Village Wooing, a 1933 play by Bernard Shaw, is an unusual love story. Embedded in the play are some important ideas about language, reading, and writing.

1. Village Wooing
A Play about Reading and Writing
Jean Reynolds

2. Welcome to
beautiful Wiltshire
Downs, one of the
settings for Village
Wooing.
Before we turn to Shaw’s
play, I have two questions
for you to think about.

3. Much of this talk is
going to be about
imagination.
My first question is
about reading.
Imagine that you’ve
just read a wonderful
book. The author is
someone you’d really
like to know.

4. You unexpectedly have a
chance to meet that author.
How do you think that would work
out?
How closely does the writer in our
heads match the actual person?

5. I have another question that tests your
knowledge of Shaw.
Imagine you’re on a quiz
show.

6. For $50,000 – name TWO Shaw
plays with all of these features:
• A bet that involves a
language challenge
• A young woman who took
an elocution course to
qualify for a job
• A man who earns his living
through language
• A married couple who run a
shop
• A marriage across class lines

7. There’s no definite answer to the first
question.
Even though the book
was magical, the writer
might not be likeable at
all.

8. The answers to my second
question are…
Pygmalion Village Wooing

9. “A very trivial comedietta”

10. But then….
Bob Gaines asked me to
write about Village Wooing
in a book he was
compiling: Marriages and
Misalliances.

11. Here’s an outline of the play.

12. Shaw never gave
names to the two
characters.
A is older and a
widower.
He makes his living
by writing the Marco
Polo Series of
Chatty Travel Guide
Books.

13. Z is younger, single,
and female.
She’s a shop assistant in a
small village.
She won a contest and used
the prize money to pay for
a cruise.
She likes to read.

14. The First Conversation
They meet for the
first time on the deck
of a cruise ship.
She keeps talking,
talking, and talking.

15. The First Conversation
He’s trying to finish
his 500-word quota
for the morning
Finally she leaves him
alone and goes to eat
lunch.

16. The Second Conversation
Six months later, he
wanders into the
shop where she’s
working.
She impresses him
with her business
knowledge.

17. The Second Conversation
She remembers him and
confesses she knew who
he was when they met on
the ship.
She had made a bet with
the other passengers that
she could get him to talk
to her.

18. The Second Conversation
He’s tired of writing.
He decides to buy the
shop and keep her on
as his assistant.
He doesn’t want to
marry her.

19. The Third Conversation
She keeps pushing
him to marry her.
Finally he agrees.

20. And now I have a
confession to make.
I’ve told you three
lies.

21. There are four characters, not two. We’ll have
more to say about the two imaginary characters
soon.

22. The outline I showed you is wrong.

23. Here’s the correct outline. Shaw
wrote only the parts in blue.

24. Shaw isn’t the sole playwright.

25. “Shaw’s Comedy of
Disillusionment”
“Comprehension of events in
the theater is always
provisional and—until the
end of performance—
necessarily incomplete. In its
temporal unfolding, dramatic
plot is a string of inferences,
the moment's best guess.”
Stanton B. Garner Jr.

26. “a pit of philosophers”
“a pit of playwrights”

27. And that brings us back to
something I mentioned earlier:

28. The similarities between Pygmalion
and Village Wooing:
• A bet that involves a language
challenge
• A young woman who took an
elocution course to qualify for a
job
• A language expert
• A married couple who run a
shop
• A marriage across class lines

29. Could Shaw have
been thinking
about writing
another play about
language…

30. …a play about reading and writing?

31. Reading isn’t interesting onstage. It’s
too solitary.

32. Writing has the
same problem.
There’s nothing
to see except a
pen moving on
paper, or fingers
tapping on a
keyboard.

33. Shaw added those two imaginary characters we
walked about earlier: the reader in A’s head, and
the writer in Z’s head. Now the sparks can fly.

34. A provocative
article by Walter
Ong, a Jesuit,
might be
helpful here.
“The Writer’s
Audience Is
Always a
Fiction,” was
published in the
1975 PMLA.

35. “A reader has to
play the role in
which the author
has cast him, which
seldom coincides
with his role in the
rest of actual life.”
From Walter Ong:

36. A Prairie Home
Companion was
a great example
of inviting
audiences to act.
Photo by Jonathunder

37. When you tuned in, you felt like a member of
a Lutheran church in Minnesota.
Photo by Nyttest

38. Shaw—“a bit of an actor” on
paper—knew all about involving
audiences this way.
When we read Shaw, we become
blazing supporters for his ideas,
or lively members of his social
circle, or close friends who share
his deepest thoughts.

39. The Real Me
Who I Think I Am
When I’m Reading
Shaw

40. If we follow Shaw and Ong’s lead, Village
Wooing explores two kinds of role playing.

41. We already know that actors role play
onstage.

42. We may not notice how often we role play
while we’re reading and writing.

43. A is a snob who thinks
the working class is
beneath his notice.
The buyers for his
books are “dreaming
shop girls,” hungry for
exotic places and
romance.

44. So what if he’s only
pretending to be a
chatty and charming
travel guide?
What really matters
are his royalty
checks.

45. Z is young, smart, and
single.
She has read the entire
Marco Polo Series of
Chatty Travel Guides.

46. She wants to walk
among the ruins in the
moonlight with the
“Marco Polo Man.”
She thinks A is that
man.

47. And that’s our prequel—
the relationship that began
when A started writing
and Z started reading his
travel books.

48. Is A a romantic
world traveler…or
a hard-working
writer?
The challenge for
both of them is to
sort out what’s
real—and what
isn’t.

49. Is Z a “dreaming
shop girl”—or a
smart young
businesswoman?

50. She’s the first
to sort out
what is and
isn’t real.
She learns that
those faraway
places are hot,
smelly, and full
of insects.

51. She’s discovered
that A isn’t really
the chatty Marco
Polo Man—but
she still wants
him.
She gives up
her chatty act.

52. A, the travel writer, has
his own issues to sort
out.
He wants to marry a
woman from his own
class—but he doesn’t like
their wasteful spending
habits.

53. He’s always
scorned
shopkeepers…
…but now he’s
finding that he
enjoys the shop
and his
customers.

54. Here’s our outline again. You can see the
prequel, where A and Z first met within the
covers of his books.

55. And you can see where we revised the
first shipboard meeting.

56. Z fooled A—and us.
She was putting on an
act for the benefit of
the “Marco Polo Man.”
We revise our notion of
what happened at that
meeting.

57. I have three takeaways to offer you.

58. First, I hope you’re
curious about Walter
Ong’s article.
We all know that Shaw often
started acting as soon as he
picked up a pen.
What we may not notice is
that we often start acting
too. It’s an idea that’s worth
exploring.

59. You’re a playwright.
Second, I encourage you
to start thinking of
yourself as a playwright
who’s collaborating with
Shaw (or Shakespeare, or
Pinter, or Hansberry, or
any other dramatist).

60. What parts of the plot did you supply
yourself?
Try diagramming a play.
It’s fun—and it can open
up new insights into a play
you thought you knew
well.

61. A Wonderful Play
Most important, I
hope you’ll read—or
reread—Village
Wooing—and watch a
performance if you
can.

62. I haven’t discussed the
ideas about life and
love in Village
Wooing, for a very
good reason. It’s a
superb play, and you
need to hear those
ideas from the
characters Shaw
created.

63. Thank you!