Shaw vs. Shakespeare

Shaw vs. Shakespeare: how is Shaw is different or better (social informer and constructive playwright) than Shakespeare

Shaw’s most prominent play Heart break House is haunted by the word of a dead man. This play represents a cultural space which the past events are attempting to destroy the present.  This play is filed with a constant tension which is created from what is forgotten and what is remembered between the new and the past generation and between the present and the past.  This gives a special association of the cultural and literally voices considered to be long dead. Despite the play portraying the echoes of Wilde and Chekhov is it actually Shakespeare’s voice which dominates this play. it is indeed the voice of  Shakespeare which haunted Bernard Shaw in his play Heartbreak House which  can be said to be a rewrite of  King Lear especially in  the  way Shaw  puppets the use of  the play climax of  his  assault which is related to Shakespeare’s.


The superior weapon of Shaw is how he has managed to rewrite the past.  Heartbreak House indeed acts as a representation of the climax achieved through a life time spent speaking on behalf of those who are literary dead. This shows how Shaw attempts to represent   himself both seen in his drama and his criticism as Shakespeare’s cultural surrogate the theory of surrogation by Joseph Roach can best be used to pinpoint the life long struggle of Shaw with the ghost of Shakespeare. Shaw’s major role in his writing is that of being Shakespeare’s surrogate through how he criticized Shakespeare and his public person who all portray how he attempt to associate with Shakespeare. His Shakespearian criticism is an attack towards  Shakespeare and even by the dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare play King Lear shows how  Shaw struggles  to replace the and alter the elements in the greatest work of  Shakespeare.


Shaw’s performance for example the GB.S persona is in many ways a form of dramatic subjugation in a similar way which is represented in the Cities of the Dead by Joseph   Roach. All forms of  acts and  performance  according to Roach is surrogation which is  an  ongoing  process which , “ representation is change”.  To Roach the society is filled with individuals who remember their artistic and cultural past through the process of surrogation and a change in these figures leads to cultural evolution leading to the establishment of a new direction all together (Roach, 80). Celebrities according to Roach represent these envied and admired aesthetic and cultural icons. They have a special place in the collective mind of the society and through the process of surrogation successors are nominated and eventually crowned (Roach, 80). Shakespeare holds the celebrity position of being the chief dramatist which is a position which   Shaw continually inspired. Shaw in most of his life  attacked  Shakespeare and this made him to become prominently known in informing the public of  his attributes which could best  be understood both in his drama and in his personal  attributes as one who is opposition of   Shakespearean ideas and elements.


In the Saturday Review magazine, Shaw published his feelings about his dramatic forerunner with shocking pronunciation. Shaw plainly says that Shakespeare egotistical, outrageous, and witty persona was simple a fiction. He goes on to say the former well renown dramatist was, “as real as a pantomime ostrich. I have never pretended that G.B.S was real; I have over and over again taken him to pieces before the audience to show the trick of him,” (Shaw, 78Therefore the G.BS complex performance is the key element which acts towards destroying   Shakespeare and replacing his will known for with that of Shaw. The symbolic act of destroying the physical body of the dead is the element which acts as a powerful importance for showing surrogation based on the fact that human body is the vessels for upholding cultural memory.  The famous   playwright and poet’s body is what accumulates power which in Roach term is an “effigy of flesh”. Such effigies according to Roach are those which fabricate associations and bodies and have the ability to evoke and provide the communities with how members can perpetuate themselves using surrogates and mediums. Shaw fights towards destroying this efficacy of Shakespeare and to replace it with him but it is important to note that despite the destruction of an efficacy, it is not possible for the community members to forget it.


How Shaw is different from Shakespeare

Shaw’s prose plays and letters demonstrate the theme of Shakespeare’s reincarnation. In one of the proseImmaturity Shaw writes that he is a descendant from the Macduff linage which is as good as being from the Shakespearean linage which he has constantly resolved to reincarnate in his cradle. In another preface in his play The Dark  Lady  of the Sonnets  Shaw  writes that he is convinced that Shakespeare’s was actuality like himself and that  if, “ I  had been born  in 1556  instead of 1856, I should  have taken to the blank verse and given Shakespeare a harder run for his money than the other Elizabethans put together” (Shaw 69).


Despite the fact that Shaw constantly tries to liken himself to the Shakespearean attributes he at the same time tries to distinguish himself.  His writings and play display the main paradox of surrogation which sees repletion as change. He goes ahead to differentiate his plays in a different style and to present a different purpose from those of his dramatic predecessor.  Roach is keen to point out that people cannot perform themselves not unless they are performed on what they thought or think of whom they were (Archibald 90).  By setting up G.BS  Shaw did not only  try  to develop a potential surrogate of the Shakespearean ideas but wrote a lot of prose which extensively criticize Shakespeare and he also went ahead to adapt most of his dramatic  predecessor’s plays . `In the play King Lear, Shaw attempts to rectify Shakespeare’s elements which he disagreed with.  Some of these social issues include the fixing of morality, unadulterated aestheticism and passive pessimism (Cohn, 322). And with all these efforts of rectifying Shakespeare’s play he came up with the Heartbreak House. Through the way Shaw attacks his dramatic predecessor, he shows one way of   differentiating himself. In the Daily News, Shaw writes that Shakespeare is credited for his power which mainly lies in his command in the use of word-music which the readers are able to admire with fascination as well as his hollowest platitudes. However to Shaw, he feels that Shakespeare main weakness lies with his major deficiency of thought at its highest sphere in acknowledging that poetry embraces morality, philosophy, religion and act as bearing for communities (Shaw, 1106).


G.B.S in Shaw’s plays, says  that a man of letters is simply a person who only confesses that he is a prophet  but has anything and to listen to the message of a  writer even  when he is a fool is one thing but  to worship his tricks  and tools in his  writing  style  and  prose is a total abomination. This shows that Shaw advice is that readers should only view Shakespeare’s work as an instrument of entertainment and not for the purpose of addressing   serious and most concrete problems in the political and social sphere.  This claim by Shaw that Shakespeare was a man who lacked  philosopher does  not actually mean philosophical  discipline but an  aspect which is far  restricted  in addressing the concern of  the  contemporary moral, political and  social  problems as shown  in his  plays. For example in the  play The  Doll House  by Ibsen  according to Shaw  will be doomed as a flat water ditch when Shakespeare’s  play A midsummer Night  Dream is considered  to be as fresh as new  paint.  He says  this  play  just  like all the other Shakespearean work portray the aesthetic value  but  has nothing to do in addressing the moral issues in  real life(the complete  preface, p 182)


Shaw’s criticism towards Shakespeare shows his frequent representation of showing  Shakespeare as  a symbol of cultural stagnation based on  the  fact  that  Shakespeare’s  work   despite the moral and artistic death  in the human race. To Shaw , he says  that  Drama should  act as  a representation  of  morality by questioning and  subverting the various preconceived notions which the  audience may be having.  Shaw in his preface to his work The Irrational Knot presents a distinction of what he considers to be art of the first order from what is art of the second order. The first order art according to Shaw  is  that which  presents the original  morality  and not  what  is  duplicated . Shakespeare according to Shaw falls under the second   order type of art because in addressing morality he portrays the hand me down form of morality. This therefore shows the major difference between these two playwrights in terms of their philosophical point of views.


Another aspect which Shaw can be credited to address in his plays and works is that he did not believe in the existence of absolute truth but he believed that both the matter and the spirit are in constant evolution towards achieving a certain desirable perfection. Therefore it is the responsibility of each age to understand the various advances in the direction towards achieving these desirable beliefs which should be different from those of the preceding age (Pedersen, 45).  Such a philosophical thought is not addressed in any of Shakespeare’s work but instead he acts as a symbol representing the worn out ideas. Based on Shakespeare’s artistic icon position, Shaw sees this as one who represents a repetitive and sterile culture because he relies on the already made morality.


Another aspect which Shakespeare’s work is criticized by Shaw is the pessimism passivism aspect.  This is especially so in Shakespearean   tragedies which are mainly pessimistic plays which give a suggestion of the human action of futility. In a pessimistic world according to the  creative  evolutionists is a  kind of work which people have the false belief that their actions are   controlled  by the gods and  this leads to a brink of  self  destruction and  stagnation. Shaw preface to Three Plays by Brieux, Shaw writes about Shakespeare that a real quarrel is that which man quarrel with God for not making man better (Hornby, 45). He sees that it is futile top quarrel with God and rather beneficial and productive if man quarrel with   his fellow men.  This is what Shakespeare does in his plays.


In Saint Joan preface, Shaw describes the characters in Shakespeare’s plays as individuals living in the air with no any kind of public responsibility.  Such characters from the middle class seem so natural because they are irresponsible and comfortable at the expensive of other people and despite the consciousness they may be having they are not ashamed.  Shakespeare works shows silences in addressing the possible cause of the ills caused by the supernatural and therefore the audience is left to think that the supernatural is to blame for the ills because of not giving the characters to take up their moral responsibility. This is what Shaw attacks in Shakespeare’s major play King Lear which portrays a word where men are helpless and portray futility and through rewriting this play in his play Heartbreak House.


Shaw attempts to mend aspects which Shakespeare has left out in his second hand morality, pessimism and aesthetics. Shaw rewrites the negative images in King Lear such as the storm of Captain Shotover as a symbol of activity, discovery, and rebirth and not of futile and despair struggle. The storm is also associated with youthfulness in the Heartbreak House which was associated with old age in Shakespeare’s King Lear.  The storm imagery in Heart break House is found in how Shotover reflects back on his youthful memories which this aging captain sees the storm as a symbol for the capacity to struggle by human beings and to overcome the diversities that come their way. He says, “Ive stood on the bridge for eighteen hours in a typhoon. Life here is stormier; but I can stand it (Shaw, 124). This means that by surviving the sea storms, Shotover is able to survive   the alienation and pain of the Heartbreak house.


Reference:

Roach J (1996) cities of the dead .circum Atlantic performance, New York P 80

Shaw (1939) the Chesterbelloc The new age lomon constable, p 73

Bernard S Preface to the dark lady of the sonnets p 69

Archibald H (1956) George Bernard Shaw. Man of the century, p 30

Cohn (1961) modern Shakespeare’s offshoots Edwin Wilson, p 322

Shaw B (17th April 1905) the Daily News. Drama observed, pp 1106

Shaw the preface to the Irrational Knot, represented in hornby, the complete preface, p 182

Pedersen L (1975) from Shakespearean villain to Shavian original moralist, McNamee review 45

Shaw preface to the three plays by Brieuus reprinted in Bernard Shaw. The complete preface, p 538

Hornsby, the symbolic action of the heartbreak house p 9





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