(14) Variety of Themes and Literary Means in Plays of G. B. Shaw.

T h e  T w e n t i e t h  C e n t u r y

[see "Background for Topics 12-27..."]

G ( e o r g e )  B ( e r n a r d )  S h a w  ( 1 8 5 6 – 1 9 5 0 )

L i f e :

- b. in Dublin x but: went to London to become a novelist, wrote 5 unsuccessful novels

- studied Karl Marx’s (1818 – 83 [= a Ger. philos., political economist, social revolutionary, and co-founder of Marxism with Friedrich Engels]) Das Kapital (1867) and Richard Wagner’s (1813 – 83) opera Tristan and Isolde (1865):

(a) socialism = the answer to society’s problems: joined the Fabian Society = a socialist organisation

(b) => a public speaker, author of public pronouncements and tracts: advocated gradual reform rather then rev., with wit absent from most oth. political writing of the time

(c) met and befriended William Archer (1856 – 1924 [= a Scott. journalist and critic])

(d) => an art critic: pioneered a new standard of wit and judgement of reviewing

- a music critic: championed the operas of R. Wagner

- a drama critic: championed the plays of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906) [see his The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)]

- a public character: experienced historical changes of the last ½ of the 19^th c. / the 1st ½ of the 20^th c. and pronounced on them in a witty epigrammatic style

- a literary celebrity: used his publicity to advocate his social ideas x O. Wilde used his to define his aesthetic POV

- a radical in many aspects: vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker, advocate of women’s rights, the abolition of private property, and the simplification of E spelling and punctuation

W o r k :

- author of more than 50 plays

(a) content:

< H. Ibsen > men-mastering, no-nonsense, and strong-willed women characters

< C. Dickens > tends to comedy, aspires to a dramatic reflection of D.’s comic energy, social diversity, and political observation

- set predominantly in the En. of the turn of the 20^th c.

- fuses elements of socialism, science, and philos. x but: not as much didactic as instructive

- ‘a drama of ideas’ = the characters argue their POVs to justify their social positions: the prostitute of Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893), the munitions manufacturer in Major Barbara (1905), etc.

- his history illuminating, present reforming, and future exciting: his intellectual confidence lacks in the cautious, agnostic, and depressive writing of most of his contemporaries

(a) form:

- emphasises the discussion: makes play and discussion practically identical, makes the spectators themselves the persons of the drama, and the incidents of their own lives its incidents

- produces dialogues of rhetorical brilliance

- reverses plot conventions, attacks conventional moralism of the audience, and moves the audience to an uncomfortable sympathy with the POVs and characters violating traditional assumptions

- orig.: difficulty getting his plays performed => publ. in a book form with a didactic preface as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898)

- then: performed in the Royal Court Theatre = the centre for avant-garde drama in London

=> received the Nobel Prize for Lit. (1925)

The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891):

- explains his reasons for admiring H. Ibsen

- defines the kind of drama he wanted to write

Widower’s Houses (1892):

= his 1^st play

- criticises the slum landlordism

The Philanderer (1893):

> forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship

Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893):

- conc.: the contemp. women’s question of the lack of employment occasions

- contrasts the future professional career of an educated, would-be-independent woman x the oldest profession of F prostitution: argues for the propriety of both vocations

- preface: prostitution caused not by F depravity x but: by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women

- women forced to resort to prostitution => infamous of society to offer such alternatives

- internal tensions: juxtaposes the liberated daughter Vivie x her brothel-keeping mother

- concl.: no reconciliation, compromise, or empty gestures of feminine solidarity x but: a slammed door with an isolated Vivie happily engrossed in her work

> the 1^st legal public performances in E allowed only in the y. after his receiving the Nobel Prize

Arms and the Man: An Anti-Romantic Comedy (1894):

= a ‘pleasant’ play for the commercial theatre

- challenges ideas of soldierly and masculine heroism

Candida: A Mystery (1894):

= a ‘pleasant’ play

- turns H. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879 [= criticises the traditional roles of men and women in Victorian marriage]) upside down in the context of a Christian Socialist family

The Devil’s Disciple (1896)

Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

The Perfect Wagnerite (1898):

< R. Wagner’s innovatory music-dramas of ‘The Ring Cycle’ (1848 – 74 [= The Ring of the Nibelung, a series of 4 epic music dramas based on elements of Germanic paganism])

- transforms W.’s mythology into an analyses of modern realities

- ‘the dwarfs, giants and gods’ = ‘dramatisations of the three main orders of men’

(a) dwarfs = ‘the instinctive, predatory, lustful, greedy people’

(b) giants = ‘the patient, toiling, stupid,…money-worshipping people’

(c) gods = ‘the intellectual, moral, talented people’

< further develops the idea in his Heartbreak House (1919)

You Never Can Tell (1899):

= a ‘pleasant’ play

- allows for the victory of a new generation over the old

Man and Superman (1903):

< Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756 – 91 [= an Austrian composer]) Don Giovanni (1787)

- set in an infernal afterlife

- transforms the play’s characters into those of Don Giovanni in a vast post-Nietzschean argument

John Bull’s Other Island (1904):

= one of his rare direct treatments of Ir.

Major Barbara (1905):

- conc.: the idea of the future reconstruction of society by a power-manipulating minority

- contrasts a strong-willed father x his equally strong-minded daughter

Androcles and the Lion (1912)

Pygmalion (1912):

- conc.: the developing relationship btw a ‘creator’ x his ‘creation’

< possibly shares this ‘grotesque’ idea with C. Dickens’s Great Expectations

> the basis of the musical My Fair Lady (1956)

Heartbreak House (1919):

- the title: from its subtle series of encounters btw characters each of which has to come to terms with disillusion and some kind of ‘heartbreak’

< develops the theme of 3 contending orders of men of his The Perfect Wagnerite

- concl.: the god-like survivors destroy the oth. 2 orders

Back to Methuselah (1920)

Saint Joan (1923):

- celebrates the recent canonisation of the Fr. military heroine Joan of Arc (1412 – 31) x but: scarcely in a churchy way

- Joan = a self-aware, self-asserting woman => ‘saintly’ not in the sentimental sense x but: by merit of the effects she has on oth. and in her willingness to give her life for the freedom opened up to her by her convictions