Shaw / Baziyan Pygmalion & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-7541-7995-6
Verlag: neobooks
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Deutsch, 623 Seiten

The selected correspondence of Bernard Shaw relating to the play Pygmalion contains 272 letters and entries, written between 1896 and 1950, and edited by a leading contemporary Shavian Vitaly Baziyan. This publication from Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, Constable and Company Ltd.: London, 1920 is a handmade reproduction from the original edition, and remains as true to the original work as possible. The original edition was processed manually by means of a classic editing which ensures the quality of publications and the unrestricted enjoyment of reading. Here are some inspirational book quotes from the book: 'Pygmalion is essentially a star play: unless you have an actress of extraordinary qualifications and popularity, failure is certain.' 'Pygmalion is my last potboiler. In future I will write plays that will not be understood for 25 years, if ever.' 'Pygmalion is my most steady source of income: it saved me from ruin during the war, and still brings in a substantial penny every week.' 'Am quite sensible, quite able, quite myself, and yet a lad playing with you on the mountains and unable to feel where you begin and I leave off. And if you tell me that you feel like that the sky will not be high enough for me (isnt that a nice Irish phrase?) Heavens! how delicious it is to make love to you!!!!!' ' Very well, go: the loss of a woman is not the end of the world. The sun shines: it is pleasant to swim: it is good to work: my soul can stand alone.' 'Last week a woman poisoned me with a war substitute for cocoa, as a result of which I not only suffered internal convulsions. . . but pitched head foremost down a flight of 17 stairs and landed on a my valuable head, which now looks like a composite of Michael Angelo' Moses and Shakspear...' 'I accused Mrs Patrick Campbell of having given me the dope in a cup of some stuff called Ovaltine, into which she put about half a canister. If I mentioned this in my letter, Ovaltine would get £20,000 damages out of us; and Mrs Campbell would be held up as Mrs Lucretia Borgia.' 'I am a Classic. I have never pretended to be anything else.' '...the amazing fact that I have ever been mistaken for anything else is due solely to the ignorance of literature prevalent among journalists who have no time for reading, and, indeed, no taste for it: an ignorance which enables managers to mutilate, travesty, and misrepresent Shakespear without detection or rebuke...' 'No art can have power for good without having power for evil also. If you teach a child to write, you thereby teach it to forge cheques as much as to write poems.' 'As you very properly say, the whole world is a fool; and I alone am right. Otherwise, what am I?' 'No I dont miss your love-making-and your sonnets! I know you so well Joey-and just how much you appreciated me-and how little-' 'I love you soulfully & bodyfully, properly and improperly, every way that a woman can be loved.' 'You know you always thought me a fool, and ...that never did I think your love making other than what it was-sympathy, kindness, and the wit and folly of genius.' 'How much would you know about me if you read what people write about me instead of going to the original?' 'If you are really in love, this will not make you yawn.' 'The more unforeseen the development the better.' 'Trust your inspiration. If you have none, sweep a crossing. No one is compelled to write plays.' 'All film adventurers denounce one another as crooks, mostly quite justly.'

Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and influencer. Shaw is one of only two people in the world to have won both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shaw, Bernard

Baziyan, Vitaly

Leseproben

I drove into Dublin today and cursed every separate house as I passed. All the old longing for beauty and blessing gets stirred up in me; and as I come back into the country you are no longer that popular actress Mrs Bella Donna, but my girl, my beauty, my darling, barefooted, dusty petticoated, or my mother of angels, or a dozen lovely wild things that would! greatly astonish the young lions of the St James’s [Theatre] stalls.

They have sent me a dummy copy of the new paper; and it’s SO ugly. Quite damnable. Unless one does everything oneself—but bless you, I don’t care....nor ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Cammabelle Lee.

So if you are idly curious as to whether I am still in love with Stella, the answer is yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes and a million times yes. Cannot help it. Am quite sensible, quite able, quite myself, and yet a lad playing with you on the mountains and unable to feel where you begin and I leave off. And if you tell me that you feel like that the sky will not be high enough for me (isnt that a nice Irish phrase?) Heavens! how delicious it is to make love to you!!!!!

G.B.S.

43/ To Harley Granville Barker

10th April 1913

...I cant fix up Pygmalion for the Kingsway [Theatre], not being the manager of that temple of art. Mrs Pattikins [Patrick Campbell] is back at 33 Kensington Square; and you had better approach her on the subject. She does not doubt Barrie’s fidelity; but she does (I gather) doubt whether she will be able to hold out if his play is not to be produced until after the next Peter Pan [by James Barrie] revival. The interim is yours.

[Robert] Loraine cables for permission to do the first act of [Man and] Superman in vaudeville. I have replied “An excellent idea.”

Forbes[-Robertson] announces Caesar [and Cleopatra] for Monday, when I shall be speaking in Gravesend, and Thursday, when I shall be speaking in Ipswich.

Is Wish Wynne too expensive to understudy Galatea? If so, we shall have to insure Mrs P. [Patrick Campbell] as all our eggs will be in one basket.

The New Statesman looks as if it would devour me. I have had to provide three articles for the first number. I’m not going to sign anything in it. Gerald Gould has done a good article on the censor for the second number—several excellent new jibes.

I wired today that I would sign the whip.

I note that your boat is on the shore and your bark is on the sea.

G.B.S.

44/ To Mrs Patrick Campbell

26th April 1913

BUSINESS

It is not certain that [James] Barrie’s sketch [Half an Hour] is gone irretrievably to Miss [Irene] Vanbrugh. She is engaged for so long ahead with [his] Rosalind and other matters, that it may be possible for you to get it back again. In that case the difficulty (I suppose) is with the [London] Hippodrome, which is doing well enough with [Hullo,] Ragtime [by Louis Hirsch] (as I guess) to dispense with a new and expensive attraction. At all events I advise you to ascertain at once from Barrie, whether he can enable you to fill up the summer with a variety engagement if you consent to sign on at once for [his The Legend of] Leonora in September at the Duke of York[’s Theatre]. Better tell him that you will not insist on £300 a week at the halls. It is too much.

I further advise you to regard the Duke of Yorks offer as of very great importance, and to make Barrie feel that nothing but the urgent need of feeding your starving infants prevents you from engaging yourself for it. If you secure it, the contract will be something to overdraw on. The chances of your getting another big play for production in June are practically negligible. In fact, I wont let you throw away Pygmalion if [George] Alexander will not play, and if you are free until September only. I have written to him to say that I cannot have so promising a potboiler used as a mere stopgap to tide him over a few weeks—for that is what, it comes to, though he does not let himself see it in that indelicate way.

In, short, sign on with Barrie and [Charles] Frohman, and take your chance as to the interval. Remember that anything you do in the meantime may fail; and if it did, your stocks might fall, and B. and F. change their minds. Therefore, again, make sure of the Duke of Yorks. Pygmalion can wait. If you want a sentimental reason for that, to rehearse Pyg. now would probably kill me. (Alexander might stiffen his bill by putting on Overruled as an afterpiece, you and he playing Mrs Juno and Gregory.)

G.B.S.

[PS] I shall be here until 3.30 (15.30) 8131 City.

45/ To Mrs Patrick Campbell

28th April 1913

—BUSINESS—

Attention!

[George] Alexander says you have promised to sign for the run if he plays Higgins. This means that you love Alexander more than me, and your sudden fancy for an appearance at the St James’s [Theatre] more than either of us.

Now listen. You have the two best plays and parts in London in the hollow of your bosom. Nothing but your own extreme folly and wickedness can deprive you of both of them. They will provide for your old age. You are already a grandmother; and as such I shall regard you for business purposes.

Barrie’s play [Half an Hour] is the surest and most lucrative. And Barrie is the author whom you can offend if you slight his offer. Well, if you sign for the run at the St. James’s [Theatre] you will be unable to engage yourself for the D. of Y’s [The Duke of York’s Theatre]. You will lose Barrie’s play and he will never look at you again. And I will give you up as a poor creature with no character, who cannot wait as I have waited.

If you sign for the D. of Y’s at once you secure Barrie’s play and Barrie’s regard; and you have Pygmalion to follow it up with or to replace it if it fails.

Therefore you must do as I order you. I am not, as an author, accustomed to argue with my stage slaves. Send for [Dion] Boucicault and sign. And the other play shall be added unto you after the run of Barrie’s.

In the meantime you can live on my adoration, on a sketch which I will write for you at the Palace [Theatre], or on a retaining fee on a/c of Pygmalion, whichever you please.

In haste

G.B.S.

46/ Mrs. Patrick Campbell to Bernard Shaw

April 1913

PASSIONATE LOVE LETTER

You dont understand my way of doing business. What about your telegram and Alexanders letter last night signed by us both? a fine and witty composition that letter if you like!—

Now its up to you to make everyone happy. Persuade Lillah [McCarthy] to play ‘Eliza’ when I am bound to go. Lillah can show the world how her husband’s Reinhardt method enables her to play better than I.—Alexander gets your play—and my Bank gets its money—I get hard work—no pence because all the pence I make are claimed.

—Send for Boucicault indeed—I have written to C. Frohman to say I am free for [The Legend of] Leonora whenever he wants me.

Did you think I ever meant to let either part go if I could help it? its taken me 20 years to make you or Barrie think I was worth speaking to far less writing for—that fine play Belladonna [by James Bernard Fagan]at last convinced you!!!!

Barrie has promised me the Australian rights of his play—I would like the provincial as well as the Australian rights of yours—but these things dont worry me, its only other people who think it so awful that I have only a “housemaid”—and no motor etc. etc

—Alexander was very amiable to me and to [my daughter-in-law] Helen last night—I couldn’t keep my 6.30 appointment—[John] Drinkwater had sent me a box for the Kingsway—so we went to him afterwards he gave us wine and cake and showed us his picture when he was a baby!—

Do make me a present of a concertina at once! I would like to play it well. I hope Georgina [Mrs Campbell’s pet dog] wont mind the noise, or Stella [Mrs Beech née Stella Patrick Campbell, daughter of Mrs Patrick Campbell] and her baby arrive until I am proficient.

My love to you

Stella

47/ Mrs. Patrick Campbell to Bernard Shaw

4th May 1913

I hope your poor head is better—on the whole I think God lets you off lightly—

I told Alexander on the phone...