whatever. But here and there occurs a scrap of intensely insusceptible,
intensely resistant material; and that stubborn scrap grapples with the
current and will not let it through until it has made itself useful to
you as those two vital qualities of literature, light and heat. Now if I
am to be no mere copper wire amateur but a luminous author, I must also
be a most intensely refractory person, liable to go out and to go wrong
at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary possibilities. These are
the faults of my qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike
myself so much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment
to pitch into me with zest, I feel unspeakably relieved and obliged. But
I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take myself as I am and
get what work I can out of myself. All this you will understand; for
there is community of material between us: we are both critics of life
as well as of art; and you have perhaps said to yourself when I have
passed your windows, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." An awful
and chastening reflection, which shall be the closing cadence of this
immoderately long letter from yours faithfully,

G. BERNARD SHAW.

WOKING, 1903




ACT I

Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, opening the morning letters. The study,
handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of means. Not
a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are at least two