Bernard Shaw: biography, facts, quotes and videos. Shaw, Bernard - writer, playwright, philosopher and Englishman with a capital letter Biography of Bernard Shaw in Russian

George Bernard Shaw is a great playwright of Irish origin, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, author of many plays and several novels.

Childhood and youth

The future playwright was born in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, in 1856. Father John Shaw traded grain, but soon went broke and gradually became addicted to drink. Mother Lucinda Shaw was a professional singer. In addition to Bernard, there were two more children in the family, girls Lucinda Frances and Elinor Agnes.

As a child, the boy attended Wesley College in Dublin, and from the age of eleven he attended a Protestant school, where special attention was paid not to the exact sciences, but to the spiritual development of children. At the same time, the shepherds did not disdain physical punishment and beat children with rods, which, as was then believed, only benefited them.

Young Bernard hated school and the entire education system, as he saw it from his school days. He later recalled that he was one of the worst, if not the last, student in the class.

At the age of fifteen, Shaw got a job as a clerk in a real estate office. The parents did not have the money to pay for their son’s college education, but family connections helped the young man take a good position for those times. His duties included collecting money for housing from the poor. Memories of this difficult time were reflected in one of the “unpleasant plays” called “The Widower’s House.”

When the young man was sixteen, his mother, having taken both daughters, left her father and went to London. Bernard stayed with his father in Dublin, pursuing a career in real estate. Four more years later, in 1876, Shaw finally went to his mother in London, where he began self-education and got a job in one of the capital's newspapers.

Creation

When he first arrived in London, Bernard Shaw visited libraries and museums, filling in the gaps in his education. The playwright’s mother made a living by giving singing lessons, and her son became immersed in socio-political problems.

In 1884, Shaw joined the Fabian Society, named after the Roman general Fabius. Fabius defeated his enemies thanks to slowness, caution and the ability to wait. The main idea of the Fabians was that socialism was the only possible type of further development of Great Britain, but the country had to reach it gradually, without cataclysms and revolutions.

During the same period, at the British Museum, Bernard Shaw met the writer Archer, after communicating with whom the future playwright decided to try his hand at journalism. He first worked as a freelance correspondent, then worked for six years as a music critic for the London World magazine, after which he wrote a theater column for the Saturday Review for three years.

Simultaneously with journalism, Shaw began writing novels, which at that time no one had undertaken to publish. Between 1879 and 1883, Bernard Shaw wrote five novels, the first of which was not published until 1886. Subsequently, critics, having analyzed the first literary experiments of Bernard Shaw, came to the conclusion that they displayed striking features inherent in the playwright’s further work: brief descriptions of situations and dialogues rich in paradoxes.

While a theater critic, Shaw became interested in the work of the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen. In 1891, he published the book “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” in which he identified the main characteristics of the plays of the Scandinavian playwright. During Shaw’s youth, the theater stage was dominated exclusively by plays, as well as minor melodramas and comedies. Ibsen, according to Shaw, became a true innovator in European drama, raising it to a new level by revealing acute conflicts and discussions between characters.

Inspired by Ibsen's plays, in 1885 Bernard Shaw wrote the first of his "unpleasant plays" called The Widower's House. It is believed that Shaw’s biography as a playwright began with this work. A new era of European drama was born here, sharp, topical, built on conflicts and dialogues, and not on the active actions of the heroes.

This was followed by the plays “Red Tape” and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” which literally blew up prim Victorian England with their undisguised topicality, caustic satire and truthfulness. The main character of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" is a prostitute who makes a living from an ancient craft and has no intention of giving up this method of earning income.

The opposite of this corrupt woman in the play is her daughter. The girl, having learned about her mother’s source of income, leaves home to honestly earn her bread. In this work, Shaw clearly demonstrated the reformist nature of his creativity, raising themes new to English literature and theater, acute and topical, political and social. Bernard Shaw complements the genre of realistic drama with subtle humor and satire, thanks to which his plays acquire extraordinary attractiveness and power of presentation.

Having created a precedent unprecedented at that time with his “unpleasant plays,” Shaw released a series of “pleasant plays”: “Arms and the Man,” “The Chosen One of Fate,” “Wait and See,” “Candida.”

“Pygmalion” is one of Bernard Shaw’s plays, a capacious, multifaceted and complex work, to which many books and scientific monographs are devoted. At the center of the story is the fate of the poor flower seller Eliza Doolittle and the wealthy, noble society gentleman Higgins. The latter wants to mold a flower girl into a lady of high society, just as the mythical Pygmalion created his Galatea from a piece of marble.

Eliza's amazing transformation helps reveal her spiritual qualities, the innate kindness and nobility of a simple flower girl. A comic argument between two gentlemen threatens to turn into a tragedy for a girl whose inner beauty they have not seen

The playwright's next significant work was the play "Heartbreak House", written after the First World War. Shaw unequivocally accused the English intelligentsia and the cream of society of plunging the country and the whole of Europe into the abyss of devastation and horror. This work clearly shows Ibsen's influence on Shaw's work. Satirical drama takes on the features of grotesque, allegory and symbolism.

The war further confirmed Bernard Shaw in his commitment to the ideas of socialism. Until the end of his days, he continued to believe that socialist Russia is an example for the entire civilized world, and the socio-political system of the USSR is the only true and correct one. Towards the end of his life, Shaw became an ideological supporter of the Stalinist regime and even visited the USSR in 1931.

For a short time, the playwright was inclined to think that only a dictator could restore order in society and the country, but after coming to power in Germany, he abandoned this idea.

In 1923, the best play, according to critics and admirers of Bernard Shaw’s work, “Saint Joan,” dedicated to the life, exploits and martyrdom of Joan of Arc, was released. The subsequent plays “Bitter but True”, “Broished”, “Millionairess”, “Geneva” and others did not receive public recognition during the author’s lifetime.

After the death of Bernard Shaw, dramas were staged by theaters in different countries, they are still performed on the stage today, and some works have found a new life in cinema. So, in 1974, the film “Millionairess” based on the play of the same name was released in the Soviet Union, which was a resounding success. The roles were performed by V. Osenev and other actors.

Personal life

In 1898, Bernard Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend, whom the writer met at the Fabian Society. The girl was a rich heiress, but Bernard was not interested in her millions. In 1925, he even refused to receive the prize, and the money had to be received by the British Ambassador Arthur Duff. Subsequently, these funds were used to create a fund for translators.

Bernard Shaw lived in perfect harmony with Charlotte for forty-five years, until her death. They had no children. Of course, marriage is not always perfect, and there were also quarrels between Shaw and his wife.

So, it was rumored that the writer was in love with the famous actress Stella Patrick Campbell, for whom he wrote “Pigglemalion”, inventing the lovely Eliza Doolittle.

Death

The playwright spent the second half of his life in Hertfordshire, where he and Charlotte had a cozy two-story house surrounded by greenery. The writer lived and worked there from 1906 to 1950, until his death.

Towards the end of his life, losses began to haunt the writer one after another. In 1940, Stella, his secret lover, who reciprocated the playwright’s feelings, died. In 1943, faithful Charlotte passed away. The last months of his life Bernard was bedridden. He bravely met his death, remaining conscious until the end. Bernard Shaw died on November 2, 1950. According to the writer's will, his body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered along with the ashes of his beloved wife.

Quotes and aphorisms

If you have an apple and I have an apple, and if we exchange these apples, then you and I each have one apple left. And if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
The greatest sin towards one's neighbor is not hatred, but indifference; This is truly the pinnacle of inhumanity.
An ideal husband is a man who believes that he has an ideal wife.
The one who knows how, does it, the one who doesn’t know how, teaches others.

Bibliography

"Immaturity (1879);
"The Irrational Knot" (1880);
"Love Among the Artists" (1881);
"The Profession of Cashel Byron" (1882);
"Not a social socialist" (1882).

George Bernard Shaw is an English playwright of Irish origin, one of the founders of the “drama of ideas”, writer, essayist, one of the reformers of theatrical art of the 20th century, after Shakespeare the second most popular author of plays in the English theater, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, winner of the award "Oscar".

Born in Dublin, Ireland on July 26, 1856. The future writer’s childhood was overshadowed by his father’s addiction to alcohol and discord between his parents. Like all children, Bernard went to school, but he learned his main life lessons from the books he read and the music he listened to. After graduating from school in 1871, he began working in a company selling land plots. A year later he took the position of cashier, but four years later, having hated the job, he moved to London: his mother lived there, having divorced his father. From a young age, Shaw saw himself as a writer, but the articles he sent to various editors were not published. For 9 years, only 15 shillings - a fee for a single article - was earned by him by writing, although during this period he wrote as many as 5 novels.

In 1884, B. Shaw joined the Fabian Society and within a short time gained fame as a talented speaker. While visiting the reading room of the British Museum for the purpose of self-education, he met W. Archer and thanks to him he began to engage in journalism. After initially working as a freelance correspondent, Shaw worked as a music critic for six years and then worked for the Saturday Review as a theater critic for three and a half years. The reviews he wrote comprised a three-volume collection, “Our Theater of the Nineties,” published in 1932. In 1891, Shaw’s original creative manifesto was published - a lengthy article “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” the author of which revealed a critical attitude towards contemporary aesthetics and sympathy for the drama that illuminated would be conflicts of a social nature.

His debut in the field of drama was the plays “The Widower's House” and “Mrs. Warren's Profession” (1892 and 1893, respectively). They were intended to be staged in an independent theater, which was a closed club, so Shaw could afford to be bold in depicting aspects of life that his contemporary art usually avoided. These and other works were included in the “Unpleasant Plays” cycle. In the same year, “Pleasant Plays” was released, and “representatives” of this cycle began to penetrate the stage of large metropolitan theaters in the late 90s. The first huge success came from “The Devil’s Disciple,” written in 1897, which was part of the third cycle, “Plays for the Puritans.”

The playwright's finest hour came in 1904, when the management of the Kord Theater changed and a number of his plays were included in the repertoire - in particular, Candida, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, etc. After successful productions, Shaw finally the reputation of an author who boldly deals with public morality and traditional ideas about history and subverts what was considered an axim was established. A contribution to the golden treasury of dramaturgy was the resounding success of Pygmalion (1913).

During the First World War, Bernard Shaw had to listen to many unflattering words and direct insults addressed to him by spectators, fellow writers, newspapers and magazines. Nevertheless, he continued to write, and in 1917 a new stage began in his creative biography. The tragedy “Saint Joan”, staged in 1924, returned B. Shaw to his former glory, and in 1925 he became the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and refused its monetary component.

At the age of over 70 in the 30s. The show travels around the world, visiting India, South Africa, New Zealand, and the USA. He also visited the USSR in 1931, and in July of this year he personally met with Stalin. Being a socialist, Shaw sincerely welcomed the changes taking place in the country of the Soviets and became a supporter of Stalinism. After the Labor Party came to power, B. Shaw was offered a peerage and nobility, but he refused. He later agreed to be awarded the status of an honorary citizen of Dublin and one of the London counties.

B. Shaw wrote until he was very old. He wrote his last plays, “Billions of Byant” and “Fictional Fables,” in 1948 and 1950. Remaining completely sane, the famous playwright died on November 2, 1950.

Years of life: from 07/26/1856 to 11/02/1950

Outstanding Irish and English writer, prose writer, playwright, music and theater critic, public figure. The second most popular (after Shakespeare) English-language playwright. He made an invaluable contribution to English and world drama. Nobel Prize winner. He is also known for his wit and commitment to socialist views.

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin. Shaw's father, a civil servant, decided to go into the grain trade. but he went broke and became addicted to alcohol. The writer's mother was a singer and amateur musician. The boy studied first at home, and then in Catholic and Protestant day schools, after which, at the age of sixteen, he got a job as a clerk in a real estate agency, where he worked for four years. In 1873, Shaw's parents divorced and his mother moved to London. Three years later, Bernard joined them, deciding to become a writer. However, all of his articles were returned by the editors, and not one of the five novels written by Shaw was published. At this time, the writer was entirely dependent on the meager earnings of his mother, who gave music lessons. In 1882, Shaw turned to social problems and became a convinced socialist. In 1884, the playwright joined the Fabian Society, created to spread socialist ideas. Shaw became an extremely active member of the community, often giving lectures three times a week. At the same time, Shaw met the theater critic W. Archer, on whose recommendation Shaw became first a freelance correspondent and then an author of music and theater reviews (since 1886) in such publications as the weekly World and Pall Mall. newspapers" ("Pall Mall Gazette"), the newspaper "Star" ("Star"). Shaw's critical works brought him popularity and financial independence. In 1895, Shaw became a theater critic for the London magazine Saturday Review. Shaw became increasingly interested in theater, wrote several works about G. Ibsen and R. Wagner, and in 1892 Shaw’s first play, “Widowers” Houses, was staged. The play was not successful and was withdrawn after two performances Several subsequent plays by the playwright also turned out to be unappreciated; directors refused to stage them, and “Mrs Warren’s Profession” was even banned by censorship (the play deals with prostitution). Shaw publishes his works with his own funds. In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne Townsend, an Irish philanthropist and socialist, who provided him with considerable support. Fame came to the playwright in 1904, when his plays became the basis of the repertoire of the Royal Court Theater in London, where they were staged by D. Vedrenne and Harley Grenville-Barker, who rented this theater. For three seasons (1904-07) the Royal Court Theater staged almost all of the playwright's most significant plays. Simultaneously with the confession, accusations of “lack of seriousness” and buffoonery begin to be heard against Shaw, in particular, the playwright L.N. Tolstoy. Shaw himself writes increasingly “serious” plays, imbued with philosophical ideas and therefore less and less popular with the public. During the First World War, Shaw's anti-war views (which he did not hesitate to express) caused the playwright to be sharply rejected by most of the press and colleagues. After his essay “War from the Point of View of Common Sense,” in which the playwright criticizes both England and Germany, calls on both countries to negotiate, ridiculing blind patriotism, Shaw was expelled from the Dramatists’ Club. In the 20s of the 20th century, Shaw’s works again are becoming popular. At this time, the most controversial and complex of Shaw's plays, “Back to Methuselah” (1922), was written, as well as the only tragedy in his repertoire: “Saint Joan” (1924), about Joan D'Arc. In 1926, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925 was awarded to Shaw "for a work marked by idealism and humanism, for sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty." Being a principled opponent of all kinds of awards, Shaw refused the monetary part of the Nobel Prize, ordering the establishment with this money of an English-Swedish literary fund for translators, especially translators of Strindberg. In 1928, Shaw published “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism” ( "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism") - a discussion on political and economic topics. And in 1931, the playwright visited the USSR and met with Stalin. Throughout his life, Shaw remained a convinced socialist and strongly supported the USSR, considering it a prototype society of the future. Shaw's wife died in 1943. After this, the playwright moved from London to his home in Hertfordshire, where he spent the rest of his life in solitude. Shaw died on November 2, 1950, at the age of 94.

The correct pronunciation of the Shaw surname is “Sho”, however, the pronunciation “Shaw” is entrenched in the Russian-speaking tradition.

Of the 988 performances staged at the Royal Court Theater between 1904 and 1907, 701 were based on Shaw's works.

In response to the phrase “The show is a clown”, V.I. Lenin said: “In a bourgeois state he may be a clown for the philistinism, but in a revolution he would not be mistaken for a clown.”

B. Shaw became the first writer to refuse the Nobel Prize.

B. Shaw is the only person awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Oscar.

Possessing an excellent sense of humor and a tenacious mind, Shaw became the author of many aphorisms.

Writer's Awards

(1925)
Oscar Award for Best Screenplay (1938)

Bibliography

Cycle “Unpleasant Plays”
Widower's Houses (1885-1892)
Heartbreaker (1893)
Profession of Mrs. Warren (1893-1894)

Cycle “Pleasant Plays”
Arms and Man (1894)
Candida (1894-1895)
Fate's Chosen One (1895)
Let's wait and see (1895-1896)

Cycle "Three Plays for the Puritans"
The Devil's Disciple (1896-1897)
(1898)
Address of Captain Brasbound (1899)

The Magnificent Bashville, or Unrewarded Constancy" (1901)
Man and Superman (1901-1903)
John Bull's Other Island (1904)
How He Lied to Her Husband (1904)
Major Barbara (1906)
Doctor in Dilemma (1906)
Interlude at the Theater (1907)
Marriage (1908)
Exposure of Blanco Posnet (1909)

Cycle "Tomfoolery and Trifles"
Passion, Poison, Petrification, or the Fatal Gasogen (1905)
Newspaper Clippings (1909)
The Charming Foundling (1909)
A Little Reality (1909)

The number of productions of Shaw's plays is incalculable. The list of film adaptations of the playwright’s works on the Kinopoisk website includes 62 film and television films.
The most famous film adaptations are:
Pygmalion (1938, UK) dir. E. Esquith, L. Howard. B. Shaw became the author of the script and received an Oscar for it.
My Fair Lady (1964, USA) dir. J. Cukor. Screen adaptation of the play "Pygmalion". The film received 8 Oscar awards, including the main award for Best Picture.

Domestic film adaptations:
How He Lied to Her Husband (1956) dir. T. Berezantseva
Pygmalion (1957) dir. S. Alekseev
Galatea (1977) dir. A. Belinsky. Film-ballet based on the play "Pygmalion".
Mournful Insensibility (1986) dir. A. Sokurov. Fantasy film based on the play “Heartbreak House”

One of two people in history (the other is Bob Dylan) to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature (1925, “For a work marked by idealism and humanism, for sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty”) and an Oscar "(1939, for the script of the film "Pygmalion"). Active promoter of vegetarianism.

George Bernard Shaw - an outstanding Irish playwright and novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most famous Irish literary figures - was born in Dublin. July 26, 1856 in the family of George Shaw, a grain merchant, and Lucinda Shaw, a professional singer. He had two sisters: Lucinda Frances, a theater singer, and Elinor Agnes, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 21.

Shaw attended Wesley College in Dublin and grammar school. He received his secondary education in Dublin. At the age of eleven he was sent to a Protestant school, where he was, in his own words, the penultimate or last student. He called school the most harmful stage of his education. At fifteen he became a clerk. The family did not have the means to send him to university, but his uncle's connections helped him get a job at Townsend's fairly well-known real estate agency. One of Shaw's duties was to collect rent from the inhabitants of the Dublin slums, and the sad impressions of these years were subsequently embodied in "Widower's Houses". He was, in all likelihood, a fairly capable clerk, although the monotony of the job bored him. He learned to keep accounting books neatly, and also to write in quite legible handwriting. Everything written in Shaw's handwriting (even in his old age) was easy and pleasant to read.

When Shaw was 16 years old, his mother ran away from home with her lover and daughters. Bernard decided to stay with his father in Dublin. He received an education and became an employee in a real estate office. He did this work for several years, although he did not like it.

In 1876 Shaw went to his mother in London. The family greeted him very warmly. During this time he visited public libraries and museums. He began to study intensively in libraries and created his first works, and later wrote a newspaper column dedicated to music. However, his early novels were not successful before 1885, when he became known as a creative critic.

In the first half of the 1890s worked as a critic for the London World magazine, where he was succeeded by Robert Hichens.

At the same time, he became interested in social democratic ideas and joined the Fabian Society, whose goal was to establish socialism through peaceful means. In this society he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend, whom he married in 1898. Bernard Shaw had connections on the side.

In recent years, the playwright lived in his own house in Hertfordshire (England) and died November 2, 1950 from renal failure. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered along with those of his wife.

Bernard Shaw's first play was presented in 1892. At the end of the decade he had already become a famous playwright. Shaw wrote sixty-three plays, as well as novels, criticism, essays, and more than 250,000 letters.

Shaw wrote five unsuccessful novels early in his career between 1879 and 1883. Later they were all published.

Shaw's first published novel was The Profession of Cough Byron ( 1886 ), written in 1882. The novel “Not a Social Socialist” has been published in 1887. The novel “Love Among the Artists” was written in 1881, published in 1900 in the United States and in 1914 in England. In this novel, using Victorian society as an example, Shaw shows his views on art, romantic love and marriage.

"The Irrational Knot" is a novel written by in 1880 and published in 1905. In this novel, the author condemns hereditary status and insists on the nobility of workers.

Shaw's first novel, Immaturity, written in 1879, was the last novel to be published. It describes the life and career of Robert Smith, an energetic young Londoner. Condemnation of alcoholism is the first message in the book, based on the author's family memories.

Shaw began working on the first play, The Widower's House. in 1885. After some time, the author refused to continue working on it and only completed it in 1892. The play was presented at the Royal Theater in London December 9, 1892. In this play, Shaw gave a picture of the life of the London proletarians, remarkable in its realism. Very often, Shaw acts as a satirist, mercilessly ridiculing the ugly and vulgar aspects of English life, especially the life of bourgeois circles (“John Bull’s Other Island”, “Arms and the Man”, “How He Lied to Her Husband”, etc.).

In the play "Mrs. Warren's Profession" ( 1893 ) a young girl finds out that her mother receives income from brothels, and therefore leaves home to earn money by honest work.

As Shaw's experience and popularity increased, his plays became less focused on the reforms he advocated, but their entertainment value did not diminish. Works such as Caesar and Cleopatra ( 1898 ), "Man and Superman" ( 1903 ), "Major Barbara" ( 1905 ) and "Doctor in Dilemma" ( 1906 ), show the mature views of the author, who was already 50 years old.

Before 1910s Shaw was a fully formed playwright. New works such as Fanny's First Play ( 1911 ) and "Pygmalion" ( 1912 ), were well known to the London public.

Shaw's views changed after the First World War, which he disapproved of. His first work written after the war was the play Heartbreak House ( 1919 ). A new Shaw appeared in this play - the humor remained the same, but his faith in humanism was shaken.

Shaw had previously supported a gradual transition to socialism, but now he saw a government led by a strongman. For him, dictatorship was obvious. At the end of his life, his hopes also died. Thus, in the play Buoyant Billions, 1946-1948 ), his latest play, he says that one should not rely on the masses, who act like a blind crowd and can choose people like Hitler as their rulers.

In 1921 Shaw completed a five-play pentalogy, Back to Methuselah, that begins in the Garden of Eden and ends a thousand years in the future.

After Methuselah, the play Saint Joan was written ( 1923 ), which is considered one of his best works. The idea of writing a work about Joan of Arc and her canonization appeared in 1920. The play gained worldwide fame and brought the author closer to the Nobel Prize ( 1925).

Shaw also has plays in the psychological genre, sometimes even touching the area of melodrama (“Candida”, etc.).

The author created plays until the end of his life, but only a few of them became as successful as his early works. "Apple Cart" ( 1929 ) became the most famous play of this period. Later works, such as “Bitter, but true”, “Bonded” ( 1933 ), "Millionaire" ( 1935 ) and "Geneva" ( 1935 ), did not receive wide public recognition.

Dramaturgy:

1885-1896 :
Plays Unpleasant, published in 1898)
"Widower's Houses" 1885 - 1892 )
"Heartbreaker" (The Philanderer, 1893 )
"Mrs. Warren's Profession" ( 1893-1894 )
Plays Pleasant, published in 1898 )
"Arms and Man" ( 1894 )
"Candida" (Candida, 1894-1895 )
"The Man of Destiny" 1895 )
“We'll wait and see” (You Never Can Tell, 1895-1896 )

1896-1904:
"Three Plays for Puritans"
"The Devil's Disciple" 1896-1897 )
"Caesar and Cleopatra" 1898 )
"Captain Brassbound's Conversion" 1899 )
"The Admirable Bashville; or, Constancy Unrewarded, 1901 )
"Sunday afternoon among the Surrey hills" ( 1888 )
"Man and Superman" 1901 - 1903 )
"John Bull's Other Island" 1904 )

1904 - 1910 :
"How He Lied to Her Husband" 1904 )
"Major Barbara" 1906 )
"The Doctor's Dilemma" 1906 )
"The Interlude at the Playhouse" 1907 )
"Getting Married" 1908 )
"The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet" 1909 )
Trifles and tomfooleries
"Passion, Poison and Petrifaction; or, the Fatal Gasogene, 1905 )
"Press Cuttings" 1909 )
"The Fascinating Foundling" 1909 )
"A Little Reality" (The Glimps of Reality, 1909 )
"Unequal Marriage" (Misalliance, 1910 )

1910-1919:
"The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" 1910 )
"Fanny's First Play" 1911 )
"Androcles and the Lion" 1912 )
"Overruled" 1912 )
"Pygmalion" 1912-1913
"Great Catherine" 1913 )
"The Music-cure" 1913 )
"O'Flaherty, Commander of the Order of Victoria" (O'Flaherty, V.C.,)
"The Inca of Perusalem" 1916 )
"Augustus Does His Bit" 1916 )
Annajanska, the Wild Grand Duchess 1917 )
"Heartbreak House" 1913-1919 )

1918-1931:
"Back to Methuselah" 1918-1920 )
Part I. “In the Beginning”
Part II. "The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas"
Part III. “It’s finished!” (The Thing Happens)
Part IV. "Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman"
Part V. “As Far as Thought Can Reach”
"Saint Joan" 1923 )
"The Apple Cart" 1929 )
“Bitter, but true” (Too True To Be Good, 1931 )

Key words: George Bernard Shaw, George Bernard Shaw, biography of Bernard Shaw, download detailed biography, download for free, British literature of the 20th century, life and work of Bernard Shaw

At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, fundamentally new types and subjects began to appear in world literature. The main difference in the literature of the new century was that the main characters were no longer people, but ideas, and they were also active participants in the action. The first authors who began to write “dramas of ideas” were G. Ibsen, A. Chekhov and, of course, B. Shaw. Based on the experience of his literary fathers, Shaw was able to participate in the creation of a completely new dramatic system.

Curriculum Vitae

George Bernard Shaw, the world famous playwright, was born on July 26, 1856 in the capital of Ireland - Dublin. Already as a child, he openly showed his dissatisfaction with the traditional education system, which he rejected in every possible way and tried to devote as much time as possible to reading. At the age of fifteen, that is, in 1871, he began working as a clerk, and in 1876 he went to England, although his heart always belonged to Ireland. Here the political was especially evident and that helped the young author to strengthen his character and subsequently reflect all the conflicts that worried him in his work.

At the end of the 70s, B. Shaw finally decided on his future and chose literature as a profession. In the 80s, he began working as a music critic, literary reviewer and theater reviewer. Bright and original articles immediately arouse the interest of readers.

Pen samples

The author's first works are novels in which he tries to develop his own specific method with many paradoxes and vivid scenes. Already at this time, in the works of Bernard Shaw, which, rather, are the first literary sketches, there is a living language, interesting dialogues, memorable characters, everything that is so necessary to become an outstanding author.

In 1885, Bernard Shaw, whose plays were becoming increasingly professional, began work on The Widower's House, which marked the beginning of a new drama in England.

Social views

His political and social views played an important role in Shaw's development as an author. In the 1980s he was a member of the Fabian Society. The ideas that this association promotes are easy to understand if you know where its name comes from. The community is named after the Roman commander Fabius Cunctator, who was able to defeat the cruel Carthaginian ruler Hannibal precisely because he was able to wait and choose the right moment. The same tactics were followed by the Fabians, who also preferred to wait until the opportunity to crush capitalism arose.

Bernard Shaw, whose works aim to open up the reader to new problems of our time, was an ardent supporter of changes in society. He wanted to change not only the deep-rooted foundations of capitalism, but also to carry out total innovations in dramatic art.

Bernard Shaw and Ibsen

It is impossible to deny the fact that Shaw was the most loyal admirer of Ibsen's talent. He fully supported the Norwegian playwright's views on the necessary changes in modern literature. In addition, Shaw was actively promoting the ideas of his idol. In 1891, he authored the book “The Quintessence of Ibsenism,” in which he demonstrates his hatred of bourgeois false morality and his desire to destroy false ideals.

According to Shaw, Ibsen's innovation is demonstrated by creating intense conflicts and having intelligent, nuanced discussions. It was thanks to Ibsen, Chekhov and Shaw that discussion became an integral part of the new dramaturgy.

"Mrs. Warren's Profession"

One of the author's most popular plays is a vicious satire of Victorian England. Just like Ibsen, Bernard Shaw shows a deep discrepancy between appearance and reality, external respectability and internal insignificance of his heroes.

The main character of the play is a girl of easy virtue who was able to accumulate serious capital with the help of her craft. Trying to justify herself to her daughter, who has no idea about the source of the family income, Mrs. Warren talks about the utter poverty in which she had to live previously, claiming that this is what pushed her to this lifestyle. Some may not like this type of activity, but Bernard Shaw explains to the reader that Mrs. Warren was a victim of an unjust structure of society. The author does not condemn his heroine, because she simply followed the lead of society, which says that all ways of making money are good.

The retrospective-analytical composition that Shaw borrowed from Ibsen is implemented here according to its most standard scheme: the truth concerning Mrs. Warren's life is revealed gradually. At the end of the play, the decisive discussion is between the main character and her daughter, whose image was the author’s first attempt to portray a positive hero.

Plays for the Puritans

The author divided all his plays into three categories: pleasant, unpleasant and for the Puritans. In unpleasant plays, the author sought to depict the terrible manifestations of the social system of England. Pleasant ones, on the contrary, were supposed to entertain the reader. Plays for the Puritans are aimed at exposing the author’s attitude towards official false morality.

Bernard Shaw's remarks on his plays for the Puritans are formulated in the preface to the collection published in 1901. The author claims that he is not a prude and is not afraid to depict feelings, but is against reducing all events and actions of the characters to love motives. If we are guided by this principle, the playwright claims, then no one can be brave, kind or generous unless he is in love.

"Heartbreak House"

The play Heartbreak House, written at the end of the First World War, marked a new period in Shaw's creative development. The author placed responsibility for the critical situation of modern morality on the English intelligentsia. To confirm this idea, at the end of the play there appears a symbolic image of a ship that has lost its course, which is sailing into the unknown with a captain who has left his bridge and abandoned his crew in an indifferent expectation of disaster.

In this play, Bernard Shaw, whose brief biography shows his desire to modernize the literary system, dresses realism in new clothes and gives it other, unique features. The author turns to fantasy, symbolism, political grotesque and philosophical allegory. Subsequently, grotesque situations and characters, reflecting the fantastic nature of artistic types and images, became an integral part of his dramaturgy, and they are especially clearly manifested in They serve to open the eyes of the modern reader to the true state of affairs in the current political situation.

In the subtitle, the author calls his play “a fantasy in the Russian style on English themes,” indicating that the plays of L. Tolstoy and A. Chekhov served as a model for him. Bernard Shaw, whose books are aimed at exposing the inner impurity of the heroes, in Chekhovian style, explores the souls and broken hearts of the characters in his novel, who thoughtlessly squander the cultural heritage of the nation.

"Applecart"

In one of his most popular plays, “The Apple Cart,” the playwright talks about the peculiarities of the socio-political situation in England in the first third of the 20th century. The central theme of the play is a discussion about the political nobility, King Magnus and the cabinet. The ministers, who were elected by the people, that is, in a democratic way, demand the establishment of a constitutional type of government of the state, while the king insists that all power in the state belongs exclusively to the government. A satirical discussion with elements of parody allows the author to reflect his true attitude towards the institution of state power and explain who really rules the country.

Bernard Shaw, whose biography reflects his contemptuous attitude towards any tyrannical power, seeks to reflect the true background of the state conflict not only in the confrontation between autocracy and quasi-democracy, but also in “plutocracy”. According to the author, by the concept of “plutocracy” he means a phenomenon that, under the guise of defending democracy, destroyed royal power and democracy itself. This happened, of course, not without the help of those in power, says Bernard Shaw. Quotes from the work can only support this opinion. For example: “The king was created by a bunch of rogues to make it more convenient to lead the country, using the king as a puppet,” says Magnus.

"Pygmalion"

Among Shaw's works of the pre-war years, the comedy Pygmalion stands out. When writing this play, the author was inspired by ancient myth. It talks about a sculptor named Pygmalion, who fell in love with a statue he created and asked to revive this creation, after which the beautiful animated statue became the wife of its creator.

Shaw wrote a modern version of the myth, in which the main characters are no longer mythical, they are ordinary people, but the motive remains the same: the author polishes his creation. The role of Pygmalon here is played by Professor Higgins, who tries to make a lady out of the simpleton Eliza, but as a result, he himself, charmed by her naturalness, changes for the better. It is here that the question arises of which of the two heroes is the author and which is the creation, although the main creator, of course, was Bernard Shaw himself.

Eliza's biography is quite typical for representatives of that time, and the successful professor of phonetics Higgins wants her to forget about what surrounded her earlier and become a society lady. As a result, the “sculptor” succeeded. With the miraculous transformation of the main character, Shaw wanted to show that, in fact, there is no difference between different social groups. Any person can have potential, the only problem is that the poor stratum of the population does not have the opportunity to realize it.

Conclusion

Bernard Shaw, quotes from whose works are known to every educated person, for a long time could not achieve recognition and remained in the shadows because publishers refused to print his creations. But, despite all the obstacles, he managed to achieve his goal and become one of the most popular playwrights of all time. The aspiration, which sooner or later will be realized if one does not deviate from the right path, became the leitmotif of the work of the great English playwright; it allowed him not only to create unsurpassed works, but also to become a classic of drama.