Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/201

Rh nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true.

Undershaft. Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shells, man. Come and make explosives with me. The history of the world is the history of those who had the courage to embrace this truth.

"Major Barbara" is one of the most revolutionary plays. In any other but dramatic form the sentiments uttered therein would have condemned the author to long imprisonment for inciting to sedition and violence.

Shaw the Fabian would be the first to repudiate such utterances as rank Anarchy, "impractical, brain cracked and criminal." But Shaw the dramatist is closer to life—closer to reality, closer- to the historic truth that the people wrest only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.