Breaking a Butterfly on a Wheel

For Hollywood the problem of Shaw’s problem plays is their sexlessness. This is especially true of the three “Plays for Puritans,” in which Shaw consciously debunked the romantic tradition. In the most famous of these, Caesar not only ignores the fact that Cleopatra is a woman; he actually tries to make her the superman. That play is still performed—only (poor Shaw) because of the glamor of the Woman in all her legends; but it is strange that the latest raid on the library should make a movie of the first of these three Puritan exercises, The Devil’s Disciple.

The romantic theme here is that of the substitute victim—the drama of Sidney Carton, dissolute hero driven to one great sacrifice by his love of the other man’s woman. Shaw simply made the dissolute fellow laugh at the woman’s belief that he dies for her, then scold her for such “limited concepts.” This of course redeems the wastrel Dick Dudgeon in Shaw’s eyes. The play combines shallow satire on the New England religion of horror with an even shallower exposition of the Nietzschean morality (for Dick Dudgeon’s devil is Dionysos, the god of beautiful destruction). Given these elements, Shaw merely let the devil’s disciple preach all his own favorite ideas, at the highest pitch of action, and made his foil, the poor minister, become a blustering soldier. The bewildered girl, caught between these worshipers of force, is left to look ridiculous.

GW

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Garry Wills

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For Hollywood the problem of Shaw’s problem plays is their sexlessness. This is especially true of the three “Plays for Puritans,” in which Shaw consciously debunked the romantic tradition. In the most famous of these, Caesar not only ignores the fact that Cleopatra is a woman; he actually tries to make her the superman. That play is still performed—only (poor Shaw) because of the glamor of the Woman in all her legends; but it is strange that the latest raid on the library should make a movie of the first of these three Puritan exercises, The Devil’s Disciple.

The romantic theme here is that of the substitute victim—the drama of Sidney Carton, dissolute hero driven to one great sacrifice by his love of the other man’s woman. Shaw simply made the dissolute fellow laugh at the woman’s belief that he dies for her, then scold her for such “limited concepts.” This of course redeems the wastrel Dick Dudgeon in Shaw’s eyes. The play combines shallow satire on the New England religion of horror with an even shallower exposition of the Nietzschean morality (for Dick Dudgeon’s devil is Dionysos, the god of beautiful destruction). Given these elements, Shaw merely let the devil’s disciple preach all his own favorite ideas, at the highest pitch of action, and made his foil, the poor minister, become a blustering soldier. The bewildered girl, caught between these worshipers of force, is left to look ridiculous.