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Shaw's Debt to Scribe

1961; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 76; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/460551

1938-1530

Stephen S. Stanton,

Literature Analysis and Criticism

It is Now generally known that Bernard Shaw had no love for Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791-1861), father of the French pièce bien faite (“well-made” play), or Scribe's well-known disciple Victorien Sardou, whose technical bravura Shaw scornfully dubbed “Sardoodledom.” Perhaps his most outspoken recorded condemnation of the prolific playwright and his factory of collaborators is this (undated) outburst to Archibald Henderson: “Why the devil should a man write like Scribe when he can write like Shakespeare or Molière, Aristophanes or Euripides? Who was Scribe that he should dictate to me or anyone else how a play should be written?” To be sure, a good many literary critics of the past century have disparaged this form of drama, combining a complex plot with a maximum of theatrical ingenuity and an absolute minimum of thought. But Shaw's call to arms against the well-made play and its popular and successful founder echoed so loudly over so long a period that it could not help but arouse many disinterested spectators. No quarter would be, nor could be, given to this mountebank, this cheap magician of the stage.