Bernard Shaw
1856–1950
Biography
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and moved to London in 1876. He struggled at first to make a name as a novelist and taught himself largely through reading and writing. By the mid 1880s he had become a respected music and theatre critic, and he joined the Fabian Society, the gradualist socialist group, where he became one of its most effective pamphleteers.
He wrote more than sixty plays. His first real public success was Arms and the Man (1894), and his later plays include Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. He used comedy and argument to press his social, political and religious ideas, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925. His views were often provocative: he supported eugenics, expressed admiration for Mussolini and Stalin, and blamed both sides of the First World War equally. Scholars still rank him among the leading English-language dramatists.
Three of his plays are in this library: Arms and the Man, a comedy set during a war in the Balkans that makes fun of romantic ideas about soldiering; Caesar and Cleopatra, a comic treatment of Julius Caesar and the young queen of Egypt; and Candida, a domestic drama in which a clergyman's wife must choose between her husband and a young poet. Together they show the wit and the argument that made his reputation.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Arms and the Man
by Bernard Shaw
In the Serbo-Bulgarian war, a Swiss mercenary who carries chocolates instead of cartridges takes refuge in the bedroom of Raina Petkoff, whose fiance is a Bulgarian officer. Shaw puts the glory of battle and the romance of heroism under a comic glass.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Caesar and Cleopatra
by Bernard Shaw
Julius Caesar, a middle-aged man of dry wit, finds the sixteen-year-old Cleopatra hiding between the paws of the Sphinx and teaches her to rule while Alexandria is under siege. Shaw's history play asks what a wise man really sees in a dazzling and cruel girl. This book uses the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Candida
by Bernard Shaw
The Reverend James Morell, a popular socialist preacher, is sure of the love of his wife Candida until a young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, tells him how little he understands her. She is asked to choose between them, and her choice is not the one the men expect.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Major Barbara
by Bernard Shaw
Barbara Undershaft, a Salvation Army major, meets her estranged father, an arms manufacturer, and agrees to visit his model factory town if he will visit her shelter. The play pits her faith against his argument that poverty is the only real sin. This book uses the racial and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Man and Superman
by Bernard Shaw
John Tanner, a rich radical writer named guardian of Ann Whitefield, believes he is the one man who will escape her pursuit. The play carries them from London to Spain and includes a long dream in Hell, "Don Juan in Hell", in which Shaw argues his ideas about the Life Force.…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Mrs. Warren's Profession
by Bernard Shaw
Vivie Warren, a clear-headed young Cambridge graduate, discovers that her mother's comfortable income comes from managing a chain of brothels. Shaw's play, once banned from the stage, argues that the real guilt belongs to a society that pays women so little. This book uses the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Pygmalion
by Bernard Shaw
Professor Henry Higgins bets that he can pass a Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, off as a duchess by teaching her to speak properly. He succeeds, and then has to face the fact that he has made a woman with a will of her own. This book uses the racial and other slurs…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.