Lecture 14 george Bernard Shaw

1856-1950

George Bernard Shaw, the great English playwright, was the founder of the social realistic drama in English literature.

Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in a poor middle-class family. His father had retired from the Department of Justice and the family lived on a small pension.

The boy took lessons of reading and writing from a governess and his uncle gave him some lessons in Latin. In 1867 Bernard Shaw was sent to a college where, as he said later, he had learned nothing.

He attended some other schools and in 1869 entered the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. When Shaw left school in 1871 he went to work as a clerk in a Dublin estate office. His wages were eighteen shillings a month; his duties were to get the incoming letters, to post the outgoing letters and buy lunch for the other clerks. His wages were soon raised and he worked in that office for five years.

Shaw's mother had a nice voice. She moved to London and worked as a teacher of singing there. In 1876 Bernard Shaw decided to follow her example and go to London. By that time he had understood that work at an office was impossible for him. He got a good recommendation when he left the office. London was the literary centre of the country and the young man wanted to try himself in writing. His father and mother helped him at that period. From time to time he worked at some offices, but his aim was to be a writer. [38] Bernard Shaw described that period: "I bought paper and ordered myself to write five pages of it a day. I had so much of the schoolboy and the clerk in me that if my five hages ended in the middle of a sentence I did not finish it until next day.”

He wrote articles and poems, essays and novels. But very little of it was published. Four novels were written at that time and only the fifth. "An Unsocial Socialist", was published in 1884.

Bernard Shaw was a socialist and in 1884 he joined the Fabian Society, a petty-bourgeois organization. The Fabians understood that the social revolution was necessary, but they did not want the workers to head this revolution. The ideas of the Fabians are present in all the works of Bernard Shaw. He became a clever public speaker, and an atheist. But his novels had little success and Bernard Shaw turned to dramatic writing.

In 1892 Bernard Shaw's first play "Widowers' Houses" was performed in London. Then, followed "Mrs. Warren's Profession" and "The Philanderer". Bernard Shaw called these works "Plays Unplea­sant". Unpleasant they were to the bourgeois public because in them the writer attacked the capitalist society. "Plays Pleasant" contained "Arms and the Man", "Candida", "You Never Can Tell". The most popular of his plays are "Pygmalion" (1913), "The Apple Cart" " (1929). "Too True to Be Good" (1931).

Bernard Shaw was an enemy of "art for art's sake" and used the stage to criticize capitalism and bourgeois society. The characters in his plays discuss political events, science, religion, education and economy. Bernard Shaw wrote more than fifty plays. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

In 1931 Bernard Shaw visited the USSR and celebrated his 75^th birthday in Moscow. He supported the progressive people in their struggle against fascism and imperialist wars.

Check yourself

1. Where was B. Shaw born'

2. What was his father?

3. In what schools did B. Shaw get his education?

4. When did B. Shaw begin to work?

5. What profession did he work in?

6. Why did B. Shaw go to London? [39]

7. What did В. Shaw want to become in life?

8. How did he learn to be a writer?

9. What were his first literary works?

10. What were his political ideas?

11. When and where was B. Shaw's first play performed?

12. Why were some of his plays called "Plays Unpleasant"?

13. What did the characters in his plays discuss on the stage?

14. When did B. Shaw visit our country? [40]