You Never Can Tell was an attempt to comply with many requests for a play in which the much paragraphed 'brilliancy' of Arms and The Man should be tempered by some consideration for the requirements of managers in search of fashionable comedies for West End Theatres. Question: What is Shaw suggesting about the anti-romantic stance of his play? Who and what events in the play represent the mistakes of the romantic/heroic view of war? Who and what events represent the good and realism in the world? And with that hint as to what I am driving at, I withdraw and ring up the curtain.
To me the tragedy and comedy of life lie in the consequences, sometimes terrible, sometimes ludicrous, of our persistent attempts to found our institutions on the ideals suggested to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history. At all events I do not see moral chaos and anarchy as the alternative to romantic convention, and I am not going to pretend I do merely to please the people who are convinced that the world is held together only by the force of unanimous, strenuous, eloquent, trumpet-tongued lying. Dealism, which is only a flattering name for romance in politics and morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in ethics or religion I see plenty of good in the world working itself out as fast as the idealists will allow it and if they would only let it alone and learn to respect reality we would all get along much better and faster.
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