The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heartbreak House, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Heartbreak House

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Posting Date: January 13, 2009 [EBook #3543]
Release Date: November, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEARTBREAK HOUSE ***

Produced by Eve Sobol

HEARTBREAK HOUSE

A FANTASIA IN THE RUSSIAN MANNER ON ENGLISH THEMES

By Bernard Shaw

1913-1916

HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL

Where Heartbreak House Stands

Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this
preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When the
play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional
diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy
even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian playwright, Tchekov, had
produced four fascinating dramatic studies of Heartbreak House, of
which three, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been
performed in England. Tolstoy, in his Fruits of Enlightenment, had shown
us through it in his most ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did
not waste any sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe
was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and
futilization in that overheated drawingroom atmosphere was delivering
the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and
energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken
it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house
standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and
amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated
the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by
seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they
were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these
charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold
up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple in
exploiting and even flattering their charm.

The Inhabitants

Tchekov's plays, being less lucrative than swings and roundabo