George Bernard Shaw
(George) Bernard Shaw[Shaw never used his first name "George" personally or professionally: he was "Bernard Shaw" throughout his long career. Since his death it has become customary to use all three of his names, even in reference works.] (
July 26,
1856 –
November 2,
1950) was an
Irish playwright and winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and the
Academy Award in 1938 for
Pygmalion. After those of
William Shakespeare, Shaw's plays are some of the most widely produced in English language theatre.
Born at 33 Synge Street in
Dublin, Ireland to rather poor
Church of Ireland parents, Shaw was educated at
Wesley College, Dublin and moved to
London during the
1870s to embark on his literary career. He wrote five
novels, none of which were published, before finding his first success as a music critic on the
Star newspaper. He wrote his music criticism under the
pseudonym Corno di Bassetto.
In the meantime he had become involved in politics, and served as a local councillor in the
St Pancras district of London for several years from 1897. He was a noted
socialist who took a leading role in the
Fabian Society.
[Holroyd, M, Bernard Shaw, London : Vintage, 1998,. ISBN 0099749017]In 1895, Shaw became the drama critic of the
Saturday Review, and this was the first step in his progress towards a lifetime's work as a dramatist. In 1898, he married an Irish heiress, Charlotte Payne-Townshend. His first successful play,
Candida, was produced in the same year. He followed this with a series of classic comedy-dramas, including
The Devil's Disciple (1897),
Arms and the Man (1898),
Mrs. Warren's Profession (1898),
Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900),
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901),
Man and Superman (1903),
Major Barbara (1905),
Androcles and the Lion (1912), and
Pygmalion (1913).
After
World War I, during which he was a staunch pacifist, he produced more serious dramas, including
Heartbreak House (1919) and
Saint Joan (1923). A characteristic of Shaw's published plays is the lengthy prefaces that accompany them. In these essays, Shaw wrote more about his usually controversial opinions on the issues touched by the plays than about the plays themselves. Some prefaces are much longer than the actual play.
[e.g. the Penguin edition of The Doctor's Dilemma, where 89 of 188 pages are taken up by the preface.]Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94 due to a fall from a ladder.
[http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cmazer/mis1.html]By the time of his death, Shaw was not only a household name in
Britain, but a world figure. His
ironic wit endowed the language with the adjective "Shavian" to refer to such clever observations as "England and
America are two countries divided by a common language."
[http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2003/may/bkpub.asp]From 1906 until his death, Shaw lived at
Shaw's Corner in the small village of
Ayot St Lawrence,
Hertfordshire. The house is now a
National Trust property, open to the public.
Concerned about the inconsistency of
English spelling, he willed a portion of his wealth to fund the creation of a new
phonemic alphabet for the
English language. On his death bed, he did not have much money to leave, so no effort was made to start such a project. However, his estate began to earn significant royalties from the rights to
Pygmalion when
My Fair Lady, a
musical adapted from the play by his comrade film producer
Gabriel Pascal, became a hit. It then became clear that the will was so badly worded that the relatives had grounds to challenge the will, and in the end an out-of-court settlement granted only a small portion of the money to promoting a new alphabet. This became known as the
Shavian alphabet. The
National Gallery of Ireland,
RADA and the
British Museum all received substantial bequests.
The Shaw Theatre, Euston Road, London was opened in 1971 and named in his honour.
The
Shaw Festival, an annual theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, began as an eight week run of
Don Juan in Hell and
Candida in 1962 and has grown into an annual festival with over 800 performances a year, dedicated to producing the works of Shaw and his contemporaries.
Shaw, in his lifetime, maintained correspondence with hundreds of personages, many notable and many not. His letters to and from
Mrs. Patrick Campbell were adapted for the stage by
Jerome Kilty as
Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters; as was his correspondence with the poet
Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (the intimate friend of
Oscar Wilde), into the drama
Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship by
Anthony Wynn. His letters to the prominent actress,
Ellen Terry, the boxer
Gene Tunney, and
H.G. Wells have also been published.
Shaw campaigned against the executions of the rebel leaders of the
Easter Rising, and he became a personal friend of the
Cork-born
IRA leader
Michael Collins, whom he invited to his home for dinner while Collins was negotiating the
Anglo-Irish Treaty with
Lloyd-George in London. After Collins's assassination in 1922, Shaw sent a personal message of condolence to one of Collins's sisters.
Shaw had a long time friendship with
G. K. Chesterton, the
Catholic-convert British writer, and there are many humorous stories about their complicated relationship.
Another great friend was the composer
Edward Elgar.
Shaw's correspondence with the motion picture producer
Gabriel Pascal, who was the first to successfully bring Shaw's plays to the screen and who later adapted Pygmalion into "
My Fair Lady," is published in a book titled
Bernard Shaw and Gabriel Pascal (ISBN 0802030025).
A stage play based on a book by Hugh Whitemore, The Best of Friends, provides a window on the friendships of Dame
Laurentia McLachlan, OSB (late Abbess of Stanbrook) with
Sir Sydney Cockerell and Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings.
Shaw had a vision (letter to
Henry James of January 17, 1909): :"I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. We can change it; we must change it; there is absolutely no other sense in life than the task of changing it. What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods."Shaw held that each class worked towards its own ends, and that those from the upper echelons had won the struggle; for him, the working class had failed in promoting their interests effectively, making Shaw highly critical of the democratic system of his day. The writing of Shaw, such as his plays
Major Barbara and
Pygmalion, has a background theme of class struggle.
Shaw's second career â€" after the theatre â€" was in support of
socialism. In
1882 Henry George's lecture on land nationalization gave depth and direction to Shaw's political ideology. Shortly thereafter he applied to join the
Social Democratic Federation. Its leader
H. M. Hyndman introduced him to the works of
Karl Marx. Instead, in May of 1884 he joined the newly-formed
Fabian Society. He played a pivotal role with the
Fabian Society and wrote a number of their pamphlets. He argued that property was theft and for an equitable distribution of land and capital. He was involved with the formation of the
Labour Party. For a clear statement of his position read
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism.
Despite the fact that he identified as being a
democratic socialist, in the 1930s Shaw approved of the regime of
Stalin and also made some ambiguous statements that are often interpreted as being pro-
Hitler. In 1945, his preface to the play
Geneva staked a claim that the majority of the victims of the
Nazi extermination camps had in fact died of "overcrowding". However, he also stated that Hitler had become a "mad messiah" over time. Shaw contrasted this with the situation in the
Soviet Union where, according to Shaw, "Stalin... made good by doing things better and much more promptly than parliaments". Shaw also made numerous anti-semitic comments at this time, although the extent to which he was merely being ironic or provocative is unclear.
Bernard Shaw was a noted vegetarian. The following was taken from the archives of The Vegetarian Society UK
[http://www.ivu.org/history/shaw/index.html]:
The Summer of 1946 seems to have been a season of anniversaries and memorials. The Vegetarian Society itself was looking forward to its 100th anniversary and giving its members advance warnings of celebratory plans.
But the big story of the July issue of The Vegetarian Messenger was the tribute to George Bernard Shaw, celebrating his 90th birthday on the 26th of that month. He had, at that time, been a vegetarian for 66 years and was commended as one of the great thinkers and dramatists of his era. "No writer since Shakespearean times has produced such a wealth of dramatic literature, so superb in expression, so deep in thought and with such dramatic possibilities as Shaw." The writer was a staunch vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and opponent of cruel sports.
Shaw has the unique distinction to be the only
Nobel Laureate who also won an
Oscar for Adapted Screenplay, 1938.
A programme of readings, guided tours and performances take place at 33 Synge Street, Dublin, the place of Shaw's birth, between July 22 and 29 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth which is on
July 26 2006. The
National Gallery of Ireland, which regards Shaw as a generous benefactor, will have a series of celebratory festivities for the remainder of 2006. Several conferences are to be held across the globe and there will be theatre readings of all 52 Shaw plays.
* Shaw was a motorcyclist, and gave
TE Lawrence a
Brough Superior.
* Upon visiting America, Shaw called New York Giants baseball manager
John McGraw the "one true American".
* Shaw is the only person ever to have won both a
Nobel Prize and an
Academy Award.
* Shaw referred to
Prophet Muhammad as the
"Savior of Humanity" when he stated:
"He must be called the Savior of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it much needed peace and happiness."Drama
*
Plays Unpleasant (published 1898):
**
Widowers' Houses (1892)
**
The Philanderer (1898)
**
Mrs Warren's Profession (1898)
*
Plays Pleasant (published 1898):
**
The Man of Destiny (1897)
**
Arms and the Man (1898)
**
Candida (1898)
**
You Never Can Tell (1898)
*
Three Plays for Puritans (published 1901):
**
The Devil's Disciple (1897)
**
Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900)
**
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)
*
The Admirable Bashville (1901)
*
Man and Superman (1902-03)
*
John Bull's Other Island (1904)
*
How He Lied to Her Husband (1904)
*
Major Barbara (1905)
*
The Doctor's Dilemma (1906)
*
Getting Married (1908)
*
The Glimpse of Reality (1909)
*
Misalliance (1910)
*
Dark Lady of the Sonnets (1910)
*
Fanny's First Play (1911)
*
Androcles and the Lion (1913)
*
Pygmalion (1912-13)
*
Heartbreak House (1919)
*
Back to Methuselah (1921):
**
In the Beginning**
The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas**
The Thing Happens**
Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman**
As Far as Thought Can Reach*
Saint Joan (1923)
*
The Apple Cart (1929)
*
On the Rocks (1933)
*
The Six of Calais (1934)
*
The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934)
*
Geneva (1938)
*
In Good King Charles' Golden Days (1939)
*
Shakes versus Shav (1949)
Novels
* Immaturity (1879)
* The Irrational Knot 1880
* Love Among the Artists (1881)
* Cashel Byron's Profession (1882-83)
* An Unsocial Socialist (1883)
Essays
*
Commonsense about the War*
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism*
The Black Girl in Search of GodEverybody's Political What's What? 1944 Constable
Music criticism
*
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring,
1923Debate
Shaw V. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton 2000 Third Way Publications Ltd. ISBN 0953507777
*
List of people on stamps of Ireland*
Comedy on screen*
Free ebook of George Bernard Shaw at
Project Gutenberg*
"Excerpt from Caesar and Cleopatra" Creative Commons audio recording.*
Dan H. Laurence/Shaw Collection in the
University of Guelph Library, Archival and Special Collections, holds more than 3,000 items related to his writings and career
*
The Shaw Society*
The Bernard Shaw Society, New York
