The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925
George Bernard Shaw |
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925
| George Bernard Shaw was born in
Dublin on 26th July, 1856. His father, George Carr Shaw,
a corn miller, was also an alcoholic and therefore there
was very little money to spend on George's education.
George went to local schools but never went to university
and was largely self-taught. After working in an estate office in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in March, 1876. Shaw hoped to become a writer and during the next seven years wrote five unsuccessful novels. He was more successful with his journalism and contributed to Pall Mall Gazette. Shaw got on well with the newspaper's campaigning editor, William Stead, who attempted to use the power of the popular press to obtain social reform. In 1882 Shaw heard Henry George lecture on land nationalization. This had a profound effect on Shaw and helped to develop his ideas on socialism. Shaw now joined the Social Democratic Federation and its leader, H. H. Hyndman, introduced him to the works of Karl Marx. Shaw was convinced by the economic theories in Das Kapital but was aware that it would have little impact on the working class. He later wrote that although the book had been written for the working man, "Marx never got hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeois itself - Lassalle, Marx, Liebknecht, Morris, Hyndman, Bax, all like myself, crossed with squirearchy - that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society; the proletariat is the conservative element." Shaw became an active member of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), and became friends with others in the movement including William Morris, Eleanor Marx, Annie Besant, Walter Crane, Edward Aveling and Belfort Bax. In May 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society and the following year, the Socialist League, an organisation that had been formed by Morris and Marx after a dispute with H. H. Hyndman, the leader of the SDF. George Bernard Shaw gave lectures on socialism on street corners and helped distribute political literature. On 13th November he took part in a demonstration in London that resulted in the Bloody Sunday Riot. However, he always felt uncomfortable with trade union members and preferred debate to action. By 1886, Shaw tended to concentrate his efforts on the work that he did with the Fabian Society. The society that included Edward Carpenter, Annie Besant, Walter Crane, Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb believed that capitalism had created an unjust and inefficient society. They agreed that the ultimate aim of the group should be to reconstruct "society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities". The Fabian Society rejected the revolutionary socialism of the Social Democratic Federation and were concerned with helping society to move to a socialist society "as painless and effective as possible". This is reflected in the fact that the group was named after the Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who advocated the weakening the opposition by harassing operations rather than becoming involved in pitched battles. The Fabian group was a "fact-finding and fact-dispensing body" and they produced a series of pamphlets on a wide variety of different social issues. Many of these were written by Shaw including The Fabian Manifesto (1884), The True Radical Programme (1887), Fabian Election Manifesto (1892), The Impossibilities of Anarchism (1893), Fabianism and the Empire (1900) and Socialism for Millionaires (1901). In his pamphlets George Bernard Shaw argued in favour of equality of income and advocated the equitable division of land and capital. Shaw believed that "property was theft" and believed like Karl Marx that capitalism was deeply flawed and was unlikely to last. However, unlike Marx, Shaw favoured gradualism over revolution. In a pamphlet, that he wrote in 1897 Shaw predicted that socialism "will come by prosaic installments of public regulation and public administration enacted by ordinary parliaments, vestries, municipalities, parish councils, school boards, etc." Shaw worked closely with Sidney Webb in trying to establish a new political party that was committed to obtaining socialism through parliamentary elections. This view was expressed in their Fabian Society pamphlet A Plan on Campaign for Labour. In 1893 Shaw was one of the Fabian Society delegates that attended the conference in Bradford that led to the formation of the Independent Labour Party. Three years later Shaw produced a report for the Trade Union Congress (TUC) that suggested a political party that had strong links with the trade union movement. In 1899 Shaw served on the TUC committee that looked into the best way to mobilize the political power of the labour movement. On 27th February 1900 the Fabian Society joined with the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). The LRC put up fifteen candidates in the 1900 General Election and between them they won 62,698 votes. Two of the candidates, Keir Hardie and Richard Bell won seats in the House of Commons. The party did even better in the 1906 election with twenty nine successful candidates. Later that year the LRC decided to change its name to the Labour Party. George Bernard Shaw wrote several plays with political themes during this period. This included Man and Superman (1902), John Bull's Other Island (1904) and Major Barbara (1905). These plays dealt with issues such as poverty and women's rights and implied that socialism could help solve the problems created by capitalism. Like many socialists, George Bernard Shaw opposed Britain's involvement in the First World War. He created a great deal of controversy with his provocative pamphlet, Common Sense About the War (1914). Shaw's status as a playwright continued to grow after the war and plays such as Heartbreak House (1919), Back to Methuselah (1921), Saint Joan (1923), The Apple Cart (1929) and Too True to be Good (1932) were favourably received by the critics and 1925 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Shaw continued to write books and pamphlets on political and social issues. This included The Crime of Imprisonment (1922), Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism (1928) and Everybody's Political What's What (1944). George Bernard Shaw remained committed to the socialist cause until his death on 2nd November, 1950. |
Caesar and Cleopatra
Caesar and Cleopatra, considered Shaw's first great play, opens as Julius Caesar's armies arrive in Egypt to conquer the ancient, divided land for Rome. Caesar meets the young Cleopatra crouching at night between the paws of a sphinx, where--having been driven from Alexandria--she is hiding. He returns her to the palace, reveals his identity, and compels her to abandon her girlishness and accept her position as coruler of Egypt (with Ptolemy Dionysus, her brother). The play's plot is complicated. Caesar takes Cleopatra's side because he and she share enemies. After avenging plots against his life and being driven from the city, Caesar kills Ptolemy in battle, making Cleopatra the sole ruler of Egypt. As he eventually departs for Rome, Caesar makes mention of a "gift" for Cleopatra, by which he means Mark Antony. Caesar and Cleopatra was extraordinarily successful, largely because of Shaw's talent for characterization. In contrast to William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, which presents Cleopatra as a mature temptress, Shaw's Cleopatra is a spoiled and vicious 16-year-old girl who grows into a mature leader. Shaw's Julius Caesar is also depicted much more sympathetically than Shakespeare's. He is a lonely, austere man, as much a philosopher and teacher as a soldier. He is also portrayed as magnanimous and possessed of an "original morality." Shaw based the play on Caesar's Civil War and Plutarch's Life of Caesar, though in the playwright's retelling the two principal characters do not actually love each other.
Pygmalion
pygmalion
romance in five acts by George Bernard Shaw, produced in German in 1913 in Vienna and in England in 1914, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell (for whom Shaw wrote the lead role) as Eliza Doolittle. Although Shaw claimed the play was a didactic drama about phonetics (the antiheroic hero, Professor Henry Higgins, is a phonetician), the play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system.
Higgins accepts a bet that simply by changing the speech of a Cockney flower seller he will be able, in six months, to pass her off as a duchess. Eliza's ambition is merely to speak like a lady. An apt, hardworking pupil, Eliza undergoes grueling training. When she successfully "passes" in high society--having in the process become a lovely young woman of sensitivity and taste--Higgins and his associate, Colonel Pickering, congratulate themselves on her success, giving her almost no credit for her phonetic, physical, and emotional transformation. She passes the final test brilliantly; a professional rival of Higgins' unmasks her as an aristocrat whose original language was Hungarian. Higgins dismisses her abruptly as a successfully completed experiment and admits no concern for her future. Eliza, who now belongs neither to the upper class, whose mannerisms and speech she has learned, nor to the lower class, from which she came, declares herself independent of him and rejects his dehumanizing attitude.
My Fair Lady (1956), a musical adaptation of the play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, was made into an equally successful film musical (1964), starring Audrey Hepburn and Harrison.
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