George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

How the Theatre fared
Let us now contract our view rather violently from the Euro-
pean theatre of war to the theatre in which the fights are
sham fights, and the slain, rising the moment the curtain
has fallen, go comfortably home to supper after washing off
their rose-pink wounds. It is nearly twenty years since I was
last obliged to introduce a play in the form of a book for lack
of an opportunity of presenting it in its proper mode by a
performance in a theatre. The war has thrown me back on
this expedient. Heartbreak House has not yet reached the
stage. I have withheld it because the war has completely up-
set the economic conditions which formerly enabled serious
drama to pay its way in London. The change is not in the
theatres nor in the management of them, nor in the authors
and actors, but in the audiences. For four years the London
theatres were crowded every night with thousands of sol-
diers on leave from the front. These soldiers were not sea-
soned London playgoers. A childish experience of my own
gave me a clue to their condition. When I was a small boy I
was taken to the opera. I did not then know what an opera
was, though I could whistle a good deal of opera music. I

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Heartbreak House
had seen in my mother’s album photographs of all the great
opera singers, mostly in evening dress. In the theatre I found
myself before a gilded balcony filled with persons in evening
dress whom I took to be the opera singers. I picked out one
massive dark lady as Alboni, and wondered how soon she
would stand up and sing. I was puzzled by the fact that I was
made to sit with my back to the singers instead of facing
them. When the curtain went up, my astonishment and de-
light were unbounded.