Farfetched Fables
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''Farfetched Fables'' (1948) is a collection of six short plays by
George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
in which he outlines several of his most idiosyncratic personal ideas. The fables are preceded by a long preface. The ideas in the plays and the preface have been called the "violent unabashed prejudices of an eccentric".Archibald Henderson, ''George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century'', Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1956, p.576.


Creation

Shaw intended to produce a series of plays summing up his own most unfashionable and unpopular ideas. The result is summed up by
Archibald Henderson Archibald Henderson (January 21, 1783 – January 6, 1859) was the longest-serving Commandant of the Marine Corps, serving from 1820 to 1859. His name is learned by all recruits at Marine recruit training (Boot Camp) as the "Grand old man of th ...
as a hodge-podge of utopian, puritanical and authoritarian concepts:


Plot

The plays take the form of five dialogues and one monologue in which the various topics are discussed. In the first fable, set shortly after World War II, a Jewish chemist decides that the atomic bomb is too clumsy a weapon, and invents a form of poison gas that is lighter than air. In the second fable the British government refuses to buy the gas, so the scientist sells it to South Africa, which uses it on London. British politicians are discussing the ways South Africa has been using the gas, but find themselves being eliminated by it. These events unleash a "dark age". In the third fable, set in a socialist society of the future, scientists have developed techniques to exactly measure human capabilities. Two subjects are tested in the Anthropometric Laboratory by members of the "Upper Ten", a ruling elite. Social status is determined by these scientific tests. Those who are "dangerous and incorrigable" are liquidated. In the fourth fable, set in the further future, the Commissioner of Diets dictates into a machine a report about how humans can now live entirely on air and water. Having started by eliminating meat from their diet, they have progressed to live without food altogether, inspired by a mythical ancient sage who lived before the "dark age" and whose name is variously known as "Shelley, Shakespear and Shavius". This fable is followed by a dialogue between two men, a woman and a hermaphrodite, who discuss the disgusting way in which humans used to reproduce, explaining that it is now all done in a laboratory, without the need to "practice personal contacts which I would rather not describe". The hermaphrodite speaks of the desire to escape physicality altogether and become pure mind. In the final fable a group of students discuss the existence of purely disembodied beings who live entirely for "knowledge and power" and who use embodied persons to help them achieve it. They note that these beings might easily kill them: "for the pursuit of knowledge and power involves the slaughter and destruction of everything that opposes it". However, they are needed by these beings to be "destroyers of vermin", as "we have to execute criminals who have no conscience and are incorrigible". At this point one of the disembodied beings appears, taking the form of angel-like creature, and announces himself as "Raphael". Raphael explains that physical pleasures revolt him, and that he is dedicated to purely intellectual passions.


Production

Shaw never intended that the play would have mainstream theatre performance. He gave a copy to the Shaw society to organise a reading for its members. A small private production was organised at the tiny
Watergate Theatre, London The Watergate Theatre in London existed in 1949-56, located on Buckingham Street, Westminster. In 1949 Elizabeth Denby, together with the theatre director and playwright Velona Pilcher, the writer Elizabeth Sprigge, and Jane Drew converted a site ...
on September 6, 1950, directed by Shaw himself, two months before his death. A public performance followed a year later after Shaw's death in
Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
at the radical People's Theatre, which had a long association with Shaw.


Interpretations

Matthew Yde sees the play as essentially a reworking of ''
Back to Methuselah ''Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch)'' by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface (''The Infidel Half Century'') and a series of five plays: ''In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden)'', ''The Gospel of the Brothers Bar ...
'', containing the same ideas about "creative evolution" articulated in the form of a myth that draws on Christian traditions. The events of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, though alluded to, seem to have had no effect on him: "the stunning revelations about Nazi death camps seem to have made no impression on Shaw, nor have altered his belief in the importance of state liquidation of public enemies in the least." In a symposium discussion following a 1992 performance of the play at the Milwaukee Shaw Festival,
Martin Esslin , birth_date = , birth_place = Budapest, Austria-Hungary , death_date = , death_place = London, England, UK , education = University of ViennaMax Reinhardt Seminar, ...
said that the play indicated that Shaw still saw the future in "nineteenth century terms. It's almost as if someone from the 1880s has suddenly woken up in the 1940s". Esslin considered it to be a "very despairing" play, but clearly drawing on Hegelian ideas of a dialectic of the spirit.
Stanley Weintraub Stanley Weintraub (April 17, 1929 – July 28, 2019) was an American historian and biographer and an expert on George Bernard Shaw. Early life Weintraub was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 1929. He was the eldest child of Benja ...
argued that Shaw was far less despairing than his Fabian colleague
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''
Chaim Weizmann Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( he, חיים עזריאל ויצמן ', russian: Хаим Евзорович Вейцман, ''Khaim Evzorovich Veytsman''; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israel ...
.Bernard Frank Dukore (ed), ''1992, Shaw and the Last Hundred Years'', Penn State Press, 1994, pp.83-91 Weizmann had previously been portrayed in similar terms in Shaw's 1936 "playlet" '' Arthur and the Acetone''.


References

{{authority control 1948 plays Plays by George Bernard Shaw