The Birdcage by John Bowen

own. “No, my dear,” Squad said. “Nothing to do with Mr. Biston. Something much more interesting. I’ve brought you
this
.”
    This
was a garnering of so far uncollected trivia by George Bernard Shaw; it had been published in a book of ninety-two pages by an American University Press. There was an annotated laundry list. There was a postcard to Messrs. Jaeger about ankle-length underwear, and another to the Herbal Food Stores asking for marigate paste. There was a formal letter, signed by Shaw but probably written by a secretary, about the rating assessment at Ayot St. Lawrence. There was a witty letter to the G.P.O., protesting at having been charged for a trunk call to Bagshot, which, Shaw claimed, he had never made. But the heart of this scholarly little book, the academic triumph of it, the genuine contribution to the
corpus
of Shaw’s work, had been the discovery and re-publication of an isolated piece of dramatic criticism written by Shaw in 1904 for
The Saturday Review
, six years after he had “opened the door” for “the incomparable Max” (the quotation marks are from Professor Benstead’s introduction). Max Beerbohm, a sudden prisoner to influenza, had persuaded Shaw to review for him a new play of social protest,
The Forgotten Men
by Edward Laverick, performed by the Independent Theatre for one Tuesday matinée in the set of a drawing-room comedy at the Avenue Theatre.
    “
For reasons which do more discredit to the public than to itself, the company was under-rehearsed. The play was underwritten . The auditorium most dismally under-peopled….
”
    “Squad, what is this?”
    “Read on, my dear. Read on.”
    “
The whole occasion might have been arranged to reassure me of the wisdom of my own decision to forswear theatrical first nights. If it had been only another
Black-Eyed Susan,
if it had been Sir Henry Irving’s disembowelled version of
Much Ado About Nothing,
why then I should have gritted my teeth and sat through it cheerfully enough, for I am man enough, I hope, to put up with a
little discomfort in the service of a sick friend. But this was torture of another sort. This was the torture of being forced to watch a murder I was unable to prevent. With the possible exceptions of myself and Mr. Granville Barker, the progressive movement in England has never produced a dramatist. The reactionaries, I may boldly say, have produced a great many, and as a pillar to the established order, the London theatre deserves a Government subsidy, but for all the disciples he has raised to follow him, Ibsen might just as well never have lived. Yet here, faltering in his own tongue as well as in those employed to speak for him, but with the promise of a voice that should be heard, was an Ibsen of the night-schools , a Polytechnic Ibsen, in Mr. Laverick. And on Tuesday afternoon, we murdered him by neglect
.”
    “A Polytechnic Ibsen…. Yes, I do see. But, Squad, how exciting!”
    “I thought you’d be pleased.”
    “Edward Laverick. I suppose you’ve never heard of him?”
    “Never. Must be dead by now. If not, he’s older than God.”
    Norah Palmer did sums on her fingers. “1904. Fifty-seven years. But unless he died immediately afterwards of disappointment, it won’t be out of copyright. Blast!” She took 1904 away from 1961 all over again in pencil on her blotting pad, and it still came to 57. Under that 57 she wrote “20?” “You know, it sounds as if he might have been quite a young man. I wonder if he’s still alive,” she said. “He needn’t be more than seventy. Though, of course, there was the 1914 war.” She drew a circle round her calculations, and then scribbled over them. “
The Forgotten Men
…. We certainly ought to have it read….
The Forgotten Men
by Edward Laverick.”
    “
Sounds made
for you.”
    “Yes, it does.”
    One of the consequences of competition among the commercial television companies in Britain is that each company has become much concerned with its