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How He Lied to Her Husband by George Bernard Shaw
page 4 of 36 (11%)
not accepted engagements to appear for a season in the vaudeville
theatres [the American equivalent of our music halls], where he
played How He Lied to Her Husband comparatively unhampered by the
press censorship of the theatre, or by that sophistication of the
audience through press suggestion from which I suffer more,
perhaps, than any other author. Vaudeville authors are
fortunately unknown: the audiences see what the play contains and
what the actor can do, not what the papers have told them to
expect. Success under such circumstances had a value both for Mr
Daly and myself which did something to console us for the very
unsavory mobbing which the New York press organized for us, and
which was not the less disgusting because we suffered in a good
cause and in the very best company.

Mr Daly, having weathered the storm, can perhaps shake his soul
free of it as he heads for fresh successes with younger authors.
But I have certain sensitive places in my soul: I do not like
that word "ordure." Apply it to my work, and I can afford to
smile, since the world, on the whole, will smile with me. But to
apply it to the woman in the street, whose spirit is of one
substance with our own and her body no less holy: to look your
women folk in the face afterwards and not go out and hang
yourself: that is not on the list of pardonable sins.

POSTSCRIPT. Since the above was written news has arrived from
America that a leading New York newspaper, which was among the
most abusively clamorous for the suppression of Mrs Warren's
Profession, has just been fined heavily for deriving part of its
revenue from advertisements of Mrs Warren's houses.

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