The Coraddi, Vol. 36

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Excerpt from The Coraddi, Vol. 36: November, 1931 HE title of this paper may, to the uninitiated, connote a Shaw quite unlike the playwright as he is known to the theatres, newspapers, and one-hour college courses. To some minds the word sociologist pic tures a slim, nervous young man with a Christian Endeavor voice who goes about pulling waifs out of snowdrifts and adjusting delinquent youth. But such a caricature is yet to be applied to Shaw. To assert that he is a sentimentalist is a consummation devoutly to be avoided, to avow that he is not is a work Of supererogation. Rather his salient wit, clever quips, and devastating satire furnish efficient instruments for the dissection Of the abuses and dissimulations of society. Yet his tactics are paradoxical: he hands not buns to the breadlines but puns to the headlines. In Mrs. Warren's Profession Shaw deals with the age-old problem which, since the days of Greek hetairas, Egyptian dancing girls, and courtesans of Louis xiv's glittering regime, has furnished the world with scandalous morsels for conversation. In the words Of Mrs. Warren, the rich owner of hotels in Berlin, Brussels, and other metropolitan centres, Shaw extenuates the position of prostitutes and at the same time jabs Sharply at Philistine respectability (his favorite literary sport). I sup pose, she says, Our father was a well-fed man, mother pretended he was a gentleman, but I don't know. The other two were only half-sisters undersized, ugly, starved looking, hardworking, honest poor creatures they were the respectable ones. Is respectability sufficient reward for such abject poverty and discomfort? The tinselled pleasures so dearly paid for by indiscreet ladies in sentimental ballads and moving pictures seem to possess more compensations than the privilege of working oneself to death in a factory to remain a decent woman. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.