This comedy of manners is not satire, for it is not mimetic. ‘Good society’ is a
pretext for an imaginary world, though Wilde’s wit relies upon social nuance for some
of its effects. Though he acknowledged W. S. Gilbert, Wilde’s comedy is personal and
extraordinarily verbal, perfecting the techniques of his own conversation.
Lady Bracknell later tries to prevent her nephew Algernon from marrying Cicely
Cardew, but on learning that she has £130,000 ‘in the Funds’, observes: ‘Miss Cardew
seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her. Few girls of the
present day have any really solid qualities, any of the qualities that last, and improve
with time. We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces.’ She commends the 18-year-
old Cicely’s habit of admitting to 20 at evening parties: ‘You are perfectly right in
making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate
about her age. It looks so calculating ....’ The assumption that society depends upon
untruth is the basis of this logic: ‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity
is the vital thing.’ Echoes of Wilde can be found in the parodist Max Beerbohm
(1872–1956). His aunts, butlers, bachelors and debutantes also appear in the weight-
less world of P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975).
Wilde reunited literature and theatre after a century in which poets from Shelley
to Tennyson wrote poetical plays, little staged and largely forgotten. After Sheridan,
the theatre fell into the hands of stock companies, doing farces or sub-literary melo-
drama, vehicles for actors such as Edmund Kean and William Macready. After
making his name in The Bells (1870), the actor-manager Henry Irving dominated in
London, putting on lavish Shakespeares with Ellen Terry. In Lyceum productions,
acting came first, staging second, text last. Act V ofThe Merchant of Venice was
dropped so that Irving, playing Shylock, could achieve maximum pathos.
In comedy,London Assurance (1841) by the Irishman Dion Boucicault was an
effective piece,but ripped-off French farces were the staple fare. The work of the
gr eat Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), was first performed in England in 1880
in translation by William Archer. Recovery began with Sir Arthur Pinero (1855–
1934), whose The Second Mrs Tanquera y (1893) Shaw compared to the ‘culminating
chapters of a singularly powerful and original novel’; Mrs Patrick Campbell played
Mrs T., a ‘woman with a past’ (i.e. the mistress of rich men). But Ibsen is more than
social-realism-with-moral-problem, and the plays of Wilde and Shaw are minor
co mpared with some of the foreign plays that were beginning to be seen in London.
Reading the plays of the Russian Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Shaw said, made him
want to tear up his own; he resisted the temptation.George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw(1856–1950) was an honest if perverse man who made the
most of his talent, contributing to British cultural life long and vigorously. In 1876,
with his music-teacher mother, he came to London from Dublin, where he had been
a clerk for seven years. This move to the metropolis has been made by many writers
already mentioned in these pages, from the time of Shakespeare onwards, a high
proportion of them being Irish or Scots. Shaw worked long as a critic of music and
then of drama, a champion of Wagner and Ibsen. A follower of Carlyle and the Life
Force, he combined socialism with hero-worship of strong men and emancipated
women.After five novels, he wrote many plays, beginning with Wido wers’Houses
(1892), an attack on slum landlords, and Mrs Warren’s Profession, a comic satire
exposing the economic incentives to prostitution in a capitalist society. Mrs Warren316 11 · LATE VICTORIAN LITERATURE: 1880–1900
George Bernard Shaw
(1856–1950) Chief plays:
Arms and the Man, The
Devil’s Disciple(1894), You
Never Can Tell(1898), Mrs
Warren’s Profession(1898),
John Bull’s Other Island
(1904), Man and Superman,
Major Barbara(1905),
Androcles and the Lion
(1912), Pygmalion(1913),
Heartbreak House(1919),
Saint Joan(1923), In Good
King Charles’s Golden Days
(1939).