Great War Theatre

Bernard Shaw (he disliked his first name George) was born on 26 July 1856 in Dublin, the youngest of three children (he had two older sisters) of George Carr Shaw and his wife Bessie, formerly Gurly. His father drank to excess; Bessie left for London in 1873 and her son followed her three years later. In the 1880s and 1890s, after failing to establish himself as a novelist, he turned to journalism as a book, art, music and theatre critic for London newspapers. He married Charlotte Payne-Townshend in 1898 (she died in 1943). His first play, Widowers’ Houses, was staged in 1892 and he continued to write for the stage until a few months before his death. Among his best-known plays are Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Pygmalion (turned into the musical My Fair Lady by other hands after Shaw’s death), Heartbreak House and Saint Joan. His published plays are often noteworthy for lengthy prefaces in which he expounds on the political, economic, social and moral ideas behind them. He championed the plays of Ibsen and strongly opposed the censorship of stage plays by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Only Shaw and Bob Dylan have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar: Shaw won the former in 1925 and the latter in 1939 for the screenplay of the film Pygmalion. Shaw was a committed Socialist (including as a speaker and as an early, leading member of the Fabian Society), vegetarian, teetotaller, anti-vivisectionist and sceptic about vaccination and the medical profession generally. He opposed anti-semitism and other forms of discrimination. He wrote extensively on the First World War (blaming all sides) and Ireland. He helped to found the New Statesman magazine and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In the 1930s, despairing of democracy’s ability to effect social change, he came to sympathise with the idea of dictatorship. He advocated the establishment of a National Theatre, a form of simplified spelling for English words and the wearing of wool next to the skin. He was an enthusiastic photographer, cyclist (he renewed his membership of the Cyclist Touring Club in the year he died) and motorist. He was a life member of the Royal Astronomical Society and joined the British Interplanetary Society in his nineties. He was a prolific letter writer, both with friends and acquaintances and to the newspapers. One of his greatest creations was the persona ‘G.B.S.’, making himself into a controversialist on all subjects, delighting in wit, argument and paradox. Shaw died aged 94 on 2 November 1950 at his house, named ‘Shaw’s Corner', in the Hertfordshire village of Ayot St. Lawrence; his death was precipitated by a fall in his garden, and his and Charlotte’s ashes were scattered there. In his will Shaw left Shaw’s Corner to the National Trust and named as his residuary legatees the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the National Gallery of Ireland, all of which continued to benefit greatly from the royalties on his works until their copyright expired in 2020.

Gender: Male

Date of Birth: 26 Jul 1856

Served in the armed forces? No

Scripts associated with George Bernard Shaw