ABSTRACT
It was the Austrians’ fault. More specifically, it was the fault of the editor of the Vienna newspaper Die Neue Freie Presse. The story of the controversy arising from Shaw's response to a request from that newspaper for an obituary of Henry Irving has been told before, but it bears revisiting in light of its centrality to the received understanding of the relationship between Irving and Shaw, the relationship that is the subject of this essay – a relationship that is far more complex than one defined merely by the numerous public and private exchange of insults between them, however diverting those insults might be: ‘a damned evil to the theatrical profession of Great Britain’, said Irving of Shaw; 1 ‘without exception absolutely the stupidest man I ever met’, said Shaw of Irving. 2
