Playwright, essayist, and pamphleteer, born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1876 he left office-work in Ireland and moved to London, UK. In 1882 he turned to socialism, joined the committee of the Fabian Society, and became known as a journalist, writing music and drama criticism, and publishing critical essays. He began to write plays in 1885, and among his early successes were Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1897), and The Devil's Disciple (1897). There followed Man and Superman (1905), Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), and several others, displaying an increasing range of subject matter. Later plays include the religious pantomime Androcles and the Lion (1912), and the anti-romantic comedy Pygmalion (1913), adapted as the musical play My Fair Lady, in 1956 (filmed, 1964). After World War 1 followed Heartbreak House (1919), Back to Methuselah (1921), and Saint Joan (1923). He wrote over 40 plays, and continued to write them even in his 90s. He was also passionately interested in the question of spelling reform, wrote most of his own work in shorthand, and left money in his will for the devising of a new English alphabet on phonetic principles (which came to be called Shavian). In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(George) Bernard Shaw (born Dublin, 26 July 1856 – died 2 November 1950 in Hertfordshire) was an Irish playwright based in the United Kingdom. After those of William Shakespeare, Shaw's plays are among the most widely produced in English-language theatre. Neither music criticism (written under the name of a family friend) nor a telephone company job lasted very long, and only two of the five novels Shaw wrote between 1879 and 1883 found publishers: Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882), a novel about prizefighting as an occupation that anticipates the theme of prostitution as an antisocial profession in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), and An Unsocial Socialist (1883). By the mid-1880s Shaw discovered the writings of Karl Marx and turned to socialist polemics and critical journalism. Through the Fabian Society’s founders, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Shaw met the Irish heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend, whom he married in 1898.
Shaw’s early journalism ranged from book reviews and art criticism to brilliant music columns (many of them championing the controversial work of the German composer Richard Wagner) from 1888 to 1890 under the signature “Corno di Bassetto” (basset horn), later under his own initials. Shifting to the Saturday Review as drama critic, a post he held from 1895 to 1898, Shaw became the champion of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, about whom he had already written his influential The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891).
Playwriting
Shaw was a novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist, inveterate letter writer, politician and public speaker, but he is by far best known today as a playwright.
Shaw was born at 33 Synge Street in Dublin, Ireland to rather poor Church of Ireland parents, George Carr Shaw (1814-1885) and Lucinda Elizabeth (Gurly) (1830-1913). Shaw had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853-1920), a musical comedy and light opera singer, and Elinor Agnes (1854-1876);
Shaw was educated at Wesley College, Dublin and moved to London during the 1870s to embark on his literary career. From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the drama critic on Frank Harris's Saturday Review.
During this time, Shaw became a socialist and joined the Fabian Society. While Shaw's political beliefs inform his plays, they do not generally overwhelm them.
Shaw started working on his first play, Widower's Houses, in 1885, in collaboration with critic William Archer. Archer, who came up with the structure, felt Shaw was no playwright (an opinion he apparently never changed), and the project was abandoned. Years later, Shaw gave it another shot and, in 1892, completed his first play—alone. Shaw created Pygmailion to show that the outside doesn't matter. Shaw would later call it one of his worst works, but he had found his medium.
His first financial success as a playwright came from Richard Mansfield's American production of The Devil's Disciple (1897). Shaw, in fact, would often see his plays succeed in America (and Germany) before they did in London.
The ideas in his earliest theatrical work were unconventional, and his wit unmatched by contemporaries (save Oscar Wilde), but his plays were still designed for the theatre of his time.
From 1904 to 1907, several of his plays had their London premieres in notable productions at the Court Theatre, managed by Harley Granville-Barker and J.E.
His first original play performed at the Court, John Bull's Other Island (1904), though not one of his more popular plays today, made his reputation in London when, during a command perfomance for King Edward VII, the King laughed so hard he broke his chair.
By the 1910s, Shaw was a well-established playwright. (Even though Oscar Straus's The Chocolate Soldier (1908)--an adaptation of Arms And The Man--was very popular, Shaw detested it and for the rest of his life forbade any musicalization of his work, including a potential Franz Lehar operetta based on Pygmalion. Only after Shaw's death did My Fair Lady become possible.)
Many feel Shaw's outlook was changed by World War I, a war he—quite unpopularly—opposed. This seemed to be a new Shaw;
In 1921, Shaw completed Back to Methuselah, his "Metabiological Pentateuch." Shaw claimed it was a masterpiece, but many critics did not share that opinion. Shaw had long thought of writing about Joan of Arc, and her recent canonization spurred him on.
He continued writing plays for the rest of his life, but very few of them are as notable—or as often revived—as his earlier work. His last significant play, In Good King Charles Golden Days has, according to St. John Ervine, passages that are equal to Shaw's major works.
Many of Shaw's published plays come with lengthy prefaces. These tend to be essays more about Shaw's opinions on the issues dealt with in the plays than about the plays themselves.
One of the world's most notable theatrical voices was silenced when Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94 due to a fall from a ladder.
After his death
By the time of his death, Shaw was not only a household name in Britain, but a world figure.
From 1906 until his death, Shaw lived at Shaw's Corner in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire.
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.
Friends and correspondents
Shaw, in his lifetime, maintained correspondence with hundreds of personages , many of them notable.
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. The latter dedicated one of his late works, Severn Suite, to Shaw; and Shaw exerted himself (eventually with success) to persuade the BBC to commission from Elgar a third symphony, though this piece remained incomplete at Elgar's death.
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 0-8020-3002-5).
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.
Socialism and political beliefs
Shaw had a vision (letter to Henry James of 17 January 1909):
“I, as a Socialist, have had to preach, as much as anyone, the enormous power of the environment. 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. That said, Shaw was not a Marxist in the traditional sense, and for a long while abhorred the aggression of Trade Unionism.
Shaw's second career — after the theatre — was in support of socialism.
Having visited the USSR in 1930s and met Stalin, Shaw became an ardent supporter of Stalinist USSR. Having been asked why he didn't want to stay permanently in the Soviet 'earthly paradise', Shaw ironically marked that England was a 'hell' but of course he was a small devil himself.
Vegetarianism
Bernard Shaw was a noted vegetarian. 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. "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."
Sesquicentennial anniversary of birth
A programme of readings, guided tours and performances took place at 33 Synge Street, Dublin, the place of Shaw's birth, between 22 July and 29 July to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth which was on 26 July 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.
Quotes
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Bernard ShawOn The Future
On Personal Responsibility
On India
On War
On Ideas
Back to Methuselah
Drama
NovelsImmaturity The Irrational Knot Love Among the Artists Cashel Byron's Profession An Unsocial SocialistEssaysCommonsense about the War The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism The Black Girl in Search of God Everybody's Political What's What? 1944 ConstableDebateShaw V. Chesterton, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. ISBN 0-9535077-7-7References and footnotes^ Shaw never used his first name "George" personally or professionally, and indeed hated being called George: he was "Bernard Shaw" throughout his long career. |
User Comments Add a comment…