George Barnard Shaw: Literary Path

A pioneer writer, philosopher, and critique of the 20th century. The prominent figure of the twentieth century, George Barnard Shaw, is always renowned for his radical ideas. When Shakespeare is primarily an artist, whose object is to hold the mirror of nature, Shaw is basically a thinker with a message, whose object is to hold the mirror of truth to his generation. He who views everything through the light of reason and focuses it on the false ideals which men have worshipped so long is a stern realist. Shaw was endowed by nature with a rare gift of fearless intellect. His ideas are surprising and contemporary for modern age, but to many of his admirers and detractors, Shaw has been a mystery, an enigma. It is worth to quote Thomas Dickson about Shaw:'The most talked about man of his time, he has been most misunderstood or most variously understood.'

George Bernard Shaw was born on July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland. The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he later recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply. He found solace in the music that abounded in the house. Lee was a conductor and a teacher of singing. His mother eventually left his father, an unsuccessful merchant, to teach singing lessons in London. At the age of twenty, Shaw left Dublin for London, where he wrote five novels. From an early age, Shaw identified himself as a socialist and joined the Fabian Society, a non-revolutionary Marxist group advocating for reform that would result in socialism without bloodshed. He married Charlotte Payne-Townshend in 1898. He was an extremely prolific writer who completed over fifty plays before his death of natural causes at the age of ninty-four.

Shaw has written plays, socio-political writings, fictions, essays, reviews, and much more. Some of them are: Widowers' Houses, The Philanderer, Candida, You Never Can Tell, The Devil's Disciple, Caesar, and Cleopatra, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, John Bull's Other Island, Getting Married, Back to Methuselah, The Apple Cart, Too True to Be Good, On the Rocks, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, The Millionairess, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God and other.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

In a letter to the Daily Chronicle dated 28 April 1898, Shaw explained the conversations that led him to write Mrs. Warren's Profession. His friend, actress Janet Achurch, had pointed him to the short story Yvetteby Guy de Maupassant as a possible.

Arms and the Man: Set in the aftermath of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Arms and the Man challenges romantic ideas about war and love. Captain Bluntschli, a fleeing soldier climbs through a Bulgarian lady's bedroom window, triggering a series of events that.

Man and Superman

George Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman' is an example of drama as a cultural debate. Those looking for curtain-to-curtain action or nonstop jokes need not buy a ticket.

Major Barbara

Premiering in 1905 and published in 1907, Major Barbara is a three-part play written by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, and critic. The plot revolves around a young woman named Barbara who is in the Salvation Army, and her efforts to help.

The Doctor's Dilemma

George Bernard Shaw was moved to write his The Doctor’s Dilemma in order to explore fully the paradox of how a man can be a genius but still lack honor. It is this tragic circumstance of the individual that moved to Shaw to view the play as a comedy.

Saint Joan 

Saint Joan is a play written by Bernard Shaw, premiering in 1923. In the early 1920s, Shaw was experiencing a period of professional depletion. Between 1918 and 1920, he had written a cycle of five interconnected plays called 'Back to Methuselah'.

Pygmalion

Pygmalion has become by far Shaw's most famous play, mostly through its film adaptation in 1938. Shaw was intimately involved with the making of the film. He wrote the screenplay and was the first man to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy.

The use of historical events and great persons and their views is evidence of Shaw's excellence. He speaks on the views of Marx, St. Thomas More, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paige, Cobbet, and Lenin. He notes down historical events like Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and the New Deal to clarify his notions. His wit is free from any kind of empty idleness, and so one can say his brain has a 'consuming fire' which burns through all conventional images until they are as transparent as glass.'

Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and, although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success.

But he conveys his ideas in a humorous way. From the very beginning, he tries to take his audience into confidence in a friendly tone. His approach is very rudimentary. His examples are most of the time real, and his conclusions seem to be inevitable naked truth. But those hardcore realities are wrapped in soft humor. He has a rather sharp tone for social criticism. His lucid presentation of ideas leaves a pleasant but deep impression. It is flow of Shaw's speech with run-on sentences that adds charm to his oratory. In this respect, Chesterton comments that 'such a man is comparitively audacious in theory because he is comparatively clear in thought'. He is so logical and analytical in thought about his observation that very often remain unchallenged. The literary style of Shaw is singularly clear, vivid, forceful, and practical. He is a master of epigrams and paradoxes which stick with memory, by the piquancy of their contents as well as manner of expression. Provocation is his chief weapon. he keeps his sting camouflaged behind a sly, impudent wit. 'Find the right thing to say, and then say it with utmost levity' is his formula. His controversial opinion, with a pinch of humor, paints his works in colours. Thus, George Barnard Shaw is one of the most well-known and popular authors even today.