any work of art. There is nothing wrong about being sick; but
if Bernard Shaw wrote a play in which all the characters expressed
their dislike of animal food by vomiting on the stage, I think we should
be justified in saying that the thing was outside, not the laws of
morality, but the framework of civilised literature. The instinctive
movement of repulsion which everyone has when hearing of the operation
in _Waste_ is not an ethical repulsion at all. But it is an aesthetic
repulsion, and a right one.

But I have only dwelt on this particular fighting phase because it
leaves us facing the ultimate characteristics which I mentioned first.
Bernard Shaw cares nothing for art; in comparison with morals, literally
nothing. Bernard Shaw is a Puritan and his work is Puritan work. He has
all the essentials of the old, virile and extinct Protestant type. In
his work he is as ugly as a Puritan. He is as indecent as a Puritan. He
is as full of gross words and sensual facts as a sermon of the
seventeenth century. Up to this point of his life indeed hardly anyone
would have dreamed of calling him a Puritan; he was called sometimes an
anarchist, sometimes a buffoon, sometimes (by the more discerning stupid
people) a prig. His attitude towards current problems was felt to be
arresting and even indecent; I do not think that anyone thought of
connecting it with the old Calvinistic morality. But Shaw, who knew
better than the Shavians, was at this moment on the very eve of
confessing his moral origin. The next book of plays he produced
(including The _Devil's Disciple_, _Captain Brassbound's Conversion_,
and _Caesar and Cleopatra_), actually bore the title of _Plays for
Puritans_.

The play called _The Devil's Disciple_ has great merits, but the merits
are incidental. Some of its jokes are serious and important, but its
general plan can only be called a joke. Almost alone among Bernard
Shaw's plays (except of course such things as _How he Lied to her
Husband_ and _The Admirable Bashville_) this drama does not turn on any
very plain pivot of ethical or philosophical conviction. The artistic
idea seems to be the notion of a melodrama in which all the conventional
melodramatic situations shall suddenly take unconventional turns. Just
where the melodramatic clergyman would show courage he appears to show
cowardice; just where the melodramatic sinner would confess his love he
confesses his indifference. This is a little too like the Shaw of