|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: As to the voluptuaries, I can assure them that the playwright,
whether he be myself or another, will always disappoint them.
The drama can do little to delight the senses: all the apparent
instances to the contrary are instances of the personal
fascination of the performers. The drama of pure feeling is no
longer in the hands of the playwright: it has been conquered by
the musician, after whose enchantments all the verbal arts seem
cold and tame. Romeo and Juliet with the loveliest Juliet is
dry, tedious, and rhetorical in comparison with Wagner's Tristan,
even though Isolde be both fourteen stone and forty, as she often
is in Germany. Indeed, it needed no Wagner to convince the
|
