confronting the failure of his 19th-century faith in progress. In Shaw’scase this ironic thinking was a shift in perspective, but still creative. AsHolroyd (1988) has observed, “Shaw’s prejudice was optimism” (p. 41).That observation would hold true even as Shaw confronted new depths ofdespair over the human condition. The Shavian life force would ultimatelyuse this challenge as a springboard to new terrain.A series of ironies, described at the beginning of theHeartbreakHousepreface, illustrate Shaw’s perspective in 1919. As Table 2 shows,Shaw began by describing an ironic relationship between politiciansand the cultured upper class (the inhabitants of “Heartbreak House”).Hannibal’s army had been innervated by the luxuries of Capua and, inlike manner, Shaw saw the country house culture of prewar leisuredEurope as a Capua for politicians. This reference was particularly pointedfor Fabians. No longer were the heirs of Quintus Fabius Maximus fightingHannibal. Instead, they contributed to the destruction of their own polityby following in Hannibal’s footsteps. From there, Shaw’s scope widened.In the next topic the irony included all of the upper classes. Then Shawdescribed ironies resulting from English democracy, culminating in a viewof that system as self-defeating. In the next topic, “Nature’s Long Credits,”he described the ironies leading to the war as humanity’s relationship toNature as a whole.Here, the ironists of the initial, narrower contexts became thealazonsofthe later, broader ones. The critique ofHeartbreak Housebecame itself na ̈ıvein a system that would not let theHeartbreak Houseinhabitants participate,if they had wanted. Then laying blame on the country’s political systembecame na ̈ıve if Nature itself laid a trap that humanity was unable to avoid.Inthisprogression,thelasttopic—“Nature’sLongCredits”—wasbothculminating and provisional. The metaphor of Nature setting a trap forhumanity tends to indicate inevitable irony. Nature’s role of creditor tohumanity’s reckless spending, however, implied that the situation wascorrectable. Shaw was explicit on that point: “[The plagues of war] wereall as preventable as the great Plague of London, and came solely becausethey had not been prevented” (1919c, p. xv). More caution would preventthe tragic irony, but humanity gave no evidence of being capable of thatdegree of caution.In effect, Shaw had been reluctantly dragged into General (inevitable)Irony territory, but he still clutched the Specific (correctable) Irony flag. Ifhuman nature led to inevitably tragic ironies, then the solution was tochange human nature. Shaw would present proposals to just that endin his next major work,Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch(1921/1977)