Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

yrs sincerely

G. Bernard Shaw

52/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

14th April 1897

Many thanks for your words about Edy [Edith Craig]. I fear I didnt make my meaning plain if you think I want you to “find an opening for her.” No, but I suppose you usually “cast” your own plays, and I want you only to MENTION Edith Craig as being fit for this or that ever-so-small-a-part. . . .

E.T.

53/ To Ellen Terry

16 April 1897

. . . Did I say “find an opening for Edy”? I apologize. I withdraw. I abase myself—you wretch: that was precisely what you ordered me to keep my eyes open for. She wants an opening ten times more than if she had no mother. Do you remember—or did you ever hear of—the obscurity of Mozart’s son? An amiable man, a clever musician, an excellent player; but hopelessly extinguished by his father’s reputation. How could any man do what was expected from Mozart’s son? Not Mozart himself even. Look at Siegfried Wagner. Ellen Terry’s daughter! Awful! Is Ted anything of a comedian? I want comedians.

Suppose this “You Never Can Tell” succeeds sufficiently to make it practically certain that a dozen matinees of a new cheap play by me would pay their way. Well, get somebody to finance a dozen matinees of “Candida” for Janet on condition that Ted [Edward Craig] plays Eugene and Edy Prossy—I told the Independent Theatre people that I’d let them do it if they could bank £1000. Or let them buy a fit-up and play “Arms & The Man” & “You Never Can Tell” in the provinces. (I have all the British rights of “Arms” & all but eleven No. 1 towns for “You Never Can Tell.”) Or let H. B. Irving & Ted, Dorothea Baird & Edy start a “Next Generation” theatre & play Othello & Iago, Emilia & Desdemona, on alternate nights. Or let them make up a nice little repertory & go round the world with it—that’s the way to get trained now.

It’s no use: I have nothing sensible to suggest. Teddy, though hypersenti- hypersensitized (got it that time!) and petulated by more luxury than was good for him in the way of a mammy seems highly and nervously intelligent. He wants ten years of stern adversity—not domestic squabble—to solidify him. Pity he’s married: why should he be a breeder of sinners?

What a Good Friday we’re having! Rain, wind, cold, skating on all the ponds, icicles hanging from the eaves and George Bernard the shepherd blowing his nail.

When are you coming into this neighborhood? I can bike over to Thames Ditton—if only I dare. Don’t let us break the spell—do let us break the spell—don’t, do, don’t, do, don’t, do, don’t—I resolved to let the end of the line decide it like Gretchen’s flower, and it has decided nothing. . . .

GBS

P.S. They’re going to elect me to the St Pancras Vestry (more public work); and I’m spending Easter on a Fabian Tract—“ Employer’s Liability .” That’s why I’m so prosaic.

54/ To Reginald Golding Bright

7th May 1897

Dear Bright

. . . Things you may mention.—Work it up as news in your own way, not as communicated by me to the paper in the first person—you will know how to manage it.

1. I have been elected a member of the St Pancras Vestry. At the first general election of Vestries under the Local Government Act of 1894, it was urged that public-spirited men of some standing should come forward and offer to serve. I condescended to do this and was ignominiously defeated, my sympathy with Labour being considered disreputable by the workmen of St Pancras. Now the Conservatives and Unionists and Moderates and other respectables of the parish have returned me unopposed in spite of my vehement protests that I have no time for such work. I recognise, however, that there is better work to be done in the Vestry than in the theatre, and have submitted to take my turn.

2. I have resolved to accept an offer made me by Mr Grant Richards for the publication of my plays. I am not a disappointed dramatist, as the curiosity and interest shewn in my plays by managers, and their friendliness & accessibility for me, have exceeded anything I had any right to expect. But in the present condition of the theatre it is evident that a dramatist like [Henrik] Ibsen, who absolutely disregards the conditions which managers are subject to, and throws himself on the reading public, is taking the only course in which any serious advance a possible, expecially if his dramas demand much technical skill from the actors. So I have made up my mind to put my plays into print and trouble the theatre no further with them. The present proposal is to issue two volumes entitled “ Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant .” Vol I, “ Unpleasant ” will contain “ The Philanderer ” and the appalling “ Mrs Warren’s Profession ” with perhaps a reprint of “ Widowers’ Houses .” Vol II, “ Pleasant ,” will contain “ Arms & The Man ,” “ Candida ,” and “ You Never Can Tell .” Possibly also “ The Devil’s Disciple ” and “ The Man of Destiny .”

I decline to say anything more at present about Sir Henry Irving and “ The Man of Destiny ” except that the story, when I tell it—and I shall probably tell it very soon—will be quite as amusing as a Lyceum performance of the play would have been. None of the paragraphs in circulation convey the remotest approximation to the truth; and the statement that Sir Henry has returned the MS [manuscript] “with a handsome compliment and a present” is a particularly audacious invention. This is enough for one week, I think.

In haste,

yrs ever

G. Bernard Shaw

55/ To Ellen Terry

29th May 1897

Oh stupidest of created women, how can I answer such letters! I ask myself how I have ever consented to know a moral void—a vacuum. I am cured of arrogance: I no longer pretend to have written either “Candida” or the Wild Duck article [about Henrik Ibsen’s play Wild Duck in the Saturday Review]: I admit that you wrote them both. But mark the result of my humility. If “Candida” is ever done, it shall not be done by subscriptions collected for the performance of a play by Ibsen. Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID woman: can you see nothing when the footlights are in your eyes? . . .

GBS

56/ To Ellen Terry

14th July 1897

. . . Charrington is taking out a Doll’s House tour; and he’s going to try “Candida” on the provincial dog. He wants somebody who can play Prossy (a character in “Candida” which you forget, probably) and Mrs Linden in the Ibsen play. I suggested Edy. Would she go, do you think?

It will be a pretty miserable tour—start at Aberdeen after 12 hours travelling; but she might pick up something from Charrington; and Janet would keep her in gossip for a twelve-month to come. . . .

GBS

57/ To Ellen Terry

20th July 1897

Edy is going to have a very difficult job of it with Mrs Linden, because Janet is so loathingly sick of rehearsing it with new Lindens that she wants Edy to get through with only one rehearsal. And the effort of swallowing all those words will be bad for Prossy. However, we must make the best of it.

The only difficulty about Prossy will be the usual difficulty—want of muscle in the enunciation of the words. When people intend to play the piano in public, they play scales for several hours a day for years. A pupil of [Theodor] Leschetitsky (Paderewski’s master) comes before the public with steel fingers, which give a quite peculiar quality and penetration even to pianissimo notes. An actress should practise her alphabet in just the same way, and come before the public able to drive a nail up to the head with one touch of a consonant. For want of this athleticism, people get driven to slow intonings, and woolly execution. Now for Prossy I want extreme snap in the execution: every consonant should have a ten pound gun hammer spring in it, also great rapidity & certainty of articulation. Of course Edy has not got all that yet; but I shall get more of it out of her than she dreams of troubling herself for at present. Young people don’t realize what a tremendous deal of work it takes to make a very small effect. But she starts with a good deal in hand that one looks in vain for elsewhere. Her expression is, if anything, too expressive normally, like Forbes Robertson’s. Her voice is quite her own. But she needs to work & use her head a good deal; for she is like a boy in her youth & virginity, and cannot fall back on “emotional” effects which are really only the incontinences of a hysterical and sexually abandoned woman, but which pull a great many worthless & stupid actresses through leading parts in vulgar drama. So she will—fortunately for herself—get nothing cheap. I have told her that if I can do anything for her in the way of going over the part with her I will make time to do it. . .