Plays PleasantIntroduction
Chronology
Preface
Arms and the Man: An Anti-romantic Comedy
Candida: A Mystery
The Man of Destiny: A Fictitious Paragraph of History
You Never Can Tell: A Comedy
Composition and Cast Lists
Principal Works of Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Although essentially shy, he created the persona of G. B. S., the showman, satirist, controversialist, critic, pundit, wit, intellectual buffoon and dramatist. Commentators brought a new adjective into English- Shavian, a term used to embody all his brilliant qualities. After his arrival in London in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day- on Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre reviews, which were collected into several volumes such as Music in London 1890 - 1894 (3 vols, 1931); Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols, 1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, including The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and Cashel Byron's Profession, both published in Penguin's Bernard Shaw Library. He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays fall into several categories- 'Plays Pleasant'; 'Plays Unpleasant'; c
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“[Shaw] did his best in redressing the fateful unbalance between
truth and reality, in lifting mankind to a higher rung of social
maturity. He often pointed a scornful finger at human frailty, but
his jests were never at the expense of humanity.” —Thomas
Mann
“Shaw will not allow complacency; he hates second-hand opinions; he
attacks fashion; he continually challenges and unsettles,
questioning and provoking us even when he is making us laugh. And
he is still at it. No cliché or truism of contemporary life is safe
from him.” —Michael Holroyd
“In his works Shaw left us his mind. . . . Today we have no Shavian
wizard to awaken us with clarity and paradox, and the loss to our
national intelligence is immense.” —The Sunday Times
“He was a Tolstoy with jokes, a modern Dr. Johnson, a universal
genius who on his own modest reckoning put even Shakespeare in the
shade.” —The Independent
“His plays were superb exercises in high-level argument on every
issue under the sun, from feminism and God, to war and eternity,
but they were also hits—and still are.” —The Daily Mail
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