The "Shawkspeare" Enigma, by Frederick Highland

I submit to you the curious case of an IRISH stamp issued in 1980 and portraying a caricature of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW by Alick Ritchie (Scott 478).

The stamp is a delightfully sly representation of GBS in an absurd yellow and red checked topcoat, wearing, as it appears, a ten gallon Stetson cowboy hat.

This is especially droll when one considers that Shaw once described "the 100% American as 99% an idiot."

One hand is stationed at his lapel as if the great dramatist and lifelong Socialist is about to deliver some Shavian bon mot like the following, one of my favorites:

"The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of man: in other terms, of human evolution. We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth."

So far, so good. An entertaining caricature....

UNTIL...

Until one breaks out the magnifier and begins examining Mr. Shaw's right hand pocket, more pertinently, the item stuffed into it. It is a crumpled manuscript title page which reads:

CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA BY SHAWKSPEARE

This is where the plot thickens.

"Shawkspeare"

As everyone knows, GBS wrote a wry 1901 play by that title, in which the ingénue Cleo learns how to be an lying, deceiving, unscrupulous stateswoman -- in brief, the avatar of a successful modern politician--- from the worldly wise and cynical Roman leader Caesar.

Now William Shakespeare wrote, about 1601, a vehicle for what must have been one very talented boy actor (since women were not permitted to perform on the Elizabethan stage), entitled Antony and Cleopatra.

This play deals with the fabled Egyptian and the love of her later life, Marcus Antonius, Caesar's loyal pal.

One of the best plays of Shakespeare's later days, A & C is a touching and transcendental meditation on mature and seasoned love, what one might be pleased to call real love, as opposed to the wretched pantings and gropings of Romeo and Juliet, and, probably for that very reason, ignored by major Hollywood film studios.

It would then seem then that either Mr. Ritchie or the designer of the stamp in question confused and conflated the names of the two playwrights and thus we end up with a kind of bifocular authorship for Caesar and Cleopatra, a conclusion, which, if an oversight, does no credit to either dramatist or the Irish Postal Service.

The Writer goes on a quest

So, in the Spring of 1997, I wrote to the Irish Postal Authority, An Post, in order to obtain some information about the Shawkspeare business.

The stamp designer had nothing to do with it, my correspondent at An Post informed me. The original cartoon of GBS by Alick Ritchie appeared in an issue of Vanity Fair Magazine and was "reproduced exactly" on the stamp. The magazine issue in which it appeared was not specified.

Now that I knew the origin of the image, I called the librarian at Conde Nast in New York, since Conde Nast now publishes Vanity Fair, and asked if he could track down the issue and provide me with a copy of the original GBS cartoon. The results were most puzzling. No record of a GBS cartoon by Alick Ritchie. No record of an Alick Ritchie who had ever illustrated for Vanity Fair. The search included issues of the magazine published prior to 1950, the year of Shaw's death.

Meanwhile I had written to several philatelic research libraries. Of these, the Wineburgh Library at the University of Texas at Dallas was the most helpful. The Special Collections Associate Director came up with the name of the Irish designer, Peter Byrne.

So I wrote back to An Post, hoping they could provide me with information about Mr. Byrne and the supposed cartoon that had inspired his design for the postage stamp. The resources of An post appear to be depleted: they could help me no further.