GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

George Bernard Shaw is a playwright considered representative of realistic drama, and marks the passage from the Victorian period to Modern literature. He was born in 1856 in Dublin, and he left school when he was 14; six years later he followed his mother who went to London to improve her prospects as a music teacher. Shaw appears as a personality split between Mozart and Wagner on the one hand and social and political personality on the other hand.

The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a study of Ibsen published in 1891, is an obvious proof of Shaw`s propensity for Ibsen`s kind of drama - social plays - which invites critics to study the similarities and differences of their works. Ibsen`s plays begin from the discrepancy between reality and the romantic drama. The realistic drama develops around the 'taboo subjects" which implies new directions: with Ibsen the emphasis is on "a new psychological contest of minds" and little physical action. He wanted his realism to be reproduced on the stage as he stated in a letter addressed to Lindb 212g66c erg in 1883.

With Shaw the playwrights can be divided into "idealists' and "realists" which is a rough, quite radical classification suggesting Shaw`s turning against idealism. Shaw was not interested in Ibsen`s symbolic and profound plays but in those attacking conventionality and hypocrisy.

A vivid spirit of his age, Shaw found the necessary resources to involve in a social movement in 1884 being one of the founders of the Fabian Society - an organisation promoting socialism. He never became a conventional socialist anyway. His personality was formed through the interference of different infuences like his training and interest in music, his study of music and dramatic criticism and his interest in social reform. Shawian plays answer his studies and interests through their critical implications.

His drama considered more instructive than didactic announces a surprising and complex literary century where comedy and tragedy combine in an oxymoron.

Shaw`s turning against idealists and from here also against ideals leads to iconoclasm. Styan notices that "the gospel according to Shaw required that we be ready to criticize our ideals which was a form of salutary self-criticism. From Shaw`s iconoclasm derives his theory about his characters: "I must worn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my figures".

His characters do not obey the already known rule of the conventional hero who is the villain but everything is changed and the conventional hero is the hero. The point is that this time the hero does not obey the conventional features, he / she is built up on paradoxes, good and bad features bound in a single person make the readers look inside themselves.

As a playwright he remains faithful to old stage traditions. The themes he deals with in his plays are: slum landlordism in Widowers` Houses - 1892; prostitution in Mrs. Warren`s Profession - 1902; masculine heroism in Arms and the Man : An Anti-Romantic Comedy - 1894; his new drama refers to Ireland, the Irish and their problem in John Bull`s Other Island - 1907; the reconstruction of society by manipulation in Major Barbara and Pygmalion - 1913. Shaw`s dramatic action feeds itself from traditions of musical theatre, and especially from Mozart and Wagnerian opera, for instance Man and Superman ( 1905 ) leading the reader to Don Giovanni by Mozart.

Shaw`s intention to shock the audience becomes reality with Mrs. Warren`s Profession published in 1893, a play whose impact on the spectators is accurately mirrored in the press of the time: it is called "illuminated cangrene" , "morally rotten" , a limit of indecency; "it defends immorality. It glorifies debauchery. It besmirches the sacredness of a clergyman`s calling." Shaw considered the reaction of the critics a triumph, but unfortunately it led to the ban of the play by the Lord Chamberlain who could censor stage performances at the time.

The performance of te play in New York in 1905 was immediately followed by the prohibition of the play while the company that produced it was arrested. However Shaw tried to demonstrate the morality of Mrs.Warren`s Profession in the preface to the play. He wanted to "draw attention to the truth that prostitution was caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together". The man who cannot see that starvation , overwork, dirt, and disease are as anti-social as prostitution - that they are the vices and crimes of a nation , and not merely its misfortunes - is a hopelessly Private Person (which means "idiot", from the Greek idiotes , a private person ).

The word "prostitution" does not appear in the play, it is never uttered although it can be felt behind every word, it is the backgroung of the play, the painful silence supporting and feeding the play. The play is also received as a "moral study of economies of prostitution", and from this point of view it is very well understood by women; however it is not so easy with men since it does not seem to treat their problem.

The main characters of the play are the women Vivie and her mother Mrs. Warren who seem to be united in their indifferences. They are like two pillars grown up from the same soil, facing each other, always a chain of brothels; her efforts and immoral activity are directed towards her daughter who enjoys an expensive education at Cambridge. Vivie was to become an idependent woman able to earn money as men do. Mrs Warren is not a villainous character, she wants to protect her daughter.

With Vivie, Shaw creates a new woman, the "unwomanly" woman who behaves like a man: she smokes, drinks whisky, and reads detective stories. Despite her freedom she is made to feel guilty of her mother`s profession .

Sanders comments that Mrs. Warren`s Profession "confronts two contemporary women`s issues: the future professional careers of educated, would be independent women, and the oldest profession, female prostitution". The internal tension leads to a breaking off between mother and daughter, the latter trying to built her future on work and "sounder principles".

Shaw couldn`t stop to this kind of plays and created a new group of plays called "plays pleasant" which bewildered his critics. With these plays he announces the modern theatre since he uses the "method of the clown and the absurdist". A play like Arms and the Man, a comedy using the burlesque and the masculine heroism to deal with its anti-war theme, was very well received by the audience and ran fifty nights which put the critics in confused position.

Shaw`s contemporary critics seize the meaning of his plays and praise his courage to face the authorities of the time and bring something new in literature. Among the features he preserves as a playwright, there is an "unpredictable" feature also sustained by the impact of his plays on his critics and audience. His status is still debatable since there are critics who wonder whether he was dealing in realism or some Shawian jokes about the two sides of the truth.