George Bernard Shaw was born on June 26, 1856 in Dublin, the son of a grain merchant. Bernard's childhood was very difficult. The young man was forced to earn a living at an early age. When he was 20 years old, he moved from Ireland to London. Here Bernard joined the Fabian Society, which interpreted the ideas of moderate socialism.
However literary activity has been attracted to him for a long time. In 1879, the novel Immaturity was created. Today magazine published following novels: "Socialist lone" (1884), "Profession of Cashel Byron" (1885 - 1886).
Bernard Show. Photo 1911
A little later, the novels Unreasonable Liaisons (1887), The Love of an Artist (1888) were published. In the early nineties, Shaw began to write plays. In 1892, the play "Widower's Houses" was created. After that, Shaw became a professional playwright. The play Mrs. Warren's Profession (1894) aroused public discontent, because it dealt with a former prostitute.
The play The Devil's Disciple (1897) was a huge success. In the same year, Shaw became a state councillor.
In 1898 the playwright married Charlotte Payne-Thousand. The bride was from a very wealthy family, but like Shaw, she was a member of the Fabian Society. Therefore, she became not only a faithful wife, but also a devoted assistant.
Geniuses and villains. Bernard Show
On the stage of the Royal Theater in 1904 - 1907. some of Shaw's plays were staged. Among these plays are "Man and Superman" (1905), "Major Barbara" (1905), "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1907). After that, Shaw became a world celebrity.
In 1912, Shaw created one of his most significant works, Pygmalion. During First World War Shaw wrote plays about what was going on in society. They were subsequently published in the collection "War Pieces" (1919). In 1919, the play "The House Where Hearts Break" was created. In 1923 - the play "Saint Joan". According to many critics, this work became the pinnacle dramaturgical activity Show.
In 1925, Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize "for a work marked by idealism and humanism, for sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty."
Shaw used the award itself to establish an Anglo-Swedish literary fund for translators.
In 1931 the playwright visited the USSR. Left intellectual, he was delighted with Soviet country, until the end of his life he admired the Soviet system and achievements.
TO late work Shows include works: Boyant's Billions (1947), Intricate Fables (1948), Shex vs. Shep (1949). The poetic play "Why she refused" remained unfinished.
George Bernard Shaw - English playwright of Irish origin, one of the founders of the "drama of ideas", writer, essayist, one of the reformers theatrical art XX century, after Shakespeare, the second most popular author of plays in English theater, Nobel Prize in Literature, Oscar winner.
He was born in Irish Dublin on July 26, 1856. The childhood years of the future writer were overshadowed by his father's addiction to alcohol, strife between his parents. Like all children, Bernard went to school, but learned the main life lessons from the books he read and the music he listened to. In 1871, after graduating from school, he began working in a company selling land. A year later, he took the position of cashier, but four years later, hating work, he moved to London: his mother lived there, having divorced her father. WITH young years Shaw saw himself as a writer, but the articles he sent to various editorial offices were not published. For 9 years, only 15 shillings - a fee for single article- was earned by him by writing, although during this period he wrote as many as 5 novels.
In 1884, B. Shaw joined the Fabian Society and already through a short time gained fame as a talented orator. Visiting the reading room of the British Museum for the purpose of self-education, he met W. Archer and, thanks to him, became involved in journalism. After first working as a freelance correspondent, Shaw worked as a music critic for six years, and then worked for the Saturday Review as a theater critic for three and a half years. The reviews written by him made up the three-volume collection “Our Theater of the Nineties”, published in 1932. In 1891, Shaw’s original creative manifesto was published - a lengthy article “The Quintessence of Ibsenism”, the author of which showed a critical attitude towards contemporary aesthetics and sympathy for the drama that illuminated conflicts of a social nature.
His debut in the field of drama was the plays "Widower's House" and "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (1892 and 1893, respectively). They were intended for production in an independent theater, which was Closed club, so Shaw could afford the courage to display aspects of life that his contemporary art usually bypassed. These and other works were included in the cycle " Unpleasant Plays". In the same year, “Pleasant Plays” were also released, and the “representatives” of this cycle began to penetrate the stage of large metropolitan theaters in the late 90s. The first huge success was brought by The Devil's Disciple written in 1897, which was part of the third cycle - Plays for the Puritans.
The playwright's finest hour came in 1904, when the leadership of the Kord Theater changed and included a number of his plays in the repertoire - in particular, Candida, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, etc. After successful productions Shaw finally secured the reputation of an author who boldly handles public morality and traditional ideas about history, subverting what was considered an axim. The contribution to the golden treasury of dramaturgy was resounding success"Pygmalion" (1913).
During the First World War, Bernard Shaw had to listen to a lot of unflattering words and direct insults addressed to him by the audience, fellow writers, newspapers and magazines. Nevertheless, he continued to write, and in 1917 a new stage in his creative biography. The tragedy "Saint Joan", staged in 1924, returned B. Shaw former glory, and in 1925 he became the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and refuses its monetary component.
Over the age of 70 in the 30s. The show takes a trip around the world, visits India, South Africa, New Zealand, USA. He also visited the USSR in 1931, in July of that year he personally met with Stalin. Being a socialist, Shaw sincerely welcomed the changes taking place in the country of the Soviets and turned into a supporter of Stalinism. After the Labor Party came to power, B. Shaw was offered a peerage and nobility, but he refused. Later, he agreed to the status of an honorary citizen of Dublin and one of the London districts.
B. Shaw wrote to a ripe old age. The last plays, "Billions of Bayant" and "Fictitious Fables", he wrote in 1948 and 1950. Remaining completely sane, on November 2, 1950, the famous playwright died.
Bernard Shaw wrote about himself:
“Typical Irish; my family comes from Hampshire in England, and my most ancient ancestor, who settled in Ireland in 1689, was a Scot by birth.
Like every Irishman, I don't like Irish people.
I became a freethinker before I could think.
What I am now freelancer does not mean that I have never tried to earn a living by honest work.
I am a lamentable example of the fact that a drunken worker is no better than a drunken drunkard. I'm not afraid of anything in the world as much as the weekend.
My fame grew with each of my failures.
The fickleness of the women I was in love with was redeemed only by the infernal constancy of the women in love with me.
From two parts: female share permanent motherhood and male - eternal childhood, I think I prefer male.
I often quote myself. It spices up my conversation.
No events happened to me, on the contrary, I myself was an event.
Few think more than two or three times a year; I have become world famous for thinking once or twice a week.
My readers constantly complain that I have not yet solved all the world's problems for them.
If I didn’t praise my intellect, what would I be doing after seventy?”
Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was born on 26 July 1856 in Dublin, the third child of George Carr Shaw and his wife Elizabeth (née Gurley). Shaw's father was a civil servant and later an unlucky grain merchant. He was also an alcoholic. Shaw's mother was a talented singer and amateur musician. Despite belonging to a solid Anglo-Irish Protestant class, the Shaw family was going through difficult times socially and financially. The life of the family was accompanied by material needs and an unfavorable moral climate, which Shaw later recreated in his tragicomedy Heartbreak House. His parents often quarreled and did not pay proper attention to their children (besides Bernard, they had two more daughters).
The boy studied first at home, and then at Catholic and Protestant day schools, after which, at the age of sixteen, he got a job as a clerk in a real estate agency. had a definite effect on the teenager. fashion teacher music, conductor John Vandeleur Lee, who taught Elisabeth singing and lived in Shaw's house as a family friend. Growing up in musical environment, Bernard fell in love with music and taught himself how to play opera scores on the piano.
Leaving her husband, Elizabeth Shaw, along with her two daughters, followed Lee to London in 1873, and Bernard Shaw, who was then only 15 years old, remained with his sick father and had to take care of a piece of bread. Three years later, Bernard moved in with his mother, deciding to become a writer, and commissioned by Lee to write articles for musical themes. Every morning, Shaw wrote five pages of prose, studied at the British Museum at noon, and attended lectures and debates in the evening. Since none of the five novels he created from 1879 to 1883 was published, the young man was entirely dependent on the meager earnings of his mother, who gave music lessons.
In 1882, a lecture by the American reformer Henry George brought Shaw's attention to social problems. In 1884, Shaw became a member of the Fabian Society, whose goal was to promote the non-revolutionary transformation of a capitalist society into a socialist one. Having joined the Fabian Society, Shaw discovered the abilities of an orator and propagandist. In verbal battles with opponents, he honed his future formidable weapon - picky jokes. He also cultivated in himself the ability to look at the ordinary from an unconventional paradoxical point of view - a quality without which his intellectual problematic theater simply would not exist.
Shaw met William Archer, a theater critic, who encouraged him to write about the theater and in 1886 recommended Shaw to the weekly The World. Archer recalled the first time he saw Shaw in the library of the British Museum. In front of him lay Capital by Karl Marx and the score of Richard Wagner's opera Golden Rhein. He read both works in turn. This episode was very typical of Shaw, who always tried to keep abreast of various advances in science, philosophy and art.
From 1885 to 1888, Shaw published reviews in the Pall Mall Gazette and, under the pseudonym Corno di Basseto, music reviews in The Star, a new, large-circulation newspaper in the capital, and in 1890 became a full-time music critic in "World". The poet W. Auden called Shaw "perhaps the best music critic of all time."
In 1895, Shaw became a theater critic for the London Saturday Review, and in an article he scathingly criticized Henry Irving, the leading stage director of the time, for his lack of interest in Henrik Ibsen and for his loose interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. The show also ridiculed the popular plays of Arthur Pinero and the philistine melodramas of Scribe and Sardou, contrasting them with social theater that realistically depicted modern life. Shaw dedicated a lecture to Ibsen's work at a meeting of the Fabian Society in 1890, and the following year the playwright wrote critical study"The Quintessence of Ibsenism", which became the first English-language study of the work of the Norwegian playwright, as well as a manifesto new drama. The book aroused the interest of J.T. Grain, director of Ibsen's play Ghosts, and he suggested that Shaw compose a play for the Independent Theatre. In 1892, after handing over a play he had co-authored five years earlier with William Archer, Shaw wrote The Widower's House, his first work for the theatre.
A promising start, however, did not materialize. The play received a reserved reception and was withdrawn from production after two performances. Over the next six years, Shaw wrote nine full-length plays and one one-act play. To stage his second play, The Heartbreaker, written in 1893, sad story about a profitable but unhappy marriage, not a single director undertook, and the play "Mrs. Warren's Profession", which raised the topic of prostitution, was completely banned.
Refusing to make concessions to censorship, Shaw published his plays at the expense of a successful journalist, as well as at the expense of Charlotte Payne Townsend, an Irish art patron and socialist, whom he married in 1898. The two-volume collection Pleasant and Unpleasant Plays was published in the year of their wedding.
Energy was surging from Shaw. Throughout the day, he did not give himself a moment's rest. As his biographer Hesketh Pearson wrote, “He could not even talk calmly: he jumped up, sat down, crossed his legs, put his hands in his pockets, took them out again, straightened up in his chair or leaned back far, hung forward, almost to the floor, or fell back - could not stay in one position for a minute! If he managed to completely wear himself out - and this happened extremely rarely - he would go into a dark room, fall flat on the floor and lie for hours, relaxing all his muscles.
Skating, riding a bike, driving a car, taking pictures - he tried to learn all simple and complex skills quickly and, at the same time, thoroughly. He studied dancing with maniacal dedication. Each time, each of these, it would seem, not the most complex sciences was given to him with difficulty. Even out of the blue, Shaw managed to break his leg or arm.
The show can definitely get a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of broken limbs. Once a year, at best once every two years, he broke something with incomprehensible regularity. Even with Charlotte, he met only thanks to the fact that in Once again broke his leg - she came to him to replace her sick nurse friend. Shaw even spent his honeymoon in a cast.
Shaw's remarks about women have always been effervescent. Once a certain disgruntled lady, in a fit of anger, said to the writer:
If you were my husband, I would not be able to resist and put poison in your tea.
Madam, Shaw replied, if you were my wife, I would immediately drink this tea ...
During one of the receptions, a lady approached Shaw and asked:
Why do you think God created man first and then woman?
Because, - answered the witty Bernard Shaw, - that he didn’t want a woman to ask him stupid questions at the time of the creation of a man ...
Once, one of his admirers, an attractive young woman, approached Bernard Shaw and, after talking a little with the playwright, remarked:
I can imagine how wonderful our children would be! From me they would get beauty, from you - a penetrating mind ...
Oh, miss, - Shaw objected, - and if nature makes a mistake and takes the first from me, and the second from you?
The writer argued that obstinate women are easier to endure than calm ones. True, they are sometimes killed, but they are never abandoned.
Shaw approached his own and other people's work with no less humor. One basketball player (obviously not excelling in sports) suddenly discovered that he had a “literary gift”. He sent his creations to Shaw with a request to evaluate them. The latter's answer was figurative and convincing: “After reading your writings, I understood why you did not become a good basketball player. The fact is that you do not know how to throw in the basket in time.
Once journalists asked Shaw:
How much would you like to earn to consider yourself happy?
Exactly as much as I earn according to my neighbors!
In his plays, Shaw used meticulous stage directions, which is why they sometimes read like novels. "Unpleasant Plays," Shaw wrote, "are designed to force the audience to face the unpleasant facts" and the discrepancy between middle-class aristocratic habits and unsavory sources of income, as was the case in Mrs. Warren's Profession. In the "pleasant" plays "Arms and a Man", "Candida", "The Chosen One of Fate" and "Let's wait and see" - an attempt was made to show the superiority of realism over naturalism.
Although Candida was a huge success in New York as early as 1903, Shaw became famous in England later, when he, his wife, and Harley Grenville-Barker rented the Royal Court Theater in London to demonstrate the drama of ideas. Shaw's plays directed by John Vedrenn and Harley Grenville-Barker from 1904 to 1907 were so popular that out of 988 performances played at the Royal Court Theater during these years, 701 were based on his works.
Bernard Shaw was once asked: “Tell me, how do you manage to come up with your amazingly witty phrases?” "It's very simple," Shaw replied. “I come up with something not witty, and then I say the exact opposite.”
Man and Superman, one of Shaw's most successful plays, a huge success with critics and audiences, was a philosophical comedy where the author shared his views on religion, women and marriage. In the operatic third act, entitled "Don Juan in Hell" and often performed separately, "a comedy of manners turns into a cosmic drama," as Major Barbara critic Margery Morgan wrote. A social satire, also written by Shaw in 1905, was a tense intellectual debate between religious conviction and worldly ambition, between hypocrisy and sincerity. In Pygmalion, social mannerisms were subjected to satirical ridicule, contributing to the strengthening of class differences. Subsequently, based on this play, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe wrote the musical "My wonderful lady».
During the First World War, Shaw was actively involved in politics. In the November 1914 issue of The New Statesman, a radical magazine created by Shaw in 1913 with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the playwright published a long essay, "War by Common Sense," in which he criticized both England and Germany, urged both countries to negotiate, ridiculing blind patriotism. Following this publication, Shaw was expelled from the Dramatists' Club and lost several friends. In 1916, he spoke out in support of the Irish Rebellion and in defense of the Anglo-Irish diplomat Sir Roger Casement, who resorted to German help in seeking support for the Irish liberation movement, was accused of treason and executed.
IN post-war play"Heartbreak House" Shaw showed the loss of spiritual values of the generation responsible for the bloodshed. In this tragicomedy, politics and economics were combined with a surreal vision of the world. Back to Methuselah, Shaw's most controversial and complex play, is a typical example of a discussion play, consisting of five interconnected plays and began in Eden and ended in 31920 AD. In this drawn-out and ponderous work, one felt the influence of the theory creative evolution Bergson, as well as Shaw's Fabian views, according to which the human intellect is capable of transforming society, made themselves felt.
After the canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920, Shaw found new heroine and the theme for his only tragedy "Saint Joan". Joan, according to Shaw, was distinguished by the wit, practicality and energy that the author admired, as well as the innocence and imagination that posed a threat to members of the clergy, whom Shaw endowed with Machiavellian features.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded in 1925, and in 1926 it was awarded to Shaw "for a work marked by idealism and humanism, for a sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty." As Swedish Academy member Per Hallström said, "Shaw the playwright has become one of the most brilliant playwrights of our day, and Shaw the preface writer of plays can be considered the Voltaire of our time." Being a principled opponent of all kinds of awards, Shaw did not come to the awards ceremony, and the award was instead presented to Arthur Duff, the British Ambassador to Sweden. With the money due to the laureate, Shaw set up an Anglo-Swedish literary fund for translators, especially Strindberg's translators. When Shaw was asked, "Why did he do it?" - The show answered: "This is a lifeline thrown to a drowning man at the moment when he has already swum to the shore ...".
In 1928, Shaw published The Guide to smart woman on issues of socialism and capitalism” – a discourse on political and economic topics. In his last plays, Shaw departed from realism and used the techniques ancient comedy.
At the premiere of one of his plays, Shaw took the stage during the intermission and addressed the audience: “Well, how do you like my play?” The amazed audience did not immediately find something to answer. And only one of them shouted: “Nonsense!” Shaw bowed politely to him and replied with a smile, pointing to the audience: “And I am of the same opinion, but what can the two of us against the mass?”.
The critical controversy surrounding Shaw's legacy has been largely fueled by the tension between Shaw the satirist and Shaw the social reformer. During his lifetime, he was accused of frivolity, and of "too irresponsible," as Max Beerbom said, "sense of humor." In Shaw's wit, Auden felt the spirit of Rossini, "the liveliness, clarity and virtuosity of the great master of buff opera." According to the English poet and critic Stephen Spender, in his worldview, Shaw is "a two-dimensional giant moving in his own two-dimensional world." Literary critic John Matthews perceived Shaw as "...a foreigner, an observant Irishman at odds with a society that meant less to him than the people he knew and loved." “The show is the successor of a great tradition,” wrote the American critic Jacques Berzen. “He used everything that is in the theatrical pantries and in the minds of people ... Shaw's plays are the richest dramatic heritage.”
Shaw's latest success was The Apple Cart, which opened the Malvern Festival in honor of the playwright.
In the years when most people were not up to traveling, Shaw visited the USA, the USSR, South Africa, India and New Zealand. In Moscow, where Shaw arrived with Lady Astor, he spoke with Stalin. When the Labor Party, for which the playwright had done so much, came to power, he was offered the nobility and a peerage, but he refused everything. At the age of ninety, the writer nevertheless agreed to become an honorary citizen of Dublin and the London district of St. Pancras, where he lived in his younger years.
Shaw's wife died in 1943. According to some statements, the marriage of Bernard Shaw to Charlotte was rather strange. Having lived with each other for 45 years, the couple remained chaste. At the beginning life together they - a 42-year-old bride and a 43-year-old groom - agreed that there would be no marital intimacy between them. Charlotte abhorred this kind of relationship. And Shaw himself, having only once tasted the “joy of carnal love,” was simply indifferent to them. His only woman was a widow - "a very well-fed madam, madly missing male caresses."
“Coitus,” Shaw wrote, “seems to me a monstrous and base occupation, and I am unable to understand how a self-respecting man and woman can see each other after spending the night together.”
Shaw preferred to experience love stories ... by mail. “Only the post office can provide the perfect love affair,” he admitted. - My correspondence with Ellen Terry was quite a successful romance. I could meet her any minute, but I didn't want to complicate our delightful bond. She had time to get tired of five husbands, but she did not get bored with me.
The remaining years the writer spent in seclusion in Ayoth St. Lawrence (Hertfordshire), where, at the age of ninety-two, he completed his last play, Byant's Billions.
Shaw died at Ayot St. Lawrence on November 2, 1950. At his request, the body was burned without any rites, and the ashes were mixed with those of his wife and scattered in his beloved garden.
About Bernard Shaw was filmed TV Broadcast from the Geniuses and Villains series.
Your browser does not support the video/audio tag.
Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Used materials:
Site materials www.narodko.ru
Text of the article "Bernard Shaw: Enemy No. 1 for all progressive women?" by A. Kazakevich
Text of the article "Don't try to live forever", author O. Anikina
Site materials www.letter.com.ua
Site materials www.n-t.ru
APHORISMS OF BERNARD SHAW:
Most of all, a person is flattered by the fact that you consider him worthy of flattery.
I'm afraid to go to America ... True, irony is my element, but at the sight of the Statue of Liberty, even I lose my sense of humor.
You will never write a good book without first writing a few bad ones.
A great work of art is a painful victory of a brilliant mind over a brilliant imagination.
The thief is not the one who steals, but the one who is caught.
If we do harm to a neighbor, then, if possible, it is irreparable.
A person's interest in the world arises from an overabundance of interest in oneself.
It is not dangerous to be sincere, especially if you are also stupid.
There is and cannot be anything more terrible in the world than eternal happiness.
It is not interesting to hang a person if he has nothing against it.
The reputation of a doctor depends on the number prominent personalities whom he sent to the next world.
Most effective method to shut up a genius is to take his ideas on faith, admit that he is a great man, and forget about him.
The secret of success is to offend as many people as possible.
To those who know nothing, but think they know everything, political career secured.
A fool always ends well.
A person can climb the highest high peak but can't stay there for long.
The longer I live, the more I tend to think that in solar system The earth plays the role of a madhouse.
Youth, to which everything is forgiven, does not forgive itself anything; but old age, which forgives itself everything, forgives nothing.
I'm too old to be interested in anyone - even myself.
I often quote myself - for the sake of brilliance.
One day an insurance company agent came to Bernard Shaw's house.
I want to insure your life, he said.
mine? Waste of work, - grinned Shaw. - Don't you know that I'm immortal?
SHOW, GEORGE BERNARD(Shaw, George Bernard) (1856-1950), Irish playwright, philosopher and prose writer, an outstanding critic of his time and the most famous - after Shakespeare - playwright who wrote in English. Born July 26, 1856 in Dublin. His father, having failed in business, became addicted to alcohol; mother, disappointed in marriage, became interested in singing. Shaw did not learn anything in the schools he attended, but he learned a lot from the books of Ch. Dickens, W. Shakespeare, D. Bunyan, the Bible, Arabian tales Thousand and One Nights, as well as listening to operas and oratorios in which the mother sang, and contemplating paintings in the Irish National Gallery.
At the age of fifteen, Shaw got a job as a clerk in a firm selling land. A year later, he became a cashier and held this position for four years. Unable to overcome his disgust for such work, at the age of twenty he left for London to live with his mother, who, after a divorce from her husband, earned her living by singing lessons.
Shaw, already in his youth, had decided to earn a living by writing, and although the articles sent out returned to him with depressing regularity, he continued to besiege the newsrooms. Only one of his articles was accepted for publication, paying the author fifteen shillings - and this was all that Shaw earned with a pen in nine years. Over the years, he wrote five novels that were rejected by all English publishers.
In 1884, Shaw joined the Fabian Society and soon became one of its most brilliant orators. At the same time, he improved his education in reading room British Museum, where he met the writer W. Archer (1856–1924), who introduced him to journalism. After working for some time as a freelance correspondent, Shaw got a job as a music critic in one of the evening papers. After six years of music reviewing, Shaw worked for three and a half years as theater critic for the Saturday Riviée. During this time, he published books about H. Ibsen and R. Wagner. He also wrote plays (collection Plays good and bad – Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, 1898). One of them, Mrs. Warren's profession (Mrs. Warren's Profession, first staged in 1902), was banned by the censors; another, Wait and see (You Never Can Tell, 1895) was rejected after several rehearsals; third, Weapon and man (Arms and the Man, 1894), no one understood at all. In addition to those named, the collection includes plays Candida (Candida, 1895), Destiny's Chosen One (The Man of Destiny, 1897), Widower's house (Widower's Houses, 1892) and heartthrob (The Philanderer, 1893). Staged in America by R. Mansfield Devil's Disciple (The Devil's Disciple, 1897) is Shaw's first play to be a box office success.
Shaw wrote plays, wrote reviews, acted as a street speaker promoting socialist ideas, and, in addition, was a member of the St. Pancras Borough Council, where he lived. These overloads have led to sharp deterioration health, and if not for the care and care of Charlotte Payne-Townsend, whom he married in 1898, things could have ended badly. During a protracted illness, Shaw wrote plays Caesar and Cleopatra (Caesar and Cleopatra, 1899) and (Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 1900), which the writer himself called "a religious treatise". In 1901 Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra And Message from Captain Brasbound were published in a collection Three Pieces for Puritans (Three Plays for Puritans). IN Caesar and Cleopatra- the first play of the Shaw, where real historical figures, - the traditional idea of a hero and a heroine has been changed beyond recognition.
Having failed on the path of commercial theatre, Shaw decided to make drama the vehicle of his philosophy, publishing a play in 1903. Man and Superman (man and superman). However, the following year, his time came. The young actor H. Granville-Barker (1877-1946), together with the entrepreneur J. E. Vedrennom, took over the leadership of the London Court Theater and opened the season, the success of which was ensured by the old and new plays of Shaw - Candida, Wait and see, John Bull's other island (John Bull's Other Island, 1904), Man and Superman, Major Barbara (Major Barbara, 1905) and doctor in dilemma (The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906).
Shaw now decided to write plays entirely devoid of action. The first of these play-discussions, Marriage (Getting Married, 1908), had some success among intellectuals, the second, Misalliance (Misalliance, 1910), turned out to be difficult for them too. Giving up, Shaw wrote a frankly box office trinket - Fanny's first play (Fanny's First Play, 1911), which went on stage for almost two years small theater. Then, as if retribution for this concession to the taste of the crowd, Shaw created a true masterpiece - Androcles and the lion (Androcles and the Lions, 1913), followed by the play Pygmalion (Pygmalion, 1914), staged by G. Beerbom-Three at His Majesty's Theatre, with Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle.
During World War I, Shaw was an exceptionally unpopular figure. The press, the public, colleagues showered him with insults, and meanwhile he calmly finished the play. The house where hearts break (heartbreak house, 1921) and prepared his testament to the human race - Back to Methuselah (Back to Methuselah, 1923), where he put his evolutionary ideas into dramatic form. In 1924 fame returned to the writer, he gained world recognition drama Saint Joan (Saint Joan). In Shaw's eyes, Jeanne d'Arc is a herald of Protestantism and nationalism, and therefore the verdict handed down to her by the medieval church and the feudal system is quite natural. In 1925, Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he refused to receive.
The last play that brought Shaw success was Applecart (The Apple Cart, 1929), which opened the Malvern Festival in honor of the playwright.
In years when most people had no time to travel, Shaw visited the USA, the USSR, South Africa, India, New Zealand. In Moscow, where Shaw arrived with Lady Astor, he spoke with Stalin. When the Labor Party, for which the playwright had done so much, came to power, he was offered the nobility and a peerage, but he refused everything. At the age of ninety, the writer nevertheless agreed to become an honorary citizen of Dublin and the London district of St. Pancras, where he lived in his younger years.
Shaw's wife died in 1943. The writer spent the remaining years in seclusion in Ayoth St. Lawrence (Hertfordshire), where at the age of ninety-two he completed his last play. Byant Billions (Buoyant Billions, 1949). Until the end of his days, the writer retained clarity of mind. Shaw died at Ayot St. Lawrence on November 2, 1950.
George Bernard Shaw. Born July 26, 1856 in Dublin (Ireland) - died November 2, 1950 in Hertfordshire (England). Irish-born English playwright and novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most famous Irish literary figures. Public figure(Socialist-Fabian, supporter of the reform of English writing). One of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The second (after Shakespeare) most popular playwright in the English theater.
The only person to be awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature (1925, "For creativity, marked by idealism and humanism, for sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty"), and the Oscar Award (1938, for the screenplay of the film "Pygmalion" ). Active promoter of vegetarianism.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on 26 July 1856 to George Shaw, a grain merchant, and Lucinda Shaw, a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances, a theater singer, and Eleanor Agnes, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 21.
Shaw attended Wesley College Dublin and Grammar School. He received his secondary education in Dublin. At the age of eleven, he was sent to a Protestant school, where he was, in his own words, the penultimate or last student. He called school the most harmful stage of his education: "It never occurred to me to prepare lessons or tell the truth to this universal enemy and executioner - the teacher."
But the education system was repeatedly criticized by Shaw for focusing on the mental rather than spiritual development. The author especially criticized the system of physical punishment at school. At fifteen, he became a clerk. The family did not have the means to send him to university, but his uncle's connections helped him get a job at Townsend's fairly well-known real estate agency.
One of Shaw's duties was to collect rent from the inhabitants of the Dublin slums, and the sad impressions of these years were subsequently embodied in Widower's Houses.
He was, in all likelihood, a fairly capable clerk, although the monotony of this work bored him. He learned to keep books of account neatly, as well as to write in a quite legible handwriting. Everything written in Shaw's handwriting (even in advanced years) was easy and pleasant to read. This served Shaw well later on when he became a professional writer: grief typesetters did not know with his manuscripts.
When Shaw was 16, his mother ran away from home with her lover and daughters. Bernard decided to stay with his father in Dublin. He received an education and became an employee in a real estate office. He did this job for several years, although he did not like it.
In 1876 Shaw went to live with his mother in London. The family welcomed him very warmly. During this time he visited public libraries and museums. He began to work hard in libraries and created his first works, and later led a newspaper column dedicated to music. However, his early novels were not successful until 1885, when he became known as a creative critic.
In the first half of the 1890s he worked as a critic for the London World, where he was succeeded by Robert Hichens.
At the same time, he became interested in social democratic ideas and joined the Fabian Society, whose goal is to establish socialism through peaceful means. In this society he met his future wife, Charlotte Paine-Townshend, whom he married in 1898. Bernard Shaw had connections on the side.
The first play by Bernard Shaw was presented in 1892. At the end of the decade, he became already a well-known playwright. He wrote sixty-three plays, as well as novels, critical works, essays and more than 250,000 letters.
Shaw wrote five unsuccessful novels early in his career between 1879 and 1883. Later they were all published.
Shaw's first printed novel was "Profession of Cashel Byron"(1886), written in 1882. The protagonist of the novel is a wayward schoolboy who, together with his mother, emigrates to Australia, where he participates in battles for money. He returns to England for a boxing match. Here he falls in love with a smart and rich woman, Lydia Carew. This woman, attracted by animal magnetism, agrees to marry despite their differences. social status. Then it turns out that main character of noble birth and heir to a great fortune. Thus, he becomes a deputy in Parliament and married couple becomes an ordinary bourgeois family.
Novel "Not a Social Socialist" published in 1887. It starts with a girls' school, but then focuses on a poor worker who actually hides his fortunes from his wife. He is also an active fighter for the promotion of socialism. From this point on, the entire novel focuses on socialist themes.
Novel "Love Among the Artists" written in 1881, published in 1900 in the United States and in 1914 in England. In this novel, Shaw shows his views on art, romantic love and marriage using the example of Victorian society.
"The Irrational Knot" is a novel written in 1880 and published in 1905. In this novel, the author denounces hereditary status and insists on the nobility of workers. The institution of marriage is called into question by the example of a noble woman and a worker who made a fortune on the invention of the electric motor. Their marriage falls apart due to the inability of family members to find common interests.
Shaw's first novel Immaturity, written in 1879, was the last published novel. It describes the life and career of Robert Smith, an energetic young Londoner. The condemnation of alcoholism is the first message in the book, based on the author's family memories.
The show breaks completely with the prim, puritanical morality still characteristic of a large part of the well-to-do circles of English society. He calls things by their real names, considers it possible to depict any worldly phenomenon, and to a certain extent is a follower of naturalism.
Shaw started working on the first play "Widower's House" in 1885. After some time, the author refused to continue working on it and completed it only in 1892. The play was presented at the London Royal Theater December 9, 1892.
In the play Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), a young girl learns that her mother earns income from brothels, and therefore leaves the house to earn money herself by honest labor.
The plays of Bernard Shaw, like plays, include poignant humor exclusive to playwrights. Victorian era. The show began to reform the theatre, introducing new themes and inviting the audience to ponder the moral, political and economic problems. In this he is close to the dramaturgy of Ibsen with his realistic drama, which he used to solve social problems.
As Shaw's experience and popularity increased, his plays became less focused on the reforms he championed, but their entertainment role did not diminish. Works such as "Caesar and Cleopatra"(1898), "Man and Superman" (1903), "Major Barbara" (1905) and "Doctor in Dilemma" (1906) show the mature views of the author, who was already 50 years old.
Until the 1910s, Shaw was a fully formed playwright. Newer works such as Fanny's First Play (1911) and "Pygmalion"(1912), were well known to the London public.
In the most popular play "Pygmalion", based on the plot ancient Greek myth, in which the sculptor asks the gods to bring the statue to life, Pygmalion appears as Professor Higgins of Phonetics. His Galatea is street florist Eliza Doolittle. The professor tries to correct the language of a girl who speaks Cockney. Thus, the girl becomes like a noble woman. By this Shaw is trying to say that people differ only in appearance.
Shaw's views changed after World War I, which he disapproved of. His first post-war work was Heartbreak House (1919). In this play appeared new show- the humor remained the same, but his faith in humanism was shaken.
Shaw had previously supported a gradual transition to socialism, but now he saw a government led by a strong man. For him, dictatorship was obvious. At the end of his life, his hopes also died. So, in the play "Buoyant Billions" (Buoyant Billions, 1946-48), his last play, he says that one should not rely on the masses, who act like a blind crowd and can choose people like Hitler for their rulers.
Shaw completed the pentalogy in 1921. "Back to Methuselah", which includes five plays, and which begins in the Garden of Eden and ends a thousand years in the future. These plays affirm that life is perfected through trial and error. Shaw himself considered these plays a masterpiece, but critics were of a different opinion.
A play was written after Methuselah "Saint Joan"(1923), which is considered one of his best works. The idea of writing a work about Joan of Arc and her canonization appeared in 1920. The play received world fame and brought the author closer to the Nobel Prize (1921).
Shaw also has plays in psychological genre, sometimes adjoining even with the area of melodrama ("Candida", etc.).
The author created plays until the end of his life, but only some of them became as successful as his early works. The Apple Cart (1929) became the most famous play in this period. Later works, such as Bitter but True, Stranded (1933), Millionairess (1935) and Geneva (1935), did not receive wide public recognition.
From 21 to 31 July 1931 Bernard Shaw visited the USSR, where on July 29 he had a personal meeting with. In addition to the capital, Shaw visited the outback - the commune. Lenin (Irskaya commune) of the Tambov region, which was considered exemplary. Returning from the Soviet Union, Shaw said: “I am leaving the state of hope and returning to our Western countries- countries of despair ... For me, an old man, it is a deep consolation, going down to the grave, to know that world civilization will be saved... Here, in Russia, I am convinced that the new communist system is capable of leading humanity out of modern crisis and save him from complete anarchy and death".
In an interview given in Berlin on his way home, Shaw praised Stalin as a politician: “Stalin is a very pleasant person and really the leader of the working class ... Stalin is a giant, and all Western figures are pygmies”.
And already in London on September 6, 1931, in his report on the trip, the playwright said: “There is no parliament in Russia or any other nonsense like that. The Russians are not as stupid as we are; it would even be difficult for them to imagine that there could be fools like us. Of course, and statesmen Soviet Russia have not only a huge moral superiority over ours, but also a significant mental superiority ".
Being a socialist in his political views, Bernard Shaw also became a supporter of Stalinism and the "other USSR". So, in the preface to his play "On the rocks"(1933) he provides a theoretical basis for the repressions of the OGPU against the enemies of the people. IN open letter to the editors of the Manchester Guardian newspaper Bernard Shaw calls the information about the famine in the USSR (1932-1933) that appeared in the press a fake.
In a letter to the Labor Monthly, Bernard Shaw also openly sided with Stalin and Lysenko in the campaign against genetic scientists.
IN last years playwright lived in own house and died at the age of 94 from kidney failure. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered along with those of his wife.
Plays by Bernard Shaw:
