I first read this piece when I was a student of dramatic art in London in 1927. I had been singled out by Shaw at a rehearsal and had loyally set out to read all his works. The second one I came up against was Man and Superman, and this scene. After the first shocks I went around dreaming what a wonderful world it would be in which audiences would come to see this. Well, here we are, and it isn’t!
I did not understand any of the references to the Don Juan legend. I was expensively educated, but nobody had shown me how to go to a public library and look things up in books, so I escaped into thinking that such grand things were not for ordinary people like me. In order that you will have no chance to creep into that hard shell, here is all of the legend necessary to be able to follow this piece.
Don Juan is the man who loves too many women and leaves them. The basic story on which the early Spanish play and the Molière play and the Mozart opera are founded goes something like this: Don Juan once made love to a woman called Donna Ana. Donna Ana was married to a man called Ottavio. You will read about him in this piece. He does not appear.
So when Don Juan made love to Donna Ana, Donna Ana screamed, and her father came to her rescue to defend her virtue. Donna Ana’s father got into a sword fight with Don Juan, and in the sword fight Don Juan killed Donna Ana’s father. Then the story cuts to some time later. There was a statue erected to the memory of Donna Ana’s father, and in a high mood one day Don Juan invited the Statue to come and have supper with him, and lo and behold, the Statue stepped down from its pedestal and came and had supper with Don Juan. And in return the Statue invited Don Juan to supper with it, and on this occasion the Statue took Don Juan down into Hell, where, according to Shaw, Ana joins them and they talk with the Devil.
—CHARLES LAUGHTON