The New York herald., 1922-12-17
Still Another
Shaw Preface
Continued from Preceding Page.

that are in the dictionary. 1t was not
by any process known to men OF learn
ing, but rather by some telepathic
method Of absorption, that I managed
at last to divine, infer. guess. and CO.
invent the story of GittG, or JittG, as
have had to spell her to avert having
her name pronounced with hard C.
Trebitsch is amiable enough to say that
have succeeded wonderfully, but even
very bad translation may De a Won
derful feat for translator who does not
know the language.
However. when It comes to translating
a play the mere translation Is only the
tiniest fraction of tbs business. I soon
found that literal translation would
fail completely to convey the play to an
Anglo-American audience. 1t was nec-
essary to translate the audience as we'll
as the play--that is, to translate Vienna
into London and New York. And this
involved translating one theatrical epoch
into another.
Vienna Is still romantic in the manner
OF Victor Hugo and Theopile Gautier.
And as the conqueror always acquires
some Of the qualities of the conquered.
even now that he no longer eats him,
there isfa touch of the East in Vienna,
not only brought by the winds along
the Danube. but left by Sobieski when
he drove the Turk back from the gates.
Add to this that viepna has never
weaned ITSELF from the sweet milk of
eighteenth century art. when even woe
was a luxury, and the heroine could not
die In gloom too deep to please the
audience. When natural history (some-
times ambiguously called realism) Is
banished from the theater. cruelty. hor-
ror and death became painless there and
even luxurious, because nobody believes
In them. The most frightful torments
may be heaped on the heroine until she
dies of poison or a broken heart; the
william may. like the wicked Count in
III Trovatore,' live only to ccntuplicar
la norte of the hero in mile atrose
spdsimi, and the hero himself may not
know moment of happiness or security
until misfortune dogs him to his death
yet no one will turn hair the more
dreadful II all Is the better 10 Is liked.
because romance can never come home
to reality. To preserve this delicious
anesthesia there must be no bringing
down TO earth of the business by the
disllusioning touch of comedy.
In England and America nowadays
such romance is privileged only in
italian opera. and is not tolerated with
out the music. The Anglo-Amercan au-
dience wants a happy ending because 1t
cannot bear an utterly unhappy one. 1t
Is true, as the late st. John Hankin
pointed out and illustrated by his Plays
with Happy Endings," that the conven-
tional happy ending Is often as unhappy
and disastrous as the marriages which
foolish magistrates and police court mis-
sionaries force on young people who
have been no better than they ought TO
be. But the fact remains that In pro-
portion as "a play succeeds I'm producing
an Illusion OF real life IL must dispense
with the frantic agonies and despairs
and poisonlngs and butcheries OF the
romantic theater. Consequently. IL you
take a play written under the tyranny
of romantic audience and present n
without modification to n comparatively
matter OF fact audience, II will miss its
mark. and may even miss flre altogether.
To avert this result in the case of
Frau Gittas Suhne" I have taken ad-
vantage OF the fortunate circumstances
that In real life the consequences OF con-
jugal infidelity are seldom either so seri-
Gus as they are assumed to be In roman
tic tragedy or so trivial as in farcical
comedy. ! may as well confess at once
that though in the original play Jittd
lives miserably ever afterward, and her
husband hardly escapes for n moment
from the strictest Spanish tradition of
Jealousy cruel as the grave, / have per-
mitted myself TO suggest, bya few slight
touches. that they may quite possibly set
tie down on reasonable human terms and
find life quite bearable after all. Trebitsch
goes so far as TO say. you have made
my last act almost a comedy" but he
does not demur to the change. which is
not in the story itself but only in the
key In which IL is played. Though the
assumptions Of the audience as to what
will happen after the fall of the cur
tain will be more cheerful In England
and America than they were In Vienna,
the action Of the play remains as In the
original. as far as have been able to
do justice to II.
Frau Gittas Suhne" was first per-
formed at the great Burgtheater OF
Vienna on February 9. 1920.