'Widowers' House' by Bernard Shaw

Didactic theatre has a long tradition, possibly theatre has always been didactic, but it is most notably sustained by plays such as Widowers' House by Bernard Shaw.  

Shaw was no slouch.  In his ninety-four years he produced more than sixty plays as well as criticism, his prefaces to his plays and pamphlets advocating various social causes as well as pursuing boxing.

Being one of the three Plays Unpleasant, unpleasant because they were not supposed to be entertaining but to raise awareness, Widowers' House is something of a black play of defeated idealism where 'dirty' money is unescapable and all is unclean.

The premise of the play is of a poor but aristocratic doctor, Dr Trench, who is on holiday with his friend, Mr Cokane, when he spies the beautiful Blanche and falls in love with her.  Her father, Mr Sartorius, the widower of the title and self-made businessman, is cautious with the doctor but tells him that if he can get the right letters of recommendation than he may marry her daughter. 

In the second act Trench finds out that Sartorius makes his money by being a slum landlord, brought to attention by Sartorius newly fired rent collector Mr Lickcheese.  Trench is distraught and decides that he cannot marry for such ill-found gains and calls it off.

Being a staunch socialist Shaw was acutely aware of the plight of the poor and how the working man loses out in the capitalist world and which also corrupts the rich.  He used his writing for political purposes to further the socialist cause through as varied a medium as his newspaper articles on opera and sport and through his drama.

Full of argument Widower's House dissects a social problem through individual characters who are fully rounded and not just ideological puppets.  These people are human beings with complexity working in a particular social context.  Take a later scene with Sartorius and his daughter Blanche:

SARTORIUS

My dear: if we made the houses any better the rents would have to be raised so much that the poor people would be unable to pay, and would be thrown homeless on the streets.

BLANCHE

Well, turn them out and get in a respectable class of people.  Why should we have the disgrace of harbouring such wretches?

SARTORIUS

[opening his eyes]

That sounds a little hard on them doesn't it my child?

BLANCHE

Oh I hate the poor.  At least I hate those dirty, drunken, disreputable, people who live like pigs.  If they must be provided for, let other people look after them.  How can you expect any one to think well of us when such things are written about us in that infamous book?

SARTORIUS

[coldly and a little wistfully]

I see I have made a real lady of you, Blanche.

BLANCHE

[defiantly] 

Well?  Are you sorry for that?

SARTORIUS

No, my dear: of course not.  But do you know, Blanche, that my mother was a very poor woman, and that her poverty was not her fault?

BLANCHE

I suppose not: but the people we want to mix with now don't know that.  And it was not my fault; so I don't see why I should be made to suffer for it.

This may be melodrama but it isn't pantomime, there are no straight up villains to hiss and boo at just people who make certain moral choices in how they make their living.  It, also, isn't stuffy and tired, it's has plenty of vigour and panache to make it a lively read and it is constructed very satisfactorily.  

There are plenty of snide remarks but few jokes in this play, which probably make it 'unpleasant', as it doesn't let the audience off the hook.  You feel complicit in how awful society is and for the best of us it spurs us on to make the world a better place rather than feel how hopeless it is.  And there is a hope at the end, it's not full blown tragedy but rather a sordidness.  It is something to make you feel very uncomfortable.

The play is a battle and you have to go in fighting if you want to come out feeling less than defeated.  But Shaw was always known for making people laugh and then making them angry and this is definitely one to make you angry.

In a sense this was written for immediate effect for his public and the fact that it has survived outside it's politics is a testament to Shaw's ability to create durable characters whose outrages and feelings connect with us today, even if the conditions are different, as we are drawn into their lives and exist with them.

That's the first play in my Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw so expect many more of these to come in the future.

Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet, which is the same name for my facebook page where I post these blogs.

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more Nobel Prize Winning books.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already have (being that the canon is huge), I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you

  

Lofty Ideals in the Nobel Prize for Literature by Chris Meyer

Prudhomme was the very first in 1901, to be awarded literature’s greatest prize; ‘in special recognition of his … lofty ideals’. Lagerlöf eight years later; ‘in appreciation of the lofty idealism. Rolland, 1913; ‘lofty idealism…’ and Gjellerup in 1917 for ‘his rich poetry … inspired by lofty ideals.’ Clearly the Swedish Academy didn’t share the same wordsmithery of some of its early prize-winners. Nor does it share the appeal of ‘lofty idealism’. Well, maybe not since 1917 at least.

100 years later and no further mention of loftiness or idealism, combinations or cocktails thereof, the Academy found itself swamped in scandal from which it needed draining. Rape and further sexual assault, corruption, deceit, misappropriation of monies and myriad misdemeanours, another aging institute was rocked by an emboldened and woke generation, and rightly so. #MeToo. Sounding more like a series ending cliff-hanger on Netflix, the Swedish Academy decided it no longer had the trust of the public, nor quite frankly, after a run on resignations, did it have enough judges to select a winner for the 2018 award.

Lucky us then - that we get two winners of the (formerly known as) prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature; two artists to further explore and admire, two purveyors of prose pleasuring us all over again, immersed in their imaginations, poets, playwrights, authors or essayists at the top-end of their game. But I am bothered to wondering whether I’d feel just a little bit peeved if I was the 2018 winner, still to be announced.

“Congratulations to so-and-so for thingamabob, the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature…for their inspired … blah, blah, blah … lofty ideals.”

Applause. Applause. Applause.

Applause dies down.

Host retakes centre stage - lights up.

“And now onto the 2019 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Not since Prudhomme have we seen such idealistic loftiness…”

And that’s it.

In an instant - in the moment of an audience gleefully letting the pins-and-needles in their hands dissipate after a sycophantically long round of applause (as if they’ve read anything by the 2018 winner anyway). It’s all - kind of - over. Yes, the press will pay you lip-service, on the evening, but already you’re just a line in a Wiki-page, or even worse still; the answer to a pub quiz tie-break question. No ‘this year’s Nobel Prize winner…” for you. No mainstage appearance at literary festivals filled with the great and good. No Oxford Union addresses. No…let’s be honest here; adulation.

Perhaps the purists among you don’t write for the adulation. Not that you’d admit it aloud. But recognition without adulation is being promoted to the bronze medal position in the discus eleven years after you’ve retired, from being a P.E. teacher, part-time, because somebody you’ve hated for a lifetime cheated. I’m just suggesting that it helps.

For what’s the point of writing if you don’t want to be heard?

And in a world in which everyone and anyone can be published at the click of a button (clearly), it can be difficult to rise above the cacophony of opinion and hackneyed nonsense, but write you must, and for adulation. Whether it be poems or essays, write. Whether it be philosophy, biography or drama, write. Write your truths and write them well, as literature can still transcend societal norms and cultural differences, the pen is mightier than the sword, as our most recent winner knows only too well.

Japanese born; Kazuo Ishiguro is Britain’s (to some contention in Japan) eleventh recipient of the Nobel prize in Literature. Awarded to him in 2017 his canon of writing he always conveys differing points of view, an ability to see things in an alternate light - probably born out of his experiencing two very different cultures, needless to remind ourselves, two warring cultures. How sublime then, given the current cultural temperature, that it takes an immigrant to pose the question of what it is to be English, in his 1989 novel; The Remains of the Day. In it he is able to fuse the servitude of the British and Japanese working class through Stevens; the novel’s unreliable narrator, but unflinchingly devoted butler to Lord Darlington. Stevens ignores his master’s cosiness to the pre-war Germans, he follows the command to fire Jewish staff members though he later regrets it, yet still disregarding his master’s political motives, in order to devote himself to a class system he could never enter. And to such cost, the cost of his own decency and in Stevens himself finding love. A message perhaps worth reminding ourselves of today. As we witness once again Britain’s penchant for far-right politics, it is worth reiterating how those with the pen fought this rhetoric of nationalism and hate.

From Orwell via Brecht, it is time again that we write for adulation for we need to be heard. Time to follow the correct masters, not out of loyalty and faith to their wealth and status but to their inspiration and education.

In accepting his Nobel Prize, Ishiguro said; ‘Can I, as a tired author, from an intellectually tired generation, now find the energy to look at this unfamiliar place?’ Perhaps he can no longer, but nor should we expect him to, as it is the turn of others to now write the truths of their time, to write again with lofty idealism and fight the right to write.

And don’t forget, please, when the 2019 winner is announced later this year, mid-October, to just rewind the tape and check out the winner from 2018 and share their lofty ideals too.