Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (2 page)

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Authors: George Bernard Shaw

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In the 1890s, deeply influenced by the dramatic writings of Henrik Ibsen, Shaw spurned the conventions of the stage in “unpleasant” plays, such as
Mrs. Warren’s Profession,
and in “pleasant” ones like
Arms and the Man
and
Candida.
His drama shifted attention from romantic travails to the great web of society, with its hypocrisies and other ills. The burden of writing seriously strained Shaw’s health; he suffered from chronic migraine headaches. Shaw married fellow Fabian and Irish heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend.

By the turn of the century, Shaw had matured as a dramatist with the historical drama
Caesar and Cleopatra,
and his master-pieces
Man and Superman
and
Major Barbara.
In all, he wrote more than fifty plays, including his antiwar
Heartbreak House
and the polemical
Saint Joan,
for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Equally prolific in his writings about music and theater, Shaw was so popular that he signed his critical pieces with simply the initials GBS. (He disliked his first name, George, and never used it except for the initial.) He remained in the public eye throughout his final years, writing controversial plays until his death. George Bernard Shaw died at his country home on November 2, 1950.

THE WORLD OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND HIS PLAYS

1856	George Bernard Shaw is born on July 26, at 33 Upper Synge Street in Dublin, to George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.
1865	George John Vandeleur Lee, Mrs. Shaw’s singing instructor, moves into the Shaw household. Known as Vandeleur Lee, he has a reputation as an unscrupulous character.
1869	Embarrassed by controversy and gossip related to his mother’s relationship with Vandeleur Lee, young “Sonny,” as Shaw was called by his family, leaves school.
1871	He begins work in a Dublin land agent’s office.
1873	Shaw’s mother, now a professional singer, follows Van deleur Lee to London, where they establish a household that includes Shaw’s sisters, Elinor Agnes and Lucille Frances (Lucy). Shaw’s mother tries to earn a living per forming and teaching Vandeleur Lee’s singing method.
1876	Elinor Agnes dies on March 27. Shaw joins his mother, his sister Lucy, and Vandeleur Lee in London. Although he tries to support himself as a writer, for the next five years Shaw remains financially dependent on his mother.
1877	Shaw ghostwrites music reviews that appear under Van deleur Lee’s byline in his column for the Hornet, a London newspaper. This first professional writing “job” lasts until the editor discovers the subterfuge.
1879	Shaw completes and serializes his first novel, Immaturity. He works for the Edison Telephone Company and later
will record his experience in his second novel, The Irrational Knot. Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House premieres.
1880	Shaw completes The Irrational Knot.
1881	He becomes a vegetarian in the hope that the change in his diet will relieve his migraine headaches. He completes Love Among Artists. The Irrational Knot is serialized in Our Corner, a monthly periodical.
1882	Shaw hears Henry George’s lecture on land nationaliza tion, which inspires some of his socialist ideas. He attends meetings of the Social Democratic Federation and is intro duced to the works of Karl Marx.
1883	The Fabian Society—a middle-class socialist debating group advocating progressive, nonviolent reform rather than the revolution supported by the Social Democratic Federation—is founded in London. Shaw completes the novel Cashel Byron’s Profession, drawing on his experience as an amateur boxer. He writes his final novel, An Unsocial Socialist.
1884	Shaw joins the fledgling Fabian Society; he contributes to many of its pamphlets, including The Fabian Manifesto (1884), The Impossibilities of Anarchism (1893), and Socialism for Millionaires (1901), and begins speaking publicly around London on social and political issues. An Unsocial Socialist is serialized in the periodical Today.
1885	The author’s father, a longtime alcoholic, dies; neither his estranged wife nor his children attend his funeral. Shaw himself never drinks or smokes. He begins writing criticism of music, art, and literature for the Pall Mall Gazette, the Dramatic Review, and Our Corner. Cashel Byron’s Profession is serialized in the periodical Today.
1886	Shaw begins writing art and music criticism for the World. Cashel Byron’s Profession is published.
1887	Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg’s play The Father is performed. The Social Democratic Federation’s
planned march on Trafalgar Square ends in bloodshed as police suppress the protesters; Shaw is a speaker at the event. His novel An Unsocial Socialist is published in book form.
1888	Shaw begins writing music criticism in the Star under the pen name Corno di Bassetto (“basset horn,” perhaps a ref erence to the pitch of his voice).
1889	He edits the volume Fabian Essays in Socialism, to which he contributes “The Economic Basis of Socialism” and “The Transition to Social Democracy.”
1890	Ibsen completes Hedda Gabler.
1891	Ibsen’s Ghosts is performed in London. Shaw publishes The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a polemical pamphlet that cele brates Ibsen as a rebel for leftist causes.
1892	Sidney Webb, a founder and close associate of Shaw, is elected to the London City Council along with five other Fabian Society members. Widowers’ Houses, Shaw’s first “unpleasant” play, is performed on the London stage.
1893	Shaw writes The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, his two other “unpleasant” plays. The latter is refused a license by the royal censor because its subject is prostitution; as a result, the play is not performed until 1902. Widowers’ Houses is published.
1894	Seeking a wider audience, Shaw begins a series of “pleas ant” plays with Arms and the Man, produced this year, and Candida, a successful play about marriage greatly influ enced by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
1895	Shaw writes another “pleasant” play, The Man of Destiny, a one-act about Napoleon, and drama criticism for the Saturday Review.
1896	Shaw completes the fourth “pleasant” play, You Never Can Tell. He meets Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a wealthy Irish heiress and fellow Fabian. The Nobel Prizes are established for physics, medicine, chemistry, peace, and literature.
1897	Candida is produced. The Devil’s Disciple, a drama set dur ing the American Revolution, is successfully staged in New York. Shaw is elected as councilor for the borough of St. Pancras, London; he will serve in this position until 1903.
1898	Shaw writes Caesar and Cleopatra and publishes Mrs. Warren’s Profession and The Perfect Wagnerite. His first anthology of plays, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, is published. He falls ill and, believing his illness fatal, marries his friend and nurse Charlotte Payne-Townshend; his wife’s fortune makes Shaw wealthy.
1899	You Never Can Tell premieres. Shaw writes Captain Brass bound’s Conversion.
1900	The Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation join forces to form the Labour Representation Party, which is politically allied to the trade union movement. The party wins two seats in the House of Commons. Captain Brasshound’s Conversion is pro duced. Three Plays for Puritans collects The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.
1901	Strindberg’s Dance of Death is completed. The Social Revo lutionary Party, instrumental in the Bolshevik Revolution, is formed in Russia. Shaw writes about the eternal obsta cles in male-female relations in his epic Man and Superman, which he subtitles “A Comedy and a Philosophy.” He also publishes The Devil’s Disciple and sees Caesar and Cleopatra produced for the first time.
1902	A private production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession is staged at the New Lyric Theatre in London.
1903	Shaw publishes Man and Superman. The Admirable Bashville is produced.
1904	John Bull’s Other Island premieres in London.
1905	Shaw writes the play Major Barbara, through which he at tempts to communicate many of his moral and economic theories, including the need for a more fair distribution of
wealth. It is produced this year, as is Man and Superman. In New York City, Mrs. Warren’s Profession is publicly staged for the first time. Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis is published posthumously. The Sinn Fein party, dedicated to Irish in dependence, is founded in Dublin.
1906	The Labour Representation Party wins twenty-nine seats and shortens its name to the Labour Party. Henrik Ibsen dies. Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma, a satire on the medical profession, is produced.
1909	Shaw writes The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet and the one act farce Press Cuttings, both banned by the royal censor.
1910	Shaw writes Misalliance, which he compares to Shake speare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
1912	He publishes Misalliance, and his satire Androcles and the Lion is staged for the first time.
1913	A German language version of Pygmalion, another satire Shaw wrote in 1912, premieres in Vienna.
1914	With World War I imminent, Shaw publishes a polemical antiwar tract, Common Sense About the War, which provokes a popular backlash and public denouncement. Pygmalion is produced for the first time in English.
1917	Dejected over the war, Shaw writes Heartbreak House.
1919	Heartbreak House is published in NewYork.
1920	The canonization of Joan of Arc gives Shaw the idea for a new play. Heartbreak House is produced in New York.
1921	Shaw publishes five linked plays begun during the war under the title Back to Methuselah, a dramatic work that begins in the Garden of Eden and ends in the year A.D. 31,920.
1923	Shaw writes Saint Joan, which is produced and hailed as a masterpiece.
1924	Saint Joan is published.
1925	Shaw is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for Saint Joan. He donates the prize money to fund an English trans lation of the works of August Strindberg.
1928	Shaw publishes his nonfiction The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and writes The Apple Cart, a dra matic comedy set in the future.
1929	The Apple Cart is produced.
1931	Shaw visits Russia, where he meets Josef Stalin and Maxim Gorky. He completes the play Too True to Be Good, which explores how war can undermine established morals.
1932	Too True to Be Good is staged for the first time.
1933	An international celebrity, Shaw makes his first trip to America. On the Rocks and Village Wooing are produced.
1934	Shaw writes the plays The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, The Six of Calais, and the first draft of The Millionairess dur ing a cruise to New Zealand. Simpleton is produced this year.
1938	Geneva, a play that imagines a successful League of Na tions, premieres.
1939	Shaw writes Good King Charles’s Golden Days, which is pro duced this year. He wins an Academy Award for the screenplay for Pygmalion, over which he exercised tight control.
1943	His wife, Charlotte, dies after a long illness.
1947	Shaw completes the play The Buoyant Billions.
1948	The Buoyant Billions is produced in Zurich.
1949	Shaw’s puppet play, Shakes Versus Shav, is produced.
1950	George Bernard Shaw dies on November 2 from compli cations related to a fall from a ladder. He bequeaths funds for a competition to create a new English alphabet based on phonetics rather than Roman letters. The competition, won in 1958 by Kingsley Read, results in the Shavian al phabet.

INTRODUCTION

In one of Katharine Hepburn’s early films,
Morning Glory
(from a 1933 play by Zoe Akins), Hepburn plays a self-confident, self-reliant, fearless, and outspoken young woman, ambitious to become a great actress in New York—in short, Hepburn plays herself. In the film, in an exchange with a producer (played by the ever-dapper Adolphe Menjou), Hepburn explains that she has done several major roles back home in her local Vermont theater company, including a role “in Shaw’s
You Never Can Tell.”
Menjou then asks,
“Bernard Shaw?”
and she replies, “The one and only.” They continue:

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