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

Dramatic Realism
4
A Playwright’s Progress
In April 1894 London critics had exuberant praise for a new play by a
fledgling playwright; they were delighted by a hilarious, “fantastic, psychological
extravaganza” (Archer, Theatrical World 109) and enormously
amused by a “droll, fantastic farce” (Walkley 67). The ungrateful author
attacked them for not realizing that he was a “realist playwright” and that
play, Arms and the Man, an example of the strictest dramatic realism. His
self-assessment was not taken seriously. Much has changed in the one
hundred plus years since, but Shaw’s claim to be a “realist playwright” is
still not taken seriously. We grant him a better understanding of human
nature and social conditions than did his contemporaries, and we recognize
him as the greatest English language dramatist in several centuries, but
“realist”? Yes, Shaw, we say, we now understand the point that you were
making, that you understood the truth better than your critics and had a
vastly better comprehension of character psychology, but we will not make
the mistake of taking you literally. You may have come close occasionally,
and you often used realism for your own ends, but you were never a thoroughgoing
realist.
It is difficult to assess Shaw’s claim to dramatic realism. Few literary
terms prove more elusive when we attempt to trap them in neat, objective
definitions. Most important for many people, Shaw shamelessly sprinkled
his plays with incidents and actions that defy our commonsense notions of
realism. Shaw loved to twit his critics, and there is a distinct bantering tone
in “A Dramatic Realist to His Critics,” his defense of the “strict realism” of
Arms and the Man. Shaw’s irrepressible clowning always allows us to take
seriously that which we approve and dismiss the rest as an exaggeration or