Playwrights / Dramatists - 04 - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

George Bernard Shaw who ranks next to William Shakespeare among English playwrights was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1856. From his mother a talented singer, he had learned much about music. (This knowledge, he combined with excellent taste and a sparking prose style to become the most influential music critic of his day later.)

Shaw came to England at the age of twenty and lived in and near London throughout the rest of his life.

After writing a few unsuccessful novels, namely ‘The Irrational Knot’, ‘Love Among The Artists’, ‘Cashel Byron’s Profession’ and ‘An Unsocial Socialist’ young Shaw turned to reviewing books and paintings in order to earn a living. It is said that he first became known as a music critic.

Shaw’s lively intelligence did not confine itself to art, fiction, and music. At an early age he became committed to the cause of social reform. He joined the Fabian movement, a type of Socialism founded in England in the 1880s, to reform the social economic and political systems through peaceful democratic measures.

Shaw turned himself into an outstanding public speaker. He continued to participate actively in politics the rest of his life. However, he found a particularly satisfying media for his ideas in reviewing drama and eventually in writing plays of his own.

In the 1890s Shaw became recognized as London’s wittiest and most stimulating drama critic. He took drama very seriously, in particular, he admired the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s cricism of middle class life revealed to Shaw, the potential impact of drama upon society.

After studying Ibsen’s works thoroughly and writing his famous essay ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’ in 1891, Shaw began to try his own hand in, writing plays. The result ‘Widowers’ Houses’ published in 1892 became the first of many plays to appear in years ahead.

At first Shaw’s plays were too controversial for English theatregoers, who were used to light and sentimental entertainment. However Shaw continued writing and publishing his plays with provocative examinations of moral and social issues. Eventually he established himself the leading English playwright of the modern period, with such works as ‘Arms and the Man’ (1894), Candida’ (1895), ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’ (1898), ‘Man and Superman’ (1903), ‘Major Barbara’ (1907), ‘Pygmalion’ (1912), ‘Heartbreak House’ (1917) and ‘Saint Joan’ (1923). For the above achievements Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Shaw’s plays mostly are comedies of ideas, or works that present complex and controversial themes within the framework of entertaining plots, appealing characters, and witty and lovely dialogues. Shaw’s works are insistently rational coolly ridiculing the conventions and prejudices of his time.

George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright passed away in London in the year of 1950.

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