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George Bernard Shaw
Shaw was born on 26 July in 1856 in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland. He came from a middle class family of the Irish Stock. His father was George Carr Shaw who acted as a civil servant of Ireland for some time. His mother was Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw who possessed undoubted musical talents.
Shaw could not get sufficient scope for formal education because of his poverty. At first, he was taught by a private tutoress. He was sent to Wesleyan Connexional School at the age of 11. In 1869, he entered Central Model Boy's School at Dublin. His professional career was full of ups and downs. He had to struggle almost throughout his whole life. His life in London was very struggling. He wrote Immaturity, his first novel in 1879 and published it in 1912. He began to work as a socialist. He entered the Fabian Society in 1884. In 1891, he wrote The Quintessence of Ibsenism. The Philanderer was written in 1893. He wrote Arms and the Man and Candida in 1894. Shaw was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Wagner and Karl Marx. He has written Man and Superman (1901-1903), You Can Never Tell (1895), Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Major Barbara (1905) and Saint Joan (1923). He has written many novels too. But he is well-known and famous for his plays. He worked as a journalist. In 1925, he achieved Nobel Prize but refused to take it. He was the "Men of the Century". His wife, Mrs. Charlotte Payne Townshend died in 1943. He died on 2nd November in 1950 at the age of 94.
Drama was a suitable medium for Shaw to present his certain ideas. He is essentially a satirist, iconoclast, propagandist and reformer. He expresses his views on love, marriage, war and romance in most of his plays. He has paid little attention to plot construction in his plays. He does not develop his plots systematically. Moreover, action and dramatic incidents are absent in his plays too.
Shaw has enriched dramatic literature by creating a variety of characters. He has drawn them from all classes of people in our society. After Shakespeare, no dramatist equals with him in this respect. But Shaw's characters are merely puppets standing for his certain ideas. So his characterisation sometimes lacks the power of fully convincing us. He is the master of wit rather than emotion. He is the master in the field of comedy writing. His comedy of ideas is full of life and fun. His dialogues are brilliant, flashy, sparkling and spontaneous. He is famous for his dramatic dialogue.
However, G.B. Shaw has many faults as a playwright. But he is undoubtedly a great dramatist. His greatness consists in being irreplaceable. He is often regarded as the English or Irish Moliere. He is also considered to be the Voltaire of the 20th century. His real place is next to Shakespeare as a playwright.
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