spent a lot of time in libraries, filling gaps in education, and later took up journalism.
In 1879 he wrote his first novel, and then four more, but these were not popular. During this time, Shaw was more successful in criticism: the main theme of his essays was art, in particular, theatrical. Shaw saw
the main problem of modern drama is the lack of a properly presented
social conflict idea and wanted to change it.
Mature period
In 1885, Shaw wrote the play The Widower's House, based on the young George's experience as a clerk when he had to collect rent from slum dwellers. This play is considered Shaw's debut as a playwright. Over time, the plays became more and more popular: the audience liked the stories in which the author raised acute social problems.The main work that ensured the fame of Bernard Shaw was "Pygmalion", written in 1912. He later received an Oscar for the screenplay based on this play.
In 1925, Shaw received the Nobel Prize for Literature, but refused the money. The writer worked hard, led a simple life and died at the age of 94.
Plays by Bernard Shaw
Bernard Shaw is an Irish playwright, philosopher and prose writer, an outstanding critic of his time and the most famous - after Shakespeare - playwright, who wrote in English. Shaw, already in his youth, decided to make a living by literary work, and although the articles sent out returned to him with depressing regularity, he continued to besiege the editorial office.
In 1885, Shaw sketched his first play, The Widower's House, followed by The Profession of Mrs. Warren, and the third play Volokita (1893) Shaw combined into what he called Unpleasant Pieces. These were the years when Shaw was looking for a response to his hatred of capitalism everywhere. It is not surprising that "Unpleasant Pieces", written in such a mood and with such thoughts, are distinguished by merciless realism and will forever remain one of the heights of English drama.
Shaw's next cycle is Pleasant Pieces. It includes War and Man (1894), Candida (1895), The Chosen One of Fate (1895), and You Can't Tell (1895). The title "Pleasant Plays" is full of hidden irony, since in this cycle, too, we meet with a rather sharp criticism of bourgeois morality and bourgeois ideals.
In the plays of this cycle, for the first time, Shaw's anti-militarist tendency is clearly visible, the desire to expose the supposed heroics of wars of conquest.
The play "War and Man" Shaw owed his stage success and universal recognition. In this play, Shaw planned to oppose the "idealist" and "realist", to show the triumph of a business man over a romantic. The true hero of the dreams of the dreamy heroine (and at the same time the rich heiress) Raina Petkova turns out not to be the ardent officer Saranov with his noisy heroism, but the calm, mocking Bluntschli, a Swiss soldier in the Serbian service. Shaw begins his play with a successful, captivating scene, revealing for the first time his inherent sense of exposure - a Serbian officer, pursued by Bulgarian soldiers, hides in the room of a Bulgarian, Raina. The great advantage of the play is its brilliant technical skill, an abundance of comedic situations and unexpected turns of action. An important aspect of the play was its anti-war orientation.
Candida (1895) is a more complex and controversial play. The play exposed the hypocrisy of the internal order of the bourgeois English family. The realist woman, the bearer of the maternal principle, Candida, is opposed to the two men - idealists. Her maternal essence manifests itself in relation to the surrounding world, to all people. Her love for her husband, Pastor Morell, has long taken on a maternal flavor. And Candida has the same motherly attitude to the young poet Marchbanks. The venerable Morell's contempt for the bourgeois audience grows into her contempt for the impotence of Christianity. Shaw clearly has sympathy for a different kind of "idealist", the poet Marchbanks. He contrasts this youth, vagabond and dreamer with Pastor Morell. A rebellious, proud youth is opposed to philistine prosperity and common morality. It was not for nothing that Marchbanks was able to discern at first glance the falsity of the Morell family life. He hopes that Candida will leave her husband with him. This reflects Marchbanks' romantic naivete. Candida has long understood the true nature of her husband, but she is a wife and mother, and therefore deliberately preserves family illusions.
In 1897 he wrote the play "The Devil's Apprentice", in 1898 - "Caesar and Cleopatra", in 1899 - "The Conversion of Captain Brassbound". In 1900, all three plays were published as a separate collection entitled Pieces for the Puritans. In the preface, Shaw explains the meaning of the common title and attacks contemporary erotic drama. In Plays for the Puritans, Shaw brings to the attention of readers a drama whose characters are not sexually motivated. For example, political considerations dominate both Caesar and the very young Cleopatra over other motives and feelings. Thus, the disclosure of all the versatility of human feelings is one of the strengths of "A Play for the Puritans".
In 1903, Shaw created the comedy Man and Superman. He made a heroine a bourgeois young lady engaged in catching a groom, and showed her actions as a service to vitality, the instinct of procreation. So a "feminine woman" like Blanche or Cleopatra has now turned into a kind of instrument of progress
The play "Pygmalion" was written in 1912-1913. In this play, Shaw used the myth of Pygmalion and brought it to the setting of modern London. The paradoxist could not leave the myth untouched. If the revived Galatea was the embodiment of obedience and love, then Galatea Shaw raises a rebellion against its creator: if Pygmalion and Galatea of \u200b\u200bantiquity got married, then the heroes of Shaw should never marry. Shaw's immediate task here, as he tried in every possible way to emphasize in the preface, is to promote linguistics, and primarily phonetics. But this is only one side of an interesting, multifaceted play. At the same time, it is a play of great social, democratic sound - a play about the natural equality of people and their class inequality, about the talent of people from the people. It is also a psychological drama about love, which for a number of reasons almost turns into hate. And finally, this is a humanistic play, showing how carefully and carefully one must approach a living person, how terrible and inadmissible is a cold experiment on a person.
From 1913 to 1917, Shaw worked on a large and serious play, A House Where Hearts Break, Shaw's saddest play, reflecting all of his thoughts and disappointments during those difficult years. This is a bitter, tragic recognition of the crisis of the English bourgeois civilization, the sharpest mockery of the lies and inhumanity of capitalist relations. One of the most significant works of Shaw, this play does not lose its significance when compared with the best that was created by him in subsequent years, and marks the beginning of a new stage in the creative development of the playwright.
In the midst of a general crisis both in England and in all capitalist countries, in June 1931 Shaw finished a new political play, Bitter But True. This play is permeated in its subtext with the greatest bitterness and depicts a dead end in which the English intelligentsia has entered. The meaning of this "political grotesque", as the author called the play, is that all its characters open their eyes to the meaninglessness of their existence. These are "lost souls" even more so than the heroes of "Home where hearts are broken." All of them understand that their life is empty and that they are "sinking into the abyss", they all want to escape somewhere from the meaningless world in which they live. Although the play is in the spirit of farce, there is hopelessness in its finale. Having shown how bad the old and crazy world is, Shaw discovers another thing: how deceiving all the recipes for salvation and renewal of this world are.
In the atmosphere of the pre-war years, Shaw continued to raise sensitive topical issues. All the works of the 30s shine with the same wit and richness of satirical invention. But the contradictions in the author's mind are by no means removed: in many cases they are felt more acutely than in the early works, since the problems of the works of the late 30s are much more responsible and complex than the one that Shaw touched at the beginning of his career
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on July 26, 1856, to George Shaw, a grain merchant, and Lucinda Shaw, a professional singer. He had two sisters: Lucinda Frances, a theater singer, and Elinor 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 in his education: "It never occurred to me to prepare lessons or tell the truth to this universal enemy and executioner - the teacher." The education system has been criticized by Shaw more than once for focusing on 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 connection uncles helped him get a job at the rather famous Townsend real estate agency. One of Shaw's duties was collecting rent from Dublin slum dwellers, and the sad impressions of those years were subsequently embodied in The Widower's Houses. He was, in all likelihood, a fairly capable clerk, although the monotony of this work annoyed him. He learned to keep track of his books neatly and to write in quite legible handwriting. Everything in Shaw's handwriting (even in his advanced years) was easy and pleasant to read. This served Shaw well afterwards when he became a professional writer: typesetters did not know grief 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 was educated and employed as a clerk in a real estate office. He was engaged in this work for several years, although he did not like it.
In 1876, Shaw went to his mother in London. The family greeted him very warmly. During this time, he visited public libraries and museums. He began to study intensively 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 magazine, 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 Payne Townshend, whom he married in 1898. Bernard Shaw had connections on the side.
In recent years, the playwright lived in his own home and died at 94 from kidney failure. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered along with the ashes of his wife.
George Bernard Shaw is a great Irish playwright, a Nobel laureate in literature, author of many plays and several novels.
Childhood and youth
The future playwright was born in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, in 1856. Father John Shaw traded in grain, but soon went bankrupt and gradually became addicted to drinking. Lucinda Shaw's mother was a professional singer. In addition to Bernard, two more children grew up in the family, girls Lucinda Frances and Elinor Agnes.
As a child, the boy attended Wesley College Dublin, and from the age of eleven - a Protestant school, where special attention was paid not to the exact sciences, but to the spiritual development of children. At the same time, the shepherds did not disdain physical punishment and beat the children with rods, which, as it was believed then, was only good for them.
Young Bernard hated school and the entire education system, which he saw from school. Subsequently, he recalled that he was one of the worst, if not the last student in the class.
At the age of fifteen, Shaw got a job as a clerk in a real estate office. The parents did not have the money to pay for their son's college education, but family ties helped the young man to take a good position at that time. His duties, among other things, included collecting money for housing from the poor. Memories of this difficult time were reflected in one of the "unpleasant plays" called "The Widower's House".
When the young man was sixteen, his mother, taking both daughters, left her father and went to London. Bernard stayed with his father in Dublin, pursuing a career in real estate. Four more years later, in 1876, Shaw still went to his mother in London, where he took up self-education and got a job in one of the capital's newspapers.
Creation
During his first time in London, Bernard Shaw visited libraries and museums, filling in the gaps in his education. The playwright's mother earned her living by giving singing lessons, and her son plunged into social and political problems.
In 1884, Shaw joined the Fabian Society, named after the Roman general Fabius. Fabius defeated his enemies thanks to his slowness, caution and the ability to wait. The main idea of \u200b\u200bthe Fabians was that socialism was the only possible type of further development of Great Britain, but the country should have come to it gradually, without cataclysms and revolutions.
At the same time, at the British Museum, Bernard Shaw met the writer Archer, after communicating with whom the future playwright decided to try his hand at journalism. He first worked as a freelance correspondent, then worked for six years as a music critic for London World magazine, and then wrote a column on theater for three years at the Saturday View.
Simultaneously with journalism, Shaw began writing novels, which at that time no one undertook to publish. Bernard Shaw wrote five novels between 1879 and 1883, the first of which was not published until 1886. Subsequently, critics, having analyzed the first literary experiments of Bernard Shaw, came to the conclusion that they showed vivid features inherent in the further work of the playwright: brief descriptions of situations and dialogues saturated with paradoxes.
When he was a theater critic, Shaw became interested in the work of the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen. In 1891 he published the book "The Quintessence of Ibsenism", in which he identified the main characteristics of the plays of the Scandinavian playwright. During Shaw's youth, plays, as well as minor melodramas and comedies, predominated on the stage. Ibsen, according to Shaw, became a real innovator in European drama, raising it to a new level by exposing acute conflicts and discussions between characters.
Inspired by the plays of Ibsen, in 1885, Bernard Shaw wrote the first of his "unpleasant plays" called "The Widower's House." It is believed that Shaw's biography as a writer-playwright began with this work. Here, a new era of European drama was born, acute, topical, built on conflicts and dialogues, and not on the active actions of heroes.
This was followed by the plays "Volokita" and "Mrs. Warren's Profession", which literally blew up prim Victorian England with their undisguised topicality, caustic satire and truthfulness. The main character of "Mrs. Warren's Professions" is a prostitute who makes a living with the most ancient craft and is not going to give up this way of earning income.
The opposite of this corrupt woman in the play is her daughter. The girl, having learned about the source of her mother's income, leaves home to honestly earn her bread. This work of Shaw clearly manifested the reformatory nature of creativity, raising new topics for English literature and theater, acute and topical, political and social. Bernard Shaw supplements the genre of realistic drama with subtle humor and satire, thanks to which his plays acquire extraordinary appeal and power of presentation.
Having created an unprecedented precedent for those times with his "unpleasant plays", Shaw released a series of "pleasant plays": "Arms and Man", "Chosen One of Fate", "Wait and See", "Candida".
"Pygmalion" is one of Bernard Shaw's plays, a capacious, multifaceted and complex piece, to which many books and scientific monographs are devoted. The story centers on the fate of a poor flower saleswoman Eliza Doolittle and a wealthy, noble socialite gentleman Higgins. The latter wants to mold a lady of high society from a flower girl, just as the mythical Pygmalion created his Galatea from a piece of marble.
Eliza's amazing transformation helps to reveal the spiritual qualities, innate kindness, nobility of a simple flower girl. A comic dispute between two gentlemen threatens to turn into a tragedy for a girl whose inner beauty they did not see
The next landmark work of the playwright was the play "The House Where Hearts Break", written after the First World War. Shaw unequivocally accused the English intelligentsia and the cream of society for having plunged the country and all of Europe into an abyss of devastation and horror. This work clearly shows the influence of Ibsen on Shaw's work. The satirical drama takes on the features of grotesque, allegory and symbolism.
The war further strengthened Bernard Shaw's commitment to the ideas of socialism. Until the end of his days, he continued to believe that socialist Russia is an example for the entire civilized world, and the socio-political system of the USSR is the only true and correct one. Towards the end of his life, Shaw became an ideological adherent of the Stalinist regime and even visited the USSR in 1931.
For a short time, the playwright was inclined to think that only a dictator could bring order to society and the country, but after coming to power in Germany he abandoned such an idea.
In 1923, the best, in the opinion of critics and fans of Bernard Shaw's work, "Saint John", dedicated to the life, exploits and martyrdom of Joan of Arc, saw the light of day. Subsequent plays "Bitter but True", "Stranded", "Millionaire", "Geneva" and others did not receive public recognition during the author's lifetime.
After the death of Bernard Shaw, dramas were staged by theaters in different countries, they are on the stage today, and some works have found new life in cinema. So, in 1974 in the Soviet Union the film "Millionaire" based on the play of the same name was released, which was a resounding success. The roles were performed by V. Osenev and other actors.
Personal life
In 1898, Bernard Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend, whom the writer met in the Fabian Society. The girl was a wealthy heiress, but Bernard was not interested in her millions. In 1925, he even refused to receive the prize, and the money had to be received by the British Ambassador Arthur Duff. Subsequently, these funds were spent on creating a fund for translators.
With Charlotte, Bernard Shaw lived in perfect harmony for forty-five years, until her death. They had no children. Of course, marriage is not always perfect, and there have been fights between Shaw and his wife.
So, it was rumored that the writer was in love with the famous actress Stella Patrick Campbell, for whom he wrote "Piglmalion", inventing the lovely Eliza Doolittle.
Death
The playwright spent the second half of his life in Hertfordshire, where he and Charlotte had a cozy two-story house, immersed in greenery. The writer lived and worked there from 1906 to 1950, until his death.
At the end of his life, losses began to haunt the writer one after another. In 1940, Stella died, his secret lover, who reciprocated the playwright. In 1943, the faithful Charlotte passed away. The last months of his life, Bernard was bedridden. He bravely met death, remaining conscious until the end. Bernard Shaw passed away on November 2, 1950. According to the writer's will, his body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered along with the ashes of his beloved wife.
Quotes and aphorisms
- If you have an apple and I have an apple, and if we exchange these apples, then you and I have one apple each. And if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
- The greatest sin in relation to one's neighbor is not hatred, but indifference; this is truly the peak of inhumanity.
- An ideal husband is a man who thinks he has an ideal wife.
- The one who knows how, the one who does not know how, he teaches others.
Bibliography
- Immaturity (1879);
- The Irrational Knot (1880);
- Love Among the Artists (1881);
- Byron's Cough Profession (1882);
- "Not a social socialist" (1882).
Years of life: from 26.07.1856 to 02.11.1950
Outstanding Irish, English writer, prose writer, playwright, music and theater critic, public figure. The second most popular (after Shakespeare) English-speaking playwright. He made an invaluable contribution to English and world drama. Nobel Prize Laureate. He is also known for his wit and adherence to socialist views.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin. Shaw's father, a civil servant, decided to go into the grain trade. but burned out and addicted to alcohol. The writer's mother was a singer and amateur musician. The boy studied first at home, and then in Catholic and Protestant day schools, after which, at the age of sixteen, he got a job as a clerk in a real estate agency, where he worked for four years. In 1873, Shaw's parents divorced and his mother moved to London. Three years later, they were joined by Bernard, who decided to become a writer. However, all of his articles were returned by editors, and none of Shaw's five novels was published. At this time, the writer was completely dependent on the meager income of his mother, who gave music lessons. 
In 1882 Shaw turns to social issues and becomes a committed socialist. In 1884 the playwright joined the "Fabian Society", created to spread socialist ideas. Shaw became an extremely active member of the community, often giving lectures three times a week. At the same time, Shaw met the theater critic W. Archer, on whose recommendation Shaw became first a freelance correspondent and then the author of musical and theatrical reviews (from 1886) in such publications as the weekly "World", "Pall Mall newspapers "(" Pall Mall Gazette "), the newspaper" Star "(" Star "). Shaw's critical work earned him popularity and financial independence. In 1895, Shaw became a theater critic for the Saturday Review, London. Shaw became more and more interested in theater, wrote several works about G. Ibsen and R. Wagner, and in 1892 Shaw's first play "Widowers" Houses was produced. The play was not successful and was filmed after two performances Several subsequent plays by the playwright were also invaluable, the directors refused to stage them, and "Mrs Warren's Profession" was even banned by the censorship (the play deals with prostitution). Shaw publishes his works at his own expense. In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne Townsend, an Irish philanthropist and socialist who gave him considerable support. Fame came to the playwright in 1904, when his plays became the basis of the repertoire of the London Royal Court Theater, where they were staged by D. Vedrenn and Harley Grenville-Barker, who directed this theater. In three seasons (1904-07), almost all of the playwright's most significant plays were performed at the Royal Court Theater. Simultaneously with the recognition of Shaw, accusations of "insufficient seriousness" and buffoonery begin to sound, in particular, the playwright L.N. Tolstoy. Shaw himself writes plays more and more “serious”, imbued with philosophical ideas and therefore less and less popular with the public. During the First World War, Shaw's anti-war views (which he did not hesitate to express) were the reason for the dramatic rejection of the playwright by most of the press and colleagues. After his essay "War from the Point of View of Common Sense", in which the playwright criticizes both England and Germany, urges both countries to negotiate, ridiculing blind patriotism, Shaw was expelled from the Playwrights' Club. In the 20s of the XX century, Shaw's works again become popular. During this time, the most controversial and complex of Shaw's plays "Back to Methuselah" ("Back to Methuselah", 1922) was written, as well as the only tragedy in his repertoire: "Saint Joan" ("Saint Joan", 1924), about Jeanne D'Arc. In 1926, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925 was awarded to Shaw "for creativity marked by idealism and humanism, for sparkling satire, which is often combined with exceptional poetic beauty." Being a principled opponent of all kinds of prizes, Shaw refused the money part of the Nobel Prize, ordering to establish with this money an Anglo-Swedish literary fund for translators, especially Strindberg's translators. In 1928, Shaw published "A Guide for an Intelligent Woman on Socialism and Capitalism" ( "The Intelligent Woman" s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism ") - reasoning on political and economic topics. And in 1931 the playwright visited the USSR and met with Stalin. Show throughout his life remained a convinced socialist and strongly supported the USSR, considering it a prototype society of the future Shaw's wife died in 1943. After that, the playwright moved from London to his home in Hertfordshire, where he spent the rest of his life in seclusion.Shaw died on November 2, 1950 at the age of 94.
The correct pronunciation of the surname Shaw: "Sho", however, in the Russian-speaking tradition the pronunciation of "Shaw" has been fixed.
Of the 988 performances played at the Royal Court Theater in 1904-1907, 701 were based on Shaw's works.
In response to the phrase “The show is a clown”, V.I. Lenin said: "In a bourgeois state he may be a clown for the philistine, but in a revolution he would not be mistaken for a clown."
B. Shaw became the first writer to refuse the Nobel Prize.
B. Shaw is the only person to be awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Oscar.
With an excellent sense of humor and tenacious mind, Shaw became the author of many aphorisms.
Writer Awards
(1925)
Academy Award for Best Screenplay (1938)
Bibliography
Cycle "Unpleasant Plays"
Widower's Houses (1885-1892)
Heartbreaker (1893)
Mrs Warren's profession (1893-1894)
Cycle "Pleasant Plays"
Arms and Man (1894)
Candida (1894-1895)
The Chosen One of Fate (1895)
Let's wait and see (1895-1896)
Cycle "Three Pieces for the Puritans"
Devil's Disciple (1896-1897)
(1898)
Captain Brasbound's Message (1899)
The Magnificent Bashville, or Unrewarded Permanence "(1901)
Man and Superman (1901-1903)
John Bull's Other Island (1904)
How He Lied to Her Husband (1904)
Major Barbara (1906)
The Doctor Facing a Dilemma (1906)
Interlude in the theater (1907)
Getting married (1908)
Exposing Blanco Posnet (1909)
Cycle "Foolishness and Trinkets"
Passion, poison, petrification, or fatal gasogen (1905)
Newspaper clippings (1909)
Charming Foundling (1909)
A Little Bit of Reality (1909)
The number of performances of Shaw's plays is incalculable. The list of film adaptations of the playwright's works on the Kinopoisk website includes 62 films and television films.
The most famous film adaptations are:
Pygmalion (1938, Great Britain) dir. E. Esquith, L. Howard. B. Shaw became the author of the script and received an Oscar for it.
My Fair Lady (1964, USA) dir. J. Cukor. Screen adaptation of the play "Pygmalion". The film won 8 Oscars, including the main award for Best Film.
Domestic film adaptations:
How He Lied to Her Husband (1956) dir. T. Berezantseva
Pygmalion (1957) dir. S. Alekseev
Galatea (1977) dir. A. Belinsky. Film-ballet based on the play "Pygmalion".
Mournful insensibility (1986) dir. A. Sokurov. Fantasy film based on the play "Home where hearts break"