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George Bernard Shaw puppet

Waldo Sullivan Lanchester (1897 - 1978)

Category

Dolls

Date

1949

Materials

Textile and wood

Measurements

21.0 ins (h)

Place of origin

Stratford-upon-Avon

Order this image

Collection

Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire

NT 1275141

Caption

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a prolific writer from the 1880s until his death in 1950. He had long been interested in the works of Shakespeare and echoed Shakespearian themes in his works, even controversially claiming his work was ‘better than Shakespeare’. When puppeteer Waldo Lanchester (1897–1978) showed Shaw two puppets he had made and invited him to write a short drama for them, the result was a ten-minute Punch-and-Judy-style sketch, Shakes versus Shav. This comic argument between the two playwrights – during which they physically fight over which is greater – was first performed in Malvern in August 1949. The puppets were carved in wood and Shaw – or ‘Shav’ – was dressed in a brown Norfolk jacket. Lanchester created four other puppets for the play, representing characters created by Shaw and Shakespeare, including Macbeth. On the magic of marionettes, Shaw wrote that while there was ‘nothing wonderful in a living actor moving and speaking … that wooden-headed dolls should do so is a marvel that never palls’.

Summary

Marionette of G.B.S. (George Bernard Shaw), the puppet has a carved wooden head and hands, painted. Dressed in a brown Norfolk jacket and plus fours, brown socks, and black shoes. Stands in wooden portico on six columns painted white, cream and gilt, with orange cloth backdrop, supported from frame by eleven black strings. Gift of the maker Waldo Lanchester in 1976.The "Malvern" backcloth to the Shaw marionette is also in the collection. (NT 1275307).

Full description

The “GBS” puppet was created by Waldo Lanchester in 1949, for Bernard Shaw’s marionette play “Shakes Versus Shav”, a comic argument between the two playwrights. The play was commissioned from Shaw by Lanchester for the Lanchester Marionette Theatre, based in Malvern. Shaw referred to Lanchester as ‘our chief living puppet master’, and "Shakes versus Shav" was first performed by the Lanchester Marionettes at the Lyttleton Hall, Malvern, August 9th, 1949. Lanchester donated the Bernard Shaw puppet to the National Trust in 1976. The backcloth to the Shaw marionette is also in the collection, and is a depiction of Malvern. (NT 1275307). The Shakespeare puppet is at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford upon Avon (SBT 1976-15/2). Waldo Lanchester and Muriel Lanchester designed and made the puppets (including their clothes), whilst the heads of Shaw and Shakespeare were carved by Jack Whitehead. A photograph survives in Shaw’s collection of the puppets being created by Lanchester. (NT Shaw Photographs 1715253.54). The inspiration for the Shaw and Shakespeare Lanchester puppets may have come from the wood-carver and sculptor Nancy Catford (later Nancy Stone), who carved some humorous bookends of Shaw and Shakespeare during the 1930s (a set of these can be seen at Shaw’s Corner). (See “The inspiration for Shakes versus Shav?”, in The Puppet Master, 16 (3), Autumn 2005, pp.24-25). Having been interested in puppets since his childhood, Shaw told Helen Haiman Joseph (a writer of plays for marionettes) about the ‘permanent marionette exhibition in Dublin’ he had known as a child. (Shaw to Helen Haiman Joseph, 25 January 1918, Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, vol.3, p.526). And this fascination was part of Shaw’s interest in a wide variety of inanimate figures such as funeral effigies, wax dummies, lay figures, and scarecrows. Shaw’s prefatory note to Max von Boehn’s Dolls and Puppets (1932) provides insight into his interest in the disquiet that puppets have the power to engender: “I always hold up the wooden actors as instructive object-lessons to our flesh-and-blood players...The puppet is the actor in his primitive form.” (Shaw, preface to Max von Boehn’s Dolls and Puppets, translated from the original German Puppen und Puppenspiele by Josephine Nicoll, 1932; there is a copy of the book in Shaw’s library, with an inscription from the translator, NTIN 3062082). The preface was also published as Shaw’s afterword to Shakes versus Shav: A Puppet Play (Stratford-upon-Avon: Waldo S. Lanchester, n.d.), p.15; reprinted in Bernard Shaw: The Complete Prefaces Volume III, p.114. A tiny “G.B.S.” fabric doll of unknown origin also survives in the collection. (NT 1275200). (Alice McEwan, 2020)

Provenance

Gift of Waldo S. Lanchester in 1976

Marks and inscriptions

(Maker's inscription on back of base of stand.)

Makers and roles

Waldo Sullivan Lanchester (1897 - 1978), maker

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