Luigi Pirandello is not often linked to George Bernard Shaw, although they did communicate through notes on one occasion, with Shaw expressing himself in a mélange of operatic French, German, and Italian, the last of which gave Pirandello much entertainment. Both playwrights admired and liked one another; Shaw praised Six Characters as the most original play he had encountered, while Pirandello greatly admired Saint Joan and wanted Marta Abba to perform the part. The New York Times invited Pirandello to write an essay on Shaw’s play, which Pirandello concluded with the assertion that Saint Joan was “a work of poetry from beginning to end.” Further consideration of how Shaw’s plays related to Pirandello’s reveals that, in spite of Pirandello’s despairing view of the human condition, which Pirandello constantly mocked as futile, one can discover moments of humor that often resemble Shaw’s comedic style.

Emphasizing preparing for a range of different audiences, Chapter 17 opens by asking readers to think about who might respond particularly well to the demonstrations that they are developing. The chapter contrasts audiences in informal learning settings and elsewhere. For the former, it’s important to have a pitch that is friendly and enthusiastic, and to be clear that your activities are free for everyone. Strategies for increased inclusivity are suggested. Summarizing some guiding principles, the chapter returns to the strands of science learning in the context of knowing your goals; considering how given and new vary across people, and planning ahead are also emphasized. Concerning applied audiences such as teachers or lawyers or policy makers and academic audiences, the principle that incomplete is not incorrect is again stressed. With all kinds of audiences, practice is paramount. The Worked Example uses a demonstration with George Bernard Shaw’s "ghoti" spelling, adjusting the spin for several different audiences.

Floyd Abrams’ Foreword sets forth the premise of the book: that America has faced recurring episodes of censorship and that censors may be admired in their time, but that freedom of speech, as protected by the First Amendment, has flourished. For that reason, censors try to avoid being called censors.

Chapter 3 examines Anthony Comstock’s legacy and the birth of the “censor’s dilemma.” Although no censor before or since has wielded such power or had the same level of influence as Comstock, his achievements were washed away by cultural and legal evolution. Even in his time, his crusades did as much to promote the popularity of “forbidden” works, and since his time, the profession of censor has been forever tarnished. The legal doctrine on which Comstock depended was reversed by the development of First Amendment law through the twentieth century, particularly the law of obscenity. To the extent that Comstock is remembered today, he is the subject of derision and scorn.

Chapter 4 sets forth the “Comstock Playbook,” the techniques used by the anti-vice crusader to attack his adversaries, which have been emulated by censors ever since. His strategies include exhibiting moral certainty, equating opposition to your cause with the love of vice, denouncing and discrediting adversaries, promoting xenophobia, poisoning the debate with invective, touting pseudo science, seeking publicity, exaggeratingthe threat to be overcome, hyping all accomplishments, and playing the martyr.

Devotional approaches to Shakespeare were typical of Victorian era. George Bernard Shaw famously coined the term “Bardolatry” to disparage his age’s devotional rhetoric, and his ambivalence has been succeeded by well over a century of critical embarrassment or ambivalence in the academy surrounding religious approaches to literature. By contrast, this chapter adopts “Bardology” as a less pejorative alternative to Shaw’s “Bardolatry,” and it proposes that even the most outré Victorian devotional approaches to Shakespeare may be studied profitably, without any special embarrassment or disapprobation.Such study can teach us about both literary art and religious movements in the modern era.

This chapter examines how the law, and especially litigation, played an important but paradoxical role in both holding the Bandmann Circuit together and also threatening to destabilize it as disputes erupted with almost predictable regularity. Enacted in the public ‘theatre’ of courts and trials, these disagreements impacted not only on labour relations, but also on the ‘intimate relations’ of marriage and reproduction; they affected artistic production and were influenced by cultural differences and media reporting. Maurice E. Bandmann’s many and often highly publicized court cases generated a secondary stage, where his artists had additional appearances. In ANT terms, the stage and the courts thus became linked, acting on one another in a mutually reinforcing activity that ultimately strengthened the network. The legal disputes centred on two main kinds of breaches: copyright and of labour contracts. Both elements constituted crucial assets in the Bandmann Circuit. Copyright protected the network’s intellectual property, whereas contracts regulated the deployment of human capital.