GKC "correcting" Shaw about the meaning of Shaw's own play....lol.

I seem destined to differ from Mr. Bernard Shaw just now. And having had the honour to differ from him about Shakespeare's plays I have now the even greater honour to differ from him about his own. Mr. Shaw's mistakes about the meaning of his own plays arise from the same source as his Shakespearean errors, a lack of warmth and poesy. Mr Huneker quotes in his book [...] Mr. Shaw's own account of the character of Candida. 'Candida' always appeared to me not only as the noblest work of Mr. Shaw, but as one of the noblest, if not the noblest, of modern plays; a most square and manly piece of moral truth. And with the authority of a close student of the work, I assure the author of it that if he imagines that he understands the character of Candida he is quite mistaken. Mr. Shaw says of Candida: 'Morell himself sees that "no law will bind her". She seduces Eugene just as far as it is worth her while to seduce him. She is a woman without "character" in the conventional sense. She is straight for natural reasons, not for conventional ethical ones." The fact of the matter is that Candida, being a strong woman and not a half-witted anarchist, knows, as all sane people do know, that 'convention' is a thing quite as real as 'nature', perhaps much more real than nature. Strong, experienced human souls accept the facts of habit, the magic of time, the need for continuity, the working loyalties, the compromises of fellowship, as they accept the sun and moon. Laws are not dead things, as the foolish Bohemians think, and as Mr. Huneker, and even Mr. Shaw, tend here to think them. Laws are living things, like songs; and for the same reason, for both songs and laws are filled with the passion and vigilance of mankind. To despise them is not to be a free man, but simply to be an unusually silly misanthrope. How far laws should sometimes be defied is another matter; but they should never be despised- for they are humanity.

-April 26, 1905, Daily News