Music Appreciation

Shaw in a minor chord

The Music Cure by George Bernard Shaw

Try to think — really try to think — if you know anything about the Marconi Company. Do you know its founder, know its major product and its major service? Do you know the Marconi scandal, one of those buried in history and whose essence is entirely unknown to more than, say, five in a hundred of those living in the second quarter of the twenty-first century?

If you know anything about any of that, answer this question. How funny is that situation, really? How much humour can truly be rung, like a little water out of a damp sponge, out of this one for others to sup? Think about that and then think that Bernard Shaw, as a curtain-raiser for a play by Chesterton, penned a little comic episode about the scandal, a bit of time after its very big blowing up, and satirised the thing rather broadly. How much are you going to laugh? Who among your friends would possibly laugh?

I’d argue that the play does not have the juice; it is not vital and refreshing. It’s stale and old news and it’s almost impossible to read. Which is a great pity. Not because I think the Marconi scandal could possibly supply — except in the hands of one of the world’s most gifted — immense and untapped comedy. But that other things this play happens to touch upon could have gone further, if it had been done with a skilful hand.

It starts promisingly, I regret to say. A young man, a politician, is being treated by his doctor for nervous exhaustion, and the doctor makes the mistake of telling him to forget the scandal he was involved in; it does not matter. You clearly meant no harm, the doctor says, in purchasing those shares.

The man then grabs the doctor almost by the lapels and says, yes, I meant to do no harm when I purchased those shares. I meant no harm at all in purchasing those shares. It’s an awful thing that so many doubt me when I say I meant no harm in purchasing those shares — when it’s clear I meant no harm, no harm at all, when I purchased those shares.

The doctor regrets that he’s set the man off again and says that he didn’t need to be told.

You’ve already told me about four hundred times, the doctor says.

At which the young man says that it’s a pity people keep asking him so many questions about it, then, for as he’s already said, he clearly meant no harm —

And the doctor either bangs his head violently on the wall or pulls open a window and launches himself from it — in some plays; but in this one he merely prescribes his patient a few drugs and tells him to get his rest.

This starts well. But it soon trails off.

There is one or other comic episodes as the young man is revealed to be a secretary of state, to be an idiot, to be the son of a duke and the anticipated inheritor of an immense estate. And also to be mad — either natally or, as may be possible, as a result of the opium and the other pills his kind, kind doctor has given him.

The doctor suggests that the young man might want to play himself some music. He was a fine pianist in his way. But the young man says that he hates music, cannot stand music, is terrified of music, and that if anyone plays it, especially himself, he will scream.

Before the doctor goes, the young man hallucinates that a giant crocodile is attempting to play the piano. And he is very afraid of both crocodiles and pianos. Then he goes to sleep, after issuing the order that under no circumstances may anyone come in. Under no circumstances.

This is a fine premise, just delivered with no subtlety and no flair. We have some jokes — I did laugh out loud at the beginning — but I never so much as smiled through the rest. What happens next? Well, of course, we can guess. A fine, attractive lady pianist arrives, and she lets herself into the sick man’s suite. He slumbers and she approaches the piano. There follows, no joke, about two minutes of her preparing to play (putting down her flowers, pulling off her gloves, opening the lid, removing as many as ten rings from her fingers), preparing to wake the sick man; and then finally she does it, and the audience laughs, and the man screams; and then, over the next however long, the lady pianist with very strong ideas about life and the drippy-but-privileged secretary of state realise they may be suited for one and other after all.

There is so much scope for jokes here that are not taken. The eventual reveal — that this beautiful, brawny woman with a lot of cojones would like to wear the trousers, as it were (being in charge, dominating her husband, beating him into jelly) and that the rich secretary of state wants to give up public life and to be a proud, subservient house-husband, as eager to be struck by his beloved as he is to be kissed and made up with afterwards — this really could have been funny. Not least because it’s more common than even the reader might think, out there in the real world. A satire on male masochism would be funny.

And yet this isn’t funny. The musical interludes that pepper the play, and the dialogue around them, aren’t funny either. It’s a pity. What a waste. What a waste it all is.