Broadbent: "my plan, sir, will be to take a little money out of England and spend it in Ireland… Have you ever heard of Garden City?"
Haffigan: "D'ye mane Heav'n?" (John Bull's Other Island, 124)

In this passage George Bernard Shaw has coupled the Irish question with a development proposal for a socialist Garden City. This may seem rather odd, since the Garden Cities were created domestically in England and America. The uncomfortable comic elements of the passage, dramatizing a benevolent, progressive English businessman having intercourse with an obsequious, uneducated, and as we learn, drunken Irishman, seem stranger still for a work essentially commissioned by Yeats for the Abbey. Yet in the play from which this was excerpted, John Bull's Other Island (JBOI), Shaw combines an interrogation of English and Irish national stereotypes with a discussion of land development policy in Ireland. These issues are well suited to the Shavian discussion play in the general sense that, in both cases, Shaw fixes upon a central dilemma without making an absolute truth claim. Here, and elsewhere in Shaw's work, national characteristics are reinscribed even as they are deconstructed, while alternative visions of land development provide no certain route to Irish independence. These twin dilemmas are not only incidentally left unresolved - they are more intimately linked through their articulation in the linguistic garb of turn-of-the-century English Liberalism. Finally, the play critiques contemporary Liberal bromides for investment capital projects which foster Irish dependency. At the same time, he points to the colonial psychology which legitimates Liberalism even while it has been thoroughly discredited.

The play is famous, in part, for the poverty of its plot, and thus for its status as one of Shaw's quintessential discussion plays. It consists of only four acts, suggesting a lack of tidy narrative resolution. It is the story of two civil engineers, Thomas Broadbent and Larry Doyle, making a trip from London to Roscullen, Ireland. Broadbent is English and Doyle is Irish, a native of Roscullen. During the visit Broadbent presents himself as a man of action, who has secured a fianceé in Nora, Doyle's childhood sweetheart, and has secured the nomination of the local power brokers to run for the district's seat in the House of Commons. The returned exile Doyle, meanwhile, rejects these same opportunities, and ruminates upon the economic and spiritual hopelessness of the Irish people. In the end Doyle and Broadbent engage in a lengthy discussion with the de-frocked mystical priest, Peter Keegan over the relative merits of alternative strategies for developing the economically and spiritually backwards Roscullen. The discussion has no impact upon the plot; yet Broadbent's plan for Roscullen moves forward unimpeded. Thus the effect of the conversation is to dramatize the interrelation of religion, nationality, and capital development while underscoring the Fabian premise that Capital, as Larry Doyle says about his land development syndicate, "has no conscience" (199).

The action of the play confirms some of the stereotypes Shaw associated with Englishness and Irishness-Broadbent is bullish, pragmatic, and a bit dull-witted; by contrast Doyle is clever, rather tragic, and paralyzed from acting to prevent Broadbent from exploiting Ireland's picturesque landscape for profit. The Liberal Broadbent's development project - a golfing resort - will bring English middle class tourists to Ireland. Through this character, Shaw juxtaposes satirical portraits of the logic of development and contemporary Liberal rhetoric of Englishness. What emerges is a paternalistic logic in which Irish "liberty" must be guaranteed by English guidance.

Broadbent - whose very name of course suggests Liberalism - is both a type of and a believer in national character types. He repeatedly characterizes the Irish as clever but incompetent, as in this speech to Haffigan: "I saw at once that you are a thorough Irishman, with all the faults and all the qualities of your race: rash and improvident but brave and good natured; not likely to succeed in business on your own account perhaps, but eloquent, humorous, a lover of freedom, and a true follower of that great Englishman Gladstone" (124). Paradoxically, Broadbent's belief in national types is part of what marks him as an English type. In Writing Ireland, David Cairns and Shaun Richards note that "a number of recent analyses of the reciprocity between colonizer and colonized have concluded that colonial discourse establishes the colonized as the repressed and rejected 'other' against which the colonizer defines an ordered self" (8). What is particularly interesting about Shaw's representation of this dynamic, however, is the modernity of his representation of otherness. As this passage demonstrates, national characterization revolves around business acumen. The typing process, in fact, naturalizes the split between British capital and Irish poverty which is at the center of the play.

Historically, this valorization of efficiency reflects shifts in Britain's imperial policy. As a result of failures such as the Boer War, British imperial rhetoric increasingly focused upon development strategies, particularly in Ireland. Broadbent contrasts his Liberal plans for Roscullen with the old imperialism: "as an Englishman I blush for the Union ... the Union Jack - that detestable symbol of a decadent Imperialism" (169). In Imperial Literature, 1870-1930, Daniel Bivona argues that this late imperial discourse often resorts to character typing to justify current colonial policy. In particular, the ideology of Indirect Rule celebrates the self-abnegating administrative style of the new imperial government, which paradoxically re-trenches its power base through a rhetoric which focuses upon the interests of the colonized. It is that logic - the way power operates through oblique rhetorical strategies, particularly in Liberal discourse - that is the rhetorical villain of Shaw's play: as Broadbent repeatedly insists, his project will bring English capital to Ireland and will ultimately lead to greater liberty. After all, as Broadbent puts it, he is "a lover of liberty, like every true Englishman" (123). Indeed, Shaw explores how comedy and farce themselves can both enact and subvert colonial power relations.

In this case, Liberal rhetoric transforms John Bull from adventurer to legislative candidate and entrepreneur. Broadbent identifies common sense and efficiency as English characteristics and employs them to justify his incursion into Ireland, which will involve dispossessing poor Irish peasant farmers: "our guidance is the important thing. We English must place our capacity for government without stint at the service of nations who are less fortunately endowed in that respect; so as to allow them to develop in perfect freedom to the English level of self-government, you know" (131-2). Broadbent's rhetoric, emphasizing capacity and endowment, subtly suggest a notion of national character closely allied to social Darwinist notions of racial character. Here again national character justifies English domination of Ireland, paradoxically claiming that English guidance is the path to liberty.

While Broadbent discusses the differences between the English and Irish character throughout the play, national typing occurs at two levels textually, both within the character dialogue and in Shaw's polemical stage directions. That is, while national stereotyping by the characters is often part of the comedy, references to national characteristics in the stage directions tend to legitimate certain national types. For example, "the English inhibitive instinct does not seem to exist in Rosscullen" (150); "when an Englishman is sentimental he behaves very much as an Irishman does when he is drunk" (153); and "general delight at this typical stroke of Irish Rabelaisianism" (177). These stage directions provide two things: first, they differ from Broadbent's analysis of national character by noting that national characteristics are situational; second, they are discursive. The latter - the assertion, for example, that Irishmen are typically Rabelaisian, takes account of the fact that Irishness is performed in discourse, that it is strategic. These differences offer a challenge to Broadbent's racial ideology by noting that English or Irish characteristics depend upon place and circumstance rather than upon race and genetics. In this position Larry Doyle is particularly closely allied with the stage instructions:

This similarity between Doyle's position and the stage directions gives some credence to claims that Doyle is an autobiographical rendering of Shaw himself. Regardless, one effect of this doubling is to make the process of stereotyping performative; that is, to reveal how stereotyping reproduces itself by fostering cultural beliefs in the stereotyper which frame Anglo-Irish interactions.

The play begins with an otherwise superfluous set piece to foreground this very dynamic. Broadbent is preparing for his trip to Ireland and seeks a "true Irishman" to help him negotiate cultural difficulties. He is duped by a drunken swindler named Tim Haffigan, who plays to Broadbent's stereotypes about the Irish (Haffigan is actually Scottish). The two characters enact a parodic version of the Hegelian master-slave relationship, revealing the complicity of the slave in sustaining the illusions of the master. Haffigan's performance is thus a projection of Broadbent's desires. As Doyle puts it,

Doyle thoroughly critiques and exposes the illusions which lead to ideas about national character. The brilliance of this play, however, is that it doesn't simply critique: rather, it exposes the futility of critique itself. As we learn, Doyle's critical position is intimately connected to economic exploitation. By contrast, an English lack of critical capacity is the key to its dominance. While in the initial scene Haffigan takes advantage of English illusions in order to secure drinking money, Broadbent's apparently naive idealism becomes one of the sources of his ability to dominate. In his interactions with the Irish throughout the play, Broadbent's continual assertions of English primacy in business and governance are clownish attempts to naturalize an exploitive relation; nevertheless, the idealism embodied in them repeatedly surmounts the self-defeating responses of the Irish.

Shaw is emphasizing precisely the way in which Broadbent's laughability performs a strategic function, and thus the way in which comedy has coercive as well as subversive potential. Doyle notes this in Act I, comparing Broadbent to a caterpillar:

Broadbent is implicitly linked to Shaw's other source of physical comedy, Patsy Farrell. Farrell is a dispossessed Irish peasant, but Shaw includes puzzling stage directions regarding his character: the actor is instructed to portray "an instinctively acquired air of helplessness and silliness, indicating, not his real character, but a cunning developed by his constant dread of a hostile dominance" (140). Farrell's cunning is never fully developed. He becomes a metonymic stand-in for the Irish peasantry, whose exploitation is continued after Irish land reform. What this subtle link with Broadbent suggests, though, is that the latter is also circumscribed within a slavish logic, that the masterful developer is also an instrument.

What is interesting about this version of the Anglo-Irish relation is that it apparently involves a rejection of imperialism and the idea of empire. Broadbent embraces the idealism embodied by Liberal proponents of suburban development, particularly Ebenezer Howard, who imagined the suburban "Garden City" as an alternative to Victorian urban living conditions. In his famous magnet diagram, Howard emphasizes "freedom" as one of the advantages of the Garden City. To Howard and likeminded reformers, this freedom was facilitated by socialist programs which, through centralized governance, allowed people the freedom to choose their profession. In Act One, in fact, Broadbent hands Tim Haffigan a copy of Howard's 1898 book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Shaw, and other Fabians, were critical of Howard's proposal because it depended upon private investment yet assumed investors would not seek
ways to maximize profit opportunities afforded by a particular project.  In an 1899 letter to Edward Rose, Shaw refers to Howard as "the Garden City Geyser" and points out that capitalists "were ready enough to go into [a Garden City] ... but that what they went for was cheap labour" (Collected Letters, 119).  Shaw sees the naivete of idealists like Howard as a justification for socialist programs which engaged the realities of modern development capital: "You had better stick to the Fabian. You will find that there is no such thing in the world as a society that will or can entirely discharge your soul's message for you" (Collected Letters, 119).  Shaw deflates the idealism of thinkers like Howard as "a mere spring of benevolent mud" (Collected Letters, 119).  Later in his career, in The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928), Shaw recommends 'nationalization' and 'municipalization' as a means to replacing manufacturing slums by "properly planned, healthy and handsome garden cities" on the grounds
that "Capitalism never dreams of doing [such projects] because it is impossible to appropriate [its] advantages as profit" (315).

In JBOI Shaw insinuates that idealist proposals such as Howard's are appropriated by development capital to pursue the
profit motive while benfitting from public munificence.  Further, he merges this appropriation with the bad faith associated with Liberal conceptions of Englishness as "common sense" and "efficiency." For Shaw, improved standards of living could not be separated readily from the imperialistic processes which drove the British economy.

The Garden City becomes directly linked to Broadbent's plans to develop a golfing resort in Rosscullen and, as the Irish spiritual priest Keegan notes, this would increase Irish dependency upon England: "when at last this poor desolate countryside becomes a busy mint in which we shall all slave to make money for you, with our Polytechnic to teach us how to do it efficiently" (201). The master-slave dynamic takes, in this passage, a more material form. Englishness, invoked so frequently in the early parts of the play, has been merely a veil for efficiency. In Act Four Broadbent exclaims that "the fact is, there are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient. It don't [sic] matter whether they're English or Irish" (198).

What Shaw accomplishes in JBOI, then, is more than a deconstruction of a Liberal version of the English "national character." He in fact reveals the ways in which it is invoked in the service of economic exploitation while being self-avowedly anti-imperialist. Surprising though it may be coming from the same figure who insisted on the primacy of nationality through much of the play, Broadbent reveals the baseline of his masterful foolery: business efficiency is the standard, above all, against which character is measured.

Keegan marshals his criticisms of Broadbent through an animal metaphor, reminding us of Doyle's earlier parable of the cunning caterpillar. Here, however, that cunning is gone, and all that remains is an ass. Keegan may speak for himself:

Just as Broadbent's garden city plan is transformed into a golfing resort with a garden city providing labor, so English governance is transformed into efficiency. For Keegan, Broadbent's typicality involves the way his character is shaped around "the service of Mammon" (199).

Thus Keegan promises to be a more effective critic of English imperialism than Larry Doyle. Unlike Doyle, for Keegan national affiliations are simply part of a larger economic process, ensuring the continuation of certain modes of production. His only allegiance, he declares, is "not Ireland nor England, but the whole mighty realm of my Church" (202). Though he wields no immediate temporal power, Keegan's faith and his critical perspective promise to make him an ameliorative presence in Ireland, and perhaps in the play itself. That is, Keegan seems poised to end the discussion in this discussion play. In a typical Shavian stroke, however, he is denied the last word. Broadbent hears Keegan's pronouncement and immediately turns it to the service of his project: "what a regular old Church and State Tory he is! He's a character: he'll be an attraction here" (203). This turn provides an exemplary instance of how Broadbent's ideology works: it incorporates resistant elements by giving them limited power. By including Keegan in his vision, he will re-establish him as an authority within the community. Yet this authority ultimately depends upon its performative nature: Keegan's gospel will be celebrated because it reflects just the sort of Irishness that Doyle abhors and for which the golfing tourists will come to Rosscullen. Broadbent exits the action with the last word, in triumph.

Thus Shaw has enacted a complex drama between purveyors of nationalist ideology and its critics. His work ultimately fits in with Yeats's project at the Abbey by valorizing land as the real stake of discussion of the Irish question, though from a quite different perspective from Yeats'. Where Shaw's play ultimately fails as good theatre, however, is in registering and justifying the shift from Broadbent the fool to Broadbent the slave of capital, or from Broadbent the caterpillar to Broadbent the ass.

Through John Bull's Other Island, then, Shaw circumscribes questions about national identity within the logic of development capital. He explores how concepts of national identity work as floating signifiers, acquiring fixed meanings only when articulated in the context of particular proposals for economic development. At the same time, the play does take a nationalist position, providing a scathing critique of British colonial policy in Ireland. As such it complements Yeats' project at the Abbey by valorizing land as the real stakes of discussion of the Irish question. Yet as Shaw is quick to point out in "Preface for Politicians," (published in 1907 with the play) John Bull's Other Island was "written in 1904 at the request of Mr [sic] William Butler Yeats ...[but] like most people who have asked me to write plays, Mr [sic] Yeats got rather more than he bargained for" (v). Here Shaw alludes to one of the central theses of the play: that the Irish mysticism promoted by Yeats could be appropriated as a touristic commodity. John Bull's Other Island is quite self-consciously the converse of Yeats' Gaelic works: farcical rather than mythic, critical rather than prophetic. As Shaw notes, the play "was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland" (v). Gareth Griffith argues that Shaw's

Shaw is not merely the voice of rationality, however. He believes that the nationalist impulse was not simply a response to the violence of colonial rule, but to the violence against a natural Irish right to sovereignty: "there is ... no greater curse to a nation than a nationalist movement, which is only the agonizing symptom of a suppressed natural function" (xxxv). Interestingly, no character in John Bull's Other Island articulates Shaw's position, and it is only through the preface that Shaw outlines a programme for Ireland's future leadership. In a section titled "English Stupidity Excused," Shaw identifies with Ireland's desire for Home Rule and exhorts the Irish to "deal in ideas and political principles since we cannot deal in bayonets; we must outwit, outwork, outstay her; we must embarrass, bully, even conspire and assassinate when nothing else will move her, if we are not all to be driven deeper and deeper into the shame and misery of our servitude" (xv). Thus while Shaw makes rather puckish claims about preferring the English to the Irish, both the preface and play serve as a tentative assertion of an Irish identity.

Where Shaw's play ultimately fails both as good theatre and as a polemic, however, is in registering and justifying the shift from Broadbent the liberal fool to Broadbent the slave of development capital, or from Broadbent the caterpillar to Broadbent the ass. Shaw, of course, anticipated such a criticism:

Shaw points out that English liberalism continues to satisfy the English public while operating as a kind of ideological cover for other forces of economic transformation. His selection of "foreigners" masquerading as Englishman-Americans, Italians, and Jews-- indites monopoly capital and syndicalism as the forces of modern economic transformation. The xenophobic nature of Shaw's claim was not unusual in commentary of this period; what is particularly interesting about it is the manner in which it is embedded in a deconstructive argument about nationality itself. In a sense this connection completes the analysis begun within the pages of John Bull's Other Island: we see English illusions as a reaction formation to the corporatization and rationalization of the modern world economy.

Works Cited

Bivona, Daniel. British Imperial Literature, 1870-1940 : Writing and the Administration of Empire. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Cairns, David. Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Culture. Manchester, Eng.: Manchester UP, 1988.

Griffith, Gareth. Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Howard, Ebenezer, Sir. Garden cities of To-morrow. Ed. F. J. Osborn. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965.

Shaw, George Bernard. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. 1928.  New York: W.H. Wise.  Vol. 20 of The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw.  Ayot St. Lawrence edition.  30 vols. 1930-32.

Shaw, George Bernard. "To Edward Rose."  14 December 1899. Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1898-1910.  Ed. Dan
Laurence.  Vol. 2.  London: Max Reinhardt, 1972, 118-9.

Shaw, Bernard. Collected Letters. Ed. Dan H. Laurence. Vol. 2. London: Reinhardt, 1985.

Shaw, George Bernard. John Bull's Other Island. Modern Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York : Norton, 1991.

Shaw, George Bernard. "Preface for Politicians." John Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara: also How He Lied to Her Husband. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1930.