The new men of destiny were no longer to be actors, but sorcerers and directors of crowd scenes. Millions died between Fanny’s First Play (1914) and Great Catherine (1919). The rise of Hitler and Stalin posed challenges to wit, which wit could not answer. Nevertheless, unwittingly and modestly Shaw’s fortunes prospered under the Reich, at least to the extent that his Geneva (1938) with its lampoon of Hitler was kept on the German stage at Goebbels’ express desire. Only one play was banned, a pleasant one: Arms and the Man went too far even for an indulgent dictator.

Shaw died in November 1950, having fallen out of a hedge at the age of ninety-four. The post-war fate of well-made plays was not proving to be happy. It was his fellow-Dubliner, Samuel Beckett, who found the alternative with, first, Waiting for Godot (in French 1952), and more devastatingly, Endgame (1957). The latter succeeded in conveying the impact of comprehensive terror – including the threat of a nuclear holocaust – on western civilization. Shaw’s example, however, was not entirely ignored. In America, Arthur Miller’s courageous exploration of private and public bad faith from All My Sons (1947) to The Crucible (1953) would have been impossible without the precedents of Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant. Thus, for a new millennium of comprehensive bad faith in international affairs, Shaw may have lessons to teach, however obliquely. As the old Victorian-Edwardian trouble-spots erupt again and again – Afghanistan, the Balkans, and ‘Mesopotamia’ – we look back in anguish. Shavian laughter demands we keep our wits about us. No less so than Wilde’s, his pleasant drama had been an art of provocation.

W. J. Mc Cormack
Tyrone Guthrie Centre
County Monaghan
December 2002

CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BERNARD SHAW

LIFE

1856 Born in Dublin on 26 July

1871 After only short periods of schooling, started work as an office boy in a Dublin firm of land agents

1873 Mother and sisters moved to London

1876 Joined mother in London; she taught singing and his sister Lucy sang professionally in musical plays

1879 While working for the Edison Telephone Company began to meet the earliest British socialists, including, in 1880, Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter (later Mrs Webb) who became lifelong friends

1879–81 Wrote five novels, four published serially in magazines

1884 Joined the Fabian Society, which advocated gradual progress towards socialism, and began giving lectures both to the Fabians and on their behalf. At about the same time, met the hugely influential theatre critic William Archer who helped Shaw to find work as a critic. First meeting with William Morris whose disciple he became

1885 Appointed as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette and music critic for the new Dramatic Review

1886–9 Art critic for The World

1888–90 Music critic for The Star (under the pseudonym ‘Corno di Bassetto’)

1889 Attended English première of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

1890–94 Music critic for The World (writing as GBS)

1891 Published The Quintessence of Ibsenism

1892 Widowers’ Houses (his first published play) given a private performance by the Independent Theatre in London

1894 Arms and the Man produced at the Avenue Theatre in London; then by actor–manager Richard Mansfield in New York

1895–8 Drama critic for The Saturday Review

1897 Encouraged by the success of The Devil’s Disciple in New York, gave up most of his work as a critic

1897–1903 Elected borough councillor for the London borough of St Pancras

1898 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant published. Married Charlotte Payne-Townshend. Began concentrating on his writing as playwright and essayist

1899 The newly founded Stage Society produced You Never Can Tell, followed by Candida and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion in 1900

1904–7 Granville Barker and Vedrenne take over the (Royal) Court Theatre in a challenge to the commercial West End theatre system. Eleven Shaw plays produced at the Court including the newly written Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara and The Doctor’s Dilemma

1905 Bought a country home at Ayot St Lawrence, approximately 25 miles north of London (retaining an apartment in Adelphi Terrace, off the Strand)

1910 Misalliance produced at the Duke of York’s Theatre

1913 Androcles and the Lion at St James’s Theatre. World première of Pygmalion in Vienna (in German), followed by a production in Berlin

1914 Pygmalion produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree, at His Majesty’s Theatre. Common Sense about the War published

1920 Heartbreak House produced at the Royal Court. Completed Back to Methuselah, a five-part cycle of plays, transforming the biblical version of creation and human destiny into post-Darwinian science fiction

1924 Saint Joan produced at the New Theatre

1925 Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. First English public performance of Mrs Wanen’s Profession (banned by the censor since 1898)

1928 Published The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

1929 The Apple Cart, produced at the first Malvern Festival, organized by Barry Jackson’s Birmingham Repertory Theatre with Shaw as its figurehead

1931 Visited Moscow, and met Stanislavski, Gorki and Stalin

1932 Too True to be Good produced at Malvern. Published fable of The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God following a visit to South Africa

1933 Travelled to India, Hong Kong, China, Japan and the USA

1936 Celebrated 80th birthday. Gave up driving

1938 Awarded Oscar for the best screenplay for Gabriel Pascal’s film of Pygmalion. Geneva (featuring caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini called before the International Court of Justice at the Hague) transferred from Malvern to Saville Theatre, and then to St James’s Theatre

1939 Ceremonially presented with the deeds of a site (in South Kensington) for the National Theatre of Great Britain

1943 Death of Charlotte Shaw

1944 Published Everybody’s Political What’s What?, an instant bestseller

1946 On his 90th birthday, honoured with the freedom of both Dublin and the borough of St Pancras

1950 Died on 2 November

1955 Alan J. Lerner based the book and lyrics of the musical My Fair Lady closely on Pygmalion

TIMES

1856 End of the Crimean War. Sigmund Freud born

1859 Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Spcecies published.