w's plays one meets an incredible number of truths by
accident.

To be up to date is a paltry ambition except in an almanac, and Shaw has
sometimes talked this almanac philosophy. Nevertheless there is a real
sense in which the phrase may be wisely used, and that is in cases where
some stereotyped version of what is happening hides what is really
happening from our eyes. Thus, for instance, newspapers are never up to
date. The men who write leading articles are always behind the times,
because they are in a hurry. They are forced to fall back on their
old-fashioned view of things; they have no time to fashion a new one.
Everything that is done in a hurry is certain to be antiquated; that is
why modern industrial civilisation bears so curious a resemblance to
barbarism. Thus when newspapers say that the _Times_ is a solemn old
Tory paper, they are out of date; their talk is behind the talk in Fleet
Street. Thus when newspapers say that Christian dogmas are crumbling,
they are out of date; their talk is behind the talk in public-houses.
Now in this sense Shaw has kept in a really stirring sense up to date.
He has introduced into the theatre the things that no one else had
introduced into a theatre--the things in the street outside. The theatre
is a sort of thing which proudly sends a hansom-cab across the stage as
Realism, while everybody outside is whistling for motor-cabs.

Consider in this respect how many and fine have been Shaw's intrusions
into the theatre with the things that were really going on. Daily papers
and daily matinees were still gravely explaining how much modern war
depended on gunpowder. _Arms and the Man_ explained how much modern war
depends on chocolate. Every play and paper described the Vicar who was a
mild Conservative. _Candida_ caught hold of the modern Vicar who is an
advanced Socialist. Numberless magazine articles and society comedies
describe the emancipated woman as new and wild. Only _You Never Can
Tell_ was young enough to see that the emancipated woman is already old
and respectable. Every comic paper has caricatured the uneducated
upstart. Only the author of _Man and Superman_ knew enough about the
modern world to caricature the educated upstart--the man Straker who can
quote Beaumarchais, though he cannot pronounce him. This is the second
real and great work of Shaw--the letting in of the world on to the
stage, as the rivers were let in upon the Augean Stable. He has let a
little of