The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales

THE BLACK GIRL IN SEARCH OF GODBY GEORGE BERNARD SHAWCONTENTS Preface to The Black Girl in Search of God The Black Girl in Search of God Aerial Football: the New Game The Emperor and the Little Girl The Miraculous Revenge The Theatre of the Future A Dressing Room ecffct Don Giovanni Explains Beautys Duty Still after The Dolls House The Domesticity of Franklyn Barnabas Death of an Old Revolutionary Hero The Serenade A Sunday on the Surrey Hills Cannonfodder THE BLACK GIRL IN SEARCH OF GOD WAS inspired to write this tale when I was held up in Knysna for five weeks in the African sum, mer and English winter of 1932, My intention was to write a play in the ordinary course of my business as a playwright but I found myself writing the story of the black girl instead. And now, the story being written, I proceed to gcuale on what it means, though I cannot too often re peat that I am as liable as anyone else to err in my interpretation, and that pioneer writers, like other pioneers, often mistake their destination as Columbus did. That is how they sometimes run away in pious horror from the conclusions to which their revela tions manifestly lead. I hold, as firmly as St Thomas Aquinas, that all truths, ancient or modern, are divinely inspired but I know by observation and introspection that the instrument on which the inspiring force plays may be a very faulty one, and may even end, like Bunyan in The Holy War, by making the most ridicul ous nonsense of his message. However, here is my own account of the matter for what it is worth. It is often said, by the heedless, that we are a conservative species, impervious to new ideas. I have not found it so. I am often appalled at the avidity and credulity with which new ideas, are snatched at and adopted without a scrap of sound evidence. People will believe anything that amuses them, gratifies them, or promises them some sort of profit.