As no one (including Mr. Shaw) has managed to do before him, Mr. Bentley has succeeded [in "Bernard Shaw"] in collecting all the various Shaws and pulling them together into a single character. Perhaps he has oversimplified. Perhaps he has been too arbitrary in denying Mr. Shaw most of his seeming inconsistencies and pointing out what has always been radiantly consistent about his rebel's work. Even so, all of us (including Mr. Shaw) stand in Mr. Bentley's debt. (p. 22)

Mr. Bentley's volume is a serious critical study. Indeed, it is so unflaggingly cerebral that it drove a colleague of mine, a most knowing but human fellow, to confess that it gave him "the willies." But, though Shavian in the sharpness of its thinking, it is strangely un-Shavian in the lack of gaiety of its spirit. If its tone is polemical, Mr. Bentley's defense is that his subject is...