George Bernard Shaw And Pygmalion Essay Research

George Bernard Shaw And Pygmalion Essay, Research Paper

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland on July 26, 1856. He lived with his lower middle class parents as the first son of three children. His father owned a failing corn milling business and had a serious drinking problem. Shaw realized the effect of his father.s poor money management and alcohol addiction at an early age. (Mazer 1) Although the family claimed gentility their precarious money situations and Shaw.s poor education caused an ever growing tension in his family. (Ganz 6-9)

His schooling consisted of lower class boarding schools mostly of the Catholic denomination. At fifteen his education ended and he was taken on as a junior clerk at a well-known real estate company. Within a year he had been promoted to head cashier and received a good salary. (Ganz 11-12)

Shaw admired his industrious mother who became a professional singer as a pupil of her live-in music teacher Vandeleur Lee. This allowed Shaw to acquire a proficient understanding of music and eventually to teach himself the piano. During this time Shaw.s mother left the problematic marriage to pursue her career in London. His sister, Lucy, went with her and later became a successful singer as well. He was left behind in Dublin to continue his work at the agency until 1876, at age twenty, when he resigned and joined his mother in London. (Mazer 1)

Shaw lived with his mother until his marriage at age forty-three. While there he began his professional career as a novelist. His first novel was titled Immaturity and along with five others, was never published. He became avidly involved in progressive politics. Through writing pamphlets and speeches his writing style developed into the aggressive style that surfaced in all his of his later works. Together with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Shaw founded the Fabian Society, a socialist organization attempting to transform England into a socialist state. This group did not advocate revolution, but supported gradual legislation and persuasion of the common people to further their socialistic goals. Although Shaw rose steadily in the literary field he always remained diligent in his political activities. (Mazer 1)

Shaw also began work as an art, music, and later drama critic. His music knowledge came from his involvement as a child in his mother.s singing career due to the fact that he had never formally studied music. He wrote under the pseudonym Corno di Basseto which means French horn in Italian. He believed that the French horn was an undesirable instrument and was only played because of Mozart.s use of it in his famous piece Requim. Shaw was a very sarcastic, blunt critic that tactlessly assaulted music of many well-known composers of his day. Although he was hard to please, a compliment from him was greatly prized. He often encouraged composers to burn music he thought was bad. Finally, Shaw moved on to a career as a theater critic in 1895 and his fame throughout the general public grew. Soon his initials, GBS, in the Saturday Review became infamous.

Shaw wrote his first play, Widower.s Houses in 1891 for a fellow theater critic and a director of a new play society. Although he faithfully created many more plays in the next twelve years, most London Theaters rejected them. Most were only preformed in little known private theater societies.

Shaw resigned his job as theater critic in 1898 after a serious illness. He married an Irish woman named Charlotte Payne-Townsend and moved out of his mother.s house. Many people also speculate he had numerous outside affairs despite the fact that his own marriage was never consummated. Their marriage continued until 1943 when Charlotte died. (Mazer 2)

In 1904, Harley Granville Barker transformed an old theater company and reinvented it into a new society for progressive drama. Ten of Shaw.s plays were produced and directed through this new company. Most of Shaw.s plays for the next ten years came out of this particular company or one run by Barker.s friends. Pygamilion was the only one not to have been produced in this way. Along with the money he received through his marriage and the royalties of the plays, Shaw became very financially independent.

World War I broke out in 1914 and almost ruined Shaw.s literary career. On account of his strong socialist beliefs he believed the war was a result of the failure of capitalism. His opinions surfaced in an article he wrote in a series of newspapers entitled .Common Sense About the War.. Many of Shaw.s supporters saw this as a threat to patriotism and accused him of treason. During this time he wrote only one major play, Heartbreak House, that expressed his distress over politics and society.

Fortunately, this animosity toward Shaw did not last and his reputation was rebuilt after the war through his entertaining plays. His most interesting works at this time regarded .creative evolution. and consisted most notably of Back to Methuselah and Saint Joan. The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to him in 1925. He very graciously bestowed the prize money to further a project translating a Swedish playwright, August Strindberg.s work into English. Now several theater companies in the United States began performing his plays while many were revived in London.

Shaw died on November 2, 1950 at the age of 94. The cause was injuries he recei