Shaw, George Bernard
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1856-1950) Irish-born playwright, critic and author, in the UK from 1876, where he remained ferociously active throughout a writing career lasting almost seventy-five years (see Longevity in Writers); though often referred to as GBS, he increasingly wrote as Bernard Shaw. Under whatever form of his name, he was central to the Fabian Society from its founding in 1884, editing Fabian Essays (anth 1889) and beginning contentious intellectual friendships with G K Chesterton and H G Wells soon after. His late summation of the Utopian socialism that underwrote his nonfiction and fiction alike was most massively presented as The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928; rev vt The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism 1937 2vols). The much later Everybody's Political What's What (1944) reflected the impact of World War Two on his thinking, at the heart of which remained a prescient contempt for all valuations of human selfhood based on the Homo economicus model (see Economics).
Some of Shaw's early plays are of some interest for their explorations into the fantastic. Arms and the Man (performed 1894; in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, coll 1898 2vols) is Ruritanian; Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (1903; performed minus the Don Juan in Hell sequence 21 May 1905; whole performed 1915) discusses, in the Hell adumbrated at the close of Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), the concept of the Superman (but does not present one on stage) and "Creative Evolution", which is seen to be both immanent and self-projected toward perfection, all shaped on the ground through Eugenics; John Bull's Other Island (performed 1904; as main title of coll 1907), though not specifically fantastic, offers a scathing vision of a free Ireland, which Shaw advocated despite forebodings; The Doctor's Dilemma (performed 1906; as main title of coll 1911) revolves around a genuine cure for tuberculosis through the Invention of a powerful phagocyte (see Medicine); Press Cuttings (performed 1909; 1909 chap), a play about women's rights set in the Near Future, is close to sf; the crash of an airplane through the glass conservatory, and the revolutionary impact of its pilot and the independent woman accompanying him on a foregathered microcosm of the social order, in Misalliance (performed 1910; as main title of coll 1914), seem to force-feed the future; and Androcles and the Lion (performed 1912; as title of coll 1916) contains fantasy elements though in all cases these elements are deployed with a cool Shavian sanity which repudiates any sense of escapism. The destruction of the old world order in Heartbreak House (written 1916-1917; as title of coll 1919; performed 1920) may have seemed backward-looking because of the play's delayed publication, but in reality the catastrophe of World War One only intensified the proleptic case it made for cultural heartbreak. The titular house has the appearance of a poop deck, pointing the Ship of Fools imagery that shapes the catastrophe it adumbrates. The play is a lament for the failure of the civilization of the West to prepare for the future, and very early manifests the Aftermath mood that dominated the 1920s; the Inventions of its aged protagonist are, after the fashion in the Scientific Romance from which this play takes some of its shape, death machines. That it was only first performed in 1920 and in America is a sign of the passionate ostracism aroused against Shaw in the denial culture dominant in the UK for half a decade beginning 1914 (from its opening salvos, the "final" War had deeply affected the noncombatant Shaw, who turned 60 in 1916); during these years, expressions of doubt about the course of civilization in the context of the Great War were met with loathing.
Shaw's first genuine sf play, an important example of the Scientific Romance, is Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921; rev 1921 UK; performed 1922: further rev several times; much rev 1945), a five-part depiction of mankind's Evolution – it was his culminating presentation of Creative Evolution – from the time of Genesis (see Adam and Eve) into the Far Future, during the course of which people have become long-lived (see Immortality) and, by the year 31,920 CE, are on the verge of suffering corporeal Transcendence into disembodied thought-entities; incidental sf devices include cellphone equivalents, a kind of Force Field and the revelation that by 3000 CE nothing whatever remains of London. The play's reputation has suffered not only from the variable quality of its successive sequences, but from an implied conflation of Eugenics and the reticently argued but unmistakably anti-Darwinian Lamarckian principles that underlie his vision of humanity's rapid progress upwards.
Though the play is otherwise nonfantastic, in the epilogue to Saint Joan (performed 1923; 1924) a spokesperson from 1920 manifests (by Timeslip) to announce Joan's canonization. From this point Shaw's plays increasingly utilized sf or fantasy modes to make a series of remarkably bleak though sometimes scattershot utterances about Homo sapiens and about the chances of the species ever doing well. The ideologically motivated charge that their dissolution of realist conventions demonstrated the senility of their author was only countered by the more balanced Bernard Shaw (1947) by Eric Bentley (1916-2020), which focused on their planetary gaze. The Apple Cart: A Political Extravaganza (performed 1929; 1930), set in the UK near the end of the century after a Channel Tunnel has been built, ironically posits monarchism as an answer to the power of great corporations. Several later plays more scathingly and far-rangingly explore similar material. Too True to Be Good: A Political Extravaganza (performed 1932), a dream fantasy about the Near Future, and On the Rocks: A Political Comedy (performed 1933), in which democracy fails in Near Future England and a Dystopian government takes over, were both assembled in Too True to be Good, Village Wooing & On the Rocks (coll 1934). The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: A Vision of Judgment (performed 1935), an Archipelago fantasy that climaxes with "the angels weeding the garden" of the islands so that the unworthy of the world disappear utterly, and The Millionairess (performed 1936), a Satire on Eugenics set on a Pacific Island, again in the Near Future, were both assembled in The Simpleton, The Six of Calais, and the Millionairess (coll 1936). Geneva: A Fancied Page of History (performed 1938; 1939) satirizes some very lightly disguised contemporary dictators and the British government as a peace conference plummets into farce: the drama ends with the End of the World. Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners (1948 Switzerland; first performed in English 1949) [see Checklist for editions] presents some terminal Utopian thoughts in the guise of fantasy, and the six skits presented Farfetched Fables arrive by stages at a distant future distinct from that envisioned at the end of Back to Methuselah, with Homo sapiens no longer tormented by the bewilderments of Sex, but also useless; these last expositions were assembled as Buoyant Billions, Farfetched Fables, and Shakes versus Shav. (coll 1950).
None of Shaw's nineteenth-century novels are of genre interest, but The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932 chap) is a fantasy Satire on evolving views of Religion whose protagonist, having been converted by the usual sexually repressed and otherwise unprepossessing missionary (see Imperialism; Sex), embarks on a quest to find a worthy god. The Old and New Testament versions arouse her disdain; she interviews Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), whom she spooks; eventually she meets and marries a self-mockingly garish version of Shaw himself in his red-haired youth, and they have children (see Race in SF) together. The book was banned in Ireland. Some of the items assembled in Short Stories: Scraps and Shavings (coll 1932) are sf, including "Aerial Football: The New Game" (November 1907 The Neolith). Both books were assembled with revisions as Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (omni 1934; vt The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales 1946). Shaw early developed a strategy for his dramatic works, where his plays as published are accompanied by extensive prefaces in which various theses, some of broad sf interest, are eloquently expounded; he developed no similar strategy for his fiction, which he seemed (correctly) to think of as peripheral. Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. [JC]
see also: Recursive SF; Theatre.
George Bernard Shaw
born Dublin, Ireland: 26 July 1856
died Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire: 2 November 1950
works (selected)
Many of Shaw's plays were issued for the use of actors long before their official release, and upon official release were generally revised; moreover, during the last half-century of his life – financial independence allowing him to subsidize this activity – Shaw was in the habit of making constant revisions, many of them unsignalled, to the extremely numerous reprints of his work. We have not attempted to trace these changes.
- The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (London: Constable and Company, 1932) [novella: chap: illus/hb/John Farleigh]
- Short Stories: Scraps and Shavings (Constable and Company, 1932) [coll: in The Works of Bernard Shaw, Collected Edition: hb/]
- Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (Constable and Company, 1934) [omni of the above two: rev of the above two: texts all rev: in Standard Edition of the Works of Bernard Shaw: hb/]
- The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1946) [omni: vt of the above: pb/nonpictorial]
- Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings (Constable and Company, 1934) [omni of the above two: rev of the above two: texts all rev: in Standard Edition of the Works of Bernard Shaw: hb/]
plays
- Arms and the Man [play: first performed 21 April 1894 Avenue Theatre, London]
- Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant (London: Grant Richards, 1898) [plays: coll: published in two volumes: the second volume, Plays: Pleasant, contains Arms and the Man: hb/]
- Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (London: Constable and Company, 1903) [play: performed minus the Don Juan in Hell sequence 21 May 1905: whole first performed 11 June 1915 Lyceum, Edinburgh, Scotland: hb/nonpictorial]
- Don Juan in Hell: from Man and Superman (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1952) [play: Act Four of Man and Superman above: hb/photos of actors]
- John Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara: Also How He Lied to her Husband (London: Constable and Company, 1907) [plays: coll: John Bull's Other Island first performed 1 November 1904 Royal Court Theatre, London: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Doctor's Dilemma, Getting Married, and The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (London: Constable and Company, 1911) [plays: coll: The Doctor's Dilemma first performed 20 November 1906 Royal Court Theatre, London: hb/nonpictorial]
- Press Cuttings: (A Topical Sketch Compiled from the Editorial and Correspondence Columns of the Daily Papers During the Woman's War in 1909) (London: Constable and Company, 1909) [play: chap: first performed 27 September 1909, Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, England: hb/]
- Misalliance, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and Fanny's First Play: With a Treatise on Parents and Children (London: Constable and Company, 1914) [plays: coll: Misalliance first performed 23 February 1910 Duke of York's Repertory Theatre, London: hb/nonpictorial]
- Androcles and the Lion; Overruled; Pygmalion (London: Constable and Company, 1916) [plays: coll: Androcles and the Lion first performed 25 November 1912 Kleines Theatre, Berlin: hb/nonpictorial]
- Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes [play: written by 1917: first performed 10 November 1920 Garrick Theatre, New York]
- Heartbreak House, Great Catherine, and Playlets of the War (London: Constable and Company, 1919) [plays: coll: contains the above plus several playlets: hb/nonpictorial]
- Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (New York: Brentano's, 1921) [play: two parts first performed 27 February 1922; second two parts 6 March 1922; final part 13 March 1922; all Garrick Theatre, New York: hb/photo of Shaw]
- Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch: Revised Edition with a Postscript (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1945) [play: rev throughout with new postcript: several editions between 1921 and 1945, not here listed, contain unrecorded revisions: in the publisher's The World's Classics series: hb/nonpictorial]
- Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (London: Oxford University Press, 1945) [play: much rev with new preface: several editions between 1921 and 1945 contain unrecorded revisions: not here listed: World's Classics: hb/nonpictorial]
- Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch: Revised Edition with a Postscript (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1945) [play: rev throughout with new postcript: several editions between 1921 and 1945, not here listed, contain unrecorded revisions: in the publisher's The World's Classics series: hb/nonpictorial]
- Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (London: Constable and Company, 1924) [play: first performed 28 December 1923, Garrick Theatre, London: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Apple Cart: A Political Extravaganza (London: Constable and Company, 1930) [play: first performed 14 June 1929 Teatr Polski, Warsaw, Poland: hb/nonpictorial]
- Too True to Be Good: A Political Extravaganza [play: first performed 29 February 1932 Boston, Massachusetts]
- On the Rocks: A Political Comedy [play: first performed 25 November 1933 Winter Garden Theatre, London]
- Three Plays: Too True to Be Good, Village Wooing & On the Rocks (London: Constable and Company, 1934) [plays: coll: assembling the above two plus a playlet: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: A Vision of Judgment [play: first performed 18 February 1935 Guild Theatre, New York]
- The Millionairess [play: first performed 4 January 1936 Akademie Theatre, Vienna]
- The Simpleton, The Six of Calais, and the Millionairess (London: Constable and Company, 1936) [plays: coll: assembling the above two plus a playlet: hb/nonpictorial]
- Geneva: A Fancied Page of History (London: Constable and Company, 1939) [play: first performed 25 July 1938 Warsaw, Poland: revised text first performed 1 August 1938, Festival Theatre, Malvern, Worcestershire: illus/hb/Feliks Topolski]
- The Buoyant Billions: An Intentionally Unfinished Comedy (Edinburgh, Scotland: R and R Clark for the author, 1947) [play: hb/]
- Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners (London: Constable and Company, 1949) [play: rev vt of the above: first performed 21 October 1948 Schauspielhaus, Zurich, Switzerland: illus/hb/Clare Winsten]
- Buoyant Billions, Farfetched Fables, and Shakes versus Shav. (London: Constable and Company, 1950) [plays: coll: contains Farfetched Fables: hb/nonpictorial]
- Buoyant Billions: A Comedy of No Manners (London: Constable and Company, 1949) [play: rev vt of the above: first performed 21 October 1948 Schauspielhaus, Zurich, Switzerland: illus/hb/Clare Winsten]
- The Collected Screenplays of Bernard Shaw (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1980) [screenplays: coll: edited by Bernard F Dukore: contains scripts for Arms and the Man and others: hb/]
nonfiction
series
Prefaces
- The Complete Prefaces, Volume One: 1889-1913 (London: Allen Lane, 1993) [nonfiction: coll: Prefaces: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Complete Prefaces, Volume Two: 1914-1929 (London: Allen Lane, 1995) [nonfiction: coll: Prefaces: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Complete Prefaces, Volume Three: 1930-1950 (London: Allen Lane, 1997) [nonfiction: coll: Prefaces: hb/nonpictorial]
individual titles (highly selected)
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (London: Constable and Company, 1928) [nonfiction: hb/Eric Kennington]
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism (London: Penguin Books/Pelican Books, 1937) [nonfiction: rev vt of the above: published in two volumes: pb/nonpictorial]
- Everybody's Political What's What (London: Constable and Company, 1944) [nonfiction: hb/]
about the author
Studies of Shaw are very numerous. A tiny sample is given here.
- G K Chesterton. George Bernard Shaw (London: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1910) [nonfiction: hb/]
- G K Chesterton. Do We Agree? (London: Cecil Palmer, 1928) with George Bernard Shaw and (chairing debate) Hilaire Belloc [nonfiction: chap: hb/]
- Frank Harris. Bernard Shaw: An Unauthorized Biography Based on First Hand Information with a Postscript by Mr Shaw (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Eric Bentley. Bernard Shaw (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1947) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Ishrat Lindblad. Creative Evolution and Shaw's Dramatic Art: With Special Reference to Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 1971) [nonfiction: pb/nonpictorial]
- J Percy Smith, editor. Bernard Shaw and H G Wells (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1995) [nonfiction: anth: in the publisher's Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw series: hb/Wesley W Bates]
- Milton T Wolf, editor. Shaw and Science Fiction (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) [nonfiction: anth: follows "scholarly" practice and ignores citing issues, failing to differentiate among Shaw's numerous revisions acknowledged or silent to Back to Methuselah (1920 onwards): hb/]
- Fintan O'Toole. Judging Shaw: The Radicalism of GBS (Dublin, Ireland: Royal Irish Academy, 2017) [nonfiction: hb/]
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