Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw: British Drama Revival
Oscar Wilde & George Bernard Shaw: British Drama Revival
Introduction to Wilde and Shaw in British Drama
British drama of the early 19th century was marked by mediocrity and decay. Victorian strict morality and the predominance of the novel as the literary genre par excellence, together with the lack of royal patronage to theatre (unlike in other periods of English literature), were factors that didn’t favour the development of the dramatic genre at the time. The late 19th century, however, witnessed the modernization and revival of British drama, mainly thanks to the works of two outstanding playwrights: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.
These two authors show several common features: they both were born in Dublin, of Protestant background, but developed their literary careers in London. And what is more important: they both wrote controversial plays that rocked the conscience of contemporary theatre-goers. However, Wilde and Shaw have more differences than similarities in many aspects. While Wilde was a defender of Aestheticism, which proclaimed art’s lack of concern with social issues with the motto “art for art’s sake”, Shaw was a politically and socially committed author.
Wilde wrote mainly comedies of manners to ridicule Victorian society, while Shaw preferred complex plays of ideas to attack the evils of the world. Finally, both had a completely different view of drama: Wilde focused on plays as a source of entertainment, while Shaw considered that theatre had the serious purpose of instructing the audience in order to change society and improve the world.
In the following sections, we will briefly analyze the main features and works of these two authors. Let us start with Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Early Life & Views
He grew up in a rich, educated family which favoured an intellectual and artistic atmosphere. He studied in Trinity College and later in Oxford, where he started to stand out as a talented and witty author. During his university life in Oxford, he embraced Aestheticism as his artistic philosophy. This trend defended that art was superior to life and nature, and thus life should be lived with an aesthetic intensity. The motto “art for art’s sake” implied that artists should make art with the only aim of searching for beauty, the supreme object of artistic creations. This way, art is amoral and doesn’t have to be committed to reality or social concerns: the only goal of the arts should be to create beauty. Aestheticism is present in all of Wilde’s works, even in the way he lived his life. Today, the most appreciated of Wilde’s artistic production are those works in which, following the principles of Aestheticism, he managed to challenge and ridicule Victorian hypocritical values and morality.
Main Works
Among Wilde’s early works, we can stand out his tales, with The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) as a superb collection of children’s tales that provided him with recognition for his creative inventiveness. Another collection of tales worth mentioning is Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891), where he included the famous The Canterville Ghost, where he mocked British superstitions and old thoughts. He also stood out as a great essayist, with his collection of essays published under the title of Intentions (1891), in which he exposed his theory of art, focusing on the individualism of the artist and the superiority of art over the real world.
However, Wilde is best-known for a novel and for his comedies of manners. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his only novel, combined Gothic supernatural elements and the “art for art’s sake” doctrine. It’s the story of a young man and his portrait. As the man grows old, he remains handsome and young, but his portrait changes, reflecting the corruption of his soul. This novel is extremely controversial and was indeed considered immoral at the time. It has often been seen as a criticism to the “art for art’s sake” doctrine, to the superficial self-love and even to Victorian society, which doesn’t recognise moral responsibilities. Some of its themes are the role of beauty for escaping the brutalities of the world (Dorian appreciates art to forget his actions), criticism to the shallow values of society, which appreciates appearance over goodness (Dorian is never ostracised despite his “mode of life”) and even the idea that the sacrifice of one’s self to another leads to destruction (Basil’s devotion for Dorian leads to his murder, Dorian’s devotion for Lord Henry’s hedonism leads to his downfall).
As far as drama is concerned, Wilde’s successful comedies of manners were written and performed between 1892 and 1895. These social comedies include social intrigues and artificial devices to mock Victorian morals. With witty humour, they portray a hypocritical society behind the mask of good manners. This way, although they may seem frivolous and only seeking a mere laugh, their aim is to attack Victorian assumptions and decorum. Wilde’s language was full of puns, wordplay, sarcasm and irony. Among these comedies of manners, we must highlight Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), his first dramatic success and a satire about marriage, A Woman of No Importance (1893), which deals with illegitimate birth, and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), about obscure social origins.
When analysing Wilde’s style, we can state that he was a sophisticated craftsman in his literary works and he put all his talent in them. His tales are skillfully written, his novel is a superb work and his plays are beautifully constructed. Wilde’s capacity for wit, irony and sarcasm is present in all his literary output, especially in his well-known epigrams, a subgenre of which he was a master. His success, however, wouldn’t last for long, as we will see in the next lines.
Final Years
Wilde’s final years were marked by scandal. Due to his homosexual affairs, he was imprisoned for two years in Reading. When he was released, he found himself bankrupt and socially rejected, so he moved to France. There he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a testimony of his time in prison. He finally died in Paris in 1900. Today, Wilde is remembered as one of the most ironic writers in English literature. With his witty and frivolous style, he gave impetus to the comedy of manners as a suitable forum for the criticism of Victorian society.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Early Life & Views
Dramatist, lecturer, essayist, art critic and social spokesman, George Bernard Shaw is one of the leading figures of 20th-century drama. Unlike Wilde, he stands out for his social commitment, reflected throughout all his literary output. Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 in a Protestant middle-class family. He left school at the age of 14 and he worked in a land agent’s office. He moved to London in 1876 and started to write then, reaching stage success only from 1900. As a young man, he was actively involved in politics. He was one of the founders of the Fabian Society, an organization of intellectuals who desired to transform Britain into a socialist state by means of progressive legislative changes and education.
Shaw’s plays cannot be understood without the influence of Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, and the concept of “plays of ideas”. Ibsen’s works reflected that drama should be seen as a forum to discuss controversial themes and social concerns. Theatre, thus, should have a serious social purpose, and this idea can be observed in virtually all of Shaw’s plays, even in his funniest comedies, which deep down are serious and are designed to transmit ideas. In his plays we can find themes such as prostitution, war, religion, family disturbances, health or economics.
George Bernard Shaw was a master of the “well-made play”, in which both the characters and the story are realistically pictured to achieve the audience’s identification. Even though his plays deal with tough issues, in many of them he shows an optimistic view: his belief in the “Life Force” that leads to progressive realization of the good. In the following section, we will see how this social concern is present in Shaw’s works.
Main Works
Shaw was a prolific writer. Throughout 60 years of literary career, he wrote around 50 plays in which he dealt with the problems of his time. Shaw’s early plays were ideological attacks on the evils of capitalism. Under the name of Plays Unpleasant, he produced three plays dealing with moral problems that weren’t well received by the audience. Then he turned to comedy in Plays Pleasant, a collection of four plays, which showed a gentler criticism while still dealing with social matters (for instance, Candida is about married love and gender equality). Both collections of plays were published as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant in 1898.
Although his latter comedies were better accepted by the public, Shaw’s real success was John Bull’s Other Island (1904). This play deals with the Irish question and is an example of Shaw’s reversals of accepted national stereotypes, constructed with the aim of educating audiences about the problems of Ireland. Before World War I, Shaw wrote some of his best plays. Among them, we can mention Major Barbara, in which he contrasts idealism against wealth and power, The Doctor’s Dilemma, a satire on the medical profession, and Androcles and the Lion, a play about religious exaltation.
Shaw’s comic masterpiece, Pygmalion, was written in 1913. It’s a drama about phonetics in which a Cockney flower girl is trained to speak received English in order to make her pass as a lady. The outbreak of World War I changed Shaw’s life and literary production. He wrote the essay Common Sense About the War, which was considered unpatriotic for accusing Britain of being equally guilty with the Germans, and provoked a decline in his popularity. The only play that he wrote during that period was Heartbreak House (1919), which projected the bitterness about British politics and society.
Shaw’s master work arrived in 1924. We refer to Saint Joan, a great play which made Shaw be accepted again among the post-war audience. This play deals with the character of Joan of Arc, who is not portrayed merely as a martyr, but as a stubborn woman. This work led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
Final Years
After the recognition of Saint Joan and the Nobel Prize, Shaw rebuilt his reputation as a playwright. From that time, his plays were regularly staged in London and in the US, some of them even adapted to other genres (for instance, Pygmalion inspired the musical My Fair Lady). His later plays explored tragicomic and non-realistic symbolism. Shaw also wrote prose at that time, among which we must mention The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism (1928). Shaw’s main contribution to 20th-century drama are his plays of ideas, dramas of moral passion and intellectual conflict which served him to discuss contemporary concerns. He dealt with taboo issues in order to rock the audience’s conscience, and he defended the social purpose of drama as a means of improving the world.
Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, & Walt Whitman
American Literature in the 19th Century
Throughout the 19th century, a real revival of a distinctive American literature took place. Authors like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Dickinson or Melville laid the foundations of the present American literature, moving away from British literary models and creating an idiosyncratic literature in the US. Emerson’s Transcendentalist tenets, as shown in Nature (1836), would change the course of American literary tradition.
Transcendentalism was defined as the “recognition of the human capacity of knowing the truth intuitively, transcending the reach of senses”. Hence, Transcendentalists were interested in expressing the inner life, defending the prevalence of Reason as an intuitive faculty over Understanding, seen as a rational faculty. Nature is seen as something ennobling that is connected to divinity, in contrast to business, which is degrading. Transcendentalist ideas had a powerful influence on literature: some authors, such as Whitman and Dickinson, were inspired by it while others reacted against it, as is the case of Poe and Melville.
In this topic, we are dealing with three of the most relevant American authors in the 19th century: Melville, Poe and Whitman. Each one of them used their literary art to respond to the world outside in their own way. Let us start with Melville.
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Biographical Data
He was brought up in an atmosphere of financial instability. After his father’s death, he had to support his family working in various jobs, but it was after his adventures as a seaman in 1845 that he found inspiration to write. His first literary success, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, was published in 1846, and later followed by Omoo, the continuation of his first book’s adventures. These adventure novels were very successful and showed the happiness of the Polynesian tribes’ people. Later on, influenced by metaphysical ideas, he wrote Mardi, which failed among the American public. This failure made him write a comedy, but he would soon return to the metaphysical and symbolic with White Jacket. His masterpiece, Moby Dick, was published in 1851 with little success, and his later novels met a similar fate.
During the 1850s, he supported his family by farming and writing short stories for magazines. However, due to the little recognition, he stopped writing fiction. He died in 1891 almost forgotten by the American public, but in the 1920s he began to be recognized as one of the great American writers.
Main Features of Melville’s Novels
Melville was a distinctive writer. To begin with, his novels show an extraordinary verbal intricacy: his texts are often compared to “onions”, with different layers of interpretation. Second, we must stand out the symbolism, density and obscurity of meaning present in virtually all his works. Finally, an important aspect is the geographical and psychic exploration and he was also a master of powerful narration with extensive descriptions and technical information about life at sea.
Moreover, there are some constant themes in his works: the world division between good and evil, a tragic view of life where the universe is somehow against human happiness, and life at sea as an allegory of the search for truth. In Typee (1846), influenced by the Rousseau’s “noble savage”, the main theme is the contrast between the vices of civilized people and the virtues of the tribes. In Omoo (1847) he took up the narrative of Typee and showed a great power of invention and characterization. In his unsuccessful Mardi (1849) and White Jacket (1850), he dealt with a more accentuated symbolism mixing fantasy and adventures. At this point, we must pay attention to his most influential work: Moby Dick.
Moby Dick: The Greatest American Epic
Moby Dick is quite difficult to classify as a novel: it contains romantic elements, realistic details, symbolism, melodramatic aspects, humour and even passages of pure lyric. The novel begins when the narrator, Ishmael, decides to go to sea on a whaling ship, willing to live adventures but unaware that Captain Ahab is devoting the voyage to his vengeful pursuit of Moby Dick, a legendary white whale that had bitten off one of his legs. This search for revenge will lead to destruction.
It’s much more than a physical voyage in time and space: it’s a psychological journey inside the human soul, as it’s a novel about the alienation from life as a result of a neurotic self-dependence: Ahab is guilty of an excessive individualism. Another theme is the limits of human knowledge: nobody reaches a complete understanding of the real nature of Moby Dick. The universe portrayed by Melville is one of extreme contradictions: there is death (the price of self-reliance to an extreme point) and there is life (when sharing with others the vicissitudes of human situations). There’s also a sense of fatalism in the novel: nature is seen as a hostile environment in which men suffer constant struggle.
One of the most outstanding symbols is the whale and its whiteness. White is a paradoxical color (it contains all colors) that Melville attributes to nature. Hence, nature is both purity, innocence and youth, and death and corruption. This is related to the contradictions mentioned above in the treatment of the universe, which Melville also sees as a kind of hieroglyph the human mind cannot decipher. The Pequod, the whaling ship named after an extinct American tribe, is also a symbol of doom and death. Finally, another powerful symbol is Queequeg’s coffin, whose interpretation changes throughout the novel: at first it represents Queequeg’s imminent death, later it becomes his chest and finally it’s the means for Ishmael to stay afloat, becoming then a symbol of hope and rebirth.
All in all, Moby Dick is a novel about puzzles: there’s a constant wondering about what Moby Dick really is and where it is. To conclude, we must state that Moby Dick is one of the landmarks in American literature and, his author, a precursor of many narrative techniques in present metafiction, remains one of the great American authors.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Biographical Data
Born in Boston in a bohemian atmosphere, Poe led a short and mostly unhappy life. When his mother died and his father disappeared, he was adopted by a wealthy family in Virginia. After a period of schooling in England, he spent a year in the University of Virginia and also in the Military Academy. As an adult, he published poems and wrote for magazines, trying to make a living out of writing in New York. However, he found much difficulty to reach the American public and when he died at the age of 40 he was found penniless.
Poe has remained an example of “poet maudit”: he embraced Romantic agony, portrayed mentally anguished landscapes far from nature and society, while having an extraordinary gift for writing. Despite having written poetry, he is nowadays best known for his short stories, full of psychotic characters, terror and nightmare-like situations, together with a romantic concern with the occult and the satanic.
Poetry & Literary Criticism
Poe started his literary career as a poet, searching for supernatural beauty in the world. The Raven and Other Poems (1845), his best-known book of poems, explores intensely a surreal landscape. There’s a permanent duality in his poetic work: terror and sadness are in contrast to an idealistic impetus, sensitivity towards beauty and sweetness to women. The idea of the otherworldly and indefiniteness is also present in Poe’s poetry, creating a powerful poetic effect.
Finally, although seeking a visionary spiritual beauty and an unconscious psychological revelation (central theme of many of his poems), he emphasized meticulous craftsmanship and attention to detail in the composition of his poems. This way, he incorporated effects of musicality in his poems, taking the goal of poetry to create pleasure. As a literary critic, Poe was mainly concerned with artistic integrity and purity of style. He was not successful in America but was widely recognized in Europe, especially among French poets such as Baudelaire.
Short Stories
Poe wrote both horror and detective short stories. He is considered one of the creators of the modern detective story. Among them, the most famous is The Murders of the Rue Morgue, where he introduced the French detective M. Dupin, who with his brilliant logical mind solves unsolvable mysteries. Poe wrote this story in a simple, realistic style.
His short horror stories have made him transcendent in American literature, which showed several pervasive features: obsession with death and the dark forces, violence, madness and a taste for the grotesque. His tales can be divided into four groups:
- Tales of death, like The Masque of the Red Death or Shadow
- Tales of crime, like Berenice or The Black Cat
- Tales of survival after dissolution, like Morella or Ligeia
- Tales of fatality, like The Man of the Crowd
Poe’s short stories show an extraordinary close observation of detail and there is also a great power of ratiocination. As in his poetry, delicacy is contrasted with morbidity, and the reader is demanded an active role for the interpretation of the story. The focus of most of his tales is the subjectivity of a character who portrays interior dramas of the self. His best short stories end in death or madness, and heroes don’t succeed. Thus, the main features of Poe’s short stories are a fantastical plot, a tone of moral neutrality, a logical development and a style of intellectual clarity.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Biographical Data
Born in New York, as a young man, he worked as a journalist for several newspapers, where he wrote prose and poetry. In 1855, he published his first edition of Leaves of Grass, which was a commercial failure. It was criticized for its exaltation of carnal love and its free verse and long lines. He worked as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War, where he wrote some of his best-known poems, such as “O Captain! My Captain!”. Later he published Democratic Vistas, a prose work, and his last long poem, “A Passage to India”. In 1873 he suffered a paralytic stroke and lived semi-invalid until his death.
Nature in American Poetry & Transcendentalism
In the 19th century, the wilderness had already been dominated to a certain extent, and a more romantic view of nature emerged. Transcendentalist poets regarded nature as a means of salvation and is a source of inspiration for Whitman’s optimism, vitalism, affirmative individualism and the celebration of the self.
Leaves of Grass: A Work in Progress
Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855, and though little appreciated, it was recognized by other poets like Emerson. It’s the most influential volume of poems in American literature and it’s unconventional both in content and technique, having a great effect on later American poets. Whitman continued publishing by re-editing it under the same title, and over time there were plenty of additions, revisions and grouping of poems. In fact, the first edition had only 12 poems while the last had almost 300. It was Whitman’s life work, which grew and changed as he and America did.
The main theme of the first edition is nature without check. The self, half body, half soul, is greatly celebrated in this work. In line with Transcendentalism, the “self” is joyfully connected with the unknown in nature. Whitman finds in Nature the same godlike reunion with the Oversoul and he never forgets that his body is the point of origin for mystical states, reconciling body and soul.
In the 3rd edition of Leaves of Grass, two poems stand out: “Children of Adam” and “Calamus”. The former is a celebration of man’s love for woman, and sex is seen as a means for the rebirth of the spirit. The latter expresses the ecstasies and agonies of manly love. Finally, another common theme is America and democracy as the key to the future happiness of humankind.
Whitman also wrote other works, such as Drum Taps (1865), written as a response to the Civil War, and the poem “Passage to India”, which is about the brotherhood of the world community and a future global connection (it celebrates the Suez Canal construction). As for the poems’ form, Whitman wrote in American vernacular, the spoken language, and composed in free verse. Hence, the message is more important than the form. His style is also joyous, vitalist and optimistic. He is the most comprehensive soul in American poetry, faithful to the feelings of things, to reality as it seems and celebrating vernacular speech, nature and the human soul.