om the grave baby to the
grinning skull; everything practical is a practical joke. But throughout
Shaw's comedies, curiously enough, there is a certain kicking against
this great doom of laughter. For instance, it is the first duty of a
man who is in love to make a fool of himself; but Shaw's heroes always
seem to flinch from this, and attempt, in airy, philosophic revenge, to
make a fool of the woman first. The attempts of Valentine and Charteris
to divide their perceptions from their desires, and tell the woman she
is worthless even while trying to win her, are sometimes almost
torturing to watch; it is like seeing a man trying to play a different
tune with each hand. I fancy this agony is not only in the spectator,
but in the dramatist as well. It is Bernard Shaw struggling with his
reluctance to do anything so ridiculous as make a proposal. For there
are two types of great humorist: those who love to see a man absurd and
those who hate to see him absurd. Of the first kind are Rabelais and
Dickens; of the second kind are Swift and Bernard Shaw.

So far as Shaw has spread or helped a certain modern reluctance or
_mauvaise honte_ in these grand and grotesque functions of man I think
he has definitely done harm. He has much influence among the young men;
but it is not an influence in the direction of keeping them young. One
cannot imagine him inspiring any of his followers to write a war-song or
a drinking-song or a love-song, the three forms of human utterance
which come next in nobility to a prayer. It may seem odd to say that the
net effect of a man so apparently impudent will be to make men shy. But
it is certainly the truth. Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul;
a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable
and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he
were without pride he would not care. Now the main purpose of Shaw's
theoretic teaching is to declare that we ought to fulfil these great
functions of life, that we ought to eat and drink and love. But the main
tendency of his habitual criticism is to suggest that all the
sentiments, professions, and postures of these things are not only comic
but even contemptibly comic, follies and almost frauds. The result would
seem to be that a race of young men may arise who do all these things,
but do them awkwardly. That which was of old a free and hilarious
function becomes an important and embarrassing necessity. Let