Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

A Playwright’s Progress 115
find noble and thus sees as her “duty” not to respect. They fence with each
other, he delighted both with the joy of being in love and his imagined skill
as a duelist of sex, she struggling with her unconscious determination not
to lose him in conflict with her humiliation at finding herself no longer
mistress of her will. When her inner battle appears on the point of breaking
her and it seems she must either abandon Valentine or be defeated by
him, she saves herself and dramatically reverses the situation. Suddenly,
she instinctively resolves to put her reason and her strength in the service
of her will: she firmly grasps Valentine with both hands and kisses him. He
instantly realizes that she is now totally in command and that while Valentine
the lover has gained his beloved, Valentine the duelist of sex has been
ignominiously defeated. She promptly orders him, to the dumbstruck
amazement of all, “Tell my mother that we have agreed to marry one another”
(1:791). The struggle, the conflict of the play, is over when Gloria
learns how to bring harmony to her soul.
Of the minor characters of this play the most interesting from the point
of view of a distinctly Shavian dramaturgy are the delightful twins, Dolly
and Phil. They share Gloria’s “modern” education but Valentine’s frivolous
and carefree attitude. Like Giuseppe (albeit in a far, far different way),
they are witty and observant without purpose or passion. Like him, too,
they are brilliant and self-conscious performers. Their lack of engagement
or commitment only enhances their extraordinary powers of observation,
and their remarkable cleverness and brilliant sense of self-presentation almost
totally conceal their callowness and lack of heart. In them good
breeding and a thoughtful, rational upbringing have produced a peculiar
variety of “lady” and “gentleman” stripped of the old-fashioned restraints
of Victorian respectability. The result is Harlequin and Columbine, roles
they most effectively play whether in traditional costumes or their modern,
fashionable equivalent. They provide the tone of brilliant gaiety that
resonates throughout the play, providing both the charm of youthful wit
to season the irrationality of sexual passion and the metallic hollowness to
accent the fatal gap in Gloria’s “scientific” education.
Of course, Shaw does not always people the backgrounds of his plays
with theatrical but shallow wits and amiable incompetents, figures like
Johnny in Misalliance who can be dismissed as, in Lina’s words, “what is
called a chump; but . . . not a bad sort of chump” (4:250). At times the needs
of the dramatic situation demand something else. Shaw usually avoids portraying
angry, bitter, and hateful people, but in The Devil’s Disciple, for