BERNARDSHAW

and the Aesthetes

byElsie B. Adams

OHIO .STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

BERNARD SHAWAND THE AESTHETES

By Elsie B. Adams

Though a genius of his stature defies anyeasy categorization, George Bernard Shaw wasenough a man of his age not to have escapedthe undeniably pervasive influence of the Eng-lish aesthetic movement. The movement wasat its height when he began writing and pub-lishing in the 1870s and remained an activeforce in British artistic and literary circles dur-ing a substantial part of his long career.

The movement had two distinct branches,and Shaw found himself sympathetic to atleast some of the tenets of both. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, he based his art on observed phe-nomena; and, with Ruskin and WilliamMorris, he saw art as the product of a healthymilieu and a genuine religious impulse.

With the fin-de-siecle aesthetes, who oftentended to languish in a haughty and fashion-able despair that he rejected, the ever vigorousShaw held in common the conviction that artdoes not uphold conventional morality andthat art must be free from censorship. It is theartist's business, he maintained, to create with-out restriction a meaningful form, appropriateand faithful to his inner vision — to depict areshaped, motivated, and articulated realitythat, as Oscar Wilde put it, serves as a modelfor life.

Though Shaw was often at pains to dissoci-ate himself from the art-for-art's-sake factionof the aesthetic movement, he was closer to itthan he was ready to admit or realize. Thegenuine artists (as distinct from the dilettantesand artistic hangers-on) who appear in hisplays are alienated, temperamental, and sensi-tive—often hypersensitive—individuals; theydevote themselves to the perfection of theircraft and are not afraid of being thoughtimmoral.