Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

P.S. Since “ Candida ” is such a cheap and simple play, why not fly over here in the thick of the season; take a theatre for half a dozen matinées; play the poet to Janet’s Candida; set all London talking & wondering; & disappear in a flash of blue fire? That would be immensely in character.

yours sincerely

G. Bernard Shaw

8/ To Richard Mansfield

9th March 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . I am working away as hard as I can at the stage business of Candida. I will get the parts copied out here if there is time as well as the script; so that there may not be a moment’s delay in getting to work at the other side. Meanwhile I had better tell you what you will want for the play. There are six parts only. One of them is an old man, vulgar, like Eccles in Caste [a comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson], only not a drunken waster, but a comfortably well off vestryman who has made money in trade. He must be a genuinely funny low comedian, able to talk vulgar English—drop his Hs and so forth. And he must be really a middleaged or elderly man and not a young man made up old, which is one of the most depressing things known to the stage. Then there is a young woman of the standing of a female clerk, rather a little spitfire, a bit common, but with some comic force and a touch of feeling when needed. She must not be slowtongued: the part requires smart, pert utterance. If you know any pair who could play Eccles and Polly Eccles thoroughly well, you may engage them straight off for Candida. Then there is a curate. Any solemn young walking gentleman who can speak well will do for him. The other three parts are, yourself, Janet, and your leading man, who must be equal to a very strong part which would be the star part if there were not the other part to relegate it to important utility. The character is a strong, genial clergyman (Candida’s husband) with much weight and popular force of style. I have not seen the Scandinavian [Albert Gran] whom Felix [Mansfield] is bringing out; so cannot say whether he looks likely to suit the part.

I must break off: it is post hour. There will be plenty of time to arrange the dresses and the one scene, which presents no difficulty. The Philanderer must now wait: it would be madness to produce it before Candida . I will keep Candida for you in London, and am quite disposed to hold over other plays for you if you can arrange to conquer the two worlds within a reasonable time. More of that afterwards.

G.B.S.

9/ To Richard Mansfield

16th March 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . [Your brother] Felix, in addition to my blessing, which is probably not copyrightable in America, has the full score of Candida and the band parts (all except the first violin, which Janet took to study on the way, and which she will no doubt lose), conscientiously read through and corrected by me—a labor which will leave its marks on my constitution until the last trumpet. It has been impossible for me to send out the contract with them: it must wait until next week. Terms, practically the same as before, except for a stipulation about the cast to secure to Janet the vested interest in the part which I promised her during its gestation. The understanding is that if it succeeds in New York, I am to hold the London rights for you for, say, a year, on the New York terms. However, I shall make fresh demands for London as to the cast. Unless you manage to get a very unlikely supply of talent for the New York production, it will be better for us all to cast the piece here strongly from the London point of view: that is, with some well known leading man ([Herbert] Waring, for instance) as Morell, Kate Phillips as Prossy (unless Mrs Bancroft [Marie Wilton] would like to try it), and a popular low comedian as Burgess. I saw [Albert] Gran this morning at the station, and was very favorably impressed by him; but he is too young, and not English enough, to play Morell here. The question of age is quite exceptionally important in this instance. You may, by sheer skill, succeed in making yourself appear a boy of eighteen in contrast to a man of your own real age; but beside a man of half your age made up for double that figure, the artificiality would be terrible. Gran has the pleasant frank style, and something of the physique for the part; and if he can hide his accent, his foreignness would not matter in New York, where the Church of England parson is an unknown quantity; so that I should not at all demur if you thought, after reckoning him up, that he would do Morell for you at the 5th Avenue [Theatre] as well as the best other man available; but for this country Morell must be ultra-home made.

If you find at rehearsal that any of the lines cannot be made to go, sack the whole company at once and get in others. I have tested every line of it in my readings of the play; and there is a way of making every bit of it worth doing. There are no points: the entire work is one sustained point from beginning to end.

In some respects I want my stage management and business stuck to with tolerable closeness. For instance, in the second act there are certain places where you must efface yourself whilst Burgess and Morell are spreading themselves. This is essential to the effect of your breaking in again. I have put you on a chair with your back to the audience during the first of these intervals; and I urge you not to alter this, as I have very slender faith in your powers of self suppression (I don’t question your goodwill) if the audience can see what in my present shattered condition you will perhaps excuse me for calling your mug. Later on, though you have hardly anything to say except the flash “That’s brave: that’s beautiful,” it is important that your face should be seen. The passage where you put your hand on your heart with a sympathetic sense of the stab Morell has suffered is cribbed from Wagner’s Parsifal .

If the play is not successful, fatten Janet, engage a Living Skeleton, buy a drum, and take to the road.

If it is successful, play Oswald in Ibsen’s “ Ghosts .” Try Lovborg in Hedda Gabler anyhow: nobody has ever touched the part here; and Janet would be a perfect Hedda.

I can no more. I hope Mrs Mansfield has quite recovered from her shaking.

By the way, unless there is a great Bernard Shaw catch-on over Candida, as to the likelihood of which I am rather sceptical, the Philanderer had better lie quiet for a while. . . .

yours—wrecked

G. Bernard Shaw

10/ To William Archer

18th March 1895

[Dear Archer]

The ‘division of wealth’ passage is all right. If only he [Arthur Wing Pinero] had used the word, ‘distribution’ he would have cleared the reef.

I am greatly dissatisfied with my article on the play. I was in the middle of the worry and overwork thrown on me by the necessity of getting Candida ready for the boat on Saturday, with the parts all corrected and the full score provided with a minutely detailed plan of the stage action and so on. The production of the play on Wednesday rushed me mercilessly, as the paper has to be ready to catch the foreign mails on Friday afternoon; so that I was quite unable to get into a sympathetic, humane mood, and could only express the— in short, what I did express. However, I should not at all mind seeing Pinero driven back into the comic line. It is in that line alone that he shews the smallest fertility. [Pinero’s play The Notorious] Mrs Ebbsmith, like the other two wouldbe serious plays, not only shews awkwardness, constraint, and impotence on its intellectual side, but apparent exhaustion and sterility on its inventive side. All the characters in it bundled together, and squeezed in a wine press would not produce blood enough to make Dick Phenyl [a character of another Pinero’s play Sweet Lavender]. ‘The Hobby Horse’ is a masterpiece of humor and fancy in comparison. It seems to me that it is only by the frankest abandonment of himself to his own real tastes and capacities that he can do anything worth doing now on the stage. . . .