Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1913 — APPLAUSE MADE SHAW ANGRY [ARTICLE]

APPLAUSE MADE SHAW ANGRY

But a London Audience Wouldn’t Keep Quiet at Play Revived at Klngsway Theater. London.—George Bernard Shaw’s appeal to audiences for “sobriety” was in vain at the first performance of his play, “John Bull’s Other Island.” which was revived at the Kfngsway theater. The audience tried to comply, but the witticisms of the play were too much for a majority of them and soli-

tary guffaws more rapidly merged into general roars. Mr. Shaw appealed in advance for the cessation of applause and told the people that they would get out of the theater half an hour earlier if they did not applaud until the end of the play; “that if you laugh loudly and repeatedly for two hours you get tired and cross, and that you are sorry the next morning that you did not stay home. “Have you noticed," he wrote, "that people look very nice when they smile or look pleased, but are shockingly ugly when they roar with laughter, shout excitedly or sob loudly. Will you think me-jrery ungrateful and unkind if I tell you that though you cannot possibly applaud my plays too much at the fall of the curtain, yet the more you applaud the performance the more angry you make me?”