Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (91 page)

Paraphrase of a line in President Woodrow Wilson’s April 2, 1917, address to Congress upon the United States entering World War I.

Isabella makes this comparison in Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure
(act 2, scene 2).

Quotation of more of Isabella’s speech.

Reference to the French traitor Paul Bolo, who was accused of spying on his country and executed in 1918.

Explosives used to breach a gate or wall.

All of these are allegorical places or persons in John Bunyan’s
Pilgram’s Progress
(1678), which Shaw admired for its hopefulness.

This commander in chief of the British forces (1914—1921) provided Shaw with a demonstration of experimental weapons.

Marietta Alboni (1823—1894), Italian contralto opera singer.

George Barnwell is a sinner in George Lillo’s middle-class sentimental tragedy
The London Merchant
(1731); Maria Martin is the heroine of
Maria Martin, or the Red Barn Mystery,
about her murder by her lover in 1827; Sweeney Todd is the legendary “Demon Barber” of London, who slit his customers’ throats.

Actor-manager of the period (1837-1919).

French farce adapted into English by James Alberry (1838-1899).

Reference to Sir Carl Meyer, who donated £70,000 to the National Theatre in 1908.

In the person of King Edward VII, who attended Shaw’s play
John Bull’s Other Island
(1904).

J. M. Barrie (see footnote to page 320) and Shaw, who were neighbors and friends.

Cathedral.

Music-hall turn by the animal imitators the Brothers Griffiths that parodied the French tightrope walker Charles Blondin (1824—1897).

The decor of the Adelphi Theatre was by Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-1792).

Play by French dramatist Eugène Brieux, adapted into English in 1914 as
Damaged Goods,
by John Pollock.

Reference to English theater manager A. E. F. Horniman (1860-1937), who presented Shaw’s first publicly produced play,
Arms and the Man,
in 1894.

Allusion to the Bible, 2 Peter 2:22.

Quotation from the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January I, 1863.

Ironic allusion to the Bible, Isaiah 57:15.

In Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
(act 4, scene 1), when shown the descendants of the murdered Banquo in a vision, Macbeth asks if their line will “stretch out to the crack of doom?”

The explosive TNT.

Balcony-like platform projecting from the stern of a ship.

Usually spelled “centerbit”; tool for making cylindrical holes.

T squares, straightedges, and set squares are types of rulers.

Movable table legs that support table leaves.

Scrubbed with a piece of sandstone, as a ship’s deck.

New Temple Shakespeare was a popular series of Shakespeare’s plays.

Naval officer’s double-breasted blue jacket.

Idiosyncratic form of address (perhaps related to “dote”).

Dealer in supplies for ships.

Stale.

Hired transportation to and from the train station.

Simile taken from the Bible, Song of Solomon 7:4.

Velvety fabric.

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), an Italian revolutionary who sought to unify Italy under a republican government and who participated in Italy’s struggle for independence from Austrian domination.

That is, from bankruptcy, so he could once again engage in business.

Louis de Rougemont is the assumed name of nineteenth-century Swiss adventurer Louis Grin (1847- 1921), who wrote sensational, often bogus, accounts of his adventures; Hesione implies that “Marcus Darnley” (her husband’s pseudonym) is a liar.

Awards, named for Prince Albert (1819-1861, husband of Queen Victoria), for altruistic rescues from injury or death.

Saindy sage.

Expensively dressed gentleman.

Long locks of hair variously arranged, worn especially by men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Meaning she is looking for a mate.

Shares issued to the owners of a company, on which a dividend is paid at a later date.

Silly, or inconsequential.

That is, the reality is the opposite of the dream.

Shaw had rehearsed this sudden intrusion by a criminal into a country house in his earlier play
Misalliance
(1910).

Meaning he was caught fair and square.

Active court, when cases are being heard.

Torch.

Phrase from Bishop Reginald Herber’s early-nineteenth-century “Missionary Hymn.”

That is, Billy Dunn.

Peevish, or fretful.

Meaning he is deliberately downplaying his assets.

Near quotation from “Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue,” by English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (179 2- 1822); Shaw has changed “our” to “their.”

Allusion to Walt Whitman’s poem “O Captain! My Captain!” written in response to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

Allusion to English composer Ivor Novello’s popular World War I song “Keep the Home Fires Burning” (1915).