Shaw's Cymbeline

Brash old George Bernard Shaw, who coined the word "Bardolatry," has never denied that he is a better playwright than Shakespeare. For Shakespeare's Cymbeline he has long had particular contempt, has called it "stagy trash of the lowest melodramatic order." Last week London play-goers had a chance to see an allegedly improved Cymbeline, by Shakespeare & Shaw.

Principal changes were in the last act, which Shaw cut to a third of its length, almost completely rewrote. What made the London audience sit up was not the clatter of the Shavian blank verse but a sly passage whose political patness even the dullest Britisher could see:

When King Cymbeline's long-lost sons are discovered, the elder,* Cadwal, is hailed as heir to England's throne. Says he: No, no! This kingly business has no charm for me. . . . Compelled to worship priest-invented gods, Not free to wed the woman of my choice, Being stopped at every turn by some old fool Crying: "You must not," or still worse: "You must."

O, no, sir, give me back the dear old cave And my unflattering four-footed friends. I abdicate, and pass the throne to Poly-dore.

To which Brother Polydore replies: ''Do you, by heavens? Thank you for nothing, my brother!"

*In Shakespeare's version, Cadwal is the younger.

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