An Introduction to Bernard Shaw's “Mr. Bernard Shaw, Special Interview”

On 3 October 1910, the day when Bernard Shaw delivered his first public lecture in Dublin, an interview with Shaw was published in The Freeman's Journal, titled “MR. BERNARD SHAW, SPECIAL INTERVIEW.”¹ The interview, under the title of “Mr. Bernard Shaw in Dublin,” was also published on the same day in Dublin's Evening Telegraph.² Since the interview appeared in the two papers, it is certain that it was a self-interview provided by Shaw. While Dan Laurence mentions the interview in Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, he and David Greene included only a brief excerpt from it in the second edition of The Matter with Ireland, which they titled “My Motto Is Ireland for All.” The interview/article was publicity for the lecture Shaw delivered that evening, “Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland.”³ While the lecture was through an invitation from the Irish Committee to Promote...