Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- A sharp critique implying Shaw's lengthy prefaces are tedious but necessary to understand his plays.
- In plain terms
- The long prefaces before Shaw's plays are annoying but necessary.
- What can you take from it?
- Great works often come with annoying context.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Are introductions necessary?
- How much context is too much?
Another view
It dismisses the value that prefaces might add to understanding.
More from James Agate
Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If he can't pretend that, he will look through the object, or round …
Permalink to quote #1 A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it.
Permalink to quote #3 Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.
Permalink to quote #4
Related quotes
As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in…
John Millington SyngeJohn Millington Synge quote #4 A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.
Terence RattiganTerence Rattigan quote #4 One of the objections I have against Campbell's Astounding was that there was too little love in it. It was a very loveless magazine. They never took enough ac…
Brian AldissBrian Aldiss quote #7