Table of Contents
FROM THE PAGES OF PYGMALION ANDTHREE OTHER PLAYS
Title Page
Copyright Page
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
THE WORLD OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND HIS PLAYS
Introduction
MAJOR BARBARA
PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA - FIRST AID TO CRITICS
THE GOSPEL OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT
THE SALVATION ARMY
BARBARA’S RETURN TO THE COLORS
WEAKNESSES OF THE SALVATION ARMY
CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHISM
SANE CONCLUSIONS
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA
PREFACE ON DOCTORS
DOUBTFUL CHARACTER BORNE BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION
DOCTOR’S CONSCIENCES
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE
RECOIL OF THE DOGMA OF MEDICAL INFALLIBILITY ON THE DOCTOR
WHY DOCTORS DO NOT DIFFER
THE CRAZE FOR OPERATIONS
CREDULITY AND CHLOROFORM
MEDICAL POVERTY
THE SUCCESSFUL DOCTOR
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-RESPECT IN SURGEONS
ARE DOCTORS MEN OF SCIENCE?
BACTERIOLOGY AS A SUPERSTITION
ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES OF IMMUNIZATION
THE PERILS OF INOCULATION
TRADE UNIONISM AND SCIENCE
DOCTORS AND VIVISECTION
THE PRIMITIVE SAVAGE MOTIVE
THE HIGHER MOTIVE. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
THE FLAW IN THE ARGUMENT
LIMITATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE
A FALSE ALTERNATIVE
CRUELTY FOR ITS OWN SAKE
OUR OWN CRUELTIES
THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CRUELTY
SUGGESTED LABORATORY TESTS OF THE VIVISECTOR’ S EMOTIONS
ROUTINE
THE OLD LINE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST
VIVISECTING THE HUMAN SUBJECT
“THE LIE IS A EUROPEAN POWER”
AN ARGUMENT WHICH WOULD DEFEND ANY CRIME
THOU ART THE MAN
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS AND WILL NOT GET
THE VACCINATION CRAZE
STATISTICAL ILLUSIONS
THE SURPRISES OF ATTENTION AND NEGLECT
STEALING CREDIT FROM CIVILIZATION
BIOMETRIKA
PATIENT-MADE THERAPEUTICS
THE REFORMS ALSO COME FROM THE LAITY
FASHIONS AND EPIDEMICS
THE DOCTOR’S VIRTUES
THE DOCTOR’S HARDSHIPS
THE PUBLIC DOCTOR
MEDICAL ORGANIZATION
THE SOCIAL SOLUTION OF THE MEDICAL PROBLEM
THE FUTURE OF PRIVATE PRACTICE
THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM
THE LATEST THEORIES
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
ACT V
PYGMALION
PREFACE TO PYGMALION - A PROFESSOR OF PHONETICS
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
ACT V
HEARTBREAK HOUSE
HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL
WHERE HEARTBREAK HOUSE STANDS
THE INHABITANTS
HORSEBACK HALL
REVOLUTION ON THE SHELF
THE CHERRY ORCHARD
NATURE’S LONG CREDITS
THE WICKED HALF CENTURY
HYPOCHONDRIA
THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO LIVE MUST MAKE A MERIT OF DYING
WAR DELIRIUM
MADNESS IN COURT
THE LONG ARM OF WAR
THE RABID WATCHDOGS OF LIBERTY
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SANE
EVIL IN THE THRONE OF GOOD
STRAINING AT THE GNAT AND SWALLOWING THE CAMEL
LITTLE MINDS AND BIG BATTLES
THE DUMB CAPABLES AND THE NOISY INCAPABLES
THE PRACTICAL BUSINESS MEN
HOW THE FOOLS SHOUTED THE WISE MEN DOWN
THE MAD ELECTION
THE YAHOO AND THE ANGRY APE
PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES!
HOW THE THEATRE FARED
THE SOLDIER AT THE THEATRE FRONT
COMMERCE IN THE THEATRE
UNSER SHAKESPEARE
THE HIGHER DRAMA PUT OUT OF ACTION
CHURCH AND THEATRE
THE NEXT PHASE
THE EPHEMERAL THRONES AND THE ETERNAL THEATRE
HOW WAR MUZZLES THE DRAMATIC POET
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ENDNOTES
INSPIRED BY PYGMALION AND THREE OTHER PLAYS
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF
PYGMALION AND
THREE OTHER PLAYS
I am, and have always been, and shall now always be, a revolutionary writer, because our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or malexperienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and weaklings, and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.
(from Shaw’s preface to Major Barbara, pages 43—44)
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” (from Major Barbara, page 127)
“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.” (from Major Barbara, page 132)
If you cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have.
(from Shaw’s preface to The Doctor’s Dilemma, page 166)
“I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything.” (from Pygmalion, page 394)
“The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”
(from Pygmalion, pages 451 -452)
“The surest way to ruin a man who doesn’t know how to handle money is to give him some.” (from Heartbreak House, page 568)
“His heart is breaking: that is all. It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.” (from Heartbreak House, page 596)
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Major Barbara was first published in 1907, Doctor’s Dilemma in 1909,
Pygmalion in 1916, and Heartbreak House in 1919.
Published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright @ 2004 by John Bertolini.
Note on George Bernard Shaw, The World of George Bernard Shaw and His Plays,
Inspired by Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, and Comments & Questions
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Pygmalion and Three Other Plays
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GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Dramatist, critic, and social reformer George Bernard Shaw was born on July 26, 1856, into a poor yet genteel Dublin household. His diffident and impractical father was an alcoholic disdained by his mother, a professional singer who ingrained in her only son a love of music, art, and literature. Just shy of his seventeenth birthday, Shaw joined his mother and two sisters in London, where they had settled three years earlier.
There he struggled—and failed—to support himself by writing. He first wrote a string of novels, beginning with the semi autobiographical Immaturity, completed in 1879. Though some of his novels were serialized, none met with great success, and Shaw decided to abandon the form in favor of drama. While he struggled artistically, he flourished politically; for some years his greater fame was as a political activist and pamphleteer. A stammering, shy young man, Shaw nevertheless joined in the radical politics of his day. In the late 1880s he became a leading member of the fledgling Fabian Society, a group dedicated to progressive politics, and authored numerous pamphlets on a range of social and political issues. He often mounted a soapbox in Hyde Park and there developed the enthralling oratory style that pervades his dramatic writing.
In the 1890s, deeply influenced by the dramatic writings of Henrik Ibsen, Shaw spurned the conventions of the stage in “unpleasant” plays, such as Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and in “pleasant” ones like Arms and the Man and Candida. His drama shifted attention from romantic travails to the great web of society, with its hypocrisies and other ills. The burden of writing seriously strained Shaw’s health; he suffered from chronic migraine headaches. Shaw married fellow Fabian and Irish heiress Charlotte Payne-Townshend.
By the turn of the century, Shaw had matured as a dramatist with the historical drama Caesar and Cleopatra, and his master-pieces Man and Superman and Major Barbara. In all, he wrote more than fifty plays, including his antiwar Heartbreak House and the polemical Saint Joan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Equally prolific in his writings about music and theater, Shaw was so popular that he signed his critical pieces with simply the initials GBS. (He disliked his first name, George, and never used it except for the initial.) He remained in the public eye throughout his final years, writing controversial plays until his death. George Bernard Shaw died at his country home on November 2, 1950.
THE WORLD OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND HIS PLAYS
1856 George Bernard Shaw is born on July 26, at 33 Upper Synge Street in Dublin, to George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.
1865 George John Vandeleur Lee, Mrs. Shaw’s singing instructor, moves into the Shaw household. Known as Vandeleur Lee, he has a reputation as an unscrupulous character.
1869 Embarrassed by controversy and gossip related to his mother’s relationship with Vandeleur Lee, young “Sonny,” as Shaw was called by his family, leaves school.
1871 He begins work in a Dublin land agent’s office.
1873 Shaw’s mother, now a professional singer, follows Van deleur Lee to London, where they establish a household that includes Shaw’s sisters, Elinor Agnes and Lucille Frances (Lucy). Shaw’s mother tries to earn a living per forming and teaching Vandeleur Lee’s singing method.
1876 Elinor Agnes dies on March 27. Shaw joins his mother, his sister Lucy, and Vandeleur Lee in London. Although he tries to support himself as a writer, for the next five years Shaw remains financially dependent on his mother.
1877 Shaw ghostwrites music reviews that appear under Van deleur Lee’s byline in his column for the Hornet, a London newspaper. This first professional writing “job” lasts until the editor discovers the subterfuge.
1879 Shaw completes and serializes his first novel, Immaturity. He works for the Edison Telephone Company and later
will record his experience in his second novel, The Irrational Knot. Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House premieres.
1880 Shaw completes The Irrational Knot.
1881 He becomes a vegetarian in the hope that the change in his diet will relieve his migraine headaches. He completes Love Among Artists. The Irrational Knot is serialized in Our Corner, a monthly periodical.
1882 Shaw hears Henry George’s lecture on land nationaliza tion, which inspires some of his socialist ideas. He attends meetings of the Social Democratic Federation and is intro duced to the works of Karl Marx.
1883 The Fabian Society—a middle-class socialist debating group advocating progressive, nonviolent reform rather than the revolution supported by the Social Democratic Federation—is founded in London. Shaw completes the novel Cashel Byron’s Profession, drawing on his experience as an amateur boxer. He writes his final novel, An Unsocial Socialist.
1884 Shaw joins the fledgling Fabian Society; he contributes to many of its pamphlets, including The Fabian Manifesto (1884), The Impossibilities of Anarchism (1893), and Socialism for Millionaires (1901), and begins speaking publicly around London on social and political issues. An Unsocial Socialist is serialized in the periodical Today.
1885 The author’s father, a longtime alcoholic, dies; neither his estranged wife nor his children attend his funeral. Shaw himself never drinks or smokes. He begins writing criticism of music, art, and literature for the Pall Mall Gazette, the Dramatic Review, and Our Corner. Cashel Byron’s Profession is serialized in the periodical Today.
1886 Shaw begins writing art and music criticism for the World. Cashel Byron’s Profession is published.
1887 Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg’s play The Father is performed. The Social Democratic Federation’s
planned march on Trafalgar Square ends in bloodshed as police suppress the protesters; Shaw is a speaker at the event. His novel An Unsocial Socialist is published in book form.
1888 Shaw begins writing music criticism in the Star under the pen name Corno di Bassetto (“basset horn,” perhaps a ref erence to the pitch of his voice).
1889 He edits the volume Fabian Essays in Socialism, to which he contributes “The Economic Basis of Socialism” and “The Transition to Social Democracy.”
1890 Ibsen completes Hedda Gabler.
1891 Ibsen’s Ghosts is performed in London. Shaw publishes The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a polemical pamphlet that cele brates Ibsen as a rebel for leftist causes.
1892 Sidney Webb, a founder and close associate of Shaw, is elected to the London City Council along with five other Fabian Society members. Widowers’ Houses, Shaw’s first “unpleasant” play, is performed on the London stage.
1893 Shaw writes The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, his two other “unpleasant” plays. The latter is refused a license by the royal censor because its subject is prostitution; as a result, the play is not performed until 1902. Widowers’ Houses is published.
1894 Seeking a wider audience, Shaw begins a series of “pleas ant” plays with Arms and the Man, produced this year, and Candida, a successful play about marriage greatly influ enced by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
1895 Shaw writes another “pleasant” play, The Man of Destiny, a one-act about Napoleon, and drama criticism for the Saturday Review.
1896 Shaw completes the fourth “pleasant” play, You Never Can Tell. He meets Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a wealthy Irish heiress and fellow Fabian. The Nobel Prizes are established for physics, medicine, chemistry, peace, and literature.
1897 Candida is produced. The Devil’s Disciple, a drama set dur ing the American Revolution, is successfully staged in New York. Shaw is elected as councilor for the borough of St. Pancras, London; he will serve in this position until 1903.
1898 Shaw writes Caesar and Cleopatra and publishes Mrs. Warren’s Profession and The Perfect Wagnerite. His first anthology of plays, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, is published. He falls ill and, believing his illness fatal, marries his friend and nurse Charlotte Payne-Townshend; his wife’s fortune makes Shaw wealthy.
1899 You Never Can Tell premieres. Shaw writes Captain Brass bound’s Conversion.
1900 The Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation join forces to form the Labour Representation Party, which is politically allied to the trade union movement. The party wins two seats in the House of Commons. Captain Brasshound’s Conversion is pro duced. Three Plays for Puritans collects The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.
1901 Strindberg’s Dance of Death is completed. The Social Revo lutionary Party, instrumental in the Bolshevik Revolution, is formed in Russia. Shaw writes about the eternal obsta cles in male-female relations in his epic Man and Superman, which he subtitles “A Comedy and a Philosophy.” He also publishes The Devil’s Disciple and sees Caesar and Cleopatra produced for the first time.
1902 A private production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession is staged at the New Lyric Theatre in London.