George Bernard Shaw biography

George Bernard Shaw was born in 1856 and died in 1950. He was born in Dublin. His father, who descended from an old Scottish noble family was a public servant and his mother was a teacher of music. Shaw attended a Methodist school in Dublin and at the age of 15 he found employment in the office of a land and state agent in Dublin. But when his mother with his sister moced to London, he decided to go to London too. He took up journalism there, and eventually became a drama critic. Having been influenced by Karl Marx and Henry george, the american land reformer, he joined them in denouncing the english system of landlordism and capitalism. He becam a member of the progressive Fabian Society, which propagated socialist principies by methods of education and decided to become a public speaker. Shaw believed that the best way to get hearing was to be a litle of Lunatic and a litle of a jester. He was preaching socialism in the streets of London and in Hyde Park. He soon came to the conclusion that the stage was a suitable platform for his criticism and, faithful to his belief that it was his destiny to educate London, he subordinated his talent to this purpose. The performance of his first play- Widowers´ Houses was attended by crowds of socialist admirers from Hyde Park, who applauded the piece the louder, the more the anti- socialists hooted it. Widowers´Houses is a satire attacking the slum landlords. In 1894, when the discussion conserning the Ibsen´s House and the new Woman was its geight. He wrote also Philanderer and Mrs. Warren´s Profession the heroin which was the propietress of several brothels. When this play was forbidden by the censur Shaw began to publish book- plays with lengthy commenteries in the form of prefaces. In the second stage of his development he mixed farce with satire. He travested Balkan history in Arms and the Ran in order to make military glory. In the Man of Destiny he wrote a mock heroic skit on Napoleon and in You never can tell he gave a farcical representation of New Woman. In Caesar and Cleopatra he laughed at the conception of ancient history found in Shakespeare and in Man and Superman he set out to controvert the ridiculous old romantic ideas about courtship. In 1912 Shaw wrote perhaps his most popular play Pygmalion, a satire on high society. Pygmalion is a word in greek mythology and Pygmalion was a King who fell in love with a statue he had sculpted and which his prayers had brought to life.

Shaw was very concerned with the state of the English language, particularly its spelling, punctuation and pronunciation. He campaigned for the simplification of the written language. He said english have no respect fpr their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They cannot spell it because they have nothing to spell it with. Professor Higgins, the famous phonetician, despises the morals of the social class to which he belongs., yet he also despites the lower classes, although he recognizes their natural inteligence. The main hereo´s name is Eliza a flowergirl selling flowers in covent garden of no education and of very low background, becomes his pupil and with Higgin´s help and the challenge of colonel Pickering´s bet she achieves such excellent pronunciation and behaviour that at a ball she is taken for a duchess. Higgins, who does not realize what problem lie ahead for Eliza in her new situation, does not bother about what will become of her. Eliza however is not willing to suffer being somebody´s plaything. Higgins knows he will does not decide the final solution between Higgins and Eliza, yet in his own epilogue to the play he says quite clearly that the two characters could no longer live together because both are too independent..
After the First World War Shaw published Hearthbrake House a farcical study of post- war Europe, which is one of his most pesimistic plays. In Back to Methuselah he developed the idea of the life force as a universal power. In the preface to this play he gives a warning, feeling that in another disaster mankind might perish. In 1924 he published Saint Joan, one of his most impressive plays. For his great literary work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925. By 1927 Shaw had written 31 plays. In 1928 he discused the problems and advantages of socialism in The Intelligent Woman´s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Shaw was a master of spoken word, he excelled in writting witty and interesting dialogues.