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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1901-1945] 20thc-Modernism » George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

Admirable Bashville

[1901] George Bernard Shaw, The Admirable Bashville: or, Constancy Unrewarded, Being the Novel of Cashel Byron's Profession Done into a Stage Play in Three Acts, and in Blank Verses, with a Note on Modern Prize Fighting (London, 1901; New York, 1917; Google Books Free Online Library of eBooks).

Yet this hand,
That many a two day's bruise hath ruthless given,
Hath slain no sentient creature for my sport.
I am too squeamish for your dainty world,
Taht cowers behind the gallows and the last,
The world that robs the poor, and with their spoil
Does what its tradesmen tell it. Oh, your ladies !
Seal skinned and egret-feathered; all defiance
To Nature: cowering if one say to them
"What will the servants think?" Your gentlemen !
Your tailor-tyrannized visitors of whom
Flutter of wing and singing in the wood
Make chicken butchers. And your medicine men !
Groping for cures in the tormented entrails
Of friendly dogs. (Act 2, Scene 1)

The legalization of cruelty to domestic animals under the cover of the anesthetic is only the extreme instance of the same social phenomenon as the legalization of prizefighting under the cover of the boxing glove. The same passion explains the fascination of both practices; and in both, the professors—pugilists and physiologist alike—have to persuade the Home Office that their pursuits are painless and beneficial. But there is also between them the remarkable difference that the pugilist, who had to suffer as much as he inflicts, wants his work to be as painless and harmless as possible whilst persuading the public that it is thrillingly dangerous and destructive whilst the vivisection wants to enjoy a total exemption from humane restrictions in his laboratory whilst persuading he public that pain is unknown there. Consequently the vivisector is not only cruller than the prizefighter, but, through the pressure of public opinion, a much more resolute and uncompromising liar. From this no one but a Pharisee will single him out for special blame. All public men, lie, as a matter of good taste, on subjects which are considered serious (in England a serious occasion means simply an occasion on which nobody tells the truth; and however illogical or capricious the point of honor may be in man, it is too absurd to assume that the doctors, who, from among innumerable methods of research, select that of tormenting animals hideously, will hesitate to come on a platform and tell a soothing fib to prevent the public from punishing them.…It is the vivisector's interest to refine upon the cruelties of the laboratory, whilst persuading the public that his victims pass into a delicious euthanasia and leave behind them a row of bottles containing infallible cures for all the disease. Just so, too, does the trainer of performing animals assure us that his dogs and cats and elephants and lions are taught their senseless feats by pure kindness. (69)

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In 1901, Shaw reworked the story of Cashel Byron the prizefighter into a play in blank verse and gave it the title The Admirable Bashville. Sidney P. Albert —George Bernard Shaw Collection (The Quintessential G.B.S.: Novels, Exhibits@BrownUniversityLibrary).