George Bernard Shaw's Philosophical Comedies
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George Bernard Shaw wrote a number of what have come to be called philosophical comedies, and three of these--Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and John Bull's Other Island--have been viewed as a trilogy in this genre because all of them deal with the issue of the bankruptcy of nineteenth-century liberalism in the face of the prevailing forces of sex, nationalism, and poverty. John Bull's Other Island specifically represents a counter to the neo-Gaelic movement then under the leadership of William Butler Yeats. Indeed, the "other island" referred to in the title is Ireland, and John Bull is the name for the British government, much as we refer to the American government as Uncle Sam. Shaw does not make an overt Marxian appeal in this play, but his analysis of the exploitation of the Irish by the British demonstrates an understanding of the nature of Karl Marx's ideas on exploitation and on the alienation of the working class because they do not own what they produce. Indeed, Shaw delves into the social structure of society so thoroughly and honestly that he never presents the sort of simple analysis of class conflict that infuses much of Marxist thought. Louis Crompton is the critic who links Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and John Bull's Other Island as representing a challenge to nineteenth-century liberalism. Shaw himself linked the three plays in a German edition under the title Comedies of Science and Religion, and the plays share a common mood and a common dramat
. . .
e class consisting of the bourgeoisie developed during the feudal period, and as the bourgeoisie got the upper hand it ended all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations:
It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest. . . (Tucker 475).
Marx's language here, as in all his writings, is the language of conflict and struggle. He sees the interplay of classes in terms of domination, and at the present juncture, it is bourgeois society that dominates.
Marx's analyses tend to differentiate clearly between the classes and to indicate which class is exploitive and which the exploited. While Shaw is at times a Marxist in his political writings, he does not make distinctions as clearly as that and finds exploitation to be a human trait divided up among the classes. The working-class Irish, which in a clear Marxist conception would be the exploited proletariat ripe for revolution, is not depicted by Shaw in such simple economic terms:
As Shaw depicts them the Irish villagers are small men, mean-spirited, stingy, and self-centered, and quite incapable of extricating themselves from the economic slough
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2046
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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