271

Play Doctor, Doctor Death:

Shaw, Ibsen, and Modern Tragedy
Bert Cardullo
T
he Doctors Dilemma was not a great popular or critical success when
it was originally produced in 1906, but the play is one of Bernard
Shaws most perplexing, intriguing works and deserves a more promi-
nent place in the Shavian canon. Indeed, in his controversial book on
Shaw, Colin Wilson goes so far as to declare that Te Doctors Dilemma
is the culmination of Shaws career as a playwright.
1
Te absurdity of
this opinion aside (among the plays successors, afer all, were Pygmalion
[1913], Heartbreak House [1919], and Saint Joan [1923]), Wilsons praise
for the play is veiled criticism of the philosophical preoccupation that he
felt seriously diminished the strength of Shaws later dramatic writing.
Wilson reads Te Doctors Dilemma as a return to the nineteenth-century,
well-made-play structure that Shaw had efectively adapted earlier; he
does not consider the play a serious attempt to write a tragedy, or even
an attempt to write a play of importance. Instead, Wilson praises Te
Doctors Dilemma as the last hurrah of the playful Shaw before the
playwright became hopelessly mired in the politics and drama of creative
evolution. I want to argue here, by contrast, that Te Doctors Dilemma
is much more interesting than Wilson contends. It is not simply an odd-
ity or a throwback to nineteenth-century dramatic forms, but a serious
attempt by Shaw to confront the traditional criteria for greatness in a
play without compromising his own modern aesthetic determination of
what a play should be.
One of those traditional criteria for greatness is that a dramatic work
should aspire to tragedy, which Te Doctors Dilemma does do. Indeed,
of all his major plays this is the only one that Shaw specifcallyand
somewhat provocativelylabeled a tragedy.
2
To date, however, critics
272 Comparative Drama
have not yet fully considered the complex relationship between the for-
mal, classically tragic aspects of Te Doctors Dilemma and the play as an
example of the new drama that Shaw espoused.
3
And it is precisely this
complex relationship between old and new that renders Te Doctors
Dilemma problematic and has so ofen caused the playits plot, its dra-
matic structure, Shaws artistic intentto be misunderstood.
Shaw came to write Te Doctors Dilemma partly in response to a
challenge from his friend and colleague, William Archer. Shaw had criti-
cized Ibsens use of death in his plays in a column written to honor the
Norwegian dramatist a few days afer his death.
4
Here is part of Archers
response to Shaws comments in his own column in the Tribune: Shaw
eschews those profounder revelations of character which come only in
crises of tragic circumstance it is not the glory but the limitation of
Mr. Shaws theatre that it is peopled by immortals.
5
A few weeks later,
Shaw answered in the third person through the letters column, announc-
ing that Mr. Shaw was writing a new play that is the outcome of the
article in which Mr. William Archer penned a remarkable dithyramb to
Death, and denied that Mr. Shaw could claim the highest rank as a dramatist
until he had faced the King of Terrors on the stage.
6
Tere can be little
doubt that Archer had struck a nerve in his ofensive defense of Henrik
Ibsens tragic drama, and Shaw could not duck the challenge to his abili-
ties as a complete and serious artist. From its inception, therefore, Te
Doctors Dilemma was linked directly to Shaws intellectual relationship
with the work of Ibsen.
Because of the direct relationship of Te Doctors Dilemma to Ibsens
drama, Shaws Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891) is particularly relevant in
this context, for it provides the most extensive commentary on the nature
of drama that Shaw wrote outside of his plays themselves. (It must be said,
however, that many of the opinions presented in this work are contradicted
by Shaws other critical writings, particularly his theater reviews, and
that he wrote Te Quintessence of Ibsenism before he had had the learning
experience of completing a single play.) Moreover, three crucial points
emerge from Te Quintessence of Ibsenism that should bear directly on
any analysis of Te Doctors Dilemma: the frst is Shaws insistence that
the dominant tragic theme in Ibsen is the futility of humanitys eforts
to live up to the ideals it constructs for itself; the second, that tragedy
Bert Cardullo 273
should be focused on living characters; and the third point is that serious
drama must be didactic. Connected to these three points is Shaws plea
for technical innovations in the new theater that he himself espoused.
Bernard Dukore, for one, has attempted to apply the dramatic prin-
ciples articulated by Shaw in Te Quintessence of Ibsenism to Shaws own
dramatic works. Dukore focuses on Shaws analysis of the technical nov-
elty in Ibsens plays, the subject that comprises the penultimate chapter in
Te Quintessence of Ibsenism. Shaw characterizes Ibsens technical novelty,
or the structural change in modern drama, as a change from exposition-
situation-unraveling to one of exposition-situation-discussion. Te em-
phasis of any dramatic work thereby shifs away from action and toward
discussion, which functions as an alternative to violent resolution and can
take place anywhere in the play, not just toward the end. Dukore applies
this model, as follows, to Te Doctors Dilemma: act 1 provides exposition;
acts 2, 3, and 4 intensify the situation; act 4 concludes the action; and in
act 5 that action is discussed.
7
Te problem with this analysis is that it
implies the action of the play concludes in act 4, and that act 5 consists
simply of a discussion of what has previously happened. While it is true
that Shaw wanted to shif the focus of drama away from situation and
toward discussion of the action, the epilogue of Te Doctors Dilemma
serves at one and the same time as the culmination of the action proper
and a discussion of the ancillary action from act 4.
Act 4 can be seen as the conclusion of the action only if Louis Dubedat
is accepted as the tragic hero of the play and his death as the culmination
of the tragic action. In a letter written at the outset of his work on Te
Doctors Dilemma, however, Shaw asserts that the hero of this piece was
to be a doctor.
8
Shaw kills of Dubedat in Te Doctors Dilemma in order
to fulfll his pledge to Archer that he was capable of putting a death on
the stage, but it is clear just from what Shaw wrote in Te Quintessence
of Ibsenism that the true tragic fgure was the character who is forced to
live on and not the one who dies: If peoples souls are tied up by law and
public opinion it is much more tragic to leave them to wither in these
bonds than to end their misery and relieve the salutary compunction of
the audience by outbreaks of violence.
9
Dubedats death makes Ridgeon
the protagonist, and it is therefore only in act 5, when Ridgeon fnds
out his murder of Dubedat was pointless, that the action of the play is
274 Comparative Drama
completed. Central to any misinterpretation of act 5 as pure discussion
is the assumption that the central premise or motivation of the action is
Ridgeons dilemma, that is, whether to cure Dubedat or Dr. Blenkinsop.
Most critical approaches to Te Doctors Dilemma have chosen to focus
on this work as a problem play involving a central moral dilemma. While
critics have disagreed about the exact nature of this central dilemma, most
agree that they are dealing with a problem play and sidestep the issue of
the drama as an example of Shavian tragedy.
10
J. Percy Smith is among
them, though he does at least attempt to address the challenges the drama
presents. He asserts that the story of this play is simple enough,
11
but he
ofers a synopsis of the plot that is simply mistaken. Smith states that the
central dilemma stems from a scarcity of the necessary seruma likely
medical, as opposed to moral, scenariobut the text gives clear and ample
evidence that there is no such scarcity at all.
At the opening of the play Sir Ralph has already administered the
serum to little Prince Henry, and it is the serum itselfalbeit incorrectly
administeredand not the lack of it that eventually kills Dubedat. It
is Ridgeons knowledge of the correct timing for injecting the serum, a
knowledge that he could presumably share, which is critical for the cure.
Tat a number of critics have seized on a scarcity of serum, not the use
of it, as the cause of the dramas central dilemma may have something to
do with their own reluctance to indict the medical profession. Indeed, as
Stanley Weintraub reports, the fact that doctors themselves did not take
seriously [Shaws] implicit and explicit injunctions to examine and heal
[themselves] must have irritated Shaw all his life.
12
In fact, it becomes clear as the play progresses that Ridgeons own
account of his dilemma is constantly changing. In act 1, he tells Jennifer
Dubedat in all earnestness that he cannot possibly take on another patient
without actually sacrifcing one of his current patients, but by the end of
act 2 he has decided that he can squeeze in one more patient without too
much trouble. And although Ridgeon informs Sir Patrick in the plays
opening scene that the test for the proper opsonin level is a simple mat-
ter, by the end of act 3 he deliberately neglects to communicate this vital
piece of information to B. B. (Sir Ralph Bloomfeld Bonington).
J. L. Wisenthal, for his part, is typical of many critics who read the
problem of Te Doctors Dilemma as the struggle between the artist and
Bert Cardullo 275
the scientist, with the artist ultimately triumphant and his way of life vin-
dicated.
13
Tis reading relies on the acceptance of Blenkinsop as a genuine
scientist, but in fact he is an undistinguished general practitioner and an
honest decent man (56); he himself says in act 1, Ive forgotten all my
science (26).
14
Te point is not that Blenkinsop is a scientist, but that,
unlike Dubedat, he is a morally sound, worthy human being. Wisenthals
reading also relies on an acceptance of Dubedat as someone who himself
is a true artist, or, in Wisenthals words, a character who embodies perfec-
tion of the worka dedicated professional.
15
Te text, however, does not
ofer convincing evidence that Dubedat values art above all elseexcept
perhaps in his death, where, as he dies, he attempts to craf an infated image
of himself not borne out by the facts of his life: I believe in Michael Angelo
[sic], Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of
color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message
of Art that has made these hands blessed (100).
Act 3 of Te Doctors Dilemma ofers counter-evidence to the view
that Dubedat serves his art above all other considerations. Tis act begins
with both Dubedats in the art-making process: Louis is painting a portrait
of Jennifer. Tey have been discussing his habit of borrowing money and
Jennifer has extracted a promise from him that he will not continue to
do so. But Dubedat is lying when he promises her that he will not bor-
row money anymore. Dubedat chooses to couch his lie to Jennifer in the
words of a romantic artist: Ah, my love, how right you are! how much
it means to me to have you by me to guard me against living too much
in the skies (61). Te fact that he is lying in this instance is made clear
to the audience upon the eventual entrance of Ridgeon and the ensuing
conversation between the doctor and Dubedat, in which the latter asks
for a loan of one hundred and ffy pounds.
Almost immediately afer Dubedat speaks the self-idealizing lines
quoted above, early in act 3, Jennifer reminds Louis of the drawings that
he owes to a customer. Dubedat responds, Oh, they dont [sic] matter,
Ive got nearly all the money from him in advance (62). Shaw chooses
to put this exchange at the beginning of act 3 because this is the point in
the play in which Dubedat will claim to be an immoral moralist. Tat is,
Shaw wants it to be clear that Dubedat thinks only of money, even when
his art is in question; he has no commitment as an artist to the drawings
276 Comparative Drama
themselves, even though he has already begun them and been almost
fully paid in advance. Indeed, Shaw specifcally indicates that the pictures
have been begun in order to underscore the expedient, mercantile attitude
Dubedat has toward his calling. Just as Dubedats possession of any artistic
merit beyond that of a clever brute is thus subtly undermined by Shaw,
so too is the validity of the science in the play undercut. Ridgeon may
appear to be a more competent doctor than Walpole, Blenkinsop, and
the obviously incompetent B. B., but Shaw was not about to concede that
Ridgeons opsonin treatment was any less ridiculous in its way than the
removal of something Walpole calls the nuciform sac.
Alfred Turco demonstrates that the critical obsession with the surface
moral dilemma of Te Doctors Dilemmawhether to cure the artist or
the scientistis based on a misreading of the play.
16
Turco points out that
Ridgeon himself is lying from the moment he meets Mrs. Dubedat, and
that this initial white lietold in an attempt to avoid his having to see
the woman for very longsets of a series of lies which, in efect, bury
the doctor. Tere is no dilemma according to Turco because, as Ridgeon
explains to Sir Patrick at the outset of the play, the test for the proper
timing of the administration of the serum is a simple matter:
Ridgeon: Send a drop of the patients blood to the laboratory at
St. Annes; and in ffeen minutes Ill give you his opsonin index in
fgures. If the fgure is one, inoculate and cure: if its under point eight,
inoculate and kill. (14)
Turco concludes that Te Doctors Dilemma is a black comedy about
the humbug, quackery, opportunism, and unscrupulousness of the medi-
cal professiona comedy, moreover, that blends the sentimental trappings
of a well-made, nineteenth-century problem play with such superfcial
technical elements of classical tragedy as hamartia, reversal, and catas-
trophe. According to Turco, Ridgeons hamartia, or false step, is a trivial
lie within the repertoire of any receptionist; his reversal occurs during a
scene in which he succeeds in killing his rival; and the catastrophe is his
gradual discovery that he has committed a purely disinterested murder.
17

Turcos reading of Te Doctors Dilemma is important because it highlights
the absurdity of interpreting the play as the straightforward discussion
of one doctors moral dilemma, and because it also outlines the tragic
structure of the drama. By dismissing the tragic structure of Te Doctors
Bert Cardullo 277
Dilemma as a form of parody, however, Turco slights the impact of the
tragedy as well as that of the plays dilemma.
Tere are two major concerns with Turcos analysis of the resolution.
Te frst of these is his self-confessed inability to account for Sir Patrick,
who is normally seen as the voice of reason in the play, and for Sir Pat-
ricks refusal to take action against what he knows to be Ridgeons murder
plans. Te other concern is with Turcos emphasis on the lie itself as the
false step that makes untenable a reading of Te Doctors Dilemma as a
straightforward or conventional problem play. Both of these concerns can
be removed by expanding on Turcos model of the superfcial technical
elements of tragedy. Indeed, I would suggest that Te Doctors Dilemma
is meant to be read as a modern tragedy rather than a classical one. And
the superfcial technical elements of tragedy that Shaw uses for comedic
efect also serve as a superstructure for a uniquely Shavian vision of what
constitutes the tragic.
Sir Patricks reluctance to intervene more strenuously to prevent the
killing of Dubedat from taking place has troubled many critics of Te
Doctors Dilemma. Paddy is privy to all the relevant information of the
plays action. He knows that Ridgeons dilemma is false, because Ridgeon
has already explained to him at the beginning of act 1 that his discovery is no
more than a simple test at the hospital that takes ffeen minutes to indicate
the patients opsonin level. In act 2, Ridgeon callously (and conceitedly)
indicates to Sir Patrick that he has romantic designs on Mrs. Dubedat;
Sir Patrick even understands at this point that Ridgeon intends to mur-
der Dubedat. Ridgeon had told him in act 1, If I wanted to kill a man I
should kill him that way (14), referring to the very course of action that
he is considering taking against Dubedat at the end of act 2. But Paddy
does nothing to dissuade him and goes as far as to help convince him of
Dubedats lack of worth in comparison with Blenkinsop.
As a result, Sir Patrick has been viewed as a knowing accomplice to the
murder, an advisor to Ridgeon in his plot to kill the artist.
18
If the character
of Sir Patrick is seen in terms of the superfcial technical attributes of tragic
structure, however, it becomes clear that he fulflls the essential role of clas-
sical choral fgure, or leader of the chorus of doctorsmedical colleagues
and advisors allto Ridgeon. Viewed in this way, Sir Patricks frank advice
and arid common sense, as Shaw describes it in the stage directions, are
278 Comparative Drama
in keeping with his role (10). His hearkening back to ancient history in
the person of his father and to the thirty cures for consumption that he
has seen in his long life are also consistent with his character as the plays
chorus. Sir Patrick provides advice drawn on knowledge of the past and
reminds Ridgeon of the lessons of history, but like a true Greek chorus
he never actively attempts to infuence the action of the protagonist. His
implication in the crime through his inaction is also consistent with the
ancient chorus in such plays as Euripides Medea (431 bce), in which the
chorus of women exacerbates Medeas homicidal anger at the same time
as they seem to be ofering her well-considered, if somewhat removed,
advice. In his role as a choral fgure, Sir Patrick thereby further underlines
the overarching tragic structure of Te Doctors Dilemma.
Turco focuses correctly, I think, on the entrance of Jennifer Dubedat
as the inciting incident of the tragedy. Te white lie (Ridgeons telling
one of his assistants to call him away quickly from his consultation with
Mrs. Dubedat by pretending that he is urgently needed at the hospital) is
simply the frst complication engendered from that inciting incident. Tis
lie, and subsequent lies told by Ridgeon, are false steps and indications of
a character faw, to be sure, but such lying is not this characters hamartia.
Tat hamartia is revealed earlier in act 1 when Ridgeon confdes to Sir
Patrick that he has been feeling unwell: Sometimes I think its my heart:
sometimes I suspect my spine. Scraps of tunes come into my head that
seem to me very pretty, though theyre [sic] quite commonplace (15).
Sir Patrick recognizes the symptoms as mild depression combined with
adolescent foolishness making a midlife appearance and warns Ridgeon
not to make a thoroughgoing fool of himself, presumably by becoming
infatuated with a woman.
Tis scene reveals the protagonists hamartia as understood by the
prevailing model of tragedy that Shaw was attempting to manipulate.
Te tragic faw is the midlife crisis that Ridgeon has brought onstage
with him; the tragic false step occurs when Ridgeon refuses to accept,
or understand, Sir Patricks diagnosis. When Sir Patrick advises him that
he is not going to die but that he may do something foolish and should
be careful, Ridgeon responds with a non sequitur: I see you dont [sic]
believe in my discovery. Well, sometimes I dont [sic] believe in it myself.
Tank you all the same (16). Ridgeon may be blind to his hamartia at
Bert Cardullo 279
this point, but if we recognize his error in judgment as the potential for
adolescent infatuation, then the dilemma of the title is no longer strictly
a fctive construct on Ridgeons part. Te moral dilemma is false, but a
tactical dilemma remains, and it is simply that of a respectable man who
has a sexual desire for another mans wife. Ridgeon uses the false moral
conundrum, which keeps altering as the play progresses, to mask the
true tactical dilemma of how to get the girl without compromising the
principles of a moral man.
Ridgeon, it must be emphasized, is at the height of his success as a
professional man when the play startson the day the drama begins, the
press reports that he will soon be knightedand Shaw uses the honor of
this knighthood to suggest that Ridgeon is a tragic hero of noble stature
in the classical sense. What also suggests his tragic stature is Ridgeons
elevated profession and his unusual frst name. He appears to have been
named afer Bishop John William Colenso, who in 1867 was excommu-
nicated from the Anglican church for his allegedly heretical religious
writings (published between 1855 and 1861), and whose case caused quite
a stir in England for many years. Ridgeons profession, of course, is that
of medical doctor, not priest or pastor. Moreover, his character is based
on that of Shaws friend Dr. Almroth Wright (18611947), who played a
prominent role, through experiments at St. Marys Hospital, in advancing
vaccination in Britain.
19
Ridgeon is thus a scientist, and, as the new dra-
matists of realism and naturalism well knew, science had become the rival
god of the twentieth century and doctors its vicarsor hereticsdepend-
ing on ones point of view. Perhaps Shaw knew, or spoke about, this more
than most, as his exhaustive 1917 compilation Doctors Delusions; Crude
Criminology; Sham Education
20
appears to attest, as does his preface to Te
Doctors Dilemma, in which he made it plain that he regarded traditional
medical treatment (including vaccination) as dangerous quackery which
should be replaced with sound public sanitation, good personal hygiene,
and diets devoid of meat.
As evidence of sciences godlike status, consider the following: Having
read about this doctors imminent knighthood in the newspapers, Jen-
nifer comes to beg assistance, or divine intervention, at the shrine of
Colenso Ridgeon, from which he must literally descend in order to see
patients in his consulting room. Like rival or sectarian Greek gods, Ridgeon
280 Comparative Drama
and his medical associates squabble about their respective specialties
or territories and brag about the honors bestowed upon, or obeisance
paid toward, them; like the Greek gods, also, Ridgeon is not above getting
directly involved in the afairs of humanshis patientson the basis of
his own mortal desires. Finally, again like the Greek gods, especially the
lesser ones, Ridgeon is not so omniscient as he would like to think he is.
He has his own blindness in his love for Jennifer, and she, a mere human,
has her own insight into Ridgeon and the ultimate fallibility of the medi-
cal profession. Ironically, Jennifer even has a spiritual side: by the end of
the play, she may have lost her faith in doctors as a result of Ridgeons
handling of her husbands case, but she still believes in her husband for all
his faws (which she acknowledges) and despite the fact that he is dead.
She may have remarried, but even this she has done on Dubedats advice:
Do you forget, she asks, that Louis disliked widows, and [believed] that
people who have married happily once always marry again? (115).
Ridgeons benightedness is of less interest in this context, however, than
the fact that he has been knighted. When Ridgeon meets Mrs. Dubedat,
he is struck by her name, Jennifer, repeating it and its anglicized equiva-
lent, Guinevere. Tis seemingly trivial detail is underscored by Shaw at
the beginning of act 2 when Dubedat calls Jennifer Jinny-Gwinny. Te
Arthurian legend of a love triangle involving a knight, a king, and a beau-
tiful Guinevere is thus reproduced in Te Doctors Dilemmawith an
obvious reversal. Te new knight, Ridgeon, is the middle-aged bachelor,
and the King of Men, as Jennifer refers to Dubedat (using a peculiarly
Welsh expression, since she is Cornish) in her book on his life, is the
young married man. Te Doctors Dilemma, of course, is not intended as
an extended gloss on this Arthurian legend, but the reference to it serves
to enrich the action, superimposing elements of romance over the plays
tragic structure.
In theory if not in practice, each genre of Te Doctors Dilemma that I
have examinedproblem play, romance, and tragedycan be considered
closed or complete unto itself, and as such these genres were incompat-
ible with Shaws philosophy of the universe. Tat philosophy saw art, as
well as life, as an evolving organism, or, as Shaw quotes Hogarth in the
play In Good King Charless Golden Days (1939), the line of beauty is a
curvenot a straight line from one fnite point to another. As we know
Bert Cardullo 281
from his 1930 speech in praise of Albert Einstein, Shaw believed in a
curvilinear universe.
21
Indeed, this was the idea at the heart of his Welt-
anschauung, or comprehensive view of the world and human existence.
He used generic models in Te Doctors Dilemma to destabilize each
other precisely so that curvilinearityindeed, non-linearitywould be
maintained and closure could not be implied in any satisfying way. In
other words, Shaw purposely disturbed the expected resolution of the
dramatic forms he used by playing one of the other in a warp and woof
of contradiction. In this sense, Te Doctors Dilemma is a diferent kind of
problem playone that, as in the case of Shakespeares own problem
plays, defes easy generic classifcation.
Tis instability of genre is initiated by Shaw from the outset of the
play, because he calls the play a tragedy in four acts and an epilogue. Te
implication is that the tragedy, as such, is encompassed in the four acts,
and that the last act, or epilogue, is simply a summing up distinct from
the tragic action per se. Tis conclusion is supported by the fact that the
death scene in act 4 seems to be the climax of the play. Te chorus of doc-
tors even enacts its own dithyramb to death in which B. B. has a mock
catharsis, exclaiming: How well he died! I feel a better man, really (103).
But Shaws purpose for phrasing the title in the way he didTe Doc-
tors Dilemma: A Tragedy in Four Acts and an Epiloguewas not to imply
that the climax comes in the fourth act. As noted, Shaw set out to put a
death in his play specifcally in response to Archers challenge. At the same
time, he seized the opportunity to make a statement about tragedy as a
dramatic phenomenon and the place of tragedy in modern dramaor in
a modern, democratic, prosaic world where the Greek concept of Fate had
been taken over by science in the form of heredity and environment, or
biology, psychology, and sociology. Tat is, Shaw wrote a fve-act tragedy
as a self-conscious quotation of the classical, or neoclassical, requirements
of tragic form. But he chose to make the title theatrically self-conscious,
or metatheatrical, by explicitly calling the play a four-act tragedy. Te title
could thus be construed as a typically whimsical touch by Shaw, a kind of
intellectual joke in which he is thumbing his nose at tradition at the same
time as he is following the traditional pattern for tragedy. Shaw seemed
to believe, however, that the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy
is not; and that he could achieve the tragic out of comedy by bringing it
282 Comparative Drama
forth as a frightening moment, an abyss that opens suddenly, rather than
as a deus ex machina.
Te meaning of Te Doctors Dilemma is inexorably tied, then, not
only to the play of its forms but also to the wordplay of its title. Indeed,
the metatheatrical device of the complete title introduces a motif that
continues throughout Te Doctors Dilemma, for the play is full of theat-
rical references and allusions to art in general, as Stanley Weintraub has
noted.
22
A number of these appear in the guise of comic characterization,
such as the Macbeth-Hamlet confation by Sir Ralph at the end of act 4, or
the reference to Brownings play A Souls Tragedy (1846) by Sir Patrick in
act 1. Te statement by Dubedat in act 3 that he is a follower of Bernard
Shaw, moreover, has the efect of shocking the audience out of the illusion
of reality that has been fabricated onstage. Te entire death scene, for its
part, is also self-consciously theatrical, as Shaw has Ridgeon draw atten-
tion to the histrionics of the moment with his line to Sir Patrick, Would
you deprive the dying actor of his audience? (99).
Te artistic design of Te Doctors Dilemma becomes clearer when
such metatheatrical features are seen as complements to the plays self-
consciously tragic superstructure. Te tragic elements already enumer-
atedhamartia, peripeteia or reversal, catastrophe, and chorusthem-
selves can be understood as subtler aspects of the metatheatrical motif in
the drama. In this way, the play becomes a kind of palimpsest on which
one set of aesthetic or dramatic criteria almost disappears as another set
can be discerned on the surface.
23
Te Doctors Dilemma has a false moral
dilemma, for example, and a true tactical dilemma. It also has a false reso-
lution in act 4 with the death of the artist, in a Dumas fls caricature, and
a true, more realistic resolution in act 5. Even the agon between the tradi-
tional morality of the doctors and the morality of the iconoclast Dubedat
is a false agon, because these two moralities never come into direct, open
confict.
Shaw laid out his strategy for toying with the audiences sense of
drama and morality in Te Quintessence of Ibsenism: Never mislead an
audience, was an old rule. But the new school will trick the spectator
into forming a meanly false judgment, and then convict him of it in the
next act, ofen to his grievous mortifcation.
24
Te Doctors Dilemma, for
its part, continually begs questions of judgment. Characters in the play
Bert Cardullo 283
are morally judged by the doctors, and all the charactersincluding the
doctorsare judged by the audience for their moral values in the same
way that Dubedats pictures are evaluated for their aesthetic ones. It is no
accident that Ridgeon himself identifes scraps of tunes that seem pretty
but are quite commonplace among his symptoms in act 1. Ridgeons own
apparent lack of credibility or Aristotelian ethos here as a judge of artistic
value is thus linked to his looming infatuation with Mrs. Dubedat and the
lack of discrimination implied by it.
No character in Te Doctors Dilemma has any credibility by the end
of the play, and no character or philosophy of life emerges as being any
more morally righteous than another. Tis is one of the reasons that the
epilogue is the most frequently criticized part of the play, for it brings
home with a vengeance the plays ethical-cum-artistic strategy. In his review
of the original production, William Archer praised the play as a masterful
comedy, but urged Shaw to drop the last act altogether.
25
If Te Doctors
Dilemma is understood as a satirical parody of tragedy, the last act or
epilogue is indeed superfuous. Te fnal act can be seen in an entirely
new light, however, once the multilayered and metatheatrical structure of
the play is understood. Te superfcial technical elements of tragedy that
Shaw introduces and plays with over the frst four acts are swept aside
in act 5; the chorus itself is removed, and the entire action of the play is
reduced to its barest elements. Once the fourth act ends and with it Shaws
comic satire, the epilogue or ffh act can then be seen as the combined
discussion-action-catastrophe of Shaws modern tragedy.
Ultimately, it is Ridgeons inability to judge Mrs. Dubedats character
that brings about his catastrophe. He has deluded himself into believing
that he killed Louis Dubedat in order to preserve Jennifers image, or
fantasy, of her husband. Te catastrophe occurs when Ridgeon realizes
that he has misinterpreted Mrs. Dubedats fantasy, for it is in actuality
a full picture that has included her husbands shortcomings all along.
Nonetheless, Jennifers judgment is no less warped than that of any of the
other characters. Shaw himself wrote the following to Cathleen Nesbitt
(the actress portraying Mrs. Dubedat in a 1923 London production) in
disparagement of Jennifer:
Jennifer is a sort of woman whom, I, personally, cannot stand, enormously
conceited, morally patronizing to everyone, setting herself always in some
284 Comparative Drama
noble, devoted, beautiful attitude, never looking facts in the face or tell-
ing herself or anyone else the truth about them for a moment, and making
even her husbands death a splendid opportunity for taking the centre of
the stage.
26
Mrs. Dubedat is the womanly woman to whom Shaw refers in Te Quin-
tessence of Ibsenismthe sort of woman who has led a bohemian life only
by chance and may well have been equally devoted to the moral shortcom-
ings of her husband had he been a banker or a munitions manufacturer.
With the revelation of Jennifers real nature, Ridgeons own self-
deception is uncovered. Consequently, he is forced to confront the fact
that he has constructed a series of false moral dilemmas in order to con-
ceal the true tactical dilemma of how to reconcile his desire for Jennifer
with his vision of himself as a moral man. Te fall of Ridgeon in act 5
is ultimately cathartic, it is true, but this kind of catharsis is peculiar to
Shaw, where we feel less pity and terror than regret and removal. By the
fnal punch line of Te Doctors Dilemma, in which Ridgeon learns that
Jennifer has married again, not only has the character of Ridgeon been
totally discredited, but the audience has lost all sympathy for him and
may well even see him as a villain.
Ridgeon has sufered a fall at the end of Te Doctors Dilemma, but he
is only slightly more isolated from the community of the audience than
he was at the start, or than most people in the audience are from their
fellow human beings in daily life. Te play is thus designed purposefully
to frustrate not only the sense of closure provided by artworks of a single,
conventional genre, but also the sense of closure that even partial rein-
tegrationof Ridgeon into the community of the audience, and of that
audience into the society of manwould suggest. In fact, Shaw wanted
to show that the ideals of this community are morally bankrupt, and all
the devices he uses in the play, the metatheatrical ones as well as those
associated with deliberate confusion of genre, are intended to aid in
exposing such bankruptcy. Because Shaw turns the audience members
own inability to make moral judgments against them, that audience is
lef feeling unable to provide the means for Ridgeons, or its own, moral
redemption. Shaws philosophy dictated that the theater should inspire
positive change in the community of the audience, but in the tragedy of
Te Doctors Dilemma the sense is that the community necessary for this
Bert Cardullo 285
change, and with it social reintegration, has not yet evolved. Such rein-
tegration belongs instead to an audience of the futureone that would
be able to understand the importance of the most tragic of all themes, in
Shaws words: a man of genius who is not also a man of honor.
27
Connected with the subject of social change and dramas role in it,
Shaw had this to say about Ibsens role in the development of modern
tragedy:
Ibsen was the dramatic poet who frmly established tragi-comedy as a much
deeper and grimmer entertainment than tragedy. His heroes dying without
hope or honor, his dead, forgotten, superseded men walking and talking
with the ghosts of the past, are all heroes of comedy: their existence and
their downfall are not the soul-purifying convulsions of pity and horror, but
reproaches, challenges, criticisms addressed to society and to the spectator
as a voting constituent of society.
28
Faced with the challenge of writing his own modern tragedy, Shaw was
quick to label Te Doctors Dilemma a tragedy but careful to imitate the
tragicomic Ibsen in this drama, in the sense that he followed his four-act
comedy with a one-act tragedy, in a play all about Death, which will
be the most amusing play ever written, as he himself put it in his reply
to William Archer in the Tribune.
29
Furthermore, in Shaws view, the new,
modern dramatic genre at which Tolstoy himself, together with Chekhov,
was aiming was tragicomedywhich is to say, in Anna Obraztsovas
words, a play that was essentially a comedy but into which the tragedy
of life boldly intruded.
30
Shaw evidently believed, then, that true comedy is invariably tragi-
comedy in an era (stretching into our own) preoccupied with human
sufering and world cataclysm, for it is too difcult to depict such a world
with unrelieved seriousness, and it is somewhat irresponsible to impose
a wholly comic vision on that world. Such absolute and disparate forms
no longer seemed relevant in the twentieth century, as they do not seem
so today. And we get at the deepest reason for Shaws liking of tragicomic
situations when he says of Ibsens implementation of such situations that
they are miserable and yet not hopeless; for they are mostly criticisms
of false intellectual positions, which being intellectual, are remediable by
better thinking.
31
Te tragicomic dilemma of the doctor confronted by a case like Dube-
dats thus has a remedy, as Shaw sees it: a social structure that would free
286 Comparative Drama
both its artists and its scientists from competitive struggle and so alleviate
the personal tragedy by solving the social problem.
Like the tragicomic Ibsen, Shaw followed exposition and situation in
this play with discussion. In Te Doctors Dilemma, discussion forms the
resolution (though it is unusually curtailed by Shavian standards, which
in the end contributes to the plays tragic quality); the ideals on which
the characters base their lives are shown to be false (as they ofen are in
Ibsens plays), because the culture in which they live is based on false
ideals; the tragic fgure lives on; and the dramas ultimate aim is didactic.
Once an Ibsenian hero of comedy, Ridgeon has becomein Shaws own
wordsthrough his very existence and downfall, not a soul-purifying
convulsion of pity and horror, but instead a reproach, a challenge, a criti-
cism addressed to society and the spectator at large. Te genius of Te
Doctors Dilemma is that afer the dust clears upon the collapse of the plays
metatheatrical structure, and Ridgeon is lef alone with Jennifer among
Dubedats paintings, the play really does function as a tragedyof the
most open, abbreviated, unassimilated kind.
Izmir University of Economics
Notes
1
Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 198.
2
Te other plays by Shaw that have the word tragedy, or a variation thereon, in their generic
descriptions are the essentially comic one-acts: Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction, An Indigestible
Tragic Romantic Comedy (1905), and Te Glimpse of Reality, A Tragedietta (1909); and the fourth
play in the Back to Methuselah cycle (1921), entitled Te Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, is really
a comic spectacle touched with pathos in which the central character is a satirical substitute for
self-pity. (See the discussion of the subject of Shaw and tragedy in my book An Idea of the Drama
[New York: Peter Lang, 2011], 83 and passim.) Shaw was well informed on the subject of classical
tragedy, having lectured at Oxford on the subject and having discussed classical drama with the
scholar Gilbert Murray. His play preceding Te Doctors Dilemma, Major Barbara (1905), references
Murray himself, and is partly indebted to Te Bacchae. See Sidney P. Albert, In More Ways than
One: Major Barbaras Debt to Gilbert Murray, Educational Teatre Journal 20 (1968): 12340; and
Sidney P. Albert, From Murrays Mother-in-Law to Major Barbara: Te Outside Story, SHAW: Te
Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 22 (2002): 1965. So Shaws taking up the subject of tragedy in Te
Doctors Dilemma should not be surprising. Moreover, he originally christened Jennifer Dubedat
as Andromeda Dubedat (emphasis mine), in what is apparently a reference to the titular heroine
of lost plays by Sophocles and Euripides. See Lillah McCarthy, Myself and My Friends (London:
Tornton Butterworth, 1933), 7980, and Margery Morgans introduction to Te Doctors Dilemma,
in Bernard Shaw, Early Texts: Play Manuscripts in Facsimile, ed. Dan H. Laurence, 12 vols. (New
York: Garland, 1981), 2:23235.
Bert Cardullo 287
3
Te reason the idea of a Shavian tragedy has caused so much critical confusion is that Shaw
was ideologically committed to comedy, where his focus was less on the psychology of the individual
and the empathy of the audience with his protagonists than on the sociology of existencepeople
molding and being molded by the society of other human beingsand on the audiences objective
or critical consideration of that existence. Indeed, so much was he ideologically committed to com-
edy that, as Nicole Coonradt proposes, Shaw even conceived of satire as a kind of antitragedy. See
Coonradt, Shavian Romance in Saint Joan: Satire as Antitragedy, SHAW: Te Annual of Bernard
Shaw Studies 29 (2009): 92108.
4
Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, Clarion, 1 June 1906.
5
William Archers response to Shaw in the Tribune (London), 14 July 1906, was not the only
trigger for the writing of Te Doctors Dilemma, which began on 11 August 1906, according to the
Garland manuscript edition of the play cited in note 2, above. Another trigger was Shaws concern
with some of the eccentricities, if not delusions, of the medical profession. On 6 July 1906, for
example, Shaw had written to the actress Ada Rehan that Dr. John F. Parkinson, of 57 Wimpole
Street, who doctors my wife has certain crazes. He is perfectly convinced that all of my failings
are due to something wrong with my kidneys. All the crimes of civilization are to him mere kidney
symptoms. See Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw: Teatrics (Selected Correspondence of Bernard
Shaw) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 72.
6
As quoted in Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works (Cincinnati:
Stewart & Kidd, 1995), 72.
7
Bernard Dukore, Playwright: Aspects of Shavian Drama (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1973), 64.
8
Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters, 18981910, ed. Dan H. Laurence, 12 vols. (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1972), 11:639.
9
Bernhard Shaw, Te Quintessence of Ibsenism: Now Completed to the Death of Ibsen (1891;
repr. London: Constable, 1913), 200.
10
One exception is Margery Morgan in Te Shavian Playground (London: Methuen, 1972),
but, as her title suggests, she is less concerned with the tragic aspect of Te Doctors Dilemma than
with its combinationlike the rest of Shaws plays that she treatsof playfulness and intellectu-
ality (46), its fusion of wit and ideas as well as art and politics. Norbert F. ODonnell rejects Te
Doctors Dilemma outright as a tragedy, suggesting that Ridgeons dilemma (that he must choose
between Dubedat and Blenkinsop) is a false one in the sense that Shaw is really proposing that the
whole concept of such a life-and-death decision is morally fawed. See ODonnells article Doctor
Ridgeons Deceptive Dilemma, Shaw Review 2 (1959): 15. Lionel Trilling, for his part, not only
rejects Te Doctors Dilemma as tragedy, but considers it a straightforward comedy; see his Prefaces
to the Experience of Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 3744.
11
J. Percy Smith, A Shavian Tragedy: Te Doctors Dilemma, in Te Image of the Work: Essays
in Criticism, ed. B. H. Lehman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955),
189207 (193).
12
Stanley Weintraub, Bernard Shaw: A Guide to Research (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1992), 84.
13
J. L. Wisenthal, Te Marriage of Contraries: Bernard Shaws Middle Plays (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1974).
14
Bernard Shaw, Te Doctors Dilemma, Getting Married, and Te Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet
(1911; repr. New York: Brentanos, 1931). All quotations of the play derive from this collection.
15
Wisenthal, 109.
288 Comparative Drama
16
Alfred Turco, Sir Colensos White Lie, Shaw Review 13 (1970): 1425.
17
Ibid., 25
18
John A. Bertolini, Te Playwrighting Self of Bernard Shaw (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1991), 79.
19
Weintraub, 83. Louis Dubedats character, for its part, may be based on the sculptor Alfred
Gilbert (18541934), who, around the time of the writing of Te Doctors Dilemma, was accused
in the press of taking commissions for work he never produced; Shaw also knew of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti (182882), who was accused of doing the same thing. Shaw had also been acquainted with
the artist Aubrey Beardsley (187298), who, like Keats, died of tuberculosis in his mid-twenties.
See Morgans introduction to Te Doctors Dilemma.
20
Te Works of Bernard Shaw, vol. 22, Doctors Delusions; Crude Criminology; Sham Education
(London: Constable, 1932), 386.
21
Bernard Shaw, George Bernard Shaw Salutes His Friend Albert Einstein (27 October 1930),
in Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, ed. William Safre (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992),
18990.
22
Stanley Weintraub, Te Avant-Garde Shaw: Too True to Be Good and Its Predecessors, in
Weintraubs Te Unexpected Shaw: Biographical Approaches to George Bernard Shaw and His Work
(New York: Ungar, 1982), 22333.
23
J. L. Wisenthal makes a similar argument about Saint Joan in Shaws Sense of History (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 90 and passim: that Saint Joans peculiar combination of
optimism and pessimism is predicated upon the superimposition of genre.
24
Bernard Shaw, Te Quintessence of Ibsenism [1891] (London: Constable, 1913), 203.
25
Tribune (London), 29 December 1906, 2.
26
As quoted in Stanley Weintraub, Shaws People: Victoria to Churchill (University Park: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 1996), 91.
27
As quoted in Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet (New York: Apple-
ton, 1932), 616.
28
Bernard Shaw, Tolstoy, Tragedian or Comedian? [1921], in Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931;
repr. London: Constable, 1949), 26079 (263).
29
Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works, 390. Shaw is also quoted
in William Archer, About the Teatre: Te Doctors Dilemma, Tribune (London), 29 December
1906, as cited in Charles Archer and Oliver Baty, eds. William Archer: Life, Work, and Friendships
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1931), 296.
30
Anna Obraztsova, Bernard Shaws Dialogue with Chekhov, in Chekhov on the British Stage,
ed. Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 45.
31
Shaw, Tolstoy: Tragedian or Comedian?, 263.
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