Template:Did you know nominations/Magic (play)

Magic (play)

(

)

Left to right: George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton

... that George Bernard Shaw jokingly threatened to torture Hilaire Belloc if it would get G. K. Chesterton (pictured, left to right) to write his first play?

Source: I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness as a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to British drama. (p.102)

ALT1: ... that George Bernard Shaw (pictured, left) praised G. K. Chesterton's (pictured, right) debut play Magic by saying it had "the Shakespearean touch"? Source: The Duke in Magic is much better than Micawber or Mrs. Wilfer, neither of whom can bear the footlights because, like piping bullfinches, they have only one tune, whilst the Duke sets everything in the universe to his ridiculous music. That is the Shakespearean touch. Is it grateful to ask for more? (pp. 106–107)
ALT2: ... that Magic is sometimes called G. K. Chesterton's (pictured, right) "one and only play" even though he wrote at least two others? Source: For "one and only play" and the play The Judgment of Dr. Johnson" he wrote, see: Yet a bittersweet quality does attach to Magic for it was to prove G.K.C's one and only real play. (p. 107) and But "Magic" was Gilbert's one and only play. (p. 135)
For the play he wrote called The Surprise, see There was a later play, The Surprise, that Chesterton wrote in 1932, but it was not published until 1952 and was first staged a year later by Hull University Dramatic Society. (p. 33)
ALT3: ... that George Bernard Shaw (pictured, left) wrote Androcles and the Lion "to insult and taunt and stimulate" G. K. Chesterton (pictured, right) into writing his first play? Source: I want to insult and taunt and stimulate Gilbert with it. It is the sort of thing he could write and ought to write: a religious harlequinade. [Androcles and the Lion] (p. 103)
ALT4: ... that G. K. Chesterton (pictured, right) and his wife were nearly mobbed in the theater lobby by an adoring audience after the debut performance of his first play? Source: Gilbert and Frances were almost mobbed in the foyer, and at every interval were eagerly surrounded. (pp. 134–135)
Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Blanche Badcock

5x expanded by ThaesOfereode (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 7 past nominations.

ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2024 (UTC).