Modern Comedies, George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a famous Irish dramatist, literary critic,

a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th century theater. Shaw was a

freethinker, a supporter of women's rights and an advocate of equality of income.

During his long career, Shaw wrote over 50 plays. His plays were ideological attacks

on the evils of capitalism and explorations of moral and social problems. He is the

only man so far to have won both the Nobel Prize for Literature - for Saint Joan in

1925 - and an Oscar for Best Screenplay - Pygmalion in 1938. When he was awarded

the Nobel Prize for Literature, he accepted the honor but refused the money.

Shaw is one of the greatest dramatists. Other than Shakespeare, Shaw is

probably the best-known English language playwright. He was a decidedly modern

writer, infusing his work with social comment and employing the language which we

still use today. His writings are, by nature, subversive. They are filled with people

with strong points of view and he highlights the absurdity of how and why people

make choices. In addition, Shaw's works provide meaty roles for women. His women

are hugely smart, much cleverer than the men, and all the characters are active, not

passive. He wrote on the folly of patriotism, the immorality of politicians, the evil of

poverty and many other subjects that still occupy us today.

Shaw was more than merely the best comic dramatist of his time, for some of

his greatest works for the stage have a high seriousness and prose beauty unmatched

by his stage contemporaries. His development of a drama of moral passion and of

intellectual conflict and debate, his revivifying the comedy of manners, his ventures

into symbolic farce and into a theatre of disbelief helped shape the theatre of his time

and after.

Man and Superman

Man and Superman was written in 1903 in four acts and performed in 1905.

Although it can be performed as a light comedy of manners, Shaw intended it to be

something much deeper than that. The plot is centered on Jack Tanner, author of "The

Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion" and a confirmed bachelor, and the

lovely Ann's persistent efforts to make him marry her. Ann is referred to as "The Life

Force" and represents Shaw's view that in every culture, it is the women who force

the men to marry them, rather than the men taking the initiative.

In Man and Superman Shaw expounded his philosophy that humanity is the

latest stage in a purposeful and eternal evolutionary movement of the "life force"

toward ever-higher life forms. The play's hero, Jack Tanner, is bent on pursuing his

own spiritual development in accordance with this philosophy as he flees the

determined marital pursuit of the heroine, Ann Whitefield. In the end Jack ruefully

allows himself to be captured in marriage by Ann upon recognizing that she herself is

a powerful instrument of the "life force," since the continuation and thus the destiny

of the human race lies ultimately in her and other women's reproductive capacity.

Pygmalion

Pygmalion was written in 1912 and performed in 1913. It is Shaw's best-

known play, and comedic masterpiece. It is a humane comedy about love and the

English class system. Like his other writings, Pygmalion has a background theme of

class struggle. Shaw held that each class worked towards its own ends, and that those

from the upper echelons had won the struggle; for him, the working class had failed

in promoting their interests effectively, making Shaw highly critical of the

democratic system of his day.

Pygmalion concerns whether it is possible to pass off a flower-girl at a society

ball, by teaching her to speak properly. It is the story of Professor Henry Higgins, a

professor of phonetics, who wagers that he can turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza

Doolittle, into the toast of London society merely by teaching her how to speak with

an upper-class accent. In the process, he becomes fond of her and attempts to direct

her future, but she rejects his domineering ways and marries a young but poor man of

the genteel class, Freddy.

The original stage play shocked audiences by Eliza's use of a swear word.

Humour is drawn from her ability to speak well, but without an understanding of the

conversation acceptable to polite society. When asked whether she is walking home,

she replies, 'Not bloody likely!' This scene in which Eliza Doolittle appears in high

society when she has acquired a correct accent but no notion of polite conversation is

one of the funniest in English drama.

Pygmalion has been both filmed (1938), winning an Academy Award for Shaw

for his screenplay, and adapted into an immensely popular musical, My Fair Lady (1956; motion-picture version, 1964).