The Road to the Quintessence

Abstract

Part one, “Becoming an Ibsen Critic,” traces Shaw’s view of Ibsen from his early indifference, to the elation he felt upon hearing Ibsen’s champion William Archer read Peer Gynt aloud, to his tireless work in the Ibsen campaign, both as a journalist who extolled Ibsen as a writer of “vital truth” in contrast to the “twaddle” of the Victorian stage, and as a man of the theatre who worked with Janet Achurch, Charles Charringon, Florence Farr, and Elizabeth Robins as they introduced Ibsen to the London stage. Part two, “The Fabian Society Lecture: Shaw, Ibsen, and Socialism,” chronicles the development of the tradition that Shaw identified Ibsen as a socialist like himself and shows that this claim is utterly false.