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S.Y.B.A. (ENGLISH)
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George Bernard Shaw
(1856–1950)
George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950) was a dramatist, critic, and polemicist from Ireland. In 1856, Shaw
was born in Dublin to George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. A civil
servant's son. As a novelist, he began his literary career. He was also skilled
in journalism, music, and literary critique. Shaw attended several schools
during his childhood, although he was always unfriendly to schools and
teachers.
Shaw quoted
as saying that “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not
popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in
which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their
parents”.
As a young man, he
travelled to London and established himself as a writer and novelist. By the
mid-1880s, he had established himself as a respected theatre critic while also
penning his own plays. Shaw's political awakening occurred throughout the
1880s. He read Marx and joined the socialist Fabian Society. His opinions were
frequently aggressive and controversial. He was a profound vegetarian who
utilised his plays to express his views on politics and society.
In 1898, at the age of
41, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend. They renamed their Hertfordshire
home Shaw's Corner and stayed together till Charlotte died. George Bernard Shaw
died in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November 2, 1950.
Important Literary
Works of G B Shaw.
The majority of Shaw's
early plays emphasised capitalism's flaws and explored existing moral and
social issues. Widowers' Houses (1892) and Mrs Warren's Profession, originally
presented in 1902 but written several years earlier (it was initially banned by
the Lord Chamberlain for its clear treatment of prostitution), are examples of
early plays. Shaw's first commercial triumph was 1894's Arms and the Man, a
play influenced by Ibsen's work, though it would take him some time to recreate
its popularity. He kept writing and was politically involved.
During
the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw established his name as a
dramatist. Over the course of five years, Harley Granville-Barker's company at
the Royal Court Theatre staged 14 of Shaw's plays. Man and Superman (authored
in 1902 and presented at the Court in 1905), Major Barbara (1905), and The
Doctor's Dilemma (1906) were among them. Shaw's work got more formally
adventurous as well.
In
1912, he composed Pygmalion, one of his most successful plays. It premiered in
London in 1914, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as professor of phonetics Henry
Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.
He was the first person
to be awarded the Nobel prize for Literature as well as an Oscar (for his work
on Pygmalion, which was an adaptation of his play of the same name). He wrote
60 plays, most of which deal with social themes such as marriage, religion,
class government and health care.
After the First World
War, during which he published tracts that jarred with the patriotic mood, he
wrote Saint Joan in 1923, now regarded as a late masterpiece.
Shaw remained a Fabian,
but he became less active as he aged. He did, however, invest in The New
Statesman, a new socialist journal launched by Beatrice and Stanley Webb.Shaw,
according to critic Kenneth Tynan, "cleared the English stage of humbug
and the English stage of cant."
Bernard Shaw's comedy
of manners, as Archibald Henderson put it, makes the audience "laugh with
one side of his mouth and cry with the other."
His Style.
The following
components constitute the key elements of "the Shavian drama": (G B
Shaw’s Drama)
· Realism: The
new play no longer dealt with historical topics or locations that were out of
time or place. It attempted to establish a tradition of natural communication
by discussing common man's difficulties.
· Revolt Against
Conventional Morality: Everything on stage was now being investigated. The old
certainties were destroyed, and the dominant views, beliefs, and concepts were
fiercely criticised by the new dramatists. New interpretations emerged, and
people began to question old phenomena, including religious ones.
· Lack of Action:
For ages, 'action' has been the essential ingredient of classical play. Until
the new drama overemphasised the inner conflict, the outer conflict remained
dominating. The modern theatre has become more static as a result of its use of
mental arguments. The study of the mind aroused the curiosity of many people,
including "new wave" dramatists.
· Adopting
Scientific Theories: During the later years of the nineteenth century, new
discoveries in numerous disciplines of science predominated, and as a result,
they began to creep into various elements of life, including the theatre. Since
then, dramatists have included scientifically established viewpoints in their
plays in an attempt to be more realistic. New inquiries into the meaning of
love and sex, which Schopenhauer's philosophy provided to the nineteenth
century and Freud's to the twentieth, were now staged, shattering people's
earlier conceptions. The new dramatists took a scientific approach to life.
· The New Comedy
of Manner: When dramatists attempted to analyse people's behaviours in a clever
satirical manner, the comedy of manner emerged. The comedy of manners
reintroduced in the new theatre is essentially the same as the
eighteenth-century comedy of manners. Both were intended to shake individuals
out of their "lethargy in thought."
· Symbolism:
Since the new drama's focus has shifted from outside conflict to interior
contradiction, symbolism has been used as a tool for expressing inexpressible
concepts, emotions, behaviours, and so on. The new dramatists discovered that
simple and direct language were insufficient, which explains the extensive use
of symbolism in modern theatre.
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