  is Professor of Literature, Bachelor of Literature, and Doctor of Arts (Theory and History of the Arts). She teaches at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina). Her research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary theatre, especially in Argentina. She has published the results of her earlier research projects in the six-volume anthology Topology of Theatrical Criticism (2009–2019). She has participated and organized different types of academic events in the same research area. She is the Editorial Secretary of the digital magazine Territorio Teatral (DAD, UNA). Cecilia  Pérez  Mondino  is Professor of Cultural History at the Centro Latinoamericano de Economía Humana (Montevideo, Uruguay). She has published numerous articles both as a researcher and as a critic, where she has showcased her active feminist activism as well as her scholarly interest in Uruguayan history and heritage. José  Luis  Oncins-Martínez  is Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Extremadura, Spain, where he lectures on pragmatics, stylistics, and corpus linguistics. In these areas, he has edited Current Trends in Corpus Linguistics (2020) and authored several papers on wordplay, translation, and Anglicisms. Miguel Cisneros Perales  lectures in Translation Studies at Universidad Pablo de Olavide, in Seville. His PhD dissertation analyses the reception of George Bernard Shaw in Spain and the presence of Spanish themes in his works. Other of his areas of research include translation and comparative literature. He holds a BA in Humanities and a BA in Translation and Interpreting from Universidad Pablo de Olavide and an MA in Translation and Multicultural Studies from Universidad de Sevilla. He has authored a new edition and translation of Pygmalion (Cátedra, 2016) and translated

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many other authors such as Andrew Lang, Daphne du Maurier, Vita Sackville-West, Clare Jerrold, and Lizzie Doten. Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín  lectures on Modern English Literature, phonetics, and ESL at the Universidad de Extremadura, Spain. He is the editor of the Continuing Checklist of Shaviana, the annual annotated bibliography published in the SHAW Journal, and the author of the bibliographical essay on Shaw for The Year Work’s in English Studies. He is working on the translation of Shaw’s works into Spanish. Aileen R. Ruane  is an FRQSC-funded postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, whose current research focuses on feminist translations and performances of plays between Ireland and Quebec. She recently completed a PhD in Études littéraires at Université Laval, where her dissertation analysed Québécois translations of Irish plays, including works from Bernard Shaw, W.  B. Yeats, Martin McDonagh, and Mark O’Rowe, via the concepts of alterity and performativity. Her published work can be found in SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland, the Women in French blog, and in the forthcoming The Theatre of Deirdre Kinahan. Pablo  Ruano  San  Segundo  is a senior lecturer at the University of Extremadura, Spain. He holds a degree in English Studies, two Master’s degrees, and a PhD in Corpus Stylistics. His research interests are in corpus linguistics, literary criticism and translation studies, with a particular interest in English-speaking authors. He has published a number of articles and chapters in edited volumes on canonical authors such as Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Tennessee Williams, and George Bernard Shaw. He has edited several books and has co-authored a handbook on corpus-stylistic studies. David  Jiménez  Torres  is Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellow at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He holds a PhD in Spanish Studies from the University of Cambridge and has taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Manchester and Universidad Camilo José Cela. His research interests include cultural exchanges between Spain and the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Spanish responses to the First World War, the figure of the modern intellectual, and the connections between history and literature. He is the author of Ramiro de Maeztu and England: Imaginaries, Realities and Repercussions of a Cultural Encounter (Boydell & Brewer) and

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­co-­editor of The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere: From the Enlightenment to the ‘indignados’ (Berghahn). He is also the author of two novels and a literary memoir centred on the work of Pío Baroja, a weekly columnist in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, and a contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Letras Libres. Jason Wilson  is Emeritus Professor at University College, London. He has written books on Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, on the Andes, on Buenos Aires and a Traveller’s Literary Companion to South and Central America. He has edited and translated Alexandre von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s Journey to Mauritius, Osvaldo Ferrari’s Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz’s Itinerary, and most recently a biography on W.  H. Hudson, Living in the Sound of the Wind (2015 and 2016). He spends his time between London and Buenos Aires.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 11.1 Fig. 15.1

Fig. 15.2

Scene from Act III of Antonio de Zamora’s (1665–1727) comedy No hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague, y Convidado de piedra (There is no Deadline Left Unmet and no Debt Left Unpaid, and the Stone Guest), by Francisco de Goya. This work was last seen in 1896 at an auction to sell off the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. Public Domain 24 George Bernard Shaw by Stefan Mrozewski. Wood engraving, 1935. National Portrait Gallery. London 44 Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez. The elusiveness of the composition and the play with perspective—the painter being also the subject of the painting—finds parallels in Shaw’s playwriting. Public Domain 68 Margarita Xirgu as Joan as she rallies the Dauphin to help her lift the Siege of Orléans at the end of Scene II. Premier of Santa Juana at Teatro Goya, Barcelona, 21 October 1925. Personal archive of Xavier Rius Xirgu 133 Portrait of Jorge Luis Borges, by Grete Stern (1951). Public Domain210 Advertisement for the Spanish translations of Shaw plays published by Aguilar on the occasion of his Nobel Prize. El Sol 22 November 1926. (Source: Hemeroteca Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de España) 285 Advertisement for the Spanish translations of Shaw plays published by Aguilar. La Gaceta Literaria Sol 1 March 1927. Source: Hemeroteca Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de España 286

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List of Tables

Table 8.1 Table A1 Table A2

Number of articles per decade where Shaw is mentioned List of the most successful productions of Shaw plays in Spanish-­speaking countries until the 1950s A Selected Bibliography of Works about Shaw in Spanish (including translations of studies originally published in other languages)

145 317 325

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-­Speaking World Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín

This volume aims to fill a niche in Shaw studies that—notable exceptions aside1—has been neglected for the better part of the last 100 years: Bernard Shaw’s influence and reception in the Spanish-speaking world. In all honesty, it should come as no surprise that Spanish-speaking countries have never been a focal point in Shaw studies. If one peruses the indexes of all the major biographical and bibliographical works on Shaw, hardly any of the place-names that are mentioned belong to countries where Spanish is an official language. By contrast, the majority of geographical references include cities where Shaw lived (Dublin, London), where his plays were very successful (Vienna, Berlin, New York, Paris), or the countries where he stopped at during his famous world tours (South Africa, New Zealand, the Holy Land, India, Russia). However, once one gets over the deceiving first impression that the Spanish-speaking world does not have a place in Shaw’s intellectual endeavors, it should become apparent that the theme of this volume deserves exploration, as we shall see. Let us not forget that after his 1899 visit to southern Europe, Shaw would remark that Spain, a

G. A. Rodríguez Martín (*) Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_1

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“soundly beaten nation,” is “so effectually brought back to the sober realities of national character and industry that I am almost in love with defeat.”2 However, as is often the case with Shaw, there is far more than meets the eye about him—and that includes the ramifications of his persona, his reception, and his influence. Indeed, the Spanish-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic had much to say in these three spheres. To begin with Shaw the man, it is easy to overlook how his formative years included a substantial amount of Spanish cultural influence—even if only the bare facts of his life are considered. Shaw, a voracious reader from an early age who would only feel at ease “with the mighty dead,”3 had a working knowledge of Spanish literature in English translation. Cervantes, a popular author in the British Isles since the seventeenth century,4 was among his favorites. Much the same can be said about Tirso de Molina, especially because the cycle of Don Juan plays founded on his El Burlador de Sevilla5 represents a major influence for Shaw’s literary outlook and a fundamental source for one of his masterpieces, Man and Superman. Furthermore, during his early days as a critic for various periodicals, he was exposed to the work of many Spanish—and a few Latin American—painters, playwrights, musicians, and writers whose artistic ability Shaw reviewed with his trademark “power of accurate observation.”6 If we begin by examining the fine arts, he wondered, for example, whether “Velasquez’s sitters ever objected to his portraying them as incarnations of their ruling passions and darling sins.”7 In the field of music, the technical prowess of violinist Pablo de Sarasate was the yardstick by which other performers were measured.8 Shaw’s dramatic criticism, in turn, contains acid remarks about dramatist José Echegaray, who “makes his puppets dance ruthlessly. He writes like a strong man to whom these people are all ‘poor devils’ whom he pities and even pets, but does not respect.”9 One of Shaw’s later book reviews even mentions Salvador de Madariaga’s historical essay Spain, which he deemed “world history” as opposed to Macaulay’s “trumpery budget of Reform Club gossip.”10 These motley but illustrative samples suffice to foreshadow—for the moment—the breadth of Shaw’s connections with Spanish culture. If we turn to Shaw’s reception in Spanish, Shaw’s impact cannot be properly gauged without considering two key elements: the vast critical tradition associated with his plays and—to a lesser degree—his non-­ dramatic works both in Spain and Latin America, and the translations of his plays into Spanish. In fact, the critical appraisals of Shaw in Spanish

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began as early as 1903, when his early plays and his provocative ideas had already captivated the imagination of those who were acquainted with the cultural and political scene of the British Isles. Take, for instance, Antonio J. Amadeo’s closing remarks in his article on “Política americana,” where the Puerto Rican explicitly paraphrases Shaw in saying that “North Americans cannot govern themselves. They think the best government is that which governs least.”11 Admittedly, Shaw’s Spanish reception in the early days also suffered from some cultural misunderstandings—and certain elements were “lost in translation.” This may explain why Man and Superman was listed under the heading “Philosophy” in the “Recent Foreign Books” section of a 1903 issue of Nuestro Tiempo.12 At any rate, by 1904 Joan Pérez Jorba acknowledges Shaw as “the leader of the cynical theatre, so to speak, because of the mordacity he uses to expose the vices of the English bourgeoisie.”13 Also around that time (1906) we already find references to Shaw in the Mexican press on the occasion of the death of Ibsen, among whose champions he is listed, alongside William Archer.14 It would not take long for critics and journalists in Mexico to quote Shaw as an authoritative figure, whether by noting his definition of civilization as something more than “electricity and the steam engine”15 or his denunciation of the “deplorable conditions” of the working class in England.16 Even reports about Shaw’s health—at times merely of a strong cold—were published in 1909.17 The list of references in the press throughout the first half of the twentieth century—even without mentioning a single dramatic review and focusing solely on tangential allusions—is endless: from the review of James Huneker’s book on Ibsen, Shaw, and other “iconoclasts” in the Guatemalan La Locomotora18 to the report in the Cuban Noticias de Hoy about Shaw and H.G. Wells’s protest against the suppression of The Daily Worker.19 Toward the end of his life, many acknowledged Shaw’s Spanish connections, even the subtlest echoes. For instance, in 1946, a French doctoral student writing a thesis on Miguel de Unamuno wrote to Shaw because he wanted to know if the intertextual echoes he perceived in certain passages of The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God were due to Shaw’s having read Unamuno. Shaw drafted his reply on the back of the letter, saying that he has “not read Unamuno” but considers him “as being in the same movement as myself.”20 To provide an illuminating example of how much of an iconoclastic icon (pun intended) Shaw had become by the 1930s, particularly in Spain, one may turn to the questionnaire published by the Comissariat de Propaganda of the Catalonian government (Generalitat) during the Spanish Civil War (1937).21 The

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pamphlet, entitled “Los escritores ingleses se pronuncian sobre la guerra Española” [English writers pronounce on the Spanish war], lists a series of replies to a questionnaire about whether the likes of W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, or Aldous Huxley supported the “legitimate Government and the people of the Spanish Republic” or “Franco and fascism.” Regardless of who supported who, Shaw’s response was literally one of a kind, for it was the only one listed not under “for” or “against,” but under “unclassified replies.” Perhaps some of his appeal in Spain had to do with his ability to defy classification. The reception of Shaw’s plays in Spanish-speaking countries also boasts a long-standing tradition, which began with Ramiro de Maeztu’s reviews of the theater in London22 and continued both in Spain and in Latin America. For example, in 1905 Maeztu justified some critics’ reaction against John Bull’s Other Island on the grounds that the play “cannot compare to other plays by Shaw” and because the playwright “took the liberty of telling the English, in England, that they do not treat Ireland well. But the English, of course, do not enjoy listening to these things and they do not go to the theatre.”23 Around that time, short notes appeared on the Paris productions of other Shaw plays, such as the 1908 premiere of Candida.24 These hybrid reviews aside, the dramatic criticism in Spanish that has focused on plays by Shaw covers the whole spectrum: from unconditional praise to lukewarm indifference; from grand productions to minor amateur projects; from the international (i.e., non-Spanish-speaking) theater powerhouses to Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. To illustrate this wide-ranging scope, let us cite a few examples of productions of Shaw plays—and criticism thereof—outside the major productions covered in this volume. This focus on the lesser plays and the lesser venues is an attempt to throw in relief the implicit thesis of this volume: the connections between Shaw studies and the Spanish-speaking world go far beyond what is contained in the forthcoming chapters. In geographical terms, perhaps the most obscure productions would be those in the Spanish protectorate of Morocco, where Margarita Xirgu’s company staged Saint Joan in Alcazarquivir in 1930.25 Similarly, countries not given a full chapter in this volume because they have seen relatively few productions of Shaw’s plays still boast a substantial record that adds to the big picture of Shaw’s plays in performance throughout the Spanish-­ speaking world. One example is the case of Peru, where

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Pygmalion was presented at the Teatro Municipal on September 28 and October 12, 1941 by the Asociación de Artistas Aficionados; and again at the same theatre by José Cibrián, July 28, 29, 31, 1949. The Escuela Nacional de Arte Escénico produced O’Flaherty, V.C. at the Teatro Segura on February 10, 1947, and Major Barbara at the same theatre on January 27, 1948. Candida was presented by the Compañía Nacional de Comedias in September 1949, at the Teatro Segura.26

This list of Peru productions can be complemented with the staging of Saint Joan in Lima by Margarita Xirgu’s company, on tour in two different seasons (1937 and 1946).27 As regards amateur circles, several university companies staged plays by Shaw, as in the case of the Compañía de Teatro de la Universidad de La Habana, led by Mario Parajón, who staged Candida in the 1950s.28 Similar work seems to have been done at the Universidad de Panamá, although this was mainly due to the prior influence of English performances.29 Much the same can be said of the 1927 production of Santa Juana by Grupo de Teatro Universitario Renovación (Argentina)30 and the Universidad de Sonora (Mexico), which staged Spanish versions of Candida and The Man of Destiny—albeit after Shaw’s death.31 Lastly, the Teatro de Ensayo de la Universidad Católica (TEUC, Chile) was probably among the first in a Spanish-Speaking context to make it rain on stage during the first act of their 1949 production of Pygmalion.32 As a consequence of the above, the critical reception of the countless productions of Shaw plays in Spanish can only be painted in broad brushstrokes, especially in this introductory essay, and they are broad because they touch upon all the chords that Shaw struck as a dramatist. Once again, I would like to focus on the wide range of critical responses that Shaw elicited over the course of more than half a century. For some, it is his didacticism, his social criticism, his quasi-scientific outlook that distinguishes him from other modern playwrights. This accounts for José Alsina’s detailed discussion of the morals and the economic foundations of Trata de blancas (Mrs Warren’s Profession), where “Bernard Shaw has the purpose of describing in detail the economic medium that punishes women who seek virtue with poverty, ageing, and premature death.”33 For others, Shaw is primarily a philosopher and, as such, is described as “the Irish dramatist who adapted Nietzsche’s theories” and turned Don Juan into a “superman.”34 Shaw’s ideas are central to critical appraisals of his work even in Spanish-speaking periodicals published in the United States.

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For example, Amado Nervo reports on Shaw’s revolutionary notions about the upbringing of children,35 whereas La Revista de Taos published in its editorial section a summary of Shaw’s proposal of a new “Minister of Marriage,” who would find spouses for single people and mediate in marital crises.36 Henríquez Ureña synthesized Shaw’s modus operandi as philosopher or teacher (“world-betterer”) when he said that for Shaw paradoxes were weapons—unlike Wilde, for whom they were an art form.37 Not for nothing, therefore, had Shaw become a central literary figure. His ideas had a global appeal, and this ability to put his finger on universal issues is reflected in essays on Shaw by several Spanish-speaking writers. For example, the Colombian essayist Baldomero Sanín Cano argues that the questions posed in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide respond to “the needs created by the supercivilized man.”38 Yet, at the same time, Shaw is indebted to a long literary tradition that can be traced back, at least, to Biblical sources and, later, Greco-Roman ones. That is why Shaw is quoted as an authoritative source by José Escofet in order to appraise the effective denouement of Hofmannsthal’s Elektra.39 But Shaw borrowed from all his great predecessors—and his contemporaries—and some Spanish-speaking critics opened new avenues of analysis in this comparative field. For instance, already in 1904, the Cuban Enrique José Varona pointed out how Beaumarchais’s Rosina and Chérubin are mirrored in Candida and Marchbanks, although the placing of three characters in a similar situation “serves quite different dramatic purposes” for each dramatist.40 On a related note, the case of Shaw’s works in Spanish translation is also quite complex. Having appointed the Luxembourg-born, French-speaking Julio Broutá as his official Spanish translator because of shared political affinities—he appointed his official French translator Augustin Hamon for the very same reason—the quality of Broutá’s versions leaves much to be desired, as we shall see.41 Perhaps because he knew of these traductological deficiencies—and perhaps also because of his obsession with overseeing everything to do with his plays—Shaw owned several Spanish dictionaries, grammars, phrasebooks, and textbooks42 that he likely consulted, albeit taking many translated passages on good faith. Indeed, translation posed further challenges to Shaw’s notion that a playwright’s original “view of his work can only be conveyed by himself.”43 What matters about the foregoing is that there is ample evidence that Shaw stirred enough interest to deserve being translated into Spanish dozens of times in his lifetime alone.44 By 1925, Shaw was listed as one of the three British authors most often translated into Spanish at the time—the

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other two being H.G. Wells and James Barrie.45 Moreover, as an illustrative combination exemplifying everything that has been said on the subject of translation thus far, let us examine Shaw’s reply to a letter from Federico E. Ibarra, a Mexican translator seeking permission to publish his own translation of a “Compendio”—most likely Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide.46 In it, Shaw (a) admits his “limited” knowledge of Spanish, but manages to draw explicit parallels between the phrasing of Ibarra’s and Broutá’s versions, and (b) refuses to allow the publication of the translation and abides by his long-standing contract with the now-­ deceased Broutá. One thus comes to the realization that—aside from the published translations discussed in this volume—there are likely many other translations that did not survive or that were never published, in this case Ibarra’s. It is only natural, therefore, that such a far-reaching critical reception as outlined above should disseminate Shaw’s ideas and aesthetics throughout Spain and Latin America. In this respect, we can only begin to estimate the number of authors, actors, and directors who were influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Shaw’s playwriting, poetics, philosophy, and religious views, and by his perennial interest in the most disparate, controversial issues. Again, even if one disregards those authors whose connections to Shaw are most obvious and penetrating, we are left with a notable list of individuals whose careers were influenced by the Irish sage. Take, for instance, the film reviews by the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga, informed by Shaw’s point of view on cinematography, one that Quiroga calls “as accurate as it is novel.”47 In the more pertinent field of drama, Shavian echoes have been noted in the plays of Peruvian José Chioino (Retorno)48 and Argentinian Román Gómez Masía (El señor Dios no está en casa).49 At a more anecdotal level, some of the cultural activities at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid included Shaw as a recurrent theme. Thus, during the 1928–1929 academic year, the residents had a chance to listen to María de Maeztu lecture on “Bernard Shaw’s Candida” and the renowned Hispanist Walter Starkie speak on the “Three Stages of Modern Theatre: Ibsen, Shaw, and Pirandello.”50 At around the same time, Josefina de la Torre, who also lectured in the women’s quarters of the Residencia, chose La gran Catalina (Great Catherine) as part of the repertory of her “Teatro Mínimo”—a chamber stage in her own house.51 Similar serendipitous influences surface when we explore the career of Argentinian actress and director Alejandra Boero, whose directorial baptism of fire was La medalla al mérito (O’Flaherty, V.C.) in the 1940s.52 To quote but one more case of

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Shaw’s presence in the intellectual circles of Spanish-speaking culture, the first articles by Gabriel García Márquez in El Universal (1948) “typically pick up on an everyday scene or event … or a literary writer such as George Bernard Shaw … which then leads into a reflection on weightier matters.”53 Despite all the connections, influences, and publications cited above— even though, as mentioned earlier, the most “Shavian” authors have been purposely avoided throughout this introduction—not a single scholar explored the topic of Shaw’s reception in the Spanish-speaking world. That is, not until Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna’s ground-breaking Shaw en el mundo hispánico (1981). This milestone in Shaw studies remains, in many ways, unsurpassed because of its scholarly rigor and penetrating critical vision. Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World attempts to build on Rodríguez Laguna’s seminal work and take advantage of the resources and methodologies that the Puerto Rican author—who also contributes a chapter here—did not have access to when writing her book. The most obvious difference between the present study and Shaw en el mundo hispánico is that it is written in English. Although reviewed in the SHAW Annual54 and listed in The Continuing Checklist of Shaviana,55 Asela’s book being written in Spanish restricted its circulation among Shaw scholars and no major studies drew from it. However, the two fundamental characteristics whereby the present volume may stand a chance at building on previous work are its scope and methodology. In terms of scope, the contributors’ different fields of expertise allow for a multiplicity of focal points that have hitherto received little attention within the book’s thematic unity; more specifically, the influence of Hispanic art and literature on Shaw’s formative years; the ideological impact of Shaw on various Hispanic intellectuals; and the role of translation and publication—and the quality thereof—in disseminating Shaw’s works and ideas. In methodological terms, as will be seen, much of the information discussed in this volume has been made available only recently via a number of digitizing projects (cited where relevant). Several digital newspaper archives—often containing past issues of specialized journals and magazines—have made it possible to locate relevant texts (production notes, reviews, critical essays) that had fallen into oblivion. In this respect, these invaluable resources helped build a more complete—and more nuanced— picture of Shaw in the Spanish-speaking world.

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Another relevant note on methodology concerns the “contemporary” outlook of this Palgrave series, which entails that the majority of chapters in this book contains only references to people, works, and events during Shaw’s lifetime (or, perhaps, up until his centenary, 1956). There is, however, a chapter in the third section of the book where the contemporary scope is only maintained by referring to actors and directors whose formative years fall within the first half of the twentieth century—although they only managed to stage Shaw plays in later decades. The case in point is Argentina, where a focus on local themes at the turn of the century and the successive (usually military) dictatorships from the 1930s on left little room for a playwright like Shaw until later times. In addition, sources in Spanish are quoted abundantly throughout, and all translations are by the chapter authors themselves. Readers are invited to review the bibliographical references to each quotation, should they wish to consult the original text. On occasion, play titles or short phrases have been left in the original Spanish when sufficient English cognates make their meaning readily apparent. This book is divided into four sections, each with a particular focus on the Shavian tradition in Spanish-speaking countries. Part I investigates the various aspects of Spanish culture (literature, art, music) that Shaw was familiar with and that may additionally have shaped his work. Thus, Chap. 2, by Oscar Giner, delves into the Don Juan myth and how Shaw, through “at least some knowledge of Tirso’s text,” reinterpreted this Spanish classic. Chapter 3, by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, examines Cervantes and his iconic masterpiece, Don Quixote, in order to ascertain the extent of Cervantes’s influence on Shaw and to highlight the Quixotic in Shaw’s style and persona. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 primarily investigate the Spanish element in Shaw’s career as a critic: José Luis Oncins-Martínez unpacks what Shaw had to say about the Spanish masters of painting during his tenure as an art critic; Miguel Cisneros Perales examines Shaw’s reviews of Spanish plays (with special attention to Echegaray’s Mariana); and Aileen Ruane explores Shaw’s criticism of Spanish musicians (both composers and performers) to bring to the fore Shaw’s interest in the performative dimension of music. Part II concentrates in the reception of Shaw’s plays and other writings in different Spanish-speaking countries. Guadalupe Nieto Caballero (Chap. 7) covers Shaw’s critical reception in Spain, especially the most successful play runs (Saint Joan, Pygmalion). A similar approach is taken in Íñigo Fernández Fernández’s chapter about Mexico (Chap. 8), although

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some space is also devoted to Shaw’s political writings and their relevance during times of national political unrest. Cecilia Pérez Mondino (Chap. 9, Uruguay) and Liliana B. López (Chap. 10, Argentina) provide abundant material for the study of Shaw’s plays in performance in their respective countries. These two chapters share the geographical core of the La Plata River estuary, on whose banks stand the major cities where Shaw plays were staged. Part III examines various Spanish-language authors who were greatly indebted to Shaw either ideologically, stylistically, or both. For example, Jason Wilson disentangles the Shavian dimension in Borges’s stylistic labyrinth in Chap. 11—from direct literary references to biographical details. David Jiménez Torres (Chap. 12) utilizes a collective outlook to trace Shaw’s influence on a number of turn-of-the-century Spanish authors, most notably Jacinto Benavente and Ramiro de Maeztu. The last two chapters (Chaps. 13 and 14) in this section (by Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora and Asela R.  Laguna) examine the two authors most influenced by Shaw: Rodolfo Usigli and Nemesio Canales, respectively. Both were playwrights whose works draw directly from Shaw and both openly discuss their indebtedness to the Irish polymath. Moreover, Usigli met Shaw and corresponded with him, while Canales translated numerous articles and letters by Shaw published in the Puerto Rican press. The last two chapters of this book (Part IV) showcase an analysis of translations of Shaw’s works into Spanish. This section is divided into an appraisal of the work of Shaw’s “official” translator, Julio Broutá (Chap. 15, by Sílvia Coll-Vinent) and of other translators (Chap. 16, by Pablo Ruano San Segundo). In both cases, the authors provide a detailed account of the publication history of Shaw’s translations into Spanish—as well as new insights into their quality. Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World closes with three appendices—with information up until the 1950s—that should serve as a reference guide to readers. The first, compiled by the editor, contains the most notable productions of Shaw plays in Spanish-speaking countries—including data such as date, venue, and the theater company that staged them. Appendices II and III, assembled by Pablo Ruano San Segundo, list works by Shaw and about Shaw, respectively, in Spanish translation. Although, as more data becomes available thanks to several digitizing projects, these appendices will remain a work in progress for years to come, they represent a notable improvement on previous efforts of this kind.

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notes 1. The sole exception is Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna’s Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Río Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1981), discussed below. 2. Bernard Shaw, “The Trials of a Military Dramatist,” in The Portable Bernard Shaw, ed. Stanley Weintraub (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 218. 3. Preface to Immaturity (London: Constable, 1931), xliii. 4. For example, Don Quixote was “famously acquired by the Bodleian library in its year of publication, 1605; George Wilkins makes the first recorded mention of Don Quixote outside Spain in 1606; and Shelton’s translation was published in 1612.” B.  W. Ife, “Cervantes and Shakespeare: asymmetrical conversations,” in Cervantes Y/And Shakespeare: New Interpretations and Comparative Approaches, ed. José Manuel González Fernández de Sevilla (San Juan de Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2006), 21–49. 5. Shaw included Don Quixote and El Burlador de Sevilla as two of his alltime favorite plays—with the caveat that although the former was “not written for the stage,” it was “historically a comedy.” Bernard Shaw, letter to Archibald Henderson, 16 November 1917. Quoted by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. 6. Bernard Shaw, Music in London, 1890–94, vol. III (London: Constable, 1932), 266. 7. Stanley Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 1885–1950 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1989), 301. 8. Bernard Shaw, Music in London, 1890–94, vol. I (London: Constable, 1932), 80. 9. James Huneker, Dramatic Opinions and Essays by G. Bernard Shaw, vol. I (New York: Brentano’s, 1906), 86. 10. Bryan Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews, vol. II (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996), 492. 11. Antonio J.  Amadeo, “Política americana,” Unión Ibero-Americana 213 (31 October 1903), 2–3. It is significant that this journal was published in the majority of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries on both sides of the Atlantic. 12. “Revista Bibliográfica,” Nuestro Tiempo 34 (October 1903), 562. Man and Superman was subtitled “A Comedy and a Philosophy,” which likely triggered the misunderstanding. Available at http://hemerotecadigital. bne.es/issue.vm?id=0002472931&page=142. 13. Joan Pérez Jorba, “Crónica de Arte y Sociología,” La Revista Blanca 137 (1 March 1904), 532. 14. “Henrik Ibsen,” El Imparcial (30 May 1906), 6.

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15. “Homenaje al Sabio Dr. Gabino Barreda,” El Contemporáneo (3 March 1908), 2. 16. “Los trabajadores ingleses,” La Iberia (5 May 1910), 1. 17. “La Salud del Dramaturgo Inglés George Bernard Shaw,” El Tiempo (24 January 1909), 3. 18. “Noticias Literarias,” La Locomotora (10 February 1907), 9. 19. Phillip Bolsover, “Bernard Shaw y H. G. Wells Solicitan la Reaparición del ‘London Daily Worker’,” Noticias de Hoy (21 March 1941), 1. 20. Bernard Shaw, Reply to Unidentified Author, 12 October 1946. Quoted by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. 21. Available at https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/es/ catalogo_imagenes/grupo.do?path=180486. 22. See Jiménez Torres, in this volume. 23. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Por los Teatros Ingleses,” La Correspondencia de España (2 October 1905), 3. 24. “Los Teatros de París,” La Época (9 May 1908), 2. 25. La Unión Ilustrada (22 June 1930), 24. 26. Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), 937. 27. Gustavo von Bischoffshausen, “Margarita Xirgu y su Compañía en Lima: Una Apuesta Teatral Moderna,” Puente. Ingeniería, Sociedad, Cultura 15, no. 4 (2009): 38–43. For more information on the tours of Xirgu’s Company in South America, see Francesc Foguet i Boreu, “Margarida Xirgu en América Latina: Compromiso y Vivencia de la Catalanidad en el Exilio,” in Presencia Catalana, ed. José M. Muriá and Angélica Peregrina, 129–147. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2012. 28. “Fallece en Madrid Mario Parajón,” Revista Hispano Cubana (HC) 26 (Fall 2006), 101–102. 29. Héctor Rodríguez. Primera Historia del Teatro en Panamá (Panamá: Caja de Ahorros, 1984), 39 and passim. 30. Graciela Frega, Mabel Brizuela, María J.  Villa, and Ana G.  Yukelson, “Córdoba (1900–1945),” in Historia del Teatro Argentino en las Provincias, vol. I, ed. Osvaldo Pellettieri (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2005), 121. 31. Luis Enrique García, Memoria gráfica del teatro universitario, 1954–2004 (Hermosillo, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora, 2006). 32. Jaime Celedón, Memorias que olvidé en alguna parte (Santiago de Chile: Aguilar, 2001), 72. Earlier productions had already used this special effect. For example, according to the review in The Times (30 September 1923. “Mr Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ in French. Puzzled Actors and Critics”), the 1923 Paris premiere also utilized this. Unfortunately, “the rain was so noisy that

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it drowned the words of the stranded people and forced Mlle. Pax … to utter the most improbable series of ejaculations and cries.” 33. José Alsina, “Teatro de Arte: Trata de Blancas,” El País (20 Julio 1908), 3. 34. “La Representación de Don Juan,” La Iberia (10 November 1906), 1. 35. Amado Nervo, “Educación Infantil,” El Nuevo Mexicano (19 May 1921), 5. 36. “Un Ministro de Matrimonios,” La Revista de Taos (13 June 1913), 2. 37. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, “Las ‘Poesías’ de Unamuno,” Revista Moderna de México (1 June 1907), 38. 38. Hernando Urriago Benítez, El signo del centauro: variaciones sobre el discurso ensayístico de Baldomero Sanín Cano (Cali: Universidad del Valle, 2007), 123. 39. José Escofet, “Crónica: Otra Vez Electra,” El Correo Español (24 February 1911), 1. 40. Enrique José Varona, “Una transfiguración de Rosina y Querubín,” Desde mi belvedere (Havana: Rambla y Bouza, 1907), 253–258. 41. See Ruano San Segundo and Coll-Vinent in this volume. 42. The online catalogue of the library at Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, lists, among others, Mariano Velázquez de la Cadena, A New Pronouncing Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages, 2 vols. (London: Appleton, 1900–1902); Fernando de Arteaga y Pereira, Practical Spanish (London: Murray, 1908); The Pelman Method of Language Instruction: Spanish (London: Pelman Institute, 1921); and R. Torres, Spanish in 30 Lessons (London: Linguaphone Institute, 1925). It is worth noting that the oldest of these volumes predates the first Spanish translations of Shaw’s plays. 43. Preface to Plays Unpleasant (CPP I: 28). All quotations from Shaw plays and prefaces are from The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, 7 vols. (London: Max Reinhardt, 1970–74), abbreviated parenthetically to include volume (Roman) and page (Arabic) numbers. 44. Miguel Cisneros Perales, a contributor to this volume, has published the latest—but certainly not the last—Spanish translation of Pygmalion (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016). 45. “¿Han Desaparecido los Autores que Viven en las Bohardillas?,” El Informador (25 October 1925), 2. 46. Bernard Shaw, Letter to Federico E. Ibarra, 15 November 1934. Quoted by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. 47. Horacio Quiroga, “El Cine y las Artes Plásticas,” Caras y Caretas (13 December 1919), 3. For an extensive discussion of Quiroga’s film reviews, see Germán Silveira, “The literary origins of film criticism in Argentina and

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Uruguay: Horacio Quiroga’s reviews, 1918–1931,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 36, no. 2 (2016): 232–251. 48. Willis Knapp Jones, Behind Spanish American Footlights (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 267. 49. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Historia Cultural y Literaria de la América Hispánica, ed. Vicente Cervera Salinas (Madrid: Verbum, 2008), 229n26. 50. Isabel Pérez-Villanueva Tovar, La Residencia de Estudiantes: Grupos Universitarios y de Señoritas. Madrid, 1910–1936 (Madrid: MIC, 1990), 265, 363. 51. Andrés Soria Olmedo, ed., Antología de Gerardo Diego: Poesía Española Contemporánea (Madrid: Clásicos Taurus, 1991), 616. 52. Gustavo Geirola, Arte y oficio del director teatral en América Latina: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay (Buenos Aires: Argus-a, 2014), 11–12. 53. Stephen M.  Hart, Gabriel García Márquez (London: Reaction Books, 2010), 35. 54. Elsie B.  Adams, “Shaw in the Hispanic World,” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 3 (1983): 246–249. 55. John R.  Pfeiffer, “A Continuing Checklist of Shaviana,” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 3 (1983): 251–259.

reFerences Adams, Elsie B. 1983. Shaw in the Hispanic World. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 3: 246–249. Alsina, José. 1908. Teatro de Arte: Trata de Blancas. In El País XXII.7654 (20 July 1908), 3. Amadeo, Antonio J. 1903. Política americana. In Unión Ibero-Americana (31 October 1903). von Bischoffshausen, Gustavo. 2009. Margarita Xirgu y su Compañía en Lima: Una Apuesta Teatral Moderna. In Puente. Ingeniería, Sociedad. Cultura 15 (4). Bolsover, Phillip. 1941. Bernard Shaw y H. G. Wells Solicitan la Reaparición del ‘London Daily Worker’. In Noticias de Hoy (21 March). Celedón, Jaime. 2001. Memorias que olvidé en alguna parte. Santiago de Chile: Aguilar. De Maeztu, Ramiro. 1905. Por los Teatros Ingleses. In La Correspondencia de España LVI.17401 (2 October 1905), 3. Escofet, José. 1911. Crónica: Otra Vez Electra. In El Correo Español (24 February 1911), 1. Foguet i Boreu, Francesc. 2012. Margarida Xirgu en América Latina: Compromiso y Vivencia de la Catalanidad en el Exilio. In Presencia Catalana, ed. José

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M. Muriá and Angélica Peregrina. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Frega, Graciela, Mabel Brizuela, María J.  Villa, and Ana G.  Yukelson. 2005. Córdoba (1900–1945). In Historia del Teatro Argentino en las Provincias, ed. Osvaldo Pellettieri, vol. I. Buenos Aires: Galerna. García, Luis Enrique. 2006. Memoria gráfica del teatro universitario, 1954–2004. Hermosillo, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora. Geirola, Gustavo. 2014. Arte y oficio del director teatral en América Latina: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Buenos Aires: Argus-a. Hart, Stephen M. 2010. Gabriel García Márquez. London: Reaction Books. Henderson, Archibald. 1956. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Henríquez Ureña, Pedro. 1907. Las ‘Poesías’ de Unamuno. In Revista Moderna de México (1 June 1907). ———. 2008. Historia Cultural y Literaria de la América Hispánica. Madrid: Verbum. Huneker, James, ed. 1906. Dramatic Opinions and Essays by G.  Bernard Shaw. Vol. I. New York: Brentano’s. Ife, B.W. 2006. Cervantes and Shakespeare: asymmetrical conversations. In Cervantes Y/And Shakespeare: New Interpretations and Comparative Approaches, ed. José Manuel González Fernández de Sevilla. San Juan de Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. Jones, Willis Knapp. 1966. Behind Spanish American Footlights. Austin: University of Texas Press. n/a. 1903. Revista Bibliográfica. In Nuestro Tiempo 34: 562. ———. 1906a. Henrik Ibsen. In El Imparcial 14.074 (30 May 1906), 6. ———. 1906b. La Representación de Don Juan. In La Iberia (10 November 1906), 1. ———. 1907. Noticias Literarias. In La Locomotora II.25 (10 February 1907), 9. ———. 1908a. Homenaje al Sabio Dr. Gabino Barreda. In El Contemporáneo XIV.2812 (3 March 1908), 2. ———. 1908b. Los Teatros de París. In La Época LX.20669 (9 May 1908), 2. ———. 1909. La Salud del Dramaturgo Inglés George Bernard Shaw. In El Tiempo XXVI.8472 (24 January 1909), 3. ———. 1910. Los trabajadores ingleses. In La Iberia IV.1184 (5 May 1910), 1. ———. 1913. Un Ministro de Matrimonios. In La Revista de Taos (13 June 1913), 2. ———. 1925. ¿Han Desaparecido los Autores que Viven en las Bohardillas? In El Informador (25 October 1925), 2. ———. 1930. Novedades teatrales In La Unión Ilustrada XXII.1085 (22 June 1930), 24.

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———. 2006. Fallece en Madrid Mario Parajón. Revista Hispano Cubana (HC) 26: 101–102. Nervo, Amado. 1921. Educación Infantil. In El Nuevo Mexicano (19 May 1921), 5. Pérez Jorba, Joan. 1904. Crónica de Arte y Sociología. In La Revista Blanca 137 (1 March 1904), 532. Pérez-Villanueva Tovar, Isabel. 1988. La Residencia de Estudiantes: Grupos Universitarios y de Señoritas. Madrid, 1910–1936. Madrid: MIC. Pfeiffer, John R. 1983. A Continuing Checklist of Shaviana. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 3: 251–259. Quiroga, Horacio. 2016. El Cine y las Artes Plásticas. In Caras y Caretas (13 December 1919). Silveira, Germán. The literary origins of film criticism in Argentina and Uruguay: Horacio Quiroga’s reviews, 1918–1931. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 36 (2): 232–251. Rodríguez, Héctor. 1984. Primera Historia del Teatro en Panamá. Panamá: Caja de Ahorros. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Río Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico. Shaw, Bernard. 1931. Preface. In Immaturity. London: Constable. ———. 1932. Music in London, 1890–94, 3 vols. London: Constable. Soria Olmedo, Andrés, ed. 1991. Antología de Gerardo Diego: Poesía Española Contemporánea. Madrid: Clásicos Taurus. Tyson, Bryan, ed. 1996. Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews. Vol. II. University Park: Penn State University Press. Urriago Benítez, Hernando. 2007. El signo del centauro: variaciones sobre el discurso ensayístico de Baldomero Sanín Cano. Cali: Universidad del Valle. Varona, Enrique José. 1907. Una transfiguración de Rosina y Querubín. In Desde mi belvedere, 253–258. Rambla y Bouza: Havana. Weintraub, Stanley, ed. 1986. The Trials of a Military Dramatist. In The Portable Bernard Shaw. New York: Penguin Books, 218–222. ———, ed. 1989. Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 1885–1950. University Park: Penn State University Press.

PART I

Spanish-Speaking Countries in Shaw’s Writings

CHAPTER 2

Bernard Shaw and the Spanish Myth of Don Juan Oscar Giner

Abyss of Hell! I call on thee, Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy! —Calderón de la Barca, El mágico prodigioso translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Parallel Lives Fray Gabriel Téllez, el maestro Tirso de Molina, was born in Madrid c.1583, about the time Shakespeare began his theatrical career in London. In 1601 he took religious vows in the order of Nuestra Señora de la Merced.1 In 1613–1614, a few years before Ben Jonson published the first folio of his Works (1616), he wrote El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, which was first published in an edited volume of plays by Lope de Vega.2 Tirso (the pseudonym means “the shepherd’s staff”) may have written over 400

O. Giner (*) Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_2

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plays, 86 of which survive. He was named Prior of the convent of Soria in 1645 and died in 1648. In the early twentieth century, Bernard Shaw took on the “frightful responsibility” of composing a Don Juan play (CPP II: 493).3 In 1887 he had elaborated the story of the Spanish hero in his brief tale Don Giovanni Explains, whose sources were “a very great play” (Molière’s Dom Juan) and “a very great opera” (Mozart’s Don Giovanni).4 The great esteem in which Shaw—not a modest man when it came to judging Shakespeare— held both these works can be determined by the following statement: “No man will ever write … a better comedy than Le Festin de Pierre …, a better opera than Don Giovanni” (CPP II: 41–2). In 1899, when Spain was recovering from the end of four centuries of imperial dreams after the Spanish-American War, Shaw visited southern Europe. On returning to London, he commented: I have found the two soundly beaten nations, Spain and Greece, so effectually brought back to the sober realities of national character and industry that I am almost in love with defeat.5

Shaw’s excursion may have resulted in the vivid descriptions for the settings of Acts 3 and 4 in Man and Superman: Act 3 is set in one of the “mountain amphitheatres” of the Sierra Nevada, infused with “Spanish magnificence and Spanish economy everywhere” (CPP II: 613); Act 4 takes place in the garden of a villa on a hill in Granada “opposite the Alhambra.” Shaw advises: “Whoever wishes to know what it is like must go to Granada to see” (CPP II: 696). According to Rodríguez Martín, Shaw cannot have been unaware of the long artistic and historiographic tradition that made the Alhambra an icon of culture in the British Isles.6 From the stories and engravings of the travelers of the Romantic Era7 to the 1854 Alhambra Court in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, the Alhambra had been a household word among educated Britons.8 Moreover, Shaw also had first-hand experience of the Alhambra. In fact, he was so impressed by Granada and its surroundings that during his 1899 trip he writes that “when the flying machine brings the Sierra Nevada within two hours of London, land on Hindhead will be worth five shillings an acre” (CL II: 104). More indirectly, Shaw also attended numerous performances in the Alhambra Theatre, as attested by his music criticism and his usage of the venue as part of the setting of his first novel, Immaturity (1879).9

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Michael Holroyd writes that the characters of Man and Superman “started talking inside Shaw’s head” in 1900. The early, provisional title for the play was The Superman, or Don Juan’s great grandson’s grandson.10 In 1903 Man and Superman was published with a new title and the subtitle “A Comedy and a Philosophy.” In addition to the four-act play, the book included an epistolary preface, the “Revolutionist’s Handbook” appendix, and “a final display of aphoristic fireworks” (CPP V: 338). In 1905 Man and Superman was staged in London but without Act 3. Two years later (1907), when Don Juan in Hell (subtitled “A Dream from Man and Superman”) was presented at the Royal Court Theatre, a synopsis expressly prepared for the occasion by Shaw revealed the ancestry of the sequence: Upon this conception of heaven and hell [not as places, but as states of the soul] the author has fantastically grafted the seventeenth century legend of Don Juan Tenorio … as told in the famous drama by Tirso de Molina and in Mozart’s opera. (CPP II: 801)

Eric Bentley confirms that Shaw had an informed regard for the history of Don Juan: Bernard Shaw … once answered as follows the present editor’s request for the right to reprint Man and Superman alongside Moliere’s Festin de Pierre: “Le Festin de Pierre should be preceded by Tirso de Molina’s Burlador de Seville [sic], not followed by Man and Superman.”11

One can also surmise that Shaw had at least some knowledge of Tirso’s text. Over the centuries, Tirso’s play was known throughout Europe primarily by the second clause of its original title: The Guest of Stone. But in the preface to Man and Superman, Shaw referred to the Spanish comedia by the first clause of its title, as it appeared in both the first (Princeps) edition of the play and in Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch’s edition of 1848: “What attracts and impresses us in El Burlador de Sevilla is not the immediate urgency of repentance, but the heroism of daring to be the enemy of God” (CPP II: 498). A reconstruction in English of the original title leads to a more precise understanding of the drama. Burla, according to the Dictionary of the Real Academia Española, is an “action, gesture or word which is intended to ridicule people or things.”12 The noun burlador has been variously

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translated as “joker,” “rogue,” or even “playboy.”13 A close approximation of the title in Spanish was adopted by Roy Campbell for his translation (The Trickster of Seville and His Guest of Stone) in Bentley’s classic volume of Spanish Golden Age dramas (1959). And yet the literal translation of the title of Tirso’s play as it appeared when first published is The Trickster of Seville AND His Guest of Stone, which situates the story at the heart of an internal tension between two disparate polarities in what Robert Louis Stevenson called “the agonized womb of consciousness.”14

Tirso’s burlador In Act One, Don Juan Tenorio has been sent from Spain to Italy by his father to avoid the scandal caused by Don Juan’s seduction and betrayal of a noble woman. In the palace of the King of Naples, he seduces the Duchess Isabela by tricking her into believing he is her betrothed, the Duke Octavio. Don Juan’s ruse is discovered by the King and Juan is arrested by his uncle, Don Pedro Tenorio, who helps him escape the palace guards. The King of Naples locks Isabela in a castle, and decrees that Duke Octavio (whom the King believes is responsible for Isabela’s deshonra) should be found and forced to marry Isabela. Don Pedro helps Octavio flee to Spain. On his way to the court in Seville, where his father attends the King of Castile, Don Juan and his servant Catalinón are shipwrecked on a beach near a village of fishermen. Don Juan awakens from his bout with the sea in the arms of Tisbea, a fisherwoman who has renounced love. She falls in love with Don Juan, and takes him to her father’s hut to recover. Meanwhile in Spain, King Alfonso arranges the marriage of Don Juan with Doña Ana de Ulloa. Don Juan promises to marry Tisbea, seduces her, and abandons her by riding away on horseback with Catalinón. At the end of the act, a village dance celebration is interrupted by Tisbea’s cries and laments. Dishonored by Don Juan, she throws herself into the sea. Act Two: King Alfonso decides to marry Don Juan to the Duchess Isabela to repair wrongs, and banishes him from Seville. The King also proposes to marry Duke Octavio to Doña Ana, once promised to Don Juan. In Seville, Don Juan renews his friendship with the Marqués de la Mota. Doña Ana and the Marqués are in love, and since the King has promised Doña Ana to Duke Octavio, she sends the Marqués a love letter—intercepted by Don Juan—asking him to come to her house at midnight. Don Diego Tenorio, Juan’s father, recriminates his son for his past

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behavior, warns him about God’s judgment at the hour of death, and informs Don Juan that the King has exiled him to Lebrija for his adventure with Isabela. That night Don Juan, wearing the cape of the Marqués de la Mota, enters Doña Ana’s rooms. She discovers Juan’s imposture and calls for help. Her father, Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, seeking vengeance for lost honor, duels with Don Juan and is killed by him. The Marqués de la Mota is arrested by Don Diego Tenorio in the King’s name for the murder of Don Gonzalo. Don Juan and Catalinón leave Seville and join a peasant wedding in a village on the road to Lebrija. Juan takes a seat next to the peasant bride, Aminta, during the pastoral wedding. In the final jornada (Act Three) of the first notable dramatic rendition of the Spanish myth, Don Juan fools the bridegroom, Batricio, into believing that he has seduced Aminta.15 Batricio runs away from the wedding. Don Juan tricks Aminta into believing Batricio has abandoned her, and offers to marry her in his place. Aminta gives in to his advances (Fig. 2.1). The final scenes contain two chiaroscuro sequences that take place among shadows and candlelight, accompanied by ghostly, premonitory songs. Don Juan and Catalinón ride back to Seville and come across the tomb of Don Gonzalo de Ulloa. Don Juan invites the statue of Don Gonzalo to supper that very night. The stage directions describe the appearance of the Guest of Stone at Don Juan’s dining table: Don Juan takes the candle, and comes to the door. Don Gonzalo enters and encounters him, in the same shape he was found in his grave, and Don Juan retreats confused, clutching his sword, candle in the other hand. Don Gonzalo advances towards him with dainty steps, and Don Juan retreats at the same pace, until he reaches the middle of the stage. (118)16

A chorus of servants sings songs during the feast: The term invites me to enjoy you. Since I have a long life ahead, let life go by. If you wait for my love, lady trusting in Death: how long to wait! (121)

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Fig. 2.1  Scene from Act III of Antonio de Zamora's (1665–1727) comedy No hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague, y Convidado de piedra (There is no Deadline Left Unmet and no Debt Left Unpaid, and the Stone Guest), by Francisco de Goya. This work was last seen in 1896 at an auction to sell off the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. Public Domain

Don Gonzalo’s statue invites Don Juan to dine at his tomb’s chapel. The next night, after a supernatural meal served by servants dressed in mourning, during which voices are heard mocking the songs heard in Don Juan’s

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rooms, the statue of Don Gonzalo takes Don Juan by the hand, scorching him with flames: The wonders of God, Don Juan        are unfathomable and so he wants you to pay for your blame at the hands of a dead man. (140)

Don Juan falls dead; his corpse is taken by the Guest of Stone into his grave: “With great noise, the grave sinks with Don Juan and Don Gonzalo; Catalinón crawls out of the grave” (141). All characters dishonored by Don Juan appear before the King of Castile seeking redress. Catalinón tells the story of the death of Don Juan. The King marries the aggrieved couples and closes the play.17 Tirso’s Don Juan is an alchemical trickster (comparable to the Native American trickster hero Coyote from Navajo mythology) who violates the social, political, ethical, moral, and spiritual order of his universe by violating four women and killing Doña Ana’s father: Catalinón: In the end, do you intend to enjoy Tisbea? Don Juan: If to trick is my ancient habit, why do you ask           knowing my condition? (44)

Don Juan offends the marriage conventions of the honor code and defies the principal pillars of Spanish society. He infringes upon the cosmic order of classic comedias, leading to a chaotic upheaval of Nature. Carmelo Santana Mojica has pointed out that the four heroines who are tricked by Don Juan are symbolic of the four basic elements: Doña Isabela (air), Tisbea (water), Doña Ana (fire), and Belisa (earth).18 After each one of his transgressions—anticipating John Tanner’s motor-car race from London to Granada—Don Juan escapes across the geographic landscape of the Spanish world. His flight comes to an end in Seville, where he desecrates a chapel that houses the stone statue of Don Gonzalo. By inviting a dead man to supper, he performs necromancy—the dreaded witchcraft practice that brought down Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. When the Guest of Stone

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grabs Don Juan by the hand, the foundational dramatic image of the myth is forged: trickster vitality in tension with structural petrification.

Genealogy of Shaw’s Don Juan In the Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, Shaw explains the historical evolution of Don Juan as a dramatic figure. Molière’s Don Juan, Shaw affirms, “casts back to [Tirso’s] original in point of impenitence; but in piety he falls off greatly.” In Don Giovanni, Mozart (“the artist-­ enchanter, the master beloved by masters”) composes the last of the true Don Juans, revealing the hero’s spirit in magical harmonies, elfin tones, and elate darting rhythms as of summer lightning made audible. Here you have freedom in love and in morality mocking exquisitely at slavery to them, and interesting you, attracting you, tempting you, inexplicably forcing you to range the hero with his enemy the statue on a transcendent plane, leaving the prudish daughter and her priggish lover on a crockery shelf below to live piously ever after. (II: 498–99)

Shaw dismisses Byron’s Don Juan as “only a vagabond libertine” and, without referring to Marlowe’s Faustus, asserts that the mantle of the Spanish hero was carried by “his cousin Faust” in the hands of Goethe: [Faust] carried both his warfare and his reconciliation with the gods far beyond mere love-making into politics, high art, schemes for reclaiming new continents from the ocean, and recognition of an eternally womanly principle in the universe. (CPP II: 500)

In the fiction of Ibsen and Tolstoy, according to Shaw, Don Juan changed his sex and became Doña Juana, “breaking out of the Doll’s House and asserting herself as an individual instead of a mere item in a moral pageant” (CPP II: 500). Shaw makes it clear that his Man and Superman is a Don Juan play “in the philosophic sense”: 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 … finds himself in mortal

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conflict with existing institutions, and defends himself by fraud and force as unscrupulously as a farmer defends his crops by the same means against vermin. (CPP II: 497)

He understood that the spirit of the Spanish Don Juan was that of a mythological rebel. In a brief exegesis of Tirso’s play, he comments: 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.19 (CPP II: 497–98)

Shaw also knew that his John Tanner—cognate with both Faust and Don Juan and, as several critics argue, an Anglicization of Juan Tenorio20—was an archetypal manifestation which reflected the history and lineage of a succession of well-known heroes of serious literature. In the Preface to Three Plays for Puritans Shaw argued that “some enemy of the gods, unterrified champion of those oppressed by them, has always towered among the heroes of the loftiest poetry.” The Diabolonian disposition— Shaw insisted—sustained by heroes who celebrate “the death of godhead, may be younger than the hills; but … is as old as the shepherds” (CPP II: 33). John Tanner had had a previous incarnation in the figure of a Puritan nonconformist: “From Prometheus to my own Devil’s Disciple, such enemies have always been popular” (II: 498). Jorge Luis Borges points out that Shaw’s Three Plays for Puritans carries a paradoxical title, “since Puritans forbid theatrical representations.”21 And yet, from beginning to end, The Devil’s Disciple maintains a religiously charged atmosphere with spiritually fervent characters throughout the course of the melodrama. Dick Dudgeon is a “Puritan of the Puritans,” a man for whom “religion is the most clamorous need of his nature.” He was raised in a house “where the Puritan religion has died” (similar to the Clennam household in Dickens’s Little Dorrit). With “Pity instead of Hatred as his master passion,” he takes the devil’s side and “champions him, like a true Covenanter, against the world.” Dudgeon (like John Tanner and like Don Juan) is a descendant of Prometheus (as received by Shaw from both Aeschylus’s tragedy and Shelley’s dramatic poem) and displays the spiritual élan of Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan believed that there was “a way to heaven even from the gates of hell”). In this regard, he follows

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the “strange religion” of William Blake, as codified in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Shaw’s American revolutionary is also kin to Wagner’s Siegfried and Nietzsche’s Superman.22 For such heroes, the Devil—in its aspect as a force opposing God—is a “Redeemer” (CPP II: 34). Like Dick Dudgeon, they are “impassioned only by saving grace,” and are wont to cry out before the scaffold, “My life for the world’s future!” (CPP II: 137). Spanish dramatic history is full of “enemies of God.” There are the rebellious angels of the religious theater and the figure of Herod in the Auto de los Reyes Magos (thirteenth century). There is the tricksterish pandering of the central character in the first dramatic masterpiece of the Spanish language, La Celestina (1499). During the Golden Age (seventeenth century) there is Laurencia, who goaded the villagers of Fuenteovejuna to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the Comendador in Lope de Vega’s play, and Prince Segismundo, “monster of his labyrinth,” who revolts against his father, the astrologer King Basilio in Calderón de la Barca’s Life is A Dream. In the Romantic era, the protagonist of Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (a descendant of Inca royalty in the play by the Duque de Rivas, 1835) is tormented by a baneful destiny which ravages his world.23 José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio (1844) features a hero that combines “disordered love with ‘evil for evil,’ and rebellion against supernatural powers.”24 Part One, Act Four is entitled “The Devil at Heaven’s Doors.”25 In the twentieth century there is the mythical figure of Don Juan Manuel Montenegro in Ramón de Valle-Inclán’s Comedias bárbaras (Barbarian Comedies) and also the solitary figure of Leonardo (the only character with a name), who violates the natural order of his world in García Lorca’s Blood Wedding. If the Dudgeon household’s Puritanism has become a dead corpse because of Mrs. Dudgeon’s master passion of Hatred, the same kind of funerary petrification—present also in Shaw’s mock tragedy Passion, Poison and Petrifaction (1905)—is evident in Tirso’s play, where social and ontological structures do not conform to the natural desires and inclinations of the young characters. This ruling, moribund religious context is embodied in the Guest of Stone, which rises from the grave to re-establish a decaying universal order. In Tirso’s burlador, Don Juan is defeated by the rule of a medieval world that imposes itself on a Renaissance sensibility. In both The Devil’s Disciple and Man and Superman, Shaw’s heroes rage against outdated social systems and idealizations which thwart natural instincts and impede all evolutionary progress.

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Starry Autos Throughout 1901, Shaw re-wrote the legend of Don Juan and made it “a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution.” He surrounded the Pageant in Hell “with a comedy of which it formed only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was a dream that did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy could be detached and played by itself” (CPP V: 338). Shaw’s “detachable” comedy—Acts 1, 2, and 4 of Man and Superman—is comparable to Golden Age comedias, the shapes of which were outlined by Lope de Vega in his New Art of Making Comedies (1609).26 Just as El burlador de Sevilla moves from comedia to religious drama with the animation of the Guest of Stone in Act 3, Shaw’s play moves, with the Dream in Hell sequence, from the realm of late nineteenth-­ century English comedy into the realm of medieval mysteries and moralities in the form of a comic Socratic dialogue. This is, indeed, the type of “beautiful variation” that Lope de Vega advocates in the “doctrinal” section of his New Art: [A Comedia must have] A mixture of tragedy and comedy, of Terence and Seneca, even if it is just like Pasiphae’s Minotaur, so they [these two polar opposites] will make one part severe; the other, ridiculous, because this variety pleases audiences much: a good example of this is given by nature, in which we find beauty through variety.27

In analogous terms of genre classification, Don Juan in Hell is comparable to an auto sacramental—a uniquely Spanish dramatic genre (in form and patronage equivalent to the Jacobean masques of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones) in which language and poetry occupy empty space and give it action and discourse; it is an artistic vehicle admirably suited for the propaganda of an established religion or—as Shaw intends—for the formulation of a new religion in comic form. The three major playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age—Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca—were priests of the Catholic Church, artist-philosophers who wrote both secular comedias and autos sacramentales. The autos were performed during the liturgical celebrations of the feast of Corpus Christi.28 During the latter half of the sixteenth century, they acquired specific formal characteristics: one-act

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allegorical dramatizations in verse, with personified abstractions as main characters (“allegorical ghosts” in Calderón’s phrase), centering on the main theme of the Eucharist as the symbol of humanity’s “spiritual history and destiny.” The autos investigated the nature of divine grace and created a sacred mythology by representing imagined concepts as living ideographs.29 For English precedents to the drama of Don Juan in Hell we need look no further than John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—an allegory in the “Similitude” of a dream about the “Journey, and the Way to Glory.”30 But what is the affinity between Bernard Shaw’s dramaturgy and a Spanish baroque dramatic form that developed out of medieval cycles and moralities? Shaw’s youthful attempts at playwriting began in 1878 with an unfinished “Passion Play.” Shelley’s influence may be significant: Shelley was an admirer of “the light and odour of the flowery and starry ‘autos,’” and produced a superb translation of several scenes from Calderón’s El mágico prodigioso (The Prodigious Magician).31 In an incisive critique of Calderón’s poetry, Shelley first voiced Shaw’s later objections to the plays of Shakespeare: Calderón, in his religious Autos, has attempted to fulfill some of the high conditions of dramatic representation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a relation between the drama and religion and accommodating them to music and dancing.32

Shaw spoke of his “morality plays” as allegories, parables, and fables. Archibald Henderson traces the origin of Shaw’s characters (“thought-­ marionettes”) to the puppet shows he remembered from his youth, and through them “to the old church pageants and shows, with their comic violence, coarseness and irreverence, Mephistophelean revolts, and Promethean, God-defying mortals on the cosmic plane.”33 In Man and Superman, Shaw reveals that the character of Ann Whitefield was prompted by William Poel’s revival of medieval poetry. The artist of Everyman, he writes, “was no mere artist, but an artist philosopher,” and these “are the only sort of artists I take quite seriously” (CPP II: 519) In the opening loa to La segunda Esposa, Calderón de la Barca defines the auto sacramental: Sermons in verse matters of Sacred Theology

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in representable idea …………………… setting forth joy in the day’s acclaim (aplauso).34

During his days as a public orator, Shaw suggested to the Salvation Army the development of “the dramatic side of their ritual by performing plays” and offered to write “a short play as a model.”35 The notion of a “sermon … in representable idea” is an apt description of several of Shaw’s plays and resulted in one of his deeply spiritual dramas, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet (1909), subtitled “A Sermon in Crude Melodrama.” Shaw confessed himself an “inspired” dramatist, “not governed by principles,”36 whose “method is pure divination” (CPP II: 294). If, as G. K. Chesterton affirms, “all our spiritual epochs overlap, and a man is often doing the old work while he is thinking of the new,” then a parallel development of artist-philosophers, across the span of centuries, may arrive at the same old formula of “two trestles, four boards and a passion” for the purposes of religious conversion.37

Creative Evolution The evolutionary progress of the Life Force demands the re-imagining of old stories. To understand the heart of the myth that Shaw extracted from Tirso’s burlador, one must take Man and Superman in its totality, without banishing the Dream in Hell from the heart of the comedy. Shaw described this dream as “grand opera in the middle of musical comedy,” and so it must remain.38 Shaw’s splendid prose is absent from El burlador de Sevilla. Tirso’s verse is terse, sober, and ascetic. He is a playwright in the vein of Ben Jonson; poetry resides not only in language but also in the stagecraft of the drama. The Spanish Don Juan is divided into two halves of the same self in Man and Superman: Tenorio’s intellectual defiance, moral passion, and philosophical diabolism reside with John Tanner; his daemonic vitality, sensual rebellion, and trickster genius are the province of Ann Whitefield. These lines, spoken by Tirso’s hero, could also be spoken by Shaw’s vital genius: Love guides me to my inclination, which no man can resist. (101)

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The Guest of Stone is associated with Roebuck Ramsden. Tanner and Ramsden are younger and older faces of the same coin: the young revolutionary and the old liberal. As Robert Brustein has pointed out, the difference between Ramsden and Tanner is only one of age, of the degree of the decay, and petrification of their ideas (italics added).39 The play, like Hamlet, begins with Death, but like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ends in Life. Like Don Juan, Ann pursues; like Don Juan, Tanner tries to escape. While in Tirso’s play Tenorio succumbs to the deadly hand of the Guest of Stone, the opposition between Don Juan and the Statue disappears from Shaw’s comedy, and is absent from the ethereal web of the Dream in Hell. The true dramatic tension is that between John and Ann. In the Dream their wills, working at cross purposes, result in a mystic separation: Don Juan leaves Hell to fulfill his philosopher’s quest in Heaven, while Doña Ana remains in darkness clamoring for a father for the Superman. The loss of materiality frees Don Juan from enslavement to Ana, and frustrates the heroine’s creative purpose. But in the comedy, in our world of flesh and spirit, passionate thought and physical vitality, their marriage becomes a divine necessity. It is Ann who asks John to take her hand in marriage. “Every woman is not Ann; but Ann is Everywoman” (CPP II: 519). Of this scene, Chesterton has written: I can see shining and shaking through them at that instant the splendour of the God that made them and of the image of God who wrote their story.40

John succumbs to Ann’s “personal fascination,” much like Tenorio’s victims fell for his tricks. The moral is that the philosopher’s precepts, the revolutionist’s creed, Tanner’s passion for contemplation, must be tempered by marriage to Ann’s sensuous vitality in a glorious alchemy—a marriage of the passion for contemplation and the sensuous vitality of the Life Force. The alternative is the doom of The Trickster of Seville and His Guest of Stone, in which Don Juan and Don Gonzalo destroy each other: The moment when John Tanner and Ann agree that it is doom for him and death for her and life only for the thing unborn, is the peak of [Shaw’s] utterance as a prophet.41

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Through this comic inversion of the classic scene, John Tanner and Ann Whitefield suffer a descent into Death (as in Tirso), in order to bring forth the Superman (as in Shaw). The coming together of Ann and John Tanner at the end of the play is a syncretic fusion (Doña Ana calls for a father for the Superman at the end of the “Don Juan in Hell” scene), now with equal male and female aspects to him/her. The result will be a hero/heroine who will inherit the vital and philosophic essences that were once divided into oppositional male and female categories in Tirso’s play. The union of both characters in a synthesis of the Life Force illuminates the influence of Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell on Shaw’s Don Juan play. Man and Superman is a new “sacramental auto,” based on an equal conception and collaboration of the sexes—an alchemical process that is central to his bourgeoning religion of Creative Evolution. In an early chronology of the history of the Don Juan legend in literature up to Man and Superman, Waxman characterized Shaw’s play as “Don Juan Upside Down.”42 Carl Henry Mills argues that in their plays, both Tirso and Shaw intended to deliver a “monkish moral” in puritanical language: Tirso to preach the evils of sin and to urge salvation through repentance, Shaw to condemn the waste of dilettantism and to extol the economy in creative evolution.43

Both appreciations are seemingly adverse, but both can be accepted. For monks devoted to God are often fascinated by heroic rebels, and become enemies (as saints are wont to do) of false representations, petrified impersonations of the living interventions of the Holy Ghost in our midst. Not in vain did Shaw deduce from Bunyan’s story—in the Preface to Three Plays for Puritans—that if there is a way to Hell from the gates of Heaven, there is also a way to Heaven from the doors of Hell (CPP II: 33).

Notes 1. The Mercedarios order was founded in the thirteenth century. They were Spanish friars who offered themselves as hostages for the return of Christian prisoners captured during the Moorish Wars. 2. Manuel de Sande, ed., Doze comedias nuevas de Lope de Vega Carpio, y otros autores (Barcelona: Gerónimo Margarit, 1630).

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3. All citations to the plays and prefaces, given parenthetically in the text with volume and page numbers (Roman and Arabic, respectively), are from The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces (London: Max Reinhardt, 1972). 4. Bernard Shaw, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales (London: Constable & Co., 1948), 188. 5. Bernard Shaw, “The Trials of a Military Dramatist,” in The Portable Bernard Shaw, ed. Stanley Weintraub (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 218. Originally published in Review of the Week (4 November 1899). 6. Gustavo A.  Rodríguez Martín, “The Genesis of Shaw’s Alhambra” (forthcoming). 7. See, for example, Enriqueta Harris and Nigel Glendinning, “British and Irish Interest in Hispanic Culture” in Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1920: Studies in Reception in Memory of Enriqueta Harris, ed. Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2010), 8–9. 8. Owen Jones, The Alhambra court in the Crystal Palace: erected and described by Owen Jones (London: Crystal Palace Library, 1854). 9. Bernard Shaw, Immaturity (London: Constable, 1931), 71–72. 10. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power (New York: Random House, 1989), 67. 11. Eric Bentley, ed., The Classic Theatre: Volume Three, Six Spanish Plays (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 484. 12. Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Academia Española, burla 1, available at http://dle.rae.es/?id=6JS4jA6. 13. See Oscar Mandel, ed., The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, 1630–1963 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963); Ángel Flores, ed., Spanish Drama (New York: Bantam Books, 1968); and Derek Walcott, The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978). 14. R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), 107. Available at https://archive.org/ stream/bub_gb_xZHv4CWgWaEC. 15. Spanish comedias are usually divided into three “acts,” called jornadas, or “journeys.” 16. Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, ed. Carmelo Santana Mojica (San Juan, PR: Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2010). All references to the text of the play, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition, with page numbers indicated parenthetically in the text. 17. All translations from Tirso’s El burlador de Sevilla are by the author. 18. Santana Mojica, ed., El burlador de Sevilla, xviii–xix. 19. The composition of Tirso’s play dates from 1613–1614. See Santana Mojica, xii–xv.

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20. This etymological connection was acknowledged as soon as the play was published. See, for example, Max Beerbohm’s review of the first edition of Man and Superman (Constable), where he explains that “the name of this play’s hero is John Tanner, corrupted from Don Juan Tenorio,” in “Mr. Shaw’s New Dialogues,” Saturday Review, 12 September 1903. Reprinted in David Cecil, ed., The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm (London: The Bodley Head, 1970), 369. 21. Jorge Luis Borges, Biblioteca personal (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2000), 86. See also Wilson in this volume. 22. Shaw also acknowledges the influence of a poem by Robert Buchanan (“The Devil’s Case: A Bank Holiday Interlude”) in which the devil is pictured as a merciful hero. See Raymond S. Nelson, “Shaw and Buchanan,” ELT 12, no. 2 (1969): 99–103. 23. Don Álvaro by Ángel de Saavedra (1791–1865) was the basis for Verdi’s La Forza del destino. 24. Ángel Valbuena Prat, Historia del teatro español (Barcelona: Editorial Noguer, 1956), 509. 25. José Zorrila, Don Juan Tenorio y Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta, 1990), 73. 26. Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library. Available at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ obra-­visor/arte-­nuevo-­de-­hacer-­comedias-­en-­este-­tiempo%2D%2D0/ html/ffb1e6c0-­82b1-­11df-­acc7-­002185ce6064_4.html. 27. The original lines from Lope’s essay are as follows: “Lo trágico y lo cómico mezclado, y Terencio con Séneca, aunque sea   175 como otro Minotauro de Pasife, harán grave una parte, otra ridícula, que aquesta variedad deleita mucho: buen ejemplo nos da naturaleza, que por tal variedad tiene belleza.”   180 28. Another religious connection is also worth noting, for Don Juan Tenorio is staged all over Spain on, the day traditionally associated with the dead (“Día de los difuntos”). 29. Alexander A. Parker, The Allegorical Drama of Calderón (Oxford: Dolphin Book Co., 1968), 75–77. 30. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Facsimile Edition (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1878), 1, 3. Available at https://archive.org/stream/ pilgrimsprogress1878buny. 31. Parker, 32; Percy B. Shelley, Selected Poetry, ed. Neville Rogers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 413–419.

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32. Parker, 32. 33. Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), 716–717. 34. Calderón de la Barca, “Loa para La segunda Esposa y Triunfar muriendo,” in Obras Completas III: Autos Sacramentales (Madrid: Aguilar, 1967), 425–427. 35. Henderson, 583n11. 36. Bernard Shaw, “On the Principles that Govern the Dramatist,” in Shaw on Theatre, ed. E.J. West (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), 116. 37. G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (London: John Lane, 1910), 196. Available at https://archive.org/stream/georgebernardsha00ches. Bernard Shaw, “Playhouses and Plays,” in Shaw on Theatre, ed. E. J. West, 182. 38. Holroyd, 79. 39. Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt: An Approach to the Modern Drama (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), 79. 40. Chesterton, 216. 41. Ibid., 221. 42. Samuel M.  Waxman, “The Don Juan Legend in Literature,” Journal of American Folklore 21, no. 81 (1908): 201. 43. Carl Henry Mills, “Man and Superman and the Don Juan Legend,” Comparative Literature 19, no. 3 (1967): 218.

References Bentley, Eric, ed. 1959. The Classic Theatre: Volume Three, Six Spanish Plays. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Borges, Jorge Luis. 2000. Biblioteca Personal. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Brustein, Robert. 1964. The Theatre of Revolt: An Approach to the Modern Drama. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Bunyan, John. 1878. Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Facsimile Edition. New York: Baker & Taylor. Cecil, David, ed. 1970. The Bodley Head Max Beerbohm. London: The Bodley Head. Chesterton, G.K. 1910. George Bernard Shaw. London: John Lane. de la Barca, Calderón. 1967. Loa para La segunda Esposa y Triunfar muriendo. In Obras Completas III: Autos Sacramentales. Madrid: Aguilar. de Sande, Manuel, ed. 1630. Doze comedias nuevas de Lope de Vega Carpio, y otros autores. Barcelona: Gerónimo Margarit. Flores, Ángel, ed. 1968. Spanish Drama. New York: Bantam Books. Harris, Enriqueta, and Nigel Glendinning. 2010. British and Irish Interest in Hispanic Culture. In Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1920: Studies in

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Reception in Memory of Enriqueta Harris, ed. Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney. Woodbridge: Tamesis. Henderson, Archibald Henderson. 1956. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Holroyd, Michael. 1989. Bernard Shaw, 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power. New York: Random House. Jones, Owen. 1854. The Alhambra court in the Crystal Palace: erected and described by Owen Jones. London: Crystal Palace Library. Lope de Vega. n.d. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/arte-­nuevo-­de-­ hacer-­c omedias-­e n-­e ste-­t iempo%2D%2D0/html/ffb1e6c0-­8 2b1-­1 1df-­ acc7-­002185ce6064_4.html. Mandel, Oscar, ed. 1963. The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays and Views, 1630–1963. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Mills, Carl Henry. 1967. Man and Superman and the Don Juan Legend. In Comparative Literature 19 (3): 216–225. Nelson, Raymond S. 1969. Shaw and Buchanan. ELT 12 (2): 99–103. Parker, Alexander A. 1968. The Allegorical Drama of Calderón. Oxford: Dolphin Book Co. Rogers, Neville. 1968. Shelley, Selected Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Santana Mojica, Carmelo, ed. 2010. Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. San Juan, PR: Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico. Shaw, Bernard. 1931. Immaturity. London: Constable. ———. 1948. The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales. London: Constable & Co. ———. 1986. The Trials of a Military Dramatist. In The Portable Bernard Shaw, ed. Stanley Weintraub. New York: Penguin Books. Stevenson, R.L. 1886. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New  York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. 1956. Historia del teatro español. Barcelona: Editorial Noguer. Walcott, Derek. 1978. The Joker of Seville and O Babylon! New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Waxman, Samuel M. 1908. The Don Juan Legend in Literature. Journal of American Folklore 21 (81): 184–204. West, E.J., ed. 1961. Shaw on Theatre. New York: Hill and Wang. Zorrilla, José. 1990. Don Juan Tenorio; Traidor, inconfeso y mártir. Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta.

CHAPTER 3

The Influence of Cervantes’ Don Quixote on Shaw’s Literary World; or, the Quixotic Shaw Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín

Cervantes—and especially his iconic novel, Don Quixote—has been considered one of the summits of world literature in England and Ireland practically since the publication of the first translations of the novel into English in the early seventeenth century. The impact of Don Quixote on the English-speaking world has been second only to the Bible. Even if we consider this fact alone, Cervantes’s masterpiece deserves a prominent place among the books that shaped Shaw’s literary world. As we shall see, Shaw himself acknowledges—both implicitly and explicitly—his indebtedness to Cervantes in general and Don Quixote in particular. Through his early readings and his exposure to the Cervantean heritage during his formative years, Shaw was captivated by the Spanish classic in ways that would later have deep ramifications for his dramatic works and his GBS persona. For example, on a tangential, yet illuminating, note, Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton have often been likened to the archetypes of Don Quixote

G. A. Rodríguez Martín (*) Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_3

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and Sancho Panza—his faithful squire—in the most disparate contexts: from the general studies of the Edwardian era to psychoanalytic treatises.1 Thus, the structure of this chapter will start with an overview of the reception of Don Quixote in Britain until the turn of the century. Although to provide even a superficial account of the reception of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (its original full title) in the British Isles up until Shaw became a playwright of renown is beyond the scope of this chapter, some brief notes about the novel’s significance as a literary icon are in order. This critical review and publication history of Don Quixote will situate the novel and its author in the world that Shaw was born into, both in his native Ireland and in turn-of-the-century London. Secondly, this chapter will explore the specific aspects of the Quixotic tradition that informed Shaw’s works, ideas, and style. By tracing his contact with (and references to) Cervantes and his iconic novel, one is able to truly gauge their prominent position in Shaw’s cultural background. Thirdly, a representative sample of the Cervantean/Quixotic element in Shaw’s dramatic works will be provided. This section offers textual evidence of how Cervantes’s intellectual and cultural influence becomes a tangible element in Shaw’s work in the form of characters, motifs, intertextuality, and even personal attitude. The last section deals with the specific parallels that can be drawn between Don Quixote and certain elements in some of Shaw’s plays, most notably Arms and the Man and Saint Joan.

don Quixote in Britain The sudden, profound impact of Don Quixote on the British Isles, especially in England, is still the subject of much scholarly debate, as the fascination with Cervantes’s character was almost immediate. In fact, “the first translation of Don Quixote into any language was Thomas Shelton’s The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha in 1612,” seven years after the original version was published.2 This translation, however, cannot possibly account for the novel’s immense popularity, given that the number of references to Don Quixote and other works by Cervantes in seventeenth-century England is astonishing, with “well over a thousand entries”—a number that experts agree is “not all that someday will be found.”3 What is more, Cervantes and Don Quixote were popular in England even before Shelton’s translation. Indeed, the “widespread familiarity with Cervantes’ novel among the playwrights of the time—and, therefore, among theatre audiences—is particularly

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astounding. […] How the English could develop such a continuing fascination with the adventures of the Spanish knight, even before they were rendered into English, is still open to speculation.”4 This literary fascination continued over the next four centuries. To continue our chronological timeline, the rise of the novel in eighteenth-­ century Britain owes a great deal to the emergence of the modern European novel in Golden Age Spain. In this regard, one Spanish novel, Don Quixote, is responsible for the lion’s share of this literary indebtedness. Not only was Don Quixote “continually translated, imitated, and widely read between 1660 and 1832, making it a perennial best-seller in Britain during this period,” it also became the model for numerous “reworkings of this Spanish classic by English novelists.”5 This is in addition to later reinterpretations of the novel, some of them authored by writers who left an indelible mark on Shaw—perhaps one of the most notable being Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.6 By the late nineteenth century, when Shaw entered the London cultural scene, interest in Hispanic studies was clearly on the rise and most well-­ educated Britons had a working knowledge of Cervantes’s most successful novel.7 During the nineteenth century public interest was sustained by the books of Richard Ford, George Borrow and Sir William Stirling Maxwell, the author of Annals of the Artists of Spain, while the universities began to make provision for the study of Spanish language and literature, initially by appointing teachers from the Spanish community that settled in England as a result of the Liberal diaspora.8

Shaw was no exception to this rising interest in Hispanic cultural and literary studies. As we shall see, his acquaintance with Cervantes and Don Quixote—as well as his understanding of their cultural significance as global icons—helped to shape what Weintraub calls “the embryo playwright.”9 Yet most Cervantes scholars who venture to produce a list of “the main literary figures who are indebted to Cervantes” invariably exclude Shaw from among the likes of “Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, Lennox, Dickens, Mary Shelley, Eliot, Chapman, Fletcher, Rowley, and also Shakespeare and Defoe.”10 Admittedly, Shaw never wrote an adaptation of Don Quixote; neither can we read any of his plays or novels from a strictly Cervantean point of view. Nevertheless, his acumen and cultural background owe a great deal to the Quixotic tradition. This, in turn, accounts

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for the presence of Cervantean elements in his works, especially in the plays. Thus, the personal and the professional aspects of this influence are the focus of the next two sections.

Cervantes, don Quixote, and Shaw When Shaw arrived in London in 1876, long before he became a world-­ renown dramatist, he made a living by using his mastery of the English language and his “power of accurate observation” as a critic of music, literature, art, and theater. It is during this period11 that we can begin to infer the extent of the Cervantean influence, as evidenced by the way he weaves Cervantes and Don Quixote into his critical pieces and by the vast number of references and allusions in his personal writings. Shaw was a voracious reader from a very early age, so much so that not even he can remember a “time at which a page of print was not intelligible to me, and can only suppose that I was born literate.”12 Among his peers, “his command of long words gave him an air of maturity that appealed more to adults than to children.”13 This produced a man who could safely claim that to me the whole vocabulary of English literature, from Shakespear to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is so completely and instantaneously at my call that I have never had to consult even a thesaurus except once or twice when for some reason I wanted a third or fourth synonym. (CPP V: 277)

Shaw the boy was well acquainted with the English classics when he left school in 1871 (at age 15) to become a junior clerk.14 The Bible, Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens, Charles Lever, Blake, Byron, and Shelley, among others, are often cited by Shaw as his dearest early readings. In sum, “whether it be that I was born mad or a little too sane, my kingdom was not of this world: I was at home only in the realm of my imagination, and at my ease only with the mighty dead.”15 It is difficult to ascertain whether Shaw came into contact with Cervantes (or with Spanish literature in general) during his childhood. There seem to be no early references to Don Quixote or its author in any of the available sources. However, by the end of his life, Shaw had discussed Cervantes and his masterpiece so many times—to the extent of becoming a Quixotic figure in himself—that this cultural connection had

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become too obvious to be neglected. Let us mention two illuminating examples of the foregoing claim, one that stems from Shaw himself and one that encapsulates what others thought of Shaw. When Shaw outlined a list of his favorite dramatic works, he included Don Quixote and acknowledged that it was “not written for the stage” but was “historically a comedy.”16 This kind of reflection cannot possibly have stemmed from someone whose knowledge of the novel was only superficial. His insightful realization of the dramatic elements in Don Quixote anticipates a long critical tradition in Hispanic studies. In fact, Shaw was probably primed to establish this inter-genre link by the myriad stage adaptations of the novel since its publication—adaptations that Shaw himself reviewed during his tenure as a drama critic.17 On a related note, Polish artist Stefan Mrozewski presented Shaw in 1935 with a wood engraving that displays a number of elements or symbols from his works and his public image. In it, the by-then Nobel Laureate was quite obviously associated with the art of writing and with Joan of Arc’s martyrdom. What is perhaps more striking to some is that Don Quixote riding into battle is one of the key elements of Mrozewski’s composition.18 After all, especially in the popular imagination, Don Quixote is much like Shaw in personal appearance and in his habit of “tilting at windmills”—a phrase that has often been used to describe Shaw’s modus operandi (Fig. 3.1).19 By the time Shaw finished his first novel (Immaturity), he had already established Cervantes as the yardstick by which to measure literary skill. Thus, “fictitious romance […] as manufactured by a twopenny-halfpenny Cervantes like Kennedy, is as often as not a cynical iconoclasm.”20 But the enshrinement of Cervantes as the touchstone of stylistic skill and comedic genius recurs particularly during his tenure as a dramatic critic. For example, his review of George William Godfrey’s Vanity Fair: A Caricature includes a scathing commentary about the effectiveness of its humor grounded on a direct comparison with Cervantes’s novel: Don Quixote’s irresistibly laughable address to the galley slaves, like the rest of his nonsense, is so close to the verge of good sense that thickwitted people, and even some clever ones, take the Don for a man of exceptionally sound understanding. Nonetheless he is a hopeless lunatic, the sound understanding which he skirts so funnily being that of Cervantes. Mr Godfrey fails to produce the same effect because he tries to say the absurd thing without precisely knowing the sensible thing.21

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Fig. 3.1  George Bernard Shaw by Stefan Mrozewski. Wood engraving, 1935. National Portrait Gallery. London

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Even more telling is Shaw mentioning Cervantes in the same breath as Ibsen—of whom he was the most enthusiastic champion—both of them masters in their respective strain of stylistic creativity and ingenuity of perspective. As Shaw puts it in “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” Exactly as Cervantes took the old ideal of chivalry, and shewed what came of a man attempting to act as if it were real, so Ibsen takes the ideals of Brand and Peer Gynt, and treats them in the very same manner. Don Quixote acts as if he were a perfect knight in a world of giants and distressed damsels instead of a country gentleman in a land of innkeepers and farm wenches; Brand acts as if he were the perfect Adam […] thereby restoring man to the condition in which he walked with God in the garden; and Peer Gynt tries to act as if he had in him a special force that could be concentrated so as to prevail over all other forces.22

However, Cervantes and Don Quixote are used to draw parallels in Shaw’s critical pieces far beyond humor and distorted realism. To quote but one representative sample, Mélissinde “remains an unredeemed humbug from one end of the play [Rostand’s La Princesse lointaine] to the other,” which is why, in Shaw’s opinion “the Dulcinea episodes in Don Quixote are so coarse in comparison to the rest of the book. Cervantes had been driven into reactionary savagery by too much Mélissinde.”23 As an art critic, Shaw’s critiques of the various exhibitions he visited for professional reasons gave him the opportunity to display his acquaintance with Cervantes. For example, he derides “ignorant East-enders” for not being familiar with Don Quixote, thus making it necessary for a painting to have an explanatory note stating that “Don Quixote’s predecessors were ‘the great knights errant of antiquities’.”24 Similarly, he praises an exhibition of George Cattermole’s paintings (“[t]he generation that knows not Cattermole should hurry to Great Portland Street to repair its ignorance”) and describes the artist as someone who “had imagination; and though, like Don Quixote’s, it ran mostly on things that never existed, he could draw and paint them with the pleasantest ease, grace, and skill.”25 The artistic links do not end there, for Shaw was the proud owner of at least one copy of Don Quixote illustrated by French artist Gustave Doré.26 Furthermore, readers must remember that this interest in Cervantes and Cervantean literature was lifelong. For example, Shaw’s personal library at Shaw’s Corner boasts a copy of Portuguese playwright Carlos Selvagem’s Dulcinéa ou a última aventura de Dom Quixote (1943), a reinterpretation

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that attests to Shaw’s continuing interest in Cervantes, as well as to the alleged theatricality of the novel, as mentioned earlier. As we can see, Shaw’s admiration for Cervantes was complemented by a deep knowledge and understanding of Don Quixote. The details he quotes and alludes to—not to mention the intricate network of associations he is able to establish between Cervantes’s work and the various topics of his criticism—requires more than a mere superficial familiarity with the novel.

Cervantes and don Quixote in Shaw’s works: The Eye of the Critic The connections between Cervantes and Shaw as literary authors have not escaped critics. In the introduction to the 1898 Brentano edition of Plays Pleasant, “M.” argues that It will repay those who seek analogies in literature to compare Shaw with Cervantes. After a life of heroic endeavor, disappointment, slavery, and poverty, the author of “Don Quixote” gave the world a serious work which caused to be laughed off the world’s stage forever the final vestiges of decadent chivalry.27

Beyond the similarities in background and artistic modus operandi, however, Shaw himself made sure that his aesthetic and stylistic indebtedness to the Spanish genius remained obvious. As early as 1881, Shaw has Lady Geraldine use “Quixotic language” in Love Among the Artists to describe the situation between Mary and Adrian, one that ultimately results in their engagement being broken off. “It is quixotic nonsense,” Lady Geraldine was saying as Jack entered. “He has behaved very badly; and you know it as well as I do, only you feel bound to put yourself in a false position to screen him.” […] You have made a mistake; and you want to be heroic out of season on the strength, or rather the weakness of that mistake. I, who know you well, do not suppose, as Belle Saunders does, that you are consciously making a virtue of a necessity; but I think there is a little spiritual pride in your resolution not to be betrayed into reproaching Adrian. In fact, all quixotism is tainted with spiritual vainglory; and that is the reason that no one likes it, or even admires it heartily, in real life.28

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Allusions to Don Quixote as the epitome of madness and, to some extent, folly do not end there. The cavalry charge that Sergius led in Arms and the Man is regarded by Bluntschli as the work of (I:404) “an operatic tenor— a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills.” Bluntschli continues: And there was Don Quixote flourishing like a drum major, thinking he’d done the cleverest thing ever known, whereas he ought to be courtmartialled for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. (CPP I:404)

However, these are merely the clichéd opinions of some characters— where Don Quixote is little more than stereotyped antonomasia for insanity, an established convention in the English language. Shaw himself knew better—and also knew his world literature. As he puts it in the preface to Major Barbara, I already knew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many another romantic hero mocked by reality. From the plays of Aristophanes to the tales of Stevenson that mockery has been made familiar to all who are properly saturated with letters. […] The particular sort of madman they represented, the romantic makebeliever, lay outside the pale of sympathy in literature: he was pitilessly despised and ridiculed here as he was in the east under the name of Alnaschar, and was doomed to be, centuries later, under the name of Simon Tappertit. When Cervantes relented over Don Quixote, and Dickens relented over Pickwick, they did not become impartial: they simply changed sides, and became friends and apologists where they had formerly been mockers. (CPP III:16–17)

In Shaw’s view, Don Quixote the character deserves our sympathy because he represents much of what is wrong with the intellectual faculties of many well-educated people. This may well also apply to zealous religiosity. As Shaw puts it in the preface to Back to Methuselah (CPP V:329), “[t]he reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixotea gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew lambs instead of feeding them.” Indeed, the fact that Don Quixote is a veritable example of humankind and a mirror in which to see ourselves is clear proof of Cervantes’s mastery of characterization, for “nothing will ever make Edward the Confessor and St. Louis as real to us as Don Quixote and Mr.

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Pickwick” (CPP IV:569). Incidentally, the repeated allusions to parallels between Don Quixote and Pickwick make Shaw one of the earliest critics—if not the first—to point out the Cervantean roots of Dickens’s first novel.29 Moreover, according to Shaw, Don Quixote (and his faithful squire, Sancho) embodies two of the most representative archetypes in history: “[g]o back to the first syllable of recorded time, and there you will find your Christian and your Pagan, your yokel and your poet, helot and hero, Don Quixote and Sancho …, all alive and contemporaneous, and all convinced that they are heirs of all the ages and the privileged recipients of THE truth (all others damnable heresies)” (CPP II:296–297). Don Quixote’s courting of Dulcinea also becomes an anti-climactic archetype, for a man’s swagger “as the breadwinner” who speaks of “[w]oman’s ‘sphere with condescension” later “drivels into erotic poetry or sentimental uxoriousness; and the Tennysonian King Arthur posing as Guinevere becomes Don Quixote grovelling before Dulcinea” (CPP II:508). All of the above notions about Don Quixote the character are especially relevant to Man and Superman, the only play with a Spanish theme and setting. Although Don Quixote only mentions Granada as the “goodly country” of Don Álvaro Tarfe—and his most exciting adventures occur in Sierra Morena, not Sierra Nevada—Shaw astutely establishes a connection between both Spanish literary figures, Don Juan and Don Quixote, in the play’s Epistle Dedicatory. In this regard, Shaw denounces “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” (CPP II:495). Under these circumstances, the message of a Don Juan play goes against “the Roman decadent phase of panem et circenses … being inaugurated under our eyes” (CPP II:515)—much more so in the case of Man and Superman, a vindication of the Life Force as the catalyst to the evolution of humankind. The complaint is made explicit thusly: Our ideal prosperity is not the prosperity of the industrial north, but the prosperity of the Isle of Wight, of Folkestone and Ramsgate, of Nice and Monte Carlo. That is the only prosperity you see on the stage, where the workers are all footmen, parlourmaids, comic lodging-letters and fashionable professional men, whilst the heroes and heroines are miraculously provided with unlimited dividends, and eat gratuitously, like the knights in Don Quixote’s books of chivalry.

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Shaw refers above to Don Quixote’s economic independence as opposed to the knights in the books that made him mad: is there anything in Shaw’s eyes that is not related to economic theory? This is closely connected to the section of the preface to The Dark Lady of the Sonnets where Shaw draws a line between economic needs in real life and in literature. Thus, only a few years after writing Man and Superman, Shaw must admit that If, on the other hand, Shakespear’s characters are mostly members of the leisured classes. … Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote’s troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet’s experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. (CPP IV:298)

Even though economic questions pervade the entire passage, it is noteworthy that, yet again, Cervantes and Shakespeare are the yardsticks with which literary stature is measured. In this particular case, Shakespeare is justified in portraying characters that do not correspond to the average distribution of wealth in society if “even Cervantes” had to do it. Of course, the preeminent position of these two authors is well established in the western canon, so much so that World Book Day is celebrated on the anniversary of their deaths.30 This leadership role ascribed to Cervantes in the field of literature spreads, for Shaw, into the broader realm of philosophy. Thus, the preface to Androcles and the Lion features a discussion of how “credulity is not to be measured by the truth of the things we believe.” This discussion continues by comparing the things that people used to believe in, regardless of their intelligence and degree of common sense. In doing so, the leading intellectuals of different historical periods are singled out: I simply cannot tell you why Bacon, Montaigne, and Cervantes had a quite different fashion of credulity and incredulity from the Venerable Bede and Piers Plowman and the divine doctors of the Aquinas-Aristotle school, who were certainly no stupider, and had the same facts before them. (CPP IV:512)

The use of Cervantes as the model of the intellectual/philosopher of the past also spreads into the art of writing fiction, where he is also the author

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to be imitated. Not for nothing is the Spanish language often referred to as “la lengua de Cervantes”—such is his epitomic status. But Cervantes is also the model novelist beyond the Spanish-speaking world. Thus, in the Preface to Plays Unpleasant, Shaw acknowledges that writing novels is the trade of Cervantes par excellence—a great compliment, coming from a man who was successful at practically everything else he tried his hand at (except for writing novels): Fielding, driven out of the trade of Moliere and Aristophanes, took to that of Cervantes; and since then the English novel has been one of the glories of literature, whilst the English drama has been its disgrace. (CPP I:20)

In sum, to return to the introduction to Plays Pleasant, “M.,” quoting Walter Savage Landor, concludes that “readers who see nothing more than a burlesque in ‘Don Quixote’ have but [a] shallow appreciation of the work.” It should be sufficiently clear that Shaw’s appreciation of Cervantes’s works is far from shallow and that, by contrast, he had a deep knowledge of—and indebtedness to—Cervantes and his unforgettable character.

Shaw’s don Quixotes This chapter has focused thus far on overt Cervantean references in Shaw’s writings. Special attention has been paid to the influence of the Spanish writer in Shaw’s formative years as a playwright; as well as to his views as a keen literary critic—whether directly in his reviews and prefaces or indirectly in his plays and novels. However, it is my contention that there is something of Quixotic literature in Shaw’s dramatic output, and that these Quixotic elements go beyond what has been described as “burlesque.” It is true, however, that Shaw also uses some obvious parodies of the burlesque in Don Quixote. As suggested earlier, it is difficult not to discern parallels between Sergius leading a cavalry charge and Don Quixote tilting at windmills when Shaw makes the connection explicit in the text of the play. However, as we shall see, the stylistic ramifications of Cervantes’s novel go well beyond that. For example, one of the major thematic links between both authors’ masterpieces (Don Quixote and Saint Joan)—and, to a lesser degree, between their canons in general—is freedom.31 Even though this aspect has received its fair share of scholarly attention, one must mention here that two iconic passages from both works mention liberty in surprisingly similar terms:

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“Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man. I say this, Sancho, because thou hast seen the good cheer, the abundance we have enjoyed in this castle we are leaving; well then, amid those dainty banquets and snow-cooled beverages I felt as though I were undergoing the straits of hunger, because I did not enjoy them with the same freedom as if they had been mine own; for the sense of being under an obligation to return benefits and favours received is a restraint that checks the independence of the spirit. Happy he, to whom heaven has given a piece of bread for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but heaven itself!” Don Quixote. Part II. Chapter LVIII. [trans. by John Ormsby]

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JOAN. […] You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God. Saint Joan (CPP VI:183–184)

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To begin with the obvious, both passages constitute a vindication of freedom as the greatest human right by the title characters. In addition, in both cases there is an explicit condemnation of imprisonment. Remember that Shaw had expressed serious interest in the question of incarceration since his early involvement with socialism and Fabianism.32 Beyond political pamphlets, he follows the same principles on the stage, where Joan prefers a painful death at the stake to “the life of a rat in a hole.” Similarly, Cervantes had suffered the pains of incarceration on various occasions— experiences famously crystallized in fiction in “La historia del cautivo” (Don Quixote. Part I. Chapters XXXIX–XLI).33 Thus, for him “freedom is one of the most precious gifts” and “captivity is the greatest evil.” Furthermore, freedom is valued above all other “commodities,” especially all forms of material comfort. Thus both texts argue that it is better to be free at all costs, even if it means that one must survive on “a piece of bread” or “bread and water.” This is quite a statement, especially in the case of Shaw, since he believed, to paraphrase Undershaft, that poverty is the worst of crimes. It is hard to tell, given the conflicting evidence, whether Shaw (via Cervantes) allows himself to romanticize about poverty for stylistic effect. But it is very significant that, at least in the case of the Joan monologue, Shaw favors religious freedom (freedom of speech and thought) over material prosperity. This is clearly connected to Dixon Scott’s view that Shaw was a romantic in spite of himself—and a Quixotic one at that: It is because he sentimentally sees himself as a satirist and harsh realist, instead of harshly realizing he is actually a romantic, that he has gone so hopelessly astray; it is because he sees himself as a Cervantes when he is really a Don Quixote ([…] for Shaw’s chief mistake about the theatre, as we will see, is his solemn attribution to the marionettes he found there of powers they never have possessed) that he has suffered the Don’s own doom.34

Other Quixotic (or rather Cervantean) parallels involve stylistic rather than thematic considerations. One may cite, for instance, the metaliterary elements in Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Shaw’s Fanny’s First Play. However, because most of them lie beyond the scope of this essay, I will only focus on a central aspect where one could argue that a Cervantean “anxiety of influence” appears in Shaw’s dramaturgy. I am referring to Shaw’s preference for dialogue over plot. This, in turn, leads to the theatrical form that Shaw mastered: the discussion play.35 If Shaw cultivated

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discussion in a genre that is preeminently oral in nature, the case of Cervantes as a forerunner is even more striking because of the formal constraints of the novel for the representation of conversation insofar as it is not an exclusively spoken genre. In quantitative terms alone, there are around 4500 examples of the different verb forms for “decir” [say] and “responder” [reply] in Don Quixote, which clearly points toward the preeminence of dialogue in the novel. In addition, both Cervantes and Shaw present different points of view with surgically crafted balance precisely because their characters engage in meaningful exchanges of words (and ideas). As Shaw put it in the “Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman” “[N]ot that I disclaim the fullest responsibility for his opinions and for those of all my characters, pleasant and unpleasant. They are all right from their several points of view; and their points of view are, for the dramatic moment, mine also” (CPP II:517). Much the same can be said of Cervantes. For example, in the case of Don Quixote, according to Leo Spitzer, the numerous dialogues between the knight and the squire which, as is well known, are inserted into the novel in order to show the different perspectives under which the same events must appear to two persons of such different backgrounds. This means that, in our novel, things are represented not for what they are in themselves, but only as things spoken about or thought about; and this involves breaking the narrative presentation into two points of view.36

As mentioned earlier, the focus on discussion as a stylistic trait affects the relative weight of action in the narrative/plot. Thus, Cervantes utilizes “numerous non-narrative genres” that result in the “incorporation of multiple speech genres by means of imitation,” which, in turn, erase “any sense of linguistic or literary normativity.”37 This flair for dialogue is not completely alien to the metaliterary element that was alluded to earlier, for both in Don Quixote and in the novellas, Cervantes explores “the potential of dialogue and its implications for authorial control,” so that “ubiquitous fictional conversations clearly reflect the thematic capaciousness of the Renaissance dialogue and its special hospitality toward metalinguistic and metaliterary subjects.”38 In the same vein, Shaw—as Chesterton would put it when discussing Getting Married—“would produce mere dialogue without the slightest play for it to support,” which testifies to Shaw’s ability to create drama that is “dramatic, by dialogue rather than action.”39

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This novel approach by Cervantes and Shaw in their respective crafts constitutes, in effect, a reshaping of literary genres that would forever alter the limits of what one may term a novel or a play. Cervantes, for example, reworks the genre of the “novella” in his “novelas ejemplares” [exemplary novels], thereby making them “less concentrated on rapid action and denouement” and adding the didactic (“exemplary”) scope that immediately establishes a link with Shaw.40 Indeed, as Shaw concludes in “The Technical Novelty in Ibsen’s Plays” The technical novelties of the Ibsen and post-Ibsen plays are, then: first, the introduction of the discussion and its development until it so overspreads and interpenetrates the action that it finally assimilates it, making play and discussion practically identical; and, second, as a consequence of making the spectators themselves the persons of the drama, and the incidents of their own lives its incidents, the disuse of the old stage tricks by which audiences had to be induced to take an interest in unreal people and improbable circumstances, and the substitution of a forensic technique of recrimination, disillusion, and penetration through ideals to the truth, with a free use of all the rhetorical and lyrical arts of the orator, the preacher, the pleader, and the rhapsodist.41

These can be, word for word, some of the innovations in Shaw’s stylistic toolkit and, as suggested here, they can be traced back to Cervantes. In this and other regards, the Cervantean influence on Shaw is beyond question. Much the same can be said of some of the key characteristics they shared as writers, for there is a lot in common between a world-class novelist who failed as a playwright and a world-class playwright who failed as a novelist. Shaw, who read Cervantes and was well aware of his literary stature, acknowledges the stylistic and thematic indebtedness to the Spanish writer both implicitly and explicitly. The intertextual links speak for themselves—not to mention the direct references and even the Quixotic details in his GBS persona. Therefore, one hopes that the foregoing pages have succeeded in substantiating and illustrating the Cervantean elements in Shaw’s works and in adding new and important connections to the cultural conversation the two rich traditions of the English and Spanish canon have enjoyed for centuries.42

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Notes 1. See Shaw Desmond, The Edwardian Story (London: Rockliff, 1949), 127 and Trygve Frøyland Braatøy, Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique (New York: Wiley, 1954), 256, respectively. 2. Howard Mancing, Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Reference Guide (London: Greenwood Press, 2006), 46. 3. Dale B.  J. Randall and Jackson C.  Boswell, Cervantes in SeventeenthCentury England: The Tapestry Turned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), xvi. 4. J.  A. G.  Ardila, “The Influence and Reception of Cervantes in Britain, 1607-2005,” in The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain (Oxford: Legenda, 2009), 4. 5. Walter L. Reed, “The Continental Influence on the Eighteenth-Century Novel: ‘The English Improve What Others Invent’,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 74. 6. Manuel Durán and Fay R. Rogg, Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 159 and passim. For the influence of Dickens on Shaw, see Pablo Ruano San Segundo, “Charles Dickens’s Influence on Shaw Revisited: A Corpus-Based Stylistic Study,” SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies 37, no. 2 (2017): 260–281. For Shaw’s critique of Dickens, see Dan H. Laurence and Martin Quinn, eds., Shaw on Dickens (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985). 7. As early as 1905, Martin Hume published his Spanish Influence on English Literature (London: Eveleigh Nash), where he writes of how “one of the great books of the world came to be written” (p. 151). 8. John Elliott, “Insiders and Outsiders,” in The British Contribution to the Europe of the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Hart, 2002), 116–117. 9. Stanley Weintraub, Bernard Shaw Before His First Play: The Embryo Playwright (Greensboro, NC: ELT Press, 2015). 10. Ardila, The Cervantean Heritage, x. 11. As Shaw was still writing book reviews the year he died, by “this period” I mean the most productive one: roughly from his arrival in London until the end of the century. 12. Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw: A Biography (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1975), 22. 13. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition (New York: Random House, 1997), 20. 14. Bernard Shaw, Sixteen Self Sketches (London: Constable, 1949), 23. 15. Preface to Immaturity (London: Constable, 1931), xliii.

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16. Bernard Shaw, letter to Archibald Henderson, 16 November 1917. Quoted by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship supported my research at the HRC. 17. For a historical review of the stage adaptations of Don Quixote, see José Luis Ramón Escobar, “Que trata de la teatralidad en el Quijote así como de otros sucesos de feliz recordación,” in Actas del X Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (1989): 671–678, and Héctor Urzáiz, “La quijotización del teatro, la teatralidad de ‘Don Quijote’,” in Locos, figurones y quijotes en el teatro de los Siglos de Oro (Almagro: Servicio de Publicaciones de la UCLM, 2007), 469–480. Shaw reviewed, for example, W. G. Wills’s A Chapter from Don Quixote at the Lyceum Theatre “Mr Irving Takes Paregoric” (Saturday Review, 11 May 1895). 18. This is only one of several works of art that present Shaw as a Don Quixote figure. Perhaps the most relevant one is Shaw’s own “Self-portrait as Don Quixote.” Available at https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/15484255. For more on Shaw’s physical resemblance to Don Quixote, see Miguel Cisneros Perales’ “George Bernard Shaw y España: Una relación desigual” (PhD dissertation. Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 2021), 428 et passim. 19. To quote but one example, Eric Bentley, discussing Shaw’s reception and reputation, wonders, “Was he not a ridiculous Don Quixote tilting at windmills?” in T.  F. Evans, ed., Shaw: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 406. 20. Immaturity, 126. 21. “At the Theatres,” in Bernard F.  Dukore, ed., The Drama Observed, 1880-1895 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1993), 332. 22. “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” in The Drama Observed, 1880–1895, 144. 23. “La Princesse Lontaine,” in The Drama Observed, 1895–1897 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1993), 372. 24. Stanley Weintraub, ed., Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 1885–1950 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1989), 357. 25. Weintraub, Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 265. 26. The book inventory of Shaw’s Adelphi Terrace home lists “Don Quixote, illust. by Doré” (10 shillings). A copy of this inventory is available at the Bernard F.  Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw at Cornell University (Bd.Ms.25 ++, D Inventory & Valuation of Property at 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C., London. 1908). I am grateful to Alice McEwan for bringing this to my attention. 27. Available at https://archive.org/details/playspleasantunp02shaw/page/ n27/mode/2up.

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28. Bernard Shaw. Love Among the Artists (New York: Brentano, 1910), 233–235. 29. See, for example, Esther Bautista Naranjo, La recepción y rescritura del mito De Don Quijote en Inglaterra (Siglos XVII–XIX) (Madrid: Dykinson, 2015), 250 and passim; Pedro Javier Pardo, “Quijotismo victoriano: los Quijotes perdidos de la literatura inglesa, 1837–1901,” in Hans Christian Hagedorn, ed., Don Quijote en su periplo universal: Aspectos de la recepción internacional de la novela cervantina (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2011), 369. 30. More information is available at https://www.un.org/en/observances/ book-­and-­copyright-­day. England and the British Empire did not adopt the Gregorian calendar (in use in most Catholic countries in Europe since the 1580s) until 1752. Therefore, the two writers did not actually die on the same day, but 11 days apart. 31. In the case of Cervantes, see, for example, Luis Rosales, Cervantes y la libertad, 2 vols. (Madrid: Gráficas Valera, 1959–1960) and Antonio Rey Hazas, “Cervantes, El Quijote, y la poética de la libertad,” in Actas del I Coloquio Internacional de Cervantistas (1990), 369–380. Saint Joan has consistently been approached as a vindication of different manifestations of freedom (religious freedom, freedom of thought, political freedom). See, for example, Brian Tyson’s The Story of Shaw’s Saint Joan (Kingston: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 1982), 64–66, and John A. Bertolini’s The Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 137. 32. Perhaps the most comprehensive summary of Shaw’s views on the matter is his preface to Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s English Prisons Under Local Government (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1922). Available at https://archive.org/details/englishlocalgove06webbuoft/page/n5/ mode/2up. 33. For more information on Cervantes’s experiences in prison, the best biographical works by common consensus are Luis Astrana Marín’s Vida ejemplar y heroica de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 7 vols. (Madrid: Instituto Editorial Reus, 1948–1958) and the more manageable biography by Jean Canavaggio, Cervantes. En busca del perfil perdido (Madrid: Espasa-­ Calpe, 1992). 34. Dixon Scott, Men of Letters (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), 29. 35. Christopher Innes, “‘Nothing but talk, talk, talk–Shaw talk’: Discussion Plays and the making of modern drama,” in his The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 163.

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36. Leo Spitzer, “Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quijote,” in Roberto González Echevarría, ed., Cervantes’s Don Quixote: A Casebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 181. 37. Anthony J. Cascardi, “Don Quixote and the Invention of the Novel,” in Anthony J.  Cascardi, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65. 38. Mary Malcolm Gaylord, “Cervantes’s Other Fiction” in Anthony J.  Cascardi, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 115. 39. G.K.  Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (London: The Bodley Head, 1961), 219, 261. 40. Frederick A. de Armas, “Cervantes and the Italian Renaissance,” in Anthony J.  Cascardi, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 48. 41. Bernard Shaw, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” in Diarmuid Russell, ed. Selected Prose (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1952), 687. 42. Earlier scholarly endeavors along this avenue of research include Martin Hume’s Spanish Influence on English Literature (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1905) and James Fitzmaurice-Kelly’s The Relations between Spanish and English Literature (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1910).

References Ardila, J.A.G. 2009. The Influence and Reception of Cervantes in Britain, 1607–2005. In The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain, ed. J.A.G. Ardila, 2–31. Oxford: Legenda. de Armas, Frederick A. 2002. Cervantes and the Italian Renaissance. In The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. Anthony J.  Cascardi, 32–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Astrana Marín, Luis. 1948–1958. Vida ejemplar y heroica de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra [7 Vols.]. Madrid: Instituto Editorial Reus. Bautista Naranjo, Esther. 2015. La recepción y rescritura del mito De Don Quijote en Inglaterra (Siglos XVII–XIX). Madrid: Dykinson. Bentley, Eric. 1976. Article in Envoy, February 1951. In Shaw: The Critical Heritage, ed. T.F. Evans, 403–407. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bertolini, John A. 1991. The Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Braatøy, Trygve Frøyland. 1954. Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique. New York: Wiley. Canavaggio, Jean. 1992. Cervantes. En busca del perfil perdido. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

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Cascardi, Anthony J. 2002. Don Quixote and the Invention of the Novel. In The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. Anthony J.  Cascardi, 58–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chesterton, G.K. 1961. George Bernard Shaw. London: The Bodley Head. Cisneros Perales, Miguel. 2021. George Bernard Shaw y España: Una relación desigual. PhD dissertation. Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville). Desmond, Shaw. 1949. The Edwardian Story. London: Rockliff. Dukore, Bernard F., ed. 1993a. The Drama Observed, 1880–1895. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. ———., ed. 1993b. The Drama Observed, 1895–1897. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Durán, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. 2006. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Elliott, John. 2002. Insiders and Outsiders. In The British Contribution to the Europe of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Basil Markesinis, 115–128. Oxford: Hart. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, James. 1910. The Relations between Spanish and English Literature. Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool. Gaylord, Mary Malcolm. 2002. Cervantes’s Other Fiction. In The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. Anthony J.  Cascardi, 100–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holroyd, Michael. 1997. Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. New York: Random House. Hume, Martin. 1905. Spanish Influence on English Literature. London: Eveleigh Nash. Innes, Christopher Innes. 1998. ‘Nothing but talk, talk, talk-Shaw talk’: Discussion Plays and the making of modern drama. In The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, ed. Christopher Innes, 162–179. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laurence, Dan H., and Martin Quinn, eds. 1985. Shaw on Dickens. New  York: Frederick Ungar. Mancing, Howard. 2006. Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Reference Guide. London: Greenwood Press. Pardo, Pedro Javier. 2011. Quijotismo victoriano: los Quijotes perdidos de la literatura inglesa. In 363–390, Don Quijote en su periplo universal: Aspectos de la recepción internacional de la novela cervantina, ed. Hans Christian Hagedorn, 1837–1901. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Pearson, Hesketh. 1975. Bernard Shaw: A Biography. London: Macdonald and Jane’s. Ramón Escobar, José Luis. 1989. Que trata de la teatralidad en el Quijote así como de otros sucesos de feliz recordación. Actas del X Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: 671–678.

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Randall, Dale B.J., and Jackson C. Boswell, eds. 2009. Cervantes in Seventeenth-­ Century England: The Tapestry Turned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reed, Walter L. 2016. The Continental Influence on Eighteenth-Century Novel: ‘The English Improve What Others Invent’. In The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel, ed. J.A.  Downie, 73–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rey Hazas, Antonio. 1990. Cervantes, El Quijote, y la poética de la libertad. Actas del I Coloquio Internacional de Cervantistas: 369–380. Rosales, Luis. 1959–1960. Rosales, Cervantes y la libertad [2 Vols.]. Madrid: Gráficas Valera. Ruano San Segundo, Pablo. 2017. Charles Dickens’s Influence on Shaw Revisited: A Corpus-Based Stylistic Study. SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies 37 (2): 260–281. Scott, Dixon. 1916. Men of Letters. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Shaw, Bernard. 1910. Love Among the Artists. New York: Brentano. ———. 1931. Immaturity. London: Constable. ———. 1952. The Quintessence of Ibsenism. In Selected Prose, ed. Diarmuid Russell, 534–691. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. ———. 1949. Sixteen Self Sketches. London: Constable. Spitzer, Leo. 2005. Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quijote. In Cervantes’s Don Quixote: A Casebook, ed. Roberto González Echevarría, 163–216. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tyson, Brian. 1982. The Story of Shaw’s Saint Joan. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Urzáiz, Héctor. 2007. La quijotización del teatro, la teatralidad de ‘Don Quijote’. In Locos, figurones y quijotes en el teatro de los Siglos de Oro, 469–480. Almagro: Servicio de Publicaciones de la UCLM. Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. 1922. English Prisons Under Local Government. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Weintraub, Stanley, ed. 1989. Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene, 1885–1950. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. ———, ed. 2015. Bernard Shaw Before His First Play: The Embryo Playwright. Greensboro, NC: ELT Press.

CHAPTER 4

Shaw and Spanish Artists José Luis Oncins-Martínez

Introduction: Shaw and Art While Shaw became known as a dramatist, a novelist, an essayist, an orator, a prolific correspondent—as well as a drama critic, music critic, and book reviewer—literature was not what first attracted him. It was, of all things, the visual arts that aroused his interest at the outset. By way of illustration, there are two anecdotes that show how crucial the relationship with the plastic arts was for Shaw—both as a writer and in the shaping of his public persona. To begin with, what Shaw metaphorically calls his “power of accurate observation,” which is the basis of the sharp social critique in his plays, extends to his physical abilities as an observer of art. As he notes in The Sanity of Art, My own sight happened to be “normal” in the occulist’s sense: that is, I saw things with the naked eye as most people can only be made to see them by the aid of spectacles. Once I had a discussion with an artist who was shewing me a clever picture of his in which the parted lips in a pretty woman’s face

J. L. Oncins-Martínez (*) Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_4

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revealed what seemed to me like a mouthful of virgin snow. The painter lectured me for not consulting my eyes instead of my knowledge of facts. “You dont see the divisions in a set of teeth when you look at a person’s mouth,” he said: “all you see is a strip of white, or yellow, or pearl, as the case may be. But because you know, as a matter of anatomic fact, that there are divisions there, you want to have them represented by strokes in a drawing. That is just like you art critics & c., & c.” I do not think he believed me when I told him that when I looked at a row of teeth, I saw, not only the divisions between them, but their exact shape, both in contour and in modelling, just as well as I saw their general color.1

In addition to a very precise way of looking at a canvas, Shaw was also the subject of several works of art by the most renowned artists of his time. Indeed, Shaw himself became a work of art; in the sculptures (a bust and a life-sized sculpture) by Auguste Rodin and Paul Troubetzkoy, respectively, in the iconic photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn, in portraits by Augustus John or Bernard Partridge: the list is very long and representations of Shaw continue to this day.2 In retrospect, it is worth noting that very early in his life, Shaw’s native sensibilities were inclined toward the visual sense and natural beauty. As a lad, his father took him on countless explorations of Dalkey Hill, nine miles south of Dublin, and Killiney Hill, adventures which left deep impressions on him.3 He fondly recalled later that he had “clambered all over Killiney Hill looking at the endless pictures nature painted for me,”4 and from “his tenth to his fifteenth year the family spent the summer months there.”5 Late in life, Shaw was asked, “What was the happiest time of your life?” to which he replied, “When my mother told me we were going to live on Dalkey Hill.”6 “I owe more than I can express to the natural beauty of that enchanting situation [italics added] commanding the two great bays between Howth and Bray Head,” Shaw remembered in his late years, “and its canopied skies such as I have never seen elsewhere in the world,”7 adding, “even Venice; and I always look at the sky.”8 He also noted that the beauty of Dalkey took him out of “his time and this world.”9 In addition to the natural beauty which helped form his consciousness, Shaw also availed himself of Ireland’s artistic offerings. By his own admission, he spent as much time as he possibly could gazing, analyzing, and studying the great masterpieces in public galleries. His favorite haunts were Hampton Court and the National Gallery of Ireland where, as he put it, “it was by prowling in this gallery [the National] that I learnt to

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recognize the work of the old masters at sight,”10 and he was also known to borrow books on art and spend hours “studying reproductions of the great Italian and Flemish painters,”11 which helped complete his education. He was particularly inspired by Michelangelo and the fourteenth-­ century artists Bellini and Filippo Lippi.12 While at first he wanted to be a musical genius—he was exposed to music in his childhood home and it remained one of his lifelong passions—Shaw soon turned to art and recalled later, “[M]y ambition was to be a great painter like Michelangelo.”13 As he put it, “I stood for my self-respect on the things I had: probity, ability, knowledge of art, laboriousness, and whatever else came cheaply to me.”14 In other, wittier, words, “I could walk into Hampton Court Palace and the National Gallery (on free days) and enjoy Mantegna and Michelangelo, whilst millionaires were yawning miserably over inept gluttonies.”15 Because of his passion for art and his ambition to become an artist, Shaw enrolled in the School of Design presided over by the South Kensington Department of Science and Art. Alas, he soon discovered that he lacked talent. He later recalled, “[W]ith competent instruction I daresay I could have become a painter and draughtsman of sorts; but the School of Design convinced me that I was a hopeless failure in that direction on no better ground than that I could not draw like Michelangelo or paint like Titian at the first attempt without knowing how.”16 But the attempt was not completely without a benefit, for as Stanley Weintraub concludes, his “art education would prove to be useful for him as a working playwright in ways he could never have anticipated,” especially in his own plays and in his period as an art critic.17 William Archer, who was a very close friend of Shaw’s and whom he had first met in the Reading Room of the British Museum, was a drama critic in the mid-1880s for the London newspaper The World. When the World’s art critic died and the paper’s editor Edmund Yates asked Archer to take on that role, Archer turned down the offer, admitting he knew nothing about painting. He shared that decision with Shaw, who urged him to accept the position and assured Archer that he would soon learn about art by studying pictures very closely. With this assurance and Shaw’s agreement to accompany Archer to the galleries, Archer accepted the position and Shaw proceeded to give him an education in art so that Archer was able to write “informed criticisms of the exhibitions.”18 Archer, acknowledging that the work was actually being done by Shaw (who felt that wandering the galleries and offering comments was not work), sent a surprised Shaw a check for

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£1.6.8—half his fee! Shaw immediately returned the check with the disclaimer that he was doing it for pleasure, whereas Archer was a paid employee. Archer sent it back again and Shaw re-returned it on 14 December 1885, commenting that he had no “external compulsion” to attend the gallery while Archer was under editor’s orders.19 When Archer, a man of integrity, told Yates that the reviews were by Shaw, Yates appointed Shaw, upon Archer’s recommendation, art critic for The World at five pence a line, earning Shaw rather less than forty pounds a year. Still, he held on to the position from February 1885 until January 1890.20 Among his many other responsibilities was serving as art critic for Annie Besant’s socialist magazine Our Corner, writing an art column titled “Art Corner.” Thus, during this period Shaw attended every picture exhibition in London with, according to Irvine, “indefatigable industry, brutal frankness, and elusive conscientiousness.”21 In addition to reading the appropriate books on the subject, Shaw always felt that “the critic’s first duty [was] to look at art.”22 As an art critic, Shaw was brutally honest, incorruptible, and always entertaining. As Pearson says, “he could not help being enlivening and he would have been readable if his subject had been trigonometry,”23 and, as Irvine notes, “he nearly always shocks and dumbfounds in such a way as to provoke thought. Even his wildest hilarity usually has an element of seriousness in it.”24 Shaw set his own standards and principles for art criticism. First, a critic should never be satisfied with an artist “who was performing at less than his potential,”25 and, second, the critic should become engaged personally with the art, pointing out that “it is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.”26 Shaw adds that another requirement for a critic is to engage intensely with an artwork, claiming that his knowledge came from the “study and also the production of works of art.”27 Shaw professed that Michelangelo played a large part in the development of his mind and art, that he was “artistically conscienceless only on high philosophical grounds,”28 and that good criticism “is rarer and more difficult than good creative writing.”29 In addition to opposing romanticism, Shaw also advocated for new approaches, such as those seen in the New English Art Club, as opposed to the conventional work of the Royal Academy.30 An example of Shaw’s acerbic pen was his review of the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Institute: the 807 works displayed “proves that we have among us some twenty-five score ladies and gentlemen who will be in a position to paint pictures as soon as the necessary subjects occur to

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them. For the present they are occupied in producing canvases which … are inexpressibly inane.”31 His integrity was unquestioned: no one, he announced, had ever offered him hard cash, directly or indirectly, “for a favorable notice.”32 As Stanley Weintraub astutely notes, “what Shaw preached with zeal has now become a fact of the art market place.”33 While Shaw modestly declared toward the end of his official art-critic career that “I am not a critic of Art,”34 “yet he wrote about art even when he did not have to and continued to write about it into his nineties,” even planning toward the end of his long life to collect his various writings on art into a book.35 Over time, Shaw developed a very clear philosophy of aesthetics in art and art criticism, not only in the visual arts but in all art forms; as Henderson asserted, Shaw was “the champion of all forms of art—pictorial, plastic, fictive, dramatic—which discover beauty, truth, and, above all, encouragement.”36 Shaw’s basic premise was that art should achieve a certain verisimilitude, an honest and genuine feeling; in short, realism—life as it really is (“real life taken as it is,” as he said about Ibsen37), as opposed to art which is idealistic (sometimes referred to as “splendor”), sentimental, or, basically, romantic. Henderson goes on to label Shaw’s view as “without idealistic falsification and romantic sublimation.”38 By extension, Shaw preached that a work of art must be “grounded in the society from which it grows and must contribute to the progress of that society, spiritually, morally, or practically.”39 On the other hand, “romance, prettiness, and superficial sentiment” have no place in great art, and great artists must create out of their own genuine, deeply held beliefs, from which “their art will draw its power.”40 He also condemns galleries and dealers who ask for “sentimentalities” and “good natured imbecilities.”41 As an art critic, he asserts that “the best art of all will come when we are rid of splendor and everything else in the glorious line.”42 Shaw also believed that art must have an effect on the viewer, making them better as humans, that it will “cultivate and refine our senses” by making the viewer more conscious and critical by protesting against the ugliness and developing a keen interest and pleasure in beauty.43 In his review of What Is Art?, Shaw praised Tolstoy for defining the relationship between the artist and the viewer as “an activity by means of which one man, having experienced a feeling, intentionally transmits it to others.”44 Lastly, Shaw extended his philosophy of aesthetics to include his economic and socialist views of art. In a lecture to the Bedford Debating Society, he decried the fact that artists must live by the sale of their pictures

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to only those who could afford to buy them, that is, the wealthy, thereby debasing art to a mere commercial enterprise (and thereby depriving the artist of his/her ambition to achieve the higher standards of art). Shaw put it quite plainly: “We need look for no improvement in the beauty of our lives, and therefore for no valuable advance in Art, until we redistribute our immense Wealth and our immense Leisure so as to secure to every honest man his due share of both in return for his share of the national labour.”45 A collateral benefit of Shaw’s abiding interest in art and his spending countless hours toiling as an art critic, thereby immersing himself in the study of paintings, is that the topic of art and artists pervades his prefaces and plays. In his preface to Misalliance, for example, he makes no less than three powerful defenses of art by saying that (CPP IV: 121) to try to suppress art is as futile as trying to suppress oxygen, that (CPP IV: 118) “fine art is the only teacher except torture,” and that nothing is more dreadful, short of disease, than looking at (CPP IV: 118) “uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings.” Other prefaces contain such statements as (CPP VI:611) “all great art … is propaganda,” that (I:236) “fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of propaganda in the world,” and when someone declares that art should not be didactic (CPP II:528), “all the people who have nothing to teach and all the people who dont want to learn agree with him emphatically.” The discussion of art and artists informs many of the plays themselves, mostly in effusive terms. For example, in Good King Charles’s Golden Days, we learn that a painter’s gift is considered to be “so magical” (CPP VII: 276) that the painter cannot be thought of in any other terms. Likewise, Back to Methuselah includes three powerful declarations about art: Ecrasia declares that without art the world would be “unbearable” (CPP V:615); the She-Ancient declares that “you use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul” (CPP V:617); and Arjillax states that the sculptor “must have something of the god in him” because his work “reflects a spirit” and that he does it not to please the public nor himself “but because he must” (CPP V:583).

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Spanish Art in Shaw’s Plays and Prefaces The name of one Spanish artist emerges from the plays and prefaces, a man Shaw seemed most to admire, usually ranking him along with the immortals such as Michelangelo and Rembrandt: Diego Velázquez. In Cymbeline Refinished, for example, the topic is that of a bad artist trying to improve on a great one, which results in something “ridiculous or merely contemptible … when the alteration damages the original, as when a bad painter repaints a Velasquez or a Rembrandt, he commits a crime”46 (CPP VII:183). In The Inca of Perusalem, a comparison is made to the famous Inca: “send the Inca to St Helena … and the world will crowd thither to see his works as they crowd now “to Madrid to see the pictures of Velasquez” (CPP IV:976–77). In an argument about the greatest artist of all time in the Preface to Immaturity, one side tries to win the competition by uttering the words “Titian Turner Rembrandt Velasquez Whistler.”47 Lastly, in the Preface to Back to Methuselah, the discussion is about artists having secular subjects to paint, such as Cupid and Psyche, “so that your skeptical Rembrandts and Velasquezs are at least not compelled to paint shop fronts for want of anything else to paint in which they can really believe” (CPP V:334). The Shaw play with the most discussion about art and artists and whose last scene takes place in an art gallery is The Doctor’s Dilemma, whose central character is the painter Louis Dubedat, an absolute scoundrel. Shaw asks in The Sanity of Art “how much selfishness one ought to stand from a gifted person for the sake of his gifts”48; as Shaw himself admits, Dubedat is a man “recklessly dishonest about money and recklessly selfish about women.”49 One memorable moment in the play is when Dubedat, on his deathbed, articulates the tenets of his faith by proclaiming that (CPP III:419) “I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting …. Amen, Amen.”50 Shaw places Velázquez in mighty company. It was perhaps Shaw’s admiration for Velázquez that inspired Neville S. Lytton to paint a portrait of Shaw in 1906 after Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X (Fig. 4.1).51 “The Modern Pope of Wit and Wisdom” creatively utilizes Shaw’s resemblance to the original sitter and his newly acquired status as a world-class playwright and sage. It is also worth noting that Innocent X was a cunning political tactician who, for example, supported Confederate Ireland during the English Civil War.

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Fig. 4.1  Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez. The elusiveness of the composition and the play with perspective—the painter being also the subject of the painting— finds parallels in Shaw’s playwriting. Public Domain

Shaw as a Critic of Spanish Art As early as the seventeenth century, Spanish art was gaining greater visibility in the international market, and British art dealers were becoming

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sensitized to new developments and potential profits.52 Between 1750 and 1900, Spanish art began to be written about and texts were being translated from Spanish following the interest of auctioneers, dealers, and collectors.53 By the mid-eighteenth century, awareness of Spanish art had increased due to the growth of art auctions, private collections assembled by travelers to the continent, and individuals serving as diplomats in Spanish embassies and elsewhere, by which time the paintings of Ribera, Murillo, and Zurbarán were known and appreciated. A watershed moment in the presence of Spanish art in the British Isles seems to have been the Peninsular War, or the War of Independence (1807–1814), during which dealers and merchants, in particular one British merchant living in Seville named Nathan Wetherell, took the opportunity to remove art from Spain.54 Wetherell decided to undertake excavations at Italica/Santiponce in the 1820s, as well as to acquire antiquities—most of which are now in the British Museum, mostly the Roman plaques.55 But his main interest was paintings, and he acquired several works from the Spanish masters—Murillo, among others.56 Through Wetherell and others, during the 1820s and 1830s, large Spanish collections arrived in London and were put up for sale, and Spanish liberal exiles who had fled the war were especially interested in retrieving their native artworks.57 One figure towers above all others in the advocacy and advancement of Spanish art in England and Ireland. This is William Stirling-Maxwell (1818–1878), a pioneer in the study of Spanish art and one of the earliest collectors of Spanish paintings, drawings, and engravings in Great Britain. After receiving two degrees from Trinity College, Cambridge, in the early 1840s, Stirling-Maxwell traveled to Spain, where he intensely studied the Spanish masters. After his return to the UK, he proceeded to write the three-volume work, Annals of the Artists of Spain, which was published in 1848 and which became the premier work on Spanish art in any language. This was followed by Velazquez and His Works, which was translated into German (1856) and French (1865) and which according to Karl Justi was “the first readable biography of Velazquez” and the first monograph on the artist, providing “a basis for all later studies,” including Justi’s own.58 Stirling-Maxwell’s books coincided with the increasing sales of Spanish art in London in the 1840s and 1850s, a congruence which ignited the growing presence and awareness of Spanish art in England. As a result, “admiring Spanish religious art in churches and galleries in Spain, and even buying it for private collections, was increasingly acceptable, if not yet

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mainstream in terms of British taste by the mid-nineteenth century.”59 Spanish art had a powerful influence on students working in Britain in the 1890s, particularly after famed American painter John Singer Sargent “exhibited La Carmencita at the Royal Academy in 1891.” In addition, “Gwen John is known to have admired Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period.”60 But the reception of Spanish art in England was not without its detractors. One negative criticism arose from the influence of Catholicism on Spanish art. British art critics fell into the trap of stereotyping the influence of the Church in Spain and questioned the use of art for devotional and religious purposes, criticizing “the extent to which art was used by the Church there to perpetuate ignorance, superstition, and idolatry.”61 This also became the basis for attacks on Spanish art and artists by the most influential British art critic of the time, John Ruskin, most notably in The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), although this seems to have had little effect on the popularity of and admiration for Spanish art in England and Ireland. Bernard Shaw was no doubt aware of much of the critical heritage surrounding Spanish artists and his personal library evinces a first-hand familiarity with many Spanish masters. Although many of Shaw’s books listed in inventories and auction catalogs are grouped together without an itemized description, many of the volumes listed in the inventory of the library at his Adelphi Terrace residence discuss the Spanish masters.62 The same applies to the auction catalog of Sotheby’s July 1949 sale of the rare books inscribed by Shaw from his personal library.63 From Pilkington’s A General Dictionary of Painters to Woltmann’s Holbein and His Time, to J. Pierpont Morgan’s Catalogue of the Collection of Miniatures, the list is most illuminating. This is in addition to the miscellaneous books collectively listed under “books on art.” Moreover, we know, for example, that Shaw owned a copy of Catalan Art from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries (1937) and also Masterpieces of the Prado Museum (1948).64 As far as individual Spanish artists are concerned, much of the discussion among critics and collectors at first centered around Velázquez and Murillo, both of whose reputations increased throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, although in time the conversation began to favor Velázquez. However, Murillo was not to be so easily dismissed. He was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and “it was not long before more of his paintings were held in British collections than in Spain itself.”65 British painters certainly responded to Spanish art, and especially to Murillo, although Velázquez was of some interest to them.66 And yet most nineteenth-century critics rated Spanish art, especially the

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two most well-known artists, below Italian art “because of its failure to idealise,”67 and Ruskin placed Murillo into the lowest category because of his naturalism.68 Another problem was the lack of access to private collections and hence a lack of genuine familiarity, which gave rise to yet another problem: in 1853, the National Gallery in London acquired an Adoration of the Shepherds that was originally attributed to Velázquez and then to Murillo and then to others, such that consensus was never reached on its authorship or even the school of painting it belonged to. Still, Velázquez and Murillo managed to maintain their reputations. Another perennially popular Spanish artist was Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), about whom knowledge was first gained when Palomino’s biography was translated into English in 1739,69 an event that may have encouraged merchants and dealers to bring some of his works to England.70 His reputation grew, but in time most acquisitions emphasized his “sweeter side” in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century.71 The other widely admired Spanish master was Francisco de Goya (1746–1828). The restoration of the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII, abandoning three years of constitutional rule (1820–1823), resulted in a large migration of Spanish Liberals to England and Ireland who brought with them numerous works by Goya which became available in England in the 1820s and 1830s.72 Moreover, tourism and connoisseurship encouraged the growth of Goya’s reputation, perhaps mainly because he extended the tradition of Spanish naturalism and scenes from everyday life pioneered by Velázquez and Murillo.73 Additionally, Stirling-Maxwell was a pioneer collector of Goya, having purchased four canvasses, as described in his Annals, as early as 1842, and whose admiration increased as his knowledge of Goya’s works grew. It is thought that the growing interest in Goya and in El Greco was due to the new public awareness of the Impressionists (championed by Shaw) and Expressionists.74 Lastly, as for the presence of Spanish art in England, Stirling-Maxwell led the way with his wide-ranging collection, which spanned the entire field of Spanish painting from “Morales to Goya, including Murillo, Zurbarán, and Cano, besides a host of minor artist such as Caxes, Carducho, Tristan, Herrera, Pereda, and whose collection provided the foundation of the Spanish exhibition at Edinburgh” as late as 1951.75 When Shaw was an art critic for The World and writing on art in Our Corner, he became quite familiar with Spanish painters, whose names are scattered throughout his reviews and writings. One name that stands out

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is that of Diego de Silva y Velázquez (1599–1660), whom Shaw greatly admired and whom he often linked with other great masters such as Rembrandt and Michelangelo, as he does in The Doctor’s Dilemma, and whom he referred to as a “delicate” sketcher, a great painter, and a great decorative draftsman76 with the “power of representing life with subtle truth.”77 Moreover, on at least two occasions, Shaw rated Velázquez above Raphael: he claimed that Velasquez “was beyond comparison a greater painter than Raphael”78 and declared that “compared with Velasquez, Raphael was a ‘mere storyteller’ whose work must have filled Velázquez with ‘contemptuous amazement’”79 (Shaw had an aversion for painters as storytellers, which inclined them to romanticism). In fact, Shaw went so far as to put words into Velázquez’s mouth by imagining him saying, “What this man [Raphael] expressed in these daubs of his must have some universal popularity, or he could not have gained his reputation; but as artist, in my sense, he certainly was not.”80 Shaw also gives a backhanded compliment to Velázquez when he complains that London shopkeepers are more interested in “the photograph of the latest celebrity than in the Velasquez portrait in the National Gallery.”81 Finally, in one review of the Old Masters at the Academy, Shaw dwelt at some length on Velázquez’s subtlety, realism, and truthfulness by discussing the royal subjects in some of his paintings. Shaw speaks of Velázquez portraying members of the nobility truthfully and as embodiments of their “ruling passions and darling sins.”82 He infers that Velázquez’s treatment of Mariana of Austria was a “ruthless picture” of her arrogant pride and that Captain-General Adrian Pulido Pareja is depicted as having a “cowling truculence” captured on “immortal canvas.”83 Shaw concludes that Velázquez basically disliked both of them. On the other hand, Shaw perceives that Velázquez must have had a fondness for the little Don Balthazar Carlos, Philip IV’s son, “of whom there are four portraits here, each as engaging as it is masterly.”84 In each case, Shaw appreciated Velázquez’s honesty. The name of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618–1682) of Seville often appears in connection with Velázquez, but he usually pales by the comparison. While his name appears scattered in his reviews—Shaw often cites Murillo’s madonnas85—Shaw writes, concerning the show of Old Masters at the Academy, that “before coming to the pictures of Velasquez, you pass a Murillo, with a heavenly-faced infant shepherd Christ,”86 and then one comes to a second Murillo, a Madonna, which Shaw describes as “discordant”: he condemns the “mock Roman colouring of which your very

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soul recoils” because it jolts so “villainously” after viewing the “majestic harmonies of Velasquez.” Shaw compliments Velázquez further by pointing out that only Rembrandt can “hold his own in that perilous juxtaposition.”87 In the early days of his career as an art critic, Shaw seems to have valued the skill of Ricardo de Madrazo y Garret (1852–1917), the son of a Madrid portraitist who was a figure and genre painter and who exhibited in Paris and London. Shaw labels Madrazo’s “Soubrette” at the French Gallery as among the “most skillfully painted pictures in the exhibition,” labeling the others “without manual skill,”88 and he singles out another Madrazo at the French Gallery which is “a brilliant little suggestion of a lady at a pianoforte.”89 But Shaw is nothing if not brutally honest about each individual painting and is not influenced by an artist’s other works. Later in 1888 and 1889, Shaw notes that Madrazo’s work is “coarse and slovenly, compared to what it once was,”90 and later declares that Madrazo’s “Summer Time” reveals how the “hand that used to be so dexterous with the rouge-pot is failing.”91 Shaw, in his usual candor, continued to give mixed reviews to such Spanish painters as Barbudo and Díaz. Salvador Sánchez Barbudo (1857–1917) was a genre painter about whom Shaw declares his “Court Matinee” to be “satirically splendid”92 while deeming his “First Communion” “partly Voltairian” and “partly merely boulvardian,” but clearly “wholly un-Britannic”93 (which is not necessarily a condemnation, mind you). However, when it comes to Barbudo’s “Connoisseurs,” Shaw concludes that the real subject of the painting is “heaps of accessories” which is carried to a “ludicrous extreme.”94 Shaw also refers Narcisse Díaz de la Peña (1807–1876, born in France to Spanish parents), another genre painter, and his work with the etching needle.95 He singles out a Díaz exhibit at the French Gallery as “admirably represented,”96 and later declares that a Díaz at McLean Gallery is “good, but nothing to rave about.”97 And Shaw finds the figures and flowers in another Díaz show startlingly inferior to Díaz’s landscapes, while exhibiting genuine appreciation for Díaz’s “Dogs and Hawk” as “an extraordinary feat in colour.”98 Several other Spanish painters are mentioned in passing here and there in Shaw’s reviews, including Zurbarán, a painter of religious subjects; Goya, a romantic painter and print maker considered the most important painter and chronicler of his era; and José Gallegos y Arnosa (1859–1917), a painter, architect, and sculptor. About Zurbarán, sometimes called “the

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Spanish Caravaggio,” Shaw notes that the catalog stipulates that one of the figures in his “St. Francis” “can be removed from view by folding the canvas,” a detail which Shaw finds not so rare in paintings; however, he says nothing about the painting itself.99 And about another Zurbarán (unnamed but hanging next to Gainsborough’s “Mrs. Sheridan” in the Grosvenor Gallery), Shaw complements him for depicting a “hideous personification of religious bigotry and the fear of hell.”100 In reviewing the collection at The New Gallery—on loan courtesy of M. Henri Rochefort— which includes a number of Goyas, Shaw praises the “historical and ethnological interest of the collection [as] considerable,” adding that “the kings are all such perfect gentlemen that one feels that the atrocities ascribed to them in the catalog must have been of the most refined kind.”101 In the Spring Exhibition at Messrs. Tooth’s in the Haymarket, Shaw praises Gallegos’s “Rehearsing the Easter Anthem” for its “capital studies of facial expression.”102 While Shaw’s time as an art critic was over by 1890, having terminated his position with The World and soon to transition into playwriting, he maintained an interest in art throughout his life and expressed his opinions in letters and venues, albeit finding himself falling behind the new currents in the art world; he is reported as saying, “I am not certain whether Picasso is the name of the latest car or a horse.”103 He even once confused Picasso with Pissarro (praising Picasso as “what a son” when speaking of Camille Pissarro, meaning Picasso’s father),104 and he was no fan of abstract art, which he judged was a way of deceiving an “ignorant public.”105 When the crowds at an exhibit of Picasso and Burne-Jones flocked to Picasso’s works, Shaw defended the Englishman by saying that he “will come into his own again.”106 On the other hand, Shaw described Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), one of the pioneers of Cubism and the dominating figure in twentieth-century art and recognized him, in 1913, as a “drawing master,”107 while in the same essay hypothesizing that “if I were to cut a square inch from a canvas by Picasso” and submit it for inspection, the viewer “would say that nobody but a hardened expert could lay on paint like that.”108 Shaw also praised Picasso for not admiring prettiness and glorifying the sitter while “omitting the popularities.”109 On balance, Shaw was very fair in his assessment of Spanish artists, allowing full credit when deserved and sometimes condemning when he felt the artist was not performing at his best. His praise for Velázquez is boundless and Shaw rates him among the great immortals of western art.

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With other Spanish artists, such as Murillo, Madrazo, Zurbarán, Goya, and others, he is very judicious, often recognizing their achievements and, when warranted, withholding praise. By the time Picasso arrived on the scene, Shaw had long since abandoned his “professional” duties as an art critic and was busy pouring his talent into plays and prefaces, wherein he continued to evince an easy familiarity with and respect for Spanish artists.

Notes 1. Shaw, Bernard. The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (London: The New Age Press, 1908), 21–22. 2. See, for example, Victor Molev’s “George Bernard Shaw, dreaming that he is Leo Tolstoy weighing fish on a mountain” (2015). Available at https://victor-­molev.pixels.com/featured/george-­bernard-­shaw-­victor-­ molev.html. 3. Another type of visual experience of the opposite kind, the sight of the Dublin slums, nauseated Shaw, again attesting to his visual sensitivity; his nurse would take him to her friends’ squalid tenements: “I saw it and smelt it and loathed it” (Pearson, 26). This experience probably resulted in his lifelong hatred of poverty. See Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One Volume Definitive Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 15. 4. Hesketh Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1942), 26. 5. Ibid. 6. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 15. 7. Ibid. 8. Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 26. 9. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 16. 10. Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 26. 11. Ibid. 12. William Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949). 26. 13. Stephen Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw (New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1949), 16. 14. Holbrook Jackson, Bernard Shaw (Freeport, New  York: Books for Library Press, 1909), 48. 15. Ibid. 16. Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 16.

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17. Stanley Weintraub, The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical Approaches to G.  B. S. and His Works (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982), 61. 18. Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 86. 19. Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 54. 20. Ibid. 21. Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 118. 22. Ibid., 119. 23. Pearson, G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait, 21. 24. Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 122. 25. Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 58. 26. Ibid. 27. Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), 179. 28. Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S., 121. 29. Ibid. 30. Bill Jay and Margaret Moore, eds. Bernard Shaw on Photography, Foreword by Michael Holroyd (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1989), vii. 31. Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 227. 32. Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 60. 33. Ibid. 34. Stanley Weintraub, ed. with an Intro., Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene: 1885–1950 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 60. 35. Ibid., 60. 36. Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, 173. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Jan McDonald, “Shaw Among the Artists,” A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880–2005, Mary Luckhurst, ed. (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 73. 41. Weintraub, London Art Scene, 5. 42. Ibid., 2. 43. Stanley Weintraub, Unexpected Shaw, 61. 44. Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, 188. 45. Bernard Shaw, Bernard Shaw: The Dairies, 1885-1897, Vol. I, Stanley Weintraub, ed. (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1986), 130. It should also be noted that as an art critic, Shaw championed Impressionism, the relatively new movement coming out of France, on several grounds. For one thing, Shaw saw that Impressionism offered

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greater freedom for the artist and that modern artists need more freedom rather than more control (Irvine 123). Moreover, Shaw viewed Impressionism as the birth of a new energy which was badly needed in an environment where convention, tradition, and repetition dominated, and he campaigned on behalf of painters such as Whistler, Burne-Jones, and Madox Brown (Pearson, 87). Finally, Shaw puts forth a powerful statement and defense of Impressionism in his essay The Sanity of Art, where he states that “because, being the outcome of heightened attention and quickened consciousness on the part of its disciples, it [Impressionism] was evidently destined to improve pictures greatly by substituting a natural, observant, real style of a conventional, taken-for granted, ideal one” (Sanity 291–2). 46. The spelling “Velasquez” is quite common in English and French, although the painter’s original last name is “Velázquez.” His full name, as registered in his baptism records, is Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez. The digitized original of this document is at https://guiadigital.iaph.es/ sys/productos/Velazquez/img/partidaBautismo.gif. 47. Bernard Shaw, Immaturity, Preface (London: Constable and Company Limited, 1931), xlii–xliii. 48. Bernard Shaw, Major Critical Essays, “The Sanity of Art” (London: Constable and Co., 1932), 288. 49. Ibid. 50. Regarding this passage, Burton says that it helps us see “a side of Shaw easily overlooked perhaps, but of cardinal importance in our view of him [in a chapter on Shaw as a mystic] … I consider it [the passage] to be central and illuminating to the extreme circumference of his thought.” Richard Burton, Bernard Shaw: The Man and the Mask (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916), 232–33. 51. A reproduction of the painting can be seen in Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works Cincinnati: Steward & Kidd, 1911), 262. Available at https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha01hend/page/n5/mode/2up. 52. Nigel Glendinning and Hillary Macartney, eds., Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1920 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Tamesis, 2010), 72. 53. Ibid., 130. 54. Ibid., 60. 55. The collection of Roman plaques that belonged to Wetherell can be seen at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG81217. 56. Frank Hall Standish, Seville and its Vicinity (London: Black and Armstrong, 1811), 144, 153, 283–284. Available at https://ia803204. us.archive.org/31/items/dli.granth.36514/36514.pdf. 57. Ibid., 63.

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58. Ibid., 221. 59. Ibid., 152. 60. Ibid., 34. 61. Ibid., 148. 62. Bd.Ms.25 ++, D Inventory & Valuation of Property at 10 Adelphi Terrace W.C., London. 1908. Bernard F.  Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Cornell University Library. The editor would like to thank Dr. Alice McEwan for bringing this to our attention. 63. Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books and Prints Removed from 4 Whitehall Court SW1, and Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, and Sold by Order of G. Bernard Shaw (London, 25 July 1949). 64. Christian Zervos, ed., Catalan Art from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries (London: W.  Heinemann, 1937); Masterpieces of the Prado Museum, introduction by Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor; translated by Edith Raybould; illustrations selected and the descriptions completed by Paul Wescher (London: Faber and Faber, 1948). Both books are listed in the online catalog of Shaw’s Corner’s library, available from the National Trust website at http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk. 65. Glendinning and Macartney, Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 73. 66. Ibid., 74–75. 67. Ibid., 177. 68. Ibid., 137. 69. Ibid., 198. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 206. 72. Ibid., 210. 73. Ibid., 216. 74. Ibid., 22. Of course John Ruskin had a certain aversion for naturalism and even went so far as to notoriously burn a copy of Caprichos, even though others expressed their admiration for Goya (Glendinning, 212). 75. Ibid., 226. 76. Jay and Moore, Bernard Shaw on Photography, 79. 77. Ibid., 81. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. London Art Scene, 383. 82. London Art 301, The World, 9 January 1890. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid., 20.

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86. Ibid., 302, The World, 9 January 1890. 87. Ibid., 302, The World, 9 January 1890. 88. Ibid., 53, Our Corner, 8 December 1885. 89. Ibid., London Art Scene, 86, The World, 31 March 1886. 90. Ibid., 241, The World, 20 March 1889. 91. Ibid., 268, The World, 20 March 1889. 92. Ibid., 188, The World, 2 November 1887. 93. Ibid., 244, The World, 31 October 1888. 94. Ibid., 86, The World, 31 March 1886. 95. Ibid., 189, The World, 2 November 1887. 96. Ibid., 210, Pall Mall Gazette, 28 March 1888. 97. Ibid., 336, The World, 5 November 1890. 98. Ibid., 270, The World, 3 April 1889. 99. Ibid., 357, The Star, 18 August 1892. 100. Ibid., 73, Our Corner, February 1886. 101. Ibid., 331, Truth, 22 May 1890. 102. Ibid., 148, The World, 23 March 1887. 103. Winsten, Days with Bernard Shaw, 222. 104. Ibid., 139. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid., 203. 107. London Art Scene, 419, obituary essay on Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema in The Nation, 18 January 1913. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid., 423. Shaw letter, The Nation, 1 March 1913.

References Álvarez de Sotomayor, Fernando. 1948. Masterpieces of the Prado Museum, trans. by Edith Raybould. London: Faber and Faber. Glendinning, Nigel, and Hillary Macartney, eds. 2010. Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1920. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Tamesis. Henderson, Archibald. 1956. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Holroyd, Michael. 1998. Bernard Shaw: The One Volume Definitive Edition. New York: Vintage Books. Irvine, William. 1949. The Universe of G. B. S. New York: McGraw-Hill. Jackson, Holbrook. 1909. Bernard Shaw. Freeport, New  York: Books for Library Press. Jay, Bill, and Margaret Moore, eds. 1989. Bernard Shaw on Photography. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books.

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McDonald, Jan. 2006. Shaw Among the Artists. In A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880–2005, ed. Mary Luckhurst. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Pearson, Hesketh. 1942. G. B. S. A Full Length Portrait. New  York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Shaw, Bernard. 1908. The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists Being Degenerate. London: The New Age Press. ———. 1931. Immaturity. London: Constable. ———. 1932. Major Critical Essays, ‘The Sanity of Art’. London: Constable. Sotheby & Co. 1949. Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books and Prints Removed from 4 Whitehall Court SW1, and Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, and Sold by Order of G. Bernard Shaw. London, 25 July. Standish, Frank Hall. 1811. Seville and Its Vicinity. London: Black and Armstrong. Weintraub, Stanley, ed. 1982. The Unexpected Shaw: Biographical Approaches to G. B. S. and His Works. New York: Frederick Ungar. ———, ed. 1986. Bernard Shaw: The Diaries, 1885–1897. Vol. I. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press. ———, ed. 1989. Bernard Shaw on the London Art Scene: 1885–1950. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Winsten, Stephen. 1949. Days with Bernard Shaw. New York: The Vanguard Press. Zervos, Christian, ed. 1937. Catalan Art from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Centuries. London: W. Heinemann.

CHAPTER 5

Shaw and Spanish Plays in 1890s London Miguel Cisneros Perales

introduction Some years have passed since E. J. West claimed that “the most dogged Shavian researcher finds a surprisingly small number of serious attempts to estimate or to define Bernard Shaw as dramatic critic.”1 However, there remains much to say on the topic. This chapter builds upon what West established in his founding paper, “The Critic as Analyst: Bernard Shaw as Example,” and its main objective is to analyze two of Shaw’s essays on the type of theater he reacted against—their peculiar feature is that the plays in question were Spanish—and to provide a new example in order to properly assess Shaw’s skills as a critic. During his years as a drama critic, Shaw mentioned very few Spanish authors and critiqued even fewer. In truth, Shaw reviewed only three Spanish plays, although he did know and read other Spanish dramatists. Research on this chapter was partially funded by a scholarship from Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Ayudas para Investigación Tutorizadas, Ref. PPI1603).

M. Cisneros Perales (*) Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_5

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He knew of Lope de Vega and Cervantes, as we can infer from several passages in his correspondence with Frank Harris.2 Evidence of Shaw’s knowledge of Lope can also be found in his frequent use of the expression “four boards and a passion,” a phrase attributed to the Spanish playwright.3 On several occasions we find mentions of how prolific Calderón was4 and of his link with Shelley,5 one of Shaw’s major influences and himself a great reader of Calderón. On the other hand, it is curious that we find no mention of Tirso de Molina in Our Theatre in the Nineties; we must wait until the preface to Man and Superman for an in-depth discussion of his play El burlador de Sevilla and the figure of Don Juan.6 We also know that Shaw saw at least one play by the Álvarez Quintero brothers,7 translated by Helen and Harley Granville-Barker,8 although this was several years later, when he was no longer a critic but a renowned playwright. Shaw’s first review of a Spanish play for the Saturday Review was entitled, oddly enough, “Ibsen Ahead!” It was a review of the special revival of Donna Diana, a “poetical comedy in four acts,” “adapted, and to a great extent rewritten, from the German version of Moreto’s El Desdén con el Desdén, by Westland Marston, in the Prince of Wales’ Theatre the 4th November 1896.”9 Although it constitutes little more than a curious anecdote, I include it here because it provides an interesting example of how Spanish classical theater had reached London in the nineteenth century—that is to say, via Germany. Can we treat this as an original play, however, or was it simply a case of a plagiarized plot? After all, Shaw does not even mention Moreto’s name, and there is no evidence that he does elsewhere. The beginning of the text is the end of the actual review: “Few performances have struck such terror into me as that of Westland Marston’s Donna Diana.” Was it really so terrible? Not exactly: what frightened Shaw was the possibility that this kind of theater could make a successful return (he was fighting against the romantic conventions of the English theater of the nineteenth century). Shaw justifies his terror because, until then, he was certain that these revivals, “[a] reversion to the classically Romantic phase which held the English stage from the time of Otway to that of Sheridan Knowles and Westland Marston,” would have no future, “because the trick of execution had been so completely lost that the performances were usually … senselessly ridiculous.”10 Luckily for him, this Donna Diana was not successful at all. According to Shaw, Marston’s version is not Classical but Romantic. His adaptation somewhat mirrors the conception that some English critics

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have of Calderón: that of an ultra-Romantic Spanish author.11 Shaw attacks not only the staginess of the production but also the method of execution of its performers, who left it a “romantic” and “obsolete play.” His review is thus an interesting text in that it contains notions that are essential to understanding his criticism during this period, including, among others, the dichotomy between Naturalism and theatrical Romanticism. Shaw ends with an appeal for subscriptions for Elizabeth Robins’s production of a play by Ibsen, Little Eyolf (hence the title), and one by Spanish playwright José Echegaray, Mariana: Oddly enough, Miss Robins announces that the profits of the torture chamber will go towards a fund, under distinguished auditorship, for the performance of other plays, the first being the ultraromantic, ultrastagey, Mariana of Echegaray. When, on the publication of that play by Mr Fisher Unwin, I urged its suitability for production, nobody would believe me, because events had not then proved the sagacity of my repeated assertions that the public were tired of tailormade plays, and were ripe for a revival of color and costume; and now, alas! my prophecies are forgotten in the excitement created by their fulfilment. That is the tragedy of my career. I shall die as I have lived, poor and unlucky, because I am like a clock that goes fast: I always strike twelve an hour before noon.12

We could ask ourselves where this reference to Mariana comes from. To understand this, we must travel back in time one year and six months. Echegaray got two of his plays, The Son of Don Juan and Mariana, published in English at the beginning of 1895 in New York. Shaw’s first reference to Echegaray was precisely in a review of these two plays in the Saturday Review on April 27 of the same year.13 The title of the review, “Spanish Tragedy and English Farce,”14 was no accident; in addition to Echegaray’s Ibsenism or anti-Ibsenism, what Shaw discussed in both this review and the next review he dedicated to Mariana, entitled “Echegaray Matinées,” is Spanish tragedy.15 In discussing Shaw’s reviews of both Echegaray plays, I will try to draw some conclusions about Shaw’s drama criticism in general and about what he, as a critic and neophyte playwright, thought about José Echegaray. We must begin by noting that Echegaray wrote very popular texts on economics, science, and politics, all considered highly informative, vigorous, and literary, and that he was a huge figure in Spain (and an emerging one in Europe),16 not only as a dramatist but also as a scientist (a famous civil

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engineer—he was first in his class—and, according to his biographer Sánchez Ron, one of the best Spanish mathematicians of the nineteenth century),17 journalist, economist, statesman, and civil servant: he was a member of various royal Spanish academies and institutions, founder of the Ateneo de Madrid and the Bank of Spain, and Minister of Public Works and Transport, Minister of Finance, and a senator.

The Son of Don Juan El hijo de Don Juan was first performed in the Teatro Español in Madrid on March 29, 1892, and published that year. It did not receive particularly good reviews nor garner much public acclaim. Nonetheless, the English translation was published and was reviewed surprisingly quickly.18 The original Spanish version was published along with the statement “Inspired after reading Ibsen’s play Gengangere” (Ghosts) on the title page.19 The translation by James Graham came with an outline of José Echegaray’s life, which Shaw did not find particularly convincing; a good summary of the play by Graham, who discussed the work in relation to Ibsen’s Ghosts;20 and a prologue by Echegaray in which the author defends himself against various accusations. These were wide-ranging: among other comments, some critics said that El hijo de Don Juan was not an original play but a plagiarism of Ibsen’s work; some complained that it was too gloomy and lugubrious; others wrote that its only topic was hereditary lunacy and still others that “from the moment when it is perceived that Lazarus will go mad, the interest of the work ceases.”21 For Shaw there was no controversy: Echegaray’s “treatment of the Ghosts theme is perfectly original,”22 and it was not simply a matter of form or dramatic technique, but a question of the motives behind each play. On The Son of Don Juan, Shaw comments that “there is not in it a shadow of the peculiar moral attitude of Ibsen.”23 Although Shaw was not categorical, he stated that Echegaray’s style was closer to that of Schiller, Victor Hugo, and Verdi, to the “picturesque” of the “older school,” and that the Ibsenist theme is just a replacement of the “villain,” “the Sallustio or Ruy Gomez,” in the form of “modern scientific culture,” “by destiny in the shape of hereditary disease.”24 Shaw’s noting the differences between the moral elements in Ghosts and The Son of Don Juan is a reiteration of his moral analysis of Ibsen’s plays.25 “Echegaray,” he writes, “remorselessly fixes all the responsibility on Don Juan (Alving), who is as resolutely vicious as Shelley’s Count Cenci.”26

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According to Shaw, in Ghosts the guilt—incarnated in Mrs. Alving—is exposed in a much more complicated way, as Ibsen “brings home to her the conviction that it was really she herself and her fellow Puritans who, by stamping men and women of Alving’s temperament into the gutter, and imposing shame and disease on them as their natural heritage, had made the ruin into which Alving fell.”27 In Echegaray’s play, the illness of the son of Don Juan is a punishment for his father’s sins—it is the individual who is guilty—while in Ibsen’s work, the individual is the way he is because society imposed the punishment upon him. Mrs. Alving, as a proto-New Woman, with her consciousness and inner conflicts between love, duty, and womanliness, is the real hero. In Echegaray’s play, however, “there is no more of that sort of conscience,” perhaps because the female leading role is almost of no importance and “the dissipated father, who does not appear in Ghosts at all, is practically Echegaray’s hero.”28 In this sense, the character lives her roles as mother to a beloved son and wife to a sinful husband without any pangs of moral conflict. “There is not the slightest trace of this inculpation of respectability and virtue in The Son of Don Juan,”29 Shaw writes: we feel no pity for Don Juan or his son in the face of tragedy, as we do for Mrs. Alving and for Oswald. Why do the plays have such vastly different motives, then? Shaw provides some answers: “the story has been taken on to new ground nationally, and back to old ground morally.”30 It is thus the Spanish moral of the old, Catholic Spain that altered the meaning of the play. Is it possible for a play with an Old Moral to belong to the New Drama? It seems quite unlikely, at least according to the concept of Ibsenist morals developed by Shaw in his Quintessence. On the other hand, it could also be a matter of literary genres. Shaw seems to hesitate when trying to label Echegaray’s plays under a specific genre: first he says that Echegaray is “tragic to death,”31 and later that “both narratives are characteristically modern in their tragicomedy.”32 We will analyze this apparent confusion after considering Shaw’s second review, this time of Echegaray’s Mariana, which Shaw titled “Spanish Tragedy and English Farce.”

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Mariana beFore Mariana Before we discuss Shaw’s views on Mariana (his reviews of the text and of the performance), let us compile the scattered mentions to the play throughout Shaw’s criticism before it reached the stage and in so doing trace the evolution of Shaw’s opinion of Echegaray’s drama. Shaw’s review of the 1897 production of Mariana begins by summing up all of his previous comments on the production process: “It is now nearly two years since I pointed out […] that Mariana was pre-eminently a play for an actress-manageress to snap up. The only person who appreciated the opportunity in this country was Miss Elizabeth Robins.”33 But, as is usually the case with G.B.S, there is more to this sudden renewal of interest in Mariana than meets the eye. He had also privately recommended the part to another actress. In 1895, he had written to Janet Achurch suggesting the role of Mariana: “By the way, have you read Echegaray’s Mariana? C[harles].C[harrington]. scoffs at it; but it struck me as being a good star play for a woman.”34 In letters to Elizabeth Robins in October 1896, Shaw had mentioned a potential production of Mariana, funded by subscriptions: “Dear Miss Robins, I have just, by the merest accident, come upon one of the Ibsen-­ Echegaray circulars. May I suggest that the same accident had better happen to every critic in London as soon as possible.”35 Shaw also wrote to R. Golding Bright: Echegaray is also to have a turn. I—G.B.S., moi qui vous parle—devoted nearly a whole article to Echegaray’s “Mariana” when it was published here, and pointed out that it ought to be snapped up as a star part by some enterprising emulator of Bernhardt & Duse. Miss Robins has taken the hint, and promises “Mariana” after “Little Eyolf.” She has also declared, in a signed circular, that if the performances produce any profit, she will use it as the nucleus of a fund for the performance of plays which are too good to be commercially practicable.36

Shaw seems excited in this letter, perhaps by the possibility of having his own plays financed if the funding experiment with Robins succeeds. He may have been thinking of Candida, since in the aforementioned letter to Achurch he also wrote, if Mansfield makes a success of “The Son of Don Juan,” then it might make up a six night repertory along with Nora, Candida [G. E. Lessing’s] Emilia

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Galotti, Alexandra, and a triple bill of “The Man of Destiny,” [R. L. Stevenson and W.  E. Henley’s] Admiral Guinea, and Hardy’s Jack Ketch piece. All three would be in the serious key of a company which might be utterly unable to touch The Philanderer.37

In his “Ibsen Ahead!” (November 7, 1896), Shaw announces that, as we have seen, Robins is raising a fund for the performance of “the ultra-­ Romantic, ultra-stagey, ‘Mariana’ of Echegaray.” In “Ibsen Without Tears” (December 12, 1896),38 Shaw mentions this potential production once again, doubting it will ever be staged. In this review, Shaw analyzes the production of Little Eyolf by Elizabeth Robins at the Avenue Theatre. Some days later, Shaw complains about Mr. Bancroft’s “pseudo-­ charitable business” of reading Dickens’s Christmas Carol “in public and giv[ing] the proceeds to the hospitals”39 and shares some of his ideas on how to spend his money for the sake of drama. Among many examples (some of them utter nonsense), he proposes this: “suppose the Independent Theatre offered to get up a verbatim performance of Peer Gynt, lasting two nights, on condition of being so far assisted that the exploit could ruin nobody but itself; or that Miss Robins were to undertake an Echegaray cycle on the same conditions.”40 He is here supporting Robins’s enterprise with some free publicity. Days earlier, Shaw had urged Robins to continue with her project: “The original production [Little Eyolf], undertaken largely at Miss Robins’s individual risk, was for the benefit of a vaguely announced fund, as to the constitution and purpose of which no information was forthcoming, except that it proposed to produce Echegaray’s Mariana, with Miss Robins in the title part.”41 The problem was that, at that time, there were four major Ibsenite actresses (and Shaw was, for one reason or another, interested in all of them), and only two theaters willing to stage Ibsen’s plays: the Avenue Theatre (which was struggling with some economic difficulties) and the Independent Theatre. There was also a substantial fund being raised by subscriptions aimed at producing Little Eyolf and Mariana—or at least that was what Robins hoped for. In Shaw’s eyes, however, the money from this fund, even after the delayed production of Little Eyolf, could not be guaranteed for Robins’s sole use and might well go to “the production of an opera, a shadow play from Paris, or a drama in which neither Miss Robins nor any of those who have worked with her may be offered any part or share whatever.”42 Shaw continues: “Under these circumstances, what likelihood is there of the experiment being resumed or repeated on

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its old basis? Miss Robins will probably think twice before she creates Mariana without some security that, if she succeeds, the part will not immediately be handed over to Miss Winifred Emery or Miss Julia Neilson.”43 It seems that Shaw also had an interest in this fund and did not like the idea of Elizabeth Robins spending the proceeds on a production of Mariana. Might it be that he wanted money for a production of his Candida? You never can tell. What is certain is that by deliberately confronting and antagonizing actresses, managers, and theaters, he was meddling—albeit denying this in his last paragraph: I do not presume to meddle in the affairs of all these actors and authors, patrons and enthusiasts, subscribers and guarantors, though this is quite as much my business as theirs; but after some years’ intimate experience of the results of unorganized Ibsenism, I venture to suggest that it would be well to have some equitable form of theatrical organization ready to deal with Ibsen’s new play, on the translation of which Mr Archer is already at work.44

The truth of that statement notwithstanding, an Ibsen play offered Shaw the critic the best possible excuse to meddle. What is more, had he not warned us not to trust him to be a fair and objective critic? Just substitute for “the critic” the initials G.B.S. Instantly the realities of the case leap to light; and you see without any argument that the lapse of a few days between the performance and the notice, far from obliterating the writer’s partialities and prejudices, his personal likes and dislikes, his bias, his temperament, his local traditions, his nationality—in a word, himself, only enables him to express them the more insidiously when he wishes to conceal their influence … we cannot get away from the critic’s tempers, his impatiences, his sorenesses, his friendships, his spite, his enthusiasms (amatory and other), nay his very politics and religion if they are touched by what he criticizes. They are all there hard at work.45

One month later, at the end of his article “The New Ibsen Play” (January 30, 1897), Shaw writes about the difficulties of staging John Gabriel Borkman46 with Robins, as she was busy with her production of Mariana: “Altogether,” he lamented, “the prospects of a speedy performance of John Gabriel Borkman are not too promising.”47 It appears that Shaw did not, by this point, view the idea of Robins producing Mariana with the same excitement as previously. Was this loss of enthusiasm due to

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the play or the actress? Was it because Shaw would have wished the fund money to be spent on a different play? The idea that there might be an ulterior motive behind Shaw’s criticism of Mariana and his interest in and praise of Echegaray’s writings (either as the author of a continental form of the New Drama or as a modern writer) became apparent to me while reading Joanne E.  Gates’s essay “The Theatrical Politics of Elizabeth Robins and Bernard Shaw,”48 where Gates explains the difficult, somewhat conflicted, relationship between Robins’s enterprises and Shaw’s interests, and which supports Margot Peters’s caveat that “the trouble with Bernard Shaw is that we always believe what he says.”49 Gates also explains the motivations behind the production of Little Eyolf, and how the Independent Theatre lost its opportunity to stage this play: Shaw had ulterior motives for wanting to see Little Eyolf staged. Shaw had written Candida specifically for Janet Achurch, for whom his infatuation is well documented, and he wanted her to perform the title role. He knew that other Independent Theatre enthusiasts would look on such a production as self-serving if he used Achurch before she performed the role that much of the London theater world was waiting for her to play. On 18 February 1896, Shaw insisted to publisher William Heinemann, who controlled the stage rights of Little Eyolf, that the £400 that the Independent held must either be spent on Little Eyolf or “on me—ME—moi qui vous écrit.” Heinemann saw this as Shaw’s attempt to get Little Eyolf out of the way so that his own play could be produced.50

Perhaps after failing to secure Little Eyolf’s rights for the Independent, Shaw saw his opportunity in the successful fund raised by Elizabeth Robins and wanted to make a similar move to secure the stage for Candida instead of, or in addition to, Mariana—which, in the event, was not successful and lasted only five matinées, thus ending the subscription experiment.51

EchegArAy’s Mariana Versus Robins’s Mariana Shaw wrote in 1895 that Mariana was a lineal descendant of Ruy Blas or Don Carlos. Nevertheless, almost two years later he had toned down his opinion, stating that Mariana was not purely sensational: “If the atmosphere of Mariana were thoroughly conventional and old-fashioned, or if Mariana were presented at first as a fanatical idealist on the subject of

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‘honor,’ like Ruy Gomez in Hernani, or Don Pablo, we might feel with her that all was lost when she discovered in her chosen Daniel the son of the man with whom her mother had eloped.”52 Why is it that Shaw changed his opinion on Mariana? Two years had passed, and Mariana was no longer a stagey personality but “the most wayward and willful of modern women.”53 Was she now a Hedda Gabler? Mariana did not have the direct Ibsenist influence that marked The Son of Don Juan (in this case from Ghosts), but some have argued that Mariana does evoke Hedda Gabler.54 However, in his first review of the play, Shaw had found the differences between both plays quite striking, as “[t]he woman who looks at Hedda Gabler or Mrs Alving may be looking at herself in a mirror; but the woman who looks at Mariana is looking at another woman, a perfectly distinct and somewhat stagey personality.”55 Echegaray’s Mariana is also “tragic to death,” a heroine struggling “with an implacable idealism which makes vengeance and jealousy points of honor.”56 However, the Mariana played by Robins (who also played a superb Hedda Gabler, in Shaw’s opinion) was not presented as “a fanatical idealist on the subject of ‘honor,’” like Ruy Gomez, Hernani, or Don Pablo, but as a “wayward and willful modern woman”; hence “the fanatical action she takes is to a Londoner neither inevitable nor natural” and “the performance must needs produce an effect of inequality.” In Shaw’s words, pretending to cast Mariana, “the passionately romantic old-fashioned woman,” as a modern woman under such an “old fashioned,” “purely sensational” and “conventional” theme as honor, as Robins’s performance intended, caused the ending of the play to be unconvincing and left the public underwhelmed and unmoved, contrary to those “plays in which the motives are as real to us as the actions.”57 This was Robins’s error: romance eluded her. As Shaw explained, “she fails as Mariana just where Dickens would have failed if he had attempted to draw such a character: that is, in conveying the least impression of her impulsive rapture of love.”58 However, Shaw the social critic, “with the newspapers containing at least three romantic murders a fortnight as symptoms of the insane condition of the public mind in sex matters,”59 hailed Robins’s Mariana “with relief and respect,” because in Echegaray’s play “a man who has already murdered one wife out of jealousy shoots Mariana before the eyes of the audience on the same provocation” and “is regarded as shewing a high sense of honor.”60 Shaw prefers the willful “modern woman cured of romance, and fully alive that the romantic view of her sex is the whole secret of its

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degradation,” even if she is unconvincing, because “until we have a Mariana who can convince us that she is as great a fool about Daniel as Daniel is about her, we shall not have the Mariana of Echegaray.”61 That said, in the end, Shaw considered the performance a good one, if Robins “will not try to adapt her acting to the drama, but will insist on the drama being adapted to her acting.”62

wAs ShAw wrong About EchegArAy? In the first review, “Spanish Tragedy and English Farce,” it is unclear whether Shaw believed The Son of Don Juan and Mariana to be good plays or not. The text is filled with apparent contradictions and ambiguities. After Elizabeth Robins’s Mariana, it is difficult to find any reference to Echegaray in Shaw’s works. We know that Mrs. Patrick Campbell staged Mariana in London some years after Robins and took it to New York,63 but we do not know if Shaw witnessed a performance of this new version. In “How the XIX Century Found Itself Out,”64 Shaw ranked Echegaray in terms of morbidity with Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, the Goncourts, Ibsen, Strindberg, Aubrey Beardsley, George Moore, and D’Annunzio. After this last reference, however, it would appear that Echegaray fell into oblivion in Shaw’s eyes. What is clear is that Shaw found Echegaray “extremely readable,” with dialogue “pellucid as to its meaning,”65 and in some “of the burning passages it rises to considerable force and eloquence.”66 Nonetheless, we should not be confused when he writes that “Echegaray is apparently of the school of Schiller, Victor Hugo, and Verdi: picturesque, tragic to the death, shewing us the beautiful and the heroic struggling either with blind destiny or with an implacable idealism which makes vengeance and jealousy points of honor.”67 All of this implies Old Drama, which must take a step back to let the New Drama come forward. There is a further example: in The Son of Don Juan, Shaw comments that the theme is original. Despite the apparent praise, this is actually a criticism, because what makes it original is that “there is not in it a shadow of the peculiar moral attitude of Ibsen”;68 “Ibsen never presents his play to you as a romance for your entertainment,”69 which is quite the opposite of Echegaray’s plays. When Shaw wrote, “I suspect the Spaniards will compel us to admit that they have produced a genius of a stamp that crosses frontiers, and that we shall yet see some of his work on our own stage,”70 he was indeed being complimentary. For Shaw, however, the word genius is related not

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only to the quality of the literary work but also to other merits: the Shavian genius is, to a great extent, very good at promoting himself, for example. As for Shaw’s belief that Echegaray’s plays had a chance of finding their place on the English stage, this could mean that Echegaray was suitable for the melodramatic and conventional taste of the time—a mere fact, not a judgment of quality. In this case, it appears Shaw was a good critic: he saw Echegaray’s merits (and those he did have: after all, he received a Nobel Prize!), but, at the same time, he knew that Echegaray did not belong to the type of drama Shaw was championing.71 Two years after this review, however, Shaw wrote another text in which, as we have seen, he commented on Elizabeth Robins’s performance in Mariana in somewhat different terms. In this second review he exclaimed— although with some “reservation”—that the “play is a masterly one” and that there was in it “an eminent degree of dramatic wit, imagination, sense of idiosyncrasy, and power over words.”72 He may have been trying to describe Echegaray as the rightful successor of Spanish Classical theater, mainly that of Calderón, as he confesses that “these qualifications are perhaps still expected from dramatists in Spain.” That is not all, however, because he follows this by stating that Echegaray was “a man of the world in the largest sense” and now seemed to believe what he had previously found unconvincing in James Graham’s outline of Echegaray’s life. Shaw now described Echegaray as a “man who comprehends his world, and knows society … as a capable statesman knows it.”73 Despite these seemingly kind words, I do not believe that Shaw thought so highly of Echegaray as a playwright and as a statesman. Shaw preferred Robins’s modern Mariana and thought, as we have previously seen, that Echegaray’s Mariana was a morally old, grounded woman. Even if we consider Shaw a man of the nineteenth century, the truth is that his dramas changed the English stage and pushed it into the twentieth century; we might even venture to claim that Shaw was a man between two centuries. This was not the case for Echegaray; he embodied the nineteenth century that Shaw antagonized so fiercely (especially during his time as a critic) and the kind of literature that Shaw was trying to eradicate. As Mariano de Cavia wrote when José Echegaray died: “Aquí yace el siglo XIX” (Here lies the nineteenth century). Why, one must ask, did Shaw praise Echegaray? Firstly, he knew no other contemporary Spanish plays that could have helped him nuance his judgment.74 Secondly, if Ibsen was an inspiration to Echegaray, he then belonged to the cause of Ibsenism, and therefore

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Shaw, one of the most prominent champions of Ibsenism, could not have disregarded Echegaray but use him as a means to advance his cause. Thirdly, as we have already seen, Shaw had some issues with Robins’s theatrical politics and his own personal and professional interests as an emerging playwright. Consequently, the good publicity that he gave to Mariana was not so much to benefit the play itself, but for the sake of the people around it, who could, in turn, support Shaw’s own theatrical career. We cannot say that Shaw was an impartial critic, nor that he was blinded by Echegaray’s presumed Ibsenism. All in all, Echegaray was merely a conventional Romantic author who tried to hide his old-fashioned face, but indeed Shaw saw through his tricks and was not fooled: “The main fault really lies, as I have shewn, with the dramatist, who has planned his play [Mariana] on the romantic lines of Schiller and Victor Hugo, and filled it in with a good deal of modern realist matter.”75 The rest was politics.

Notes 1. E. J. West, “The Critic as Analyst: Bernard Shaw as Example,” Educational Theatre Journal 4, no. 3 (1952), 200. 2. See, for example, Harris’s letter to Shaw: “You can’t write to me or about me without calling me names […] Lope de Vega calls Saavedra-Cervantes every name he can put his tongue to and Cervantes replies by praising his ‘most excellent, ingenious and amusing comedies.’” Quoted in Stanley Weintraub, ed., The Playwright and the Pirate: Bernard Shaw and Frank Harris, A Correspondence (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1982), 77. 3. “If you ask what my choice would be between ‘four boards and a passion’ and a sumptuous mise-en-scène without the passion, I am for the four boards.” Shaw, “Ten Minutes with Mr Bernard Shaw,” in The Drama Observed 1880–1895, ed. Bernard F. Dukore (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1993), 221. 4. Shaw wrote to his French translator, Augustin Hamon, about his Spanish translator Julio Broutá: “He throws off translations faster than Calderón threw off his four thousand original plays, and sends me almost every week not only a translation but a printed and published copy in a paper cover … involving me in an instant payment.” Quoted in Fred Crawford, “Shaw in Translation,” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 20 (2000), 188. 5. In his review of The Cenci, published in Our Corner in June 1886, Shaw wrote: “The inevitable historical document was duly translated from the Italian original. And he [Shelley] wrote a preface in which he scrupulously

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stated that an idea in one of the speeches was suggested by a passage in Calderon’s El Purgatorio de San Patricio. This, he said, was the only plagiarism he had intentionally committed in the whole piece.” The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 60. 6. See Oscar Giner in this issue. 7. The play was Fortunato, by the Álvarez Quintero brothers. The performance was in 1928, and the actor O. B. Clarence played the leading role. Of this we have clear confirmation as, years later, Clarence wrote to Shaw asking him for some lines for his autobiography and Shaw complied thusly: “He [O. B. Clarence] was always engaged elsewhere, notably in Barrie’s plays, and once, very delightfully, in a Spanish play translated by Granville-­ Barker, in which he represented a quite unathletic white collar clerk driven by unemployment and the hunger of his children to take a job with a variety star, who stood him up against a target and outlined his figure on it with bullets. Nobody else on the stage could have played that part as you did.” Collected Letters 1926–1950, 656. 8. Shaw knew of the Granville-Barker translations, but we do not know if he read them. In a text he wrote in 1946, after Barker’s death, Shaw explains: “After their retirement to Devon and then to Paris he became a highly respectable professor. Besides his Prefaces to Shakespeare, he wrote two more plays, and collaborated with his wife in translation from the Spanish.” The Drama Observed 1911–1950, 1506. 9. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 693. 10. Ibid. 11. Even Shaw might have held this opinion, as exemplified by the use of Calderón’s name in another piece: “To this day such splendid melodramas as Othello, with its noble savage, its villain, its funny man, its carefully assorted pathetic and heavy feminine interest, its smothering and suicide, its police court morality and commonplace thought; or As You Like It, with its Adelphi hero, its prizefight, its coquet in tights, its good father and wicked uncle, represent the greatness of Shakespeare to nine tenths of his adorers, who mostly, when you mention Helena, or the Countess of Rousillon, or Isabella, or Cressida, or Ulysses, or Bertram, stare at you, and think you are talking about Calderon and Homer.” The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 1003. 12. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 697. 13. Shaw mentioned the reception and review of Echegaray’s books in a letter to publisher Fisher Unwin (September 9, 1895): “By the way, is there any public as yet which reads plays? When you sent me the Echegaray volumes I wrote them up in the Saturday & urged them on the notice of Richard Mansfield, the actor. I see now that he declares his intention of opening the Garrick (New York) next season with ‘The Son of Don Juan’ Do those

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Cameos sell?” Quoted in Michel W. Pharand, ed., Bernard Shaw and his Publishers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 30. 14. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 317–323. 15. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 787–792. 16. Unfortunately, there is no complete study of Echegaray’s reception in England or the English-speaking world (not even in Europe generally). However, we can find many examples that prove he became a successful author: for example, the many translations of his plays (he already had three plays translated into Swedish before receiving the Nobel Prize). In several leaflets published by The Player’s Club of the University of British Columbia in the 1930s, we can see under the epigraph “Previous Performances” that the play The World and His Wife by Echegaray was performed eighteen times in 1924, compared to Shaw’s You Never Can Tell only fifteen times the year before. The World and His Wife (El Gran Galeoto) also enjoyed eighty-eight performances in New  York’s Daly’s Theatre following its premiere on November 2, 1908 (Luis Pegenaute, “El teatro español de fin de siglo: su recepción en los EEUU hasta 1936.” In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute (Barcelona: PPU, 2001), 219). Pegenaute also mentions many other plays by Echegaray performed in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and over twenty-five English translations of plays by Echegaray were published from 1985 to 1922 (ibid., 218–222, 252–253). 17. José Manuel Sánchez Ron, “José Echegaray: entre la ciencia, el teatro y la política,” Arbor 179, no. 707–708 (2004), 601–688. Available at http:// arbor.revistas.csic.es/index.php/arbor/article/view/510/511. 18. José Echegaray, The Son of Don Juan, trans. James Graham (London: Fisher Unwin, 1895). 19. First edition available in digitized format at archive.org/details/ elhijodedonjuan00echegoog. 20. The influence of Ibsen on Echegaray has received much academic attention, not only with regard to The Son of Don Juan but also in relation to other plays by Echegaray. In an early essay, Ruth Lee Kennedy summed up those influences, concluding that Echegaray was “the first tragic writer of Spain to seek to combine the play of ideas with that of intrigue and the first to put his protagonist in sharp conflict with a conventional society that would swallow up the individual. And this last, I doubt not, represents a real borrowing from the ‘grand old man of the north.’” Ruth Lee Kennedy, “The Indebtedness of Echegaray to Ibsen,” The Sewanee Review 34, no. 4 (1926), 402–415. 21. The Son of Don Juan, 25. 22. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 23. Ibid.

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24. Ibid. 25. As West pointed out, the comparison was part of Shaw’s method of analytical criticism: “while Archer and Walkley boasted of their lack of technical knowledge of acting, and of their inability to remember a single concrete detail, Shaw ceaselessly compared and contrasted artists in interpretation and in technique: Shakespeare and Ibsen; Ibsen and Echegaray; Madox Brown, Watts, and Leighton; Coquelin and John Hare, Weedon Grossmith and Joe Jefferson, Janet Achurch and Mrs. Pat Campbell; Calve and Olga Nethersole, Ellen Terry and Réjane, Duse and Bernhardt.” West, “The Critic as Analyst,” 203. 26. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 27. Ibid. 28. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 321. 29. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 30. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 321. 31. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 32. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 322. 33. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 787. 34. Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1874–1897 (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1965), 548. 35. Collected Letters 1874–1897, 683. 36. Collected Letters 1874–1897, 684. 37. Collected Letters 1874–1897, 548. Mansfield’s production of The Son of Don Juan never reached the stage. 38. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 717–723. 39. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 723. 40. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 726. 41. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 721–722. 42. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 722. 43. Ibid. 44. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 723. 45. Dan H.  Laurence, ed. Shaw’s Music, 1893–1950 (London: The Bodley Head, 1981), 237–238. 46. John Gabriel Borkman, incidentally, finally reached the stage on May 3, 1897, at the New Century Theatre in the Strand. In an eponymous review we find a new reference to Mariana, which had already seen the light without great success: “As the woman in revolt against the intolerable slavery and injustice of ideal ‘womanliness’ (Karin and Martha in Pillars of Society) or against the man treating her merely as his sexual prey (Mariana in the recital of her mother’s fate) her success has had no bounds except those set by the commercial disadvantages at which the performances were undertaken.” The review was negative overall; Shaw concludes by saying that it

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was “a rather disappointing performance.” He was unhappy with the performance, with the delay of the production of John Gabriel Borkman, and with Elizabeth Robins, who at some point “betrays that she is an Ibsenite without being an Ibsenist.” The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 844. 47. The Drama Observed 1895–1897, 766. 48. Joanne E. Gates, “The Theatrical Politics of Elizabeth Robins and Bernard Shaw,” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 14 (1994), 43–53. 49. Margot Peters, “As Lonely as God,” in The Genius of Shaw: A Symposium, ed. Michael Holroyd (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), 185. 50. Gates, “The Theatrical Politics,” 47. 51. He might have had the same objective when, one month after the premiere of Mariana, he praised the producers, now in another theater: “The New Century Theatre is the title of the latest combination of enthusiasts for the regeneration of the drama in this country. It is the same group which lately achieved the performances of Little Eyolf and Mariana.” The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 821. And again: “It is no doubt heroic of the Independent Theatre to send out a mission to accustom the demoralized and recalcitrant provincial playgoer to Ibsen’s plays and mine. It is at least prudent, if not glorious, for the New Century Theatre to promote the spread of the New Drama by sitting tightly on its copyrights and neither performing its Echegaray and Ibsen plays itself nor allowing anyone else to do so.” The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 935. 52. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 787. 53. Ibid. 54. Spanish critic Francisco Villegas Zeda, for example. See Iris Fernández Muñiz, “La España Moderna y la recepción temprana de Ibsen en España: en busca de la identidad del desconocido primer traductor español,” Cartas Hispánicas 6 (2016), 10. Available at http://www.bibliotecalazarogaldiano.es/carhis/descargas/Fernandez-­M uniz_La-­E spana-­ Moderna-­y-­la-­recepcion-­temprana-­de-­Ibsen-­en-­Espana.pdf. 55. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 321. 56. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 57. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 788, 791, 787. 58. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 790. 59. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 791. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Luis Pegenaute, “El teatro español de fin de siglo,” 218. 64. Preface to Three Plays by Brieux (London: A. C. Fifield, 1911), x. Available at https://archive.org/stream/threeplays00brieiala#page/n15/ mode/2up.

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65. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 319. 66. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 320. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 321. 70. The Drama Observed 1880–1895, 323. 71. We should not forget, as I noted earlier, that Echegaray became a very successful author worldwide after being awarded the Nobel Prize. It would also be a mistake to consider that Shaw’s criticism of Echegaray was guided by his “impressionist prejudice” (West’s words, and I concur): “Admitting his personal bias, I deny in Bernard Shaw impressionist prejudice, quoting him in his own defense: ‘You cannot have qualifications without experience; and you cannot have experience without personal interest and bias. That may not be an ideal arrangement; but it is the way the world is built; and we must make the best of it.’ I submit that he did pretty well with it.” West, “The Critic as Analyst,” 205. 72. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 788. 73. Ibid. 74. For an overview of Shaw’s influence on later Spanish playwrights, especially Benavente, see Jiménez Torres in this volume. 75. The Drama Observed 1897–1911, 792.

ReFerences Crawford, Fred. 2000. Shaw in Translation. In SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, vol. 20. University Park: Penn State University Press. Dukore, Bernard F., ed. 1993a. The Drama Observed 1880–1895. University Park: Penn State University Press. ———., ed. 1993b. The Drama Observed 1895–1897. University Park: Penn State University Press. ———., ed. 1993c. The Drama Observed 1897–1911. University Park: Penn State University Press. ———., ed. 1993d. The Drama Observed 1911–1950. University Park: Penn State University Press. Echegaray, José. 1895. The Son of Don Juan. Translated by James Graham. London: Fisher Unwin. Fernández Muñiz, Iris. 2016. La España Moderna y la recepción temprana de Ibsen en España: en busca de la identidad del desconocido primer traductor español. In Cartas Hispánicas, vol. 6. Madrid: Fundación Lázaro Galdiano. Gates, Joanne E. 1994. The Theatrical Politics of Elizabeth Robins and Bernard Shaw. In SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, vol. 14. University Park: Penn State University Press.

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Kennedy, Ruth Lee. 1926. The Indebtedness of Echegaray to Ibsen. The Sewanee Review 34 (4): 402–415. Laurence, Dan H., ed. 1965a. Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1874–1897. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company. ———., ed. 1965b. Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1926–1950. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company. ———., ed. 1981. Shaw’s Music, 1893–1950. London: The Bodley Head. Pegenaute, Luis. 2001. El teatro español de fin de siglo: su recepción en los EEUU hasta 1936. In La traducción en la Edad de Plata. Barcelona: PPU. Peters, Margot. 1979. As Lonely as God. In The Genius of Shaw: A Symposium, ed. Michael Holroyd. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Pharand, Michel W., ed. 2009. Bernard Shaw and his Publishers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sánchez Ron, José Manuel. 2004. José Echegaray: entre la ciencia, el teatro y la política. Arbor 179: 707–708. Shaw, Bernard. 1911. Preface. In Three Plays by Brieux. London: A. C. Fifield. Weintraub, Stanley, ed. 1982. The Playwright and the Pirate: Bernard Shaw and Frank Harris, A Correspondence. University Park: Penn State University Press. West, E.J. 1952. The Critic as Analyst: Bernard Shaw as Example. Educational Theatre Journal 4 (3): 200–205.

CHAPTER 6

Shaw and Spanish Music Criticism Aileen R. Ruane

There are people who will read about music and nothing else. They are presumably the only people who will dream of reading these three volumes. —Bernard Shaw (CMC I: Inscription)

In writing about Bernard Shaw’s involvement with and knowledge of music, Brigitte Bogar reveals that “Shaw played the piano, cornet, hunting horn, guitar, and flute, and he also sang and composed.”1 Additionally, Fintan O’Toole writes that it was, in fact, Shaw’s music criticism that “first established his reputation as a writer.”2 It should come as no surprise that Bernard Shaw, for whom there exists an ever-expanding checklist of Shaviana, should have focused his attention on musicians and composers from Spain.3 Indeed, Shaw’s interest in music was no mere dabbling, and it should also not surprise anyone that this extended to music and musicians in the Hispanophone world, Spain in particular, thus developing into a global familiarity with Spanish musicians, singers, and even dancers.

A. R. Ruane (*) Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_6

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Many of these artists were well on their way to becoming some of the most popular musicians in the London music scene, as well as internationally, which makes Shaw’s interest in their performances logical and pertinent.4 Moreover, Stanley Weintraub observes the following, affording an apt point of departure for queries into the extent of Shaw’s awareness of Spanish composers and musicians: In the field of music, Shaw’s criticism—by far the most prolific area among his critical endeavors—covered the work of many Spaniards like Isaac Albéniz (as a pianist and composer), tenors Fernando Valero and Pedro Guetary, violinist Pablo de Sarasate, dancer Carolina Otero—even amateur singer León de Silka, of whose career there are practically no other extant records but Shaw’s criticism.5

Likewise, Shaw’s knowledge extends far beyond the mechanics of instrumental and vocal expression to embrace a sense of the more profound impacts of musical performance. An emphasis on that which is visual problematizes and even obscures (slightly) Shaw’s knowledge of the theoretical and practical components of music composition and performance. Yet despite Shaw’s experience and interest in this area of musical criticism, and his polyvalent approach to analyzing and delivering criticism, his impact in these areas remains under-studied. Instead, there is a focus on Spanish cultural and literary influences in Shaw’s oeuvre rather than on Shaw’s ability to finesse the technical, practical aspects of music criticism. Furthermore, while this ability has served to foster some scholarship, a focus on Shaw’s knowledge of Spanish music and musicians in particular has been marginal at best. Indeed, the fact that Shaw was able to assess even the style of singing instruction utilized by certain performers indicates that his knowledge of Spanish music runs much deeper than previously thought, subtly encompassing history, culture, and technical prowess. According to Weintraub, Shaw claimed that music criticism was an exercise in lunacy, akin to having been assigned a padded cell in a mental asylum.6 Like other equally provocative statements, Shaw’s commentary here belies what reveals itself to be an engaged interest in the art of music criticism, from opera to symphony to even the burlesque. With this interest came an even greater attentiveness to the inner workings of this industry, including the technical abilities to achieve the highest levels in these disciplines. Certainly, such an exercise proved to be essential in focusing

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the attention of an erstwhile “sane” public on what matters the most in terms of the overall performance. Shaw’s approach to music criticism was to make it “readable even by the deaf,” having been instructed by T.  P. O’Connor, then editor of the Star, to avoid jargon.7 This modus operandi would prove to be critical to Shaw’s ability not only to grasp the technical aspects of instruments as diverse as the violin or the harpsichord, but also to master an even finer understanding of music’s performative aspects, even from conductors. Under the pseudonym “Corno di Bassetto,” Shaw produced an astounding number of often acerbic, sometimes glowing, but always insightful, commentaries on all aspects of music performance. In order to lay the groundwork for further study in this area, one must take a closer look at exactly how Shaw evaluates Spanish music and the artists who performed it in London. Because “the bulk of the reviews focused on London and elsewhere in England,” Shaw’s knowledge of Spanish musicians requires more in the way of context, including a retrospective look at his days as Corno di Bassetto.8 As Fintan O’Toole observes, “one of his [Shaw’s] pet hates was singers hiding their nationality by adopting foreign names and singing in assumed European accents.”9 A global perspective on Shaw’s main objectives in evaluating Spanish music and musicians can be obtained by asking a few questions: What are his primary concerns? How does he frame his critiques for his London-based readership? What technical and performative aspects does he deride or praise? Bogar significantly argues that “Shaw had very specific musical ideals, especially when it came to opera and vocal music in general, and in many instances his musical reviews also revealed his political views.”10 The politics underlying Shaw’s preferences in music as key to his criticism in turn reflects the tension in London “over capitalism and socialism and between those who wished to preserve an English way of life against foreign influences and those who took a more cosmopolitan stance.”11 As such, it is important to account for the fact that Shaw’s critique of Spanish music and musicians occurs within the context of London’s environs, thus suggesting that his engagement with Spanish music is enhanced by an atmosphere of cosmopolitanism. “Cosmopolitanism,” Rebecca L. Walkowitz writes, “has always involved a negotiation between distance and proximity” and thus broadly speaks to the relationship played by the experience of the global, the international, in Shaw’s work.12 As Corno di Bassetto, Shaw adds Spain and Spanishness early to his repertoire of critiques, demonstrating an awareness of geography (“Iberian,” “Andalusian”)

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as it relates to performance and technique.13 Examining these areas reveals that Shaw’s penchant for incisive critique and unyieldingly high standards reached far beyond dramatic theater and politics and indeed beyond margins and national boundaries. Shaw’s knowledge of non-Anglophone composers and musicians, and of the ethnic and national backgrounds of the compositions in question, evinces his keen awareness of the role played by the international in the performance milieu of his day. This chapter will thus serve as the entry point for a neglected research area of Shavian studies, arguing that Shaw was in fact quite knowledgeable about Spanish music to the extent that his criticism encompassed both technical music theory and Spanish culture. Moreover, “Shaw seems to have inculcated in himself a radical honesty of opinion, an inability to hold his tongue and say nice things he did not believe.”14 Thus Shaw’s views of Spanish music and musicians never cross the line into fulsome adulation, but rather demonstrate a critical appreciation stemming from a vast cultural and musical knowledge.

Spanish Musicians and Composers in London In 1893, Shaw makes an interesting comparison about a performance during Haydn’s string quartet in G minor by Slovenian violinist Gabriela Wietrowetz. He comes to her defense by arguing that her critics, who “declare that she plays out of tune,” cannot tell the difference between “German intonation and Spanish.” In this regard, she is for Shaw “a worthy successor of [Guillermina María Francisca] Neruda” (CMC III: 79). During this time, London was host to many Spanish musicians, and Shaw took an interest in them, not simply from one performance to another, but often over many years. Attention to detail is a hallmark of Shaw’s criticism, and his dogged focus on the evolution of Spanish musicians signals a knowledge and a familiarity with this musical tradition that evidently stems from continuous study. Shaw mainly concentrates his remarks on pianists and violinists, who frequently took part in chamber music concerts and larger orchestral performances in such venues as the Royal Albert Hall. These Spanish musicians in particular occupy a prominent place in Shaw’s critiques, regularly appearing over the course of multiple, substantial reviews, which attests to his familiarity with Spanish musical culture. The contexts in which Shaw reviews these performers comprise a kind of model for the critiques that follow, one that variously identifies certain qualities proper to musical technique, then speaks to an overall

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performance, and finally follows the progression of those qualities as they serve to build or establish a career in London. One example of a career that Shaw follows, demonstrating such an evolution, is that of pianist and composer Leon de Silka (1857–1920). Shaw presents de Silka first as merely an amateur pianist, introducing him as having “invited the Spanish ambassador and some other people to hear him play” (CMC I: 34). Shaw situates de Silka in terms of his talent and position among a cohort of capable musicians in London at this time. However, Shaw’s repeated use of the word “amateur” is significant because, as a musician who would not otherwise have received critical attention (according to Weintraub’s statement above), de Silka clearly possesses qualities that would potentially elevate his status. Despite his reputation for frank commentary—Shaw goes on to note that another young musician, Mr. Leonard Borwick, “could play his [de Silka’s] head off” (CMC I: 34)—Shaw nevertheless leaves room in his criticism to account for improvements on the part of these artists. This critical space and pedagogical forbearance speaks to the importance Shaw ascribed to music as an art form and part of the fabric of London life, as well as his familiarity with Spanish music in its national context. For example, he comments on de Silka’s amateur status and his untapped potential pending more study, practice, and lessons. Indeed, Shaw comments a year later that the pianist has much improved in terms of technique but still risks remaining merely a “brilliant drawing room player” (CMC I: 209). This comment appears paradoxical, as it both praises de Silka yet relegates him to a particular sphere. Hence, Shaw situates de Silka’s abilities as well as the milieu in which his music is received, thus creating a hierarchy that gestures toward the end product. A final comment about de Silka made by Shaw in his first volume of criticism provides further insight into the presence of Spanish musicians in London and their impact on Shaw’s critiques. Shaw notes that while de Silka plays in a nimble fashion, he lacks in technique and makes significant mistakes, which results in “a tendency to repress himself in the manner of a gentleman rather than to realize his conception in the manner of an artist” (CMC I: 34). These comments point to Shaw’s larger concern for something beyond technical prowess: a capacity to engage with an audience on a deeper level, as he distinguishes firmly between style (“the manner of a gentleman”) and status (“the manner of an artist”). Another Spanish musician that Shaw frequently mentions over the course of his collected reviews is Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909). Albéniz was

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a multifaceted virtuoso—pianist, composer, and conductor—who took up residence in London during the period in which Shaw began writing his music reviews for The World. Shaw concentrates his critiques on Albéniz the composer. His review of 19 April 1893 singles out an opera, The Magic Opal or The Magic Ring, for which Albéniz wrote a revised score.15 Shaw does not place the burden of the opera’s failure entirely on Albéniz’s shoulders, but instead cites his score as “sinking under the weight of its libretto” even as he praises it as charming and vivacious (CMC II: 288–289). Furthermore, Shaw goes on to praise Albéniz’s skill and effort in crafting a score to fit the libretto, but remarks that it was not sufficiently in tandem with the production’s other failings, such as the ill-cast music parts. In fact, Shaw’s critique is directed toward the faulty production as a whole, and because of unfit singers and poor direction, Albéniz’s score and conducting suffer. Nevertheless, Shaw assures his readers that Albéniz’s score will continue to grow in popularity, thanks to its noted charm and vivacity (CMC II: 289). Shaw often introduces Spanish musicians in the context of their compatriots, allowing for the creation of a musical network of sorts that provides continuity during the four years over which Shaw’s reviews were written. It was through Albéniz that violinist Enrique Fernández Arbós (1863–1939) came to Shaw’s notice. His first critique of Arbós is lukewarm and pinpoints the violinist’s attitude rather than his musical technique (CMC I: 131). Indeed, while praising his “general intelligence,” Shaw chastises Arbós for his coldness toward the public and conductors, who are used to artists who risk their image for the sake of pleasing their audience while performing at the highest standard. Still in the context of his appearances with Albéniz (who played pianoforte accompaniment), Arbós fails to impress Shaw a second time: “Once it is understood he is not a first-rate player … he will disappoint no reasonable person” (CMC I: 139). Shaw is therefore not only aware of the performer’s technical aspects but also of the overall effect of the performance on the audience. However, in 1892 Shaw does congratulate Arbós on his playing as first violinist in the adagio from Beethoven’s quartet in E flat.16 Thus in first introducing and following Arbós as part of his reviews of Albéniz, Shaw further develops the kind of cosmopolitanism that emphasizes connections that had thus far been at most serendipitous and begins to reshape them and broaden their scope. The Spanish musician and composer who is most regularly the focus of Shaw’s critiques is Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908), a virtuoso violinist of

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the highest degree17 and a musician to whom Shaw does not always explicitly attribute Spanishness. Shaw reviews Sarasate more than any other Spanish musical artist and considers him and the Belgian Eugène-­Auguste Isaÿe to be the world’s greatest violinists and the most technically adept (CMC III: 50). Shaw notes that Sarasate is a “fully matured artist” who is technically proficient but without unnecessary embellishments (CMC I: 181), although he also notes that his exquisite technical flourishes are no less than “miraculous” (CMC I: 207). Shaw spent so long following Sarasate’s career that he could state that Sarasate was “never as good in the summer as after the autumn, when he has just had a rest” (CMC I: 206). Moreover, according to Stanley Weintraub, “the technical prowess of Sarasate was the yardstick by which other performers were measured.”18 This seems to suggest that, for Shaw, devotion to the craft contributes directly to the ability to consistently deliver skillful performances. Despite his obvious appreciation of technical skill, Shaw focuses on the artist as a whole. For example, referring to a review of French violinist Émile Sauret that was being circulated on the occasion of his concert in May 1892, Shaw observes that the author of the review contrasts “individuality” with “specialty.” In Shaw’s estimation, Sarasate is one with his art, whereas Sauret has more “individuality,” writes the reviewer, because he has not conflated his identity with his craft; he thus falls short of Sarasate’s “artistic perfection” (CMC II: 98). “Specialty” is thus akin to virtuosity and comprises a profound command of all aspects of violin playing, whereas “individuality” is likened to style over substance, able to impress through difference but in the final analysis lacking a firm grounding in technique that only comes from years of studious devotion. In fact, Shaw uses Sarasate to compare, contrast, and contextualize other musicians, from Sauret to Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi. Moreover, Shaw’s tracking Sarasate’s London career over the course of the four years during which his reviews were written serves as a point of reference for all professional musicians in the city, and Shaw even challenges them to push the boundaries of Sarasate’s painstakingly acquired artistic perfection (CMC III: 130). In his 18 February 1891 review, Shaw invokes Sarasate as the standard with which to compare Hungarian violinists Joseph Joachim and Mihàli Reményi: “It is useless to compare Reményi with Joachim: they are both fiddlers, it is true […]. If there is to be a comparison at all, Sarasate must be the other term of it” (CMC I: 132). In addition, while maintaining that Sarasate is the more highly trained player, Shaw eventually acknowledges that “Reményi often makes Sarasate appear

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a mere musician by contrast.” Nonetheless, such critiques also reinforce what Shaw has already established and will continue to observe in his reviews of Sarasate: that his skill lies in his work ethic and subsequent mastery of technical playing (CMC I: 132). To rival or surpass him is thus a feat, as shown by Shaw’s eventual comments on Isaÿe, who had previously come close to equaling Sarasate, in Shaw’s opinion, but fell short of the Spaniard’s artistic perfection.19 Despite Shaw’s praise of Sarasate as artist and musician, he is not beyond criticism, Shaw noting in a review of 18 June 1890 that Sarasate was “less high-spirited than he was” upon his initial arrival in London, whereby he was one of the most exceptional talents to be seen (CMC I: 19–20). Shaw observes that the violinist’s technique is not without the occasional fault: for instance, the quickness and rhythm of Sarasate’s playing often affect the quality of his adagios (CMC I: 132). While Sarasate occasionally falters, his blunders do not occur in isolation from the performance event. In keeping with Shaw’s holistic assessment, conductors and ensemble members are also factors to consider, as Shaw notes in a 10 June 1891 review of a concert primarily featuring Sarasate conducted by Sir William George Cusins, whom Shaw calls “an extraordinarily bad conductor,” which in turn negatively affected Sarasate, despite his being “an extraordinarily good violinist” (CMC I: 209, 264–265).20 But it is Shaw’s question—“are they quite the men for one another in this relationship?”—that attests to his keen sense of how culture interacts with technical prowess. Indeed, to praise Sarasate while noting his technical weaknesses over time implies that Shaw knows full well which performance elements counteract those weaknesses. Unfortunately, Cusins failed to control the performance and thus exacerbated rather than concealed Sarasate’s flaws. In Shaw’s own words (CMC I: 207): “The result is that Mr Cusins spoils Sarasate’s concerto-­ playing, and Sarasate exposes Mr Cusins to public execration.”

Spanish Singers Brigitte Bogar states that “[o]pera and vocal performances total well over half of all of Shaw’s musical writings,” so it is only natural that Shaw would devote considerable space in his reviews to both opera singers and their performances, whether in the context of solo performances or operas.21 Shaw’s reviews of Spanish singers occur in slightly different contexts than those in which he evaluates musicians and composers, which is significant in terms of his familiarity with Spanish music and culture. These reviews

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focus on the vocal technique of these singers, or lack thereof (as is sometimes the case according to Shaw), as well as on how that technique serves to bolster their theatricality or detract from it. One singer whose performance qualities seem to overcome, according to Shaw, a deficit in skill or technique is Fernando Valero, a Spanish tenor from Madrid who frequently toured internationally, which eventually brought him to Shaw’s attention in London. Of course, Shaw’s perception of Valero concentrates on how his vocal technique is augmented by his theatricality. At first, Shaw admits that Valero is “a man who makes me laugh by a legitimate stroke of art [and] charms all the criticism out of me” (CMC I: 3–4). Nevertheless, given Valero’s style of singing (“nothing but bleating invested with artistic merit”), Shaw was initially skeptical of the tenor in spite of his artistry; however, as can be seen in Shaw’s previous comments on this “legitimate stroke of art,” Valero’s talent for theatricality eventually wins him over. The paradoxical nature of Shaw’s critique— “artistic merit” despite the “bleating”—substantiates the complex relationship resulting from Shaw’s familiarity with these singers and his own penetrating, seasoned knowledge of the theater. Perhaps the answer can be found in another critique, where Shaw labels Valero’s stage presence as being full of “spirit and humour,” particularly in work by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (CMC I: 29). These qualities evoke a different kind of relationship with performance, one that goes beyond the skills acquired during singing instruction at any level. Shaw’s appreciation for singers and dancers is thus rooted in his knowledge of the theater. Indeed, as can be seen by these reviews, the performative aspects of an opera singer’s presence frequently win Shaw over, as long as the technique is adequate. A balance must be struck, as is evident in Shaw’s reviews of Valero. Shaw’s implied use of the theatrical metaphor in Valero’s case foregrounds the realities of performance, arguing for a “dramatic intelligence” that would render operatic singing more than an advanced form of vocal technique (CMC I: 2). Guillaume Lubert (1859–1919) is another Spanish tenor—he is identified as “the latest Spanish tenor”—who Shaw reviews multiple times between 1890 and 1894 and who also demonstrates an evolution linked to his performance abilities. The truth is that Lubert was in fact French, but his performing alongside Valero and the roles he played (in operas of Spanish theme, whether in London or abroad, like Carmen, La Favorita, or Don Juan), apparently led Shaw to confusion. It is under these circumstances that he has been included in this chapter. Startlingly,

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Shaw initially refers to him as essentially mediocre, save for the fact that he is “careful and intelligent about his stage business, rising even to energy as a melodramatic actor” (CMC I: 170). Nevertheless, in focusing on his “stage business,” which is to say, his acting and his energy, Shaw emphasizes his preoccupation with performance and theatricality as a whole, not simply those aspects marked by a particular training method. It is this notion of holistic performance that contributes to Shaw’s ability to perceive points of comparison between Lubert and other singers. For example, Shaw compares Lubert with Valero22 in the context of Carmen, as the character Don José, and with the rest of the cast in Mireille, as Vincent. In the case of Carmen, Shaw cites Lubert’s physicality and vocal strength first, noting that he did not elicit the same physical appeal as Valero (Shaw describes his Don José as appearing too weak to kill Carmen) and yet sang better than Suane, despite demonstrating a “rather commoner quality” in terms of vocal ability (CMC I: 170–171). Shaw’s view of the tenor improves and he commends his “unaffected and earnest” portrayal of Vincent in Mireille (CMC I: 212). With regard to this performance, Shaw’s opinion of Lubert relates to the whole; thus while the Spanish tenor is praised, it is only to the extent that he can help the duets in which he took part achieve “the least whiff of the characteristic atmosphere of the piece […] across the footlights” (CMC I: 212). Lubert’s “careful intelligence” in the business of performance finally translates into a theatricality that ensures an effective performance event. This further manifests itself in a subsequent mention of Lubert, where Shaw refers to him and Valero by way of introducing the Italian tenor Fernando de Lucia (CMC II: 104). In the constant tension between mastered vocal technique and intense theatricality, Shaw’s critiques accept nothing less than the balanced embodiment of both. Nevertheless, and in spite of certain improvements, Lubert retains certain weaknesses; Shaw’s comments about de Lucia reveal as much: like Lubert and Valero, de Lucia is similarly “artificial” (CMC II: 104).

Spanish Singing Methods and Instruction Due mainly to his mother’s status as a professional singer and her (amorous) relationship with her vocal coach, Vandeleur Lee, Shaw is exceptionally conscious of the importance of vocal training so as to perfect intonation, projection, and pitch. This explains much of his overall knowledge of vocal techniques and methodology. According to Brigitte Bogar,

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“His mother was an opera singer and composer of romantic songs. […] It was Vandeleur Lee who encouraged Shaw to become a music critic when Shaw joined his mother and sisters in London in 1876. Lee himself was a vocal coach and opera conductor, and it therefore followed naturally for Shaw to write on opera, vocal music, and vocal technique.”23 Technique thus forms the basis for Shaw’s critiques but is also mitigated by the more ephemeral qualities of performance. While Shaw encourages vocal training as an integral part of the quest to become a professional artist, he is also wary of efforts that purport to isolate certain elements out of the whole in order to achieve an essence that is unattainable straightaway. The artificial qualities for which Shaw criticized de Lucia, Lubert, and Valero originate in vocal instruction, specifically that proposed by Julián Gayarre (1844–1890). The mention of this particular methodology, alongside others, further underscores Shaw’s relationship with Spanish music performance in London. Accordingly, Shaw’s knowledge of Spanish singing methods and instruction is closely connected with his critiques of singers from Spain and other nationalities. The overall importance of this knowledge is twofold: first, it speaks to his authority in critiquing musical performance, and second, it testifies to his familiarity with Spanish musical culture beyond that which is exported and reterritorialized in London. One of the most significant points to consider in Shaw’s knowledge of Spanish composers and musicians as they “translate” to London is that of the different methodologies pertaining to vocal technique. Shaw’s critiques in this area evoke the gap between technical skill and performance. Singing, especially for opera, is a skill requiring hours of practice and physical strength; this was readily apparent to Shaw through his knowledge of operatic singing methods via his mother, his sister Lucy, and Vandeleur Lee. Nevertheless, the ephemeral qualities of performance nuance Shaw’s harsher critiques by gesturing toward operatic singing as part of an artistic whole rather than simply as a technical skill that is forcibly mastered. While Shaw mentions the Gayarre method in passing in each of his three volumes—as “goat-bleating”—the García method of singing, developed and promoted by vocal pedagogue Manuel García (1805–1906), receives much more attention and explicit criticism throughout the volumes (CMC II: 212). Such was Shaw’s overall opinion of the school’s methodology that he wryly remarked, “I must honestly add that the one lesson I ever had from a pupil of the Garcia school was prodigiously instructive, especially as to whether or not it was advisable to take another” (CMC II: 226). Shaw’s first-hand experience of this methodology in

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practice lends further support for his overall familiarity with singing methodologies generally, including those originating in Spain. Shaw uses his review of a concert at the Royal College of Music on 14 December 1892 as an opportunity to critique the García method. The focal point of his critique of the method’s faults lies in the performance by Maggie Purvis, the singer playing Euridice in Christoph Gluck’s Orfeo. Shaw adamantly insists that “no method that is merely negative is of any use to a dramatic singer, or indeed to any artist whatever” (CMC II: 213). In this instance, Shaw notes how the García method has been employed in London vocal academies as a means of compelling students to produce the ideal sound and tone without any awareness of theatricality. He goes on to claim that obsessive focus on tone will eventually result in a failure to transcend the technical elements, as well as injury. Discussing his suspicion of the García method, Shaw argues that the goal of any singing method should be “to manage her [the singer’s] breathing and so forth … and keeping her at that until she has learnt the physical act of singing, and is in possession of a fully developed voice well under her control, which she can use as vigorously as she wants to without any damage. Then, and not until then, is the time to waken her artistic conscience” (CMC II: 212). The crux of Shaw’s skepticism toward this method is that it attempts to produce the finished tone and sounds before a singer has been properly instructed. The emphasis on the García method and how it affects the desired end result, that of artistic perfection, is an opportunity for Shaw to chastise a singing culture that is divorced from theatricality. The popularity of the García method for opera singers was something of a worldwide phenomenon and was supported by treatises and manuals delineating the methodology.24 Even still, the overly mechanical nature of this method runs afoul of Shaw’s need for a “whole performance.” Shaw’s feelings about this method, along with his knowledge of it, are apparent when he laments, “I have heard a good many pupils of the Garcias in my time … and I must frankly say that though I do not doubt that all the great Garcias were masterful people and powerful actors, I am a confirmed sceptic as to the practical value of their system of vocal instruction” (CMC II: 212). Furthermore, the García methodology ignores, in Shaw’s estimation, the emotional theatricality necessary for connecting technically mastered vocal technique with a character. The high level of artistry in the performances exhibited by many of the Spanish musicians Shaw lauds in London is something that he also recognizes as being teachable. In critiquing the

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García method for its focus on tone to the detriment of both the foundational physical aspects of singing as well as its performative elements, Shaw suggests that there is an expectation for every singer to be able to achieve perfection straightaway without adequate preparation. Shaw’s familiarity with this particular methodology can also be demonstrated through his knowledge of its technical minutiae. For example, Shaw also criticizes García’s methodology for its insistence on the employment of an overemphasized technique to produce explosive sound, the glottal attack.25 This is in keeping with Shaw’s skepticism with the method’s emphasis on an abrupt, disconnected means of shaping its students as vocalists. Indeed, Shaw observes that, with regard to another singer whose career he followed, the English baritone Charles Santley, his rendition of the “Ave Maria” was “without the very least coup de glotte,” much to the chagrin of “Mr Lunn and Signor Garcia” (CMC II: 259). By citing examples of this technique in practice, or the avoidance thereof, Shaw combines his own lengthy study of vocal techniques and methodologies with his knowledge of Spanish singing culture.

Operas Featuring Spanish Culture and Themes Closely related to Shaw’s insightful knowledge of Spanish singers and vocal methodologies is his interest in how Spanish literary culture marks musical performance. One such work is Ruy Blas, a story with roots in seventeenth-century Spain but that has since inscribed itself in European culture through various works, such as Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas (1838). The Ruy Blas reviewed by Shaw was in fact an overture written by Felix Mendelssohn, which Shaw mentions as part of a critique of conductor Hans Richter on 25 June 1890. Rather than focusing on the cultural origins of the overture, Shaw takes this moment as an opportunity to contrast Richter’s handling of this overture versus that of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll (CMC I: 24). While the commentary on Richter is interesting in its own right, it is Shaw’s secondary comment on the nature of the Ruy Blas overture that is significant in terms of Shaw’s relationship with Spanish musical culture and performance. Shaw notes that, as opposed to Wagner’s overture, which is “music and nothing else,” Mendelssohn’s Ruy Blas is “music and dramatic poetry” (CMC I: 24). These comments evoke performance, similar to what Shaw desires and expects from the truly adept singers and musicians that he critiques over the course of these volumes.

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Shaw makes another notable reference to Ruy Blas in the form of Filippo Marchetti’s opera Ruy Blas, which is also based on Hugo’s play. Shaw uses Marchetti’s opera to critique Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda as an inferior operatic version of another play by Hugo, Angelo the Tyrant of Padua (1835). While it is clear from the comparison that Shaw’s intention is not to critique Marchetti’s Ruy Blas—Shaw uses the latter, in fact, in a hyperbolic fashion to denigrate La Gioconda—it is also apparent that Shaw finds the Marchetti opera to be unworthy of the historical subject matter made classic in dramatic fashion by Hugo. So while Shaw’s remark regarding Ponchielli’s abilities has less to do with Ruy Blas itself and more to do with the nascent trend Shaw detests of lesser-skilled composers and playwrights imitating “great men,” it testifies nonetheless to some of the subtler ways in which Spanish themes and culture function within Shaw’s criticism.

Spanish Dancers The tension between comprehensive, in-depth training and performativity is most apparent in Shaw’s dance-related critiques, which, while noticeably in the minority, still have an impact on his familiarity with Spanish musical culture. Shaw’s lack of formal training in dance—as opposed to his musical training—limits his “vocabulary” and could potentially impact his ability to respond to these types of performances with adequate authority. However, given Shaw’s familiarity with the culture surrounding dance as it exists in the contexts of opera and music concerts, his critiques instead resonate when they recognize the symbiotic relationship between music composition and different types of dance.26 The technical abilities of musicians and singers remain important for Shaw, but the explicitly performative manner in which a dancer inhabits the stage means that effective criticism must carefully balance many different aspects of the performance as a whole. For these reasons in particular, the attention to the role played by Spanish dancers in operas and burlesques forms the most concrete aspects of Shaw’s dance-related criticism. Indeed, Shaw’s criticism here favors dance as it embodies and expresses musical composition rather than the ability of the individual dancers to master the technical aspects of their craft. In focusing on performance over technical mastery, Shaw’s dance-­ related criticism is in line with the rest of his music criticism, but also differs to the extent that where technical mastery and training were

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foundational for performance, now performance supersedes all else.27 While Shaw’s expertise in the more technical aspects of music performance is clearly on display in his criticism of composers and musicians, when it comes to reviews of musical events that include dance, his theatrical experience foregrounds artistry, emotion, and performance as a whole. A dancer for whom this performance and Spanishness are conflated is the celebrated burlesque performer Carolina de Otero (1868–1965). In a review of a 19 October 1892 performance at the Empire, Shaw contrasts the “intense feeling” of Otero’s dance with the more “mechanical” abilities of another famous dancer, Lottie Collins (1865–1910).28 After having previously described the athletic abilities and “exhaustively studied” movements of Collins, Shaw now contrasts them with Otero, whom he qualifies as an “immeasurabl[y] greater artist” (CMC II: 169). Shaw specifically introduces her with the salutation “Señorita” and twice in the same review describes her as “a Spanish dancer and singer” (CMC II: 169). The distinctions that Shaw makes between Collins and Otero give the reader clues as to the importance of the latter’s ethnicity for performance: Shaw’s comments about classical ballet and operatic dance often point out their technical virtuosity at the expense of any theatrical value. However, Shaw labels Otero’s performance in this particular instance as being indicative of a great artist while simultaneously highlighting her exoticized Spanishness. Unlike the other musicians, composers, and singers he reviewed, Shaw’s attention to Otero’s ethnic background is couched as second-hand information—“described as a Spanish dancer”—indicating that her perceived status as “other” is conflated with her art form or that her style of burlesque dance evokes her Spanish origins. Shaw’s awareness of this results in his praise of the effectiveness of her performance, a “perfect success,” something about which he finally contrasts England’s lack of acknowledgment as a “national crime” (CMC II: 169). The distinctions made by Shaw in this review and especially in his direct address to Otero—where he once again salutes her as “Señorita”—point to cultural distinctiveness and difference: London’s theater-going public is unable to recognize Otero’s artistic value because they privilege Collins’s “cleverly mechanical” abilities, whereas Otero literally embodies performance (CMC II: 169).

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Conclusion In the end, although Shaw does not go into greater detail regarding Spanish history and culture in the context of these music reviews, his ability to authenticate Spanish culture and themes identifies the culture of these performers as knowable and quantifiable. This extends to what is, for Shaw, merely imitation. For example, after having attested to the relative strengths and weakness of several female singers in the context of a small concert, Shaw writes that Mr. William Wallace composed a set of five “Spanish” songs for four voice parts; the punctuation, double quotation marks, indicates Shaw’s attitude toward the authenticity of these “Spanish” songs (CMC II: 314). While Shaw in this particular review does not further clarify what he implied by “Spanish,” taken in the fullness of his other critiques, we can infer that this quality consists of movement, energy, and theatricality. By using “Spanish” as a descriptive category for this musical composition, while also making it clear that it was created by a Scottish composer,29 Shaw hints that there is a certain distance from authentic Spanishness. Indeed, Shaw observes that the songs were “very pretty and fluent,” but that they were also familiar, which suggests that they lacked an alterity that would otherwise render them authentically Spanish, without the use of punctuation (CMC II: 314). Moreover, this attention to Spanishness means that there is space to consider how national identities manifest globally through Shaw’s music criticism. Significantly, the only national identities that Shaw explicitly mentions more than “Spanish” are “English” and “Italian,” which underscores the role played by identity in Shaw’s reviews of these performances, even beyond his factual knowledge. For example, as Fintan O’Toole has revealed, Shaw particularly loathed it when singers chose to conceal their ethnic origins; despite his positive engagement with the notion of performance, Shaw seems to insist nonetheless on faithfulness to characteristics associated with the performer’s national origin. However, Shaw attributes aspects of identities that do not essentialize these musicians, singers, dancers, and composers, but rather serve to discern the ways in which those identities contribute to or detract from performance. As can be seen in the Wallace review discussed above, the fact that Shaw distinguishes the songs as “Spanish” neither indicates stereotyping on the part of the composer nor necessarily speaks to preconceived notions on Shaw’s part. Attention paid by Shaw toward the Spanish singers, dancers, composers, and musicians that he encountered over the course of these reviews posits national

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identity as almost accessory to the point he is trying to make regarding the intersection of foundational training and theatricality. Nevertheless, the fact that Shaw mentions national identity at all provides some basis for the argument that he possesses a degree of knowledge in this area. Without needing to provide excessive background information or to lecture on matters relating to Spain, its literary history and culture, Shaw demonstrates his close familiarity with Spanish musicians and their international milieu, mainly through the nature of his comments and his prolonged following of their careers. While there is little doubt about the wide-ranging scope of Shaw’s interests, the fact that this familiarity is so prolonged and ties so heavily into notions of theatricality requires a re-­ assessment of Shaw’s uncompromising attitude toward the performing arts. So while Brigitte Bogar argues thoroughly that the importance of music and musicality in Shaw’s plays has been an oft-overlooked area, this applies equally to that of the role of theatricality and performativity in his music reviews.30 In singling out composers, musicians, dancers, singers, and Spanish themes in musical performances, Shaw reveals the varied nature of his own musical interests, especially where these relate to cultural exposure for London audiences and readers. More importantly, Shaw validates the international exposure of these artists from Spain by appealing to his own comprehensive knowledge of their milieu without resorting to stereotypes or other essentialized qualities in order to effectively impart his critiques.

Notes 1. Brigitte Bogar, “Introduction,” SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies 39.1 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 3. 2. Fintan O’Toole, Judging Shaw (Dublin: The Royal Irish Academy, 2017), 64. 3. Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, of the Universidad de Extremadura, publishes “A Continuing Checklist of Shaviana” annually in the SHAW Journal. 4. For example, musicians and composers like Pablo de Sarasate were already “famous throughout Europe and in North and South America” by 1859. Composers of international provenance were inspired by his talent to dedicate musical compositions to him as well. Likewise, Isaac Albéniz studied in Brussels with Franz Liszt and was already influencing salon piano music out of France prior to his appearances in London. See Jim Samson, ed., The

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Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 729. 5. Stanley, Weintraub, “Music and the Man: The Autobiography of Corno di Bassetto.” TLS (5 July 2013): 13–15. When Weintraub notes that “there are practically no other extant records” of de Silka’s career, he must be referring to the English-speaking world. De Silka had made a name for himself in Spain by the time Shaw first saw him perform, and there are numerous notes and brief critical pieces about him in the Spanish press at the time. See, for example, in the autumn of 1890 alone, “Crónicas de la Corte,” La Época (29 September 1890), 2; “Boletín del Día,” El Correo Militar (11 October 1890), 2; “Noticias de San Sebastián,” El Imparcial (21 October 1890), 2; and “Boletín Musical de la Quincena,” Ilustración Musical Hispanoamericana 68 (15 November 1890), 389. 6. Stanley Weintraub, “Music and the Man. The Autobiography of Corno di Bassetto,” 2013. 7. Bernard Shaw, London Music in 1888–1889 as Heard by Corno di Bassetto (Later Known as George Bernard Shaw) with Some Further Autobiographical Particulars (London: Constable and Company Limited, 1937), 6. 8. Bogar, “Introduction,” 3. 9. O’Toole, Judging Shaw, 69. 10. Bogar, “Introduction,” 3. 11. Ranald C.  Michie, Guilty Money: the City of London in Victorian and Edwardian Culture, 1815–1914 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009), 190. 12. Cosmopolitanism characterized much of Shaw’s work as well as London’s concert and performance milieu in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though ancillary to this chapter’s discussion of Shaw’s Spanish music criticism, an understanding of this concept aids in contextualizing the transnational elements of Shaw’s music criticism. Furthermore, it emphasizes the role played by London as a significant locus of culture. See, for example, Rebecca L.  Walkowitz’s introduction to her monograph Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (2006). Walkowitz situates critical cosmopolitanism in London as a space where local affiliations interact with and against international perspectives. The presence of such perspectives was linked to London as a global financial center in which cosmopolitanism meant that much of the cultural, financial, and political affairs were increasingly conducted by persons from outside of England. For more information on the economic and literary intersections here, see Ranald C.  Michie, Guilty Money: the City of London in Victorian and Edwardian Culture, 1815–1914 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009). 13. Bernard Shaw, London Music in 1888–1889, 120. 14. O’Toole, Judging Shaw, 91.

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15. The Magic Opal was revised by Albéniz and performed in London later that year as The Magic Ring. 16. Shaw situates this review as part of a “resumption” of this particular concert series, which he intended to chronicle (CMC II: 181). 17. Shaw notes that finding someone to rival his talent is “not reasonably possible” (CMC III: 28). 18. Shaw, Music in London, 1890–1894, vol. I, 80. 19. Shaw also discusses Sarasate in relation to his participation at music festivals, Norwich in particular; Shaw describes it as “splendid” and refers to Sarasate’s violin playing specifically (CMC III: 30). 20. Shaw submits critiques even for performances he does not attend (CMC I: 209, 264–265). 21. Bogar, “Introduction,” 4. 22. In his review, Shaw writes “Valera,” likely a typographical error, as there are no other mentions of “Valera” in the three volumes of music criticism, nor does the name appear in the index. 23. Bogar, “Introduction,” 3. 24. See Manuel Garcia, Garcia’s new treatise on the art of singing. A compendious method of instruction, with examples and exercises for the cultivation of the voice (New York: C.H. Ditson and Company, 1800). 25. Shaw’s disdain for this technique is readily apparent across his criticism. He informs the reader that in order to produce the same sound, “surprise a gentleman of full habit by a smart dig of your finger into his epigastrium at the moment when he has taken a full inspiration” (CMC II: 227). 26. Shaw mentions dance primarily in passing throughout the three volumes, but even these superficial remarks reveal a deep knowledge of dance culture(s). For instance, Shaw distinguishes between the “crudities” of country step dances and the “Ultra Academic” of classical ballet (CMC I: 45). 27. “Perhaps by the next time I visit a music-hall,” Shaw proclaimed, “the ballet will have found its Wagner, or at least its Meyerbeer. For I have had enough of mere ballet: what I want now is dance-drama” (CMC II: 66). 28. More reviews of Collins are found throughout Shaw’s volumes and he speaks highly of her “perfect self-possession” and “fine athletic training” (CMC II: 90). 29. In other reviews included in this volume, prior to this one from 17 May 1893, Shaw notes that Wallace is “a young Scotch composer” (CMC II: 203, 314). 30. Bogar, “Introduction,” 1–6.

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References Bogar, Brigitte. 2019. Introduction. SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 39 (1). Special Issue: Shaw and Music. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Garcia, Manuel. 1800. Garcia’s new treatise on the art of singing. A compendious method of instruction, with examples and exercises for the cultivation of the voice. New York: C.H. Ditson and Company. Michie, Ranald C. 2009. Guilty Money: the City of London in Victorian and Edwardian Culture, 1815–1914. London: Pickering and Chatto. O’Toole, Fintan. 2017. Judging Shaw. Dublin: The Royal Irish Academy. Samson, Jim, ed. 2001. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaw, Bernard. 1932a. Music in London, 1890–1894. Vol. I. London: Constable. ———. 1932b. Music in London, 1890–1894. Vol. II. London: Constable. ———. 1932c. Music in London, 1890–1894. Vol. III. London: Constable. ———. 1937. London Music in 1888–1889 As Heard by Corno di Bassetto (Later Known as George Bernard Shaw) with some Further Autobiographical Particulars. London: Constable. Walkowitz, Rebecca L. 2006. Cosmopolitan Style: Beyond the Nation. New York: Columbia University Press. Weintraub, Stanley. 2013. Music and the Man: The Autobiography of Corno di Bassetto. Times Literary Supplement 5753: 13–15.

PART II

Shaw’s Reception in the Spanish-­Speaking World

CHAPTER 7

The Reception of George Bernard Shaw’s Works and Ideas in Spain Guadalupe Nieto Caballero

Introduction The impact of Bernard Shaw on the Spanish cultural scene extends well beyond his works as a playwright, and yet the reception of his works and ideas has not been fully cataloged or documented in any depth. This chapter seeks to redress this lacuna by analyzing the Spanish reception of Shaw’s works and ideas through a selection of comments published in Spain during Shaw’s lifetime. As we shall see, the critical attention Shaw received in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century was relatively scarce, but was later to flourish—especially from the mid-1910s onward— when readers and the public discovered his plays. This analysis is divided into three sections and follows a linear, chronological order. First, I will cover the years leading up to the First World War, when Shaw became a well-known playwright and gained literary prestige. I will then analyze the reception of Shaw’s works until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in

G. Nieto Caballero (*) Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_7

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1936, examining both the publication and performances of his plays and Shaw’s intellectual impact after he was awarded the Nobel Prize.1 Lastly, I will discuss the reception of his works and ideas until the end of his life in 1950, focusing mostly on the criticism of his published plays and their performances. As will be seen, some of the most prestigious Spanish-­ speaking critics—including Ramiro de Maeztu, Luis Araquistáin, and Andrenio, among others—were not indifferent to Shaw, either as a playwright or as a public figure, but expressed deep admiration for the Irish playwright. My analysis concludes with a general discussion of the reception of Shaw’s works and his most influential ideas in Spain.2

Bernard Shaw in Spain Until 1918 In a clear reference to the mismatch between London and Berlin, on the one hand, and Paris, on the other hand, Ramiro de Maeztu3 argues that the real boundary between Spain and Europe is not in the Pyrénées, but in river Rhine and the English Channel. Maeztu discusses this intellectual gap between Spain and Europe in an article published in La Correspondencia de España, in May 1908, in which he analyzes the failure of Candida in Paris (a city traditionally disinclined to changes) and regrets that Spain is but a mere mirror of French trends. The Basque critic admired Shaw both “as playwright and socialist”4 and befriended him “in the 1907–1908 Savoy season, when Caesar and Cleopatra, You Never Can Tell and The Devil’s Disciple were released, becoming fascinated with Shaw’s treatment of characters.”5 As Maeztu’s review suggests, Bernard Shaw’s impact in Spain would be slow and progressive. Unlike in Britain, Germany, or America, at the beginning of the twentieth century Shaw was still far from being a household name in Spain. In order to better understand why, it is important to bear in mind that Spain, very much like Ireland, was immersed in a deep cultural renewal. This renewal resulted in the so-called Spanish Silver Age,6 a cultural movement born in an atmosphere of social and political upheavals following the loss of the colonies in 1898 and that would last until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. In addition to the impact of the First World War, Spain also endured social conflicts, coup d’états, revolutionary attempts, and a Civil War. The situation for the reception of Shaw’s works, therefore, was far from ideal. At the turn of century, Shaw was still referred to in Spain as an English— rather than Irish—playwright.7 His works were mainly known in publication rather than in performance.8 In fact, when one of Shaw’s plays was

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performed in Spain for the first time—Mrs Warren’s Profession, discussed below—José María Sembi referred to Shaw as “an unknown wise author.”9 This situation would soon begin to change, albeit slowly. It is true, however, that well-known Spanish men of letters acknowledged Shaw’s potential. For instance, in 1907 Ramiro de Maeztu asserted, “At present, Bernard Shaw can count on his audiences of believers who will follow him until the end. This happens to all men who have seriously fought for something. They find it hard to get followers, but when they do, they are his forever.”10 As will be seen, this statement will eventually apply to Spanish readers and to the general public. Another reason for the delayed reception of Shaw in Spain is the dramatic preferences of the Spanish public at the beginning of the twentieth century, which were very different from the innovative trends then emerging in Europe. The most renown Spanish playwrights, such as the Álvarez Quintero brothers, Carlos Arniches, Jacinto Benavente, and Pedro Muñoz Seca, were known for their conservative views, while the relatively few progressive playwrights such as Miguel de Unamuno, Azorín, and Valle-­ Inclán, or the proponents of avant-garde drama, sometimes did not even see their plays performed (one remarkable exception being Federico García Lorca in the 1920s and 1930s). For these shortcomings, José Escofet blames the indifference of the Spanish public and the kind of obsolete drama that still dominated the Spanish stage, one that was full of sentimentality, “with its sighs, whimpers, its rhymes, its subtleties, melancholy, faintings, and effeminate make-up.”11 All of this had a clearly negative impact on the reception of Shaw’s plays, which comprised situations and expressed controversial ideas that were clearly antithetical to the mind-set of the Spanish public. One must also take into account the average Spanish middle-class theatergoer of the time to understand the slow acceptance of Shaw’s works in Spanish society. Indeed, only those of a certain status could afford theater tickets. Moreover, these people had a marked catholic background, which greatly influenced their stance toward Shaw’s controversial themes. Take Mrs Warren’s Profession; as Luis Bello argued in his review of the play’s Spanish premiere in 1908, its cold reception was very much due to the difficulties in finding an actress willing to play the lead role of a brothel-­ keeper. Up to seven actresses declined the role before Soledad García accepted it12. The actresses who refused to play Mrs. Warren were characterized by “the bourgeois sense of a happy medium, which is more or less the same in Spain, France, and England. Pudding or paella, cant or

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decorum. It’s all the same. Narrow-mindedness, limitations in all dishes and in all languages.”13 Further evidence is found in P. Caballero’s14 comments about that premiere. He accused Shaw of being “controversial and immoral” and called the role of Mrs. Warren “most repulsive, distasteful, and ignoble,” connecting it to the role of Celestina (a medieval madam) in Fernando de Rojas’s eponymous hybrid play. Moreover, he attacked Soledad García “for not having followed the example of the previous seven actresses, and not having rejected a task so unbecoming of the qualities that are still the norm among the women of my country, God bless them.” Conversely, he expressed admiration for those actresses who refused to play Mrs. Warren’s part, as the way in which she earns her living in the play is far from honorable in Spain. In Caballero’s opinion, Bernard Shaw should not even be “mentioned in decent conversation.” Such conservatism explains Spain’s overall hostility to Shaw and his plays at the beginning of the twentieth century. Another problem was the lack of curiosity in new dramatic forms among the Spanish middle class. As Alejandro Miquis also points out with regard to Mrs Warren’s Profession, which he himself produced, the staging could have been “outstanding if at least there existed among us, if nothing else, a little curiosity for art: but such a thing does not exist and there is, by contrast, passive resistance against anything new, a certain, terrifying ‘anti-­ innovationism’ that slows down those who want to march forward.”15 This view was actually shared by Julio Broutá, Shaw’s official Spanish translator, who believed that a Spanish audience “is fonder of flourished, highly rhetorical style than of the elevated satire of the English playwright.”16 In addition, Alejandro Miquis also regretted that, whenever a foreign theater company stages plays in Madrid, “neither authors nor actors attend these performances.” Miquis is in fact shocked by the unjustified hostility toward—and the sinful nature continuously attributed to— the staging of Mrs Warren’s Profession. Nevertheless, it is only fair to say that audiences did not always share this view, as some spectators actually liked the play. This portion of the public, write Miquis, despite “the crudeness of the language and the harshness of the action,” applauded the performance and showed “their good taste.”17 This somehow paved the way for the widespread discovery of Shaw in Spain that would soon take place. Another reason for the uneasy reception of Shaw’s oeuvre in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century is the quality of Shaw’s translated works. In a review of Broutá’s translation of Pygmalion, for instance,

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Critilo accuses Shaw’s official translator of being “the greatest obstacle thus far between Spanish-speaking readers and the spirit of Bernard Shaw.”18 Likewise, Francisco Aznar Navarro writes that Broutá—a Luxembourgian—cannot even speak Spanish, “and a gentleman who cannot write in Spanish cannot, must not attempt the translation of Shaw’s works or any other foreign author’s.”19 Andrenio—pen name of Eduardo Gómez de Baquero, one of the most renowned critics in Spain in the first half of twentieth century—also attacked Broutá, whose translations prevented “our public from becoming acquainted with this great English wit.”20 All of these comments illustrate the obstacles preventing Shaw from reaching a wide Spanish readership.21 Yet, despite all these difficulties, it should be noted that by 1915 Bernard Shaw had garnered some reputation in Spain, especially for his influential opinions on issues related to the First World War, opinions which permeated Spanish society. Shaw’s comments praising Spain for its neutral position in the conflict were also echoed by the Spanish press and critics.22 Another example is his controversial tract Common Sense About the War, which was published in translation in Spanish newspapers and widely reviewed by Spanish critics. Luis Araquistáin, Andrenio, and Ramiro de Maeztu, among others, voiced their opinions about Shaw’s ideas. Araquistáin and Andrenio, for instance, believed that Shaw did not really know what was happening and that his solutions were not effective.23 Ramiro de Maeztu went so far as to say that Shaw had lost his head over the war.24 Thus did Shaw’s controversial political opinions awaken the interest of well-known Spanish men of letters, which would also contribute to the reception of Shaw’s works in Spain. In addition to his political ideas, Bernard Shaw also penetrated the literary scene in Spain through his influence on Spanish writers. A review in Nuevo Mundo, for example, stated that “Shaw exerts a notable influence on our present literature through our writers.”25 This impression coincides with Critilo’s opinion: “let us just say that Shaw did not shock anybody in Spain. Perhaps because some of the Shavian qualities had already spread among us through the mannerisms of certain authors.”26 Indeed, the craftsmanship of the Irish playwright influenced several dramatists, such as Jacinto Benavente, Cipriano Rivas Cheriff, and Ricardo Baeza,27 among others. For instance, numerous comments and critical pieces were published on Shaw and Jacinto Benavente (who in 1922 was also awarded the Nobel Prize).28 Like Shaw, Benavente satirized the prudish Spanish society, as can be seen in Los Intereses Creados (1907). Ramiro de Maeztu

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was one of the first critics to discuss the similarities between the two playwrights. In his opinion, both authors shared many virtues, such as “their caustic and penetrating wit, the same social intention in their language, an analogous ironic depth, perhaps the same pessimism in the depths of their spirit, and, above all, the same precious gift of being able to elicit laughter with very serious ideas, albeit expressed through dislocating paradoxes.”29 This Shavian influence on well-known Spanish authors, in short, was also a catalyst to the reception of the Irish playwright and his works that was about to take place.

A Decade of Success: Bernard Shaw in the 1920s and Early 1930s Between 1920 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the status of Bernard Shaw in Spain changed dramatically. Several theater companies began performing his plays on a regular basis, which resulted in consolidating his reputation in Spain. Without a doubt, the performances of Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and Candida were the most successful, and although they were not Shaw’s only successes, due to space constraints I will mainly focus on those three. Pygmalion Although the play was originally published in 1913, the Spanish public would not see it performed until 1920 in a staging by Gregorio Martínez Sierra’s theater company, with actress Catalina Bárcena as Eliza Doolittle, at the Teatro Eslava in Madrid on 5 November. Such was its success that newspapers continued to refer to the performance for the next few weeks. El Imparcial, for example, celebrated the figure of Shaw and the quality of his play, highlighting that, thanks to his play, the theater “is sold out every day.”30 El Liberal commented on the “brilliant success of the beautiful and funny comedy by Bernard Shaw.”31 In another review, Mauricio Bacarisse wrote about the skilled playwright who “has created a drama that is unreal, unbelievable, while at the same time staying in touch with the issues and types of everyday reality.”32 In terms of the performance, it is worth noting that, when adapting Shaw’s play, Martínez Sierra omitted the entire first act, while the end of the fourth “had been altered in such a way that it seemed as if professor

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Higgins and Eliza would marry in the end, despite the lengthy epilogue where Shaw explains why such an ending is impossible.”33 Prior to the premiere, Martínez Sierra published a booklet explaining these changes and trying to convince the public to come to the play. In response to this booklet, and in clear support of Martínez Sierra, Andrenio described Pygmalion as a play “of clear plot, in keeping with the taste of the Spanish public, and embellished with brilliant paradoxes and flashes of wit, which have also been pleasant to comedy audiences ever since Benavente began the art of stage conversation with his characters.”34 Evaluating Catalina Bárcena’s role in the play, Martínez Sierra believed that she had “attained well-deserved personal success in this play, which seems written just for her.”35 This opinion is also shared by Xabier Cabello Lapiedra, who gives Bárcena much credit for the play’s success, as the audience “applauds her with an obvious enthusiasm that has been justly earned by this unrivalled actress.”36 All these opinions clearly demonstrate a new trend in how Shaw is perceived by the critics, certainly more with favor than at the beginning of the century. This favorable criticism was, at least to some extent, responsible for the success of Pygmalion, thanks to which Bernard Shaw began to be widely known in Spain. The play was performed several times in the Teatro Eslava in 1922,37 1923,38 and 1924,39 as well in San Sebastián and Vitoria, where it was also highly successful.40 Ten years later, in 1935, Pygmalion would be performed in Barcelona, with Catalina Bárcena once again in the leading role. Lastly, in May 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Pygmalion returned to the Teatro Victoria in Barcelona in a performance that was part of the Casa del Actor project, led by Josefina Díaz de Artigas.41 These different performances of Pygmalion, in short, are fundamental to our understanding of how Shaw made a name for himself in Spain. Saint Joan The next major production of one of Shaw’s plays in Spain was in 1925: Saint Joan, whose translation had appeared the previous year in Revista de Occidente, at the time the most prestigious cultural magazine in Spain.42 The translation received the appreciation of both public and critics. Antonio G. Linares, for instance, compared Shaw to Anatole France and considered the play as the starting point of a new school of drama that aimed to refute the historical lies revolving around the figure of Joan of Arc.43

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Saint Joan premiered in New York on 28 December 1923. The short lapse between the US premiere44 and Spanish premiere in 1925 illustrates the increasing success of Bernard Shaw and his favorable reception by the Spanish public. Saint Joan premiered at the Teatro Goya, in Barcelona, on 21 October 1925, with renown actress Margarita Xirgu as Joan, which attracted the attention of the Spanish press. Melchor Fernández Almagro, for instance, said that the performance offered “an excellent lesson to writers of historical drama.”45 Before the premiere, however, the newspapers had already anticipated its success based on previous performances in New York, London, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris, as well as on the publication of the play’s translation in Revista de Occidente. Following opening night, several newspapers heralded the success of the performance. La Vanguardia, for instance, published articles about the play, the performance, and the appreciation by the public. These praised a play “that is art and beauty in its entirety,” as well as the performance and Xirgu’s magnificent acting: she “plays the lead role of the play in such a unique manner that it has undoubtedly granted her the greatest success of her career.”46 However, the play closed on 3 November after only twenty-five performances, and these did not, unfortunately, fulfill the original expectations of some critics. As Soler Horta argues, “the expectations that certain critics and authors had regarding the drama of Bernard Shaw will conflict with the indifference of audiences that are not used to ‘un-theatrical theatre’ and among whom Shaw is still considered bold.”47 This coincides with the unfavorable conditions—the Spanish public’s lack of curiosity, their conservative and catholic background, and so on—mentioned earlier and which hindered the reception of Shaw’s work in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. To some extent, these conditions remained a problem in the 1920s. Saint Joan was also staged at the Teatro Victoria, where Margarita Xirgu’s theater company offered five performances for working-class people at affordable prices.48 Two years later, in September 1927, Xirgu’s theater company also staged the play at the Teatro Pereda in Santander.49 It was only in March 1926 that Saint Joan arrived in Madrid, once again at the Teatro Eslava and also thanks to Margarita Xirgu’s company. Unfortunately, there are very few comments about the premiere in the Madrid press, mostly because the focus was on the Nobel Prize that Shaw had been awarded the previous year (see Section “Bernard Shaw’s Nobel Prize: The Definitive Recognition”). In 1927, new performances took place in various theaters. The first was in the Teatro Alkazar, by the Pitoëff

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theater company. In a review of Pitoëff’s premiere, which was in French, the critic and poet Enrique de Mesa regretted that the performance lacked “the dynamic impulse, the popular effervescence, the gleeful and naïve simplicity of a tomboy that moved her [Joan] to military life.”50 However, the performance was warmly received by the public. A couple of months later, in November 1927, the play was performed at the Teatro Fontalba. A critic by the name of “M. M.” compared Margarita Xirgu’s Joan to that of Ludmilla Pitoëff (in the Teatro Alkazar production), arguing that Xirgu’s acting was better because she could bring the role of Saint Joan closer to “the comedy, embedded in tenderness, with which Shaw seems to have conceived his Joan of Arc.”51 Candida Shaw’s next success in Spain was Candida, which premiered at the Teatro Infanta Beatriz in Madrid in 1928. Crispín, a literary critic from Nuevo Mundo, lamented that Candida arrived in Spain very late compared with other countries, where it had been staged long before. In his opinion, Shaw was still a stranger to the Spanish public.52 As for the production, it is indeed remarkable that Candida had already been performed in Catalan, in Barcelona, during the 1907–1908 season, by Adrià Gual’s Nova Empresa de Teatre Català. This theater company aimed to make the public familiar with contemporary foreign theater, along the lines of what Teatro de Arte had done with Mrs Warren’s Profession in Madrid.53 Enrique de Mesa, writing about the premiere in Madrid, considers Candida the ideal performance play and the best structured and the simplest of Shaw’s plays.54 He also says that Candida requires sustained attention from the public because it contains some psychologically motivated behavior that may not be understood by a Spanish audience, as this behavior is “alien to our way of thinking.”55 In his opinion, a Spanish mind may find it difficult to accept that a man and his wife’s lover argue about the woman’s spiritual possession or that the woman chooses between them and then delivers a philosophical speech. Furthermore, the choice of a socialist protestant pastor’s home as the setting where part of the action takes place contributes to the mismatch between these two ways of thinking. As Antonio de Obregón explains, the public generally accepts innovations but may refuse those in Candida because the public believes that they are impudent.56 Similarly, Fadrique also believed that Candida is an immoral and

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scandalous play, even though he considered it an example of pure intellectual elucidation.57 López Heredia’s company was in charge of the performance of Candida. Irene López Heredia played the leading role, which was a hit with critics and public alike. Juan González Olmedilla praised López Heredia’s role acting as an example of “commensuration, discretion, tact.”58 This view contrasts with Enrique de Mesa’s opinion, as expressed in his aforementioned article, where he states that López Heredia did not achieve the innocence and simplicity of character of Shaw’s original Candida. At any rate, the exceptional staging of the company deserved the recognition of the public, who “applauded at the curtain calls on the three nights.”59 After performing the play in Madrid, López Heredia’s theater company moved to the Teatro Cervantes in Málaga and then to Buenos Aires, where reports confirm a success similar to that of Madrid. Argentinian newspapers—as Spanish ones had done—praised the staging and the cast. More specifically, they valued how the company adapted the play to the public “without making it intellectual.”60 López Heredia’s company would return to Spain in 1930 (Valladolid), where they staged Candida.61 The performance’s warm welcome indicates the increasing acceptance of Shaw’s works by the Spanish public in general. Other Successful Productions In addition to the performances of Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and Candida mentioned above, there were other Shaw plays performed in Spain. Though all were to a greater or lesser extent successful, their impact was not so widely acknowledged as had been the previous ones. This might be, among other reasons, because the theater companies that staged them were not so well known, or perhaps because the plays themselves were not so controversial—such as Captain Brassbound’s Conversion62—and thus did not awaken the same interest among the Spanish public (Fig. 7.1). Another example is The Philanderer, which premiered at the Teatro Fontalba in Madrid in March 1931 with Lola Membrives’s company. As is the case with the well-known actresses in leading roles discussed thus far— Catalina Bárcena, Margarita Xirgu, Irene López Heredia, and Carmen Díaz63—this staging starred Lola Membrives, at the time one of the most famous actresses in Spain.64 Before their Spanish tour, the company had performed the play in Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The literary critic

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Fig. 7.1  Margarita Xirgu as Joan as she rallies the Dauphin to help her lift the Siege of Orléans at the end of Scene II. Premier of Santa Juana at Teatro Goya, Barcelona, 21 October 1925. Personal archive of Xavier Rius Xirgu

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Juan González Olmedilla reviewed the Spanish performance and considered it “a very pleasant comedy, full of action, funny, amiable,” while also extoling the comic role played by Membrives, who had hitherto played dramatic roles for the most part. Luis Araújo-Costa also reviewed the play, stating that “audiences are spellbound by the play from the very first scene until the curtain because of its subtle charm.”65 During these years, there were also reviews of other plays, such as Back to Methuselah and On the Rocks.66 Although these plays were never staged in Spain during Shaw’s lifetime, they were reviewed by Spanish critics. These reviews of foreign productions (in Europe and America)67 evidence Shaw’s gradually increasing impact on foreign stages. Bernard Shaw’s Nobel Prize: The Definitive Recognition Aside from his plays, Shaw’s 1925 Nobel Prize also contributed decisively to his recognition in Spain, where newspapers published the news that came from Sweden in November 1926.68 In addition to their compliments for the Nobel, journalists and critics also discussed Shaw’s response to the award, as he claimed he did not expect it. They also commented on Shaw’s decision to accept the honor but not the prize money. As we know, after his initial decision to refuse the emolument, he bequeathed the sum to begin a project to strengthen relationships between England and Sweden and to make Swedish translations into English affordable and available. This gesture was highly regarded among Spanish critics, who considered it “a noble example of love for letters and for humankind.”69 Most importantly, it resulted in a growing interest by Spanish critics to (re)discover Shaw’s work and keep the Irish playwright in the spotlight. Being awarded the Nobel Prize definitely paved the way to his recognition is Spain, as he proved to be “one of the sincerest and best-meaning spirits of the last fifty years, while at the same time being an exceptionally gifted writer.”70

The Reception of Bernard Shaw Between 1936 and 1950 To a great extent, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War destroyed the cultural scene that had been built during the previous years. Some of the best-known Spanish men of letters—Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Amado Alonso, Rafael Alberti, and Ricardo Baeza—went into exile, while others

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such as Federico García Lorca and Pedro Muñoz Seca were killed. As a result, cultural activity was dramatically reduced during the Civil War and in the post-war era. A major cause of this cultural stagnation was “the censorship of the Franco regime, which would oversee the maintaining of the social order and religious morals in all forms of artistic expression. Because of this, and because of the catastrophic state of the country, the first post-war years saw practically no plays by foreign authors.”71 The little information about Bernard Shaw that came from abroad was related to his winning of the Oscar in 1939, as he became the first artist to be awarded both the Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. Newspapers published Shaw’s reaction to winning the Oscar, one that was very similar to his response to winning the Nobel Prize. He declared that he had been awarded the Oscar in 1939 because Pygmalion was the only film that year and that he owed the award to the people in Hollywood, the ones who worked the miracle.72 As for the performance of his plays in Spain during the Civil War, only a couple of his works were staged. In 1938, The Devil’s Disciple was performed at the Teatro Poliorama in Barcelona (in Catalan),73 while in August that year there were some performances of How He Lied to Her Husband at the Teatro Barcelona.74 After the Civil War, Shaw’s plays returned to the Spanish scene very slowly, and even those that had already been staged had to undergo censorship. The first Shaw play censored by the authorities was Candida, “whose negative verdict by the censors delayed its public performance for a few years.”75 The application by the Heredia-Asquerino Company (Irene López Heredia’s) to stage it in 1941 failed because of a censorship report that considered the play a recreation of English Socialism and mandated that it should not be performed. The report argued that “although the plot and action are not openly political, the main characters include a member of the Protestant clergy who advocates Socialism.”76 De Isabel Estrada quotes a 1945 note by the Director General of Cinema and Theatre, Antonio Fraguas, noting that the play cannot be performed because “the aforementioned author [Shaw] is the majority shareholder of the press branch of the Communist Party in London.”77 Lastly, in 1949 Más fuerte que ellos was performed as part of a larger spectacle that also included Víctor Pellerin’s Intimidad and August Strindberg’s La señorita Julia. It premiered at the Teatro Beatriz in Madrid with the La Carátula theater company.78 Pygmalion was also censored many times by authorities. It did pass the censorship in 1942 but with several deletions and emendations. The

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censor wrote that Pygmalion was “often rude and coarse, and it contains inadmissible notions, despite being set in England, such as considering morality the exclusive property of certain social classes; but I think it would be fit for performance if cut.”79 The same ruling applied when two other companies asked to perform the play in 1943 (Carmen Sánchez’s) and 1944 (Soler-Mari’s). The companies headed by Bassó-Navarro and Josita Hernán-Antonio Casal managed to obtain a favorable resolution by restricting admittance to people over the age of sixteen.80 In addition, despite his socialist ideals, Shaw showed an interest in fascist regimes like Mussolini’s. He recreated the fascist leaders of Europe in Geneva, a Fancied Page of History in Three Acts (1938), in which three characters are summoned before an international court: Herr Battler, Signor Bombardone, and General Flanco, the alter-egos of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. General Flanco de Fortinbras “connects the contemporary Spanish leader to the Prince of Norway who calls for ‘Soldiers’ music and ‘the rites of war’ over Hamlet’s body at the end of Shakespeare’s play.”81 Shaw himself expands on the significance of the events described in the play: “I am robustly well (for my age) and have written … a new scene for Geneva (declaration of war by Hitler and his betrayal by Mussolini and Franco, so far idiotically unnoticed by press and Cabinet).”82 Michael Holroyd notes that Shaw commented on the Spanish Civil War, noting that “every country […] was entitled to its civil wars without foreign interference. He looked on the Spanish Civil War as an internal clash with Franco standing for property, privilege, and ‘everything we are all taught to consider respectable’, and though his sympathies were generally on the left, he distanced himself from other British intellectuals.”83 Shaw said that Spain should “choose for itself” and that “it is really not our business.”84 Stanley Weintraub concluded that “for Shaw, a victory for the wrong side in Spain was preferable to a general European war, which the internationalizing of the Civil War seemed to be making inevitable.”85 Some time later Shaw wrote that he had come to regret the “horrible mistake of securing victory for Franco, with the result that Franco will probably sell Spain to Hitler for Portugal, and give us a fearful job in the Atlantic.”86 Lastly, Spanish newspapers reported on the state of Shaw’s health and eventually on his death on 2 November 1950. The obituary in Ínsula, for example, mentioned that Shaw behaved sensibly and that he regretted some of his anecdotes and controversies as both a man and a writer.87 Jacinto Miquelarena’s obituary article in ABC concluded that “in the last hours of his life he was the great Bernard Shaw of old, the crazy and

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brilliant genius he had created as his own persona; the protagonist of all his stories.”88 The present chapter has offered a panoramic view of the reception of Shaw’s works and his ideas in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. As we have seen, despite the reluctance of critics and theater figures to accept Shaw’s plays during the first years of the twentieth century, they ended by permeating Spanish cultural life. The reservations of the Spanish public with regard to his works and his controversial ideas were replaced with admiration after it had gotten use to his innovative drama. At any rate, by the end of his life, Shaw had gained an outstanding reputation in Spain, as his plays were performed by the most prestigious theater companies and by the best-known actors of the time. The possibilities provided by the digitized archives of primary and secondary sources are numerous and openly available to researchers. What has been outlined here is merely the tip of an iceberg that deserves further study. Access to these resources illustrating Shaw’s impact on the Spanish cultural world, a topic thus underexplored, opens new avenues of analysis that will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of Shaw’s genius beyond his work as a playwright.

Notes 1. Due to editorial constraints, the chapter focuses only on the most widely acclaimed performances, namely those of Mrs Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and Candida. 2. This study has been carried out with materials available in the digitized archives of the Spanish National Library (http://www.bne.es/es/ Catalogos/HemerotecaDigital/), the Virtual Library of Historical Press (http://prensahistorica.mcu.es/es/estaticos/contenido. cmd?pagina=estaticos/presentacion), and the digital archives of ABC (http://hemeroteca.abc.es/) and La Vanguardia (http://www.lavanguardia.com/hemeroteca). 3. Ramiro de Maeztu. “¡Cándida en París!.” La Correspondencia de España (30 May 1908), 1. 4. Maeztu’s views on Socialism were largely ambivalent. See Jiménez Torres in this volume. 5. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 25. 6. See José-Carlos Mainer, La Edad de Plata (1902–1939). Ensayo de interpretación de un proceso cultural (Madrid: Cátedra, 1981). See also Hernán

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Urrutia, “La Edad de Plata de la literatura española,” Cauce. Revista de Filología y su Didáctica 22–23 (2000): 581–595. 7. Rafael Altamira, “La decadencia en Francia,” La Correspondencia de Alicante (19 April 1904), 1. 8. Luis de Vargas, “Revista bibliográfica,” Nuestro Tiempo (10 April 1906), 84. 9. José María Sembí, “Bernard Shaw,” La Ciudad Lineal 335 (1908), 467. 10. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Ecos de Londres. The Philanderer,” La Correspondencia de España (28 February 1907), 1. 11. José Escofet, “Puntos de vista. El dominio de la guerra,” La Vanguardia (26 April 1917), 10. 12. A good thermometer to measure the reception of any author’s work (in this case, Bernard Shaw’s) is the press. It includes comments of all kinds, often associated with the staging of a specific work. Hence, in this chapter there are numerous references to these articles of theater criticism, especially when the performances involve companies and actors of renown in the cultural panorama of the time. 13. Luis Bello, “Crónica del teatro. Bernard Shaw en el Teatro de Arte,” Faro (9 August 1908), 309–10. As Luis Bello says, this work had to wait until he could premier it at the Free Theatre of the Stage Society. In New York, the performance was forbidden. 14. P.  Caballero, “Crónica teatral,” La Lectura Dominical (August 15, 1908), 523. 15. Alejandro Miquis, “La Semana Teatral. Trata de blancas,” Nuevo Mundo (30 July 1908), 25. 16. Julio Broutá, “Revistas y libros. Benavente en los Estados Unidos,” España. Semanario de la vida nacional (3 February 1916), 14. 17. Alejandro Miquis, “La Semana Teatral,” Nuevo Mundo, 25. 18. “La semana teatral. Bernard Shaw en Eslava,” España. Semanario de la vida nacional (27 November 1920), 15. 19. Francisco Aznar Navarro, “Novedades teatrales,” La Correspondencia de España (13 November 1920), 6. 20. Andrenio, “Veladas teatrales,” La Época (6 November 1920), 1. 21. For further information on the translated works of Shaw into Spanish, see Coll-Vinent and Ruano San Segundo in this volume. 22. See José Escofet, “Puntos de vista. El dominio de la guerra,” La Vanguardia (26 April 1917), 10. 23. See Luis Araquistáin, “Momentos de la guerra. Un llamamiento de Bernard Shaw,” El Liberal (16 November 1914), 1. Andrenio, “El factor hombre,” La Época (17 December 1914), 1. 24. Ramiro de Maeztu, “La coalición de los intelectuales,” Heraldo de Madrid (18 February 1916), 1.

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25. “Obras de G. Bernard Shaw.—El sentido común y la guerra.—Androcles y el león, comedia en tres actos; Hombre y superhombre, comedia en cuatro actos. Traducciones de Julio Broutá. Madrid, 1915,” Nuevo Mundo (17 July 1915), 41. 26. Critilo, “La semana teatral. Bernard Shaw en Eslava,” España. Semanario de la vida nacional (27 November 27 1920), 13–14. 27. See, for example, Andrew A. Anderson, “Coincidencias y paralelismos: las carreras teatrales de Ricardo Baeza y Cipriano Rivas Cheriff,” in Actas del XII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas. 21–26 de agosto de 1995, Birmingham, vol. 4, ed. Derek Flitter (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1998), 41–49. 28. See, for instance, Villiams Haynes, “Jacinto Benavente, por Villiams Haynes,” La Lectura. Revista de ciencias y de artes 233, no. 2 (May 1920): 127–133. 29. Ramiro de Maeztu, “El dilema del Doctor. Drama de Bernard Shaw,” La Correspondencia de España (27 November 1906), 1. 30. “Guía de espectáculos,” El Imparcial (19 November 1920), 5. 31. “Entre bastidores,” El Liberal (21 November 1920), 4. 32. Mauricio Bacarisse, “La persecución de lo paradisiaco (Impresiones teatrales),” España. Semanario de la vida nacional (4 December 1920), 10. 33. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 36. 34. Andrenio, “Veladas teatrales,” La Época (6 November 1920), 1. 35. Ibid. 36. Xabier Cabello Lapiedra, “Crónica teatral,” La Ilustración española y americana (30 November 1920), 568. 37. “El teatro,” La Acción (21 March 1922), 2. 38. “Gacetillas,” El Sol (28 February 1923), 2. 39. “Gacetillas teatrales,” La Correspondencia de España (4 April 1924), 5. 40. “Pigmalión de Bernard Shaw,” La Acción (8 September 1920), 6. 41. This project aimed to build a place that “would take away and perhaps erase the sad beggar-like sensation” of retired actors, who did not enjoy a comfortable position once their careers came to an end. See Felipe Sassone, “Por y para la ‘casa del actor,’” ABC (15 May 1936), 14. 42. Revista de Occidente was founded in 1923 by José Ortega y Gasset, philosopher and authority among the Spanish thinkers of the first half of twentieth century. The periodical included translations from the most important European and American philosophers, men of letters, and scientists, such as Georg Simmel, Bernard Shaw, and Hermann Weyl, among others. The journal continues to be published. 43. Antonio G.  Linares, “Una obra que da que hablar. La Santa Juana de Bernard Shaw,” La Esfera (26 April 1924), 34.

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44. Spanish critics and newspapers also reported on the premieres in Berlin, Vienna, and London. 45. Melchor Fernández Almagro, “Margarita Xirgu y Bernard Shaw,” La Época (31 October 1925), 5. 46. “Música y teatros,” La Vanguardia (28 October 1925), 19. 47. Anna Soler Horta, “Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G.  B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938),” in La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute (Barcelona: PPU, 2001), 300. 48. “Música y teatros,” La Vanguardia (3 November 1925), 23. 49. “El teatro en provincias,” El Heraldo de Madrid (8 September 1927), 5. 50. Enrique de Mesa, “Vida teatral. La compañía Pitoeff en el Alkázar,” El Imparcial (4 February 1927), 1. 51. M. M., “Los teatros,” La Libertad (4 February 1927), 5. 52. Crispín, “La Semana Teatral. ‘Pepa Doncel’ y ‘El Benaventismo’,” Nuevo Mundo (30 November 1928), 24. 53. Anna Soler Horta, “Notícia de la recepció,” 295–296. 54. Enrique de Mesa, “Anoche, en los teatros. Un estreno en el Infanta Beatriz,” El Imparcial (25 November 1928), 3. 55. Ibid. 56. Antonio de Obregón, “Teatros. Notas para la temporada 1928–1929,” Atlántico. Revista mensual de la vida hispanoamericana (5 June 1929), 60–64. 57. Fadrique, “Crónica teatral,” La lectura dominical (1 December 1928), 834. 58. Juan G.  Olmedilla, “Las novedades teatrales del sábado,” El Heraldo de Madrid (26 November 1928), 5. 59. Enrique de Mesa, “Anoche, en los teatros,” 3. 60. “Información teatral,” El Sol (18 July 1929), 7. 61. “El teatro en provincias,” Heraldo de Madrid (21 February 1930), 6. 62. This play was performed by Carmen Díaz’s theater company. It premiered first in Barcelona in 1927 and then in Málaga in 1928, before returning to Barcelona in 1930. The translation of the title was not clear in Spanish; hence the variant versions, such as La conversión del capitán Brandelourg, La conversión del capitán Brandsbunrd, and La conversión del capitán Brasbond. 63. This fact did not go unnoticed by the critics, who extoled the work of these actress-entrepreneurs in performing Shaw’s plays. See Manuel G. Nogales, “Bernard Shaw en España. De Margarita Xirgu a la Membrives, pasando por Carmen Díaz y la Bárcena,” Estampa (28 March 1931), 22. See also Pilar Nieva de la Paz, “Las autoras teatrales españolas frente al público y la crítica (1918–1936),” in Actas del XI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, vol. 2, ed. Juan Villegas (California: University of California, 1994): 129–139.

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64. In fact, some of the most important Spanish playwrights of the first half of twentieth century—Álvarez Quintero, the Machado brothers, Jacinto Benavente—wrote roles for Lola Membrives. Together with María Teresa Montoya and Margarita Xirgu, she was also one of the principal actresses of Federico García Lorca’s theater. 65. Luis Araujo-Costa, “Veladas teatrales,” La Época (21 March 1931), 1. 66. See “Algunas escenas de la nueva obra de Bernard Shaw,” Heraldo de Madrid (1 March 1924), 5. See also “¡Alo, Madrid! Sobre las rocas,” La Libertad (15 December 1933), 3. 67. See Pedro Penzol, “Desde Londres. La última comedia de G.  Bernard Shaw,” La Libertad (14 November 1923), 4. See also “Juana de Arco, Bernard Shaw y el público francés,” Heraldo de Madrid (22 March 1924), 3. “La Juana de Arco de Bernard Shaw en Berlín,” Heraldo de Madrid (27 December 1924), 5. 68. It is worth noting that although the Nobel Prize corresponds to 1925, the jury’s decision was published in the following year. 69. “Mr. Bernard Shaw,” El Sol (24 November 1926), 5. 70. Ibid. 71. María Antonia de Isabel Estrada, “George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: recepción y recreación de su teatro en España durante el Franquismo” (PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004), 53. 72. “ABC en Roma. Hollywood, Palestina dorada,” ABC Sevilla (11 March 1939), 4. 73. “Notas teatrales de Mi revista,” Mi revista (1 April 1938), 32. The play was translated into Catalan by Carles Capdevila. It had been performed only once during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. 74. “Teatros y conciertos,” La Vanguardia (5 August 1938), 5. 75. Isabel Estrada, “George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne,” 241. 76. Isabel Estrada, “George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne,” 242. 77. Ibid. 78. All the news reports and reviews speak of this play as a “one-act,” but there is no further information as to its plot or characters. Hence, we can only hypothesize from the title (literally, Stronger Than Them) which play from the Shavian canon it actually was—Annajanska or How He Lied to Her Husband, most likely. 79. Isabel Estrada, “George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne,” 243. 80. Ibid. 81. In Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw. The Lure of Fantasy (1918–1951), vol. 3 (New York: Random House, 1991), 243. 82. Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters (1926–1950), Dan H. Laurence, ed. (New York: Penguin), 538. 83. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 422.

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84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters (1926–1950), 622–623. 87. “Bernard Shaw,” Ínsula 59 (1950): 8. 88. Jacinto Miquelarena, “Al amanecer el día de hoy, ha fallecido el ilustre escritor y dramaturgo Bernard Shaw,” ABC (2 November 1950), 22.

References Holroyd, Michael. 1991. Bernard Shaw. The Lure of Fantasy (1918–1951). Vol. 3. New York: Random House. Isabel Estrada, María Antonia de. 2004. George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: recepción y recreación de su teatro en España durante el Franquismo (PhD diss.). Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Mainer, José-Carlos. 1981. La Edad de Plata (1902–1939). Ensayo de interpretación de un proceso cultural. Madrid: Cátedra. Nieva de la Paz, Pilar. 1994. Las autoras teatrales españolas frente al público y la crítica (1918–1936). In Actas del XI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Juan Villegas, vol. 2, 129–139. California: University of California. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria. Soler Horta, Anna. 2001. Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G.  B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938). In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute, 295–311. Barcelona: PPU. Urrutia, Hernán. 2000. ‘La Edad de Plata de la literatura española’. In Cauce. Revista de Filología y su Didáctica 22–23.

CHAPTER 8

An Irishman in Mexico: Bernard Shaw in the Mexican Press (1900–1960) Íñigo Fernández Fernández

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman. (A Comedy and a Philosophy (Westminster: Archibald Constable & and Co., Ltd., 1903), 238.)

Introduction The study and reception of the work and ideas of Bernard Shaw in the Mexican press during the first half of the twentieth century is a theme that has not been broached, and thus could well be seen as a fertile field for the study of the history of the Mexican press and literature. What is certain is that, in the specific case of Mexico, this reception process was marked by conjunctures and structural changes that represented the end of one regime—the Porfiriato—and the rise and consolidation of another—the

Í. F. Fernández (*) Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_8

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revolutionary. On the one hand, during the former, the sense of Francization reigned in the breast of a small but powerful urban elite.1 On the other hand, the governors who emerged from the Revolution were, initially, inclined to foment a nationalism in which the resurgence of the arts in the country was based on the revival of the pre-Hispanic world.2 In time, this situation was reversed in such a way that Mexican critics and readers began to obtain a greater knowledge of Shaw, his works, and his ideas. One of the mediums in which we can better see this transformation is the press. Slowly, newspapers dedicated more space to the playwright and his universe, and the articles ceased being mere transcripts of cables from abroad and became profound reflections written by the best authors of the fifties and sixties. With the above in mind, we provide an account of this process in the national press between 1900 and 1960 while illustrating how Shaw’s works and ideas were presented in this medium. We wish to provide an overview of the Shavian texts, representations, and concepts that most attracted the attention of Mexican editors and columnists in order to better understand the opinions and reflections that they inspired. To that end, this chapter proceeds by decade, and in each one we begin with the reception of Shaw’s works and then broach his ideas. The resulting discussion be read as a complement to Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna’s study, Shaw en el mundo hispánico. To this end, we consulted newspapers of the era, now housed in the National Periodical Library of Mexico, which represent different points of view—some from the governmental level, others from the private level; some political, others artistic; some of an anecdotal character, others of a more reflective type—of Shaw and the world he created through his writings.

Some Prior Considerations As noted above, the presence of Shaw in Mexican newspapers grew over the years; however, this raises two questions: How radical was this change and can one measure it? We can answer both questions from a quantitative standpoint and approximately if we consider the number of times Shaw’s name appeared in those newspapers and magazines in the digital archive of the Hemeroteca Nacional de México. We present the results in Table 8.1. It should be noted at the outset that there is a decrease in the number of relevant results among the decades 1900–1910, 1911–1920, and 1921–1930. These are three decades in which texts focusing on Shaw

8  AN IRISHMAN IN MEXICO: BERNARD SHAW IN THE MEXICAN PRESS… 

Table 8.1  Number of articles per decade where Shaw is mentioneda

Decade

145

Number of articles

1900 to 1910 1911 to 1920 1921 to 1930 1931 to 1940 1941 to 1950 1951 to 1960

131 54 71 207 298 540

a Data compiled by the author with the materials from the Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de Mexico

were scarce, and where most references to Shaw were mere allusions or anecdotes. The 1900–1910 decade corresponds to the final years of the Porfiriato, a time in which the Irish playwright was mostly known as a critic and his plays were slowly taking root in the theater.3 By contrast, the period from 1910 to 1930 included two facets of the Mexican Revolution: armed conflict and the establishment of the revolutionary State. While the first can be considered a destructive stage involving the isolation of the country at all levels, including culturally, the second entails a cultural reconstruction based on revolutionary principles and under the premise that national arts must be the crucible in which national identity is formed.4 After 1931, we observe a considerable increase—both qualitative and quantitative—in articles on Shaw in Mexican newspapers, the press also helping the Mexican public to discover him through various methods: publishing his books; publishing biographies, interviews, and news about him; outlining productions of his works; giving accounts of his ideas about war, marriage, socialism and life. In addition, this was when theatrical performances of Pygmalion began, Shaw’s most frequently quoted text and the play most discussed in the Mexican press, one that represented Mexican revolutionary governments’ ideals of social transformation.

The Beginnings: 1900–1910 During the Porfiriato, English-language newspapers—particularly El Heraldo Mexicano—became the major source of information on the work and ideas of Shaw in Mexico. They offered information from foreign press agency cables or from newspapers edited in the United States and Europe, and though many of them mentioned Shaw, few focused on him.

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The Heraldo published opinions by some theater critics from the Unite States and England on the staging of two of Shaw’s newest plays: Man and Superman and Mrs Warren’s Profession. The critiques were very severe, branding both plays immoral, indecent, and harmful to social mores. In an article dated November 1931, the New  York publication The Theatre is quoted as saying that “[Mr. Shaw is] a menace to morals [… and his greatness consists in] that which he professes to despise: technical grammatical ability, not in philosophy, except in minor satire”;5 while The Overland Monthly stated that Man and Superman represented the climax of its author’s career and the end of his role as a shaper of public opinion.6 The commentary of the New York Herald on Mrs Warren’s Profession, a far more polemical work, as it addressed the theme of prostitution, was transcribed thusly: “The limit of indecency on the stage was reached last night at the Garrick Theatre,”7 and it closed by saying that the play was an insult to decency. It also noted that the day after its premiere, the New York police had temporarily cancelled the production, and it included a statement by Shaw himself attributing the provocations to the city’s newspapers.8 It is interesting to observe how the Spanish-language press wrote about Shaw, as it focused on the written play rather than on its staging. In 1906, El Imparcial published an article, the first we find written in Spanish, entitled “The resurrection of Don Juan.”9 In it Shaw speaks as a “revolutionary artist” and the article refers to Man and Superman, noting that the Irishman transformed the figure of Don Juan into the concept of a superman, following the ideas of Nietzsche. In 1907, El Correo Español showcased a notice originally edited in Madrid containing a brief reflection on The Doctor’s Dilemma. In offering a brief summary of the play and explaining that it had greatly enthralled the London public, the editor explained that it belonged to a group of “works of a beautiful puritanism and was profoundly human […].”10 As far as Shaw’s ideas are concerned, what the newspapers offer is in fact a mere sketch. In politics, for example, Shaw’s affiliation with Fabian socialism is mentioned, although numerous articles do present his position on certain political issues of the day. This can be seen in a planned state visit by the Russian czar to England, which elicited from Shaw the phrase “Damn the czar’s tyranny and his imprudence in coming to these shores,”11 a rant against English imperialism and its affinity for governing other territories supposedly for their own benefit.12 On Shaw’s idea of society, some articles linked social to economic factors. The Heraldo reported on the public reading of his work, First Acquire

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an Independent Income, and the Practice of Virtue, where he claimed that the world was only interested in the accumulation of capital, defending his views on establishing a minimum income and the right of every working man to earn one.13 In this regard, in 1910 El Tiempo and La Iberia published two articles on the lecture Shaw gave at a meeting organized to question the causes of poverty in Britain and in which he emphasized the necessity of creating independent societies that guaranteed work for all citizens.14 It is interesting to note that while the editors of other publications were able to find in the above something exotic or striking, something typically “Shavian,” those at El Tiempo did not. This was a Catholic newspaper which, between 1909 and 1912, published anecdotes about Shaw, updates on his state of health, and accounts of his European premieres. Clearly influenced by the encyclical Rerum Novarum, its editors declared themselves against the situation in which Mexican laborers lived, and it is striking that these arguments were added to those of an author they well knew had expressed his discomfort with the Ten Commandments.15 This situation, which was continually repeated in the Mexican press albeit in different contexts, is a recognition of social sensitivity and a preoccupation with Shaw and the social divide he denounced.

Shaw During Revolutionary Times, 1911–1920 During this decade, El Heraldo published the first advertisements for Shaw’s books. Between 1911 and 1914, The Aztec Land bookstore advertised they had some books by Shaw for sale, but without specifying their titles; however, they were touted as some of “[t]he most brilliant essays. Heretical, paradoxical, speeches […].”16 Slowly, then, the Mexican press began to show a greater interest in Shaw’s literary world. Ramiro wrote a critical article on The Man of Destiny—after having read the Spanish version—to sing its praises,17 while El Tiempo shared a report with its readers that began with the London staging of Fanny’s First Play, later discussing the never-ending feud that the dramatist maintained with theater critics.18 Simultaneously, newspapers like El Tiempo, La Opinión, and El Nacional Gráfico included notices about the staging of Shaw’s dramas (Mrs Warren’s Profession, Fanny’s First Play, The Man of Destiny, etc.) from a positive perspective in that they recognized their success in Europe and the United States.

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In this context, the Mexican press accomplished a remarkable achievement in terms of noting the reception of Shaw’s work. In 1917, an article appeared in El Nacional: periódico de literatura, ciencias, artes, industria, minería y comercio, stating that the editors of the Revista de Cultura— Agustín Loera y Chávez and Julio Torri—had just published Overruled in Spanish, with an introduction by Antonio Castro Leal.19 Leal was a part of the so-called seven sages of Mexico20 and also one of the first discoverers and champions of Shaw, because of the intellectual wealth he found in his comedies.21 Ideologically, Shaw’s socialist affiliation remained a secondary interest, perhaps because none of the Mexican revolutionary leaders had raised an alternative model to capitalism.22 However, as we shall see, Shaw’s stance on the Great War aroused much public interest, and in general, Shaw was shown to be a critic of his government—while also professing an understanding of the German cause. In 1915, his famous essay “Common Sense About the War” was translated and abridged into the article “La causa alemana-inglesa” (the German-English cause) and published after the Germans had invaded Belgium. While the British authorities were accusing the Germans of violating Belgian neutrality, Shaw was writing such inflammatory phrases as “we began it […],” and “it is an undeniable fact that Germany is, indeed, more democratic than England.”23 This controversial stance illustrated Shaw’s pacifist nature, a spirit the Mexican press made room for in its pages—either to forecast that the European war would be short and that its cause was that of a few, or to report on the Irishman’s visit to the Western Front. In fact, pacifism was a widespread sentiment among Mexicans, as they had experienced first-hand the ravages of civil war for many years. Thus, it is worthy of note that in 1918, journalist Muñoz Bustamante wrote with emotional that Shaw had for many years “predicted the outbreak of global conflict, and that the worst peace is preferable to the best war.”24

Interest in Shaw’s Ideas and Works Is Born: 1921–1930 If in the previous decade Mexican intellectuals had discovered Shaw, they sought to make him, in turn, accessible to the general public in the next decade. A case in point is José Vasconcelos, a highly respected man within the realm of Mexican culture and the head of the Secretariat of Public

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Education (SPE) between 1920 and 1924. For this public discovery to take place, however, Vasconcelos first needed to reconcile himself with the daunting figure of Shaw. Although in 1917, he had denigrated Shaw as “a little Celtic slave,”25 for reasons unknown, soon after he began his tenure at the SPE, he changed his mind, as evidenced in the issues of the Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (SPE Bulletin), which in its first edition announced that the translation of some of Shaw’s works was already in progress—specifically, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Candida.26 This project was completed the following year and complemented by the printing of 20,000 copies of The Doctor’s Dilemma.27 These texts were integrated into the “Vasconcelian Library,” an endeavor aimed at dramatically reducing illiteracy rates in Mexico and improving the moral quality of its inhabitants. Thus, the inclusion of some of Shaw’s plays in a project with few precedents in America28 carried the implicit recognition of the universal character of Shaw’s work. Jorge Cuesta, a member of “Los Contemporáneos,”29 published the article “La Santa Juana de Shaw” (Shaw’s Saint Joan) in La Antorcha, which sparked his interest in literary criticism; Cuesta can be considered the first critic of Shaw in the Mexican press, an exercise which, according to Augusto Isla, also foregrounded some of Cuesta’s own creative preoccupations.30 On a related note, a few years later, throughout May 1928, the literary magazine La Nueva Voz translated and published a series of texts under the title “Tolstoy v. Shaw: Some Unedited Texts.” These were treated as an epistolary exchange between the two men, one that began with Shaw sending the Russian a copy of his Man and Superman, and which included the Irishman’s good-humored defense of the criticisms he received, assuring the Tolstoy that he was not a supporter of art for art’s sake, but rather in favor for putting art to the service of others.31 In fact, La Nueva Voz was one of the first publications in Mexico, together with Fantoche, to give Shaw a prominent voice. Between the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the magazine published pieces that would revive Shaw’s ideas on love, women, journalism, politics, language, and literature—to name but some of the issues the articles touched upon. The periodicals of the day also referred to other facets of Shaw, such as his militant socialism. In April 1921, the SPE launched the magazine El Maestro: Revista de cultura general. Its first edition featured “El Espanto Ruso [The Russian Terror],”32 an article by Shaw explaining the positive qualities of the Russian education system and justifying the actions taken by Lenin after 1917. Along the same lines, the conservative Jaliscan

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newspaper El Informador, exactly as the Catholic newspaper El Tiempo had done in 1910, devoted several pages to Shaw even though his ideas ran contrary to its editorial line. In this instance, it allowed the Irishman to explain his socialist ideas in an article that showcased his genius with one of his trademark witticisms: “does socialism consist of me receiving a salary equal to that of a vendor selling programs at the theater where my comedies are staged? Of course! Why should they pay me less?”33 Shortly afterward, another notice appeared about a talk Shaw had given at the Fabian Society of London in which he guaranteed that, should the socialist regime prevail in England, it would inculcate the children with “a religion that belongs to our time and our habits.”34 Although between 1921 and 1930 Shaw continued to be a relatively little-known author in Mexico, newspaper readers were greatly enjoying his works. For example, when he turned seventy, El Informador published his biography—the first that we have found—in which some of his distinctive features were mentioned: his sarcasm, his vegetarianism, his militant socialism, even the extent of his bank account. The biographical note also contained a statement that allows us to understand the genius and universality of his work: “[…] he enjoys enormous popularity in England, which is undamaged by his socialist ideas or his ideological eccentricities—from time to time delivered with friction.”35 This illustrates how a conservative publication like El Informador could nonetheless publish such comments amidst the escalating tensions between the Catholic Church and the Mexican government.36

The Road to Consolidation: 1931–1940 It was in the thirties that the Mexican press began to focus on Shaw’s work, particularly on the staging of his best-known comedies. True, Shaw’s plays had been staged before. In 1927, Pygmalion premiered at the Teatro Regis in Mexico City, and in that year and in 1928, Candida premiered on the same stage;37 but it is only after this decade that we begin to see advertisements and critical articles about Shaw productions in the press. In 1934, El Informador announced that the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara was presenting Candida with the actress Gloria Iturbe’s company,38 the same one that, since 1931, had received support from the SPE to present this work to the country. Two years later, Margarita Xirgu’s company staged Santa Juana at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Elizondo, a

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theater critic from Excélsior, applauded their acting skills, downplaying the fact that the public had been bored by a work considered, in his opinion, difficult to stage.39 This was also the era of the boom in Mexican experimental theater, dominated by productions at Teatro Ulises (1926) and linked to Los Contemporáneos and the Teatro Orientación (1931) and its eponymous theater group, led by Julio Bracho and with support from the Secretariat of Public Education. These were spaces for which Shaw’s work was a perfect fit, as Xavier Villaurrutia observed: And what else were the experimental theaters Ulises and Orientación doing if not attempting to create an audience, a new curiosity that will resist new works, both foreign and Mexican? […], thanks to which, the names of the great ancient and modern dramatic authors ring again or ring for the first time in the ears of our Mexican contemporaries.40

In 1937, El Nacional published an article that briefly reported on the life of both groups and mentioned that between July and December 1932 they had produced How He Lied to Her Husband (it is unclear whether at the Teatro Hidalgo or at Palacio de Bellas Artes), under the direction of the then-obscure playwright and promoter of Mexican theater Celestino Gorostiza. The scenic design was the work of pioneering surrealist painter Agustín Lazo.41 In 1939, Fernando Wagner began another project of a different kind: the Teatro Panamericano theater group. He hoped to stage, using Mexican and American artists, “certain important works that they [the Americans], due to certain circumstances [censorship], cannot stage.”42 The second play they staged, at the Teatro Puebla on 13 April, was Arms and the Man, and it was so successful that the company presented it again that July.43 This was also the decade when Shaw made his only visit to Mexico. In March 1936, he traveled to various locales in the company of a group of tourists. Although the national newspapers followed him, El Informador (Guadalajara) devoted a long article to an account of his stay in the city.44 In it, they gave the minutest details of Shaw’s voyage and exalted him for the originality of his work, for his humor, and for his positive comments about the countryside and Mexican culture. On the other hand, his visit also raised suspicions among certain sectors of the Mexican press. His treatment of journalists, whom he had always evaded, disillusioned many,45 among them Jorge Cuesta. Others believed

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that once back in England, taking advantage of his fame, Shaw would be transformed and turn his kind words into cruel criticism.46 In fact, he did not need to return to Europe to express his critical views. In an interview with the periodical Sucesos para Todos in Mexico City, he declared that the country’s press was not free and that, in consequence, “[…] it supports everything. What Hitler would support, what Mussolini would support. When the president of Mexico is murdered, it supports the next.”47 There is no doubt that in a nation like Mexico, traditionally so suspicious of the outside world, Shaw’s words did not please many readers or politicians— not because they were not true, mind you, but because they were uttered by a foreigner. Both El Porvenir and Sucesos para Todos published short biographies of Bernard Shaw, in 1935 and 1936, respectively. Though almost identical in content, their importance lies in their desire to promote the life, habits, works, and ideas of a writer who was receiving increasing attention in Mexico.48 However, while Shaw was being discovered by the Mexican public, he also met with some—although comparatively few—detractors in the press. For example, in 1935, Nemesio García Naranjo, a politically conservative journalist for the Monterrey newspaper El Porvenir, began publishing articles against Shaw on account of his militant socialism: “[…] many of his dramas have been covered in dust and mold,” Naranjo wrote, “so much so that the tragedies of William Shakespeare are more in synch to the rhythm of our own times […].”49 Similarly, at the end of the decade, the magazine Sucesos para Todos published a note with the suggestive title “Is Bernard Shaw a sage … or a fraud …?”50 that criticized the Irishman for proclaiming himself a socialist while leading the life of a wealthy capitalist. (After all, he drove a Rolls-Royce.) The Shavian ideological aspects filling the Mexican press during this period were a nonsensical mélange in which “contradictions” abounded.51 Shaw argued against the prevailing idea of democracy when he indicated that a government run by the people was the same as a play directed by the people—while also declaring that the Nazi movement inspired a certain sympathy (at least until the regime began its campaign against the Jews). Shaw also spoke on the virtual disappearance of capitalism in the Soviet Union and the necessity of nationalizing the banks in the United States52 while also admitting that “communism is the most marvelous experiment that the world has ever seen, but I have no intentions of sharing my money with anyone.”53

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From the Shaw boom to Its Death: 1941–1950 During these years, Shaw’s true genius was publicly recognized, resulting in the appearance of serious criticism of his work in the country’s most prominent newspapers. In 1942, Xavier Villaurrutia compared Shaw to the Spanish writer Jacinto Benavente and pointed out that the Irishman, despite his age (Shaw was in his mid-eighties), still had an interest in writing modern theatrical works in which social freedom continued to be one of the central themes.54 In El Nacional, Adolfo Urgo referred to Shaw’s work as “an innovative program,” a product of his affiliation with the Fabian Society, the cult of Marx, the influence of Henrik Ibsen, and anti-sentimentalism. However Urgo had a knack for deconstructing some of the Irishman’s works. For example, he commented on how Androcles and the Lion exposed Shaw’s position on the Evangelical Church and religion; in the case of The Doctor’s Dilemma, he remarked that he railed against medicine; and Urgo claimed that Shaw displayed an evident hostility against marriage in Getting Married. Likewise, the Mexican critic would discuss how Shaw illustrates his theories on phonetics in Pygmalion, and in the case of John Bull’s Other Island, how he used humor to explain the incompatibility between the Irish spirit and the English temperament.55 Urgo was in good company. Prior to Shaw’s death, the poet Manuel Torre commented on the advantages of Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, Fanny’s First Play, The Doctor’s Dilemma, and You Never Can Tell, concluding that “the three basic themes of his theater [are]: ironic dissection of the conjugal bond […]; implacable and sardonic dissection of the national sense of the cult of heroes […] and the sterility of loving pleasure.”56 Both critics were writing for El Nacional, a periodical owned by the Mexican government, which showed the greatest interest in Shaw and his world during these years. In 1944, it published an addendum called “Shaw’s Best Pages,” which offered extracts from the Irishman’s best works. In 1949, on the occasion of his birthday, it published a brief biographical review of Shaw that lists his most important works, those which had been published and staged in Mexico. Meanwhile, the number of theatrical performances of Shaw’s work increased. Rodolfo Usigli’s Teatro de Medianoche project staged Vencidos (Overruled); the American Theater company, Héroes y hombres (Arms and the Man) and Pigmalión; the Proa Group, the Compañía Mexicana de

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Comedia, and the Teatro Estudiantil Autónomo, Cándida; and the Teatro de los Electricistas company, Pigmalión and Santa Juana.57 In business terms alone, some performances were so successful that the producers gave parts to very popular actors; such was the case of the Compañía Mexicana de Comedia, who employed such famous stars as Stella Inda, José Luis Jiménez, and Rafael Baladón. In the field of ideas, the press reiterated facets of Shaw that had previously been presented. During the Second World War, the national newspapers published articles from international press agencies that outlined his position on Germany. If in the past he had justified the belligerent character of that nation, he now asked England in particular and the Allies in general not to apply lex talionis—an eye for an eye—in the bombardment of Berlin: “I cannot accept the argument that the effect of bombing Berlin will be entirely different from the bombing of London […].”58 As the war drew to a close, Shaw was reproachful of the fact that at the end of the Great War, Germany had not been given a fair deal, adding that since much of Germany had been destroyed by bombs, it was necessary that the Allies contribute to its reconstruction. When the Nuremburg trials drew to a close, he again polemicized in writing that he would prefer that those found guilty should receive morphine tablets rather than be hanged.59 Although Mexico played but a secondary role in the conflict, this position irked many Mexicans. Nemesio García Naranjo went on the attack again and between 1944 and 1946 used his column “Panorámicas” to aver that Shaw was trivializing what had happened in Europe and that his very twisted view of justice had already manifested itself in the prologue to Saint Joan.60 In addition, both El Informador and El Porvenir published various articles on Shaw’s views of the Soviet Union. It is noteworthy how the theme of his socialist affiliation remained on a secondary plane, while his defense of the Soviet state and of its leader, Joseph Stalin, acquired relevance for the press at the dawn of the Cold War. In this sense, the press emphasized two aspects. The first was an idealized image of the Soviet Union in order to present it as a country where “liberty of thought, speech, press, creed, work and professional association […],” among other virtues, prevailed, and that it was the model that other nations should follow in the future.61 The second point was focused on the pacifist character attributed to the Stalinist regime. Shaw maintained time and again that Stalin was not interested in the Soviet Union becoming a threat to the rest of the world, that in fact he feared the rise of another “imperialist” war,

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and that his interest was focused on his country’s domestic issues.62 Fortunately, Shaw died years before Nikita Khrushchev published The Secret Report to the XX Congress of the CPSU, which exposed and described in detail the excesses committed by Stalin. Shaw’s death, on 2 November 1950, did not go unnoticed in the Mexican press: some covered the event in more detail than others, but all of the most important newspapers published an obituary with a brief account of its circumstances. Some stuck to playful anecdotes while others offered a profound analysis but without a clear consensus. Manuel Torre outlined the general technical features of Shaw’s plays; these were deeply criticized by some, especially the occasional use of unnecessary prologues and the fact that the secondary characters usually anticipate the main theses of the works.63 José Mancisidor, on the other hand, highlighted Shaw’s sense of humor and irony as a kind of escape from everything that hurt and mortified a man, while Julián Martí complained of all the “artless” writers who wrote unceasingly about Pygmalion, as if it were Shaw’s only work.64

Shaw After Shaw: 1951–1960 Shaw’s death marked an interesting change in the Mexican press. Its writers—especially those of El Nacional, which dedicated the most pages to him—became more interested in his work than in his ideology, such that articles on his plays, reflections on their significance, and commentaries about their staging show clear evidence that Shaw’s legacy in Mexico was assured more by his artistry than his ideology. Thus Calibán referred to the Irish artist’s “wit, love of paradox, and mania for playing the devil’s advocate, while at the same time recalling that he had taken advantage of all these virtues to amass a considerable fortune.”65 Meanwhile, Carlos Barrera took up the controversy surrounding Mrs Warren’s Profession, asserting that it was not pornographic and that Shaw had actually created a character that delivered subversive truths exceeding those of all revolutionaries.66 Along previous lines of argument, Fernando Terrazas defended not only Shaw’s ability to create vivid characters but also his ability to analyze the role of women in his entire canon. Terrazas grouped Shaw’s women into three types: the feminine, who were selfless and sacrificial (Raina in Arms and the Man); the emancipated, who had been liberated from all romantic illusion (Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion); and those with the last

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word, who were sexually dynamic and who pursued men (Ana in Man and Superman).67 When the centenary of Shaw’s birth approached, newspapers published reflections on his legacy and greatness. In general, these reflections agreed that his writings were modern, coherent, rich in ideas, and denoted talent—but that none could be deemed a “masterpiece.” There were also notable differences in opinion among critics: while the theater critic Manuel Izaguirre exalted the qualities of The Devil’s Disciple, Man and Superman, and Pygmalion, the journalist and writer Esteban Salazar Chapela was more severe in his assessment, declaring that “I had no interest in any of what he wrote in the last fifteen years of his life.”68 Even beyond the grave, Shaw thus continued to provoke controversies among his supporters and detractors. Press reports of the day also show that Shaw’s work circulated in other channels, some new and others traditional. As for the new channels,69 between 1952 and 1953, the Monterrey radio station XET began transmitting Pygmalion as a part of their “Teatro Universal” program, and in 1958, the Círculo Cultural Femenino Hispanoamericano of Monterrey undertook a concert reading of Cándida under the direction of the aforementioned Manuel Izaguirre. It is important to note that these institutions (“Círculos Culturales Femeninos”) were also established in other Latin American nations and were part of a larger project by the Spanish government to create a Hispanic Community of Nations that would abide by the principles of Catholicism, Antocommunism, and Hispanism.70 The traditional channel was of course the theater. Thus, in 1951, the Instituto Francés de América Latina presented La Revelación de Blanco Posnet (The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet) for the first time in Mexico in a production directed by the Viennese Charles Rooner and starring Augusto Benedico in the lead role. The production was very successful with both audiences and critics, especially with Armando de Maria y Campos, whose comments had a strong influence in the mainstream media. Throughout the decade, theaters continued to stage plays by Shaw unpublished works in Mexico; for instance, in 1957, Salvador Novo staged and directed El Inca de Perusalem as part of a larger project under the title “Dos Horas de Teatro” (Two Hours of Drama).71 It was in 1959 that the Mexican theater scene was swept off its feet with My Fair Lady, the first Spanish version of the American musical comedy— produced and directed by and starring the famous actor Manolo Fábregas. The premiere took place at the Teatro María Luisa Montoya in Monterrey

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on 19 February and it received a great deal of praise in a number of very favorable reviews. The well-known playwright Luis G. Basurto considered the staging a source of pride for Mexicans due to its brilliance and perfection, which garnered a standing ovation—a reaction foreshadowing its resounding success in the future—while the critic Fedres emphasized the quality of the Castilian version.72 The quality of the translation is perhaps why it was the basis of the Portuguese version—rather than the original English libretto—that premiered in Brazil in 1962.73 Fittingly perhaps, My Fair Lady had to be the work by which Bernard Shaw achieved popular recognition in Mexico, a little more than seven years after his death. This is yet one more piece of irony in the life of a writer who made irony his great ally—and his indelible trademark. At the beginning of the twentieth century, George Bernard Shaw began to be known in Mexico through articles published in the English press which referred to the premieres of his works in Europe or to one of his famous anecdotes. However, the Mexican press would not develop a truly legitimate interest in Shaw until the twenties, when a young generation of intellectuals discovered in his works a medium for innovation in the Mexican theater, one in which to experiment with aesthetics and different, provocative themes. The thirties marked the beginning of Shaw’s consolidation in the press, as evidenced by the publication of various biographical studies, which we must interpret as an example of a growing interest in Shaw by editors and readers. In the forties, the Irishman achieved fame in the press. His plays were performed in more and more venues and his books were advertised in a variety of periodicals. The number of articles stemming from European information agencies diminished, whereas those by Mexican critics and literati increased. The Mexican intelligentsia was eager to study Shaw’s work in blocks in order to analyze them from a global perspective, as if they wanted to describe the internal functioning of the Shavian world. This tendency continued into the decade prior to Shaw’s death, during which many critical voices were raised over the Irishman’s work in a variety of newspapers and magazines—regardless of their editorial stance. In addition, it was at this time that Shaw garnered fame, thanks to the staging of My Fair Lady, which caused the Mexican public to exalt Shaw (however vicariously) and which continues to be a national favorite. In this regard, one must mention that Pygmalion was, by quite a large margin, the work most cited by the Mexican press (both as a text and as a

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play), followed by Saint Joan, Candida, and Arms and the Man. Perhaps this enthusiasm for Pygmalion in Mexico stemmed from reading a work in which the transformation of a human being is possible through education—something that the first Mexican revolutionaries had tried but with little success. By way of conclusion, perhaps the fundamental historical notion that this chapter seeks to illustrate is how far-reaching Shaw’s influence and reception was. Our discussion has been but the tip of a much larger iceberg that will hopefully open new areas of research within both Shaw studies and Mexican theater history. One need only remind readers that in terms of ideas, we have not delved into the diverse ideological aspects that the Mexican press took from Shaw, such as his continued criticism of the English government, his position on Indian independence, his biting criticisms of the United States, and numerous other topics. However, it is important to point out that for Mexican journalists, the Shavian ideas that warranted the most attention were those on his rejection of war (as seen through his alleged pro-German positions in both global conflicts) and his attachment, as controversial as it was, to socialism (where the figure of Stalin looms large). Likewise, we have not addressed the cinematographic chronicles of Hollywood’s adaptations of Shaw’s work that were also important in Mexican newspapers—particularly in El Universal—during the forties and fifties. This is fertile ground for further investigation of the influence these chronicles were able to exert on a national audience, but also on their important role as mediums for the dissemination of the playwright’s work in the Mexican cinematographic industry. This is aptly illustrated by the failed attempt to create a version of Androcles and the Lion starring the Mexican iconic comedian Mario Moreno “Cantinflas,”74 and may well present another novel and enriching facet of Shaw’s reception in the national press. Regardless of how much is left to be done, it is evident that the literary and intellectual presence of Shaw in Mexico during his lifetime was both influential and controversial, with ramifications in the theater, the publishing industry, politics, and the press.

Notes 1. Javier Pérez Siller, “Inversiones francesas en la modernidad porfirista: mecanismos y actores.” In México Francia: Memoria de una sensibilidad común, Siglos XIX–XX (Vol. II), ed. Javier Pérez Siller and Chantai Cramaussel (México: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, 1993), 83. Quotations from Spanish sources translated by the author.

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2. Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, Arte y poder. Renacimiento artístico y revolución social. México, 1901–1945 (México: El Colegio de Michoacán-Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), 13. 3. T.  F. Evans, George Bernard Shaw: The Critical Heritage. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 5–6. 4. Omar F. González Salinas, “Fiesta cívica y culto al ‘Padre de la Patria’ en el Estado revolucionario, 1910–1940.” Secuencia 93 (2015): 173. 5. “Books, Authors, Magazines, Poems,” El Heraldo Mexicano (19 November 1905), 11. 6. Ibid. 7. “News of the Playhouses,” El Heraldo Mexicano (19 November 1905), 13. 8. Ibid. 9. “La resurrección de Don Juan,” El Imparcial (1 November 1906), 1. In Mexico this figure had become popular in the nineteenth century, thanks to José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio, first staged in 1865. 10. “Una Fabulilla,” El Correo Español (2 February 1907), 1. 11. Associated Press, “Do not Want the Czar to Come,” The Mexican Herald (27 July 1909), 1. 12. “The Outlook,” El Heraldo Mexicano (16 July 1910), 1. 13. “Chispazos,” El Heraldo Mexicano (26 December 1904), 4. 14. “Notas editorials,” El Tiempo (5 May 1910), 1; and “Los trabajadores ingleses,” La Iberia (5 May 1910), 1. 15. “Chispazos,” El Heraldo Mexicano (7 November 1906), 1; and “A Great Thought,” El Heraldo Mexicano (19 June 1907), 1. 16. “The Aztec Land,” El Heraldo Mexicano (16 February 1911), 9. 17. Ramiro, “Todos tenemos dentro nuestro Napoleón en pequeño,” La Opinión (29 May 1913), 3. The full name of the author is not visible in the digitized copy available at http://www.hndm.unam.mx/consulta/resultados/visualizar/558a36867d1ed64f16c9a2ec?resultado=5&tipo=pagina& intPagina=3. 18. “Bernard Shaw and la crítica,” El Tiempo (22 June 1911), 4. 19. “Una comedia de Bernard,” El Nacional: periódico de literatura, ciencias, artes, industria, minería y comercio (19 November 1917), 3. See Ruano San Segundo, in this volume. 20. Formed in 1915, the other members of this group of intellectuals, charged with the academic reconstruction of Mexico, were Alberto Vásquez del Mercado, Alfonso Caso, Manuel Gómez Morín, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Teófilo Olea and Leyva, and Jesús Moreno Baca. 21. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Puerto Rico: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1981), 57. 22. Arnaldo Córdova, “Mexico: Revolución burguesa y política de masas.” In Interpretaciones de la Revolución Mexicana, eds. Adolfo Gilly et al., 55–89. (México: Nueva Imagen (UNAM), 1980), 70, 84.

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23. Bernard Shaw, “La causa alemana-inglesa,” Boletín de la Guerra (2 February 1915), 1–2. 24. Muñoz Bustamante, “El grande anhelo del mundo,” El Pueblo (7 May 1918), 5. 25. Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos. Los años del águila (1920–1925). Educación, cultura e iberoamericanismo en el México posrevolucionario. (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989), 464. 26. “Informe de los trabajos realizados de julio de 1921 a febrero de 1922,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (1 May 1922), 318. 27. “Revista ‘El Maestro’,” Boletín de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (1 January 1924), 32. 28. Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Ulises criollo (Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 2000), 109. 29. This group of intellectuals—named after the magazine Contemporáneos— born in Mexico between 1899 and 1905 were devoted to literature, teaching, diplomacy, and journalism. Its members include José Gorostiza, Salvador Novo, Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Gilberto Owen, Carlos Pellicer, and Jaime Torres Bodet. 30. Jorge Cuesta, “La Santa Juana de Shaw,” La Antorcha (25 August 1925), 23; and Augusto Isla, Jorge Cuesta: El león y el andrógino: un ensayo de sociología de la cultura (México: Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, 2010), 109 and passim. 31. “Tolstoi contra Shaw. Unas cartas inéditas,” La Nueva Voz (19 May 1928), 24–25. 32. Bernard Shaw, “El espanto ruso,” El Maestro: revista de cultura general (19 May 1921), 54–58. The article only reprinted and translated the relevant section of the lecture Shaw delivered on 29 January 1920 at Kingsway Hall, entitled (and later published as) “Socialism and the Labour Party.” Available at https://ia800704.us.archive.org/5/items/n1n3elmaestrorevista01mexi/n1n3elmaestrorevista01mexi.pdf. 33. “Instantáneas neoyorquinas,” El Informador (22 November 1925), 3. 34. Tancredo Pinochet, “Bernard Shaw habla acerca del socialismo,” El Informador (29 January 1926), 3. 35. Consorcio Internacional de la Prensa, “La vida de George Bernard Shaw,” El Informador (26 August 1926), 3, 5. 36. This tension led to the Cristero War (1926–1929), an armed struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Mexico. 37. Under the direction of Gregorio Martínez Sierra. See Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (London: Appleton-­Century-­ Crofts, 1958), 938. Martínez Sierra had staged the play in Spain a few years earlier, to great critical acclaim (see Nieto Caballero, in this issue).

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38. “Teatro Degollado. Cándida, creación de Gloria Iturbe,” El Informador (15 February 1934), 6. 39. José Elizondo, “Santa Juana, de Bernard Shaw, en Bellas Artes,” Excélsior (26 June 1936), 5. 40. Xavier Villaurrutia, Textos y pretextos (Mexico: Ediciones Casa de España, 1940), 179. 41. Bracho, Julio. “Teatros experimentales en México,” El Nacional (1 May 1937), 21. 42. José Manuel Rodríguez, “Breve charla con Fernando Wagner,” El Nacional (27 April 1939), 4. 43. “Nueva pieza del Teatro Panamericano,” El Nacional (2 July 1939), 3. 44. “Bernard Shaw pasó ayer por esta capital,” El Informador (12 March 1936), 1, 6. 45. See “Huésped ilustre: G.B.S.,” Revista de revistas (8 March 1936), 1. 46. “Bernard Shaw en México,” El Porvenir (16 March 1936), 3. 47. Ewald “Una entrevista con Bernard Shaw,” Sucesos para todos (24 March 1936), 44. 48. Ewald “Una entrevista con Bernard Shaw,” Sucesos para todos (24 March 1936), 44, 51; John Ervine, “Una gran figura. Bernard Shaw, socialista aristócrata,” El Porvenir (22 September 1936), 3. 49. Nemesio García Naranjo, “Los escritores de moda,” El Porvenir (16 June 1935), 3. 50. ¿Es Bernard Shaw un sabio … o un farsante …? Sucesos para todos (27 June 1939), 28. 51. Hal Draper has an explanation: “Both the Webbs and Bernard Shaw […] became advocates of Stalinist totalitarianism in the 1930s. Earlier, Shaw, who thought socialism needed a Superman, found more than one. He supported Mussolini and Hitler as benevolent despots […], and he was disillusioned when he realized that they did not really abolish capitalism.” See Hal Draper “¿Qué es el socialismo desde abajo?,” Socialismo o Barbarie (2013[1968]). Available at http://www.socialismo-­o-­barbarie. org/?p=906. Last accessed on February 9, 2017. 52. Romo Emilio Uribe, “Modernismo femenino,” Crisol (1 January 1934), 24; Bernard Shaw, “La campaña antijudía de los nazis,” El Nacional (14 March 1933), 3; “Bernard Shaw dice que el capitalism está condenado,” El Porvenir (2 August 1931), 1; “Los financieros norteamericanos han seguido una política suicida,” El Nacional (15 April 1933), 1, 4. 53. “Bernard Shaw en México,” El Porvenir (13 March 1936), 1, 4. 54. Xavier Villaurrutia, “Lo increíble de Benavente,” Jueves de Excélsior (23 July 1942), 31. See also Jiménez Torres, in this volume. 55. Adolfo Urgo, “Bernard Shaw y el teatro de las ideas,” El Nacional (17 April 1941), 3.

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56. Manuel Torre, “Tránsito y valor de Jorge Bernard Shaw,” El Nacional (21 May 1950), 6. 57. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 63–64; El Porvenir (25 April 1948), 5. 58. “Los niños y la guerra,” El Informador (31 August 1941), 9. 59. Henry Tosti Russell, “George Bernard Shaw se opone al castigo de unos criminales,” El Nacional (3 February 1944), 9, 11; Henry Tosti Russell, “George Bernard Shaw y su opinión de la guerra,” El Informador (3 February 1944), 1, 7; “Bernard Shaw hubiese inyectado morfina a los nazis y no colgarlos,” El Nacional (21 October 1946), 6. 60. Nemesio García Naranjo, “Panorámicas,” El Porvenir (16 March 1944), 3, 5; Nemesio García Naranjo, “Panorámicas,” El Porvenir (17 December 1945), 4; Nemesio García Naranjo, “Panorámicas,” El Porvenir (2 September 1946), 4. 61. Bernard Shaw, “La crisis de Rusia,” El Informador (31 December 1945), 3. 62. “Bernard Shaw no cree que Rusia sea seria amenaza,” El Porvenir (4 July 1944), 20; “Conceptos de Shaw,” El Informador (2 November 1948), 2. 63. Manuel Torre, “Tránsito y valor de Jorge Bernard Shaw,” El Nacional (21 May 1950), 3, 6. 64. José Mancisidor, “Humanidad de Bernard Shaw,” El Nacional (12 November 1950), 1, 2; Julián Martí, “Pulso y honda,” Suplemento dominical de El Nacional (12 November 1950), 2. 65. Calibán, “El espejo indiscreto,” El Nacional (26 March 1951), 3. 66. Carlos Barrera, “Teatro y pornografía,” El Porvenir (20 September 1952), 4. 67. Fernando Terrazas, “Ángulos,” El Informador (29 March 1953), 4, 6. 68. Manuel Izaguirre, “El centenario de Shaw,” El Porvenir (29 July 1956), 18; Esteban Salazar Chapela, “Responso por Edén,” El Nacional (25 January 1957), 3. 69. “Federico Flores presenta la celebrada obra de Bernard Shaw ‘Pigmalión’,” El Porvenir (13 November 1953), 12; “Desde hoy inician programa de lecturas de teatro,” El Porvenir (6 February 1958), 7. 70. Valeria Tessada S. “Fronteras de la Comunidad Hispánica de Naciones. El aporte de la Sección Femenina de Falange y su proyección en Latinoamérica.” ILCEA 18, Secuencia 93 (2015): 1–12; Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla. Diplomacia franquista y politica cultural hacia Iberoamérica, 1939–1953, Madrid: CESIC, 1988; Heliodoro Manuel Pérez Moreno. “La Sección Femenina de la España de Franco (1939–1975) y sus contradicciones entre ‘perfil de mujer’ y medios educativos,” Cadernos de História da Educação 7 (2008), 77–92. 71. Francisco Monterde, “Teatro. Dos experimentos,” Universidad de México (April 1957), 29.

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72. Luis G.  Basurto, “El estreno de ‘Mi Bella Dama’,” El Porvenir (21 February 1959), 12; Fedres, “Manolo y su bella dama,” El Porvenir (21 February 1959), 12. 73. Rosalie Rahal Haddad, Bernard Shaw in Brazil: The Reception of Theatrical Productions, 1927–2013 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), 37. 74. See a brief account of the project in Valerie Pascal, The Disciple and His Devil (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 191–192. For the correspondence that Shaw and Pascal exchanged on the question, see Bernard F. Dukore, ed., Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw: Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 239 and passim.

References Azuela de la Cueva, Alicia. 2005. Arte y poder. Renacimiento artístico y revolución social. México, 1901–1945. México: El Colegio de Michoacán-Fondo de Cultura Económica. Córdova, Arnaldo. 1980. México. Revolución burguesa y política de masas, en Interpretaciones de la Revolución Mexicana, Ed. Arnaldo Córdova, 55–89. México: Nueva Imagen-UNAM. Draper, Hal. 2013. ¿Qué es el socialismo desde abajo? Socialismo o barbarie. Accessed 9 February 2017. http://www.socialismo-­o-­barbarie.org/?p=906. Evans, T.F. 2007. George Bernard Shaw. The Critical Heritage. New  York: Routledge. Fell, Claude. 1989. José Vasconcelos. Los años del águila (1920–1925). Educación, cultura e iberoamericanismo en el México posrevolucionario. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. ———. 2000. José Vasconcelos. Ulises criollo. Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica. Henderson, Archibald. 1958. George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. London: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Isla, Augusto. 2010. Jorge Cuesta: el león y el andrógino: un ensayo de sociología de la cultura. México: Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura. Pérez Siller, Javier. 1993. Inversiones francesas en la modernidad porfirista: mecanismos y actores. In México Francia: Memoria de una sensibilidad común; siglos XIX–XX.  Tomo II, ed. Javier Pérez Siller and Chantai Cramaussel, 83–130. México: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Puerto Rico: Editorial Universitaria-Universidad de Puerto Rico. Shaw, Geroge Bernard. 1903. Man and superman. A Comedy and a Philosophy. Westminster: Archibald Constable & and Co., Ltd. Villaurrutia, Xavier. 1940. Textos y pretextos. México: Ediciones Casa de España.

CHAPTER 9

Bernard Shaw’s Theatre in Uruguay (1930–1960) Cecilia Pérez Mondino

Introduction This first section attempts to survey what is, in itself, an overview of the presence of Bernard Shaw’s drama on the Uruguayan theatre scene. The time frame for this chapter is affected by the practical absence of any Shaw productions in Montevideo during the first two decades of the twentieth century. This does not necessarily mean that Shaw had not been a significant intellectual force in Uruguay and the rest of the Southern Cone. Let us remember that, on the occasion of Shaw’s passing, Número published an article by Uruguayan critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal—living in Cambridge at the time—who, despite arguing that Shaw’s work had become outmoded, underscored his stature and influence: Acknowledging these limitations does not imply denying that Shaw’s shadow is cast, widespread, over our cultural scenario. And if one takes into

C. P. Mondino (*) Universidad Centro Latinoamericano de Economía Humana, Montevideo, Uruguay © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_9

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consideration that his drama blended comedy and tragedy with political economy, science, and certain aesthetic or technical questions, it does not take much to understand that, in a way, the drama of Sartre and Camus, the novels of Malraux and Koestler, the essays and satires of Orwell, are to a large extent Shaw’s heirs.1

Incidentally, Rodríguez Monegal was quite an authority on Shaw in Uruguay. He wrote, for example, a review of the 1944 Argentinian edition of Frank Harris’s biography of Shaw.2 During the first half of the twentieth century, Shaw was better known among readers than among theatregoers, for the circulation of his works in print was quite widespread. Numerous translations were available in public and private libraries, generally edited in Madrid or Buenos Aires, and Shaw was well-known among left-leaning circles. To illustrate this, in retrospect, it is amusing to learn that a foreign visitor in Uruguay, who complained about the lack of religious education in schools, declared to the press:3 “I have visited countless schools in Uruguay, and I was shocked to see that children knew who Bernard Shaw or Lenin are, but they do not know the names of the apostles.”4 Likewise, in 1931, the periodicals distributed by the trade unions reported on Shaw’s visit to the Soviet Union with an article entitled “Bernard Shaw saluda el triunfo de [salutes the triumph of] la Unión Soviética.”5 The first Shaw plays staged in Montevideo theatres were produced by European companies on tour, which would often visit the capitals on the River Plate for long runs—especially beginning in the 1850s. These companies, mostly Italian, French, and Spanish, would spend months in the country and effectively influence the budding Uruguayan theatre in technically and artistically—while they would also help disseminate the dramatic texts of foreign authors, often in their own translations.6 It should be noted that the success of foreign companies would continue well into the twentieth century, alongside the development of Uruguayan companies.7 Uruguayan theatre proper began to consolidate around the mid-1940s, when different projects began to emerge, such as Comedia Nacional (supported by the municipality of Montevideo) and different college theatre groups—these came together under the Federación Uruguaya de Teatros Independientes (F.U.T.I.) in 1947. The Comedia Nacional company was founded under the auspices of Andrés Martínez Trueba, head of the Comisión de Teatros Municipales. This institution sought to make up for

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the blatant deficiency in Montevideo, where audiences could choose among a hundred cinemas but only three theatres.8 This initiative also constituted the origin of the Escuela Municipal de Arte Dramático (drama school), whose first director was Margarita Xirgu, in order to train the actors who would later become the ensemble of the Comedia Nacional.9 In the context of both the Comedia Nacional and the Federación Uruguaya de Teatros Independientes, the vast majority of Shaw plays were staged during the 1950s–1960s, especially under the leadership of Juan José Brenta (1921–2000), who directed most of them.

Foreign Companies In mid-1937, the theatre company led by Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu staged a vast repertory at the Teatro 18 de Julio in downtown Montevideo. In addition to acting in plays by Federico García Lorca, she played the title role in their production of Santa Juana, which had premiered in Spain a decade earlier.10 In the days leading to the premiere, the play received significant media attention, and a number of preview notes were published in the local press. Unfortunately, as the bibliographical record indicates, many of these pieces were not signed. The article in El País (the most widely circulated newspaper in the country) praises the playwright for his productive longevity, for he wrote the play when he was almost seventy, yet he displays “the force of imagination, the clean vividness and the thrilling dexterity of youth which, by virtue of a rare gift, has never abandoned the illustrious Irish writer.”11 The action, which Shaw had organized after careful study of the historical sources, “weaves a plot of six acts [sic] and an epilogue that is full of juicy vitality, where Shaw mixes genres from stylized realism to the grotesque and pure idealism.” The critic also comments that all the aesthetic considerations must be taken together with the “sharp pins that Shaw sticks into the powerful [individuals], religion, human nature, and even his own England.” But in a country with a strong Catholic cultural background, the religious element could not be overlooked. In that respect, the review notes that “certain expressions, especially in the epilogue, suggest that Shaw wanted to clear any shadow of a doubt with the positive statement that it was really God’s hand that played a part in those events.” This is not to imply that even though “Shaw manages to make us see the invisible and show the miracle permanently,” he does not utilize “the most brutal sarcasm against those who rule humankind in the name of a God that has denied his assistance.” This, in turn,

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has a number of technical and stylistic counterparts, expressed in terms of “broader brush strokes, with less detail” and “a special, extraterrestrial aura that, in the end, transforms all the other characters and Joan herself into puppets of her secret fate.” Almost a decade later, the critic Carlos Martínez Moreno considered that the greatest successes in the 1947 season were achieved by two Italian companies. One of them, led by Emma Gramatica, staged La Professione della signora Warren.12 The reviews display much of the interest that Montevideo theatregoers had both in the controversial play and in the famed Italian diva. More specifically, the most detailed critical piece, published in El País, provides a thorough analysis of the significance of a play that the author himself calls “unpleasant,” which refers not to the play but to the crudeness of its theme, which leads to distressing situations whose dramatic nature—far from the pathos expressed by the musical verse and the tragic gesture, by the recitative attitude and the shallow emphasis—shudders at the unassailable simplicity of reality, of bitter, real situations.13

The article goes on to comment how “prudes may find the play offensive,” yet audiences are enthralled by the “deep pathos of these beings that are shackled by the manacles of money as the only solution to their existence.” The stylistic repertoire of the dramatist is summarized by “stark contrast, which is the vitalizing spark of Shaw’s long discussions—even a little longer than usual in Italian, for obvious reasons.” It is perhaps worth noting that in all of these articles, and for many years to come, Shaw is referred to in the Uruguayan press—and in the press of practically all Spanish-speaking countries, as other chapters in this volume attest to—as a British or English playwright. This does not mean that his views on the “Irish Question,” especially during the years between the Great War and the proclamation of the Irish Free State, did not enjoy substantial media coverage in Spain and Latin America.14

Shaw’s Plays Produced by the Comedia Nacional The Comedia Nacional produced two Shaw plays during the 1950s: Arms and the Man (1951) and Candida (1959)—the first ever Shaw plays staged by this company. Although other playwrights saw more of their plays staged during these years, both productions were highly anticipated and, as we shall see, received a great deal of media and critical attention.

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Indeed, the staging of a Shaw play in 1951 by the National Company raised many expectations in Montevideo. Numerous articles were written in anticipation in different newspapers, where critics usually displayed a profound knowledge and understanding of the Shavian canon: Comedia Nacional premieres tonight, for the first time in its four-year tenure, a play by Bernard Shaw. Its English title is Arms and the Man (a phrase borrowed from the Aeneid) and it has variously been translated into Spanish as Héroes, El Héroe y el Soldado. In the Comedia Nacional production, they opted for the title El Soldado de Chocolate (the title of the Oscar Straus operetta based on the play), which is well-known by the public and it is close to the actual meaning of the play. Director Orestes Caviglia, speaks enthusiastically about the text. […] In Bernard Shaw, as in any first-rate drama, there is a phenomenal balance between form and content; everything that Shaw wanted to say more than 50 years ago remains completely valid, and even more poignant on occasion, in the world of today. And as regards the theatrical effectiveness of El Soldado de Chocolate, here we find a remarkable vehicle for actors who take advantage of it and, needless to say, evidence to deny the myth that Shaw is nothing but talk.15

The critic of El País also acknowledged the excellence and relevance of the text—as well as the happy occurrence that this should be the first production of a Shaw play by Comedia Nacional.16 The review had to make readers aware that El Soldado de Chocolate was the same play they may have heard of by other titles (Héroes, El héroe y el soldado, and De armas tomar). The translation, by Mariano de Vedia y Mitre, is considered “acceptable,” in that it is faithful to the original and does not contain egregious errors, but it lacks the “sharpness and colorfulness” of Shaw’s text. Apart from these introductory remarks, the piece in El País praises the Shavian text because “even though the events of its subject matter are now in the books,” the comedy remains “fresh and relevant” in its treatment of “romantic fantasy in love and war, the cult of a special kind of heroism and a special kind of femininity.” Indeed, even though audiences surely feel complacently distant from the questions that Shaw satirizes, “the satire is exercised with so penetrating and realistic a knowledge of human beings” that it “supersedes the circumstantial and confers the play true lasting relevance.” When it comes to describing the characters, the critic insists that— despite their inherent traits—they completely escape “simplistic

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typecasting” and “neutral symbolism.” He finds them “full of life, of vital contradiction, of personality. The author conceives them and casts them into the realm of his humor, where he [Shaw] is able to reconcile his lucid perception of human nature and his deep sympathy for it.” In sum, El País ended its encomium by noting that “the few flaws of the version that we have been offered in truth have more to do with the staging and the performance than with the text.” Another review of this production was published in El Debate under the title: “La Comedia Nacional Estrenó Anoche una Obra de Bernard Shaw.”17 As in the El País piece, the fact that Shaw had died the previous year called for a general appraisal of his figure as a dramatist. He revived the English theatre that had been so badly damaged by puritanism. The great Irish writer always presented, with energy and wit, social and human problems that he addressed free from prejudice and even against systematic thinkers or speculative humanists like Montaigne. He did not devise an ideology of scandal, like many erroneously thought. […] Civilization has its commonplaces and myths. And Bernard Shaw stands against them, with such an unfailing and tenacious intent to promote free criticism, a revision of the classical ideas that old authors had been following for so long with recurrent devices—thereby creating a type of drama without any social or human repercussions.

Indeed, “a whole system of ideas crumbles with Shaw.” Along that line, he is placed on the same plane as others who played the same role, like “Aristophanes, Molière, Quevedo, and Larra.” Audiences laugh with El Soldado de Chocolate, but they also “laugh reflexively,” because Shaw’s is a “drama of ideas and concepts, of critical sharpness.” Here, the playwright does not engage in “dialectical juggling, as in many of his other plays.” He exposes the themes “without histrionics, without the airs of a preacher, and without an angry critique of traditional ethical values.” The play itself was also framed as a comedy that attacks “romantic idealization, hypocrisy, especially as regards sentimental issues and fake heroism.” In particular, the critic of El Debate highlights the “felicitous” third act, where “conflict peaks, ranging from psychological drama and social satire.” In strict terms, El Soldado de Chocolate is not an anti-war play. It is “a satire against militarism, against the mystique of heroism, against an exalted concept of national greatness secured at gunpoint.” And it is also a derisive, caustic critique of those who seek to earn a badge with their

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actions on the battlefield, “even though his adventures somewhat resemble Don Quixote tilting at windmills.” Shaw’s characters also deserve further commentary in the El Debate review, for the author seems to enjoy “placing his characters in compromising situations they cannot escape with mere complacent phrases of kindness or by using graceful, ornamental expressions.” But perhaps the greatest compliment to Shaw is paid in the closing paragraph, because the critic acknowledges that this play “is not among the best in his extensive canon: there must be at least ten that are superior to this one in ideological content, in spiritual quality, in conceptual density, or in the importance of their themes.” Still, there is no doubt that El Soldado de Chocolate is an “appealing” play full of “poignant talent.” A month later, Martínez Moreno wrote another review of the play in Marcha, along the same lines that the aforementioned critics had followed.18 For example, he argues that “despite being written in 1894, the play has remained fresh and relevant throughout time.” It is interesting to note, however, how Martínez Moreno stresses the technical difficulties in staging this version of Arms and the Man, because the play is so wisely devised, and written with the trademark Shavian intellectual brilliance. Such a mature and civilized piece, so fair and rich in intentions, so full of penetrating dialogue, necessitated an equally mature effort so as to present its full value in the right light. The efforts by the Comedia Nacional— inspired by the learned and pure devotion of Orestes Caviglia—were not always successful enough to honor such excellence.

Eight years later, in 1959, the Comedia Nacional produced Cándida. Reviews, especially one in El País, also included a sound scholarly analysis of the play.19 Thus, it is argued that this play “from the early period … showcases the imposing influence of Ibsen’s drama, an influence Shaw deliberately tried to import into the British theatre as a liberating force.” As a consequence, Shaw “combatted the totemic superstition of ‘la pièce bien faite’” and declared that there was only future “for the drama of ideas.” But what separated Shaw from Ibsen, according to the critic in El País, was that Shaw indeed “followed in Ibsen’s footsteps, but with a display of dialectic and rhetoric that the Norwegian playwright never allowed himself, thereby transforming the problem play into the drama of ideas.” The review then goes on to include some references to the best-known scholarship on Shaw at the time (Eric Bentley and James Huneker) and

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quotes at length Shaw’s reply to Huneker when asked about the “chiaroscuro” that Candida seems to represent—a member of “the breed of cruel and greedy females who are irresistibly charming nonetheless.” Shaw’s words, as usual, are illuminating: Don’t ask me conundrums about that very immoral female, Candida. […] Candida is as unscrupulous as Siegfried: Morell himself sees that “no law will bind her.” She seduces Eugene just exactly as far as it is worth her while to seduce him. She is a woman without “character” in the conventional sense. Without brains and strength of mind she would be a wretched slattern or voluptuary. She is straight for natural reasons, not for conventional ethical ones. Nothing can be more cold-bloodedly reasonable than her farewell to Eugene: “All very well, my lad; but I don’t quite see myself at fifty with a husband of thirty-five.” It is just this freedom from emotional slop, this unerring wisdom on the domestic plane, that makes her so completely mistress of the situation. Then consider the poet. She makes a man of him finally by showing him his own strength—that David must do without poor Uriah’s wife. […] The New York hausfrau thinks it a little paradise; but the poet rises up and says, “Out then, into the night with me”—Tristan’s holy night. If this greasy fool’s paradise is happiness, then I give it to you with both hands, “life is nobler than that.” That is the “poet’s secret.” The young things in front weep to see the poor boy going out lonely and brokenhearted in the cold night to save the proprieties of New England Puritanism; but he is really a god going back to his heaven, proud, unspeakably contemptuous of the “happiness” he envied in the days of his blindness, clearly seeing that he has higher business on hand than Candida.20

Even though this review deems—somewhat misguidedly—Shaw’s roll of female characters as evidence of his “misogynism,” its depth and level of detail speaks volumes about the respect of critics for Shaw’s dramatic ideas and their manifestation on the stage.

Bernard Shaw Staged by Independent Theatre Companies The history of Shaw productions by independent theatre companies during the 1950s covers much of the Shavian canon, which attests to the growing popularity of his plays. These include Pygmalion (1953, 1959),

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Mrs Warren’s Profession (1955), You Never Can Tell (1957), Widowers’ Houses (1958), and Saint Joan (1960). The earliest record of a Shaw play being staged by an independent theatre company is a 1953 production of Pigmalión. Directed by Juan José Brenta, it was staged between 10 and 14 June at El Galpón by the Club de Teatro. As we shall see with similar theatre groups, as these were still in their infancy, they could not afford to perform for more than a few nights. Two years later, also at El Galpón, there was a very successful staging of Androcles y el león, again under the directorship of Juan José Brenta.21 The review in El Debate extolled the figure of Shaw by saying that “at all events Shaw belongs to the group of men who, by the sheer magnitude of their work, the depth of their thought, and the honesty of their outlook, are able to determine the perspective of the opinions of their contemporaries about themselves, without having to wait for history to judge them.”22 A few days later, also in El Debate, another piece comments on Shaw’s dramaturgy and explains how “despite the multiplicity of forms by which it is expressed, Shaw’s plays have a profound unity. Above all else, Shaw is a moralist, but he is not optimistic about humankind. There is a deep melancholy behind the roughness and cynicism that he is pleased to show in his characters. But he also admits that they are not the only ones to blame, but also society, with its sentimental and intellectual prejudice.”23 Two years later, in 1955, Teatro Moderno produced La profesión de la señora Warren. Juan José Brenta would direct his third Shaw play on this occasion. By then, his previous work had become a well-known touchstone for theatregoers, for the reviews mentioned “the farcical comedy of Androcles and the Lion” in order to stress the contrast with this play, described as “a strong piece of the early Shaw—the Shaw of admonishing realism.”24 The review in Marcha highlighted the “solid scaffolding of this type of theatre,” where every single character “shines within their domain. Mrs Warren still practices her profession, which will forever remain damnable yet reasonable while the social structure continues to impose itself; and her daughter’s scruples will not make her change her mind while the fundamental rationale for her profession remains unaltered—the root of capitalism itself. […] One need only look at the long road of Mrs Warren’s life, which can still enthrall an audience in 1955.” The production received lukewarm praise as “an acceptable take on this important text; there is little else they could have done. Let us say without circumlocutions that this is a play for actors, and that nobody in the ensemble possesses the faculties for great performances […] but the

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interest of the play and the acceptable version make it worth a night at the theatre.” Towards the end of 1957, Teatro Moderno announced the premiere of Nunca puede saberse (You Never Can Tell). The preview piece mentions that “the deep and scintillating satire of the Irish genius” deals with a new familial order “that has been shattered by the emergence of feminism—a new social criterion that goes against turn-of-the-century conservatism.” The play was directed, as usual, by Juan José Brenta, while Mario Galup and Ema Varzi were responsible for stage design and costume design, respectively.25 The later review in El Debate was limited to outlining the plot of the play and to superficial comments about women’s emancipation as a pressing issue in nineteenth-century England.26 A few months later, however, the same newspaper published an essay that reflected at length on Shaw’s drama.27 In it, we find prophetic remarks that have not stood the test of time. Specifically, the critic acknowledges Shaw’s role in “changing the literary/dramatic taste of the public, but I should be surprised if he remained popular in ten years’ time.” According to this essay, Shaw’s “causticity, his iconoclastic attitude, his opposition to routine conventions, his return to Ibsen” are losing the transcendental value they had until then. And, paradoxically, the critic concludes that Shaw “is a comedian and a satirist endowed with rigorous reasoning powers that he uses to fight trite and puerile ideals … but his works are getting old.” In March 1958, Teatro del Pueblo produced another Shaw play, this time Casa de los viudos (Widowers’ Houses). The play elicited interesting commentaries in a thorough review in El Debate.28 Although the critic finds fault with the play because “it was the first play Shaw wrote … the virtues that the Irish playwright and philosopher would include in a more perfected manner in his later plays” are easily discernible. But precisely the fact that it is a first play makes “the swift dialogue, the spot-on satire, and the round characters” all the more surprising. These qualities make the play “relevant for the present-day audience.” In general terms, the reviewer focuses on the “structural weaknesses” of the play, because “the first act is written in a different manner to the other two”—and also on the “reiteration of melodramatic situations in the second and third acts.” In this regard, the version by Teatro del Pueblo (directed by Brenta, who by then had become the country’s premier Shaw director) “throws in relief the virtues of Shavian prose, while its defects remain largely unnoticed.” The director was singled out for the success of the production, and Casa de los

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viudos was considered “one of the greatest milestones in his otherwise uneven career.” It is worthy of note that the critic in El Debate is clearly knowledgeable about Shaw because he explains that Blanche and Trench “are the prototypical Shavian couple, where the woman is the leading force and the one who, despite seeming weak, will make all the decisions—whereas the man will be the passive party … Don Juan in our times is actually Doña Juana, as Shaw will later write in his preface to Man and Superman.” The following year, in 1959, Teatro Moderno again produced a Shaw play at Palacio Salvo. Pigmalión was the piece of choice this time. The review in El País stressed the paradoxical success of the play on a global scale.29 Indeed, “when Shaw wrote a comedy in which humor stemmed largely from the phonetic varieties of the English language, he may have thought the play was untranslatable. … However, Pygmalion was to become one of Shaw’s most widely disseminated plays in other languages, one of the most accessible to all audiences, and one that does not feel attached to a specific Victorian, English reality.” After all, despite the nuances that are lost every time a foreign substandard accent substitutes for cockney, “Pygmalion has other comic merits beyond phonetic contrasts or lexical extravagance.” In fact, wordplay and other linguistic tricks are only apt pretexts for “a violent satire of English society and some of its greatest vices: privilege, prejudice, snobbery.” Thanks to this technique, Shaw manages to create “one of the finest versions of the theme that presides over most of his works: the battle of the sexes.” April 1960 witnessed the premiere of Santa Juana by a Uruguayan company. The Club de Teatro production was also noteworthy because it was directed by José Estruch, a Spaniard who had gone into exile in the country after the Spanish Civil War. Theatre critic Carlos Martínez Moreno, in his Marcha review, was of the opinion that no ensemble in Uruguay at the time could successfully take on Saint Joan—although he held Estruch in high esteem as a creative director.30 Martínez Moreno quotes Eric Bentley as saying that Saint Joan is “an attempt to achieve different types of syntheses, one of those recurring Shavian attempts at combining into one play what has been boiling in his mind through a number of earlier plays, so as to join them and supersede them.” As usual with many other adaptations of the play (in the original English and in foreign languages), there are two common caveats that critics like to point out. First, that theatre companies do not normally have enough actors so that each role can be played by a single person—in addition,

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Shaw’s highly rhetorical style posed a great challenge for a company that was not “trained in the art of speaking; that is, they are not consummate experts in lengthy recitation.” Second, directors must grapple with Shaw’s tendency to micro-manage the production (and publication) of his plays, as expressed in “stage directions … long prefaces … and detailed physical descriptions of his characters.” According to Martínez Moreno, regardless of whether one believes that a critic “should have an ideal staging in mind,” when critics read Shaw, they become “crusaders for the intentions of the author—as scrupulously detailed in the dramatic text.” This realization perhaps explains why Martínez Moreno is not too harsh on “the liberties the director took with the text,” which were few—although the same cannot be said of the mise-en-scène and scenography. As the critic puts it, “in Saint Joan, Shaw is concerned … with the medieval aura of its theme, the clash between timeless sanctity and run-of-the-mill French feudalism. All of this necessitates a style that—if not weightier—should be less immaterial than in this version, this Saint Joan of low ceilings and witty scenography.” Still, the review ends on a quasi-hagiographic note that extolls the addition of another classic play (“for who can now question Shaw’s status as a classic?”) to the repertory of Club de Teatro—and welcomes a production that elevated the artistic quality of the Festival Uruguayo-Argentino de Teatro Independiente: “Santa Juana is worth a pyre.”

Radio Adaptations of Bernard Shaw Plays The state-run Servicio de Difusión Radioeléctrica (Radioelectric Broadcast Service, or SODRE), founded in 1929, adapted several Shaw plays for radio broadcast. In the 1953–1954 season they presented Así engañó él al esposo de ella (How He Lied to Her Husband), and four other plays were aired between 1955 and 1959: El buen rey Carlos (In Good King Charles’s Golden Days), O’Flaherty, VC, El hombre del destino (The Man of Destiny), and Cándida. El buen rey Carlos was revived in 1961—together with Santa Juana.31 Unfortunately, the SODRE archives are in deplorable condition and are not indexed or catalogued in any systematic way. In fact, researchers who have been able to access their document repositories complain that most items are now in a state of decay and neglect—not to mention that the security clearance and secrecy surrounding the archives is well beyond

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what one would expect for this kind of items.32 Thus the author has been unable to gather further information on the radio adaptations cited above.

References to Bernard Shaw in marcha Aside from the play reviews discussed in the previous sections, there exist a number of scattered references to Bernard Shaw in the Uruguayan press. The majority of these were published in the weekly Marcha, starting in the late 1930s, when it was founded by Carlos Quijano. This section, a brief survey of what was newsworthy about Shaw in Uruguay up until the 1960s, will hopefully shed light on the reception of his works and ideas. On 4 August 1939, the UK film version of Pigmalión premiered at Metro Cinema in Montevideo. The review by Arturo Despouey mentions that “it is no use repeating here how G. B. Shaw adapted” the myth of Galatea to a “question of linguistic sculpture”—it is certainly telling that he should consider this a well-known fact—which he utilizes “to laugh at his fellow countrymen with the mirth of a buccaneer.” For the critic, even if one takes into consideration that “the phonetic issues make it practically untranslatable, Pygmalion has been translated very, very poorly.”33 Nevertheless, when the cinema season came to a close, Pigmalión was regarded as the best adaptation of a play, and Wendy Hiller was singled out as the best actress that year. In Despouey’s words, “the force of a great literary talent on the silver screen has been attested undoubtedly with the sweeping success of Shaw’s Pygmalion.”34 As happened elsewhere, Shaw was also popular as an eccentric jester. That is why collections of his quips and anecdotes were published regularly: for example, when he answered a curtain call at the premiere of Back to Methuselah [sic] and “one lone ‘boo’ apparently carried loudly over the audience applause.” Shaw immediately responded, “My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?”35 The premiere in question was actually that of Arms and the Man, hence the widespread habit of misquoting Shaw and of ascribing to him things he never did or said. This was not the only occasion on which Shavian witticisms were echoed in the Uruguayan press. In 1943, Pierre Sandahl recounts some anecdotes filled with the “irony of Bernard Shaw.”36 For example, on the occasion of a gala banquet, Shaw “excused himself because of his old age” and because “he was quite an Irishman” and was afraid his “scruples would get the better part of him when the King is toasted.” This idiosyncratic

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attitude explains the existence of “Shawian [sic] theatre just as there exists a Shakespearean theatre. The Oxford dictionary now lists the adjective Shawian. It is the first time ever that a British author has given a word to the dictionary in his lifetime.” In November 1939 appeared a review of the 11 August premiere of In Good King Charles’s Golden Days at the Malvern Festival.37 His “history lesson in three scenes” (the subtitle was in fact “A True History that Never Happened”), imbued with “the youthful agility of good old Shaw,” was considered “the best show of the year at the famous Malvern festival.” The critic in Marcha exposes how “the author sticks to historical facts less than ever and utilizes anachronism deliberately.” Furthermore, Shaw is said to “laugh in the face of allegedly unmovable dramatic principles” and, as a consequence, “Charles II is not presented as the sensuous, frivolous monarch” but “a man more serious and reflective, sentimentally faithful to his wife.” Shaw, in a way, “has made his protagonist into a theoretician of parliamentary monarchy amidst a firework display of paradox.” On the whole, it is important to note that most of the review comprises second-­ hand information “based on [British] chronicles.” When the company, led by Spaniards Catalina Bárcena, Josefina Díaz, and Manuel Collado, staged Pigmalión, critic Carlos Martínez Moreno complained about the adaptation of the broad Cockney accent of the London working class into Madrid slum slang (“caló”38), which he deemed a misguided revision.39 In addition, given that the movie version had been recently revived, it was only natural that audiences would establish parallels between the play and Leslie Howard’s version. These parallels, however, “were perhaps useless and, aside from that, an impossibility because one end of the comparison is Brouta’s translation.”40 Shaw was also known in Uruguay as an advocate of didacticism in literature, especially in the case of the theatre. For example, in a 1942 article, critic and playwright Denis Molina writes that he “agrees with Bernard Shaw … that the organization of theatre [e.g., a national theatre] is more of an influential factor in the education of a nation than the school or universities systems.”41 The biography of Shaw by Frank Harris in Spanish translation (1944) also garnered further commentary by critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal, although he focuses especially on aspects relating to his scholarly career (Rodríguez Monegal later became professor of Latin American contemporary literature at Yale University):

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Almost twelve years after the original edition, this Argentinian translation is published … there is a French translation from 1938 and a pirated Chilean edition from 1938 also. … This translation outdoes the French one and sticks closely to the text by Harris-Shaw, but there is a typo in Shaw’s post-­ scriptum, written in 1931—not in 1935, as stated on page 332. There exist better photographs of Shaw than the ones included here.42

There was also an indirect discussion of Shaw’s Pygmalion in a review of the film Kitty (1945), directed by Mitchell Leisen. The review, also by Emir Rodríguez Monegal and titled “Pigmalión sin[without] Bernard Shaw,” argues that the film, based on Rosamond Marshall’s eponymous novel, “unashamedly reproduces the central plot of Pygmalion.” When comparing both works, Monegal suggests that “Bernard Shaw is a creator; his Pygmalion may not be a masterpiece, but it is a valuable literary work, while it seems evident that Marshall’s novel has nothing to do with literature.”43 Another milestone in this compilation of Shavian references in the Uruguayan press occurred when Gabriel Pascal’s film version of Caesar and Cleopatra premiered in the country. The review in Marcha draws heavily from considerations about Shaw’s playwriting and his other plays— whether adapted for the screen or not: One should discard altogether any romantic imagery that the title may suggest for those who do not know the author well. This is because Bernard Shaw has systematically refused to be a romantic, and a large portion of the originality of his plays depends on problems being solved on stage without any concessions to the conventions of theatre and novels. This stance is confirmed in Candida, where the protagonist, having to choose between a sensible husband and a poet lover, chooses the former; it is confirmed in Saint Joan, where the author does away with the legendary aura that the centuries, patriotism, and religious zealotry have bestowed upon the heroine; it is confirmed in Major Barbara, where Shaw takes the Salvation Army, crime, an arms manufacturer, and a professor of Greek so that he can laugh at them all and state, among other notions, that the Salvation Army should accept money regardless of who offers it—even their enemies. […] One must outline these general principles of Shaw’s works, not only to make it clear that Caesar and Cleopatra is not the story that the average cinema-­ goer would like to see, but also to stress the fact that you will not find the best virtues of Shaw’s theatre in it. Devoid of social satire, there remains a historical evocation of sorts that is not meant to interpret events, but merely

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to describe characters—love and passion being little more than rhetorical devices here.44

The critic was not happy with the film—he believed that the marriage of Shaw and cinema was disadvantageous for both, and that Caesar and Cleopatra did not reach the artistic heights of Pygmalion. He also argues that Shaw had not understood that cinematography possessed its own language and that audiences were accustomed to it: Shaw should write true cinematic adaptations of his plays, he concludes. One renowned Shaw specialists was journalist Mauricio Müller who, under the sobriquet “Verdoux,” reported on the international success of “Don Juan in Hell.”45 Three British actors “exiled in Hollywood: Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Laughton, and Charles Boyer” made up a dramatic quartet alongside Agnes Moorehead. The stage was completely bare— “the men in smoking jackets, the lady in a night dress.” The review mentions that “the play has been on tour to 50 different cities in the USA and the UK (but neither to New York or London) to much public and critical acclaim.” Müller shows his admiration for Shaw in his description of the stage piece. As he puts it, this “long-winded piece of obstinate fantasy that Bernard Shaw inserted between the second and third acts of Man and Superman is an example of incorrigible genius.” It is a “dream-sequence embedded without any other considerations in the middle of a play that is long enough as it is. It deals seriously with philosophy, religion, the battle of the sexes—while remaining a self-contained, captivating piece of Shavian drama.” In sum, “Don Juan in Hell” is considered an “intellectual puzzle” because it is the quintessential token of how “Shaw is able to convey his dialectics without theatricality, and yet he manages to enthrall his audience.” Secondary sources also stirred the curiosity of journalists in Uruguay. For example, Emir Rodríguez Monegal also reviewed Shaw and Society: An Anthology and a Symposium, where “men who knew Shaw and were strongly influenced by him have contributed special chapters about his life and his impact on society.”46 The portrait of Shaw that the book paints can be summed up as [t]he central and coherent Shaw, the one who in the latter days of the Victorian Era took to the platform in order to free people from their prejudices, to demolish the conventions of a capitalist society, to clear the path for

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the bloodless labor revolution. Shaw became the greatest, most brilliant and persuasive orator among the small Fabian group and—together with Beatrice and Sydney Webb—laid the economic and administrative foundations of British socialism.47

The reviewer reveals a great deal of foresight in arguing that “although only the playwright is likely to survive the test of time,” there is no gainsaying that the figure of the Fabian Shaw remains exceedingly stimulating and “is worthy of a place alongside the other dimensions of his long biography.” Shaw’s reputation in Uruguay, and in the Spanish-speaking world at large, remained prestigious and relatively stable, even after his death. To quote but a representative case, in 1960 critic Carlos Martínez Moreno wrote an indignant review of a production he had seen in Paris at L’Athénée Louis Jouvet. This was Cher menteur (a French translation by Jean Cocteau of Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar), starring María Casares and Pierre Brasseur. The review was titled “Difamación de G.B.S.” (A libel against G.B.S.).48 Martínez Moreno faults the play and the production on three grounds. First, because the very idea of dramatizing epistolary exchanges “seems to ignore the fact that the humor and spontaneity of the witticisms in their letters do not necessarily remain intact in spoken dialogue.” In addition, the only reason Cher menteur is successful (“even among critics”) is because of an “apocryphal superstition about Shaw’s sarcasm that lives on in France, even among the cultured classes. It is the type of reputation that is spread by magazines that collect his witticisms—whether real or attributed.” Lastly, the quality of the acting (and the casting) left much to be desired: “only an audience who does not know who GBS was can believe Pierre Brasseur’s Shaw”; there is not a single point of contact between “Brasseur, with his rustic overweight build and his vulgar gesticulation,” and Shaw—who goes from fifty-six to eighty-something years of age in the play—that Irishman who was “sinewy, blonde, scruffy, with bushy eyebrows and blue eyes, an ascetic build and steely style—as so many witnesses and documents have corroborated.” Although few Shaw plays were staged by Uruguayan companies during the period 1930–1960, the reviews and reports published in the press nonetheless attest to the notion that Shaw was a household name among the country’s critics and intellectuals, who are for the most part quite knowledgeable about the Irish playwright and his milieu. Of special interest are the pieces published by the prestigious weekly Marcha, well

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circulated in several countries of Latin America—although this in no way implies that Shaw was not mentioned in other press venues, as we have seen. It must be noted here that some of the articles discussed were selected for their authors’ literary and theatrical expertise, while many others were published unsigned. The Shavian works that were produced in the early stages of Uruguayan theatre seemed to pose a significant challenge that the country’s budding companies, still in their formative years, were not ready to take on. At any rate, the population of Uruguay at the time, with its high rates of literacy and with access to universal primary, secondary, and tertiary education, can certainly have been expected to enjoy Shaw’s works and ideas. On the whole, therefore, our research shows that Uruguayan audiences admired Shaw’s social critique, his irony, and his iconoclastic ideas.

Notes 1. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Inmortalidad de G.B.S.,” Número, December 1950, 592. All translations are by the editor. Only selected (and signed) articles in periodicals have been listed in the References section. The rest are cited in the relevant endnotes. 2. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “‘Bernard Shaw’, Frank Harris,” Marcha, 17 March, 1944, 15. 3. The Catholic Church and the State became formally separated by the Uruguayan Constitution of 1919. 4. Rosita Forbes, Tribuna Popular, 5 February, 1932, 8. Cited in Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, Historia Contemporánea del Uruguay (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo, 2004), 199. 5. La lucha obrera, December, 1931, 4. 6. See, for example, Roger Mirza, “Para una revisión de la historia del teatro uruguayo: desde los orígenes hasta 1900,” in Uruguay, imaginarios culturales: desde las huellas indígenas a la modernidad, eds. Hugo Achugar and Mabel Moraña (Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 2000), 183, 192. 7. Osvaldo Pellettieri y Roger Mirza, eds., Florencio Sánchez entre las dos orillas (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998). 8. For more on the origins and history of the Comedia Nacional, see the relevant section on their website at https://comedianacional.montevideo. gub.uy/institucional/los-­origenes (In Spanish). 9. Claudio Paolini, El teatro uruguayo y los pliegues del realismo (Montevideo: Delta, 2014), 10. 10. See Nieto Caballero in this volume. 11. El País, 4 August 1937, 11.

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12. Marcha, 26 December 1947, 16. 13. El País, 9 September 1947, 5. 14. Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, “Shaw’s Ireland (and the Irish Shaw) in the International Press (1914-1925),” in Audrey McNamara and Nelson Ritschell, eds. Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2020). 15. Marcha, 19 October 1951, 12. 16. El País, 22 October 1951, 18. 17. El Debate, 20 October 1951, 6. 18. Marcha, 16 November 1951, 11. 19. El País, 24 July 1959, 8. 20. This quotation appeared originally in James Huneker, Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 254–255. 21. El Debate, 5 September 1955, 5. 22. El Debate, 9 September 1955, 5. 23. El Debate, 16 September 1955, 5. 24. Marcha, 28 October 1955, 17. 25. El Debate, 27 June 1957, 5. 26. El Debate, 16 July 1957, 5. 27. El Debate, 20 September 1957, 5. 28. El Debate, 25 March 1958, 7. 29. El País, 8 August 1959, 12. 30. Marcha, 8 April 1960, 15. 31. Servicio de Difusión Radioeléctrica, su organización y cometidos. Memoria de la labor realizada entre 1930 y 1962. 32. Santos Melgarejo, Adriana. “La música en la radio oficial, 1973–1985. Prácticas discursivas en las emisoras radiofónicas estatales de Uruguay.” M.A. thesis. Universidad de la República (Uruguay). 2018, 23–27. 33. R. Arturo Despouey, Marcha, 4 August 1939, 16. 34. R. Arturo Despouey, Marcha, 29 December 1939, 14. 35. Marcha, 20 October 1939, 3. 36. Marcha, 9 April 1943, 11. 37. Marcha, 3 November de 1939, 16. 38. In a strict sense, “caló” refers to the less than homogeneous variety of Romani spoken in the Iberian Peninsula and France, although the word has acquired the general sense of jargon or slang, often with a negative connotation. 39. Marcha, 9 May 1940, 12. 40. It is evident that Brouta’s translation was not held in high esteem by Martínez Moreno. See Coll-Vinent in this volume. 41. Marcha, 6 February 1942, 8. 42. Marcha, 17 March 1944, 15.

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43. Marcha, 14 June 1946, 13. 44. Marcha, 18 March 1949, 12. 45. Marcha, 24 August 1951, 11. 46. C.E.M.  Joad, ed. Shaw and Society: An Anthology and a Symposium (London: Odhams Press, 1951), 4. 47. Marcha, 15 de enero de 1954, 15. 48. Carlos Martínez Moreno, “Difamación de G.B.S.,” Marcha, 4 November 1960, 12.

References Caetano, Gerardo, and José Rilla. 2004. Historia Contemporánea del Uruguay. Montevideo: Fin de Siglo. Despouey, R. Arturo. 1939a. ‘Pigmalión’, de Shaw. In Marcha I.7. ———. 1939b. Panorama cinematográfico. In Marcha I.28. Huneker, James. 1922. Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. New York: Scribner’s Sons. Joad, C.E.M., ed. 1951. Shaw and Society: An Anthology and a Symposium. London: Odhams Press. Martínez Moreno, Carlos. 1951. ‘El Soldado de Chocolate’ Una obra de Shaw. In Marcha XIII.599. ———. 1960a. Santa Juana, una prueba exorbitante. In Marcha XXI.1004. ———. 1960b. Difamación de G.B.S. In Marcha XXII.1033. Mirza, Roger. 2000. Para una revisión de la historia del teatro uruguayo: desde los orígenes hasta 1900. In Uruguay, imaginarios culturales: desde las huellas indígenas a la modernidad, ed. Hugo Achugar and Mabel Moraña. Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce. Molina, Denis. 1942. ¿Por qué dar semejante importancia al teatro? In Marcha IV.125. n/a. 1939. Nueva pieza de Shaw. In Marcha I.20. Paolini, Claudio. 2014. El teatro uruguayo y los pliegues del realismo. Montevideo: Delta. Pellettieri, Osvaldo, and Roger Mirza, eds. 1998. Florencio Sánchez entre las dos orillas. Buenos Aires: Galerna. Rodríguez Martín, Gustavo A. 2020. Shaw’s Ireland (and the Irish Shaw) in the International Press (1914–1925). In Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland, ed. Audrey McNamara and Nelson Ritschell. Palgrave: Cham. Rodríguez Monegal, Emir. 1944. ‘Bernard Shaw’, Frank Harris. In Marcha VI.225. ———. 1946. Pigmalión sin Bernard Shaw: ‘La bribona de armiño’. In Marcha VIII.334. ———. 1950. Inmortalidad de G.B.S. In Número 11. ———. 1954. Shaw Fabiano. In Marcha XV.704. Sandahl, Pierre. 1943. Ironías de Bernard Shaw. In Marcha V.179.

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Santos Melgarejo, Adriana. 2018. La música en la radio oficial, 1973–1985. Prácticas discursivas en las emisoras radiofónicas estatales de Uruguay. M.A. thesis. Universidad de la República (Uruguay). SODRE. 1963. Servicio de Difusión Radioeléctrica, su organización y cometidos. Memoria de la labor realizada entre 1930 y 1962. Montevideo: El Servicio. Verdoux (pen name of Mauricio Müller). 1951. Cuarteto Dramático. In Marcha XIII. 590.

CHAPTER 10

The Reception of Bernard Shaw’s Plays in Argentina Liliana B. López

Shaw’s dramatic works have been produced on the Argentinian stage for decades. There has practically always been one of his plays on the boards since the 1920s until the present, and the people of the theatre in Argentina—as well as critics and audiences—have been attracted to Shavian drama because the ideas and questions it poses have a universal appeal. Today, we can safely say that Shaw has superseded his own times, as it often happens with the classics. In addition, he has established numerous notions and situations whose artistic productivity greatly exceeds the sphere of theatre. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze how the reception of Shaw’s drama in Argentina was shaped by the differences and similarities between the professional and amateur companies that staged his plays. It will also focus on some of the challenges posed by translation, especially in relation to certain aspects of idiomatic language. Finally, the chapter delves into the resignification that the local historical context had in the reception of some specific productions that were reinterpreted by

L. B. López (*) Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_10

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audiences and critics as having concrete connections to the sociopolitical situation in the country. To begin with, it is important to note that one can only speak about an Argentinian theatre scene proper after 1910, approximately—a date that incidentally marks the first centennial of the May Revolution. Although there had been theatrical activity since colonial times, especially in Buenos Aires, not until that date do we find an autonomous theatre sector that was relatively free from the influence of political power.1 During the nineteenth century, political instability had a negative impact on the continuity of theatrical activity. However, this did not stop new local genres from emerging at this time, such as gaucho literature and the Criollo farce (sainete). Still, there is no denying that the local theatre scene was ultimately affirmed—for different reasons—with the turn of the century. Indeed, it was then that the latest European playwrights began to be known in Argentina, thanks to both foreign and local companies, while the record of local dramatic productions grew exponentially. In these hectic, early years of the twentieth century, we find a budding interest in Shaw’s works, with some of his plays being translated for the first time into Spanish in the country.2 Thus, the literary magazine Hebe published La profesión de la señora Warren (1918) and Mariano de Vedia y Mitre translated Arms and the Man (Héroes y hombres) in 1920. A few years later, in 1926, the first Shaw plays premiered in Argentina. First, actress Blanca Podestá (1889–1967) starred in the title role in Candida and the play was such a success that it would be produced for years to much critical acclaim. The production would also tour the country and, for example, received much praise during its short run at Teatro San Martín (San Miguel de Tucumán, September 1926). Artistic director Alberto Ballerini was commended for his scenic design while Podestá “once again received the well-deserved applause of the audience for her notable performance.”3 Even though this chapter focuses on the reception of Shaw’s plays in later years, a brief chronological account of the main Shaw productions from 1926 to the 1960s is in order and will attest to the continuity and ongoing interest mentioned at the outset. This chronological account is divided into a series of geographical areas within the theatre scene in Argentina.4 Indeed, the theatre scene in the country—particularly in Buenos Aires, where the majority of productions are held—is not homogeneous. There exists, first of all, a professional space that is linked to a lucrative vision of

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the theatre business. Next, we have an independent theatre, especially from the 1930s onward, which emerged as an opposing force to the professional circuit. In addition, there also exists an official theatre that plays the self-assigned role of guardian of a valuable cultural tradition. Lastly, one cannot forget the productions by foreign companies that served as an external stimulus to the endeavors of all sorts of national companies. Let us provide a brief overview of the role (and Shavian connections) of these different theatre spheres outside what we call “the professional space.” Independent theatre in Argentina emerged in the early twentieth century, and had a tremendous impulse when Leónidas Barletta founded Teatro del Pueblo [Theatre of the People] in 1930. Independent theatre in Argentina (Teatro del Pueblo and other groups with a similar outlook) applied their “didactic model” to different poetics, such as neocostumbrism (a contemporary take on the depiction of local archetypes and their social environment), farce, or the drama of ideas.5 This is the framework, for example, of the 1950 production of Vencidos (Overruled) by Florencio Sánchez’s Teatro Libre. Teatro Nacional Cervantes, founded in 1921, remains the only national theatre in the country and the symbol of official theatre in Argentina.6 Brainchild of Spanish actress María Guerrero and her husband, Spanish impresario Fernando Díaz de Mendoza, the couple also invested their own money to make this project viable. A law passed in 1933 effectively gave birth to Teatro Nacional de la Comedia, the national company, which would have Teatro Cervantes as its headquarters. This company has always represented the official vision of dramatic art in Argentina—the first Shaw play staged at Teatro Cervantes being Fascinación [The Philanderer] (1951 and 1953). As regards foreign companies, they have been a major influence in Argentinian theatre since the early days, especially in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the Argentinian “belle époque encouraged cultural activity.”7 In this context, and although much of this cultural activity slowed down after the Great War, Margarita Xirgu starred in the title role of Santa Juana in Buenos Aires in 1937—after her company had toured Peru and Uruguay. In later times, foreign companies continued to serve as introducers of new dramatists and plays from overseas. A case in point is the 1966 production of Village Wooing by the Brenda Bruce Company, directed by Roy Rich. As readers can surmise by now, Shaw did not receive much attention from Argentinian companies until the 1950s. However, there was a

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remarkable surge in the number of Shaw plays staged in Argentina in the 1960s.8 The prestigious cultural magazine Sur, founded and directed by Victoria Ocampo, noted this phenomenon in an article by Jorge Cruz: It is funny how several companies presented Shaw plays recently: Caesar and Cleopatra (Delia Garcés), Major Barbara (Los Comediantes), Man and Superman, which was in my opinion the best show of the year, presented by the Comedia Nacional under the directorship of Orestes Caviglia, and Saint Joan (Club de Teatro del Uruguay)—not to mention the revival, at the beginning of the year, of Candida by La Máscara.9

The premiere of Man and Superman was not without controversy due to censorship, which resulted in director Orestes Caviglia (and the rest of the cast) resigning. On the occasion of Caviglia’s passing, in 1971, critic and theatre historian Luis Ordaz described the embarrassing events in a biographical note about the director published in Talía: Between 1950 and 1955 he directed the Comedia Nacional del Uruguay and, in 1956 he took up the directorship of Comedia Nacional Argentina. Under Caviglia’s leadership our national theatre had a brilliant period that was violently cut short when, in 1960, he reacted against the various disagreements and pressure from the official regime that interfered with and hampered his work. He submitted his resignation to the Director de Cultura, stating that “I have come to the sad conclusion that you and I understand the Theatre differently.” Note how he capitalizes “Theatre.” And he went on to say, so as not to leave any doubts, “For you it is just a matter of small politics. For me, it is the greatest form of art.” His moral authority was so great that the entire cast also resigned: Milagros de la Vega, Inda Ledesma, Violeta Antier, Ernesto Bianco, Corrado Corradi, Jorge Rivera López, Lalo Hartich, and the rest of the ensemble who were staging Shaw’s Man and Superman. This is a play that seemed “dangerous” to the Director de Cultura at the time, and it unleashed a head-on clash between two opposing, well-defined views.10

This episode concerned the fact that, as part of the play program, spectators were given extracts of “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion” by John Tanner. The Director General de Cultura (at the Ministry of Education) deemed its distribution dangerous, according to the Conintes Plan for National Security.11 The government official argued that it was his duty to ban any performance that attacked political

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institutions, and in this perspective did not imply an act of censorship.12 The official theatre had to wait until 2001 to stage Man and Superman. After it premiered at Teatro San Martín, critic Ernesto Schóo wrote a review entitled “Even after his death, Shaw is always newsworthy”: Despite the fifty-two years that have elapsed since his death, Shaw continues to captivate the imagination of humankind, even if it is because one of the most popular musical comedies of all time, My Fair Lady, is based on his Pygmalion. And right here, in Buenos Aires, Man and Superman is one of the most successful shows running at the San Martín at the moment.13

For actor and director Norma Aleandro, Shaw’s drama was unfinished business that she needed to tackle: Shaw had interested me as an author my entire life. […] That’s why when Kive Staiff offered to let me direct Man and Superman, I did not hesitate to accept. […] The author fulfils an ambitious plan in the play: the search for the Life Force that leads to the creation of a perfect man, the theory of the anti-Don Juan, putting the future of the human race first instead of the liberty of instincts, as the Renaissance suggested. And, above all else, he intends to shock audiences, fight the commonplace ideas of those who think they are in the right, demolish their foundations to watch them flinch uneasily. […] What matters to me is to make his philosophy clear.14

In the context of official theatre companies, there were productions of Shaw plays that represented true landmarks in the local scene. One of them was the 1981 production of Pygmalion at the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, directed by Rodolfo Graziano. The text was adapted by Manuel Barberá, and Guillermo de la Torre was in charge of both the staging and lighting. Since Pygmalion shared the venue with El conventillo de la Paloma, by Alberto Vacarezza (albeit on different days), critic and researcher Raún Castagnino noted in an article in La Prensa that Be that as it may—whether coincidental or planned—those interested in speech impediments shall find rare case studies when they attend the shows at the Cervantes.15

Without a doubt, the most emblematic production of a Shaw play on the official theatre circuit took place in 1982, with the premiere of Santa Juana at the Teatro Municipal General San Martín, under the directorship

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of independent actor Alejandra Boero. The renowned theatre critic Gerardo Fernández translated the text, and it was edited in the corresponding annals of the Teatro Municipal General San Martín. The Introduction, also by Fernández, contains a biographical note on the author and his most notable works—both dramatic and critical—later to focus more specifically on Santa Juana. He would pay special attention to the trial scene: Shaw sticks with admirable humility to historical data, especially in the trial scene, where he follows the accounts of the records of Joan’s trial to the letter. Yet he always tries to rescue the simple humanity of the title character, knocking her off the pedestal, avoiding her immutable image as an icon—all of this with a style that swings between emotion and reason, a style that foreshadows Brecht’s detachment. Thus, he manages to make Joan appear as what she really was: a simple and naïve country girl endowed with an extraordinary military genius. Joan was moved by the voices that she claimed were from Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret and was possessed, according to Shaw, by the Life Force that he first discussed in Man and Superman and which he deemed the primal motor of the Universe and of all great human endeavors. Through these, she became the first woman in history to achieve a military and nationalistic goal: expel the English invaders from France and unite her country under the legitimate king. As for Joan’s conviction and execution at the stake, Shaw does not present these events as the dark will of merciless judges/executors, but as fully legal procedures (albeit unjust, since Joan was innocent) that are even generous in their interest in saving the soul of the girl and sparing her the rigors of torture.16

In addition, the Teatro Municipal General San Martín, the main theatre of Buenos Aires, devoted an entire issue (no. 7) of Teatro magazine to the production. The staging was discussed in detail in an interview with the director, Alejandra Boero, and lead actor, Juana Hidalgo, entitled “a dove in the battlefield.” The interviewer, journalist Antonio Rodríguez de Anca, asked Boero about the author: I love him. I particularly love his intelligence, his intellectual clarity. Shaw is a writer who manages to display the sharpest social problems with brilliant lucidity and a rare combination of vigor and coherence—all of this without ever losing his subtle and acid sense of humor. I mean that he uses humor as a tool, as a weapon. It is precisely this aspect that I find most appealing, because I am of the opinion that humor is the only means to attack and destroy totalitarian philosophy.17

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To the recurring question of the relevance of Shaw at the time, she answered thus: Boero:

What matters most in a dramatist is content. As for myself, I care about content and not so much about form. Form can be outmoded or outdated, but if what the dramatist says is relevant today, it is always possible to find the right form for the present day. That is precisely the role of the director; that is my métier. I believe plays should be updated, but with a great deal of respect and faithfulness. Rodríguez de Anca: Can Shaw be considered a classic? Boero: At this point in time, he is unquestionably a classic. Especially because of the depth of his approach to transcendental issues and the ever-returning problems of humankind, which he tackles ever so rigorously and authentically.18 This production was received differently depending on the sociopolitical context. It was largely perceived, not only by the members of the company but by critics and audiences as well, as political theatre—albeit in different senses of the word in each case. For instance, the editorial in Teatro, by the director of the theatre, Kive Staiff, was titled “Liberty First.” In it, Staiff connects Shaw with Ibsen but, above all else, with the drama of Brecht. He argues that Shaw’s work is […] a forerunner of Brechtian detachment, which offers a tension between feeling and reflection both to actors and spectators. Freedom is one of the driving forces in Saint Joan and it works in a double sense: the freedom of the author in the treatment of the subject matter and the freedom of the protagonist, the lack of prejudice of the author and the libertarian message of the play. […] But he also points toward another form of freedom: the struggle of the French people, led by Joan of Arc, to expel from their territory the invading English forces, to defeat their vicious colonial policy. An issue that becomes all too relevant for the Argentinians of this day and age— the early 1980s.19

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Without ever mentioning it, we can read here a clear allusion to the south Atlantic War, which broke out in 1982. The looming presence of the acting de facto government did not allow for more explicit commentary. In the same magazine, Jaime Potenze wrote “The Intelligent Spectator’s Guide to Saint Joan” (“Guía para el el espectador inteligente de Santa Juana”), where a similar reading of the play is found: A character that, above all else, put the invading English in their place (that is, England) was sure to excite the imagination of George Bernard Shaw, one of the most alert and least prejudiced spirits ever to roam the earth. That is why he tackled a chronicle of the Saint, and saying that he rose to the challenge is perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay him. It is never an apology, although the author does not try to conceal his positive attitude toward the character. A self-proclaimed atheist, a fact of little relevance here because nobody can define themselves in this domain, he never hesitated to title the play Saint Joan. Her last words illustrate the author’s thought: “O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?” Concluding from this that Shaw was indeed ready warrants an explanation, which can be found in the preface— the background one requires to understand the play.20

The reception of the play by the audience, however, favored an interpretation that alluded to the championing of freedom against the dying dictatorial government rather than a reference to the war against England. Theatre historian Perla Zayas analyzes the question in a chapter of her book on political theatre: I agree that certain texts may have a political reading depending on the circumstances. In our country, for example, Waiting for Godot, directed in the 60s by Jorge Petraglia, was received as “Waiting for Perón,” and Shaw’s Saint Joan, which premiered during the Falklands War, saw the audience stand up, scream, and applaud at different times because they would see in the dialogues a clear allusion to the military dictatorship.21

In this regard, H. R. Jauss’s warning about the relationship between the literary work and the experience of reception becomes particularly relevant.22 It goes without saying that it is each particular reception that attributes a political reading to a work, beyond the author’s “intentions.”23 Thus, the critical reception following the premiere of Santa Juana in 1963 at the Candilejas was quite different—under the directorship of

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Jorge Petraglia, with Delia Garcés in the lead role. On this occasion, critics focused on the work of the director and, most notably, on the tenor of the acting. The extensive review by Emilio Stevanovich in Talía N° 25 attests to his appreciation for the playwright’s work and his disagreement with the spirit of the staging: Shaw’s drama, and there are very few cases like his, is what Shaw wanted it to be. Therefore, it cannot become an excuse for anything or anyone. There exist three very important factors for Shaw as regards the protagonist: 1) Joan’s visions, or what the author called her “evolutionary appetite”; 2) Joan’s masculinity and militarism; and 3) the trial at Rouen and Joan’s death. First, Shaw discerned out of these three major keys, based on extant documents and his “power of accurate observation,” Joan’s spiritual conditions and psychological motivations. Second, he depicted the historical period that constituted the political, social, and religious background that framed and facilitated Joan’s journey. But out of these three major factors, Shaw also discerned a natural style of representation for his play, as if he intended his character to become evident and to avoid the “idolatrous romance that has grown up around her, and the belittling scepticism that reacts against that romance,” to quote his own words from the preface. Because Joan was—Shaw continues—“a sane and shrewd country girl of extraordinary strength of mind and hardihood of body. Everything she did was thoroughly calculated.” In other words, Joan was a rationalist, just like Shaw and, in consequence and in sum, the play. A rationalist demonstration of a goal that, if it has an ideal at all, it is the ideal of Truth exposing consecrated lies. Shaw sought and found a possible and tangible Joan, that is, a human Joan. That is why he despised Voltaire’s fake historicism and Schiller’s silly romanticism just as much as Mark Twain’s Victorian prudishness. That is also why he discarded Anatole France’s “anti-Joan”—because he was fundamentally anticlerical and unable to ever believe in the existence of Joan as a person. Shaw believed in her existence with the utmost conviction, the conviction that director Jorge Petraglia lacked.24

The social critique present in Shaw’s playwriting, which stems from Ibsen, was also valued on the Argentinian stage. La profesión de la Sra. Warren has been produced for decades and its popularity may be accounted for by its approach to the theme of prostitution. In it, Shaw presents prostitution as a dreadful consequence of the system, facilitated by a large network of social agents. In 1965, the Gente del Teatro Asociada theatre group produced La profesión de la Sra. Warren, with Orestes Caviglia as director, as noted

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earlier. Inda Ledesma, Chela Ruiz, Jorge Rivera López, and Lalo Hartich starred in it. The critics, however, did not delve into the problems presented in the play, but they introduced an aspect that must be taken into account: translation. This surfaces in the review by Emilio Stevanovich in Talía N° 28: The most notable aspect of this version of Mrs Warren’s Profession is that England is nowhere to be found in it. This deficiency cannot be entirely blamed on the faithful staging by Orestes Caviglia. […] To this we may add the absurd translation by Alfredo Varela, a rare mistake for such a responsible author, in which he transforms an ever-distinguished style into something borderline vulgar—let us not forget that whenever Shaw deals with the vulgar, he does so with such skill that we perceive no clash of tenors. The terms have been transformed alarmingly: “receive” is “chupar,” “appearance” turns into “pinta,” “pocketing” becomes “sacarle el jugo a algo,” “scorn” is now “jorobar,” “fool” is “abombado,” “class” is “calaña,” “disagreeable” becomes “asqueroso,” etc.25 On other occasions, Varela becomes anglicized and transforms “possibility” into “chance.”26 As regards Frank’s catchphrase “viejo” (whose manners are closer to those of an American student), they are the equivalent of “old man” or “gov’nor,” which is correct although it sounds too close to our speech.27

It should be noted that translation difficulties appear to be a long-standing issue, as described in Ernesto Schóo’s 2005 article entitled “Las dos señoras Warren” (La Nación, 16 April), written on the occasion of the premiere at Teatro Regio. The critic compared the two Spanish versions to the original—one of them entitled Trata de blancas—where he pointed out, with sharp sense of humor, numerous hilarious discrepancies. The 2005 production at Teatro Regio was directed by Sergio Renán and the following year it continued at Teatro Presidente Alvear; both venues are part of the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires. Linguistic considerations aside, Shaw’s drama is also the epitome of the “drama of ideas.” In the words of Luis Gregorich, Unquestionably, Bernard Shaw is one of the titans of present-day theatre. He could be deemed, and rightly so, the main agent in the transition from nineteenth-century drama to the new experiences of the twentieth. It is evident that his works, his insightful comments on dramatic theory, and his incessant activity as an intellectual agitator, constitute the natural nexus between Ibsen and Brecht. This does not simply refer to thematic and

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t­echnical affinities, but to a more comprehensive philosophical conception of life and drama. These three authors no longer care as much about highlighting the tragic condition of humankind or describing their eternal, immutable ordeals, but rather focus on the social and even political basis of desire, suffering and, in general, human actions. This shift in focus is all the more evident as we move forward chronologically.28

We can observe how the critics make an effort to arrive at a holistic understanding of the ideas underlying dramatic texts. There is a noticeable lack of academic research at a local level on this central aspect. Perhaps one of the few exceptions is to be found in the essays by Enrique Anderson Imbert,29 who discusses this question in several fragments that take Santa Juana as the starting point: Shaw uses the phrase Life Force (Fuerza Vital) and Evolutionary Appetite (Apetito Evolutivo) to refer to what Bergson calls Evolution Créatrice. A mysterious driving force works on our personal experiences and makes us instruments of its will. A will to overcome circumstances more and more and to know more and more about the secrets of nature. If we call this creative life force that operates by experimentation “Providence,” then Shaw’s intentions in his religious comedies become apparent. Saint Joan is an exceptional play in Shaw’s dramatic canon. The heroine is a tragic character. Each of her successes crumbles and becomes a failure: her military genius garners her victories and yet military men without genius manage to capture her; she reaches glory and yet is burnt at the stake; after she is executed, those who killed her repent and she is loved more dead than alive. Joan is a martyr of the Life Force. Shaw does not spare resources in the great trial scene, where Joan uses Shavian violence. The Life Force clashes against the inertia of matter. Shaw, with trademark impartiality, respects both sides of the question, that of the vitalist Joan and that of the inert minions of ecclesiastical and state order. The conflict between innovation and tradition proves irreconcilable until we make the world a place where superior people can live.30 (1982: 41)

Another aspect inherent to Shaw and highly regarded by critics and the public is humor. It is present in his dialogues through irony, sarcasm, and by virtue of the situational comedy in some of his plays. Take, for instance, Androcles and the Lion. Its premiere in independent theatres took place in 1953, when the Nuevo Teatro theatre group staged it under directors Alejandra Boero and Pedro Asquini. This time they chose a circular

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stage—quite the novelty in Argentina—and the deliberately anachronistic costumes designed by Oski (Óscar Conti) turned a few heads. Los Macocos—one of the groups of the official theatre—staged another version in 1999 at Teatro San Martín. It was directed by Javier Rama. Not long ago the same venue witnessed the version by Ariadna Bufano (2014), which received much praise and several awards.31 There remains to be analyzed the indirect reception of Shaw’s drama through plays that are not his own but deal with his life or are adaptations of his plays. An example of the latter is the Pygmalion-based Educando a Rita (Educating Rita), by Willy Russell, which premiered in Buenos Aires in 2013. Mi querido mentiroso (Dear Liar), by Jerome Kilty, was far more significant and had a wider presence in Argentinian stages. The first time it was staged in Buenos Aires was in 1962 at Teatro Argentino by the independent Gente de Teatro Asociada theatre group, directed by Orestes Caviglia. Critic Kive Staiff—an outspoken admirer of Shaw—penned the review in Talía N° 23. His article showcases his admiration for the Irish playwright, an admiration mediated by the compilation of the correspondence between Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: In sum, this is a quite one-sided rhetorical combat, where the pleasure of listening to Shaw meets its match in the replies by the charming, extravagant actress. The playwright feels the urge to go beyond what public scrutiny allows, and Campbell satisfies her need to feel admired by a “brain.” In Shaw, we witness eroticism under the guise of a detached intellectual relationship; in the actress, the joy of astonishment. In both cases, there is a certain amount of hurtful sadism—as well as the tacit conviction that they are making history in modern drama.32

In 1975, China Zorrilla and Villanueva Cosse starred in a new production of Mi querido mentiroso, and in 2002 it was played and directed by Norma Aleandro and Sergio Renán. In light of what has been discussed thus far, it is evident that Shaw’s works and his persona exceeded by far his own lifetime and his cultural context. Theatre people in Argentina regard him as an irreplaceable touchstone, as part of their cultural tradition. Indeed, that is the main argument in Luis Gregorich’s essay on “Bernard Shaw and the drama of ideas”: But Shaw’s stature cannot be restricted to the English-speaking world. It is not an overstatement to call him the founder of the drama of ideas, a genre

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that would welcome aboard Brecht, Sartre and Ionesco—each on their own terms. However, it cannot be said that the ideas (and even the ideologies) that struggle in Shaw’s plays work as mere abstract concepts without body and soul. On the contrary, they will invariably be incarnated in convincing characters. The extraordinary dialogues of his plays feel astounding because of their vivacity and penetrating insights; they do not yield to the facile amusement of the audience, who are used to mere emotional exaltation. By contrast, these dialogues result in a rational, harmonious feast for those who go to the theatre with the intention of educating themselves and improving their intellect. Shaw, one could argue, is demanding of his audiences because, like a good socialist and utopian, he believes in the ability to overcome oneself. Despite his contradictions, or perhaps thanks to them, this Irish puritan and preacher, who fought for the dignity of labor, the emancipation of women and the eradication of social prejudice, has earned a place of honor in the pantheon of modernity. His plays, which follow from and develop the long-standing critical and comic tradition of Aristophanes, Maquiavello, Molière, Goldoni, and Beaumarchais, will continue to entertain and disturb, for a long time, audiences in all parts of the world. This recognition of the universality of intelligence is, without a doubt, the recognition that Shaw would have acknowledged with the utmost gratitude.33

notes 1. For an overview of the cultural zeitgeist in the early years of the country, see Carlos Altamirano y Beatriz Sarlo, “La Argentina dl Centenario: Campo intelectual, vida literararia y temas ideológicos,” Revista Hispamérica 9, No. 25/26 (1980): 33–59. 2. See Ruano San Segundo in this volume. 3. “Blanca Podestá, una actriz de carácter.” La Gaceta, 28 August 1926. Available at https://www.lagaceta.com.ar/nota/696433/sociedad/ blanca-­podesta-­actriz-­caracter.html. 4. See the tables at the end of this volume for detailed information about the most notable productions of Shaw plays in Argentina. See also Pérez Mondino in this volume for more information on productions in the River Plate area, which also stretches into modern Uruguay. 5. Osvaldo Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: La segunda modernidad, 1949-1976 (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2003), 106. 6. For a brief overview of the history of Teatro Nacional Cervantes, see https://www.teatrocervantes.gob.ar/el-­teatro/. A more detailed chronology (including several productions of Shaw plays) available at http://

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inteatro.gob.ar/Files/Publicaciones/112/2011%20Historia-­del-­teatro-­ nacional-­cervantes.pdf. 7. Osvaldo Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: La emancipación cultural, 1884–1930 (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2002), 534. 8. This fact is particularly noteworthy if we consider that theatrical activity was much less than in later decades. 9. Jorge Cruz, “La temporada teatral de 1960.” Revista Sur, N° 268 (Buenos Aires, 1961), 145–147. 10. Luis Ordaz, “Caviglia,” Talía N° 39/40 (Buenos Aires, 1972), 8–10. 11. For more information on Plan Conintes and the censorship during this period, see Plan Conintes: Represión política y syndical (Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Derechos Humanos, 2014). 12. Perla Zayas de Lima, “Algunas reflexiones sobre la censura teatral en la Argentina,” en Arte y poder (Buenos Aires, CAIA, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA), 1993), 225–233. 13. Ernesto Schóo, “Aún muerto, Shaw es siempre noticia,” La Nación (Buenos Aires, 26/01/2002). 14. Norma Aleandro, “Una directora para Shaw,” La Nación (Buenos Aires, 27/10/2001). 15. Raúl Castagnino, “La temporada del Teatro Nacional Cervantes,” La Prensa (Buenos Aires, 1981), 11. 16. Gerardo Fernández, “Introducción a Santa Juana,” Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 1983, 13. 17. Alejandra Boero, “Una paloma en el campo de batalla,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 1982), 56. 18. Alejandra Boero, “Una paloma en el campo de batalla,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 1982), 56–57. 19. Kive Staiff, “Primero, la libertad,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 1982), 4–5. 20. Jaime Potenze, “Guía para el espectador inteligente de Santa Juana,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 1982), 14–17. 21. Perla Zayas de Lima, “III.  Somigliana y el teatro político,” in Carlos Somigliana. Teatro histórico-Teatro político (Buenos Aires: editorial Fray Mocho, 1995), 94–95. 22. “The theory of the aesthetics of reception does not simply allow us to understand the meaning and form of a literary work in the historical development of its understanding. It forces us to situate the work in its ‘literary succession’ in order to ascertain its position and historical significance in relation to the general experience of literature. In the process of a transcendental history of literature, it reveals itself as a process in which the passive reception of the reader or critic becomes active, and ultimately it becomes

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the author’s new output. In other words, the following work may solve formal or ethical problems that were left unsolved in the previous one and, alternatively, it may also pose new problems” (Jauss, 1976: 188–189). 23. At any rate, the political dimension present both in Shaw’s texts and in his activism is unquestionable, even in his “science fiction.” See Jameson, 2009. 24. Emilio Stevanovich, “La profesión de la señora Warren,” Talía N° 28 (Buenos Aires, Talía, 1965), 31. 25. The editor has done his best to find the original English word that was mistranslated, because the original review always cites two Spanish words (one, Shaw’s, usually neutral and the other, Varela’s, typically marked as a colloquialism). However, it is impossible, in principle, to ascertain whether the critic refers to these words in particular. 26. The word “chance” is an Anglicism in common use in many Spanish-­ speaking countries. However, at the time the review was written, it was still seen as a foreign word. Oddly enough, the word is listed as a Gallicism in the latest edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. 27. The epithet “viejo” is a colloquial term of address in many South American countries, especially Argentina. Even though it literally translates as “old man,” its tenor and register are different from what Shaw tries to depict in the play. 28. Luis Gregorich, “Bernard Shaw y el teatro de ideas,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín,1982), 7. 29. Enrique Anderson Imbert, Comedias de Bernard Shaw (México: UNAM, 1977). 30. Enrique Anderson Imbert, “Santa Juana,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín,1982), 41. 31. See review in La Nación at https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/ la-­leyenda-­del-­hombre-­bueno-­y-­el-­leon-­agradecido-­nid1716610/. The production moved to Teatro Regio when Teatro San Martín was closed. At the time of writing, this is the last production of a Shaw play in Argentina. 32. Kive Staiff, “Mi querido mentiroso,” Talía N° 23 (Buenos Aires, Talía, 1963), 22. 33. Luis Gregorich, “Bernard Shaw y el teatro de ideas,” Teatro N° 7 (Buenos Aires, Teatro Municipal General San Martín,1982), 12.

reFerences AAVV. 1963. Talía. N° 28. Buenos Aires, Talía. ———. 1969. Quién fue en el teatro nacional. Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Estado de Cultura y Educación. ———. 1971. Talía. N° 39–40, Buenos Aires, Talía. ———. 1982. Revista Teatro, Año 3, Número 7. Buenos Aires: Teatro San Martín.

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Altamirano, Carlos, and Beatriz Sarlo. 1980. La Argentina del Centenario: Campo intelectual, vida literararia y temas ideológicos. Revista Hispamérica Año 9 (25/26): 33–59. Anderson Imbert, Enrique. 1977. Comedias de Bernard Shaw. México: UNAM. Bloom, Harold. 1995. El canon occidental. Barcelona: Anagrama. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1974. Nota sobre (hacia) Bernard Shaw (1951). In Obras completas, 747–749. Emecé: Buenos Aires. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Campo de poder, campo intelectual. Itinerario de un concepto. Buenos Aires: Montresor. Cruz, Jorge. 1960. Visión optimista de la temporada de 1959. Revista Sur N° 262, 75–77. ———. 1961. La temporada teatral de 1960. Revista Sur N° 268, 145–147. Fernández, Gerardo. 1983. Introducción. In G.B. Shaw, Santa Juana (traducción de Gerardo Fernández). Buenos Aires: Teatro Municipal General San Martín. Jameson, Frederic. 2009. Arqueología del futuro. El deseo llamado utopía y otras aproxiLaiones de ciencia ficción. Madrid: Akal. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1976. La literatura como provocación. Barcelona: Península. Marial, José. 1965. El teatro independiente. Buenos Aires: Alpe. Ordaz, Luis. 1972. Caviglia. Revista Talía N° 39/40. Buenos Aires, 8–10. Pellettieri, Osvaldo. 2002. Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: La emancipación cultural, 1884–1930. Buenos Aires: Galerna. ———. 2003. Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: La segunda modernidad, 1949–1976. Buenos Aires: Galerna. Praz, Mario. 1976. La literatura inglesa. Del Romanticismo al Siglo XX. Buenos Aires: Losada. Schóo, Ernesto. 2002. Aún muerto, Shaw es siempre noticia. La Nación (Buenos Aires, 26/01/2002). Zayas de Lima, Perla. 1993. Algunas reflexiones sobre la censura teatral en la Argentina. In Arte y poder, 225–233. Buenos Aires: CAIA, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA). ———. 1995. III.  Somigliana y el teatro político. In Carlos Somigliana. Teatro histórico-Teatro político. Buenos Aires: editorial Fray Mocho.

PART III

Influence and Relationship with Spanish-Speaking Authors

CHAPTER 11

Borges’s Admiration for George Bernard Shaw Jason Wilson

Sometime in the early 1920s Jorge Luis Borges, born in 1899, first read George Bernard Shaw. From then on, he “read and reread” him.1 He told Seamus Heaney and Richard Kearney that the first book he came across by Shaw was The Quintessence of Ibsenism, and he was so impressed by this writer of a “deep philosophical curiosity” that it turned into a lifelong passion.2 It helped shape his developing critical position, as Shaw’s book was an analysis of Ibsen’s philosophy and not just literary criticism. Borges had returned from seven years in Europe (1914–1921) to rediscover a Buenos Aires located in the fringes of the European mimicking city. He went off to Europe again with his family for another year and then settled definitively in 1924  in the city where he was born. He was going through a timid avant-garde phase, called ultraísmo, as its leader and leading theorist, but already looking beyond reducing poetry to daring metaphors to those aspects of history that made Argentina unique. Critics have called this second phase in his development, following his ultraísmo, his nativist or criollo moment where he explored what was peculiar to Argentine

J. Wilson (*) University College London, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_11

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culture, such as the outlaw gaucho Martin Fierro, tangos, and his city’s suburbs, which he called “orillas” and which were still colonial in aspect. He was making himself his generation’s leading intellectual. In his first book of essays called Inquisiciones (Inquisitions), of 1925 (he was 26 years old), which he then refused to reprint until his estate released it posthumously, he referred to Shaw in an essay on James Joyce and Irish writers. He was always drawn to Ireland and his rebellious, iconoclastic streak found Ireland’s writers sympathetic to his own outsider view of European culture. The Irish were the “famous agitators of English literature,” he wrote, and included Swift and Sterne as pruners of literary exuberance. He then mentioned Shaw in the year that he won the Nobel Prize as “the most pleasing Reality of present-day letters.”3 He too was an “agitator” from Argentina within the wider context of Hispanic letters. By 1925 Shaw was extremely well-known in the Anglo-Saxon world of letters, but he was less established in Buenos Aires. For Borges to select him as the most pleasing “Reality” reveals how differently Borges saw himself in comparison to his Argentine contemporaries. He had chosen an Irish writer as supreme model. In the 1920s French culture dominated Argentine literary culture. That Borges selected Shaw (and Joyce or Yeats) came from his English roots. He had an English grandmother called Fanny Haslam and spoke English to his father. He read Shaw in English, though by the late 1930s and 1940s Shaw was being translated from Spain. He has often said it was his discovery of English letters (Stevenson, Chesterton, Kipling) that fashioned his literary style in Spanish. Over the next decade Shaw was made to embody Borges’s own quirky criticisms. Both were autodidacts and freed from any university conformity, and both were omnivorous readers in public libraries. It should be said that this first book Inquisiciones inaugurated Borges’s reputation as a witty, sharp-tongued critic, a position that he carved out for himself in Argentina until 1955 when he lost his sight and stopped writing and publishing his essays because he couldn’t read anymore. But he turned his back on this first book and particularly criticised his own linguistic mannerisms, his idiosyncratic Spanish spelling and turns of phrase, as he tried out an Argentine style. It was at this period that he turned English writers into Argentine ones, so George Bernard Shaw became Jorge Bernard Shaw, and W.  H. Hudson became Guillermo Enrique Hudson. This nationalist trait was not of Borges’s own making, but a typical Argentine assimilation of foreign-ness, of making a foreign

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writer their own. However, Borges soon dropped this habit, and changed back to referring to George Bernard Shaw. The next point to make concerning Borges’s taming of Shaw was that Borges never wrote about the theatre. I’m not even sure he went to the theatre and he never met Shaw in the flesh. He simply read plays. He did go to the cinema and even reviewed films later in the magazine Sur. And he loved the popular tangos, and was known to sing them aloud. So he was not against popular culture. But Shaw was a reading act. This reading of a play and not seeing the play as a spectator acted on the stage allowed him to envision Shaw his own way. It is curious that Shaw in 1901 argued for a theatre that should be read, like a novel.4 Borges took this reading act a stage further and, in his own work, reversed the role of writing and reading. He invented a sub-genre that he called a “ficción,” not a short story, not an essay, but a hybrid driven by mischievous ideas and speculations, rather than by, say, lived experience, history, or psychology. He had no patience with realism, the slow accumulation of verbal details; he dismissed psychology, plot, the illusion of place, and in fact the realist novel tradition. He once confessed he hardly ever finished a novel. So he defined himself as a reader, aware that so much had already been written, so why not simply “falsify other people’s stories,” a boutade demolishing Romantic claims to ego individuality and originality. Years later Roland Barthes would invent the “death of the author.” From the first number of the literary magazine Sur in early 1931, run by Victoria Ocampo, Borges became the prime contributor among a cosmopolitan group of writers who included Count Keyserling, José Ortega y Gasset, André Malraux, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, André Gide, Waldo Frank, Drieu la Rochelle (Ocampo’s lover), and countless others. Victoria Ocampo was a rich woman who lavished her fortune on her magazine, inviting writers from Europe and setting up local writers in what would become the best magazine in the continent. Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and essayist, said that when he first published a piece in Sur, he spent a week in dreamy bliss, for he had joined the select set. Paz even read the surrealist André Breton first in Sur in 1936, and Breton became Paz’s mentor from when they met in Paris in the late 1940s. Sur, the magazine, defined generations of writers. Borges kept apart from the social gatherings organised by Victoria Ocampo but became Sur’s main Argentine writer, contributing to nearly all the numbers and making his name there in the 1930s.5

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In September 1936  in Sur Borges published an essay, “Shaw’s latest comedies” (Las últimas comedias de Shaw), where he underlined what he sought in Shaw. He asserted the dialogue of ideas as central to Shaw in a series of phrases like “to think in dramatic form,” or “in dialoguistic form,” or “these purely argumentative comedies.” He praised Shaw’s “splendid rhetoric” and confirmed his old belief that Shaw was the best prose writer of his day, comparable to T. S. Eliot and Paul Valéry. This odd evaluation reveals much about Borges himself and where he placed his own, quirky prose writing. In “The Perfect Critic,” from The Sacred Wood (1921), T. S. Eliot had chosen Aristotle as his prime example of a critic for whom “there is no method except to be very intelligent.” That was what Eliot called a “completely free” intelligence. Eliot was close to his chosen Aristotle and defined the taste of his day. The same goes for Paul Valéry, who sought lucidity and as much consciousness as possible in writing.6 It’s this quality of thought that he brings out in his reading of the plays. In an anthology that he prepared with his close friend and fellow writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares, called Libro del cielo y del infierno, 1960 (Book of Heaven and Hell), he cited Shaw from a Who is who where he said his favourite pastime was “to think.”7 To Adolfo Bioy Casares in 1971, Borges said he admired Shaw’s “continuous mental activity,” which was what he meant by “thinking.” In this 1936 essay he found defects in the plays he reviewed, especially El bobalicón de las islas inesperadas with its too-British angels. But it was a new play, and Borges turned the English title, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, into his Spanish, where “simpleton” becomes the slangy “Bobalicón” and not the more conventional “Simple,” as it appeared in 1963 when this play was finally translated into Spanish. Borges was far freer and more creative in his translation. However, his critical views cannot deny Shaw’s “wit” and his “resplendent lucidity” and he compares Shaw’s position in the intellectual order as similar to Luther, Quevedo, Lawrence of Arabia (that is how Borges referred to T. E. Lawrence, a close friend to Shaw), and especially Nietzsche and Bunyan. Perhaps the odd name out in that list is Francisco de Quevedo, the seventeenth-century Spanish poet, polemicist, and wit who had a merciless black humour that appealed to Borges. That placing of Shaw with Quevedo comes from Borges’s own attitude to European culture, which he elaborated in his famous 1951 lecture “The Argentine Writer and Tradition.”8 Here he inverts Argentine provincialism to say that Argentine writers are freer than their European counterparts and are not victims of a monolithic national

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literature. They read more writers from around the world, in translation, and that’s still the case today. One word summarises Borges’s outsider view and it is his “irreverence” towards national traditions.9 Borges returned to Shaw for a third time in his book of essays titled Otras inquisiciones, 1952 (Other Inquisitions), in an essay “Note on (toward) Shaw” written in 1951. Here Borges comes back to a book as a form of “dialogue” with a reader. A book is a relation with a reader and as such is “inexhaustible.” What, Borges asked, does Shaw’s pre-eminence rely on? He dismissed the union or municipal problems of the early plays, the jokes in the Pleasant Plays, and in a typical aside, questions whether humour is not an oral rather than written genre. He continues discarding Shaw’s prefaces, whose ideas can be traced to Schopenhauer or Butler, but praises his creation of characters, listing Lavinia, Blanco Posnet, Keegan, Shotover, and especially Julius Caesar (he puts his name in Spanish) as the best of his generation. Comparing these characters to Paul Valéry’s Monsieur Teste or Nietzsche’s Zarathustra “is to intuit with shock and even scandal Shaw’s primacy.” Borges’s opinion is so surprising and even scandalous because, surely, no one in Argentina had made the same claim about Shaw’s place in the literary and philosophical pecking order. He translates something from an angry letter that Shaw wrote to his biographer Frank Harris: “I understand everything and everybody and I am nothing and nobody.” It is clear that Borges chose this sentence because he could have written it himself. From his early essay “Of the nothing of personality” of 1922, published in Inquisiciones (Inquisitions) in 1925, to his constant interest in Buddhism, where he went as far as co-authoring a history of Buddhism, he knew that personality was literally a mask hiding a nothing inside.10 About Buddhism, Borges wrote that “the negation of personality is one of the essential dogmas of Buddhism.” He used this Buddhist insight to castigate the vanity of fellow writers, what he called the period’s “romantic ego mania,” and played in many of his “fictions” with who he was as an ephemeral double of himself.11 Borges also wrote a short review of Frank Harris’s unfinished biography in 1934 for the Revista Multicolor where he found Harris’s “lack of inhibition” and an “insolence” that you would never find in any biography written by an Argentine.12 Shaw’s sentence summarised Borges’s own credo that behind personality there lies nothing. So Borges saw himself in Shaw. From Shaw’s belief in “nothing” there flowed his rich characters. Perhaps Shaw’s most ephemeral character, Borges speculated, was himself in his witty columns (Fig. 11.1).

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Fig. 11.1  Portrait of Jorge Luis Borges, by Grete Stern (1951). Public Domain

He closes his 1951 essay by returning to the scandal of Shaw’s views. His fundamental themes are philosophy and ethics, and Borges doesn’t find it odd that he is not valued in Argentina. He claims that Argentines do not believe in anything but chance, Democritus’s “fortuitous concourse of atoms.” The Argentine shows no interest in philosophy or in ethics. Current novels, or poetry or philosophy (and only here does he offer names: Heidegger and Jaspers) give rise to the illusion of an ego, “that Vedanta reproves as a capital mistake.” Believing in the ego leads to an immoral vanity. Borges employs Vedanta as a philosophy to criticise Argentine letters, his ethical position as a critic (a bit like W. B. Yeats). His last sentences: “Shaw’s work, on the other hand, leaves us with a taste of freedom,” the taste of Portico’s doctrines and the taste of the sagas. Shaw couldn’t be placed higher on the literary ladder than being the sole writer,

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against the tradition of the western canon, to aim at freedom from the self or ego. I believe that Borges’s claim for this ego freedom is dependent on his piece being a criticism of the vogue for Heidegger and Jaspers in Argentina in the 1950s, well before they became debated and known in England. He doesn’t say who these fellow writers are, but Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit was translated in 1951 by José Gaos in Mexico and promoted by Carlos Astrada, one of Heidegger’s students, in Argentina. He was absorbed through the pages of Sur, with the essayist Hector Murena being an example. Of course, Borges read German fluently and didn’t need to turn to translations. There’s an implicit reference to Ortega y Gasset, another Sur star thinker, and a dismissal of a long Western tradition of love poetry kept alive by Argentine poets. He finally uses Vedanta to dismiss all these writers’ vanity. So we can see that praise of Shaw is scandalous because it allows Borges to reject most Argentine literature.13 Borges returns to Shaw for a fourth time in his jointly written Introducción a la literatura inglesa, 1965 (Introduction to Literature in English), with María Esther Vázquez. Their collaboration was more than literary, as Borges fell in love with the much younger woman and sought to marry her. He was shocked when she left him to marry Horacio Armani, a poet. She later wrote a good biography on Borges. Borges has now dropped his passionate take on Shaw and is constricted by the literary history book genre. He simply enumerates Shaw’s theatre and its themes (based on Ibsen and Wagner, etc.). His humour has cast a shadow over his essential seriousness, and that has made Shaw one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. The piece ends with anecdotes from his long life, like giving back his Nobel Prize money, visiting Russia, and his death at the age of 94 while axing a tree.14 These anecdotes come from literary hearsay and early biographies and reveal how cultural distance from Europe can distort. For example, “giving back his Nobel Prize money” was really setting up an Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation with the prize money he donated. Or that his death while axing a tree was in reality pruning a branch, falling, and dying a month later, as Michael Holroyd has shown.15 Borges returned to Shaw in 1985 in one of his prologues for the series of books called “Biblioteca personal,” which ceased with his death in 1986. He had picked his three favourite plays, César y Cleopatra, La comandante Bárbara, and Cándida, giving their titles in Spanish. How can he sum up his debt to Shaw, he opened, for he was far more than a

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witty writer. He then outlined his life, and compared his philosophy, again, with Escoto Erígena (he gives his name in Spanish, and places him in the eleventh century). This linking of Shaw and John Scotus Erigena, a ninth-­ century Irish writer, is unique to Borges and is a testimony to his vast, playful learning. He read his De Divisione Naturae and stole his idea that “God created himself through the creation of his creatures in nature.” Both Shaw and Erigena held that genuine creation stems “from a metaphysical nothingness,” what Erigena called in his Latin “Nihil.” Erigena was accused of heresy, wrote his book in the form of a dialogue, and was famous for the freedom of his speculations. His work was rediscovered in 1681. Borges told Heaney and Kearney that “I doubt that Shaw ever read Erigena.”16 Well, in fact, Shaw might have read about Erigena in a copy of Heinrich Zwimmer’s The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture, as Professor Gustavo Rodríguez Martín pointed out to me, as it is listed as one of the books held at Shaw’s Corner. His brief note closes with how Shaw was at odds with his time and did not indulge in “the weaknesses of the human condition” but was “the sole way of imagining heroes.” Borges found his Caesar more convincing than Plutarch’s or Shakespeare’s. This was one of the eccentricities that Borges admired in Shaw, going against the grain, that harmonised with his vegetarianism, his Fabianism, his sexuality, and the way he predicted his old age.17 In an interview with Osvaldo Ferrari, a series of talks on the radio recorded in 1985, Borges dedicates 15 minutes to Shaw. Ferrari makes a comment about Shaw’s originality and Borges answers by stressing that it was more than surprising, adding that “Shaw is always seen as witty, but above that, he should be seen as wise and just as well.” His wit has obscured this side to Shaw, that he was “wise,” repeating that he was a “lucid man.” He even uses old-fashioned language and talks of Shaw’s “great soul.”18 Borges’s reading of Shaw over the years from the 1920s to 1985 reveals debt to a great thinker, less than a great playwright, or polemicist, and this claim has to be confronted with Argentine history. Shaw would not be understood, Borges wrote, because Argentinians think in blocks and not as individuals. It is this stress on individuality that unites Borges and Shaw. Shaw’s cry that “Believe me, I always was, & am, an intense individualist” would also epitomise Borges.19 Becoming an individualist in letters is hard work as it means defining yourself against a long literary tradition and standing out as an individual. It has nothing to do with negating the ego. The great European social forces backing Hitler and Stalin and the lesser

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politicians following them in the 1930s and 1940s were no different in Argentina. There was no room for an individual. During Peronism in the late 1940s social conformity mattered so much that the individual no longer counted. Against the values of his times in Argentina, Borges came across Shaw and marvelled at his freedom of being an individual. Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Hughes are right to assert this in their entry on Shaw in their dictionary on Borges when they pick out “the emphasis he placed on the values of the individual as against those of society.” I would have placed their comment more in the Argentine contexts of the impossibility of being an individual faced with the massive Peronist conformity.20 How Borges’s views on Shaw differed from Shaw commentators is beyond my remit, but by accentuating the often hidden Argentine reality behind his views, we can see that Borges used Shaw to criticise his period, and to argue for an old-fashioned view of him as a kind of guru, employing his studies in Vedanta to show how he reached a reader’s “soul.” It is not very different to the way, say, Richard Church saw Shaw when he too wrote of how the “argument becomes incandescent and throws a ray of light into regions of the soul far beyond the comprehension of the logical mind.”21 Both regard Shaw as a strange guru or wise man. But it was Borges who compares this lucidity with two of the West’s most lucid writers, Paul Valéry and T. S. Eliot, and groups Shaw with a bunch of very radical thinkers who include Borges’s beloved Quevedo. This cosmopolitan position ensures a wider perspective as Shaw himself was already a cosmopolitan, from his outsider Ireland and moved by European thinkers like Ibsen and Nietzsche. So much for his reader’s debt to Shaw, but Borges was also an indefatigable talker, as witnessed by his old friend Adolfo Bioy Casares. Michael Holroyd also described Shaw as a “talking machine.”22 Both Borges and Shaw shared this talkative mode. Not only did Borges and Bioy Casares co-author under the name Bustos Domecq and then of Suárez Lynch a series of detective novels about a detective called Isidro Parodi who was in prison, but solving crime puzzles, collected in Borges’s complete works, but they also concocted anthologies. During almost daily after-dinner chats at Bioy’s flat on Ecuador and Santa Fe in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, they would gossip about literary matters, with constant references to Shaw’s work, an obsession shared by both of them. He repeated several times, “Let’s talk about Shaw.” He was always on Borges’s mind. Bioy secretly recorded their catty opinions in a diary and published them, well after Borges’s death, in 2006 as Borges. It covers 40 years of intimate

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conversations and has been compared to Boswell’s Johnson or Eckermann’s Goethe, as one writer recording the detailed thoughts of another. At one moment in 1976 Borges spoke about Shaw in the United States and how “no American academics know who he is.” Before in 1960, he commented “how odd that Shaw has disappeared almost without notice.” Yet for Borges, Shaw towered over the writers who followed him, to such an extent that they ceased to exist.23 Shaw springs up in many of Borges’s countless interviews, from the one with Ernesto Sabato to Estela Canto’s memoir of their relationship during this same period of the 1940s when she announced herself to be a disciple of Shaw, and had to go to bed before they contemplated marriage. They both admired Shaw, but disagreed on his best points.24 Borges told her that he had never met a woman who liked Shaw before, and she knew English. She found allusions to Shaw’s Candida in his “English” poems, so called because he wrote them in English. Not many critics or biographers have explored Shaw’s presence in Borges’s fiction apart from citing his name. Most critics point to the “fiction” titled “El inmortal,” the opening story of El Aleph (1949), where Homer and the narrator merge into one as they search for the City of the Immortals, wander labyrinths and desert. This City could have been made by Gods who have abandoned it or were plain mad. Nobody could be happy there. The verbs “I thought” and “I dreamt” dominate the “fiction” in a world of loneliness and solipsism. Slowly, the narrator realises he lives in “thought,” in pure speculation. He writes: “they know that over an infinite stretch of time everything happens to every man.” There is no person, no individual. “Nobody” is the key to the text that ends: “I have been Homer; shortly, I will be Nobody like Ulysses; shortly I will be everybody. I will die.”25 Ronald Christ first showed how Borges’s “staccato” allusions bring Back to Methuselah (1921) into this story about Homer and his double. In a postscript to the story, Borges actually cites Shaw’s Back to Methuselah, V (“As Far as Thought Can Reach”). But to sum up, Christ argues that Borges’s tale is very different in tone to Shaw’s play, where Shaw is “optimistic” and “corrective” and Borges “dejected” and “dispiriting,” while admitting he enjoyed Shaw’s “cerebral capers.” This allusion to Shaw is taken up again by Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Hughes in 1990 where they show how Shaw’s As far as Thought Can Reach, the last play of Back to Methuselah, has people born from an egg at the age of 17 and evolve and experience all that life can offer. They claim that Borges’s phrase “in an

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infinite period of time, all things happen to all men” derives from Shaw’s “everything happens to everybody sooner or later’.” Bell-Villada adds further passages lifted from Shaw as well as repeating this one from “El inmortal.”26 Leonard Cheever, in 1980, and unread by the traditional Borgesian critics, revealed in a short article more Shaw hints, from an epigraph from Father Keegan, a character from Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island, in the co-authored (by Borges and Bioy) Crónicas de Bustos Domecq (1967) and to a few other essays by Borges in the 1940s like his “A new Refutation of Time” and “A Comment on August 21, 1944.”27 However, despite such scanty evidence, there is no doubt about the extent to which Borges held Shaw in his mind in the 1940s in Argentina while composing his best-­ known “fictions” as a constant mental and textual dialogue. More than specific references to his wide reading of Shaw’s prolific works, Borges found in Shaw a similar sense of paradox and wit, allied to an ethic. He learned from him a staccato way of thinking that was based on freedom from conventions, without needing to develop any insight in careful, rational prose. Shaw’s fascination with vegetarianism, with sexuality, with politics and much more made him a very different writer to Borges. Nevertheless, it was reading Shaw that liberated Borges’s own freedom of aphoristic or “staccato” thinking, only held in check by the ironic and haunting limitation of death. As he said about the importance of reading: “I remember more what I’ve read than what I’ve lived.”28

notes 1. Quoted by Ronald J Christ, The Narrow Act. Borges’ Art of Allusion (New York: New  York University Press, 1969), an excellent, early study of Borges’s debt to English and American literature, 13. Daniel Balderston compiled a list of Borges’s writings about Shaw under “Shaw” in his The Literary Universe of Jorge Luis Borges. An Index to References and Allusions to Persons, Titles and Places in his Writing (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986) and again under “Shaw” in Borges, Una Enciclopedia, with Gastón Grillo and Nicolás Helft (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1999). 2. Seamus Heaney and Richard Kearney, interview with Borges in The Crane Bag 6 (1982): 71–78. 3. Jorge Luis Borges, Inquisiciones (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1994), 24. 4. I would like to thank Professor Gustavo Rodríguez Martín for recommending Shaw’s essay on “How to Make Plays Readable” from E. J. West, ed., Shaw on Theatre (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1958), 90–95.

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5. Jorge Luis Borges, En Sur, 1931–1980 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1999), 132–135. 6. See T. S. Eliot’s compilation of Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry (London: Faber, 1958). 7. See John King, Sur. A Study of the Argentine Literary Journal and its role in the Development of a culture, 1931–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). See also Patricia Willson, La constelación del Sur. Traductores y traducciones en la literatura argentina del siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2004). 8. Jorge Luis Borges, En Sur, 1931–1980, 132–135. 9. “El escritor argentino y la tradición,” given in 1951, published in Sur in 1955, and then added to his 1932 Discusión in his 1974 Obras completas. It shows how Borges mocked chronology. 10. Borges, with Alicia Jurado, “Qué es el budismo?,” Obras completas en colaboración (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1979), 719–781. 11. See my Borges (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 14–18. 12. Borges en Revista Multicolor, 1933–1934 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Atlántida, 1995), 205. 13. Jorge Luis Borges, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974), 747–749 and translated by James E.  Irby in Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970). 14. “Introducción a la literatura inglesa,” in Obras completas en colaboración, 847–848. 15. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, the One-Volume Definitive Edition (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997), 531 and 788. 16. Heaney and Kearney, 77. 17. Jorge Luis Borges, Biblioteca personal (prólogos) (Buenos Aries: Alianza Literatura, 1988), 71–2. 18. Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari, Reencuentro. Diálogos inéditos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999), 161-166. 19. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 75. 20. Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Hughes, A Dictionary of Borges (London: Duckworth, 1990), 221–222. 21. Richard Church, British Authors: A Twentieth-Century Gallery, with 53 Portraits (London: Longmans, 1948), 28. 22. Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 56. 23. Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges, edición de Daniel Martino (Buenos Aires: Destino, 2006), 1592, 664, 1131. 24. Jorge Luis Borges and Ernesto Sabato, Diálogos (Madrid: Emecé, 1976), 125; Estela Canto, Borges a contraluz (Madrid: Colección Austral, 1989), 27–28. 25. Jorge Luis Borges, Obras completas, 533–544.

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26. See Christ in endnote 1, Evelyn Fishburn & Psiche Hughes, 221–2; Gene H.  Bell-Villada, Borges and his Fiction. A Guide to his Mind and Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 39. 27. Leonard A.  Cheever, “Jorge Luis Borges and George Bernard Shaw,” Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 6, no. 1 (1980): 52–62. I would like to thank Professor Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín for drawing my attention to his article. 28. Fernando Sorrentino, Siete conversaciones con Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo, 2001), 145.

reFerences Balderston, Daniel. 1986. The Literary Universe of Jorge Luis Borges. An Index to References and Allusions to Persons, Titles and Places in his Writing. New York: Greenwood Press. Balderston, Daniel, Gastón Gallo, and Nicolás Helft. 1999. Borges, Una Enciclopedia. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma. Bell-Villada, Gene H. 1999. Borges and his Fiction. A Guide to his Mind and Art. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bioy Casares, Adolfo. 2006. Borges. Buenos Aires: Destino. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Alicia Jurado. 1979. Qué es el budismo? In Obras completas en colaboración, 719–781. Emecé: Buenos Aires. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Ernesto Sabato. 1976. Diálogos. Madrid: Emecé. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Osvaldo Ferrari. 1999a. Reencuentro. Diálogos inéditos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. ———. 1955. El escritor argentino y la tradición. In Sur 232. ———. 1970. Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings. [James E.  Irby (trans.)]. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. 1974. Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Emecé. ———. 1988. Biblioteca personal (prólogos). Buenos Aries: Alianza Literatura. ———. 1994. Inquisiciones. Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1995. Borges en Revista Multicolor, 1933–1934. Buenos Aires: Editorial Atlántida. ———. 1999b. Borges en Sur, 1931–1980. Buenos Aires: Emecé. Canto, Estela. 1989. Borges a contraluz. Madrid: Colección Austral. Cheever, Leonard A. 1980. Jorge Luis Borges and George Bernard Shaw. Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 6 (1): 52–62. Christ, Ronald J. 1969. The Narrow Act. Borges’ Art of Allusion. New  York: New York University Press. Church, Richard. 1948. British Authors: A Twentieth-Century Gallery, with 53 Portraits. London: Longmans. Eliot, T.S. 1958. Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry. London: Faber.

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Fishburn, Evelyn, and Psiche Hughes. 1990. A Dictionary of Borges. London: Duckworth. Heaney, Seamus, Richard Kearney, and Jorge Luis Borges. 1982. Borges and the World of Fiction: An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges. In The Crane Bag 6 (2): 71–78. Holroyd, Michael. 1997. Bernard Shaw, the One-Volume Definitive Edition. London: Chatto & Windus. King, John. 1986. Sur. A Study of the Argentine Literary Journal and Its Role in the Development of a Culture, 1931–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaw, Bernard. 1958. How to Make Plays Readable. In Shaw on Theatre, ed. E.J. West, 90–95. London: MacGibbon & Kee. Sorrentino, Fernando. 2001. Siete conversaciones con Jorge Luis Borges. Buenos Aires: Casa Pardo. Willson, Patricia. 2004. La constelación del Sur. Traductores y traducciones en la literatura argentina del siglo XX. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Wilson, Jason. 2006. Jorge Luis Borges. London: Reaktion Books.

CHAPTER 12

Shavian Shadows in Spanish Lands: Shaw’s Impact on the ‘Generation of 1898’ David Jiménez Torres

This chapter will analyze the impact of George Bernard Shaw’s writing and career on the loose grouping of Spanish authors which has come to be known as the ‘Generation of 1898’ (Generación del 98). I will begin by examining what direct influence, if any, Shaw had on the work of the so-­ called 98ers.1 I will propose that, perhaps surprisingly, his strongest impact was not on the generation’s playwrights (Jacinto Benavente and Ramón del Valle-Inclán) but on its journalist and essayist Ramiro de Maeztu. I will then explain how Shaw’s international renown meant that, from the 1920s onward, he became one of the fundamental points of reference for the public’s understanding of the characteristics and direction of contemporary high culture. This meant that, even within Spain, the work and actions of the 98ers were often compared to Shaw’s by younger authors and readers. Shaw thus defined a horizon of expectations regarding the behavior of writers and public intellectuals which, in turn, determined the Spanish public’s perception of 98ers like the writer Miguel de Unamuno. This

D. Jiménez Torres (*) Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_12

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shows that, when it comes to a figure as widely known and multifaceted as Shaw, studies on his influence must take into consideration his presence as a loosely defined persona in the public’s imagination as well as his specific works and ideas.

Interest Without Influence: The Cases of Benavente and Valle-Inclán Before delving into our analysis, it is important to point out that the term ‘Generation of 1898’ is both well-established and roundly contested. In its most common formulation, it refers to a group of authors and public intellectuals who first achieved renown in the mid-to-late 1890s, who reached the apex of their prominence in the 1910s and 1920s, and who retain to this day a high degree of significance in Spanish culture, many of their works being included in school and university curricula. The authors most commonly included in this grouping are Miguel de Unamuno, Ángel Ganivet, Pío Baroja, Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Azorín, Antonio Machado, Ramiro de Maeztu, and Jacinto Benavente. The common trait shared by this group would be an attitude of iconoclastic protest toward the Spanish cultural conventions and sociopolitical situation of the 1890s. This attitude would have been granted legitimacy by the disastrous War of 1898 (known in the English-speaking world as the Spanish-American War), in which Spain’s defeat and subsequent loss of its American and Asian colonies would have illustrated how dramatically the country’s imperial glories had faded, and would have acted as a catalyst for the desire to renew and modernize Spain. Many well-founded objections to using ‘Generation of 1898’ have been made, first by the so-called generation’s own members and later by literary scholars and cultural historians.2 Both then and now, the objections tend to center on the lack of a common agenda or a set of continuing similarities among the aesthetic projects and political ideologies of the members of this alleged generation, each of whom developed their own particular career and concerns. The term has thus lost some of its original appeal, but continues to be employed as shorthand for the leading figures within the Spanish literary world of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Thus, understanding 98ers as a literary establishment with a professional trajectory that was, at least in temporal terms, clearly defined,

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establishes a good framework for an analysis of their relationship to Shaw. On the one hand, and as other chapters in this volume readily document, Shaw achieved a high degree of fame and influence in early-twentieth-­ century Spain. His plays were staged throughout the country and his statements on matters of public interest were reported in the press—and often on the front page. One prominent essayist and politician, Álvaro Alcalá Galiano, even referred to Shaw in 1930 as “a universal celebrity.”3 It is therefore safe to say that anybody we might include within the ‘Generation of 1898’ would have been aware of Shaw’s main positions on society and politics, and would probably have seen at least one of his plays. Indeed, we can find all of them making casual references to Shaw at some point in their careers: Azorín claimed that Candida was his favorite contemporary play, along with Hedda Gabbler; Unamuno referenced Shaw’s position on the issue of Irish nationalism as a prompt for his own stance regarding Basque nationalism; and Baroja’s biographer informs us that “Bernard Shaw’s earlier plays amused him; not so much the later ones.”4 Moreover, most of their personal libraries included some of Shaw’s works: Unamuno’s, for example, held Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara, and Saint Joan (in Julio Broutá’s translation).5 Dates and timelines, however, are crucial. For despite his enormous success in Britain and beyond in the late 1890s, Shaw’s work did not become well-known in Spain until the 1920s. Thus, despite being significantly younger than Shaw (Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, and Benavente were born in the mid-1860s, while Baroja, Azorín, and Maeztu were born in the early 1870s), all the 98ers were well-established in their literary careers by the time Shaw’s works began to circulate widely in Spain. As a consequence, it is difficult to find solid traces of Shaw having exerted a decisive influence in the aesthetic or political development of any of the 98ers. The two prominent playwrights within the group, Valle-Inclán and Benavente, are cases in point, for none of them is close to Shaw in thematic or stylistic terms. Let us see why. The former was a modernist throughout his entire career. To be precise, at the beginning of his career, Valle-Inclán fit the Spanish sense of this term (what is usually referred to as ‘symbolism’ in English-language criticism), his final works approached the English sense of the term ‘modernism’ (a high degree of linguistic and narrative experimentation, often involving a clear and self-conscious break with the Realist tradition). It is thus that his style was compared at first with those of Yeats, Synge, or Lady

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Gregory, while later in his career it was compared with James Joyce’s.6 Never, to my knowledge, was a comparison made with Shaw. Indeed, and beyond a penchant for social criticism, it is difficult to discern points of contact between Valle-Inclán’s and Shaw’s landmark works. The former’s social criticism unfolds firmly within the realm of farce, and his disregard for characterization, realistic dialogue, or overt moral lessons seems at odds with Shaw’s style. This was quite clear to his contemporaries, with the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez writing that Ramón del Valle-Inclán was—is—a true Celt. Like those great Irish authors who are also his contemporaries, George Moore, J.  M. Synge and Yeats (Bernard Shaw is a different matter), he started out under the influences of universal symbolism […]. In England Valle-Inclán has been compared with George Moore, but he does not resemble him much, and is also far superior to Moore. Those he really resembles […] are Synge and Yeats.7

Benavente’s case is more complex. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922 (three years before Shaw), he was a popular dramatist whose plays combined social criticism with realistic dialogue and a disdain for melodrama. Indeed, he shares quite a few literary characteristics with Shaw: both of them were prolific and successful playwrights in their own time, both catered to the same bourgeois public who was actually criticized in their works, both were credited with infusing new blood into their respective national theatres, both preferred to drive their plays through dialogue rather than action, both had a pedagogical streak which determined their approach to writing for the stage, and both were accused by critics of being superficial, ideologically inconsistent, and overly verbose.8 It is no surprise, then, that Benavente’s work has often been identified as exhibiting Shavian influences. As Gallud Jardiel has argued, however, this judgment seems to be born of little more than the chronological coincidence of Benavente’s career paralleling Shaw’s own.9 Benavente’s style was already well-defined by the 1890s, thus ruling out the possibility of it having been directly influenced by Shaw during his formative phase. Benavente himself stated that he had not even heard of Shaw until 1906, by which point he had already written and staged about twenty plays.10 He even seems to have resented the comparison: in 1907 he responded forcefully to the accusation by a younger author, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, that he had drawn inspiration for several of his works from Shaw, without

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having credited the source. While Benavente acknowledged that he knew and respected Shaw’s work, he asked: Does this young Anglophile believe that I have been living off plagiarizing an author who had not yet been born—in literary terms—by the time I was, if not exhausted, then at least a bit tired of writing comedies? […] This is truly the last straw, being accused of deriving imitations, plagiarism—and not just inspiration—from authors whose existence I wasn’t even aware of until a couple of days ago, so to speak.11

While the forcefulness of Benavente’s disavowal might well indicate that there was more to the issue than he was letting on, career timelines do seem to bear out his defense of his own originality vis-à-vis Shaw. Moreover, even though Benavente occasionally worked as a translator of foreign plays into Spanish, he never translated any of Shaw’s, opting instead, within the English tradition, for Shakespeare and Bulwer-Lytton. Someone who was well-acquainted with both Benavente’s work and contemporary British drama, Ricardo Baeza, explained that Benavente’s primary British influences were Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, A. W. Pinero, and H. A. Jones.12 And in her 1981 study on Shaw’s impact in the Spanish-speaking world, Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna concluded that a comparison between Shaw’s and Benavente’s plays produced only superficial similarities.13 Shaw’s relationship with Benavente, then, seems to be one of little more than semi-conscious parallelisms. Indeed, when reading through the various mentions that Benavente made of Shaw in his journalism, one gets the sense that he found the Irishman to be a kindred spirit. In a 1907 review of Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, Benavente wrote sympathetically of theatrical “groundbreakers” (innovadores) who, in his view, had to leverage their hard-won popularity among the public against the hostile disposition of conservative drama critics.14 Benavente, as most readers of the time knew, had also faced the animus of critics, and had responded by vindicating his popularity among Spanish theatregoers.15 In the same article, and again in reference to Shaw’s reception in Britain, Benavente expressed his envy of those countries in which a groundbreaking author was allowed to express opinions that went against the general view without having to face social ostracism as a result. We can therefore conclude that the admiration Benavente claimed to profess toward Shaw (“the only modern English [sic] playwright who is worthy of attention,” he wrote in his review of Caesar and Cleopatra) was also a useful rhetorical device

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through which to vindicate his own work. Benavente was not alone in this: another of the 98ers, Miguel de Unamuno, referred to Shaw as “an absolute, through-and-through heretic, even of his own heresies.”16 Readers of the time could scarcely have failed to notice how much this description fit Unamuno’s own, iconoclastic public persona. Indeed, several scholars have noticed that Unamuno, “like Bernard Shaw or Pirandello, created for himself an outer mask, a second aggressive personality that enabled him to face the world.”17 In a similar vein, Sedwick notes that “like Bernard Shaw, both Unamuno and Pirandello fascinated their readers by being aggressively eccentric.”18 Not for nothing did Ortega write in his obituary of Unamuno, somewhat acidly, that “Unamuno belonged to the generation of Bernard Shaw.” According to the Spanish philosopher, Unamuno and Shaw “belonged to the last generation of ‘intellectuals’ [his emphasis] who still believed that humankind exists for no higher purpose than to serve as audiences to their jester jokes, their arias, their polemics.”19

A Spanish Fabian: Ramiro de Maeztu We have seen how, for the majority of the 98ers, Shaw was a figure they came to know when they were already well-established in their careers. They were familiar with Shaw’s work and respected him, and his opinions might prompt them to write an article on contemporary literature or politics, but Shaw reached their bookshelves—or nearest theatres—too late to exert a decisive influence on their work. The main exception to this lag is journalist and essayist Ramiro de Maeztu, who, for a number of biographical reasons, was uniquely poised to come into contact with Shaw’s work sooner than the other 98ers. Maeztu was the only one in this group who learned English as a child (his mother was of British descent) as well as the only one who spent a significant period of his life in Britain: from 1905 to 1919 he worked as the London correspondent for several Spanish newspapers.20 Maeztu had initially made his mark in the Spanish public sphere as one of the principal figures of that iconoclasm and desire for modernization which was later taken to be representative of the ‘Generation of 1898’. By 1905, however, he had grown wary of the Nietzschean ideals of his youth and was in the search of a more solid basis from which to effect social change. This was the context in which a common friend, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, took Maeztu to a Fabian rally and afterward introduced him to Shaw.21

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Maeztu quickly became fascinated by Shaw, whom he described to his readers as a “truthteller” who “charges fearlessly against all the lies and all the illusions of art.”22 In subsequent articles he would occasionally refer to Shaw as “my friend,” although their personal interactions seem to have been rather scarce (no letter from Maeztu is listed in the Shavian archives held in the British Library). More importantly, he attended many of Shaw’s public talks and nearly all the premieres of his plays. In 1907 he wrote that he “adored” Shaw, whom he considered “as brilliant, as witty and even funnier than Wilde, but at the same time […] more knowledgeable about men and things, inspired by higher ideals, and capable of striking harder and more effectively.”23 It should be noted that Maeztu took the world of ideas and of political action very seriously—to the extent of being occasionally lampooned for it—which explains his gravitating toward the socially engaged outlook that underpinned Shaw’s plays. In his opinion, the latter were “the most intense and maturely thought-through that are staged anywhere in Europe.”24 We should note that Maeztu was writing at a time when the Spanish public had, as yet, very little knowledge of Shaw: Julio Broutá’s first translations of his plays were published in 1907, to a generally indifferent reception, and the first Spanish staging of a play by Shaw, in 1908, was so unsuccessful that another would not be attempted until 1920.25 Benavente even claimed, in the response to Pérez de Ayala examined above, that Maeztu had been the first Spaniard to write about Shaw. Among the various consequences of Maeztu’s fascination with Shaw is the former’s brief incursion into playwriting. Before arriving in London, Maeztu’s only attempts at creative writing consisted of a few short stories and a serialized novel, all of which he signed with a pen name. However, the Shavian approach to drama seems to have convinced Maeztu that plays were an effective means of political action, and therefore a professional path worth pursuing. In 1908 he told his readers that plays, when approached as Shaw does, could be the “most noble and sublime of literary forms.”26 The year 1908 was also the year in which he privately informed the young philosopher José Ortega y Gasset that he was working on several plays, and some time later he would write to his sister that, once he had completed a rigorous project of self-education, his intention was to devote himself solely to playwriting.27 The only one of these projected plays to have survived, The Emerald Syndicate (El sindicato de las esmeraldas), has been described by leading Maeztu scholar González Cuevas as bearing a strong imprint of Shavian drama.28 Indeed, the characters in this

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highly pedagogical play strike a characteristically Shavian equilibrium between embodying certain ideas and being capable of realistic dialogue and human fallibility. Shaw also seems to have influenced Maeztu’s developing interest in the Don Juan myth. Shaw had famously appropriated this character from Spanish literary history in Man and Superman, and particularly in the play’s third act, which Maeztu saw—and wrote favorably about—when it was first staged in 1907.29 A couple of years later, Maeztu, who had previously never shown an interest in the Don Juan myth, gave two talks on the topic at London’s Polyglot Club, and he published his ideas on Don Juan in his 1925 collection of essays Don Quijote, Don Juan y la Celestina.30 It is true that, in this work, Maeztu never references Man and Superman, not even in the detailed overview he provides of foreign appropriations of Tirso de Molina’s character. However, Maeztu’s take on the Don Juan myth coincides with Shaw’s in a number of ways, such as his interpretation of Don Juan as someone who believes hell exists but chooses not to think about it yet. Maeztu’s claim that foreigners who appropriate the Don Juan myth prefer to see him as someone who “seeks after some ideal” rather than a mere “trickster” (burlador) would also fit with the philosophizing protagonist of Man and Superman.31 It also seems significant that Maeztu’s essay begins with a quotation from Baudelaire’s “Don Juan aux enfers”— the same poem, of course, that lends its title to the third act in Shaw’s play.32 Shaw, however, does not feature in Maeztu’s essay at all. This blatant omission, despite Shaw’s unquestionable role as a source and influence, may be due to a deliberate animosity that Maeztu developed toward Shaw during the First World War, and which is explained below. Everything mentioned thus far, however, is only the tip of the iceberg as far as Shaw’s influence on Maeztu is concerned. For Maeztu was not primarily fascinated by Shaw the playwright, but by Shaw the public intellectual. This makes sense when we consider that Maeztu had always been interested in how intellectuals could and should intervene in public affairs. Maeztu first embodied and then became disillusioned with the type of anarchic, atomistic public action that he and other 98ers like Baroja or Azorín had carried out, and which—as he later came to realize—was more effective at career-building than at truly changing the state of things in Spain. In Shaw and the Fabians, however, Maeztu saw a different model of how intellectuals might work toward social change. The basis for this model would be self-discipline, well-organized collective action, and a

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clear understanding of what the intellectual’s relationship with the masses should be. Maeztu’s admiration for the Fabian model in general, and for Shaw as its primary exponent in particular, is readily visible in the three public lectures he gave in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao in 1910.33 Taken together, the three talks—which were well-attended by each of the three cities’ local intelligentsia—are an explicit encouragement to Spanish intellectuals to be more like the Fabians. Maeztu presented the latter as one of the reasons for the United Kingdom’s success in advancing toward a society that was both more industrialized and more just. It was the lack of responsible and well-organized intellectual elites such as the Fabians, Maeztu argued, which prevented Spain from advancing along the joint paths of modernization and social justice. And he put Shaw forward as an example of the determination and goal-oriented attitude that all responsible public intellectuals should adopt: Just think of Bernard Shaw’s output: one or two plays per year; a book of essays; constant collaborations in about a dozen magazines; forty or fifty letters to the Times; sixty or seventy speeches in favor of the Socialist cause; position-setting on any given matter of public interest; administrative work in a theatre, in the Fabian Society and in a dozen more associations; and, as his basis, a constant and densely-packed study of science, economics, philosophy, history, political science. How is he able to do all of this? He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t eat meat, he doesn’t consume stimulants, he doesn’t allow himself to have romantic distractions (caprichos), he doesn’t attend social occasions (reuniones de recreo) or café discussions (tertulias); his life is all about study, output and public action.34

Readers familiar with Shaw’s private life will find some amusement in Maeztu’s remarks about his supposed lack of “romantic distractions.” But what is important here is Maeztu painting an idealized picture, for anyone who attended his lectures, of Shaw the public intellectual. Moreover, this presentation seems to have had an impact, particularly on authors and thinkers who were younger than him. The most prominent among these, Maeztu’s young friend Ortega y Gasset, became involved around this time in a brief attempt to create a Spanish Fabian Society. Moreover, the Fabian aim (as conveyed by Maeztu) of creating a responsible intellectual elite, one that based its legitimacy on disciplined study and on a desire to apply

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scientific principles to social issues, underlies Ortega’s founding in 1913 of a ‘League of Political Education’ (Liga de Educación Política).35 Maeztu’s admiration of Shaw, however, began to dissipate around 1912, and would eventually turn into explicit rejection. His reading of Catholic distributists like Hilaire Belloc and G.  K. Chesterton, and of guild socialists like A.  J. Penty and A.  R. Orage—to whose weekly, The New Age, he became a regular contributor—slowly convinced him of the pitfalls of the Fabian project. These readings and intellectual influences should be understood as the “English” component of his progressive shift toward a more conservative stance. Once he returned to Spain in 1916, the sociopolitical turmoil during the Great War—including the rise of anarchists and their unions, the consequences of the rapid expansion of the Spanish economy as a non-belligerent country, and the threat of peripheral nationalism—triggered a steady reaction in Maeztu from liberal to conservative positions. This paved the way for his disappointment with Shaw’s early and well-­ publicized anti-militarist position toward the Great War, which was tantamount to being a pacifist in Maeztu’s view. Indeed, Maeztu was from the beginning a passionate defender of the cause of the Triple Entente and traveled to the front various times as a war correspondent for the Spanish press. He also declared that Shaw’s pronouncements on the war had signed “his death certificate as a thinker. No longer will anyone believe in Bernard Shaw.”36 Maeztu, who espoused a type of combative, agonistic militarism even before the outbreak of hostilities, blamed anti-militarists like Shaw (once again, using the word ‘pacifist’ in several of his articles) for how unprepared for war Britain had been. In a scathing review of Common Sense About the War, he duly enlisted all the well-worn criticisms of Shaw as an irresponsible and inconsistent public figure.37 Somewhat paradoxically, Maeztu’s distancing himself from Shaw led to their most public exchange: a journalistic polemic in the pages of The New Age. Maeztu published a long article entitled “The Confusions of Mr. Bernard Shaw,” to which the latter responded (in a piece entitled “The Alleged Confusions of Mr. Bernard Shaw”) with great tact and respect for his opponent. Maeztu’s follow-up piece went unanswered.38 Maeztu’s animus against Shaw for his pacifism would last the remainder of his life. In 1925 he wrote that in the midst of the European conflagration, while watching the enemy lines from afar, I often dreamt that the good soldiers from this side of the hill

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would join up with those from the other side, and all together, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans and Belgians would turn against the pacifists and leeches in the rearguard.39

He also continued reading English Catholics like Belloc, Chesterton, and their younger disciples, who often made Shaw the target of their attacks on modern culture. In a glowing review of a volume of essays published in the 1930s by English Catholic intellectuals, Maeztu wrote that they “leave nothing standing in the house of cards built by all those English authors who consider themselves to have advanced ideas, such as Wells, Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell.”40 We can thus see how one member of the ‘Generation of 1898’ who was most directly influenced by Shaw, and who did the most to publicize his work in Spain, ended up disavowing his former idol and criticizing everything he stood for. The only exception in this criticism was Saint Joan, which deeply impressed the increasingly Catholic Maeztu.41

It’s a Generational Thing: Shaw and the 98ers as Seen by Younger Readers There is yet another, more diffuse aspect to Bernard Shaw’s relationship with the 98ers. The extraordinary renown that Shaw achieved in Spain in the 1920s and 30s, once his plays had been translated into Spanish and were regularly being staged across the country, meant that he became firmly embedded in the public’s mental map of contemporary literature, culture, and politics. This helped shape the horizon of expectations under which the Spanish public received literary works and political declarations, not only by foreign authors but also by Spanish ones. Shaw thus became a conceptual point of reference which influenced the reception of later work by the 98ers, particularly among those readers who were some years younger than them. We can see how this dynamic operated in practice in an interview with a university student that was published in 1930  in the liberal-leaning newspaper El Sol. Asked to name his favorite contemporary authors, the unnamed student responded: “in terms of Spanish ones, [they are] Unamuno, Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Benavente [and] Ortega y Gasset. And among the foreign ones, [they are] Bernard Shaw, Wilde, André Maurois and Mark Twain.”42 Note that, except for Ortega, all the Spanish authors listed by the student are figures traditionally associated with the ‘Generation

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of 1898’. Other press pieces from this period yield similar results: interviewed in the same year as the anonymous student, the young novelist Ramón J. Sender declared that his favorite contemporary Spanish authors were Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, and Baroja, whereas his favorite foreign ones were Shaw and Pirandello.43 Far from remaining at the level of anecdote, I would posit that there were consequences to this coexistence of Shaw and the 98ers in the Spanish public’s pantheon of contemporary authors. It appears that the public was encouraged to find parallels between these figures, and even to homogenize them according to certain shared characteristics. The journalist, essayist, and politician Luis Araquistain argued in 1928 that Benavente, Unamuno, and Valle-Inclán were doing at the Spanish level what Shaw and Pirandello were doing at the European level: carrying out a wholesale renewal of theatrical styles and techniques.44 The comparison was structured in such a way that Shaw and Pirandello were presented as the norm (or the best exemplars of the trend), and Benavente, Unamuno, and Valle-­ Inclán were presented as its Spanish variants. Similarly, Ramón J. Sender, in the interview mentioned above, claimed that both Shaw and Unamuno (along with Pirandello) were “extraordinary jugglers” of words and arguments.45 For his part, the literary critic Ramón Iglesia Parga explained in 1929 that both Unamuno and Baroja embodied that rare public figure, the teller of “uncomfortable truths,” a figure which, in his mind, was best exemplified internationally by Shaw.46 Indeed, it appears that readers who were younger than the 98ers understood that the latter, like Shaw, were the main living exponents of a sort of anarchic intellectualism. In this interpretation, the type of intellectual embodied by Shaw and the 98ers was brave enough to express uncomfortable truths which, at the very least, made their countrymen question their most deep-seated beliefs. But this type of intellectual was also overtly obsessed with establishing his own career and calling attention to himself, thus remaining incapable of the kind of well-organized collective and institutional action that could truly effect change. Nowhere was this more evident than in the obituary Ortega y Gasset wrote upon Unamuno’s death in 1937: Unamuno belonged to the same generation as Bernard Shaw. I bring up the connection between the two of them because, once we set their names next to one another, we can readily see the shared traits that their similar ages (coetaneidad) impose upon their respective particularities. Theirs was the

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last generation of ‘intellectuals’ to still be convinced that mankind exists for no higher purpose than to serve as spectators to their jester tricks, their arias, their polemics. […] They had not discovered tacticism, nor the pleasure that a true intellectual finds in hiding and in nonexistence.47

Ortega was, remarkably, turning Maeztu’s presentation of Shaw-the-­ public-intellectual on its head. As shown above, in his 1910 lectures Maeztu had put Shaw forward as an example of the type of responsible intellectual capable of collective action which served as an antidote to the anarchic intellectualism of his fellow 98ers. By 1937, however, Ortega was invoking Shaw as the best exponent of that type of anarchic individualism to be found outside Spain. Where Maeztu had presented Shaw as the anti-­ Unamuno, Ortega presented him as a kindred spirit to him. Given how, in both cases, the comparison came from figures who had much to gain by denigrating Unamuno, we may wonder whether this responded to real changes in Shaw’s public persona from the 1910s to the 1930s, or whether he was simply versatile enough to be used as a foil for both one thing and its opposite.48

Conclusions Shaw had a peculiar influence on the segment of the early-twentieth-­ century Spanish literary establishment that is often referred to as the ‘Generation of 1898’. All of the 98ers had a decent knowledge of his work, and most of them appreciated it, but it arrived in Spain too late to exert a decisive formative influence on them. Consequently, Shaw does not seem to have had much of an impact on the group’s two leading playwrights, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Jacinto Benavente. The latter’s work does exhibit some striking parallelisms with Shaw’s style and technique, but likely those parallelisms are simply a reflection of the shared tastes of the Western European theatre-going publics of the time. The figure most directly influenced by Shaw was the 98er with the least significant literary output: Ramiro de Maeztu, the journalist and essayist who became a fervent supporter of Shaw’s work (both on the stage and on the stump) during his extended stay in London. Maeztu helped popularize Shaw’s work in Spain, laying the groundwork for the first translations of his plays, and he framed the Spanish public’s understanding of his figure as one that went well beyond the realm of playwriting and fully into that of public intellectualism.

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In part because of this, during the 1920s and 30s Shaw also affected the 98ers in an indirect yet important way. Younger authors like Ortega, Araquistain, and Sender associated Shaw and the 98ers as all belonging to a generation that was firmly embedded in the European literary establishment, and which—because of this—shared several traits. They thus judged some of Benavente’s plays within a framework determined by Shaw’s own, or framed Unamuno’s public persona as being akin to the Shavian model of intellectuals’ intervention in matters of public interest. It is likely— though I have not uncovered much evidence in this regard—that these operations also took place conversely, whereby Shaw’s pronouncements or plays were received by the younger Spanish public within a framework determined by Benavente, Unamuno, etc. There are thus many reasons to examine the question of Shaw’s influence in early-twentieth-century Spain in a more general—perhaps sociological—manner that goes beyond merely reading and reacting to texts. It is a striking testament to the fame that Shaw achieved in his lifetime that he was able to shape the reception of authors he never met and in a country so different from his own.

Notes 1. I am adapting here, somewhat orthopedically, one of the ways in which these authors are referred to in Spanish literary scholarship: noventayochistas. 2. The most succinct exemplar of these scholarly objections can be found in the manifesto appended to José-Carlos Mainer and Jordi Gracia, eds., En el 98: los nuevos escritores (Soria–Madrid: Fundación Duques de Soria— Visor, 1997). A classic and still highly useful English-language study of the original effect of the 98ers is Herbert Ramsden’s The 1898 Movement in Spain: Towards a Reinterpretation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974). 3. Álvaro Alcalá Galiano, “Bernard Shaw, superhombre intelectual.” ABC (8 May 1930). All translations from the Spanish are my own. I retain certain Spanish words in parentheses in the case of untranslated works or in instances where the original has nuances I have been incapable of conveying fully in English. 4. Asel Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Puerto Rico: Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 28, 24. Julio Caro Baroja, Los Baroja. Memorias familiares (Madrid: Taurus, 1978), 71.

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5. Mario Valdés and María Elena de Valdés, An Unamuno Source Book (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973). I am grateful to Stephen G. H. Roberts for this information. 6. Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos, La literatura irlandesa en España (La Coruña: Gesbiblo, 2010), 14. 7. The quotation is taken from Darío Villanueva, “Valle-Inclán y James Joyce,” in Joyce en España. IV Encuentros de la Asociación Española James Joyce, ed. Francisco García Tortosa & Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos (A Coruña: Universidade Servizo de publicacións, 1994), I: 55. 8. Enrique Gallud Jardiel, La dramaturgia de Jacinto Benavente (Madrid: Antígona, 2015), 36. 9. Gallud Jardiel, Benavente, 23. 10. Gallud Jardiel, Benavente, 24. 11. Jacinto Benavente, “El teatro de Bernardo Shaw,” Heraldo de Madrid (29 June 1907). 12. S. [sic], “Entrevista con Ricardo Baeza,” La Gaceta Literaria (15 November 1930). 13. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw, 99–101. 14. Jacinto Benavente, “César y Cleopatra,” Heraldo de Madrid (14 December 1907). 15. We see this in one of his most polemical pieces, the pro-German manifesto published during the First World War: Jacinto Benavente, “Amistad germano-española,” La Tribuna (18 December 1915). 16. Miguel de Unamuno, “El Estatuto o los desterrados de sus propios lares,” El Sol (7 July 1931). 17. Walter Starkie, “Epilogue,” in Unamuno: Creator and Creation, eds. José Rubia Barcia and M.  A. Zeitlin (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), 235. 18. Frank Sedwick, “Unamuno and Pirandello Revisited,” Italica 33(1), 42. 19. José Ortega y Gasset, “En la muerte de Unamuno,” Obras Completas. Vol. V (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1964), 265. 20. For Maeztu’s relationship with the United Kingdom, see David Jiménez Torres, Ramiro de Maeztu and England: Imaginaries, Realities and Repercussions of a Cultural Encounter (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016). Two relevant works on Maeztu’s impact on Spanish politics and culture are Pedro Carlos González Cuevas, Maeztu: biografía de un nacionalista español (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2003), and José Luis Villacañas, Ramiro de Maeztu y el ideal de la burguesía en España (Madrid: Espasa, 2000). 21. Ramiro de Maeztu, “En torno a Shakespeare,” La Correspondencia de España (30 April 1905). For Cunninghame Graham as a nexus between the British and Spanish intelligentsias of his time, see David Jiménez

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Torres, “De historiador de la Conquista a icono de la Hispanidad: R. B. Cunninghame Graham como mediador cultural,” Erebea 6 (2016), 197–225. 22. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Balance teatral,” La Correspondencia de España (29 July 1905). Maeztu’s statement alludes to the debate over Shakespeare between Shaw and Chesterton held around this time. 23. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Don Juan en el infierno,” La Correspondencia de España (12 June 1907). 24. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Trabajo y descontentamiento,” Nuevo Mundo (19 December 1907). 25. Francisco Lafarga and Luis Pegenaute ed., Diccionario histórico de la traducción en España (Madrid: Gredos, 2009), 1046–7. The reference to the 1908 and 1920 stagings is in Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw, 19. 26. Ramiro de Maeztu, “La ‘Cándida’ de Shaw,” Nuevo Mundo (14 May 1908). 27. The letter to Ortega is dated 2 July 1908 and is held in the Fundación Ortega y Gasset—Gregorio Marañón. The letter to his sister, dated 21 July 1911, is in María Josefa Lastagaray Rosales, Los Maeztu: una familia de artistas e intelectuales (Doctoral dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2010). 28. The play is published in Emilio Palacios Fernández, ed., Ramiro de Maeztu: obra literaria olvidada (1897–1910) (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2010). The assertion of Shavian influence is in González Cuevas, Maeztu, 139. 29. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Don Juan en el infierno,” La Correspondencia de España (12 June 1907). 30. Maeztu’s talks at the Polyglot Club are summarized in L. de Aitz-Gorri, “Don Juan y el donjuanismo: una conferencia de Maeztu,” Nuevo Mundo (10 March 1910). 31. Ramiro de Maeztu, Don Qujote, Don Juan y la Celestina: ensayos en simpatía (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2004), 103. 32. Maeztu, Don Quijote, 89. 33. Ramiro de Maeztu, Liberalismo y socialismo: textos fabianos de 1909–1911 (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 1984). 34. Ramiro de Maeztu, La revolución y los intelectuales (Madrid: Bernardo Rodríguez, 1911), 28. 35. Rafael Urbano, “La ‘Fabian Society’,” El Socialista (18 December 1913). See also E. Inman Fox’s Introduction in Maeztu, Liberalismo. 36. Ramiro de Maeztu, “El fin del pacifismo,” Heraldo de Madrid (31 January 1916). 37. Ramiro de Maeztu. “La extinción del lujo,” Heraldo de Madrid (14 December 1914). 38. Ramiro de Maeztu, “The Confusions of Mr. Bernard Shaw,” The New Age (15 June 1916); George Bernard Shaw, “The Alleged Confusions of Mr.

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Bernard Shaw,” The New Age (20 June 1916); Ramiro de Maeztu, “Mr. Shaw and the German Republic,” The New Age (27 July 1916). I have written about this polemic, and what it signals about Spanish attitudes to the First World War (as well as about those of neutral countries in general), in David Jiménez Torres, “Neutrales belicistas contra contendientes pacifistas: la polémica entre George Bernard Shaw y Ramiro de Maeztu durante la Primera Guerra Mundial,” in Carlos Sanz Díaz and Zorann Petrovici, eds., La gran guerra en la España de Alfonso XIII (Madrid: Sílex), 233–254. 39. Maeztu, Don Quijote…, 96. 40. Ramiro de Maeztu, Defensa del Espíritu (Madrid: Rialp 1958), 60. 41. Ramiro de Maeztu, “Santa Juana,” El Mundo (14 January 1924). 42. “Lo que piensan los jóvenes,” El Sol (18 January 1930). 43. José Luis Salado, “Ramón J.  Sender engordó cuatro kilos en la cárcel,” Heraldo de Madrid (15 May 1930). 44. Luis Araquistain, “La disolución de la conciencia,” El Sol (2 February 1928). 45. José Luis Salado, “Ramón J. Sender…” 46. Ramón Iglesia Parga, “El viaje de Turquía,” La Gaceta Literaria (1 August 1929). 47. José Ortega y Gasset, Ensayos sobre la Generación del 98 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1981), 57. 48. On the different modes of public intellectualism in early-twentieth-­century Spain, see Stephen G. H. Roberts, Miguel de Unamuno o la creación del intelectual español moderno (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2007), and David Jiménez Torres, “La palabra ambigua. Los discursos sobre el intelectual en España, 1889–1914,” Historia y Política, 43, 193–223. On the multiplicity of meanings of the term “intellectual” in Europe at the time, and on its relationship to cultural prestige, see Stefan Collini, Absent Minds. Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Chaps. 1 and 2.

References Caro Baroja, Julio. 1978. Los Baroja. Memorias familiares. Madrid: Taurus. Collini, Stefan. 2006. Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallud Jardiel, Enrique. 2015. La dramaturgia de Jacinto Benavente. Madrid: Antígona. González Cuevas, Pedro Carlos. 2003. Maeztu: biografía de un nacionalista español. Madrid: Marcial Pons.

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Jiménez Torres, David. 2016a. Ramiro de Maeztu and England: Imaginaries, Realities and Repercussions of a Cultural Encounter. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. ———. 2016b. De historiador de la Conquista a icono de la Hispanidad: R.B. Cunninghame Graham como mediador cultural. Erebea 6: 197–225. ———. 2019. Neutrales belicistas contra contendientes pacifistas: la polémica entre George Bernard Shaw y Ramiro de Maeztu durante la Primera Guerra Mundial. In La gran guerra en la España de Alfonso XIII, ed. Carlos Sanz Díaz and Zorann Petrovici, 233–254. Madrid: Sílex. ———. 2020. La palabra ambigua. Los discursos sobre el intelectual en España, 1889–1914. Historia y Política 43: 193–223. Lafarga, Francisco, and Luis Pegenaute, eds. 2009. Diccionario histórico de la traducción en España. Madrid: Gredos. Lastagaray Rosales, María Josefa. 2010. Los Maeztu: una familia de artistas e intelectuales. Doctoral dissertation: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. de Maeztu, Ramiro. 1911. La revolución y los intelectuales. Madrid: Bernardo Rodríguez. ———. 1958. Defensa del Espíritu. Madrid: Rialp. ———. 1984. Liberalismo y socialismo: textos fabianos de 1909–1911. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales. ———. 2004. Don Quijote, Don Juan y la Celestina: ensayos en simpatía. Madrid: Visor Libros. Mainer, José-Carlos, and Jordi Gracia, eds. 1997. En el 98: los nuevos escritores. Soria–Madrid: Fundación Duques de Soria—Visor. Ortega y Gasset, José. 1964. Obras Completas. IX Vols. Madrid: Revista de Occidente. ———. 1981. Ensayos sobre la Generación del 98. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Palacios Fernández, Emilio. 2010. Ramiro de Maeztu: obra literaria olvidada (1897–1910). Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Ramsden, Herbert. 1974. The 1898 Movement in Spain: Towards a Reinterpretation. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Roberts, Stephen G.H. 2007. Miguel de Unamuno o la creación del intelectual español moderno. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Puerto Rico: Editorial Universitaria. Sedwick, Frank. 1956. Unamuno and Pirandello Revisited. Italica 33 (1): 40–51. Starkie, Walter. 1967. Epilogue. In Unamuno: Creator and Creation, ed. José Rubia Barcia and M.A.  Zeitlin, 234–252. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. de Toro Santos, Antonio Raúl. 2010. La literatura irlandesa en España. La Coruña: Gesbiblo.

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Valdés, Mario, and María Elena de Valdés. 1973. An Unamuno Source Book. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Villacañas, José Luis. 2000. Ramiro de Maeztu y el ideal de la burguesía en España. Madrid: Espasa. Villanueva, Darío. 1994. Valle-Inclán y James Joyce. In Joyce en España. IV Encuentros de la Asociación Española James Joyce, ed. Francisco García Tortosa and Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos, vol. I, 55–72. A Coruña: Universidade Servizo de publicacións.

CHAPTER 13

Bernard Shaw and Rodolfo Usigli: Where Playwrights Converge Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora

The Devil’s Disciple Mexican playwright Rodolfo Usigli (1905–1979) managed to establish the supremacy of drama on the Mexican literary scene during the 1920s and 1930s. He did so by transforming the national essence into something universal—thereby presenting the Mexican character as existing beyond the foundations of an ethnic group, as a human experience that is valid on a global scale. This is how Usigli himself put it in his “Ensayo sobre la actualidad de la poesía dramática,” written soon after the premiere of his most popular play, El gesticulador (The impostor), on 17 May 1947: Up until the present day I quietly yet strongly believe that—taking the greatest risks in the process—I have created a Mexican theater. In other words, and with all due modesty, I am sure that Mexico begins to exist in a full sense and creates its own theater through my work, which is as precise a tool as human tools go. Somebody had to do it, and it happened to be me, just like others must create a new political or economic system: by their

G. S. de la Mora (*) Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_13

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disposition, their volition, their vocation, and because we are in Mexico; by a chance that is so fantastic and accurate that it overshadows mathematical science and makes the human imagination blush.1

Usigli outlines in this text the traits he believes playwrights must possess: a disposition toward genius and knowledge, a personal drive toward dramaturgy that makes it a life’s goal, and a vocational inclination to respond to social calls. This holy trinity of requirements constitutes the ethical goal that Usigli sought to fulfill—as well as the yardstick by which those mad enough to become playwrights should be measured. After the so-called Mexican Revolution, all sorts of artists attempted to express a Mexican identity—whether with the paintbrush, the pentagram, the pirouette, the story, or the stage. On the stage, Usigli led the Mexican nation and wanted to write historical plays that would allow audiences to contemplate and reconsider their social and historical past. Where did this young author find the inspiration to offer himself and others such a daunting dramaturgical mission? While looking for a mentor on the world theater scene of the early 1900s, Usigli discovered Shaw. The first Shaw play introduced in Mexico had been the 1917 edition of Vencidos (Overruled), translated and with an introduction by Antonio Castro Leal.2 This humble paperback always remained safely housed in Usigli’s personal library, and for very good reasons. Indeed, Castro Leal’s introduction depicts the Shavian genius in nine sections, whose headings provide a succinct idea of how remarkably on target they were: “El apóstol desengañado” (“the disillusioned apostle”); La moral popular, clara y valiente (“brave and straightforward popular morals”); GBS, Hauptmann y Brieux; El arte sin dragones (“art without dragons”); El diálogo infinito (“the endless dialogue”); Jane Austen y Bernard Shaw; and La manía del prefacio (“the preface obsession”), where Castro Leal states that Shaw “recommends that all original and intelligent men, as part of their own work, insist on their own merits.” The mind of the young Usigli must have been enthralled by the contemplation of his own merits under the Shavian literary lens. The Mexican theme progressively gained momentum in Usigli’s work: it went from the mere repetition of stock local scenes to a dramatic investigation of the social and psychological motivations of the Mexican people—until a faithful rendering of the Mexican essence surfaced. His plays and his countless prefaces and epilogues (a habit he learned from Shaw) examine Mexico from a tripartite perspective comprising the natural sciences, anthropology, and philosophy. Throughout this cognitive process,

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the playwright conceptualized drama as an exceptional medium for human learning. In this regard, the genealogy of Usigli’s aesthetics was perhaps best summarized by José Emilio Pacheco: Usigli discovered the plays and ideas of George Bernard Shaw (who had been introduced in our country by Antonio Castro Leal). In The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a book that was also the starting point for Brecht to reach very different formal conclusions, Usigli read words that left an indelible mark on him: realism is not stage illusionism. Through realism we try to assess society, tackle the problems of modern existence, attack the hypocrisy and conventionalism of the middle class and incorporate true discussion in dramatic dialogue.3

The Discovery of a Mentor Usigli’s stylistic findings stemmed from various disquisitions about new approaches to dramatic realism, and he insisted that Shaw’s drama was not a chance endeavor, but the discovery of the art of the stage as a means of transforming society. Understanding the aesthetic correspondence between Usigli’s theater and the dramatic tradition that began with Ibsen and was continued by Shaw is a fundamental and necessary starting point. The 1932–1933 season (October to January) in Mexico City was considered a Post-Romantic Cycle and included the first play by Shaw in the country: Candida. Although Usigli played no part in the production, he attended it. Years later, he would lead the Teatro de Medianoche Project (9 March to 23 April, 1940), a venture that utilized movie theaters once the screenings were over. This is where Usigli translated and directed Overruled.4 In the preface written between 1933 and 1935 for Noche de estío, Usigli expressed in print for the first time his knowledge of and admiration for the work of the Irish playwright. In subtitling his play a “Shavian comedy,” he acknowledges that The worst flaw that the critics will find in this play will be, no doubt, its Shavian architecture, which begins with this preface. Nevertheless—and not trying by any means to prevent such remonstrations—I would like to point out that it cannot be considered a flaw because this comedy is not unwittingly Shavian. On the contrary, my reading Heartbreak House by Mr. GBS several times set in motion a mechanism that I had been fabricating ­progressively inside myself, piece by piece, starting with my reading of some comedies by Aristophanes and all of Molière’s.5

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Another Shavian stimulus came along during the ten months he spent studying drama at Yale University thanks to a Rockefeller Scholarship (1935–1936).6 During that time, Usigli had the opportunity to witness a rich repertory, including an outstanding production of Saint Joan with Katharine Cornell in the lead role. In addition, his academic endeavors included a course taught by British scholar Allardyce Nicoll, who must have included Shaw in the syllabus or at least referenced him abundantly, given his publication record and interest in Shaw.7

Crossroads The question of why Usigli chose Shaw as his literary model and vicarious mentor can be answered not only because of Shaw’s prominent reputation in Europe, but also because of their shared biographical parallels. They both bore the burden of being considered foreigners: Dublin-born Shaw had made a new start in London in 1876, while Usigli had been born in Mexico City but was the son of an Alexandria-born father of Italian citizenship and a mother who had been born a subject of the Austro-­ Hungarian Empire (present-day Poland); Usigli spoke with her in French. Both authors must have experienced a sense of estrangement in dwelling in a land that was not that of their ancestors. In addition, they both had poor relationships with their fathers. Intellectually, both were largely self-taught yet attained peaks of dramatic expertise and sociopolitical understanding among their peers. Their relatively humble origins did not prevent them from sounding immodest on occasion. Another commonality was their outspoken admiration for Ibsen: from the Norwegian dramatist they learned the notion of a new dramatic realism laden with social content; in short, they conceived the theater as a means of social healing. Both Usigli and Shaw thus wielded sarcasm, ground the axe of irony, and enjoyed solitude. Other biographical coincidences include parallels between their dramatic outputs. In 1884, 28-year-old Shaw wrote a playlet in French (Un Petit Drame) that was unpublished during his lifetime. Likewise, Usigli wrote 4 Chemins 4 (also in French) in 1932, when he was 27, a piece that would not be published in its original language until 1963.8 Shaw was in his late thirties when he wrote the first plays that turned into immediate successes, while Usigli was exactly forty when he visited his colleague in London on two occasions and discussed two plays he was working on: Corona de sombra, about Mexican emperors Maximilian of Habsburg and

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Charlotte of Belgium (written in 1943, premiered in 1947) and Corona de luz, about the Virgin of Guadalupe (begun in the 1940s, published only in 1963).9 Some of these parallels may have been on Usigli’s mind in choosing Shaw as a mentor and literary role model, especially after Shaw had achieved worldwide recognition with his Nobel Prize in 1925. Reviewing Usigli’s dramatic career, it is not difficult to discern a Shavian influence. His first three plays—El apóstol (1931), Falso drama and 4 Chemins 4 (both 1932)—contain traces of Benavente’s high comedy, especially the first one, and the notable influence of Henri-René Lenormand in the third. They are dramatic exercises that seek to showcase the skill of the professional playwright. His next three plays, collectively entitled Tres comedias impolíticas, are a complete dramatic and stylistic reversal: behind the characters is the looming presence of a society in crisis, which is presented through an ironic lens and with an impartiality far removed from propaganda theater—as if it were an X-ray of Mexican society after the Revolution. These were Noche de estío (1933–1935), labeled by the author “a Shavian comedy,” El president y el ideal, and Estado de sitio (both 1935). With them, Usigli found his playwriting self, which he would maintain for another thirty-six plays. The turning point for this stylistic reversal was the Shavian outlook that—when transplanted to Mexico—became an epiphany for his drama. Usigli himself acknowledges this transformation in his obituary of Shaw: Shaw the man always brought me thought and light. Ever since I read him for the first time, even in clumsy translations, I found clarity in him, a clarity as complete and well-organized as that of a planetary system. I am indebted to him for my understanding of the theatre—more than to Molière, even more than to Shakespeare—despite all our differences in perspective and temperament. I speak of myself just to say that ever since I knew of his existence, his name became associated in my mind with the notion of brightness, and every time I have said “Shaw,” I’ve seen a great light. Perhaps—and I still believe this—this impression was only the realization that I was in front of the freest writer of our time.10

Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna has analyzed Shaw’s influence on Usigli’s dramatic career. She notes, by way of summary, that Usigli’s social dramas also contain evident Shavian echoes. Medio tono (1938) reveals a closer affinity to Chekhov, but the description of the moral and economic crisis of a family from the north of Mexico comprises conflict-

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ing attitudes between parents and children that remind us of some scenes from Fanny’s First Play […] Another dramatic piece with a recognizable Shavian theme is La familia cena en casa (1942), which recreates the Pygmalion myth in the social and cultural context of Mexico in order to criticize the hypocrisy and shallowness of the Mexican middle-class. […] Jano es un muchacha, a comedy about prostitution, stirred an uproar that was only second to Hernani, A Doll’s House or Mrs Warren’s Profession.11

El gesticulador has probably been the play by Usigli that has received the most thorough critical appraisal and general admiration. Written in 1938 and premiered in 1947, it deals once again with the hypocrisy of the average Mexican, and the many dialogues of dynamic intellectual force are unquestionably a result of Shavian influence. The same applies to Corona de sombra (1943), Corona de fuego (1961), and Corona de luz, la Virgen (1963), a trilogy that stages the history of Mexico with an inquisitive perspective about the genesis of Mexican identity and that of those born within those geographical confines. Had Shaw been born in Mexico, he might have felt the urge to write such a trilogy. Usigli himself considered Corona de luz in particular to be a play analogous to Saint Joan. Although, as noted earlier, other works by Usigli bear resemblance to Shaw’s in style and stance, Corona de luz is perhaps the most relevant case in point. To begin with, both Usigli and Shaw have a similar outlook on history and the representation of historical events in drama. Shaw claims that you cannot even write a history without adapting the facts to the conditions of literary narrative, which are in some respects much more distorting than the dramatic conditions of representation on the stage. Things do not happen in the form of stories or dramas; and since they must be told in some such form, all reports, even by eyewitnesses, all histories, all stories, are dramatic representations, are only attempts to arrange the facts in a thinkable, intelligible, interesting form—that is, when they are not more or less intentional efforts to hide the truth, as they very often are. (CPP I: 481)

It does not take a keen observer to identify the similarities in Usigli’s own views on the subject, which he phrases as follows: Thus, when staging historical event, it must be treated, above all else, dramatically [teatralmente] from beginning to end. So, the playwright [poeta] is not a slave but an interpreter of the historical event. The goal is not, therefore, to alter the facts of history, but to shed on them the light of a contem-

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porary sentiment; of interpreting them in human, that is, dramatic [teatrales] terms, according to a sensitivity that is not contaminated with political, racial, or ideological biases.12

But the concomitances between the two authors have deeper ramifications that go beyond a general take on the dramatic representation of historical events. In structural terms alone, the lengthy prologue to Corona de luz is deemed by some critics “more interesting than the play” itself—a complaint that will surely sound familiar to Shaw scholars.13 In addition, from a thematic standpoint, a clear parallel can be established between the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego and Joan’s visions—both cases being inextricably connected, on the one hand, to the experience of faith and religion on a personal level and, on the other, to the historical development of Mexico and France in sociopolitical terms. In the case of Mexico, as Beardsell notes, “the miracle of the apparition of the Virgin … is obviously a fundamental phenomenon in Mexican religious faith and nationalism.”14 The political exploitation of an alleged miracle is also a major link between both plays. Joan’s visions inspire her to rally the French troops to victory, and the French Dauphin makes cunning political use of this phenomenon, later to abandon Joan to her fate. In Corona de luz the powers that be fabricate a miracle that would help their goals of secular and religious power. In both cases, the conflict between faith and power—and between conflicting ethics—account for an extensive use of discussion among the characters. From a stylistic point of view, this is perhaps best represented in the trial scene in Saint Joan and in the second act in Corona de luz. In Shaw’s play, “the extraordinary intellectual merit … is the force and fairness with which the case of her [Joan’s] opponents is put; the startling clarity with which each of them states it, and consequently our instantaneous recognition of its relation to the religious instinct.”15 Likewise, Usigli manages to depict “individualized” friars in Act II “through contrasts that are manifested at the linguistic level.” Even the friars that come on stage later are defined by “their participation in the discussion.”16 Some similarities are even more striking because they are displayed at a formal, stylistic level. For example, one can mention the repetition of ­certain phrases as a means to mimic religious language in order to add a supernatural effect in key scenes. Let us look, by way of illustration, into the epilogue in Saint Joan and the section of Act II in Corona de luz where Fray Juan wonders whether he should follow his faith or obey the Emperor’s orders.17

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JOAN. My sword shall conquer yet: the sword that never struck a blow. Though men destroyed my body, yet in my soul I have seen God. CAUCHON [kneeling to her] The girls in the field praise thee; for thou hast raised their eyes; and they see that there is nothing between them and heaven. DUNOIS. [kneeling to her] The dying soldiers praise thee, because thou art a shield of glory between them and the judgment. THE ARCHBISHOP [kneeling to her] The princes of the Church praise thee, because thou hast redeemed the faith their worldlinesses have dragged through the mire. WARWICK [kneeling to her] The cunning counsellors praise thee, because thou hast cut the knots in which they have tied their own souls. DE STOGUMBER [kneeling to her] The foolish old men on their deathbeds praise thee, because their sins against thee are turned into blessings. THE INQUISITOR [kneeling to her] The judges in the blindness and bondage of the law praise thee, because thou hast vindicated the vision and the freedom of the living soul. THE SOLDIER [kneeling to her] The wicked out of hell praise thee, because thou hast shewn them that the fire that is not quenched is a holy fire. THE EXECUTIONER [kneeling to her] The tormentors and executioners praise thee, because thou hast shewn that their hands are guiltless of the death of the soul. CHARLES [kneeling to her] The unpretending praise thee, because thou hast taken upon thyself the heroic burdens that are too heavy for them.

FRAY JUAN. Os he llamado a todos, hermanos—especialmente a vos, Fray Pedropara preguntaros quién soy. (Todos se miran extrañados.) ¿Quién soy, os pregunto? ¿Soy el primer Obispo de la Nueva España por la gracia de Dios y del Papa? ¿O soy el último lacayo adulador de mi rey? ¿Soy el pastor sobre quien pesa el deber de salvar a las almas de este hemisferio? ¿Soy, a la manera de San Pedro, la piedra angular de esta Iglesia? ¿O soy un mercenario? ¿Soy un hombre de fe o un descreído? [Después de otra pausa llena de extrañeza, todos contestan como en una letanía, reflejo de la disciplina eclesiástica, con un poco de deformación profesional.] MOTOLINÍA. Sois Fray Juan de Zumárraga. FRAY MARTÍN DE VALENCIA. Sois un hombre de fe. LAS CASAS. Sois el Obispo de la Nueva España. DON VASCO. Sois la piedra angular de esta nueva Iglesia. PEDRO DE GANTE. Sois el Pastor de almas de este hemisferio. LAS CASAS. Sois nuestro jefe. FRAY MARTÍN DE VALENCIA. Sois nuestro apoyo. MOTOLINÍA. Sois nuestra esperanza. PEDRO DE GANTE. Sois nuestro inspirador. DON VASCO. Sois nuestro guía.

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In both cases, a group of secondary characters respond to the words and actions of a protagonist in order to provide a chorus-like, yet kaleidoscopic response that, on the one hand, emphasizes the climactic nature of the scene and, on the other, highlights the multifaceted ramifications of the protagonist’s actions. As we shall see, some of the notions discussed thus far were implicitly and explicitly included in the correspondence both writers exchanged and on the two occasions they met.

Usigli Interviews Shaw The timing of Usigli’s visit to Shaw could not have been more inconvenient: the final years of World War II (1944–1945). Although the Mexican was familiar with armed conflict—his early childhood was spent amidst the bloody Mexican Revolution (1910–1913)—this was his first chance to visit London, as he had just been appointed vice secretary of the Mexican embassy in Paris. Usigli first sent two letters requesting an interview with Shaw, who declined to receive him. “I am a Mexican playwright passing by London on my way to Paris,” Usigli wrote on 13 November 1944, “where I have been assigned by my government, and I would consider it a great privilege if you were kind enough to see me.” Upon receiving the negative reply by Mrs. Blanche Patch (Shaw’s secretary at the time), the young dramatist reiterated on 20 November: “I am a playwright in a desert; in fourteen years I have written some eighteen plays, five or six of which have been produced … and four of which have been printed. … I feel tired and inert and a little dizzy, and I strongly suspect that I need a good but wellreasoned, scolding. As the greatest living playwright—and the only one to whom I could confess as much—would you care for the job? I will be in London for a few days yet.”18 Shaw himself replied on 22 February of the following year with a postcard: “As you have got much further in your 39th year than I in my 40th you have nothing to learn from me.” Usigli then left London but returned for Christmas, receiving a third negative reply to his request—again from Shaw’s secretary. The Mexican then changed his tactics and waited until his third trip to London. Usigli’s new letter was met with a fourth epistolary refusal, this time from Shaw himself, on 23 March 1945. The card had a photograph of Shaw on the back and read: “I am very very old; and this village is practically inaccessible except to people who can command a private car from door to door. … I fear you must wait until the war is over—if I live so long.”19

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The tenacious disciple again changed his modus operandi and showed up uninvited in Ayot St. Lawrence on 31 March 1945. Although he was kindly welcomed, the conversation between the playwrights was rather trivial at first: Usigli reminded Shaw of his short visit to Mexico during his 1935 world tour; they spoke about the political situation in Mexico—its legal system, land ownership, workers, and trade unions—and in England and the United States. When the master asked the disciple, “And other than being a diplomat, what do you do?” Usigli replied, hopeful: “I write plays. I wrote to you. Perhaps you remember my letter and your reply.” Now they were talking. Usigli mentioned that he had seen a production of Candida in Mexico. Next, they moved on to comment on the paper shortage due to the war and on some biographies of Shaw on the market. The intensity of the conversation slowly waned and the visitor had to leave without further opportunity to speak about himself. On his way out, Usigli handed Shaw the manuscript of Corona de sombra in English translation. The visitor, however, felt befuddled by the whole experience: “The next day I vaguely remembered having a dream where I visited Bernard Shaw.”20 Two weeks later there was a second interview, on 12 April.21 They spoke about Roosevelt’s recent passing (on that very day), about Churchill and Dickens. Shaw inscribed several books that Usigli was carrying. The upcoming dramatist asks the master if he had read his play: “Which play?” replied the old sage. The misunderstanding was cleared up when Shaw remembered that he had only read the first act. Then Usigli described two plays he could only begin to envision: El gran teatro del mundo and Corona de luz.22 The Mexican linked the genesis of the latter to Saint Joan: “For me, it represents, in a certain way, the starting point for my play, just like Heartbreak House represents the starting point of my drama awareness.”23 The disciple took a shot with his 8 mm camera as a keepsake. The interview was over. The two meetings between mentor and emerging playwright could have pivoted around their work, but the circumstances were not favorable. However, they continued to correspond and Usigli received a letter with explicit commentaries about Corona de sombra: “The play is pure tragedy from beginning to end, but never turgid and tiresome. English tragedy is always adulterated with comedy like the black and white sweets that children call bulls’ eyes, but the Mexican tragedy is homogeneous through and through, noble through all its variety and novelty”; Shaw closed with a remarkably telling sentence: “Mexico can starve you, but it cannot deny your genius, GBS.”24 If Shavian ideas remained an unquestionable

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compass for Usigli’s career as a playwright, it is equally worthy of note that his play stirred Shaw’s interest and that the Irish playwright acknowledged Usigli’s talent. When Usigli published Corona de luz in 1963, he dedicated it to Bernard Shaw with these words: “To GBS, who in 1943 wrote: ‘I look forward with pleasure to reading the virgin play’.” In addition, he inserted two epigrams. The first is from Saint Joan: “THE ARCHBISHOP. A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles” (CPP VI: 105). The second is from Back to Methuselah: “THE SERPENT.  A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless possible. Something that never could happen and yet does happen” (CPP V: 346). The Mexican writer must have had in mind his two visits to Shaw, together with the countless Shavian works he had read and the immense critical output about him, by the 1960s, that he tried to keep up with.25 Mexican comedian Mario Moreno, or “Cantinflas,” was considered for the lead role in the film version of Androcles and the Lion, to be directed and produced by Gabriel Pascal. Shaw learned about this and accepted the suggestion when he was told that Usigli would be the Spanish translator. Alan Young, practically unknown at the time, ended up starring in the film. Incidentally, and much to the dismay of Shaw scholars, Usigli’s translation is now lost. That same year, Usigli had been Mexico’s delegate at the Cannes Film Festival. The previous year he had married Argentinian Casas Olloqui and by 1952 their daughter Lavinia had been born. Lavinia is an uncommon name in Mexico—but it is shared by Aeneas’s wife and by the female protagonist of Shaw’s Androcles.26 Usigli also wrote an obituary in the form of a eulogy to his beloved mentor, “GBS and the freedom of writing”: “Shaw’s thought has not died … he always brought the thought of light … the freedom of all his readers and audiences depended on his own … if consolation is a kind of hope, hope is not a kind of struggle—even though the struggle is always a kind of hope—and the world that finds consolation is a world that cannot be saved.”27 Toward the end of the text, Usigli remarks: “I owe him [Shaw] the light in the arcane mystery of theatre, and men in general owe him the passionate and rational defense of the human sense of life and work, and the world owes him the most mature profession of peace.”28 Usigli died at 73 on 18 June 1979, while his mentor lived to be 94, dying on 2 November 1950. They would never meet again, but Shavian ideas planted the seed of Mexican theater as the leading artistic movement in the nation. Today, Shaw is second only to Shakespeare as the best dramatist in the English language, whereas Usigli achieved recognition as the

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most prominent Mexican dramatist. Both also had countless followers: Shaw’s are called “Shavians” and Usigli’s are called “usiglianos.”29 The characteristics they shared as playwrights and thinkers have all to do with the fact that Shaw was Usigli’s “greatest inspiration,” an “influence he took pride in advertising.”30

Notes 1. Rodolfo Usigli, Teatro completo, vol. 3 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979), 497. All translations from the Spanish are mine or the editor’s unless otherwise noted. When sufficient English cognates make the meaning readily apparent (especially in the case of play titles), I cite only the original Spanish. 2. See Ruano San Segundo and Coll-Vinent in this volume for further references on the Spanish translations of Shaw’s works. 3. José Emilio Pacheco, ed., Tiempo y memoria en conversación desesperada: poesía 1923–1974, de Rodolfo Usigli (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1981), 10. 4. Guillermina Fuentes, “El teatro de medianoche, de Rodolfo Usigli: Expuesto en una nota informativa, seis momentos y un epílogo.” Biblioteca Cervantes Virtual. Available at cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/el-­teatro-­de-­ medianoche-­de-­r odolfo-­usigli-­expuesto-­en-­una-­nota-­informativa-­seis-­ m o m e n t o s -­y -­u n -­e p i l o g o / h t m l / 6 c 1 5 9 e d 1 -­d 5 9 0 -­4 6 7 4 -­a a 0 e -­ 58536191ef42_2.html. Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora, Apología de Rodolfo Usigli: Las polaridades usiglianas (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2005) and Dramaturgia mexicana del siglo XX: Fundación y herencia (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2006). Available respectively at cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/apologia-­de-­rodolfo-­usigli-­las-­ polaridades-­usiglianas/html/af43f2b2-­8aab-­487b-­9810-­b42f91eda5d1.html and at cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/dramaturgia-­mexicana-­fundacion-­y-­ herencia/html/26d1c450-­5d65-­479e-­ad66-­eed6f0a0d859.html. 5. Rodolfo Usigli, Teatro completo, vol. 3, 303. 6. The chronicle of this time in New Haven can be established in part thanks to the sixteen published letters between Xavier Villaurrutia and Salvador Novo (Cartas de Villaurrutia a Novo), two of which have a post scriptum by Usigli. The first letter is from October 1935 and the last from July 1936. Through these documents we have learned about the daily routines of these—at the time—promising writers. 7. See Allardyce Nicoll, The Theory of Drama (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1931) and The English Theatre: A Short History (London: Thomas Nelson, 1936), among others.

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8. Rodolfo Usigli, Una pieza a tientas: 4 Chemins 4 (Mexico: Centro de Investigación Rodolfo Usigli, 2011). 9. Usigli wrote a third play in this trilogy, entitled Corona de fuego (1960), which dealt with the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The three Coronas depict an anti-historical version of the country and received widespread popular and critical acclaim. 10. Rodolfo Usigli, “Shaw y la libertad de escribir,” in Teatro completo, vol. V (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), 471. 11. Asela Rodríguez-Seda De Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Universidad de Puerto Rico: Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 144–46. 12. Rodolfo Usigli, Corona de sombra, ed. Rex Edward Ballinger (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961), xv–xvi. 13. Alberto Dallal, “Rodolfo Usigli, Corona de Luz,” Revista de la Universidad de México XIX.12 (1965), 31. Available at https://www.revistadelauniversidad.mx/download/4c2a11aa-­b402-­4329-­9053-­0cbf6340a763. 14. Peter R. Beardsell, “Los niveles de verdad en ‘Corona de Luz’, de Rodolfo Usigli,” Anales De Literatura Hispanoamericana 12 (1983), 23. 15. Desmond MacCarthy, “St Joan: The Theme and the Drama”, in Saint Joan: Fifty Years After, 1923/24–1973/74, ed. Stanley Weintraub (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 34. 16. Liliana E.  Solhaune, “Signos Linguisticos y Signos no Lingüísticos en “Corona De Luz” de R. Usigli,” Dispositio 13.33/35 (1988): 240. 17. The original Spanish has been used here so that the lexical and syntactic repetition can be observed more clearly. 18. The Rodolfo Usigli Archive, Correspondence, Box 15, Miami University Library, Ohio. The catalogue lists ninety boxes containing more than half a million items. They were acquired in 1995 and are held in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections. More information is available at http:// spec.lib.miamioh.edu/home/usigli/. 19. Michel Pharand, “GBS’s Mexican Disciple,” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 32 (2002): 190–93; Guillermo Schmidhuber, Apología de Rodolfo Usigli and Dramaturgia mexicana del siglo XX. 20. Rodolfo Usigli, Teatro completo, vol. 5 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005): 430–45. 21. The author would like to close these considerations by remembering the time when he interviewed Usigli on 28 February 1979, four months before his death: “I travelled from Monterrey to Mexico City just to ask the famous playwright for advice as a budding dramatist. During the conversation, Usigli spoke repeatedly about his interviews with GBS, which probably indicates that he had those in mind as the model for my own. Usigli opened up the secrets of a playwright’s exhausting toil: ‘Whether your plays get produced or not should not matter to you; or whether or not you are published; or whether the critics praise you or attack you, none of that

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matters. The only thing that matters is running the risk of theatre throughout your life and, when the curtain falls, you will find out if you were a great dramatist; but you may also run that risk and find out you was not a great dramatist, but that’s the risk you have to take. If you do, you’ll find out. If you don’t, you never will’. I treasure the second volume of his Teatro completo, inscribed on that occasion ‘To Guillermo Schmidhuber, author of La catedral humana, because he took the risk of theatre’. He used the past tense, as if he could prophesize that I was going to take that risk. I consider that instant to be my rite of passage, my theatrical baptism. I will always thank him for his generous effort in taking the first step of my dramatic road with me, in spite of his being almost blind.” Guillermo Schmidhuber de la Mora, Apología de Rodolfo Usigli, 1. 22. Rodolfo Usigli, Teatro completo, vol. 5, 445–61. 23. Ibid., 457. 24. Ibid., 463. 25. The books that the Usigli family kept attest to this. Five of them (some inscribed by the author) are now in the Schmidhuber-Peña library and were donated by Lavinia Usigli, the playwright’s daughter. 26. The author of this chapter corroborated the origin of her name in conversation with Lavinia Usigli and Sandro, her brother, on 12 July 2017. 27. Rodolfo Usigli, Teatro completo, vol. 5, 469. 28. Ibid., 473. 29. Layera compiled written interviews with Usigli’s followers, disciples, and others in his personal circles: Francisco Monterde, Luis G.  Basurto, Margarita Mendoza López, Octavio Paz, Rafael Solana, Héctor Azar, Carlos Solórzano, Emilio Carballido, Luisa Josefina Hernández, Héctor Mendoza, Raúl Moncada Galán, Vicente Leñero, Hugo Argüelles, Luis de Tavira, Guillermo Schmidhuber, and—with a dramatic dialogue of genius—José Emilio Pacheco. Usigli en el teatro: testimonios de sus contemporáneos, sucesores y discípulos (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996). 30. Peter R. Beardsell, A Theatre for Cannibals: Rodolfo Usigli and the Mexican Stage (London: Associated University Presses, 1992), 24.

References Beardsell, Peter R. 1983. Los niveles de verdad en ‘Corona de Luz’, de Rodolfo Usigli. Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana 12: 13–27. https://revistas. ucm.es/index.php/ALHI/article/view/ALHI8383110013A/24293. ———. 1992. A Theatre for Cannibals: Rodolfo Usigli and the Mexican Stage. London: Associated University Presses.

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Dallal, Alberto. 1965. Rodolfo Usigli, Corona de Luz. Revista de la Universidad de México XIX (12): 31. Fuentes, Guillermina. El teatro de medianoche, de Rodolfo Usigli: Expuesto en una nota informativa, seis momentos y un epílogo. Biblioteca Cervantes Virtual. www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/el-­teatro-­de-­medianoche-­de-­ rodolfo-­u sigli-­e xpuesto-­e n-­u na-­n ota-­i nformativa-­s eis-­m omentos-­y -­u n-­ epilogo/html/6c159ed1-­d590-­4674-­aa0e-­58536191ef42_2.html. Layera, Ramón. 1996. Usigli en el teatro: testimonios de sus contemporáneos, sucesores y discípulos. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. MacCarthy, Desmond. 1973. St Joan: The Theme and the Drama. In Saint Joan: Fifty Years After, 1923/24–1973/74, ed. Stanley Weintraub, 31–38. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Nicoll, Allardyce. 1931. The Theory of Drama. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. ———. 1936. The English Theatre: A Short History. London: Thomas Nelson. Pacheco, José Emilio, ed. 1981. Tiempo y memoria en conversación desesperada: poesía 1923–1974, de Rodolfo Usigli. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Pharand, Michel. 2002. GBS’s Mexican Disciple. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 32: 190–193. Rodríguez-Seda De Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Universidad de Puerto Rico: Editorial Universitaria. Schmidhuber de la Mora, Guillermo. 2005. Apología de Rodolfo Usigli: Las polaridades usiglianas. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.  https://www. cervantesvirtual.com/portales/rodolfo_usigli/obra/apologia-de-rodolfo-usiglilas-polaridades-usiglianas/ ———. 2006. Dramaturgia mexicana del siglo XX: Fundación y herencia. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara. https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ obra/dramaturgia-mexicana-fundacion-y-herencia/ Solhaune, Liliana E. 1988. Signos Linguisticos y Signos no Lingüísticos en “Corona De Luz” de R. Usigli. Dispositio 13 (33/35): 235–249. The Rodolfo Usigli Archive. n.d. Miami University Library, Ohio. http://spec. lib.miamioh.edu/home/usigli/. Usigli, Rodolfo. 1979. Teatro completo, 5 vols. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. ———. 2011. Una pieza a tientas: 4 Chemins 4. Mexico: Centro de Investigación Rodolfo Usigli. Villaurrutia, Xavier. 1966. Cartas de Villaurrutia a Novo, 1935–1936. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

CHAPTER 14

Bernard Shaw and the Literary Imagination of Nemesio R. Canales Asela R. Laguna

Revisiting George Bernard Shaw’s impact on Puerto Rican journalist Nemesio R.  Canales (1878–1923) after four decades of pursuing other academic, intellectual, and teaching interests has proven to be both incredibly challenging and rewarding.1 From the perspective of a retired professor, the journey has brought to the surface the havoc that “forgetting” brings about, with certain caveats. First, a portion of my original appreciation of the writings of Shaw and Canales had become vague and had to be refreshed. Second, there were new sources of research and information that had to be reconsidered. Fortunately, these two tasks brought me back to my original pleasure of reading these authors. Similarly, it has been remarkable to reconfirm the inexhaustible relevance of the work of both Shaw and Canales, two literary masters, who, albeit separated by the Atlantic Ocean, different languages and cultures, shared a common aspiration to innovate, reform, and transform their societies throughout their writings. Endowed with a genial sense of witty and ironic humor, both

A. R. Laguna (*) Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_14

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critically exposed world and local politics, power, war, poverty, hunger, migrations, class and gender relations, women’s rights—among many other issues. Both, passionately and furiously, created a literary corpus committed to wakening audiences to the reality of social and class disparities, unfairness, destitution, warfare, inequality, political intervention, formations and exclusions of state building, empire, colonies, the language of exclusion, and social and religious hypocrisy. This chapter is a revised and updated version of my previous articles published in 1970s and 1980s on Shaw and Canales.2 Today, as in the past, in Puerto Rican literary history and criticism, it is almost mainstream to commend Nemesio R.  Canales for his abounding wit, humor, and efforts to champion women’s rights and to raise the political and social consciousness of the people while seeking simultaneously to challenge, reinvigorate, and renovate his contemporary literary and social context. Equally productive has been the scholarship focusing on Canales’s cultural, literary, and ideological connections and disconnections with Spanish, Latin American, and Puerto Rican Modernism and Modernists.3 Undoubtedly Canales was thoroughly familiar with major socialist thinkers and with Spanish, Latin American, American, and European writers. Ibsen, Georges Bataille, John Galsworthy, D’Annunzio, Sudermann, Strindberg, Anatole France, Walt Whitman, and Shaw were among those most often alluded to in his writings. Nevertheless, few studies center on the repercussions of those readings upon Canales’s intellectual formation or on his role as mediator and disseminator who attempted to convey to Spanish-speaking readers a new critical sense of modernity, an urgency to transgress, change, and renovate the status quo—as well as an invitation to tune in to local, Latin American, American, and world affairs. Canales’s special affinity for Shaw’s ideas and dramatic technique are part of a foundational springboard from which he elaborated a cultural dialogue between the individual—the life experience of a Spanish-speaking Caribbean from an island under imperialist rule—and the world, immersed in cultural isms, social and political challenges, local wars, territorial expansion, and revolutions. Unlike Shaw, who enjoyed a very long and very productive writing life, Canales was short-lived and his writing output much less abundant than his counterpart. As did Shaw, however, he moved among, collaborated with, and worked alongside a diverse group of literary modernists ranging from European, American, and local modernists, avant-garde artists, and thinkers. And like Shaw, an Irishman in Britain, Canales had to navigate

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his place as a colonial subject both in Spain and in the United States, and to scrutinize and negotiate thorny questions and issues related, among others, to the uses of the vernacular and the lingua franca, the relationships between high and low culture, tradition and modernism, nativism and cosmopolitanism, nationalism and imperialism, war and peace, and idealism and realism. Like Shaw in his time, Canales in Puerto Rico was recognized as a forerunner and iconoclastic spokesman of modern philosophical, social, and literary thought. Born in the mountainous central region of Puerto Rico, Jayuya, in 1878, Canales was sent to study medicine in Zaragoza, Spain. The outbreak of the Spanish American War of 1898 influenced the family’s decision to bring him back; he was soon sent to the United States, where he received a law degree in 1902 from the now defunct Baltimore Law School. Upon his return to the island, he successfully joined law firms, first in the southern city of Ponce where he also began to write for some local newspapers, and then in the capital, San Juan, collaborating with two important literary figures of the early twentieth century: the critic, essayist, and Ibsen translator, Miguel Guerra Mondragón, and poet Luis Llorens Torres, who, after Canales’s death in 1923, became in the thirties the popular national poet of the island. Mondragón, Llorens Torres, and Canales were part of a notorious group of public intellectuals who engaged in shaping the contested post-1898 literary scene.4 Nationalism, Americanization, modernism, internationalization, and cosmopolitanism figured as cultural clashing visions and projects. Inquiries into national identity and reality helped question the status quo of the colonial political arena and to critically examine whatever aspects would threaten the insertion of traditional national institutions, customs, and values into modernity. In tandem with the traditional role of the Hispanic intellectual “letrado,” Canales, in addition to his legal work and active political life since joining the Unión Puertorriqueña Party, owed his reputation to his diverse contributions as an irreverent writer, essayist, and journalist. Feeling ill while sailing to New  York City, Canales died on board ship in 1923. As a member of the first generation of twentieth-century intellectuals, Canales stands as a solitary figure: a social and political agitator, a witty and ironic exponent of insular as well as international affairs, and, ultimately, an independent eclectic voice difficult to frame within a specific literary movement. Ideologically a liberal in favor of the independence of the island, he favored socialism. His education in both Spanish and English made him

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quite conversant with Spanish and Latin American literature and history as well as European and American literary, cultural, and political trends. He also defied prevalent, official standard Spanish usage by inserting in his journalist discourse a style closer to the Spanish colloquial mode, communicating with his audiences in language familiar to them.5 Canales himself stated in 1915 that he was the first to introduce the genre of “philosophical humor” to the island.6 He wrote for important newspapers and journals, among them El Eco de Puerto Rico, El Diario de Puerto Rico, El Día, Revista de las Antillas, and La Semana. He founded others such as Juan Bobo (1915), Idearium (1917), and Cuasimodo (1919). Most of the articles under the columns “Vendimia literaria” and “Paliques” (short, humorous, and critical journalist writings) that appeared in Revista de las Antillas were subsequently published as a collection, Paliques (1915). As part of his larger modernist project, from 1918 to 1921 Canales lectured and traveled with an Argentinean friend to Caracas, Panama, and Buenos Aires to establish several literary initiatives. In Panama he printed his inter-American magazine, Cuasimodo (1919–1920), his last and only Pan-American literary project. In 1922 he anthologized all his polemical essays against the dramaturgy of Spanish playwright Jacinto Benavente as La leyenda benevantina (The Benaventine Legend). Canales also wrote short novels, Feliz Pareja (1918), Hacia un lejano sol (1920), and Mi voluntad se ha muerto (1921), and a play, El héroe galopante, published posthumously. Like Shaw, who as a journalist achieved notoriety as an art, music, and controversial social and political critic, journalism became Canales’s favorite form of expression to assert dialogically his critical and polemical views on topics ranging from local politics and personalities to global concerns about the First World War, hunger, poverty, political corruption, and imperialism. He felt at ease voicing his opinions on topics as disparate as the Titanic disaster, the care and status of children, the future of Spain, Puerto Rico, world writers and intellectuals, grammar, love, art, morality, and feminism. All his writings, laden with irony and satire, were used to awaken society, shake the world out of complacency, fossilized ideas, and customs, and unmask political, social, and literary stereotypes, old-­ fashioned traditions, and agendas that sustain inequality of any form. For Shaw the real artist was a renovator, and every reformer “was a rebel, one who dissents with the sacred norms.”7 In exploring Canales’s literary sources, Bernard Shaw thus stands as one of the main pillars supporting and shaping the articulation and construction of some of Canales’s dissenting social, economic, and political

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arguments. Shaw also provided themes, plot structures, and individual characters from which Canales imprinted his own fictional texts. According to one of his critics and friends, Dominican ambassador Sócrates Nolasco, it was while studying Law in Baltimore (1899–1902) that Canales became acquainted with the works of Anatole France and Shaw, soon becoming a follower of the “revolutionary ideas of the most interesting of the Fabians.”8 He also noted that Canales read and re-read Shaw, learning sometimes more from the prologues than from the plays.9 Manuel Martínez Plée, another of his contemporaries, regarded Canales as the most enthusiastic of Shaw’s disciples and his most “conspicuous admirer” in Puerto Rico.10 Shaw’s overpowering intertextual presence in Canales fluctuates throughout his career: from mere allusions and references throughout to a major source of themes, plot structures, and characters. Acknowledging these intertextual relationships and how they have been recontextualized by Canales contributes to a much refreshing and invigorating reading experience of a socialist journalist battling the atmosphere and political climate of Puerto Rico during the first decades of American rule. The first references to Shaw date back to Canales’s collaborations in the “Vendimia Literaria” column of the Revista de las Antillas (1913–1914). In “The Drama in England” (“El drama de Inglaterra”) from March 1913, for example, he reviews the performance of Widower’s Houses—together with Ibsen’s Ghosts—on the London stage as showcasing the “interesting personality of the Irish playwright.”11 In highlighting the renewal of English drama, he recognizes Shaw as “one of the most legitimate glories of English letters” and as “the incarnation of a school and a period, to whose daring and vigorous genius is owned the real renaissance that is taking place in the English dramatic art.”12 In another article, reviewing Stanley Houghton’s performance of Hindle Waker in New York (September 16, 1913), Canales rejoices in the success in New York City of the daring ideas of Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Shaw.13 In 1916 he translated and published a Shaw essay on morality in cinema where he inserted a brief Shaw biography for the Puerto Rican readership and praised him as follows: More than an artist, he is a philosopher; each of his works was received by the general public with grunts; but with grunts and more, his wonderful work began to be accepted and there isn’t anyone today who can dispute his right to be considered one of the most extraordinary geniuses that humanity has seen.14

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For Canales, Shaw’s best plays were Major Barbara, Candida, and Man and Superman, which he renders in Spanish as “John Tanner.” Candida, however, was for him a “masterly exposition of the inevitable and predominantly poetic point of view over brutish force and common sense.”15 His deep admiration for Shaw was a leitmotif in whatever he wrote about modern drama. Canales’s allusions were not merely brief, passing comments on a well-noted personality, but an attempt to pay tribute to a playwright and thinker who was renewing the British stage and to inform and guide his readers about one of the most genial figures on the theatrical world scene. The publication of Cuasimodo (1919–1920) stands out in featuring several markers that make it relevant for exploring other facets of the expanding Shaw-Canales relationship.16 First, Cuasimodo was Canales’s last journalistic initiative. Founded in Panama in collaboration with his Argentinean anarchist friend Julio R.  Barcos, it was hailed as an “Inter American Magazine about world politics, the affirmation of renovating ideas and the assessment of the intellectual values predominant in Spain and America.” Secondly, during the two years it was published, though emphasizing Shaw more prominently than others, it also featured such thinkers as H. G. Wells, Tagore, Kipling, Adelina Pathi, Wagner, Dostoevsky, Anatole France, Tolstoy, Upton Sinclair, Frank Harris, Ruskin, Gorki, Oscar Wilde, Max Eastmann, Romain Rolland, Whitman, Rubén Darío, Lugones, Ingenieros, Galdós, Unamuno, and many others. Shaw appeared at least eight times in the thirteen issues published. During this post-First World War period, letters and short essays selected from Shaw’s writing varied in subject matter ranging from the need for all to work, ideas on current world political issues, and critical statements about the United States. Also included were Shaw’s thoughts on strikes and hunger strikes, strong governments, and his views on killing for sport. Some of those titles include “We all should work”/“Todos debemos trabajar para pagar”; “Letter from Bernard Shaw”/“Carta de Bernard Shaw’”; “Recent statements from Bernard Shaw on current affairs”/“Recientes declaraciones de Bernard Shaw, sobre las grandes cuestiones de hoy”; “Slaughter of children as a new international game”/“Matanza de niños como nuevo sport internacional”; “On strikes/Sobre las huelgas”; “Wanted: A Strong Government”/“Los gobiernos por la fuerza son ridículos”; “What Shaw says about the current situation of the United States”/“Lo que dice Bernard Shaw sobre la situación actual de los Estados Unidos”; and “The rationale for a hunger strike”/“La lógica de la huelga de hambre.”17

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The press was vital in sustaining a flow of information relating to Shaw. His political beliefs contributed widely and effectively to promoting, underlining, and supporting a socialist and anarchist consciousness. Shaw advanced one of the journalistic goals of Hispanic editors: keeping the Spanish-speaking world well informed about contemporary world events and voicing their opposition to American territorial expansion. Third, Cuasimodo, strategically printed in Panama City, came to form part of the social and international network outlet for anarchists in the region, where Barcos, another collaborator, the Spanish anarchist José María Blázquez de Pedro, Panamenian educator José Moscote, and Canales promoted a pan-Americanism grounded in the people’s interests and not in those of the governments: seeking a free education, organizing workers, and fostering a cosmopolitan and anti-nationalist culture. In the pages of this journal, they criticized the imperial agenda of the United States, its interventions in the Americas, and its policies against the workers of the world. It published a letter to President Wilson criticizing American policy regarding Panama and denouncing the Monroe Doctrine against all European interventions, but not of the United States in the rest of the Americas.18 Fourth and lastly, it was in Cuasimodo that Canales launched between 1919 and 1920 a series of literary assaults against the plays of Nobel Laureate Jacinto Benavente. In doing so, Canales, by opposition, reiterated his preference for Shaw’s theater of ideas. These critical attacks on the foremost Spanish dramatist Benavente were subsequently collected and published as a booklet entitled La leyenda benaventina (The Benavente Legend) in 1922, the very same year Benavente received the Nobel Prize for Literature. If Shaw’s The Quintessence Ibsenism (1891, 1913, 1922) sought to express his respect and admiration for Ibsen, it also aimed more broadly to explain the key components of Ibsenism and to generate interest and enthusiasm for his works in turn-of-the century England, when Ibsen was still considered a controversial and polemical figure. Conversely, La leyenda bevaventina was born of Canales’s dissatisfaction with Benavente’s stunning popularity and with those contemporary Spanish critics who were comparing him to Bataille, Galsworthy, D’Annunzio, and Shaw. Canales questioned the enormous reputation the “deified” or “celebrated” Benavente had enjoyed as the best “colossal, insuperable, the only” Spanish playwright.19 However, while deconstructing Benavente’s theatrical art and message, Canales elevated Shaw to a paradigmatic model to follow. Simultaneously, he was articulating the reasons for embracing

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the theater of ideas. Canales reaffirmed his dislike of romanticism and his alignment with realist drama, and reiterated the importance of the theater as an instrument to demolish false ideals. Canales’s unrelenting essays on Benavente were conceived as “a rattling outcry of alarm and protest, in the name of all who speak my language in Spain and America, but specially on behalf of the young people, with aspirations here and there.”20 By examining La losa de los sueños, Señora Ama, Los malhechores del bien, Los intereses creados, La noche del sábado, and other works, Canales implacably demolished Benavente’s oeuvre, which he characterized as lacking in ideas, plays comprising tedious and dull situations without profound conflicts constructed within the confines of rigid theatrical formats, and by the use of the same rhetorical and language conventions that appeal to the bourgeoisie, without any features of innovation or modernity. For Canales, dramatic genius was grounded in the creation of complex, profound protagonists and original works. Benavente wrote beautiful and exquisite works, even some intense ones, but nothing comparable to La Giaconda, Le Phatene, or Candida.21 Canales claimed that Benavente, endowed as he was with wit and ingenuity, contrary to Shaw was not a genius “because a genius creates and Benavente has not created anything.”22 More importantly, he deplored the traditional roles Benavente assigned to women, from the poor young woman at the mercy of the charitable whims of upper-class women who arrange their marriages, to the submissive, self-sacrificing wife, the flattering Don Juans, and so many other conventional Spanish stereotypes. Benavente did not create a Hamlet, a Segismundo, a Nora, or a John Tanner. His conventional and sleep-inducing Tenorios were a far cry from that of Man and Superman by the “wonderful Shaw,” whose Don Juan was a Tenorio who had evolved, who had developed from his multiple experiences a philosophy, retaining as a core trait of his personality the spirit to rebel against conventions.23 Canales also denounced Benavente’s adulation of audiences, noting that in contrast to Ibsen or Shaw, he never opposed the principles, morality, or prejudices of the “illustrated bourgeoisie” that filled the seats and loges at performances. If he had taken a different moral stance, Benavente would have been called an “anarchist, immoral, unnaturalized or a monster.”24 Canales concluded that Benavente was not the best of Spain nor a good playwright. Lastly, the worst fault that could be attributed to Benavente lay in his “moral influence upon youth” because he never rose or tried to achieve the “highest mission of guide, leader, of social

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‘pioneer’.”25 Ultimately, Canales succeeds in denouncing the harmfulness of a conformist and conventional romantic outlook on society. If many of Canales’s sustained references and allusions emphasized his great esteem for Shaw the philosopher-artist and social reformer who renewed and transformed modern English drama, other texts evince an empathy and close association with Shaw’ socio-political thought. Like his Irish mentor, Canales centered his work on denouncing the absurdity of many of the socio-political and cultural bourgeois beliefs and attitudes by resorting to witty humor, irony, and satire. Shaw’s social ideas also permeate the articles “La virtud del dinero” (“The virtue of money”) and “Riqueza y pobreza” (“Richness and Poverty”) from Paliques (1915), and they do so in terms of two primary mutual concerns: the need to eradicate poverty and the necessary impulse to defend the socio-economic value and importance of money for social vindication. They illustrate very close textual similarities even though Canales does not cite Shaw as a source. Major Barbara’s famous preface, particularly the section headed “The Gospel of St. Andrew Undershaft,” becomes the prototext. It functions as a “book-on-the-desk” technique, whereby Canales translates, paraphrases, and copies from the original. In “The virtue of money,” Canales introduces the topic by disagreeing with the widely held notion that money is sinful. If Shaw deplores teaching “children that it is sinful to desire money” as an act “to strain towards the extreme possible limit of impudence in lying and corruption in hypocrisy” (CPP III: 30), Canales elaborates that money has always been despised and singles out how institutions such as schools, homes, churches, and theaters have traditionally taught that money is the source of crime and a mortal sin. He echoes Shaw’s statement that money represents “health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty” (CPP III: 30) when he writes that “such as life is organized, wealth is strength, and strength is health, inspiration, harmony, kindness, the source of permanent light, progress and glory.”26 Like Shaw, he believes that money is the most powerful and effective agent to achieve goodness and progress. To illustrate this idea, Canales resorts to introducing the influential social impact of the “bandit millionaire” in society. The term and definition of “bandit millionaire” as the man “without entrails who started his journey in the dark den of misery and crime, under the only guidance of redeeming money, ends up dying almost in sanctity”27 correspond to the characterization of millionaire Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara. Other instances reinforce

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Canales’s close indebtedness to Shaw, whom he paraphrases and translates when discussing poverty. For instance, when Shaw states that “[t]he first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on reasonable terms” (CPP III: 31), Canales’s Spanish rendition expresses the idea more strongly by categorically making the assertion a very personal affirmation: “I believe, I affirm, I maintain that the first of our duties, contrary to what we tell our sons and daughters, in not to be poor.”28 To let someone to be poor is for Shaw to be “weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease. Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and dirt. … Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous congeries of slums” (CPP III: 25). Canales adopts the same rationale and terminology but in an inclusive plural pronouncement: “poverty makes us weak, ignorant and rough, transforms us into a permanent exhibit of ugliness and filth, into a perennial nucleus of vileness and laziness, into a huge and infectious virus where all the germs of all sorts of illnesses and wretchedness beat or pound … we convert the suburbs into a stinky overcrowding of rags and waste.”29 Canales ends up by adopting Undershaft’s belief that poverty is “the worst of crimes” (CPP III: 172) when he affirms that indigence is “the biggest, the most abominable of all crimes. I even think it is the only crime.”30 In the eight essays devoted to “Richness and poverty,” Canales defended himself from those who criticized his concept of money and returned again to his energetic attack against poverty and the conditions that contribute to its persistence. Extracting matter from the preface to Major Barbara, he aligns himself with Shaw’s assertion that poverty should be treated like smallpox or any other contagious disease. Indigence must not be tolerated. For Shaw any adult “with less than, say 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but inexorable killed” (CPP III: 26). Canales agrees and adds that I would propose, as the only remedy to purge the world from all the horrors that afflict us, that we reduce the Penal Code to only one single criminal article in which to punish with atrocious penalties—even with death penalty if needed—the crime of walking in the streets without a decent amount of money in the pocket.31

Canales, like his mentor, favors the creation of a state that guarantees each citizen a pension and a job but where neither poor nor lazy people would be tolerated, demands the eradication of a legal system that punishes the

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ruffian (the product of poverty), but never solves the everlasting problem of poverty itself.32 Punishment is for Shaw “only a pretense of cancelling one crime by another; and you can no more have forgiveness without vindictiveness than you can have a cure without a disease” (CPP III: 43). Canales, adopting an interrogative mode, asks “what does justice today do except devote its life to the sterile task of sending more and more poor people to jail, prison or the scaffold?” or “what is justice today but an act of sterile revenge?”33 Another thematic similarity appears when both men address why the practice of punishment should be abandoned: so that the thief, the ruffian, the gambler, and the beggar, may without inhumanity be handed over to the law, and made to understand that a State which is too humane to punish will also be too thrifty to waste the life of honest men in watching or restraining dishonest ones. That is why we do not imprison dogs. We even take our chance of their first bite. But if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal chamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate his bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and expiate again … seems to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark and bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices, as we put up with their illness, until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of sympathy, and some generosity in complying with their last wishes, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of them. (CPP III: 60–61)

Canales appropriates the image and metaphor of the biting dog to question, criticize, and seek reform of the legal and justice system: If we know that a dog is rabid, would we make a terrible mistake waiting to get rid of it until the dog has bitten one or more times? Then, if we are to always punish the poor for what it is the result of the inevitable poverty, why wait until he steals or kills to tie him up and send him to jail? Would it make more sense to jail him, as I do propose, for the sole reason of being poor, thus avoiding the damage its crime was going to cause, and our justice—our cruel justice—would not have to be sorry for its known futility as is evident today? But no one should be blamed for being poor, someone will tell me. And I would respond that neither is the leper to be blamed for his leprosy, and we send him unscrupulously to an island and there we isolate him from the rest of the world. Neither is the dog to be blamed for rabies and yet we kill it without remorse.34

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From the preface to Major Barbara, Canales has omitted Shaw’s delineation of the Irish writers who have influenced his thought, as well as Shaw’s consideration of the religious and social thought and organization of the Salvation Army and some discussion of his ideas on Christianity and Anarchism. Other essays, published in Juan Bobo and Idearium, evidence further affinities, particularly with Shaw’s ideas on the First World War. In Common Sense About the War (1914), Shaw condemned and criticized European militarism and held capitalism responsible for the war. He denounced the political short-sightedness of the British War Office and the Foreign Office that were incapable of maintaining the army and the people informed about war deliberations. He was also critical of secret diplomacy, British hypocrisy, neutrality, the unfulfilled promise to defend small nations such as Belgium, and the blind patriotism of “with my country, right or wrong.”35 Conversely, Shaw pleaded for an open democracy, the vote for suffragists, compulsory military service, the defense of Russia and small nations, while affirming that socialism was the only route to bringing about peace and stopping German and British militarism. Canales, following Shaw and the Fabians, believed that both suffrage and the right to strike were “powerful tools that would change man’s destiny.”36 Shaw defined war as organized death and piracy and Canales as a slaughter, acceptable because it was superior to “the hypocritical and ignoble war that hungry dogs hold during peaceful times.”37 Both agreed that a good war justifies any cause but that the First World War was also a war “of ideas, institutions, almost of philosophies … [it] was a bloody collision of the militarist conception of the world, represented by Germany, against another conception, that of a smoother and more modern Political Democracy, championed by the Entente.”38 Shaw saw the war as a way “to give the coup de grâce to medieval diplomacy, medieval autocracy, and anarchic export of capital, and make its conclusion convince the world that Democracy is invincible, and Militarism a rusty sword that breaks in the hand.”39 Canales amplifies those reasons and encourages Puerto Ricans to proudly fight. The war is between two polarizing and competing philosophies in Europe. Whoever goes to this war does not participate to defend this or that nation, but to affirm and defend and create a propitious environment for each man, to destroy the foundations of the old world, full of dreadful crimes, brutality, abuse, monopoly, blood, tears, mud, physical and spiritual meanness. Who would not fight eagerly for the present and the future

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against the past; and for what is alive and is happening now against what is dead and is in the process of rotting? A son of this miserable island of Puerto Rico, how can you be indifferent to the idea of collaborating with the immense work of destroying monopolies, privileges, systems, castes, and all that makes it possible for a nation to enslave another one and one man to enslave another.40 Like Shaw, Canales defends compulsory conscription, favors the participation of France and Russia, and criticizes “perfidious Albion”—as they both call England—although Canales is more generous with England than is Shaw. After the War, Canales praised the work of Shaw—and of other men such as J. M. Keynes, and Anatole France41—who in pamphlets pleaded for non-retaliation and non-punishment toward Russia and Germany and, conversely, promoted contributing to in their social, economic, and political reconstruction. Canales’s only play, El héroe galopante (The galloping hero), and his novels Feliz Pareja (Happy Couple) and Hacia un lejano sol (Towards a Distant Sun) are indeed illustrative of implicit intertextual resonances and connections. Written in 1923, El héroe galopante is intertwined thematically and technically with Shaw’s Arms and the Man (1894). Dramatist and critic Francisco Arriví, along with other critics, pointed to Shaw’s play as a source of influence. Josefina Rivera de Alvarez saw it as a social critique in which Canales ridiculed the traditional concept of the hero, contrasting it with his representation of the anti-hero, a projection of Canales’s own personality.42 Both texts are reactions against Romanticism, which represented a reactionary movement that distorted reality and created false idolization or hero-worship, particularly in military and warlike contexts. Both writers resorted to comedy to present what Shaw called “nothing less than the destruction of old-established morals.”43 Arms and the Man polarizes the action by creating conflicts between elements of romance and of what he calls “genuinely scientific natural history” (I: 385). Through his anti-dramatic and anti-heroic treatment of the protagonist, Bluntschli, Shaw attacks the idealistic and romantic ideas of Raina and Sergius. For Shaw, idealism is a flattering name for romance in politics and morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in ethics and religion. … I can no longer be satisfied with fictitious morals and fictitious good conduct, shedding fictitious glory on robbery, starvation, disease, crime, drink, war, cruelty, cupidity, and all the

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other commonplaces of civilization which drive men to the theatre to make foolish pretenses that such things are progress, science, morals, religion, patriotism, imperial supremacy, national greatness and all the other names the newspapers call them. … I see plenty of good in the world working itself out as fast as the idealists will allow it; and if they would include the beneficial exercise of respecting themselves, … we should all get along much better and faster. … To me the tragedy of life lies in the consequences, sometimes terrible, sometime ludicrous, of our persistent attempts to found our institutions on the ideals suggested to our imaginations by our half-­ satisfied passions, instead of a genuinely scientific natural history. (CPP I: 385)

The dramatic modus operandi consists in letting the protagonists look ridiculous when overtly idealistic and friendly and likable when they are genuine and authentic. In Raina, who is engaged to Sergius but ends up marrying Bluntschli, Shaw examined the idealization of the warrior hero, attacked by the anti-­ hero Bluntschli. Sergius, the idol of the Bulgarian army, has achieved his position without the knowledge of the professional military art. Described as a Byronic rebel, he is a man who, even when he sees reality as it is, prefers to exalt the ideal, at the expense of life. The idealized conception Raina has of him begins to change when she harbors the professional soldier Bluntschli who is trying to escape from the enemy. Exhaustion, sleeplessness, fear, hunger, nervousness, and lack of adequate military equipment typical of his rank: these are the realities of Bluntschli’s military experience. These realities—plus his cynicis—sharply contrast with Raina’s romantic conceptions and sensibility. In addition, Bluntschli’s naturalness contrasts with the theatricality of Sergius, Raina, and the aristocratic airs of her parents. The tradition of the military and war hero is given a mortal blow when the idealized hero Sergius confesses that his reputation is due to his ignorance and declares: “I am no longer a soldier” because “soldiering, my dear madam, is a coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms” (CPP I: 421). Shaw exposes in Raina the traditional and idealized conception of the hero that the protagonist, Bluntschli, precisely refutes and grinds up with his implacable logic. This process, albeit modified, will appear in Canales’s play.

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El héroe galopante is a one-act prose play. It centers on Pedro Sandoval, a First World War hero, who after much war experience believes that it is better to run away from a dangerous, brutal, and brainless incident than to be kicked, thrashed, mauled, or killed. Running for your life is construed as a much higher aspiration than to be celebrated as a dead or beleaguered hero. At first glance, it is a light comedy, but soon one encounters a rather serious and profound comedy of ideas wrapped in a deliciously ironic and funny mode. Canales dramatically engages his characters in popular conventional arguments that include a biting criticism of contemporary society and sexual mores. The streamlined, one-dimensional comedy of ideas, deprived of extensive Shavian stage directions and descriptions, opens with three young ladies discussing the concept of the hero and ideal man. For Clarita, it is physical beauty; thus, she falls in love with Arturito. Nepa favors intelligence and the romantic Amelia identifies the hero with a strong, brave, daring man capable of dying for a woman, a Don Juan. Don Miguel, the head of the family, links heroism to patriotism, and for Arturito there is no better example of pluck and courage than when Sandoval vanquished a German soldier holding a bomb. However, Sandoval, the protagonist, exhibits behavior and manners that do not fit those traditional definitions. He advocates a different kind of heroism, one rooted in justice and rationalism. His version of heroism invites us to examine, analyze, and respond rationally rather than react physically. When Sandoval’s reputation is at its highest, Doña Rosa, the family mother, comes in to share the incredible episode she has been told about. Sandoval, when leaving the town’s drugstore, was attacked by the son of a wealthy person he is suing for fraud. Confronted with such danger, he begins to run away as a crowd of witnesses scream at him: “Coward! Chicken! Devil!, he runs faster than a Ford!”44 Upon hearing this shameful anecdote, everyone turns on him. Amelia breaks with him, Arturo treats him with cynicism, and Don Miguel no longer considers him a gentleman. Nonetheless, Sandoval defends himself, stating that his attitude was that of a scared man or animal who, faced with obvious danger, says, “‘Feet, what do I want you for?’ And runs off, flying at the speed of lightning. … Dying is less frightening than being beaten at the pleasure of a brute.”45 The anti-conventional attitude of Sandoval ends up by favorably influencing the others, including Nepa, who accepts marrying him. While Shaw in his play distinguished between military efficiency and military heroism while the action of the play takes place during a war,

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Canales focused on two types of courage, physical and moral, and he sets the action in the post-war period of a Puerto Rican on the island. Physical courage is characteristic of the rooster and the bull, and only emphasizes corporal injury. Moral courage, in turn, has no other end but to “safeguard or protect, illuminate, plant, create.”46 Therefore, Sandoval’s behavior responds to logical decisions, which explains why the same man who had “the romantic but brute courage to place his life at the mercy of a German bomb … then has the vulgar, but reflexive, intelligent and saving courage of fleeing from Regúlez.”47 In criticizing physical courage, he attacks wars: This kind of courage, which is not rational, but muscular, belongs to all the world. Here is the war. What did the First War prove but that everyone in the world, the English as well as the French and German, the American and the Bulgarian, and the Turk, know how to confrontdangers and, in general, to kill or be killed?...thus, why are we so terrified at the suspition that we lack such an inconsequential virtue as this, possessed by all and that places our ability to reason at the level of bloody aggressiveness typical of the rooster, jaguar, goriila and bull.48

Through irony and satire Canales rebels against conventional descriptions of chivalry and morality. Anti-hero Sandoval offers a good example when he states the following: There are two essential requirements to be a gentleman: first, to live off rent. Can anyone conceive of a perfect gentleman working to live like any other mortal? Another one, not to think for yourself, because he who uses the head to think, most likely will dissent from public opinion and he who dissents, breaks conventions and infringes on the honor code. I lack both requisites: therefore, I am not a gentleman. I am simply a man.49

Canales also critiques conventional and family traditions. Wedding celebrations, for example, are described as “stiff and solemn, as in a procession of the Corpus Christi”;50 the engagement ritual is conceived as the “sinister anteroom of marriage, that pantheon of live and semi-live where minutes are years and years are centuries”;51 and of the family, he says “that there is nothing more boring than a family, except a family party if the party is in the countryside.”52 The structure of the play pivots around its anti-climactic message: a condemnation of heroism in its traditional romantic sense. Space considerations prevent a profound analysis of the protagonists, but yet they are

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nonetheless well sketched out. Each represents a different viewpoint. Nepa stands for the New Woman: she is intelligent, rational, logical, and realistic; hence her affinity with Sandoval. Nepa proposes to Sandoval, and in a final statement, echoing the one of Man and Superman, he falls for her, and while laughing she says, “Sandoval gets Nepa, or Nepa gets Sandoval?”53 El héroe galopante represents the incorporation into the Latin American theater of the Shavian “pleasant” comedy in the style of Arms and the Man. It long predates Usigli’s works and represents an aggressive and daring condemnation of ridiculous bourgeois presumptions, aspirations, and conventions. Among his narrative writings, the short novel Hacia un lejano sol (1920) shows a Shavian influence, mostly from Widowers’ Houses (1892) but also from other plays constructed around the notion of tainted money—Major Barbara and Mrs. Warren’s Profession being obvious examples. Canales’s novel deals with the disillusionment of the main character, Gloria, at her discovery that the family’s fortune, as well as her fiancé’s, is the outcome of the exploitation of the poor. The parallels between Shaw and Canales are mainly based on similarities in attitudes and reactions between Dr. Trench and Gloria. Trench is horrified to find out his girlfriend’s fortune comes from renting in poor neighborhoods. He refuses to borrow money from his future father-in-law but he soon learns that that his own family’s fortune is linked to not-so-honorable businesses. As Trench did, Gloria breaks up with Pablo because his father makes his money by defrauding others. Both Gloria and Trench react similarly when they discover the truth. Sartorius, the rack-rent landlord, exploits tenants who live in properties mortgaged by Trench’s family. The acknowledgment of the tragic truth that both their fortunes are tainted by exploitation operates in the same way. “Do you mean to say that I am just as bad as you are?” (I: 94), says Trench, while Gloria states, “—Oh, Mr. Ramón, what a disgrace! … Thus, I have no reason to reproach Pablo, that we are equal, that we both eat and live from the misery and pain of others!”54 Despite the final reconciling of the lovers in both plays, the Puerto Rican text differs from Shaw’s in that Gloria has fallen in love with her music teacher, thirty-three years older than she is, but, conscious of the age difference, he advices her to marry the young Pablo. Again, a typical Shavian unromantic ending. Seeking literary sources does not imply undermining the originality or creativity of Canales, who learned to exploit the literary and philosophical

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teachings of well-known (past and contemporary) European writers and Spanish-speaking writers and dramatists. Among them, Bernard Shaw had much to offer Canales so he could carry on his mission to effect change by disbanding romantic and unrealistic notions, dismantling idols, subverting traditional concepts and customs, and attacking institutions.

notes 1. My sincere thanks and gratitude to my former colleague, Dr. Vincent Spina, retired professor of Spanish from Clarion University, for reading, editing, and offering helpful remarks and suggestions to improve this text. 2. See my essays “Arms and the Man y El héroe galopante: la desmitifación del heroísmo,” Latin American Theater Review 9, No. 2 (Spring 1976): 63–67; “G. Bernard Shaw y Nemesio R. Canales: relaciones e influencias,” Sin Nombre 1, No. 2 (Julio–septiembre 1977): 34–45; and “Shaw: Paradigma temática y estructural de Nemesio R.  Canales,” Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 125–133. 3. See E. Montes de Rodríguez, Nemesio R. Canales: vida y obra 1878–1923. M.A. Thesis. Río Piedras, 1967; Julia C. Ortiz Lugo, Modernismo y estética de lo cercano en los artículos periodísticos de Nemesio R.  Canales. PhD Thesis. Tulane University, 1989; Rogelio Escudero-Valentín, Literatura y periodismo en la obra de Nemesio R. Canales: La etapa de Cuasimodo. PhD Thesis. U of Virginia, 1989; Antonio Crespo Vélez, La poética de Nemesio R. Canales: discurso de resistencia en La Leyenda Benaventina. PhD Thesis. University of Puerto Rico, 2005; María Teresa Babín. Genio y figura de Nemesio R. Canales. San Juan, PR. Biblioteca de Autores Puertorriqueños, 1978; Servando Montaña Peláez, Nemesio R.  Canales: Lenguaje y situación. San Juan: Ed. Universitaria, 1973. 4. See Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, El almuerzo en la hierba (Río Piedas: Ed. Huracán, 1982) for an examination of the major contributions of these four important figures: Canales, Llorens, Mondragón, and Palés Matos and the importance of the journal Revista de las Antillas. 5. Consuelo Naranjo, María Dolores Luque, Miguel Angel Puig-Samper, eds., Los Lazos de la cultura. El Centro de Estudios Históricos de Madrid y la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1916–1939 (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Historia, Depto. de Historia de América. Colección Tierra Nueva e Cielo Nuevo, 2002), 278. 6. See his introduction to Paliques (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1952), iii. Please note that all translations from the original Spanish in this essay are mine.

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7. In Servando Montaña Peláez, ed. Antología de Nemesio R. Canales, 2nd ed. (Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2000), 377. It must be noted that Professor Servando Montaña Peláez must be commended for his enormous efforts to collect and edit Canales’s disparate writings. 8. Nolasco, Escritores de Puerto Rico (Cuba: Ed. El Arte, 1953), 76. 9. Nolasco, 76. 10. In E. Fernández García, ed., El libro de Puerto Rico (San Juan: El Libro Azul, 1923), 774. 11. Montaña Peláez, Antología de Nemesio R. Canales, 101. 12. Antología, 101. 13. Antología, 73. 14. “La moral de los cines,” Revista de las Antillas, Año 11, 7 (Sept. 1914), 21–22. 15. “La moral de los cines,” 22. 16. All the issues of Cuasimodo are freely available in digitized format at http://americalee.cedinci.org/portfolio-­items/cuasimodo/. 17. An area of research worth exploring is Canales’s role as a translator of Shaw’s letters and newspaper articles. 18. For an examination of the role of Cuasimodo, Canales, and friends played within anarchist circles, see Kirwin R. Shaffer, “Contesting Internationalists: Transnational Anarchism, Anti-Imperialism and the US Expansion in the Caribbean, 1890s–1020s,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, vol. 22, 2 (2011), 11–22, and José Julián Llaguno Thomas, “Acción local y auditorio global: la presencia anarquista en América Central según sus fondos documentales entre 1910–1930,” Diálogos Revista Eletrónica de Historia, vol. 17, 2 (2016). Available at https://www.revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/dialogos/article/view/22168/25369. Feb. 22, 2017. 19. Nemesio R. Canales, La leyenda benaventina (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Gráfico Oceána, 1922), 23. 20. La leyenda benaventina, 23. 21. La leyenda benaventina, 18. 22. La leyenda benaventina, 21–22. 23. La leyenda benaventina, 48–49. 24. La leyenda benaventina, 116. 25. La leyenda benaventina, 21–22. 26. Paliques, 30. 27. Paliques, 30. 28. Paliques, 31. 29. Paliques, 31. 30. Paliques, 32. 31. Paliques, 48–49.

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32. Paliques, 56. 33. Paliques, 49. 34. Paliques, 49. 35. Common Sense About the War appeared in the New Statement on November 14, 1914. Shaw included it in What I Really Wrote About the War (New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1931), vol. XXI. We use this edition. 36. Nolasco, 72. 37. Many of the essays that Canales published in Juan Bobo and Idearium about the war were collected by Servando Montaña in his Antología Nueva de Nemesio R. Canales: Meditaciones Ocres (Río Piedras: Ed. Universitaria, 1974), II, 12. 38. Antología Nueva, 101. 39. Common Sense About the War, 115. 40. Nueva Antología, 83–84. 41. Canales also mentions “Brashford” among the authors with a similar political stance, but it is not clear who he is speaking about. 42. See V. F. Arriví, “La generación del treinta: el teatro,” Literatura puertorriqueña; 21 Conferencias (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1960), 382–383, and Josefina Rivera de Alvarez, “Génesis y desarrollo de la dramaturgia puertorriqueña hasta los umbrales de la generación del treinta,” Revista del Instituto de Cultura, No. 76–77 (Julio–dic. 1977), 19–30. 43. “Meredith on Comedy,” in Our Theater in the Nineties (London, 1932), III, 87. 44. El héroe galopante. Comedia en un acto y en prosa (Barcelona: Art Enterprise, 2003). Colección Grandes Maestros Universales, 48. 45. El héroe galopante, 50. 46. El héroe galopante, 55. 47. El héroe galopante, 52. 48. El héroe galopante, 53. 49. El héroe galopante, 57. 50. El héroe galopante, 46. 51. El héroe galopante, 52. 52. El héroe galopante, 38. 53. El héroe galopante, 61. 54. In Antología de Nemesio R. Canales, 395.

reFerences Arriví, V.F. 1960. La generación del treinta: el teatro. In Literatura puertorriqueña; 21 Conferencias. San Juan, Puerto Rico. 382–383. Babín, María Teresa. 1978. Genio y figura de Nemesio R. Canales. San Juan, PR: Biblioteca de Autores Puertorriqueños.

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Belaval, Emilio S. 1977. Conciencia capital del teatro. Revista del Instituto de. Cultura 76–77 (julio–dic): 31–36. Canales, Nemesio R. 1922. La leyenda benaventina. Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Gráfico Oceána. ———. 1952. Paliques. Río Piedras, PR: Editorial Universitaria. ———. 1992. Obras completas. Edited by Servando Montaña Peláez. San Juan, PR: Ediciones Puerto. ———. 2003. El héroe galopante. Comedia en un acto y en prosa. Barcelona: Art Enterprise. Colección Grandes Maestros Universales No. 48. Díaz Quiñones, Arcadio. 1982. El almuerzo en la hierba (Llorens Torres, Palés Matos, René Marqués). Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán. Henríquez Ureña, Pedro. 1959. Tres escritores ingleses: Oscar Wilde, Pinero, Bernard Shaw. In Obra Crítica, 7–16. Fondo de Cultura Económica: México. Montaña, Servando. 1973. Nemesio R. Canales: Lenguaje y situación. San Juan: Ed. Universitaria. ———. 1974. Antología Nueva de Nemesio. R.  Canales: Meditaciones Ocres. II. Río Piedras: Ed. Universitaria. Montes de Rodríguez, E. 1967. Nemesio R. Canales: vida y obra 1878–1923. MA Thesis. U. de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Naranjo, Consuelo, María Dolores Luque, Miguel Angel Puig-Samper, eds. 2002. Los Lazos de la cultura. El Centro de Estudios Históricos de Madrid y la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1916–1939. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Historia, Depto. De Historia de América. Colección Tierra Nueva e Cielo Nuevo. No. 46. Nolasco, Sócrates. 1953. Escritores de Puerto Rico. Cuba: El Arte. Orama Padilla, C. 1978. Nemesio R. Canales. Revista del Instituto de Cultura 79 (abril–junio): 15–17. Quiñones, Samuel R. 1942. El humorismo en la obra de Nemesio R. Canales. In Temas y letters, 105–130. San Juan: Biblioteca de Autores Puertorriqueños. Rivera de Alvarez, Josefina. 1977. Génesis y desarrollo de la dramaturgia puertorriqueña hasta los umbrales de la generación del treinta. Revista del Instituto de Cultura, 76–77 (Julio–dic): 19–30. Rodríguez de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Río Piedras, PR: Editorial Universitaria. Rosa Nieves, Cesáreo. 1956. Don Juan: Hombre y símbolo. El Mundo. Nov. 17, 21. Shaw, George Bernard. 1931a. The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw. Vol. VIII. New York: W. H. Wise and Company. ———. 1931b. What I Really Wrote About the War. Vol. XXI. New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co.

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Varona, José Enrique. 1938. Una Transfiguración de Rosina y Querubín. In Desde mi belvedere, 190–193. La Habana: Oficina Central. Vientós Gastón, Nilita. 1956. El centenario de Bernard Shaw. In inDICE Cultural, vol. I, 249–251. San Juan: Ed. Universidad de Puerto Rico. Warreck, G.R. 1956. Hombre y superhombre. El Mundo. Nov. 9, 12.

PART IV

Shaw in Spanish Translation

CHAPTER 15

Julio Broutá’s Translations of Bernard Shaw Sílvia Coll-Vinent

Introduction It is well known that Bernard Shaw was deeply concerned with the translations of his works, to the point that he kept a thorough record of the whole process of translation and performances of his plays in foreign countries, most particularly in Central Europe.1 On the recommendation of Shaw’s Austrian translator Siegfried Trebitsch (1868–1958), Julio Broutá became Shaw’s official translator into Spanish in 1907 and retained this position throughout Shaw’s lifetime.2 Born in Luxembourg in 1896, Broutá acquired Spanish nationality by marriage and lived in Madrid, where he worked as a correspondent for a number of English, Belgian, French, and German newspapers while also earning a living as a

This chapter is part of the project “El mundo de ayer: la figura del escritor-­ periodista ante la crisis del nuevo humanismo (1918–1945)” (FFI2015-67751-P), awarded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad. S. Coll-Vinent (*) Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_15

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professional translator. Broutá was more than able to meet the requirements for his Continental translators: he had a good mastery of English, so he could translate directly from the original without an intermediate source (all of his translations are “from the English”); he also had a good familiarity with Spanish and worked quickly, so he could provide translations at a speedy pace, to the amazement and satisfaction of Shaw himself.3 Moreover, as a contributor to the left-oriented La Revista Blanca (1898–1905), Broutá was keen on socialism and Naturalism. This might have been a factor in Shaw’s sympathetic view of Broutá when he appointed him to be his authorised Spanish translator.4 All in all, Broutá could deliver what Shaw most appreciated: the rendering into Spanish of his entire canon in a timely fashion. This chapter provides an overview of Broutá’s extensive career as Shaw’s official Spanish translator. First we will survey the sequence of the entire corpus of published translations and then assess the quality of the translations themselves. Broutá’s translations have a bad reputation; they are regarded as poor, vulgar, inadequate, misguided, and influenced by foreign prose, to the point that Broutá was alliteratively nicknamed “el bruto” (“Broutá the brute”).5 We will try to rectify this opinion by examining three of his translations in depth. More particularly, we will analyse the plays which have enjoyed the warmest reception on the Spanish stage: Candida, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan.6 For an assessment of the translator’s competence, we shall take into account Shaw’s attitude towards the translation of his plays, as he made clear in a 1919 letter stemming from criticisms over contemporary translators: It is always the same song: Trebitsch, Vallentin, Brouta [sic], Hevesi, Hamon, Agresti are all infamous impostors: how can I possibly allow my works to be so horribly misinterpreted? […] Every living German thinks that he, and he alone, should translate my plays; and therefore every living German agrees that Trebitsch’s translations are atrocious. No doubt they are not translations at all. He writes original plays, and puts my name on them. But as they seem to please the German public, and make money for me, I let him have his own way. I cannot agree with a German about his own language; and so I make fun of it.7

As frivolous as this comment might sound, any examination of the translations of Shaw’s plays should take Shaw’s approval into account, along with his tolerance of his plays being adapted to the needs of the

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stage and the demands of city audiences, either Vienna in the case of Trebitsch or Madrid and Barcelona in the case of Broutá. By December 1928, Broutá’s version of Candida had made its way into the popular collection “El Teatro Moderno,” a cheap compendium sold at 50 cents per volume that included comedies by Jacinto Benavente, Manuel Linares Rivas, Luis Araquistain, and Gregorio Martínez Sierra, among others, but also plays by Oscar Wilde, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Gabriele D’Annunzio.8 Cándida was thus the work selected to consolidate Shaw’s position in the modern theatre canon in Spain.

Publication History9 A transfer of rights between Bernard Shaw and Julio Broutá for the translation of Shaw’s works into Spanish was sealed in a notarised document signed in Madrid on 10 December 1907.10 That year, the first two of Broutá’s translations of Shaw’s plays were published in Madrid by the Sociedad Española de Autores (Spanish Society of Authors, 1899–1932), which held the exclusive rights for any publication or performance of Shaw’s works: De armas tomar: comedia en tres actos y en prosa (Arms and the Man, as part of Shaw’s Plays Pleasant), and two of his Plays Unpleasant: Non olet: comedia en tres actos y en prosa (Widowers’ Houses) and Trata de blancas: comedia dramática en cuatro actos y en prosa (Mrs Warren’s Profession). Broutá’s habit of changing titles in those early translations already points to his tendency to adapt plays to the Spanish context. Both “de armas tomar” and “non olet” (from the Latin “pecunia non olet” or “money does not smell”) are idiomatic phrases that—especially in the case of Arms and the Man—somewhat belie the theme of the plays. Cándida: un misterio en tres actos appeared a year later (1908)11 and premièred in Barcelona the same year in a joint adaptation in Catalan by Broutá and Martí Alegre and was the first work ever to be performed in Spain, immediately following its première in Paris.12 This might explain the 1911 publication of the one-act play regarded as a satirical sequel to Cándida, Su esposo: comedia en un acto, en prosa (How He Lied to Her Husband). A number of Broutá’s translations concentrate in the same presses over a short period (1907–1915): in 1908, El enamorador: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa (The Philanderer), Los despachos de Napoleón: juguete en un acto y en prosa (The Man of Destiny), and Lucha de sexos: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa (You Never Can Tell); in 1909, El discípulo del diablo: drama en cinco actos y en prosa (The Devil’s Disciple); in 1910, La

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conversion del Capitán Brassbound: comedia en tres actos y en prosa (Captain Brassbound’s Conversion); in 1911, La comandanta Bárbara: comedia en tres actos y en prosa (Major Barbara) and Su esposo: comedia en un acto, en prosa (How He Lied to Her Husband); in 1912, El dilemma del doctor: drama en cinco actos y en prosa (The Doctor’s Dilemma), La otra isla de John Bull: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa (John Bull’s Other Island), and El compromiso de Blanco Posnet: comedia en un acto y en prosa (The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet); and in 1915, Androcles y el león: comedia de fábula en tres actos y en prosa (Androcles and the Lion) and Hombre y superhombre: comedia y filosofía en cuatro actos, en prosa (Man and Superman). All these translations received a fairly favourable critical reception at the time, and they reveal Broutá as one of the leading figures in the dissemination of Shaw’s works and in the shaping of his critical reception in Spain, especially during these early years. Thus, José Alsina speaks of Broutá’s “commendable task of rendering Shaw’s works into Spanish” and how he helped to “divulgate Shaw’s work.”13 Even when the critic in question has a negative opinion of Shaw as a dramatist, he admits to having taken on faith the criteria and opinions of “such a distinguished and knowledgeable writer” as Broutá.14 Broutá’s version and rights to Pygmalion were given to the theatre entrepreneur and author Gregorio Martínez Sierra,15 to be premièred at Teatro Eslava (Madrid) on 7 November 1920. According to Broutá himself, the translation was modified by the theatre director “to be adapted to the needs of the stage.”16 Pigmalión was the first Shaw hit and the most widely performed of his comedies in Spain, with 45 performances in the 1920 theatrical season, followed by 9 in 1921, 45 new performances in 1922, and 7 during the 1923–1924 season.17 The play took the Spanish theatrical scene by storm.18 However, it was also received with some contempt and was subject to substantial moral scrutiny, which was hardly justifiable in view of Broutá’s version.19 The popularisation of Shaw among Spanish theatregoers and readers came after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. That event brought “a natural curiosity in all countries towards the task of the famous Irish writer,” and Spain was not indifferent to “the significance of the abundant and transcendental work, and so we can see how his works are being sold, available in an excellent Spanish version due to Julio Broutá, and published by Mariano Aguilar, one of the most enthusiast and able Spanish publishers.”20 According to the same source, by that date (1 November 1926) the following plays by Shaw had been published: Comedias desagradables,

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Comedias agradables, Hombre y superhombre, Volver a Matusalén, Tres comedias para puritanos, La otra isla de John Bull, El dilemma del Doctor, Matrimonio desigual (Misalliance), La casa de las penas (Heartbreak House), and Pigmalión. The volumes in Aguilar included not only the “dialogue of the comedies of the Irish genius, but also in all their extension the annotations and peculiar prefaces and epilogues Shaw is so fond of, in which he pours out all the treasures of his wit, the humanism of his paradoxes, the causticity of his satiric vein, the generosity of his feelings, the comic vein of his dramatic structures, his brilliant philosophy and the impetuosity of his iconoclasm,” as we can read from the advertisement that appeared in Gaceta Literaria upon the publication of Matrimonio desigual (1927).21 Broutá’s version of Saint Joan, Shaw’s world-famous only tragedy, premièred first in Teatro Goya in Barcelona (21 October 1925)22 and then in Madrid, at Teatro Eslava (23 February 1926), with 31 performances.23 Broutá’s version, Santa Juana: crónica dramática en seis escenas y un epílogo, came out in book form published by Revista de Occidente and then continued with many editions by Aguilar: c.1939, 1943, 1948, 1953, the latter with a preface by F. S. R. (Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles), himself a playwright, a theatre critic, and Madrid chronicler. It was also published in 1937 by Espasa-Calpe, for distribution in Latin America. Some critics, however, doubt that Broutá indeed translated Santa Juana—at least the version that was staged with Margarita Xirgu in the lead role. Ricardo Baeza, who also translated several plays by Shaw, adds an intriguing footnote to one of his essays in the Argentinian literary magazine Sur, where he claims that the staged text “seems [to have been translated] by several young writers, friends of the company.”24 Aguilar also published, in 1928, Guía de la mujer inteligente para el conocimiento del socialismo y el capitalismo (The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism). This was followed in 1930 by the political extravaganza El carro de las manzanas: una extravagancia política (The Apple Cart), which had three further editions (1936, 1945, and 1951) and was reprinted much later, in 1981, by Bruguera (Barcelona). It came with a preface by F.  S. R. and with a special translator’s note in which Broutá explains his decision to keep a literal translation of the title after having consulted Shaw himself on the matter. Broutá (and Shaw) disagreed with the German solution (Der Kaiser von America). Shaw suggested to him the title Breakages Limited (Roturas S. A.), which Broutá thought would not be very clear to a Spanish audience, and he eventually

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kept the original title because it was effective and sounded familiar to Spanish audiences, even though the idiomatic reference to the notion of “upsetting the apple cart” was lost in translation. He also kept the characters’ original names.25 In 1931, El hombre que se deja querer, Broutá’s version of The Philanderer, premièred on stage in Madrid; it was included in Comedias escogidas (1957) with the new title Fascinación. Broutá’s César y Cleopatra and Cándida were later selected by Jorge Luis Borges for his personal library (Barcelona: Orbis, 1987; repr. 1988). Also in the 1930s, there came the publication of the novel La profesión de Cashel Byron, which was reprinted in 1944 and 1998 (Barcelona: Ediciones del Bronce). Pigmalión was by far Shaw’s most successful play in Spain: reissued many times by Aguilar (1945, 1949, 1951), it was reprinted in popular collections in the early 1980s, first in Club Bruguera (in 1981 and 1983), then in a 1983 edition by both Círculo de Lectores and Orbis (together with Trata de blancas [Mrs Warren’s Profession]), followed by Planeta in 1984 (also published in fascicles), Seix Barral (1985), and back to Orbis for a last 1998 reprint. In Argentina, Pigmalión, together with La cosa sucede (The Thing Happens), was issued by Espasa-Calpe in 1944 (Figs. 15.1 and 15.2). Bernard Shaw’s peak in Spain was in 1957 with the publication of the aforementioned collected volume Comedias escogidas. This volume came out with a preface by A. C. Ward, and the selection included the following plays: Héroes, Cándida, Trata de blancas (Mrs Warren’s Profession), Fascinación (The Philanderer), El discípulo del diablo, César y Cleopatra, Pigmalión, La casa de las penas (Heartbreak House), La cosa sucede (The Thing Happens), La tragedia de un caballero entrado en años (Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman), Hasta donde alcanza el pensamiento (As far as Thought Can Reach), and Santa Juana. This compilation was reissued regularly until the late 1960s (1960, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1968) and then again in two further reprints, in 1973 and 1979. Shaw’s Comedias escogidas has proven to be an enduring success in the story of the modern drama of ideas in Spain and in the history of Aguilar, a publisher that disappeared in the early 1980s. Edited versions of Broutá’s translations published elsewhere include the play El hombre que se deja querer: comedia en tres actos, en prosa, which premièred at Teatro Fontalba in Madrid on 20 March 1931 and came out simultaneously in an edition illustrated by Antonio Merlo (Madrid: Estampa). Espasa-Calpe (Buenos Aires) also issued the plays Héroes in 1947 and Matrimonio desigual in 1949.

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Fig. 15.1  Advertisement for the Spanish translations of Shaw plays published by Aguilar on the occasion of his Nobel Prize. El Sol 22 November 1926. (Source: Hemeroteca Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de España)

Generally speaking, Broutá’s translations were regarded by many critics as less-than-perfect renderings of Shaw’s original text, to say the least. Ricardo Baeza, for example, despite his personal and intellectual appreciation for Broutá, complains that “he [Broutá] can’t write Spanish and his dialogue is utterly impossible [to play] on the stage.”26 Yet, some reviewers acknowledge the challenges that Shaw’s plays posed for Spanish translators, especially because of the “local” flavour of his drama: “translating the script, and even preserving the humor in his dialogues is, if not easy, at least feasible; translating the types and customs of the British people verges on the impossible, or something close to that.”27

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Fig. 15.2  Advertisement for the Spanish translations of Shaw plays published by Aguilar. La Gaceta Literaria Sol 1 March 1927. Source: Hemeroteca Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de España

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The Translator at Work The focus of this section will be the translations of some of Shaw’s most successful plays on the Spanish stage: Candida, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan. They have been selected on the grounds that they cover three key dimensions of Shaw’s dramatic art: the Ibsenite discussion play on marriage and courtship; the comic and the satirical applied to social class differences; and the epic register in Shaw’s only tragedy. Subtle, witty criticism of the social status quo is not always accurately perceived in translation, as it sometimes lacks precision in social nuances, such as in an early annotation in Act I of Cándida, in which the word “slums” is translated as “esos barrios donde se desarrolla la vida pedestre de la clase media” (319).28 Still, on the whole the translator evinces a good command of both languages in all three translations. In all of them, he achieves a nearly perfect functional equivalence in both dialogue and annotations, with the necessary amplifications and syntactic transformations. Take, for instance, this descriptive stage direction about Rev. Morell, A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and goodlooking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound unaffected voice, which he used with the clear and athletic articulation of a practised orator, and with a wide range and perfect command of expression. (I: 517–18)29

which is effectively rendered as Es un hombre vigoroso, listo, popular, de unos cuarenta años, de buena salud y presencia, lleno de energía, de modales cordiales y corteses, con una voz bien timbrada y sin afectación, que usa con la articulación limpia y fuerte de un orador práctico, disponiendo además de un léxico abundoso que maneja con perfecto dominio. (321)

Broutá likewise shows a capacity to sound idiomatically convincing in his rendering of tone. Thus when Morell exclaims, “Scarlatine! Rubbish! It was German measles,” the translator powerfully fires out, “¡Qué escarlatina ni qué ocho cuartos! Lo que han sido son viruelas bobas” (324). He also manages to achieve a functional equivalence in rendering the insulting tone, as when Morell addresses Marchbanks by calling him “You little snivelling cowardly whelp,” which he turns into “Mocosuelo, deslenguado.” He also successfully captures the angry tone on these two occasions, which are marked with emphasis or repetition:

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MORELL. […] I want no more of your poetic fripperies. (CPP I: 579) (Agarrándolo) Diga la verdad de una vez. Mi mujer es mi mujer, y ya estoy harto de sus estupideces poéticas. (382) CANDIDA [severely] Yes I am: very angry. (CPP I: 581) (Severa) Sí, señor; estoy enojada, muy enojada. (384)

Many idiomatic expressions throughout the play find their fair equivalent in Spanish: “without making a fool of himself” as “sin ponerse tonto”; “I keep him in his place” becomes “no lo trato con tantos miramientos”; “mad as a ’atter” as “loco de remate”; “that’s one comfort, anyhow” as “algo es algo”; and “is a gentleman, and knows his place,” as “es un caballero y sabe lo que son buenas maneras.” Moreover, a degree of equivalence is also achieved when transmitting the oral quality of the dialogue: BURGESS. […] A clergyman is privileged to be a bit of a fool, you know: it’s only becomin’ in is profession that he should. Anyhow, I come here, not to rake up old differences, but to let bygones be bygones. [Suddenly becoming very solemn, and approaching Morell] James: three years ago, you done me a hill turn. (CPP I: 527) Un clérigo tiene derecho a estar un poco chiflado, ¿sabe usted? Eso lo trae el oficio. En fin, a lo que estamos. Yo he venido no para renovar riñas antiguas, sino para decirle que lo pasado, pasado. (Poniéndose de repente muy solemne y acercándose a MORELL) James, hace tres años me hizo usted una gorda. (330)

Broutá sometimes amplifies Burgess’s idiolect, such as in the following example: BURGESS. […] Well, you orr a queer bird, James, and no mistake. But [almost enthusiastically] one carnt elp likin you. (CPP I: 531)

which becomes (Alegrándose a pesar suyo.) Cuidado, James, que usted dice cada cosa … No hay que darle vueltas, usted es un hombre raro. Pero, a pesar de todo (casi con entusiasmo), uno no puede dejar de quererlo. (334)

Social class markers find their functional equivalent, for instance, when Proserpine fretfully says, “It’s well you and I are not ladies and gentlemen,” which becomes “Felizmente, usted y yo no pertenecemos a la

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aristocracia” (356–7), just as social criticism is effectively conveyed in comments such as this: BURGESS. […] the line you took is the payin line in the long run for a man o your sort. (CPP I: 532) el camino que viene siguiendo es el único que conduce al medro a los hombres de su clase. (335)

Or in these malicious words (on Morell’s sermons) by Candida: I should care very little for your sermons: mere phrases that you cheat yourself and others with every day. (CPP I: 565) qué poco caso haría yo de tus sermones, palabras huecas con las que cada día engañas a los demás. (368)

However, a weakness is perceived when the translator adds downgrading overtones, such as in Proserpine’s reply to Burgess: PROSERPINE [fretfully] It’s well you and I are not ladies and gentlemen: I’d talk to you pretty straight if Mr Marchbanks wasnt here. [She pulls the letter out of the machine so crossly that it tears]. There! now I’ve spoiled this letter! Have to be done all over again! Oh, I cant contain myself: silly old fat head! (CPP I: 553) (Enfadada) Felizmente, usted y yo no pertenecemos a la aristocracia. Ya le habría dicho yo cuatro cosas si el Sr. Marchbanks no estuviese presente. (Saca la carta de la máquina tan bruscamente que se desgarra). Bueno, ahora he roto esta carta y he de hacerla de nuevo. ¡Todo por su culpa, viejo imbécil! (356–7)

Towards the end of Act III, there is a noticeable change in treatment (from “usted” to “tú”), to emphasise Candida’s stance in her relationship with husband and suitor: CANDIDA [slowly recoiling a step, her heart hardened by his rhetoric in spite of the sincere feeling behind it] Oh! I am to choose am I? I suppose it is quite settled that I must belong to one or the other. (CPP I: 590) (Retrocede lentamente un poco, asqueada por su oratoria, a pesar de los sinceros sentimientos que envuelve.) ¡Conque tengo que escoger! Supongo que también está convencido que tengo que pertenecer a uno o a otro. (393) […]

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CANDIDA. […] And pray, my lords and masters, what have you to offer for my choice? I am up for auction, it seems. What do you bid, James? (CPP I: 590) Y digan, mis amos y señores: ¿qué tienen que ofrecer a trueque de mi elección? Según parece, me van a subastar. ¿Qué ofreces tú, James? (393)

Precise and well-translated stage directions can also be found throughout the play: “suddenly perching himself grotesquely on the back of the easy chair” is translated as “encaramándose de repente de un modo grotesco en el sillón” or “prosaically slipping down into a quite ordinary attitude on the seat of the chair” (I: 576–77) as “Se desliza abajo para sentarse en el sillón de un modo ordinario” (379). Only a few interpretation errors have been detected, such as improper uses of the passive voice: “where the marble floors are washed by the rain and dried by the sun” (I: 558) as “dondelos pavimentos de mármol son lavados por las lluvias y secados por el sol” (362). More substantial changes and deviations from the original occur in the translation of Pygmalion. The translator’s hand becomes more noticeable to such an extent that Broutá’s version of Pygmalion should be regarded as more of an adaptation. First of all, Act I is set in the “pórtico de San Pablo” (St Paul), without mentioning that it should in fact be the church in Covent Garden, the London vegetable market. Nevertheless, the translation is idiomatically convincing from the outset, as when the protagonist says, “I’m getting chilled to the bone” (CPP IV: 669), which becomes “Nos vamos a calar hasta los huesos. ¡Vaya un chaparrón!.”30 Here the translator willingly grapples with the challenge of rendering London slang into the language of lower-class districts in a Spanish city, a solution that was criticised by some, as we learn from the first translator’s note: “Some critics have disagreed with my translating London slang into suburban language” (662).31 This can be illustrated with many instances, such as this one, which amplifies the dialogue: THE FLOWER GIRL. Nah then, Freddy: look wh’ y’ gowin, deah. FREDDY. Sorry [he rushes off]. THE FLOWER GIRL [picking up the scattered flowers and replacing them in the basket] Theres menners f’ yer! Tə-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad. (CPP IV: 670–71) LA FLORISTA.—¡Anda, pasmao! ¡Vaya con el señorito cegato! Nos ha amolao el cuatro ojos. ¡Ay, qué leñe! FREDDY.—Bastante lo siento, pero tengo prisa. (Escapa corriendo.)

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LA FLORISTA.—(Recogiendo sus flores y volviendo a colocarlas en el canasto.) ¡Vaya unas maneras tienen algunos! ¡Moño, las tienen de …! ¡Y poco barro que hay! ¡Pues ya nos hemos ganao el jornal! (662–663)

A major consideration involved in such a challenge is the rendering of the flower girl’s idiolect from the original, which is phonetically marked in an attempt to represent it in phonetic alphabet, one of Shaw’s lifetime interests. Broutá leaves out the phonetic representation—just as Shaw abandons “this desperate attempt to represent her dialect”—and compensates for this by using some phonetic features of the colloquial variety of Spanish, such as eliding the intervocalic—d (“estropeás,” “toas”), eliding the final— d (“usté”), using yeismo (“cabayero,” “ramiyete”), or eliding final syllables (“quié” for “quiere”; “tié” for “tiene”; “tuviá” for “tuviera”). He also compensates by using vulgar idiomatic expressions, sometimes adding new lines to the dialogue in the process: THE FLOWER GIRL. Garn! Oh do buy a flower off me, Captain. I can change half-a-crown. Take this for tuppence. (CPP IV: 673) ¡Anda la mar! Si tuviá yo un “soberano”, estaría yo ahora en un palco de la ópera. Mírese a ver si tiene medio penique. (664)

This vulgarisation of speech also applies to other characters (individual or collective) in the play, such as when the general hubbub cries out to the flower girl: Who’s hurting you? Nobody’s going to touch you. Whats the good of fussing? Steady on. Easy easy, etc. […] Whats the row? What-shedo? Where is he? A tec taking her down. (CPP IV: 673–74) La Muchedumbre.—¡Cállate la boca, tonta, que nadie se mete contigo, caramba! ¡Calma, calma, chica! ¡Pero qué pamemas son ésas! ¡Qué escandalosa es la criatura! ¡No le da poco fuerte a la niña! (665)

Or when the bystanders address the note-taker, who they believe is a policeman, also amplifying vulgar dialogue: THE BYSTANDERS GENERALLY [demonstrating against police espionage] Course they could. What business is it of yours? You mind your own affairs. He wants promotion, he does. Taking down people’s words! Girl never said a word to him. What harm if he did? Nice thing a girl cant shelter from the rain without being insulted, etc., etc., etc. (CPP IV: 675)

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(Juntándose en su poca simpatía por la Policía.) ¡Claro! ¡Qué ganas de meterse donde nadie le llama! Esto no se ve más que en este país. ¡Si creerá que con esas chinchorrerías se va a ganar el ascenso! Le digo a usted que ni en la Papuasia. ¡Que se vaya a tomar el fresco! …, etcétera. (666)

Lexical colloquialisms such as “guiri” translate “a copper’s nark,” a sort of informer, and sometimes compound colloquialisms in English are rendered in paraphrase: “a blooming busy-body” becomes “un guasón que quie tomarnos el pelo” (666), and idiomatically close expressions (“You ought to be stuffed with nails” as “¡Que siempre usted me ha de salir en contra!”). The low register used by the translator rings true, with all the nuances of emphasis effectively rendered, for instance, at times with syntactical redundancies such as THE FLOWER GIRL. […] How do I know whether you took me down right? You just shew me what youve wrote about me. (CPP IV: 674) ¡Yo qué sé lo que habrá escrito ahí! Enséñeme a ver. (666) (“Let me look” = Literally translated = “Let me do look at it”: a redundant colloquial syntactic structure)

Occasionally, the translator adds explanatory notes, perhaps to give some hints to the actors (“Reads reproducing her pronunciations exactly” becomes “Lee reproduciendo exactamente la fonética de la muchacha. Para que la ilusión sea completa, la misma actriz puede hablar, haciéndose creer al público que es el presunto imitador”) (666) or to make a pronunciation trait clear (“Aaaaaaaah–ow-ooh!” becomes “Aaayyy! [Esta exclamación es una especie de hipo prolongado, que en ella es peculiar]”) (672), or even to make a moral point (“She [The mother] gathers her skirts above her ankles and hurries off” is translated as “Se arremanga las faldas” with this footnote: “Excuso decir que esto hoy sobra”) (669). A higher degree of variation occurs unjustifiably at some point in Act I: a change of place names, “Sesley” becomes “Whitechapel” (with a translator’s footnote: “to be pronounced Vuitchépel”) (666), and then the translator substantially changes the dialogue on the social origins of the flower girl, creating stronger, more self-deprecating replies (being compared to a criminal or a beggar):

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THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, what harm is there in my leaving Lisson Grove? It wasnt fit for a pig to live in; and I had to pay for-and-six a week. [In tears] Oh, boo—hoo—oo. (CPP IV: 675) Sí, sí; en aquel barrio nací [Whitechapel]; no lo puedo negar; pero no me vaya a multar por ello … que no lo volveré a hacer. (Risas.) Ahora vivo en Lisson Grove. Esto supongo que no es un crimen. (Empieza nuevamente a lamentarse.) (667) He’s no right to take away my character. My character is the same to me as any lady’s. (CPP IV: 678) ¡Yo lo que digo es que no tié derecho a molestarme. ¿Soy acaso una mendiga? (669) Poor girl! Hard enough for her to live without being worried and chivied. (CPP IV: 678) ¡Vaya una vida perra la que tiene una! ¡Cuánto hay que sudar para ganar un triste piri! Y encima la amuelan a una de todas las maneras. (669)

The translator keeps changing the details about the neighbourhood she was brought up in and the vulgar language she speaks. So “this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days” becomes “esa muchacha con su lenguaje canallesco y estropeado”; “I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party” is transformed into “si fuese cosa de apuesta hacerla pasar por una duquesa en la ‘soirée’ o en la ‘garden-pary’ de una Embajada.” The profession of the note-taker is turned into a ventriloquist, and the flower girl keeps insisting throughout that he is a policeman: THE FLOWER GIRL. Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward! (CPP IV: 679) Sí, sí; ahora quiere hacerse pasar por ventríloco; pero a mí no hay quien me quite que es de la secreta. (670)

Some local references to social class behaviour in London’s high-class quarters are missing, giving to the task of the note-taker another social twist by substituting the bourgeois aspiration to learn foreign languages, French in particular: This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with £80 a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths. (CPP IV: 679)

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Estos tiempos son, como usted sabe, de “snobismo.” Las clases ricas, lo mismo las burguesas que las aristocráticas, viajan mucho y quieren estudiar idiomas extranjeros … Hoy personas de viso pronuncian el francés. (670)

This perfectly illustrates the degree of adaptation involved in Broutá’s Pigmalión: the final section of Act I is abridged and substantially changed. Thus all of these translator’s interventions may somehow justify the use of the nickname “el bruto.” Of the translations being reviewed, this is by far the freest. As noted earlier, Broutá’s Pigmalión should be regarded as an adaptation, or sometimes a free version, as he certainly played with the original, albeit with the legitimate goal of adapting Shaw’s dialogues to the nature and variety of local Castilian registers—and of course to please Madrid theatregoers and Spanish comedy lovers at large. With Saint Joan Broutá returns to the faithful and functionally equivalent translations we saw in Cándida. Annotations and dialogues are translated competently and the translator remains faithful to the original right up to the end of the play. All descriptions of Joan fit the original: the Maid (“la Doncella”) is characterised as a “crazy wench” (“moza trastornada”), “a beggar on horseback” (“una mendiga engreída,” 118),32 “a relapsed heretic” (“una hereje reincidente,” 164), and a self-described soldier—“I was always a rough one: a regular soldier,” which although not translated verbatim, the general meaning of the phrase is preserved in “Siempre fuí de cuerpo tosco y recio, un verdadero soldado” (173). The powerful, valiant soldier is a real threat also because of her eloquence: “It’s no use [says Poulengy to Robert de Baudricourt]. She can choke you like that every time” (CPP VI: 93), which becomes “Es inútil, Roberto; no puedes con ella” (80). Differences between high and low registers are also conveyed in the translation, with the marked respectful treatment (use of “voseo” with authorities, aristocracy, and the Inquisition) sometimes emphasised in Spanish: LA HIRE. She may strike the lot of us dead if we cross her … be careful what you are doing. (CPP VI: 103) A ver si nos mata a todos si nos oponemos a su voluntad … Dios mío, señor, mirad bien lo que hacéis.

Likewise, the lower register used by Joan herself is appropriately rendered and syntactically and lexically marked:

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JOAN. Where be Dauphin? (CPP VI: 108) ¿En dónde está el Delfín? (93) Who be old Gruff-and-Grum? (CPP VI: 111) ¿Quién es ese viejo gruñón? (95) Easy, Charlie, easy. What art making all that noise for? (CPP VI: 194) Calma, Carlitos, calma. ¿A qué viene todo ese ruido? (172)

Broutá’s translation sounds idiomatically effective as well in his rendering of many fixed expressions: “Dressing up don’t fill empty noddle” (CPP VI: 112) as “El traje pomposo no llena la cabeza vacía” (96); “Certainly, English for the English goes without saying” (CPP VI: 140) as “Cierto, ni que decir tiene que Inglaterra para los ingleses” (123); and “This is past bearing” (CPP VI: 180) as “Esto ya no se puede tolerar” (160). In addition, several interesting adaptations can be observed: JOAN. Ah! If, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there’d be no need of thinkers. (CPP VI: 149) ¡Oh, sí, sí, sí …! Si no existiese la palabra, sí, todo marcharía como sobre ruedas. (132)

As well as several syntactic transformations and variations, when appropriate: LAHIRE. […] but she has got hold of the right end of the stick. Fighting is not what it was. (CPP VI: 150) Pero sí tiene razón en eso de que pelear ya no es lo que fué antiguamente. (133)

There are also some particularly felicitous renderings, such as the following words spoken by the bastard Dunois to Joan (on crowning the Dauphin): “you have crowned him; and you must go through with it” (CPP VI: 141), which becomes “tú has sido la reina de la fiesta y tienes que asistir hasta el fin” (125). Some lyrics and lines recited in the dialogue, such as the last tune in the epilogue (“Rum tum trumpledum” becomes “Run tun runtuntún”), are adapted, and so are measures and coins (“penny” to “escudo”). From the analysis above, therefore, one may conclude that Julio Broutá managed to accurately render Shaw’s wit and dramatic humaneness. He was able to render the impertinence and ingenious vivacity of his characters through dialogue, and he also managed to produce a competent

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translation of scene and character directions. On the whole, he appears to show a thorough mastery of the plays in all their complexity. Shaw’s sense of humour may sometimes be downgraded by vulgar dialogue (as seen in the case of Pygmalion), yet the discussion of ideas, the habit of taunting the upper classes, and most importantly Shaw’s sarcastic vein are rendered in a lively, idiomatically convincing manner nonetheless. Shaw found lasting fame in the Spanish-speaking world thanks mostly to Broutá’s versions, which had a long shelf life via numerous editions and reprints. Not for nothing did Broutá’s versions of Candida and Caesar and Cleopatra end up in Borges’s personal library. Likewise, it is no coincidence that Broutá’s version of Cándida is also the one that would be plagiarised by such a late version as that of José Luis Alonso in 1985.33 His Pigmalión is still a pleasure to read and, despite many outdated vulgar phrases, still retains the freshness and the outspoken dialogue that made Shaw an enduring classic of modern comedy. Julio Broutá’s translations are worth reading and will stand as a landmark in the heritage of modern European theatre in Spanish.

Notes 1. Fred D.  Crawford, “Shaw in Translation,” in SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 20 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000), 177–220. 2. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 42–43. See also Pablo Ruano San Segundo in this volume. 3. Crawford, “Shaw in Translation,” 188. 4. Broutá was the author of only one original work: La ciencia moderna, sus tendencias y cuestiones con ella relacionadas (Barcelona: Montaner y Simón, 1897). 5. Rodríguez-Seda, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 43. 6. Dru Dougharty and María Francisca Vilches, La escena madrileña entre 1918 y 1926: Análisis y documentación (Madrid: Fundamentos, 1990), 393, 429; La escena madrileña entre 1926 y 1931: Un lustro de transición (Madrid: Fundamentos, 1997), 414, 526, 547. 7. Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch, ed. Samuel A. Weiss (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 208. 8. See the list of published plays in Cándida: misterio en tres actos (trad. Julio Broutá). Madrid: Prensa Moderna, 1928; and El Teatro Moderno, núm.

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173. The play premièred at Teatro Infanta Beatriz de Madrid on 24 November 1928. 9. For bibliographical details of all the translations listed in this chapter, see Appendix I. 10. Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil, “Colección de documentos del escritor y editor Gregorio Martínez Sierra: recuperación y tratamiento,” Revista General de Información y Documentación 19 (2009): 335–336. 11. See the early advertisements for Shaw’s dramatic works in translation, for example, in El Imparcial (11 February 1908): 5; and “Publicaciones de actualidad,” La Correspondencia de España 18 February (1908): 2. 12. See Anna Soler Horta, “Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G. B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938).” In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute (Barcelona: PPU, 2001), 296. This Catalan version remains unpublished. 13. José Alsina, “Nuevas obras publicadas,” El Pais (6 April 1908): 3. 14. “Revista Bibliográfica,” Nuestro Tiempo I (Jan–March 1908): 106. 15. Sánchez Vigil, “Colección de documentos del escritor y editor Gregorio Martínez Sierra,” 320. 16. See the translator’s note to Pigmalión (Madrid, Aguilar, 1944), p.  21. Gregorio Martínez Sierra, the director, eliminated the first act and changed several things at the end of Act IV. 17. Dougharty and Vilches, La escena madrileña entre 1926 y 1931, 393. 18. F.  S. R., “Nota preliminar: G.  Bernard Shaw,” in Pigmalión (Madrid: Aguilar, 1944), 11–19 (18–19). 19. Miguel Cisneros Perales, “Introducción a la obra y al autor,” in George Bernard Shaw, Pigmalión, ed. and trans. Miguel Cisneros Perales (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016), 53. 20. El Consultor Bibliográfico (1 November 1926): 60. 21. La Gaceta Literaria (1 March 1927): 4. 22. Soler Horta, “Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G.  B. Shaw a Catalunya,” 298. 23. Dougharty and Vilches, La escena madrileña entre 1918 y 1936, 393, 429. 24. Ricardo Baeza, “Recuerdos de Bernard Shaw,” Sur 200 (June 1951): 15n1. Incidentally, Victoria Ocampo, the founder and editor in chief of Sur, met Shaw at his home in Ayot St. Lawrence and recounts the occasion in an article in the same issue. 25. “Nota especial del traductor,” in George Bernard Shaw, El carro de las manzanas: una extravaganza política por un miembro de la Real Sociedad de Literatura (Madrid: Aguilar, 1945), 81–82. 26. Ricardo Baeza, “Recuerdos de Bernard Shaw,” 15. 27. Alejandro Miquis, “La Semana Teatral. El hombre que se deja querer,” Nuevo Mundo (27 March 1931): 14.

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28. César y Cleopatra, La comandante Bárbara, Cándida (Barcelona: Orbis, 1987; Biblioteca personal Jorge Luis Borges 47). I henceforth quote from this edition. 29. All citations to the plays and prefaces, given parenthetically in the text with volume and page numbers (Roman and Arabic, respectively), are from The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces (London: Max Reinhardt, 1972). 30. Comedias escogidas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1966; 6th edition), 661. I henceforth quote from this edition. 31. The original reads: “Algunos críticos encontraron mal que se tradujera el slang londinense al lenguaje de los barrios.” 32. Santa Juana: crónica dramática en seis escenas y un epílogo (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1937). I henceforth quote from this edition. 33. See Raquel Merino Álvarez, “Del plagio como ‘método’ de traducción del teatro inglés en España: una tradición demasiado arraigada,” TRANS.  Revista de Traductología, 5 (2001), 219–226. According to Merino, 96% of Alonso’s text, performed in Madrid in 1985, is based on Broutá’s version of Cándida.

References Crawford, Fred D. 2000. Shaw in Translation. In SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 20, 177–220. University Park: Penn State University Press. Dougharty, Dru, and María Francisca Vilches. 1990. La escena madrileña entre 1918 y 1926: Análisis y documentación. Madrid: Fundamentos. ———. 1997. La escena madrileña entre 1926 y 1931: Un lustro de transición. Madrid: Fundamentos. Merino Álvarez, Raquel. 2001. Del plagio como “método” de traducción del teatro inglés en España: una tradición demasiado arraigada. TRANS. Revista de Traductología 5: 219–226. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria. Sánchez Vigil, Juan Miguel. 2009. Colección de documentos del escritor y editor Gregorio Martínez Sierra: recuperación y tratamiento. Revista General de Información y Documentación 19: 317–340. Soler Horta, Anna. 2001. Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G.  B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938). In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute, 296–311. Barcelona: PPU. Weiss, Samuel A., ed. 1986. Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

CHAPTER 16

The Unauthorized Shaw: Non-official Translations in the Spanish-Speaking World Pablo Ruano San Segundo

Introduction As we have seen in the previous chapter, the best-known translator of Bernard Shaw into Spanish during his lifetime was the Luxembourgian Julio Broutá, whom Shaw himself named his “official translator” in 1907.1 Broutá corresponded with Shaw and later acquired the rights2 to the works he would translate (see the Appendix). He was even acknowledged by the press as the “only” translator of Shaw into Spanish, as can be seen in the following excerpt from the newspaper El Sol on April 5, 1928:

The research reported on in this chapter was funded by the Spanish Government (Ayuda del Programa de Recualificación del Sistema Universitario Español. Modalidad de recualificación del profesorado universitario funcionario o contratado), which we acknowledge here. P. R. San Segundo (*) Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7_16

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Q: Which are the best translations of Shaw’s plays into Spanish? A: There are no other translations than those by Julio Broutá. Visit the General Society of Authors of Spain. This statement, however, does not reflect the real situation of Shaw’s Spanish translations. In fact, the rendering of Shaw’s works into Spanish during his lifetime went well beyond Julio Broutá, not only after Broutá’s death in 1932, but also previously. Unfortunately, works translated by people other than Broutá are frequently deemed incidental, as if they were the exception that proves the rule. With helpful but misguided outlooks, the few academic works touching upon these translations have considered them subsidiary.3 This chapter seeks to redress the imbalance between the scholarly attention paid to these translations—virtually non-existent—and those by Broutá. Specifically, I will examine those translations by translators other than Broutá up to 1956, thereby covering Shaw’s lifetime and also the years leading up to the centenary of his birth. My purpose is twofold. First and foremost, I intend to compile the first-ever bibliographical record of these translations. This will provide a more comprehensive view of the translations of Shaw’s works into Spanish, thereby completing and complementing the analysis of Broutá’s translations discussed in the previous chapter. Second, I will discuss the circumstances under which some of the translations were carried out, thus adding depth to our understanding of Shaw’s reception in the Spanish-speaking world. The compilation of the different translations listed here will also open new research avenues in the study of Bernard Shaw’s works from a traductological point of view.

Methodology and Scope Given the lack of previous studies on Shaw’s translated works into Spanish by people other than Julio Broutá, I sought out those translations by tracking documents in various national and international repositories that would likely contain references to Shaw’s translated works into Spanish. The main source used was Worldcat, one of “the world’s largest network of library content and services.”4 In addition to Worldcat, specific searches were also carried out in the Spanish national library—BNE (Biblioteca Nacional de España)—and in the national libraries of the nineteen different Spanish-speaking countries of Hispanic America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,

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Peru, Puerto Rico (U.S.), Uruguay, and Venezuela. In the case of the Biblioteca Nacional de España, I used both the online catalog and the virtual newspaper library, a repository of digitized historical press and other materials from Spain and American Spanish-speaking countries spanning 1683 to the present. Searches in the virtual newspaper library made it possible not only to find references to translations not located anywhere else but also to analyze valuable information about Shaw’s translated works: comments on the quality of the translations, performances by theater companies, and so on. It should be noted, however, that newspapers frequently referred to performances by theater companies as if they were translations. This is the case, for instance, with Martínez Sierra’s adaptation of Broutá’s translation of Pygmalion. Martínez Sierra was the director of Compañía Cómico-­ Dramática Gregorio Martínez, which adapted Broutá’s Pygmalion for performance in 1919. However, in the Spanish newspaper El Heraldo de Madrid (March 28, 1929), Martínez Sierra is referred to as the play’s translator.5 Fortunately, there exists a contract between Julio Broutá, Herlinvaux (Shaw’s representative in Spain), and Martínez Sierra, whereby the last acquired the rights to perform—or authorize the performance of—Broutá’s translation.6 This contract makes it clear that Martínez Sierra did not translate the play. Unfortunately, these confusions are more common than one would expect and sometimes hindered the search for translations. A few remarks must be made about the scope of this study. First, the works discussed are only those written by Shaw. In other words, miscellanies in which excerpts from his plays or some of his best-known witticisms are translated into Spanish, such as Armando Donoso’s Bernard Shaw: sus mejores páginas: selección7 and Francisco Madrid’s George Bernard Shaw: sus ideas, sus anécdotas, sus frases, have been excluded. Although they do deserve further analysis—they could help situate those aspects of Shaw in which people showed more interest, for instance—these miscellanies are beyond the scope of the present study. Second, translations of Shaw’s numerous letters and newspaper articles have not been analyzed. Not only would they have been impossible to fully catalog, but they also lack the strictly literary value of the works analyzed here.8 Third, only those works translated into Spanish are discussed. Thus translations published in Catalan have not been considered. This is the case for translations by Carles Capdevila, which include Com ell va enganyar el marít d’ella (How He Lied to Her Husband) in 1934, Santa Joana, L’home i les Armes, Cèsar i Cleopatra (Saint Joan, Arms and the Man, and Caesar and Cleopatra) in 1937, and

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El deixeble del diable (The Devil’s Disciple) in 1938 (this one in collaboration with Fernández Burgas). These translations are indeed useful to better understand the reception of Shaw in the particular case of Spain, but as they are not translations into Spanish, they have also been excluded.9 These caveats aside, we are left with a grand total of twenty-eight references, together with some adaptations of Broutá’s works. These twenty-­ eight references comprise an unprecedented sample for a traductological corpus that has been for the most part neglected, when not entirely omitted, in the study of Shaw’s works in Spanish translation, and are discussed next in chronological order of publication, from the earliest to the most recent. For the sake of clarity, I distinguish between the translation of Shaw’s plays and their prefaces (Section “Plays”) and the translation of his non-dramatic texts (Section “Non-dramatic Texts”). Whenever possible, I comment on aspects relevant to the translation being discussed. For some references, unfortunately, not much information is available, and in those cases I simply refer to the translated work as a milestone in the chronological axis that has been followed.

Plays As the plays are Shaw’s best-known works, it comes as no surprise that they are his most frequently translated texts. Specifically, nineteen of the twenty-eight references discussed here correspond to dramatic texts. Of those nineteen references, eight were published before Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which illustrates his relatively early popularity in the Spanish-speaking world.10 The first translation found is Ballester Escolas’s Lucha de sexos; comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa (1908). This version of You Never Can Tell, as will be seen in Section “A Note on the Quality of the Translations,” is not the best from a traductological point of view. There is little information about the circumstances surrounding the publication of this work; in fact, in the book itself, the translator is named by the initials B.E. It is worth noting, however, that this is the only translation published in Spain before Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize (not counting Broutá’s, of course). The other seven were published in South America. This translation was followed by Antonio Castro Leal’s Vencidos, a translation of Overruled published in 1917 in Mexico. Castro Leal was a Mexican writer who would later become Dean of the University of Mexico. He had shown an interest in rendering English works into Spanish from a

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very young age,11 to the extent that he completed this translation of Overruled when he was only twenty-one. This translation was published in Cultura, a monthly magazine that published translated works of renowned writers. Vencidos was Castro Leal’s contribution to the magazine, whose publication had just begun some months earlier. Incidentally, this translation was the starting point of Castro Leal’s lifelong interest in Shaw.12 Some years later, Shaw himself went to Mexico and visited him and was apparently upset with him for not having contacted him about copyright issues.13 As a result, Castro Leal’s admiration for Shaw diminished. 14 Also in 1917, Rebeca Goldsmith translated El inca de Perusalem15 in Argentina. Unfortunately, there is little information about this publication, the very first translation of a Shaw work into Spanish by a woman. Another woman, María Teresa de Brelaz, would also translate a Shaw play (The Doctor’s Dilemma) three years later, in 1920. She had a reputation among the intellectual circles in Buenos Aires because of her literary works, and her El dilema del doctor was widely praised: the weekly magazine Caras y Caretas, in an article published on July 10, 1920, called it “beautiful [hermosa].” In 1920, three more translations of Shaw’s plays appeared in Argentina: one of Man and Superman by Agustín Remón and Ramiro Díaz Azpeitia— De esta agua no beberé: comedia en cuatro actos—and two of Arms and the Man: one by Mariano de Vedia y Mitre—El héroe y sus hazañas: comedia anti-romántica en tres actos—and another by José Luis Peña Monne—El héroe y el soldado. As far as Remón and Díaz Azpeitia’s De esta agua no beberé is concerned, not much information has surfaced. We know, however, that it was performed some years later, in April 1943, at the Teatro Romea.16 Fortunately, more is known about the two translations of Arms and the Man. De Vedia y Mitre’s El héroe y sus hazañas, for instance, was generally acknowledged as a good translation. The renowned critic Henríquez Ureña, in fact, extolled this work to the detriment of Julio Broutá’s faulty translations.17 Opinions assessing translations at that time, however, should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are actually far from faithful renderings of Shaw’s texts. In the particular case of De Vedia y Mitre’s translation, for instance, there are significant errors, such as the very title of the play, the names of the characters, and the omission of the countries mentioned in the original play. These aspects are actually criticized by Peña Monne in his foreword to El héroe y el soldado. He severely attacks De Vedia y Mitre’s work, accusing him of poorly translating Shaw’s play and

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citing the reasons outlined above. Peña Monne’s translation, however, is not a response to De Vedia y Mitre’s version, as it was actually completed earlier, at the end of 1918. In April 1919, Peña Monne wrote to Shaw, who acknowledged his letter in July. That same year, Peña Monne offered the work to the newspaper La Vanguardia, where it was published in installments from April 18 to May 7 in 1920, as he notes in his foreword to the print edition. His translation, however, also fails in the preservation of some of Shaw’s stylistic traits, as we will briefly see in Section “A Note on the Quality of the Translations.” A couple of years later, in 1922, Julio R.  Castellanos translated Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, which would appear in his book Mme. Marie-Modes; comedia en un acto; La primera nube: comedia en un acto; La emperatriz bolchevique: pieza en un acto de Bernard Shaw. As is the case with the previous translations, it was also published in Argentina. Unfortunately, there appear to be no extant reviews or comments discussing Castellanos’s work. In the 1930s, two more translations were published, also in Argentina. The first one, in 1931, was Santa Juana: seis escenas y un epílogo, a translation by one R.J., most likely Rudolf Jan Slaby, a Czech Hispanist and translator living in Argentina, where the translation was published. Moreover, he was an acknowledged socialist who supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. As is well-known, the relationship between Shaw and his translators was often grounded in their political affinity rather than their talent.18 It is plausible, therefore, that non-official translators also approached the Irish playwright under the influence of his socialist views. This may have been the case with Jan Slaby. The second translation, also published in Buenos Aires, was by Uruguayan translator Edmundo Bianchi. His translation of How He Lied to Her Husband, Cómo él le mintió al marido de ella, appeared in 1937. Bianchi was an anarchist playwright and this may have sparked his interest in rendering Shaw into Spanish. In the 1940s, several translations of Shaw’s plays were published. Some of them were carried out by Ricardo Baeza, a well-known man of letters famous for his interest in the Irish question. Baeza came to a private agreement with Broutá for the translation of some of Shaw’s works, which explains why several translations were carried out by him in the 1940s.19 In 1941, for instance, Baeza adapted Broutá’s Candida, the first Shaw play censored in Spain under Franco’s dictatorship.20 After Candida, Baeza translated three other plays: Pigmalió and La cosa sucede (The Thing

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Happens, one of the plays in Back to Methuselah) in 1942, and La profesión de la señora Warren in 1946. These two translations were made and published while he was living in exile in Argentina.21 As will be discussed in the next section, Baeza also translated Frank Harris’s Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions, a controversial work with an epilogue by Shaw. Baeza’s translations were followed by Alberto Puccio’s César y Cleopatra in 1947 and Pedro Lecuona’s Comedias desagradables. Casas de viudos. El Mariposón. La Profesión de la Señora Warren in 1949, a translation of Plays Unpleasant. There is little information about these two translations. It should be mentioned that Lecuona’s work as a translator of Shaw went beyond Plays Unpleasant, as he also translated Hombre y Superhombre in 1950 and Vuelta a Matusalén: pentateuco metabiológico—in collaboration with Floreal Mazía—in 1956. Furthermore, prior to Comedias desagradables, in 1946 he had also translated Everybody’s Political What’s What? (Guía política de nuestro tiempo), as discussed in Section “Non-­ dramatic Texts.” Lastly, in the 1950s, many of Shaw’s plays were translated in Argentina. In 1950, Clara Diament published La otra isla de John Bull; Así mintió él al esposo de ella; La comandante Bárbara, a translation of John Bull’s Other Island, How He Lied to Her Husband, and Major Barbara. Then, after Shaw’s death in November 1950, a kind of revival took place that resulted in the translation of his most successful works. In 1951, Floreal Mazía, one of the best-known Argentinian translators of all time, published Tres comedias para puritanos. El discípulo del Diablo; César y Cleopatra; La conversión del capitán Brassbound, a translation Three Plays for Puritans. This was followed, in 1952, by Androcles y el león, Denegado (Overruled) and Pigmalión, and in 1955 by Ginebra, Otro final para “Cimbelino” y El buen Rey Carlos. These nineteen references contain, to the best of my knowledge, all the plays translated into Spanish by translators other than Broutá up to 1956. Most of them were published in South America, either by Hispanic-­ American translators—the Mexican Castro Leal, the Uruguayan Edmundo Bianchi, or the Argentinian Floreal Mazía—or by Spanish translators in exile following the Spanish Civil War, such as Ricardo Baeza. These nineteen references constitute a significant number of texts that, most likely due to the prominence Broutá’s official translations, have traditionally gone unnoticed to those interested in Shaw’s reception in the Spanish-­ speaking world. In addition to his plays, however, some of his other works

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were also rendered into Spanish by translators other than Julió Broutá. These works are discussed next.

Non-dramatic Texts In terms of Shaw’s non-dramatic texts translated into Spanish by translators not officially appointed by Shaw, nine references have been found.22 Interestingly, these nine references correspond to works that Broutá did not translate. This lack of overlap demonstrates the relevance of these “other” translations in order to generate a holistic, nuanced picture of the reception of Shaw’s works in the Spanish-speaking world. Moreover, the mere existence of these non-dramatic texts suggests that the interest Shaw excited in the Spanish-speaking world went beyond his work as a playwright. The first two translations found were published in Spanish avant-garde magazines. The first is Juan Manuel Galán’s Máximas para revolucionarios, published in 1912 in Prometeo, a magazine edited by Ramón Gómez de la Serna; the second is Rafael Urbina’s “Cómo Rodin hizo mi busto,” published in 1919  in Cosmópolis, a partial translation of “A Memory of Rodin,” an article by Shaw published in 1918 explaining how his portrait bust was made by Auguste Rodin.23 These two translations in avant-garde magazines were followed by two others by Luis Beltrán: El perfecto wagneriano in 1922 and Manual del revolucionario y las maximas para revolucionarios in 1923. The fact that three of the first four non-dramatic texts translated by people other than Shaw’s official translator had a strong political slant24 clearly suggests the influence of Shaw’s socialist ideas in the intellectual circles of the Spanish-speaking world. Also in the 1920s, we find Ricardo Baeza’s Vida y confesiones de Oscar Wilde, a translation of Frank Harris’s Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions published in 1928. Baeza knew Oscar Wilde and had translated some of his works.25 It is thus natural that he translated Harris’s controversial biography, which included an epilogue by Shaw, and this was the impetus to his translations of some of Shaw’s plays and his adaptation of Broutá’s Cándida, as discussed in the previous section. Unlike his translations of Shaw’s plays, this work was translated before Baeza went into exile in Argentina. In the 1930s, Armando González translated The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, published as Sovietismo y fascismo in 1939. There is little information about the translation of this political

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compendium, although it illustrates how Shaw’s socialist ideas had spread well beyond the English-speaking world. As with Máximas para revolucionarios, El perfecto wagneriano, and Manual del revolucionario y las maximas para revolucionarios, this translation of The Intelligent Woman’s Guide was also published in Latin America (in Chile). Three years later, in 1942, José María Camps translated Las Quintaesencias, Shaw’s landmark analysis of the works of Henrik Ibsen and his reception in England. José María Camps, an inveterate Marxist, fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side and was imprisoned. Following his release, he edited some books and also translated The Quintessence.26 Given the political situation in Spain, it would have been very difficult for Camps, who went into exile in Mexico, to translate Shaw’s socialist-leaning works, such as those mentioned earlier. This may be why he accepted (while still in prison) to translate a critical work such as The Quintessence27 at the request of Josep Janés i Olivé, a well-known Spanish poet and editor.28 Also appearing in the 1940s are two more translations by people who would later translate Shaw’s plays. The first is Guía política de nuestro tiempo by Pedro Lecuona, published in 1946, a translation of Everybody’s Political What’s What?, a treatise in which Shaw examines aspects related to the Second World War. Interestingly, it was published only two years after Everybody’s Political What’s What (1944). The second is Floreal Mazía’s Dieciséis esbozos de mí mismo in 1949 (Sixteen Self Sketches). This autobiographical work appeared in 1949, when Shaw was ninety-three. These almost simultaneous appearances of Mazía’s and Lecuona’s translations with respect to their original English texts suggest a steady increase in Shaw’s popularity in the Spanish-speaking world toward the end of his life. The swift translation of his last works, in fact, seems to anticipate the revival that would take place after his death in 1950, when many of his works— especially his plays—were rediscovered by Spanish-speaking readers. Lastly, in 1953 Miguel de Hernani translated El vínculo irracional, Shaw’s only novel translated into Spanish in the period considered here. (Incidentally, De Hernani is mainly known for having translated Adolph Huxley into Spanish.) Unfortunately, there is little information about this translation of The Irrational Knot, most probably because Shaw’s novels were not widely known—at least compared to his plays. It was probably translated because of its theme: a marriage—the knot in question—that soon deteriorates, given that Argentina (where the translation appeared) was dealing with a controversial situation in the late 1950s regarding the

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rights of married women, just before the government approved the first modern law on divorce in 1954. This may have prompted De Hernani to translate the novel. It is also worth noting that El vínculo irracional was published after Shaw’s death and was one of the many translations that appeared during the aforementioned Shaw revival. These nine references—ten if we add Baeza’s translation of Harris’s Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions—include all the non-dramatic texts that, to my knowledge, were translated by people other than Broutá up to 1956. These nine translations, added to the nineteen references discussed above, comprise a total of twenty-eight Spanish translations carried out by people other than Shaw’s official translator.29 These twenty-eight works had never before been compiled, most probably because they have always been regarded as incidental and have been eclipsed by the prominence of Broutá’s versions. These translations, however, should be approached with caution, as the rendering of Shaw’s works into Spanish is far from ideal. In order to illustrate some of the most problematic aspects of the translations discussed here, a few examples are offered in the following section.

A Note on the Quality of the Translations The critic Henríquez Ureña has argued that “in order to know Shaw, it is necessary to read him in English. Unfortunately, the translations of his works into Romance languages are in general imperfect, as they contain mistakes of interpretation and omit both the elasticity and the conciseness which characterize them.”30 This is, in Henríquez Ureña’s opinion, because Shaw was sympathetic to his socialist friends and frequently signed over his translation rights to them. In the case of Spanish, he refers mainly to Julio Broutá, whose mother tongue was neither English nor Spanish and whose faulty translations earned him the sobriquet “The Brute” (El Bruto).31 This criticism, however, is also applicable to the other translators who rendered Shaw’s works into Spanish, and in order to exemplify this, I will briefly comment on a few illustrative cases from two plays. The first example is an idiomatic expression32 from Ballester Escolas’s Lucha de sexos. Shaw’s original play—You Never Can Tell—is full of idiomatic and idiosyncratic expressions. For example, Philip’s repeated use of “my knowledge of human nature”—he uses that expression eight times throughout the play—becomes a defining trait of his idiolect, playing a clear individualizing role. In other occasions, fixed expressions are used more subtly, as in the example of to throw something in somebody’s teeth:

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GLORIA (bitterly). Oh, not Miss Clandon: you have found that it is quite safe to call me Gloria. VALENTINE.  No, I won’t: you’ll throw it in my teeth afterwards and accuse me of disrespect. I say it’s a heartbreaking falsehood that I don’t respect you. It’s true that I didn’t respect your old pride: why should I? It was nothing but cowardice […]. (CPP I: 753)33

In addition to the general meaning of this phraseological unit as a reproach, the expression “to throw something in somebody’s teeth” acquires a new meaning when uttered by Valentine, as he works as a dentist and Gloria has been his patient. As Rodríguez Martín argues, Shaw’s choice of this phraseological unit recalls both Valentine’s job and the origin of his acquaintance with Gloria.34 Ballester Escolas, however, omits the important phraseological unit in his translation: Gloria.—(Con amargura.) ¿Por qué Miss Clandon? Demasiado sabe usted que se me puede llamar Gloria. Valentine.—No me atrevo. Luego me haría usted los reproches más violentos acusándome de falta de respeto. Sepa usted que es una equivocación garrafal el creer que yo pueda no tenerle respeto. Es verdad que no respeto su antiguo amor propio, y con razón, porque ese amor propio, en realidad, no era más que cobardía […].35

The translation of “you’ll throw it in my teeth afterwards and accuse me of disrespect” as “Luego me haría usted los reproches más violentos acusándome de falta de respeto” omits the idiomatic expression altogether, thus nullifying Shaw’s allusive wit. In all fairness, however, the translation of phraseology poses clear problems when used, as in this example, with a double meaning. However, it should be noted that the Spanish word dientes (teeth) is also used in idiomatic expressions with meanings that could have perfectly suited Shaw’s use of to throw something in somebody’s teeth, thereby retaining the reference to Valentine’s occupation. This is the case, for instance, of tomar a alguien entre dientes—“to speak badly of someone”—or even no entrarle a alguien de los dientes adentro alguien o algo— “to feel disgust for someone,” according to the Royal Spanish Academy.36 Although with a slightly altered sense, the use of either of these two Spanish phrases would have preserved Valentine’s play on words, thereby retaining Shaw’s characteristic use of these units. The omission, therefore, suggests that Ballester Escolas may have been unaware of the double sense of Shaw’s use of the original idiomatic expression.

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The second and third examples are even more apparent. They are from Pedro Lecuona’s Hombre y Superhombre, specifically from Máximas para revolucionarios, the appendix that follows the play. The first example is one of Shaw’s maxims on education: A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. (CPP II: 783)

This maxim is an open criticism to the education system, which Shaw frequently attacked, perhaps because he had little formal education and yet managed to outsmart most of his contemporaries.37 Lecuona, however, misinterprets the maxim and changes the original sense completely: El cerebro de un tonto, al digerir la filosofía, la convierte en locura, al digerir la ciencia la convierte en superstición, y al digerir el arte lo convierte en pedantería. De ahí la necesidad de una instrucción universitaria.38

Lecuona clearly misunderstood the meaning of the adverb “hence.” By using “De ahí la necesidad de una instrucción universitaria” (“the need for university education”), he transforms Shaw’s criticism of university instruction into an actual need in order to prevent the aspects mentioned in the first part of the maxim. The rendering of “hence” into Spanish, however, does not pose a problem, and a simple translation such as “He ahí la educación universitaria” or “como muestra de ello tenemos la educación universitaria” would have been far more accurate and faithful to the original. The second instance is one of the so-called Stray Sayings and has a marked religious component, one of Shaw’s most recurring themes throughout his works: The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery. (CPP II: 795)

Lecuona’s rendering of this maxim into Spanish is also far from ideal: Convertir a un salvaje al cristianismo equivale a convertir el salvajismo al cristianismo.39 In this case, the mistake does not seem so much the result of a misunderstanding in the interpretation of a particular word as a mistake in the interpretation of the maxim as such. His rendering of the second half of the maxim as “equivale a convertir el salvajismo al cristianismo” (“is the conversion of savagery to Christianity”) actually does turn the maxim into

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an extended parallelism—the conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of savagery to Christianity—which is not the sense intended by Shaw. This mistranslation also illustrates how a translation of Shaw’s works into Spanish can be far from perfect. In summary, these three examples from Lucha de Sexos and Hombre y Superhombre illustrate Henríquez Ureña’s views on the quality of the translated versions of Shaw’s works, and throw in relief how translators had little respect for the style of literary authors at the time.40 Such an attitude, together with the well-known fact that “English writers were an unfamiliar landscape”41 to translators in general, results in a mediocre rendering of Shaw’s stylistic traits into Spanish. Of course, not many claims can be made on the basis of a mere two examples, and further analysis must determine the actual quality of Shaw’s translated works listed here— an endeavor well beyond the scope of the present study. The two examples discussed here merely illustrate a few conspicuous errors in order to support the prevailing opinion about the quality of Shaw’s translated works. Normally circumscribed to Broutá’s works, these opinions, as we have shown, continue to be valid when applied to the traditionally disregarded translations discussed here. Bernard Shaw was widely translated into Spanish by translators other than Broutá and yet criticism has frequently disregarded or undervalued these works. As we have seen, these translations appeared as early as 1908 and continued uninterruptedly throughout his life. Rendering Shaw’s works into Spanish was carried out by Spanish, Argentinian, Mexican, and Uruguayan translators, and most of the translations were published in Hispanic America, due mainly to Spain’s volatile political situation, especially after Franco’s victory in the 1939 Civil War. Even Spanish translators published their translations while in exile in America. As for the translations themselves, however, very little is available in the form of comments or reviews, making it very difficult to describe the circumstances under which some of them were carried out. At any rate, this is the first time that all these works have been compiled, laying a foundation on which to build future analyses of the reception of Shaw’s works in the Spanish-speaking world: the circumstances under which the translations were made, which translated plays were performed, where and for how long, and so on. With the new evidence this chapter provides that the translations of Bernard Shaw’s works into Spanish actually went well beyond the renditions by his official translator, it has hopefully opened new avenues of analysis and research on the impact of Shaw’s works on the Spanish-speaking world.

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Notes 1. Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico (Río Piedras, Editorial Universitaria, 1981), 42–43. 2. There is a deed between Bernard Shaw and Julio Broutá notarized by Juan García Coca in which the rights for the translated works of Shaw into Spanish are transferred to Broutá. See Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil, “Colección de documentos del escritor y editor Gregorio Martínez Sierra: recuperación y tratamiento,” Revista General de Información y Documentación 19 (2009): 317–340. 3. See, for example, Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos, La literatura irlandesa en España (La Coruña, Netbiblo, 2007), 80–84; Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, His Life and Works: A Critical Biography (Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Company, 1911), 934–40; Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 42–43. 4. “Worldcat” Worldcat, accessed March 1, 2017, http://www.worldcat.org/. 5. “Rumores,” Heraldo de Madrid, March 28, 1929, 6. 6. See Sánchez Vigil, “Colección de documentos,” 336. 7. Bibliographical references for all translations listed in the chapter can be found in the Appendix. 8. Needless to say, these translations also deserve scholarly attention. In fact, albeit tangentially, they have already been scrutinized; for example, Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna discusses the work of Nemesio Canales, a well-­ known translator of Shaw’s letters and newspaper articles. See Rodríguez-­ Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 125. 9. For more information on the translation of Shaw into Catalan and the reception of his works in Catalonia, see Enric Gallén, “Traduir i adaptar teatre a Catalunya (1898–1938),” in La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute (Barcelona: PPU, 2001), 49–74; Anna Soler Horta, “Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G. B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938),” in La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute (Barcelona: PPU, 2001), 295–311; Josep Marco, “Una aproximació a l’habitus de Carles Capdevila, traductor i home de lletres,” Quaderns. Revista de traducció 17 (2010): 83–104. 10. In Spain, for instance, he was the best-known Irish author at the beginning of the twentieth century. See De Toro Santos, La literatura irlandesa, 23. 11. Serge I. Zaïtzeff, “Alfonso Reyes y Antonio Castro Leal: un diálogo literario,” in Actas del IX Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: 18–23 agosto 1986, vol. 2, ed. Sebastián Neumeister (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, 1989), 733–744.

16  THE UNAUTHORIZED SHAW: NON-OFFICIAL TRANSLATIONS… 

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12. He would later spend much time discussing the Irish playwright with his dear friend Alfonso Reyes. Zaïtzeff, “Alfonso Reyes y Antonio Castro Leal,” 737. 13. José Emilio Pacheco, “Antonio Castro Leal (1896–1980),” Proceso (1981). Accessed 1 March, 2017, http://www.proceso.com.mx/130225/ antonio-­castro-­leal-­1896-­1980. 14. It is worth noting that Castro Leal’s Vencidos seems to have been one of the Spanish translations included in José Vasconcelos’s project. Vasconcelos was a Mexican man of letters who promoted the creation of a library of classic and contemporary authors so that students from rural schools would have access to renowned writers during the Mexican Revolution. Shaw was among the selected authors. Although there exists no further information on the translators of Shaw’s works (they are referred to as a board of translators), it seems that Castro Leal’s translation was among the Shavian texts. The project was quite successful. In 1924, for instance, up to 20,000 copies of The Doctor’s Dilemma were circulated. For further information on Shaw and Mexico, see Fernández Fernández in this volume. 15. Throughout this chapter, only Spanish titles will be used where names and sufficient English cognates make the corresponding title readily apparent. El inca de Perusalem, for instance, is clearly a Spanish version of The Inca of Perusalem. 16. Information available on the official website of Teatro Romea at http:// www.teatreromeapropietat.cat/es/archivo-digital/espectaculos?view= espectaculos&from=1940&to=1949&start=100. Accessed 1 March, 2017. 17. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, “Bernard Shaw,” Repertorio Americano 17 (1936): 257–259. 18. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw. 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power (London: Chatto & Windus, 1989), 54–55. 19. Ricardo Baeza, “Recuerdos de Bernard Shaw,” Sur 200 (June 1951): 15. 20. María Antonia de Isabel Estrada, “George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: recepción recreación de su teatro en España durante el franquismo” (PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2001), 241. See also Nieto Caballero, in this volume. 21. Indeed, Argentina was one of the countries par excellence in which well-­ known Spanish men of letters took up exile during and after the Spanish Civil War, such as the poet Rafael Alberti and the playwright Ramón Gómez de la Serna. For further information about Spanish translators living in exile in Argentina, see Germán Loedes Rois, “Los traductores del exilio republicano español en Argentina” (PhD diss., Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2012). 22. In addition to these eight references, some collaborations in Broutá’s translations were found. This is the case, for instance, of Luis Araquistáin.

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Even though he did not translate Shaw directly into Spanish, he collaborated with Broutá in translating two tracts, La sensatez del arte: exposición contra la opinión corriente de que los artistas son degenerados (The Sanity of Art) and El sentido común y la guerra (Common Sense about the War), in 1913 and 1915, respectively. Since they are not translations as such, however, they are not discussed here. 23. Even though only two translations have been found in Spanish avant-­garde magazines, it does not appear far-fetched that there existed more translations of Shaw’s works in these magazines. Searching for these works, however, is not easy, as the digitalization of avant-garde magazines by the Spanish National Library is still in progress. For a comprehensive account of Spanish avant-garde periodical publications, see Manuel Ramos Ortega, Las revistas literarias en España entre la “Edad de Plata” y el medio siglo (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 2001); Rafael Osuna, Revistas de la Vanguardia española (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2005). 24. It should be borne in mind that in The Perfect Wagnerite, in addition to musical criticism, Shaw interprets Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung in socialist—Marxist—terms, as an allegory of the collapse of capitalism. 25. His best-known translations are El abanico de lady Windermere (Lady Windermere’s Fan), El alma del hombre y otras prosas (The Soul of Man under Socialism), El crimen de Lord Arturo Savile (Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories), El príncipe feliz y otros cuentos (The Happy Prince and Other Stories), Un marido ideal. Comedia en cuatro actos (An Ideal Husband), and Una mujer sin importancia (A Woman of No Importance). 26. For further information on the life of José María Camps, see Gregorio Torres Nebrera, “Retrato de un inquisidor liberal,” in Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra (1940–1975), ed. Víctor García Ruíz and Gregorio Torres Nebrera (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2006), 7–32. 27. It should be remembered that, even though The Quintessence was originally presented to the Fabian Society as an essay “directly concerned with the issue of socialism,” socialism is rarely alluded to being considered a less socialist-leaning work than The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, The Perfect Wagnerite, or Maxims for Revolutionists, among others. See Matthew Yde, Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism: Longing for Utopia (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 27. 28. See Josep Mengual Catalá, A dos tintas: Josep Janés, poeta y editor (Barcelona: Debate, 2013). 29. As noted earlier, however, there may have been more translations of Shaw’s works during his lifetime than those listed here. For whatever reasons, these translations have unfortunately disappeared. The twenty-eight references discussed throughout this chapter, therefore, are all to versions that have survived to the present day.

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30. Henríquez Ureña, “Bernard Shaw,” 257–259. 31. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 43. See also CollVinent in this volume. 32. Idiomatic language is one of the best-known aspects of Shaw’s style. See Wolfgang Mieder and George B. Bryan, The Proverbial Bernard Shaw: An Index to Proverbs in the Works of George Bernard Shaw (Westwood, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994); Gustavo A.  Rodríguez Martín, “Shaw and Language,” in George Bernard Shaw in Context, ed. Brad Kent (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), 289–296. 33. Quotations from Shaw’s plays are from The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces (1971), 7 vols. 34. Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, “Modificación estilística de las unidades fraseológicas en la obra dramática de George Bernard Shaw” (Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Extremadura, 2011), 239. 35. Bernard Shaw, Lucha de sexos; comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa, trans. Ballester Escolas (Madrid, R. Velasco, 1908), 145. 36. “Real Academia Española (RAE),” Real Academia Española, accessed March 1, 2017, http://www.rae.es/. 37. To quote but one more of his maxims: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches” (CPP II: 784). 38. Bernard Shaw, Hombre y superhombre, trans. Pedro Lecuona (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1950), 320. 39. Lecuona, Hombre y superhombre, 332. 40. José Francisco Pastor, “El problema de las traducciones,” La Gaceta Literaria 64 (1929): 422. 41. José Francisco Pastor, “El problema de las traducciones,” 422.

References Baeza, Ricardo. 1951. Recuerdos de Bernard Shaw. In Sur, vol. 200. Bernard, Shaw. 1908. Lucha de sexos; comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa. Translated by Ballester Escola. Madrid: R. Velasco. ———. 1950. Hombre y superhombre. Translated by Pedro Lecuona. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Gallén, Enric. 2001. Traduir i adaptar teatre a Catalunya (1898–1938). In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute, 49–74. Barcelona: PPU. Henderson, Archibald. 1911. George Bernard Shaw, His Life and Works: A Critical Biography. Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd Company. Henríquez Ureña, Pedro. 2010. Bernard Shaw. In Repertorio Americano, vol. 17. Holroyd, Michael. 1989. Bernard Shaw. 1898–1918: The Pursuit of Power. London: Chatto & Windus.

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de Isabel Estrada, María Antonia. George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: recepción recreación de su teatro en España durante el franquismo. PhD dissertation. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Loedes Rois, Germán. 2012. Los traductores del exilio republicano español en Argentina. PhD dissertation. Valencia: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Marco, Josep. 2010. Una aproximació a l’habitus de Carles Capdevila, traductor i home de lletres. In Quaderns. Revista de traducció, vol. 17. Mengual Catalá, Josep. 2013. A dos tintas: Josep Janés, poeta y editor. Barcelona: Debate. Mieder, Wolfgang, and George B. Bryan. 1994. The Proverbial Bernard Shaw: An Index to Proverbs in the Works of George Bernard Shaw. Westwood: Greenwood Press. Osuna, Rafael. 2005. Revistas de la Vanguardia española. Sevilla: Renacimiento. Pacheco, José Emilio. 1981. Antonio Castro Leal (1896–1980). In Proceso. Pastor, José Francisco. El problema de las traducciones. In La Gaceta Literaria, vol. 64. Ramos Ortega, Manuel. 2001. Las revistas literarias en España entre la “Edad de Plata” y el medio siglo. Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre. Rodríguez Martín, Gustavo A. 2011. Modificación estilística de las unidades fraseológicas en la obra dramática de George Bernard Shaw. PhD dissertation. Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura. ———. 2015. Shaw and Language. In George Bernard Shaw in Context, ed. Brad Kent, 289–296. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna, Asela. 1981. Shaw en el mundo hispánico. Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria. Sánchez Vigil, Juan Miguel. 2009. Colección de documentos del escritor y editor Gregorio Martínez Sierra: recuperación y tratamiento. In Revista General de Información y Documentación, vol. 19. Soler Horta, Anna. 2001. Notícia de la recepció del teatre de G.  B. Shaw a Catalunya (1908–1938). In La traducción en la Edad de Plata, ed. Luis Pegenaute, 295–311. Barcelona: PPU. de Toro Santos, Antonio Raúl. 2007. La literatura irlandesa en España. La Coruña: Netbiblo. Torres Nebrera, Gregorio. 2006. Retrato de un inquisidor liberal. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra (1940–1975), ed. Víctor García Ruíz and Gregorio Torres Nebrera, 7–32. Madrid: Fundamentos. Yde, Matthew. 2013. Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism: Longing for Utopia. New York: Palgrave. Zaïtzeff, Serge I. 1989. Alfonso Reyes y Antonio Castro Leal: un diálogo literario. In Actas del IX Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: 18–23 agosto 1986, ed. Sebastián Neumeister, vol. 2, 733–744. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag.



Appendix A

Table A1  List of the most successful productions of Shaw plays in Spanish-­ speaking countries until the 1950s Play

Country (City)

Date

Venue and/or company

Cándida Los despachos de Napoleón Cómo mintió la esposa La emperatriz Annayanska Héroes y soldados La cruz de la victoria de O´Flathery Augusto hace lo suyo Androcles y el león La comandante Bárbara La comandante Bárbara Fascinación Hombre y superhombre

Argentina Argentina

1936 1944

Espacio de la agrupación Diagonal Norte 943

Argentina

1937

Sótano Café Tortoni

Argentina

1939

Moreno 1033

Argentina Argentina

1945 1947

Diagonal Norte 943 N/D

Argentina Argentina Argentina

1952 1953 1942

Loria 1194 Corrientes 2120 El Círculo (Rosario)

Argentina

1960

Grupo Los comediantes

Argentina Argentina

1953 1960

Teatro Nacional Cervantes Teatro Nacional Cervantes (continued)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7

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APPENDIX A

Table A1 (continued) Play

Country (City)

Date

Venue and/or company

Pigmalión

Argentina

1924

El oficio de la Sra. Warren

Argentina

1927

Santa Juana Club feminista (The Philanderer) Demasiado bueno para ser cierto Santa Juana César y Cleopatra La medalla al mérito Don Juan en los infiernos Pigmalión El soldado de chocolate Cándida

Argentina Argentina

1926 1930

Teatro Cervantes. Dramática Italiana de Tatiana Pavlova Teatro Cervantes. Compañía Alemana de Comedias Georg Urban Liceo Varios

Argentina

1932

N/D

Argentina Argentina Argentina

1937 1960 n/d

Teatro Odeón Teatro Alvear Alejandra Boero (dir.)

Chile

1953

Compañía de Eduardo Naveda

Chile Chile

1949 1953

Teatro de Ensayo (Company) Teatro de Ensayo (Company)

Chile

July 1951

Teatro L’Atelier. Miguel Frank Company Teatro Experimental de la Universidad de Chile Teatro El Comedia. Margarita Xirgu Company Teatro El Comedia. Margarita Xirgu Company Sala de Audiciones del Ministerio de Educación. Escuela Secundaria de Arte Escénico Teatro Municipal. The Bogotá Players The Bogotá Players

Mrs Warren’s Profession Santa Juana

Chile

c. April 1952 Chile (Santiago) Mar. 1937

Santa Juana

Chile (Santiago) Oct. 1939

How He Lied to Her Chile (Santiago) Dec. 1948 Husband

Pigmalión

Colombia (Bogota) Colombia (Bogota) Costa Rica

Pigmalión

Costa Rica

10 Mar. 1947

Candida

Cuba (Santiago) Mexico

Nov. 1953

Saint Joan Arms and the Man

Pygmalion

Dec. 1948 n/d 25 Feb. 1927

1927

Teatro Nacional. Compañía Española de Gregorio Martínez Sierra Teatro Nacional. Compañía de Comedias y Dramas de José Cebrián Las Máscaras Theatre Group Teatro Regis. Gregorio Martínez Sierra (continued)

  APPENDIX A 

319

Table A1 (continued) Play

Country (City)

Date

Venue and/or company

Pygmalion

Mexico

1928

Santa Juana Arms and the Man Overruled The Ideal Husband (El perfecto marido) Candida Candida

Mexico Mexico Mexico Mexico

1934 1939 1940 1946

Teatro Regis. Gregorio Martínez Sierra Teatro Arbeu. Margarita Xirgu Palacio de Bellas Artes Teatro Rex. Teatro de Medianoche Teatro Estudiantil Autónomo

Mexico Mexico

The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet O’Flaherty V.C.

Mexico

1942/1943 Grupo Proa 1950 Sala Latinoamericana. Ignacio Ibarra 1951 La Sala Molière

Peru

Feb. 1947

Major Barbara

Peru

Jan. 1948

Candida

Peru

Sep. 1949

Pygmalion

Peru (Lima)

Oct. 1941

Pygmalion

Peru (Lima)

July 1949

Santa Juana1

Spain (Barcelona) Spain (Barcelona) Spain (Barcelona) Spain (Madrid)

Oct. 1925

Teatro Segura. Escuela Nacional de Arte Escénico Teatro Segura. Escuela Nacional de Arte Escénico Teatro Segura. Compañía Nacional de Comedias Teatro Municipal. Asociación de Artistas Aficionados Teatro Municipal. Compañía de Comedias y Dramas de José Cebrián Teatro Goya. Margaritua Xirgu

1935

N/D

May 1936

1907

Teatro Victoria. Casa del Actor Project Teatro la Comedia. Sociedad Álvarez Quintero Nova Empresa de Teatre Català

19273

Carmen Díaz Theatre Company

1938

Teatro Poliorama

Aug. 1938

Teatro Barcelona

1946

Teatro Barcelona. Teatro de Arte Marta Grau & Arturo Carbonell

Pygmalion Pygmalion Pygmalion Candida2

Spain (Barcelona) Spain (Barcelona)

Captain Brassbound’s Conversion The Devil’s Disciple4 Spain (Barcelona) How He Lied to Her Spain Husband (Barcelona) O’Flaherthy V.C. Spain (Barcelona)

May 1930

(continued)

320 

APPENDIX A

Table A1 (continued) Play

Country (City)

Date

Venue and/or company

Mrs Warren’s Spain (Madrid) Profession (Trata de blancas) Pygmalion Spain (Madrid)

1908

Teatro del Arte. Alejandro Miquis

Nov. 19205

Candida The Philanderer

Spain (Madrid) Spain (Madrid)

1928 Mar. 19316

Más fuerte que ellos Candida Pygmalion

Spain (Madrid) Spain (Madrid) Spain (Sevilla)

1949 1946 1929

El soldado de chocolate How He Lied to Her Husband Pygmalion El soldado de chocolate Pygmalion

Uruguay

1951

Teatro Eslava. Gregorio Martínez Sierra Teatro Infanta Beatriz Teatro Fontalba. Lola Membrives Company Teatro Beatriz. La Carátula Heredia-Asquerino Company Teatro Exposición (Exposición Iberoamericana). Catalina Bárcena y Gregorio Martínez Sierra El Galpón Theatre Company

Uruguay

1948

The Anglo-Uruguayan Institute

Uruguay Uruguay (Montevideo) Venezuela (Caracas)

1952 Oct. 1951

The Anglo-Uruguayan Institute Teatro Solís. Comedia Nacional

1924

Catalina Bárcena Company

Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain)

Notes 1. This and other productions toured their respective countries. In these cases, only the date and venue for the premiere is given. 2. In Catalan. 3. Probably did not premiere until 1930. Went on tour and was staged, at least, in Málaga and Valencia. 4. In Catalan. 5. Staged again in 1922, 1923, 1924, and 1929, also starring Catalina Bárcena as Eliza. 6. This production had previously premiered in Buenos Aires (Nov. 1930) at Teatro Avenida.



Appendix B: Translations into Spanish Until the 1950s

Pablo Ruano San Segundo (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain) Non-Official Translators Baeza, Ricardo, trans. La profesión de la señora Warren. Buenos Aires: Hachette, 1946. ———, trans. Pigmalión. La cosa sucede. Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe Argentina, 1942. ———, trans. Vida y confesiones de Oscar Wilde. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1928. Beltrán, Luis, trans. El perfecto wagneriano. Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1922. ———, trans. Manual del revolucionario y las máximas para revolucionarios. Montevideo: C. García, 1923. Bianchi, Edmundo, trans. Como él le mintió al marido de ella. Buenos Aires: Argentores, 1937. Camps, José María, trans. Las Quintaesencias. Madrid: Ediciones de la Gacela, 1942. Castellanos, Julio R., trans. Mme. Marie-Modes; comedia en un acto; La primera nube: comedia en un acto; La emperatriz bolchevique: pieza en un acto de Bernard Shaw. Buenos Aires: Bambalinas, 1922. Castro Leal, Antonio, trans. Vencidos. Mexico: Imprenta Victoria, 1917.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7

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APPENDIX B: TRANSLATIONS INTO SPANISH UNTIL THE 1950S

De Brelaz, María Teresa, trans. El dilema del doctor. Buenos Aires: Moro & Tello, 1920. De Hernani, Miguel, trans. El vínculo irracional. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1953. De Vedia y Mitre, Mariano, trans. El héroe y sus hazañas: comedia anti-­ romántica en tres actos. Buenos Aires: Cooperativa Editorial, 1920. Diament, Clara, trans. La otra isla de John Bull; Así mintió él al esposo de ella; La comandante Bárbara. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1950. Donoso, Armando, trans. Bernard Shaw: sus mejores páginas: selección. Chile: Nascimiento, 1928. Escolas, Ballester, trans. Lucha de sexos; comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1908. Galán, Juan Manuel, trans. “Máximas para revolucionarios.” Prometeo 37 (1912): 1–12. Goldsmith, Rebeca, trans. El inca de Perusalem (comedieta casi histórica). Buenos Aires: Los Modernos, c. 1917. González R., Armando, trans. Sovietismo y fascismo. Santiago: Letras, 1939. Slaby, Rudolf Jan, trans. Santa Juana: seis escenas y un epílogo. Buenos Aires: Luz, c. 1931. Lecuona, Pedro, trans. Comedias desagradables. Casas de viudos. El Mariposón. La Profesión de la Señora Warren. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1949. ———, trans. Guía política de nuestro tiempo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1946. ———, trans. Hombre y superhombre. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1950. Madrid, Francisco, trans. George Bernard Shaw: sus ideas, sus anécdotas, sus frases. Buenos Aires: Schapire, 1951. Mazía, Floreal, trans. Androcles y el león; Denegado; Pigmalión. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1952. ———, trans. Dieciséis esbozos de mí mismo. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1949. ———, trans. Ginebra, Otro final para “Cimbelino” y El buen Rey Carlos. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1955. ———, trans. Tres comedias para puritanos. El discípulo del Diablo; César y Cleopatra; La conversión del capitán Brassbound. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1951. Peña Monne, José Luis, trans. El héroe y el soldado. Buenos Aires Moro & Tello, 1920. Puccio, Alberto, trans. César y Cleopatra. Buenos Aires: Tor, 1949.

  APPENDIX B: TRANSLATIONS INTO SPANISH UNTIL THE 1950S 

323

Remón, Agustín, and Ramiro Díaz Azpeitia, trans. De esta agua no beberé: comedia en cuatro actos. Buenos Aires: La Escena, 1920. Urbina, Rafael, trans. “El arte de Rodin.” Cosmópolis 6 (1919): 382–384. Official Translator: Julio Broutá Broutá, Julio, trans. Androcles y el león: comedia de fábula en tres actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1915. ———, trans. Cándida. Un misterio en tres actos. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1908. ———, trans. César y Cleopatra: comedia histórica en cinco actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1909. ———, trans. Comedias agradables. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1930. ———, trans. Comedias desagradables. Madrid: J. Pueyo, 1924. ———, trans. Comedias escogidas. Madrid: Aguilar, 1957. ———, trans. De armas tomar: comedia en tres actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1907. ———, trans. El carro de las manzanas: una extravagancia política por un miembro de la Real Sociedad de Literatura. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1930. ———, trans. El compromiso de Blanco Posnet: comedia en un acto y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1912. ———, trans. El dilema del doctor: drama en cinco actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1912. ———, trans. El dilema del doctor; Llegando a casarse; El compromiso de Blanco Posnet. Madrid: J. Pueyo, 1924. ———, trans. El discípulo del Diablo: comedia dramática en tres actos y cuatro cuadros, en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1909. ———, trans. El enamorador: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1908. ———, trans. El hombre que se deja querer: comedia en tres actos, en prosa. Madrid: Estampa, 1931. ———, trans. El porvenir del mundo: comentarios a la Conferencia de la Paz. Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1919. ———, trans. El sentido común y la guerra. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1915. ———, trans. Guía de la mujer inteligente para el conocimiento del socialismo y del capitalismo. Madrid: J. Pueyo, 1929. ———, trans. Hombre y superhombre: comedía y filosofía en cuatro actos, en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1915. ———, trans. La casa de las penas; La Gran Catalina, La Cruz de la Victoria de O’Flathery; El Inca de Jerusalén; Augusto hace lo suyo; Ana Janska; La Emperatriz Bolchevique. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1925.

324 

APPENDIX B: TRANSLATIONS INTO SPANISH UNTIL THE 1950S

———, trans. La comandanta Bárbara: comedia en tres actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1911. ———, trans. La conversión del capitán Brassbound: comedia en tres actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1910. ———, trans. La otra isla de John Bull: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1912. ———, trans. La otra isla de John Bull; Su esposo; La comandanta Bárbara. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1926. ———, trans. La profesión de Cashel Byron: novela. Madrid: Yagües, 1929. ———, trans. La sensatez del arte: exposición contra la opinión corriente de que los artistas son degenerados. New  York: The Spanish American book, 1913. ———, trans. Los despachos de Napoleón: juguete en un acto y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1908. ———, trans. Lucha de sexos: comedia en cuatro actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1908. ———, trans. Matrimonio Desigual. La Dama Morena de los Sonetos. La Primera Obra de Fanny. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1927. ———, trans. Non olet: comedia en tres actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1907. ———, trans. Pigmalión. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1944. ———, trans. Pigmalión; Androcles y el león. Madrid: J. Pueyo, 1925. ———, trans. Santa Juana: crónica dramática en seis escenas y un epílogo. Madrid: Rafael Caro Raggio, 1925. ———, trans. Su esposo: comedia en un acto y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1911. ———, trans. Trata de blancas: comedia dramática, en cuatro actos y en prosa. Madrid: R. Velasco, 1907. ———, trans. Tres comedias para puritanos. Madrid: Yagües, 1930. ———, trans. Volviendo a Matusalén. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1926.



Appendix C

Table A2  A Selected Bibliography of Works about Shaw in Spanish (including translations of studies originally published in other languages)1 Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

Bernard Shaw

José J Llopis

1979

Bernard Shaw

José M Camps

1942

Bernard Shaw

Hesketh Pearson

1946

Bernard Shaw

José Carlos Mariátegui 1971

Bernard Shaw y el teatro de vanguardia

Antonio López Santos 1989

Bernard Shaw, la confrontación ideológica y la síntesis dialéctica

José Guirado Moya

1973

Bernard Shaw: biografía

Frank Harris

1943

Bernard Shaw: el hombre y su obra

Eric Bentley

1951

Barcelona: Ediciones AFHA Madrid: Ediciones de la Gacela Spain: Montaner y Simon [Lima, Perú] Servicio de Publicaciones Salamanca [Spain]: Universidad de Salamanca Valencia: Universidad de Valencia Buenos Aires: Losada México, D.F.: Biografías Gandesa (continued)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7

325

326 

APPENDIX C

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

Borges y Bernard Shaw

Julio O Chiappini

1994

Boxeo: tema literario

José Laurino

1972

Rosario, Prov. Santa Fe, República Argentina: Zeus Editora Montevideo, Uruguay: Estudios Gráficos de CBA Mexico, Hermes

Cartas entre en autor y una actriz Bernard Shaw; Patrick 1955 Campbell, Mrs.; Alan Dent Cartas entre un autor y una actriz Bernard Shaw; 1955 Beatrice Stella Campbell Cincuenta escritores Fernando Durán; Juan 2014 Antonio Massone Comprensión de Dostoiewsky, y Ricardo Baeza otros ensayos Conversaciones y encuentros: Rodolfo Usigli [Bernard Shaw, Lenormand, Jean Cocteau, Clifford Odets, André Breton, Elmer Rice, Paul Muni, B. Traven, T.S. Eliot Crítica y arte Baldomero Sanín Cano

1935

Cuatro puntales del teatro moderno: Shaw, Pirandello, Ibsen [y] Rolland Cuestiones estéticas De golpe y porrazo

Julio Alfredo Como

1948

Alfonso Reyes Alberto Martínez Herrera

1911? 1964

De Jenofonte a Bernard Shaw en el mundo de las escrituras abreviadas

Albano Rosell

1955

1974

2012

Buenos Aires: Hermes [Chile]: Academia Chilena de la Lengua Barcelona, Editorial Juventud, s.a. México, Organización Editorial Novaro

Universidad Externado de Colombia; [Medellín?]: Fondo Editorial Universidad Eafit [Buenos Aires] Tinglado Paris, P. Ollendorf La Habana, Ediciones R[evolución] Montevideo

(continued)

  APPENDIX C 

327

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

Don Juan en el tiempo y en el espacio: análisis históricopsicológico, seguido de una serie de “Estampas” diversas ¿Dónde está hoy el socialismo?

Jacinto Grau

1953

Buenos Aires: Editorial Raigal

Bernard Shaw; Harold 193– Joseph Laski; Richard Stafford Cripps, Sir; Hugh Dalton Dalton, Baron; A L Rowse; S K Ratcliffe; et al Johan Huizinga 1946

Buenos Aires: Ediciones Argentinas Cóndor

Blas Raúl Gallo

1956

[Buenos Aires] Quetzal

Enrique Dickmann

1950

Buenos Aires, Editorial La Vanguardia

Alyce de Kuehne

1969

Augustin Frédéric Hamon

1914

El porvenir del mundo: comentarios a la Conferencia de la Paz El rumbo del mundo: controversia sostenida en Moscú entre H.G. Wells y Stalin, con los comentarios sugeridos a los eminentes escritores G. Bernard Shaw y J.M. Keynes El teatro contemporáneo

Bernard Shaw; Julio Broutá

1919

México: Enrique G. Gonsen Valencia, Ed. F. Sempere y Compañía Madrid Fernándo Fe

Alfredo de la Guardia

1947

El teatro: desde Bernard Shaw hasta Bertolt Brecht

Siegfried Melchinger

1959

El concepto de la historia y otros ensayos; Versión española de Wenceslao Roces El importante G.B.S., ensayo crítico sobre la vida y obra de George Bernard Shaw El mensaje de G. Bernard Shaw al complir 94 años. (Conferencia pronunciada, en la Casa del Pueblo, el 22 de julio de 1950) El mito de Pigmalión en Shaw, Pirandello y Solana El Molière del siglo XX; Bernard Shaw y su teatro

Joseph Stalin; Herbert George Wells; George Bernard Shaw; John Maynard Keynes

México: Fondo de Cultura Economica

Madrid: Gráfica Tabaquera

Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier Buenos Aires: Compañía General Fabril Editora (continued)

328 

APPENDIX C

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

En recuerdo de Beatriz Rabaza: comedias, tragedias y leyendas grecorromanas en el teatro del siglo XX Ensayo sobre educación

Aurora López; Andrés 2009 Pociña; Beatriz Rabaza

Granada: Universidad de Granada

George Bernard Shaw

Ensayos biográficos: políticos y economistas Ensayos fabianos: escritos sobre el socialismo

John Maynard Keynes

1992

Madrid: La Colmena Barcelona: Crítica

Bernard Shaw; María Mercedes Gutiérrez Sánchez; Fernando Jiménez Núñez

1985

Escritos ingleses sobre música

John Case; Pablo Massa

2000

¿Estamos de acuerdo?

G K Chesterton; Bernard Shaw; Victoria León M Dolors Urgell i Xambó; Antoni M Badia i Margarit

2010

Aurelio A Boza Masvidal Cayetano Betancur Campuzano

[v. 1, [Habana]: 1935?] [Cultural] 1969 Bogota Revista Ximenez de Quesada 1981 [Salamanca]: Universidad de Salamanca

Estudio lingüístico sobre “Pigmalió” de J. Oliver: trabajo presentado para la Licenciatura de Filosofía Letras en la Sección de Filología Románica Estudios de literatura italiana Filosofos y filosofias

Función de la dramaturgia de George Bernard Shaw en la génesis de las corrientes teatrales modernas G. Bernard Shaw contra M. Rey Tosar. Una burda maniobra en la que aparece el famoso escritor al servicio del capitalismo foráneo y actuando contra intereses culturales argentinos

Antonio López Santos; Javier Coy

Manuel Rey Tosar

Year

1964

1950

Publisher

Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Servicio de Publicaciones Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Cultura de la Presidencia de la Nación Sevilla Renacimiento

Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona

[Buenos Aires] Editorial Americana

(continued)

  APPENDIX C 

329

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

G.K. Chesterton y Bernard Shaw: amigos enfrentados por el socialismo y la religión George Bernard Shaw

G K Chesterton; Bernard Shaw; Joan Solé G K Chesterton; José Méndez Herrera Gertrud Mander

2014

Barcelona Círculo de Lectores D.L.

1943

Madrid: La Nave

1987

G K Chesterton; José Méndez Herrera Fernando Gomez del Val María Antonia de Isabel Estrada

1959

México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica Barcelona G.P

1991

Revista Alerta

2005

Antonio R Bocanegra Padilla Rosa Pastalosky

1992

Madrid [Universidad Complutense], Servicio de Publicaciones Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz Argentina: Librería y Editorial Castellví Barcelona: [s.n.] México, D.F.: Grupo Ed. Tomo [Place of publication not identified]: Editorial En Buen Romance Oxford, Dolphin Book Co

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: recepción y recreación de su teatro en España durante el franquismo George Bernard Shaw: estilo literario George Bernard Shaw: su ideario político, filosófico y social Grandes contemporáneos Grandes matrimonios en la literatura Guerra, violencia y dignidad

Hispanic studies in honour of Joseph Manson

1963

Winston Churchill, Sir 1944 Jeffrey Meyers; 2007 Roberto Mares Ricardo Güiraldes; 1984 Ramachandra Gowda

Joseph Manson; Dorothy M Atkinson; Anthony H Clarke Hombres que cambiaron nuestro Albert Djemal mundo Homenaje a Bernard Shaw y Jorge Luis Borges; André Gide Victor Ocampo Homenaje a Don Antonio Antonio Domínguez Domínguez Ortiz Ortiz; Juan Luis Castellano; Miguel Luis López-Guadalupe Muñoz Humor y sabiduría: Bernard Carlos de Valle López Shaw...

1972

2001 1951

México, D.F.: Plaza y Valdés Buenos Aires

2008

Granada: Universidad de Granada

1958

Barcelona G. P. [Guada] (continued)

330 

APPENDIX C

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Graeme Brooker; Rosa 2013 Cano Camarasa Introduccion al teatro de Bernard Blas Raul Gallo 1960 Shaw Irlanda 1916–2016: abril-junio, Guillermo David 2016 Sala Juan L. Ortiz

Publisher

Interiores esenciales desde 1900

Barcelona: Blume

Ironías y verdades

Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno Buenos Aires: Longseller Novaro, Organizacion Editorial Novaro [ca. 1950–1960]

Juegos de niños

La autobiografía de Bernardo Shaw La dramática de Shaw y Pirandello La frontera increíble

Bernard Shaw; Virna Köhle James Gould Cozzens

2001 1967

Luis Calvo

Aurelio A Boza Mazvidal Severo Mirón; José Revueltas La influencia de Bernard Shaw en Cipriano Foyo Alejandro Casona Alvaro-Díaz

1935

La religion y la moral en el teatro Fernando Anzorena de G. Bernard Shaw Padilla; Manuel Romero de Terreros, marqués de San Francisco Las últimas comedias de Shaw Jorge Luis Borges Lo que ellos han visto en Rusia Carlos de Vidts Los escritores ingleses se pronuncian sobre la guerra española

1932

Los Titanes del humorismo novelas para alegrar el espíritu Los viajeros

1945

Magicos y logicos. I. Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton. [II. Joseph Conrad, Lytton Strachey, Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley.]

Noé Jitrik André Maurois; Emiliano Aguado

1990 1992

1936 1932 [ca. 1937]

1969

Habana Cultural, s.a. México: Noriega Edits.: Limusa Oviedo Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de Publicaciones Mexico City: Universidad Nacional de México

Buenos Aires: Sur Santiago [Barcelona] Comissariat de Propaganda de la Generalitat de Catalunya México, D.F. Editorial Diana [Buenos Aires] J. Alvarez Barcelona: Editorial Apolo

(continued)

  APPENDIX C 

331

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

Nota sobre (hacia) Bernard Shaw Jorge Luis Borges Nuevos retratos contemporáneos Ramón Gómez de la Serna

1961 1945

Obliteración; seguido de Dos conversaciones con George Bernard Shaw; y de Rodolfo Usigli: preparación para un acto final, Obliteración Propaganda de las actividades de la Coordinación de Difusión Cultural de la UNAM: junio, 1996 Pygmalion de Bernard Shaw: análisis de tres traducciones desde el punto de vista de la teoría de la traducción ¿Qué es el modernismo?: nueva encuesta, nuevas lecturas

2014

Buenos Aires: Sur Buenos Aires, Editorial sudamericana México, D.F.: Bonilla Artigas Editores

Rodolfo Usigli; Bernard Shaw; Adolfo Castañón

1996

México: UNAM, Coordinación de Difusión Cultural

Anabel Moro Sánchez

1997

Richard Andrew Cardwell; Bernard McGuirk

1993

Reflexiones en torno a la traducción de la obra de Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Cinta Ramos Fernández

1997

Resumen de Bernard Shaw

Ramón Gómez de la Serna; Martín Greco Ramón Gómez de la Serna

2007

Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Boulder, Colo.: Society of Spanish and Spanish-­ American Studies Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Madrid Del Centro

Retratos contemporáneos escogidos Serta gratvlatoria in honorem Juan Régulo, II. Esperantismo Shaw en el mundo hispánico

Sus ideas, sus anécdotas, sus frases Teatro de Ensayo de la Universidad Católica de Chile presenta “Pigmalión”: comedia en cinco actos: (programa)

1968

1987 Asela Rodríguez-Seda de Laguna

1981

Georges Bernard Shaw 1951 Bernard Shaw; Teatro de Ensayo de la Universidad Católica de Chile

1949

Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana La Laguna: Univ. de la Laguna Río Piedras, P.R.: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de Puerto Rico Buenos Aires: Schapire Santiago: Impr. Universitaria

(continued)

332 

APPENDIX C

Table A2 (continued) Title

Author/s

Year

Publisher

Teatro de hoy

Federico Orcajo Acuña

1936

Buenos Aires; Montevideo: Sociedad Amigos del Libro Rioplatense Madrid: Publicaciones de la Asociación de Directores de Escena de España, DL España: Jose Janes México Madrid: Valentín Tordesillas

Teoría y técnica de la escritura de John Howard Lawson obras teatrales

1995

Treinta años con Bernard Shaw Tres apuntes sobre G.B.S. Un gobierno internacional

1951 1951 1914

Una Cultura moribunda: la cultura burguesa

Blanche Patch Ernesto Madero L S Woolf; Bernard Shaw; Alejo García Góngora Cristóbal Caudwell; Vicente Romano

1970

México: Grijalbo

Pablo Ruano San Segundo (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain)

Note

1. Several of these volumes contain only one chapter or essay on Shaw.

index1

A Achurch, Janet, 86, 89, 96n25 Albéniz, Isaac, 102, 105, 106, 117n4, 119n15 Aleandro, Norma, 191, 198 Alsina, José, 5, 282 Álvarez Quintero, Serafín and Joaquín (Quintero brothers), 82, 125, 141n64 Amadeo, Antonio J., 3 Andrenio (pen name of Eduardo Gómez de Baquero), 124, 127, 129 Androcles y el león, see Shaw, Bernard, Androcles and the Lion Araquistain, Luis, 124, 127, 230, 232, 281 Archer, William, 3, 63 Argentina, 5, 7, 9, 10, 132, 166, 179, 205, 206, 209–211, 213, 215,

249, 283, 284, 300, 303–307, 311 Buenos Aires, 4, 132, 166, 188, 189, 191, 192, 196, 198, 205, 206, 213, 258, 303, 304, 332n6 Shaw’s reception in, 187–199 theatre scene, 189 See also Borges, Jorge Luis Aristophanes, 47, 50, 170, 199, 241 Arniches, Carlos, 125 Auden, W. H., 4 Azorín (pen name of José Martínez Ruiz), 125, 220, 221, 226 B Bacon, Francis, 49 Baeza, Ricardo, 127, 134, 223, 283, 285, 304–306

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 G. A. Rodríguez Martín (ed.), Bernard Shaw and the Spanish-Speaking World, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97423-7

333

334 

INDEX

Bárcena, Catalina, 128, 129, 132, 140n63, 178, 332n5 Baroja, Pío, 220, 221, 226, 229, 230 Barrie, James, 7 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin de, 6, 199 Beckett, Samuel, 4 Bede, 49 Bedford Debating Society, 65 Bellini, Giovanni, 63 Belloc, Hilaire, 228, 229 Benavente, Jacinto, 10, 98n74, 125, 127, 129, 141n64, 153, 219, 225, 229–232, 243, 258, 261, 262, 281 Shaw influence on, 220–224 Bernhardt, Sarah, 86, 96n25 Besant, Annie, 64 Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 208, 213–214 Blake, William, 28, 33, 42 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 28, 33 Boero, Alejandra, 7, 192, 193, 197 Borges, Jorge Luis, 10, 27, 212, 215, 284, 296 Shaw influence on, 205–215 Brasseur, Pierre, 181 Brecht, Bertolt, 192, 193, 196, 199, 241 Brenta, Juan José, 167, 173, 174 Breton, André, 207 British Museum, 63, 69 Broutá, Julio, 6, 7, 10, 126, 127, 221, 225, 282, 283, 291, 299–306, 308, 311, 323 career as translator, 279–281 history of Shaw plays translated, 281–285 quality of translations, 286–295 Brown, Ford Madox, 77n45 Bunyan, John

The Pilgrim’s Progress, 27, 30 Burne-Jones, Edward, 74, 77n45 Byron, Lord, 26, 42, 268 C Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 28–30, 82, 83, 92, 94n11 influence on Man and Superman, 31 Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 91, 198 Canales, Nemesio, 10 El héroe galopante, 258, 267, 269, 271 Feliz Pareja, 258, 267 Hacia un lejano sol, 258, 267, 271 La leyenda bevaventina, 261 Paliques, 258, 263 Shaw influence, 255–272 Cándida, see Shaw, Bernard, Candida Cano, Alonso, 71 Castro Leal, Antonio, 148, 240, 241, 302, 303, 305, 313n14, 321 Caviglia, Orestes, 169, 171, 190, 195, 196, 198 Celestina, La, 28, 126 Cervantes, Miguel de, 2, 9, 39–54, 82, 132, 189 critical reception by Shaw, 46–50 Don Quixote, 9, 39–54, 171, 226 Dulcinea, 45, 48 influence on Shaw, 42–46 reception in Britain, 40–42 Sancho Panza, 40, 48 stylistic parallels with Shaw, 50–54 César y Cleopatra, see Shaw, Bernard, Caesar and Cleopatra Charrington, Charles, 86 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 31, 32, 39, 53, 206, 228, 229 Chile, 5, 300, 307 Chioino, José, 7

 INDEX 

Club de Teatro, 173, 175, 176, 190 Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 62 Colombia, 6 Comedia Nacional (Uruguay), 167–172 Critilo (pen name of Antonio Romera), 127 Cuba, 3, 6 La Habana (Havana), 5 D The Daily Worker (periodical), 3 Darío, Rubén, 260 de la Torre, Josefina, 7 de Molina, Tirso, 2, 9, 19, 21–29, 31–33, 82, 226 El Burlador de Sevilla, 2, 19, 21, 29, 31, 82 El Burlador de Sevilla (plot), 26 influence on Man and Superman, 28 de Vega, Lope, 19, 28, 29, 82 influence on Man and Superman, 29–31 Dear Liar (by Jerome Kilty), 181, 198 Despouey, Arturo, 177 Díaz, Carmen, 140n63 Díaz de Artigas, Josefina, 129, 178 Díaz de la Peña, Narcisse, 73 Dickens, Charles, 27, 41, 42, 47, 87, 90, 248 Don Juan, 2, 5, 9, 29, 30, 48, 82, 86, 90, 91, 96n37, 109, 146, 175, 180, 191, 226, 262, 269 Spanish literary archetype as a source for Man and Superman, 19–33 Doré, Gustave, 45 Dublin, 1, 62, 242 Duse, Eleonora, 86, 96n25

335

E Echegaray, José, 2, 9, 81–84, 91–93, 94n13, 95n20, 96n25, 98n71 critiqued by Shaw, 91–93 Mariana, 9, 72, 83, 85–89, 91–93, 96n46, 97n51 Shaw’s review of The Son of Don Juan, 84–85 Shaw’s reviews of Mariana, 86–91 The Son of Don Juan, 83 Elektra, 6 El hijo de Don Juan, see Echegaray, José, The Son of Don Juan (Echegaray) El Inca de Perusalem, see Shaw, Bernard, The Inca of Perusalem Eliot, George, 41, 208, 213 Eliot, T. S., 208 Emery, Winifred, 88 Escofet, José, 6, 125 F Fernández Arbós, Enrique, 106 Fernández, Gerardo, 192 Ferrari, Osvaldo, 212 Fielding, Henry, 41, 50 France, Anatole, 129, 195, 256, 259, 260, 267 Franco Bahamonde, Francisco, 4, 135, 136, 304, 311 G Gallegos y Arnosa, José, 73, 74 García Lorca, Federico, 28, 125, 135, 141n64, 167 García, Manuel method of singing, 113 García Márquez, Gabriel, 8

336 

INDEX

García, Soledad (Spanish actress), 125, 126 Gayarre, Julián, 111–112 Generation of 1898, 219–232 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 26, 214 Gómez Masía, Román, 7 Goya, Francisco de, 71, 73, 75, 78n74, 130 Gramatica, Emma, 168 Granville-Barker, Harley, 82 Guatemala, 3 Guerra Mondragón, Miguel, 257 Guerrero, María, 189 Guetary, Pedro, 102 H Hamon, Augustin, 6, 280 Harris, Frank, 82, 166, 178, 209, 260, 305, 306 Hartzenbusch, Juan Eugenio, 21 Heidegger, Martin, 211 Henríquez Ureña, Pedro, 6, 303, 308, 311 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 6 Hugo, Victor, 84, 91, 93, 113 Huneker, James, 3, 171, 172 Huxley, Aldous, 4, 207, 307 I Ibarra, Federico E., 7 Ibsen, Henrik, 3, 7, 26, 45, 54, 65, 82–88, 91, 92, 95n20, 96n25, 97n51, 153, 171, 174, 193, 195, 196, 205, 211, 213, 241, 242, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 307 A Doll’s House, 26, 244 Ghosts, 84, 85, 90, 259 Hedda Gabbler, 221 John Gabriel Borkman, 88, 96n46 Little Eyolf, 83, 86, 87, 89, 97n51

Peer Gynt, 45, 87 Isaÿe, Eugène-Auguste, 106–108 J Jiménez, Juan Ramón, 222 John, Augustus, 62 John, Gwen, 70 Jones, Inigo, 29 Jonson, Ben, 19, 29, 31 Joyce, James, 206, 222 L La comandante Bárbara, see Shaw, Bernard, Major Barbara La gran Catalina, see Shaw, Bernard, Great Catherine La medalla al mérito, see Shaw, Bernard, O'Flaherty, V. C. Lenin, Vladimir, 149, 166 Lippi, Filippo, 63 Llorens Torres, Luis, 257 London, 1, 4, 19–21, 25, 40–42, 58n39, 63, 64, 69, 70, 72, 73, 82, 86, 89, 91, 102–109, 111, 112, 115, 117, 124, 130, 135, 146, 147, 150, 154, 178, 180, 224–226, 231, 242, 247, 259, 290, 293 Independent Theatre, 87–89 The National Gallery, 71, 72 The New Gallery, 74 López Heredia, Irene, 132, 135 Lubert, Guillaume Albert, 110 Lucia, Fernando de, 110 Lytton, Neville S., 67 M Machado, Antonio, 220 Madariaga, Salvador de, 2 Madrazo, Ricardo de, 73, 75

 INDEX 

Maeztu, María de, 7 Maeztu, Ramiro de, 4, 10, 124, 125, 127, 219–221, 231 critique of Shaw, 224–229 Mantegna, Andrea, 63 Marlowe, Christopher Faustus, 25, 26 Marston, Westland, 82 Martínez Moreno, Carlos, 168, 171, 175, 176, 178, 181 Martínez Sierra, Gregorio, 128, 129, 281, 282, 301 McLean Gallery, 73 Membrives, Lola, 132–134, 140n63 Mendelssohn, Felix, 113 Mexico, 3–5, 7, 9, 207, 211, 300, 302, 305, 307, 311 Mexican Revolution, 144, 145, 240, 243, 247, 313n14 Porfiriato, 143, 145 Shaw’s reception in, 143–158 See also Usigli, Rodolfo Michelangelo, 63, 64, 67, 72 Mi querido mentiroso, see Dear Liar (by Jerome Kilty) Miquis, Alejandro, 126 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 20, 21, 26, 50, 170, 199, 241, 243 Montaigne, Michel de, 49, 170 Moreno, Mario (Cantinflas), 158, 249 Moreto, Agustín, 82 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 20, 21, 26 Mrozewski, Stefan, 43 Muñoz Seca, Pedro, 125, 135 Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, 69–72, 75 N National Gallery of Ireland, 62 Neilson, Julia, 88

337

Neruda, Guillermina María Francisca, 104 Nervo, Amado, 6 The New Age (periodical), 228 New English Art Club, 64 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 5, 28, 146, 208, 209, 213, 259 Nolasco, Sócrates, 259 O Ocampo, Victoria, 190, 207 Ortega y Gasset, José, 139n42, 207, 211, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230 Otero, Carolina, 102, 115 Our Corner (periodical), 64, 71 P Panama, 5, 258, 260, 261, 300 Parajón, Mario, 5 Pascal, Gabriel, 179, 249 Paz, Octavio, 207 Pérez de Ayala, Ramón, 222, 225 Pérez Jorba, Joan, 3 Periodicals in Spanish ABC (Spain), 136, 137n2, 142n88 Cuasimodo (Puerto Rico), 258, 260, 261 El Correo Español (Spain), 146 El Debate (Uruguay), 170, 171, 173–175 El Heraldo Mexicano (Mexico), 147 El Imparcial (Spain), 128, 146 El Informador (Mexico), 150, 151, 154 El Liberal (Spain), 128 El Nacional (Mexico), 147, 148, 151, 153, 155 El País (Uruguay), 167–171, 175 El Porvenir (Mexico), 152, 154 El Sol (Spain), 229

338 

INDEX

Periodicals in Spanish  (cont.) El Tiempo (Mexico), 146–147 El Universal (Colombia), 8, 158 Idearium (Puerto Rico), 258, 266 Juan Bobo (Puerto Rico), 258, 266 La Correspondencia de España (Spain), 12n23, 124, 233n21, 234n23 La Iberia (Mexico), 147 La Locomotora (Guatemala), 3 La Nueva Voz (Mexico), 149 La Revista de Taos (United States), 6 La Vanguardia (Spain), 130, 137n2, 141n74, 304 Marcha (Uruguay), 171, 173, 175, 177–182 Noticias de Hoy (Cuba), 3 Nuestro Tiempo (Spain), 3 Nuevo Mundo (Spain), 127, 131, 234n24, 234n26, 234n30 Revista de las Antillas, 258, 259 Revista de Occidente (Spain), 129, 130, 233n19, 283 Sucesos para Todos (Mexico), 152 Sur (Argentina), 190, 207, 208, 211, 283 Talía (Argentina), 190, 195, 196, 198 Perón, Juan Domingo, 194, 213 Peru, 4, 5, 7, 189, 301 Lima, 5 Picasso, Pablo, 70, 74, 75 Pigmalión, see Shaw, Bernard, Pygmalion Pirandello, Luigi, 7, 224, 230 Pissarro, Camille, 74 Podestá, Blanca, 188 Poel, William, 30 Puerto Rico, 3, 8, 10, 255, 256, 259, 267, 270, 271

Q Quevedo, Francisco de, 170, 208, 213 Quiroga, Horacio, 7 R Raphael, 72 Rembrandt, 67, 72, 73 Ribera, José de, 69 Rivas, Duque de, 28 Robins, Elizabeth, 83, 86–93, 97n46 Rochefort, Victor Henri (Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay), 74 Rodin, Auguste, 62, 306 Rodríguez Laguna, Asela, 8, 10, 144, 223, 243 Shaw en el mundo hispánico, 8 Rodríguez Monegal, Emir, 165, 166, 178–180 Royal Academy of Arts, 64 Ruskin, John, 70, 71, 78n74, 260 Russell, Bertrand, 229 Ruy Blas (Opera), 89, 113, 114 S Sánchez Barbudo, Salvador, 73 Sanín Cano, Baldomero, 6 Santa Juana, see Shaw, Bernard, Saint Joan Sarasate, Pablo de, 2, 102, 106–108, 117n4, 119n19 Saturday Review (periodical), 82, 83 Schiller, Friedrich, 84, 91, 93, 195 Schóo, Ernesto, 191, 196 Second World War, 154, 307 Selvagem, Carlos, 45 Sender, Ramón J., 230 Shakespeare, William, 19, 20, 30, 41, 42, 49, 96n25, 136, 152, 212, 223, 243, 249 Shaw, Bernard

 INDEX 

The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, 3 Androcles and the Lion, 49, 153, 158, 173, 197, 249, 282 Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, 141n78 The Apple Cart, 283 Arms and the Man, 40, 47, 151, 153, 155, 158, 168, 169, 171, 177, 188, 267, 271, 281, 301, 303 Back to Methuselah, 47, 66, 67, 134, 177, 214, 249, 305 Caesar and Cleopatra, 124, 149, 179, 180, 190, 223, 296, 301 Candida, 4–7, 86, 88, 89, 124, 128, 131–132, 135, 137n1, 149, 150, 158, 168, 172, 179, 188, 190, 214, 221, 241, 248, 260, 262, 280, 281, 287, 289, 296, 304 Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, 132, 282 Cashel Byron's Profession, 284 Common Sense About the War, 127, 148, 228, 266 Corno di Bassetto (pseudonym as a music critic), 103 Creative Evolution (Life Force), 31–33, 48, 191, 192, 197 critical views on Echegaray, 91–93 criticism on Cervantes, 46–50 Cymbeline Refinished, 67 The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 49 The Devil’s Disciple, 27, 28, 124, 135, 156, 239–241, 281, 302 The Doctor’s Dilemma, 67, 72, 146, 149, 153, 282, 303, 313n14 Don Giovanni Explains, 20 Don Juan in Hell, 21, 29, 30, 33, 180

339

Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, 26, 48, 53 Fanny’s First Play, 52, 147, 153, 244 Geneva, 136 Getting Married, 53, 153 Great Catherine, 7 health and death, 3, 5 Heartbreak House, 241, 248, 283, 284 How He Lied to Her Husband, 135, 141n78, 151, 176, 281, 282, 301, 304, 305 Immaturity, 20, 43, 55n15, 67 The Inca of Perusalem, 67 influence on Benavente, 224 influence on Borges, 205–215 influence on Canales, 255–272 influence on Maeztu, 224–229 influence on Spanish-speaking authors, 7 influence on Usigli, 239–247 influence on Valle-Inclán, 222 In Good King Charles’s Golden Days, 66, 176, 178 The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 6, 7, 283, 306, 307 interview with Usigli, 247–250 Irish Question, 168 John Bull’s Other Island, 4, 153, 215, 282, 305 knowledge of Cervantes, 42–46 knowledge of Spanish literature, 2, 39, 42, 43, 50, 81–84 knowledge of Spanish musicians and composers, 101–115 knowledge of the Spanish language, 6 Love Among the Artists, 46

340 

INDEX

Shaw, Bernard  (cont.) Major Barbara, 5, 47, 153, 179, 190, 221, 260, 263, 264, 266, 271, 282, 305 Man and Superman, 2, 3, 20, 21, 26, 28–31, 33, 48, 49, 53, 82, 146, 149, 156, 175, 180, 190–192, 221, 226, 260, 262, 271, 282, 303 The Man of Destiny, 5, 87, 147, 176, 281 Misalliance, 66, 283 Mrs Warren’s Profession, 5, 125, 126, 131, 137n1, 146, 147, 155, 173, 188, 195, 196, 201n24, 244, 281, 284, 305 My Fair Lady, 156, 157, 191 Nobel Prize, 92, 124, 127, 130, 134, 135, 141n68, 206, 211, 222, 243, 261, 282, 302 O’Flaherty, V. C., 5, 7, 176 Overruled, 148, 153, 189, 240, 241, 302, 303, 305 Passion, Poison and Petrifaction, 28 The Philanderer, 87, 132, 189, 281, 284 Plays Pleasant, 46, 50, 221, 281 Pygmalion, 5, 9, 126, 128–129, 132, 135, 136, 137n1, 145, 150, 153, 155–158, 172, 175, 177, 179, 180, 191, 198, 244, 280, 282, 287, 290, 296, 301 The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 45, 205, 241 reception in Argentina, 187–199 reception in Mexico, 143–158 reception in Spain, 3 reception in the Spanish-speaking world, 2, 4, 5 review of Echegaray’s The Son of Don Juan, 84–85

reviews of Echegaray’s Mariana, 86–91 The Revolutionist’s Handbook, 21, 190 Saint Joan, 4, 5, 9, 40, 43, 50, 51, 128–132, 137n1, 149, 153, 154, 158, 173, 175, 176, 179, 190, 193–195, 197, 221, 229, 242, 244, 245, 248, 249, 280, 283, 287, 294, 301 The Sanity of Art, 61, 67, 75n1, 77n45 The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, 156, 282 The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, 208 socialism, 52, 64, 103, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 158, 181, 257, 266, 280 stylistic parallels with Cervantes, 50–54 Three Plays for Puritans, 27, 33, 305 translations into Spanish, 6, 10, 127, 130, 280–295, 299–311 Un Petit Drame, 242 visit to Spain, 1, 20 Widowers’ Houses, 173, 174, 271, 281 You Never Can Tell, 124, 153, 173, 174, 281, 302, 308 Shelley, Mary, 41 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 27, 30, 42, 82, 84 Shelton, Thomas, 40 Silka, León de, 102, 105, 118n5 Singer Sargent, John, 70 Sotheby’s, 70 Soviet Union, 152, 154, 166 Spain The Alhambra, 20 Barcelona, 129–131, 135, 140n62, 215n3, 227, 281, 283

 INDEX 

Bilbao, 227 Ferdinand VII, 71 Golden Age literature, 33 Granada, 20, 25, 48 Madrid, 4, 7, 19, 67, 73, 84, 109, 126, 128, 130–132, 135, 146, 166, 178, 227, 279, 281–284, 294, 301 Málaga, 132, 140n62, 332n3 Residencia de Estudiantes, 7 Santander, 130 Seville, 21–23, 25, 32, 72 Sierra Nevada, 20, 48 Spanish Civil War, 3, 123, 124, 128, 129, 134, 136, 175, 304, 305, 307, 313n21 Spanish protectorate of Morocco, 4 theatre scene, 114–117, 123–128 Stalin, Joseph, 154, 155, 158, 212 Star (periodical), 103 Starkie, Walter, 7 Stirling-Maxwell, William, 69, 71 Synge, John Millington, 221, 222 T Teatro Alkazar, 130 Teatro del Pueblo (Argentina), 189 Teatro del Pueblo (Uruguay), 175 Teatro Eslava, 128–130, 282, 283 Teatro Fontalba, 131, 132, 284 Teatro Goya, 283 Teatro Infanta Beatriz, 131 Teatro Moderno, 175 Teatro Nacional Cervantes, 191 Teatro Orientación, 151 Teatro Pereda, 130 Teatro Poliorama, 135 Teatro San Martín, 188, 191, 192, 198 Teatro Ulises, 151

341

Teatro Victoria, 129, 130 Titian, 63, 67 Tolstoy, Leo, 26, 65, 149, 260 Trata de blancas, see Shaw, Bernard, Mrs Warren's Profession Trebitsch, Siegfried, 279–281 Troubetzkoy, Paul, 62 Turner, William, 67 U Unamuno, Miguel de, 3, 125, 219–221, 224, 229–232, 260 United States of America, 5, 145, 147, 152, 158, 214, 248, 257, 260, 261 Urgo, Adolfo, 153 Uruguay, 7, 10, 165, 166, 168, 175, 177–182, 189, 190, 301, 304, 305, 311 Montevideo, 4, 132, 165–169, 177 SODRE (Servicio de Difusión Radioeléctrica), 176 Usigli, Rodolfo, 10, 153, 271 Corona de fuego, 244 Corona de luz, 243–245, 248, 249 Corona de sombra, 242, 244, 248 El apóstol, 240, 243 El gesticulador, 239, 244 El gran teatro del mundo, 248 El president y el ideal, 243 Estado de sitio, 243 Falso drama, 243 4 Chemins 4, 242, 243 interview with Shaw, 247–250 Jano es un muchacha, 244 La familia cena en casa, 244 Medio tono, 243 Noche de estío, 241, 243 Shaw influence on, 239–247 Tres comedias impolíticas, 243

342 

INDEX

V Valero, Fernando, 102, 109–111 Valéry, Paul, 208, 209, 213 Valle-Inclán, Ramón María del, 28, 125, 220–222 Vandeleur Lee, George, 110, 111 Varona, Enrique José, 6 Vasconcelos, José, 148, 149, 313n14 Velasquez, Diego, 2, 67, 70–74 Verdi, Giuseppe, 84, 91, 109 Villaurrutia, Xavier, 151, 153 W Wagner, Richard, 28, 113, 119n27, 151, 211, 260 Wells, H.G., 3, 7 Wetherell, Nathan, 69 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 67, 77n45

Wilde, Oscar, 6, 223, 225, 229, 260, 281, 305, 306, 308 Woolf, Virginia, 207 X Xirgu, Margarita, 4, 5, 130–132, 140n63, 141n64, 150, 167, 189, 283 Y Yates, Edmund, 63 Yeats, W. B., 206, 210, 221, 222 Z Zorrilla, José, 28, 159n9 Zurbarán, Francisco de, 69, 71, 73–75