George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

1913-1916
HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK
HALL
Where Heartbreak House Stands
H
EARTBREAK
 H
OUSE
 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 ama-
teurs 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 fero-
ciously 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

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4
Heartbreak House
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 volup-
tuaries; 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 ex-
ploiting and even flattering their charm.