Plays Unpleasant Read Free Page B

young man that the inheritance of the woman he loves was acquired immorally. In the original, his dilemma was resolved by the intervention of a major national economic crisis, so that the heroine’s father might be ruined and the problem removed. In the first Archer–Shaw version (originally titled ‘The Way to a Woman’s Heart’) the hero has to confront his problem, which he does by literally pitching the father’s money into the river at Remagen (hence thesecond Shaw–Archer title ‘Rhinegold’). In the final and completed Shaw version, however, the hero does not behave heroically, not least because the heroine chooses to behave in a most surprising way.
    By the end of the first act of
Widowers’ Houses
, young Harry Trench has become engaged to Blanche Sartorius, whose brisk and unsentimental attitude to things (including Dr Trench himself) we have learnt to enjoy and admire. We have also discovered that there is a problem with the means by which Blanche’s father amassed his fortune. In the second act, Trench discovers that Sartorius is a slum landlord, and, like the heroes of both
Ceinture Doree
and ‘Rhinegold’, proclaims that he cannot possibly accept this tainted treasure, proposing to his fiancée (without, being a Victorian gentleman, entirely explaining why) that they live off his income alone.
    Then two unexpected, but by no means implausible, things happen. The first is that Blanche refuses to abandon her inheritance, on the impeccably feminist grounds that it’s her money not his, that she does not wish to be absolutely dependent on her husband, and that if (as she suspects) this is an excuse to renege on his commitment to her then this is ‘so like a man’. The second is that Sartorius reveals that Trench’s own income comes from mortgages on Sartorius’ property – in order to free himself of it he would have not only to impoverish his wife but bankrupt himself.
    This situation is left unresolved at the second interval, but given a further twist in Act III, when Sartorius is faced with a choice rich in irony – if he improves his hellish properties he might make a killing from compulsory purchases by (yes, here they are again) the London County Council, but he can only do so by risking Trench’s capital and thus his livelihood. The only way this conundrum can be resolved is if Trench overcomes his scruples and marries Blanche after all.
    Now this doesn’t
quite
work in plot terms; basically, Trench faces the same moral dilemma twice, though in the secondcase it is not so much a dilemma as a
fait accompli
. But anyone who has attempted to make such material work will recognize that Shaw has presented a complicated financial plot in a way that is plausible, intriguing of itself, and consistently clear; at each stage, the plotting faces the characters with unavoidable practical choices rich in moral meaning; and at the climax of the play he has complicated an already potent situation with a surprising, ironical, and yet plausible twist (the fact that in order to make an even fatter profit out of compulsory purchase, it suddenly becomes in Sartorius’ interests to become a model landlord). All of which communicates Shaw’s message, that capitalism has made everyone complicit in its evils whether they like it or not; and that the alternative is not to attempt to live an individually moral life, but to change society. Which Trench cannot do, so we, by implication, must take on the task.
    Having brought that off, there is a sense of Shaw giving up: in order to top and tail Trench’s surrender, he must bring Trench and Blanche back together, which he does in a long speech by Blanche in which the text is abuse and the subtext animal sexuality (‘It suddenly flashes on him’, Shaw instructs the Trench actor disarmingly, ‘that all this ferocity is erotic: that she is making love to him’). Silent until