The shewing-up of Blanco Posnet ; and, Fanny's first play : definitive text
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Bibliographic Information
The shewing-up of Blanco Posnet ; and, Fanny's first play : definitive text
（Bernard Shaw library）
Penguin Books, 1987
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Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet
Fanny's first play
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Contents of Works
- The shewing-up of Blanco Posnet : a sermon in crude melodrama
- Fanny's first play : an easy play for a little theatre
Description and Table of Contents
Description
'A tearing, flaring, revivalist drama' was how Desmond MacCarthy described The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet. Set in America's Wild West and aptly subtitled 'A Sermon in Crude Melodrama', this single-act play concerns the conversion of a horse thief desperate to 'keep the devil' in him and die game. Published in 1909, it brought Shaw into conflict with the Lord Chamberlain of England, who banned it on the grounds of alleged blasphemy, and it was twelve years before the play was performed in a London theatre. In an interview Shaw commented, 'I am sorry that Fanny's First Play has destroyed the cherished legend that I am an unpopular playwright ... for the first time I have allowed a play of mine to run itself to death ... And the worst of it is it will not die.' First performed in 1911, the play is a delightful farce in which Shaw debates some of his favourite subjects: middle-class morality, marriage, parents and children and women's rights. And, deliberately concealing his authorship, Shaw took the opportunity to satirize contemporary drama critics who, he claimed, 'do not know dramatic chalk from dramatic cheese when it is no longer labelled for them.'
Table of Contents
- The Censorship
- A Readable Bluebook
- How Not To Do It
- The Story of The Joint Select Committee
- Why the Managers Love the Censorship
- A Two Guinea Insurance Policy
- Why the Government Interfered
- The Peers on the Joint Select Committee
- The Committee's Attitude towards the Theatre
- A Bad Beginning
- A Comic Interlude
- An Anti-Shavian Panic
- A Rare and Curious First Edition
- The Times to the Rescue
- The Council of Ten
- The Sentence
- The Execution
- The Rejected Statement - Part I The Witness's Qualifications
- The Definition of Immorality
- What Toleration Means
- The Case for Toleration
- The Limits to Toleration
- The Difference between Law and Censorship
- Why the Lord Chamberlain?
- The Diplomatic Objection to the Lord Chamberlain
- The Objection of Court Etiquet
- Why not an Enlightened Censorship?
- The Weakness of the Lord Chamberlain's Department
- An Enlightened Censorship still worse than the Lord Chamberlain 's
- The Practical Impossibilities of Censorship
- The Arbitration Proposal. The Rejected Statement - Part II The Licensing of Theatres - The Distinction between Licensing and Censorship
- Prostitution and Drink in Theatres
- Why the Managers dread Local Control
- Desirable Limitations of Local Control
- Summary of the Rejected Statement
- Preface resumed - Mr George Alexander's Protest
- Eliza and Her Bath
- A King's Proctor
- Counsel's Opinion
- Wanted: A New Magna Charta
- Proposed: A New Star Chamber
- Possibilities of the Proposal
- Star Chamber Sentimentality
- Anything for a Quiet Life
- Shall the Examiner of Plays Starve?
- Lord Gorell's Awakening
- Judges: Their Professional Limitations
- Conclusion
- Postscript.
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