MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION
by George Bernard Shaw
1894
With The Author's Apology (1902)
THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY
Mrs Warren's Profession has been performed at last, after a delay
of only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the
triumphant amusement of startling all but the strongest-headed of
the London theatre critics clean out of the practice of their
profession. No author who has ever known the exultation of
sending the Press into an hysterical tumult of protest, of moral
panic, of involuntary and frantic confession of sin, of a horror
of conscience in which the power of distinguishing between the
work of art on the stage and the real life of the spectator is
confused and overwhelmed, will ever care for the stereotyped
compliments which every successful farce or melodrama elicits
from the newspapers. Give me that critic who rushed from my play
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