Arms and the man
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Book Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: uu L'. i/-7- ist.il INTRODUCTION To the irreverent- and which of us will claim entire exemption from that comfortable classification?- there is something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox cri...
MorePurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: uu L'. i/-7- ist.il INTRODUCTION To the irreverent- and which of us will claim entire exemption from that comfortable classification?- there is something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox criticism toward Bernard Shaw. He so obviously disregards all the canons and unities arid other ihings which every well-bred dramatist is bound to respect that his work is really unworthy of serious criticism (orthodox). Indeed he knows no more about the dramatic art than, according to his own story in " The Man of Destiny," Napoleon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. But both men were successes each in his way- the latter won victories and the former gained audiences, in the very teeth of the accepted theories of war and the theatre. Shaw does not know that it is unpardonable sin to have his characters make long speeches at one another, apparently thinking that this embargo applies only to long speeches whichconsist mainly of .bombast and rhetoric. Therenever was an author who showed less predilection for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results. He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the world and he assumed the task of mundane reformation with a confident spirit. It seems such a small job at twenty to set the times aright. He began as an Essayist, but who reads essays now-a-days?- he then turned novelist with no better success, for no one would read such preposterous stuff as he chose to emit. He only succeeded in proving that absolutely rational men and women- although he has created few of the latter- can be most extremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.As a last resort, he turned to the stage, not that he cared for the dramatic art, for no man seems to care less about "Art for Art's sake," being in this a perfect foil to his...
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