Shaw, the Man
Teresa Hudson urges us not to underrate or overlook the life and work of George Bernard Shaw
The 26th of July 2006 marked the 150th anniversary of George Bernard Shaw’s birth. Although most famous for being a playwright, Shaw was also a novelist, socialist, feminist, opinionated essayist, vegetarian, critic of art, music and theatre, teetotaller, journalist, motorcyclist, orator, religious, political and social philosopher, and an avid fan of boxing. Sadly, despite having written over fifty plays and winning both the Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, little has been done to commemorate his sesquicentennial by the national theatres of his native city of Dublin and his adopted city of London.
Shaw’s works are often criticised for containing little, if any, dramatic action and are sometimes regarded by critics as socialistic sermons rather than moving theatrical pieces. It is true that if one goes to a performance of a Shavian play, one will be given a lesson in how Shaw believed life should be lived. However, this lesson will be given with a dose of laughter and several witty thumps on
the head, which is where Shaw aimed. And Shaw is undoubtedly best known for his comedies, particularly Major Barbara, Pygmalion, and Arms and the Man. He gently humiliated his audiences into recognising their own shortcomings by creating characters who were stereotypes personifying the problems and dilemmas of Victorian society. A prime example of this is his most famous creation, Eliza Doolittle. Through Eliza, Shaw successfully portrays the obstacles and setbacks faced by Victorian women in both the working-class and upper-class stations of society. Anyone who has seen a production of Pygmalion would agree that, although Shaw tells his story through dialogue rather than action (i.e. Eliza’s successful debut as a lady never sees the light of the stage), it is more than a mere socialistic sermon and provides a delightful evening’s entertainment.
More interestingly, if we were to take a closer look at Shavian drama, we would find a theatre full of desire and sexual angst that could rival even Shaw’s contemporary, Oscar Wilde. Shaw’s own sex life could be regarded as curious. It began rather late, at the age of twenty-nine, in a love affair with a widow who was both Shaw’s elder and his mother’s friend. This woman developed an almost stalker-like obsession with the young Shaw, which overwhelmed him, and the character Julia Craven of The Philanderer was based on her. At forty-three, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend, and although the marriage was said to be ‘nearly perfect’ it excluded all sexual contact. Whether Shaw’s sex life ended entirely with his marriage is subject to debate. It is known that he did have at least three affairs, one rumoured to have resulted in an abortion. However, no one is entirely sure if any of the affairs were actually consummated. The most famous of them, which is well documented in a published collection of letters, was with Mrs Patrick Campbell. Their relationship is believed to have totally excluded sex. In spite of this, it almost ended his marriage to Charlotte who was well aware of (and troubled by) her husband’s philandering.
Despite the lack of sexual intimacy in Shaw’s life, he championed the idea of free love and found Victorian prudery tedious. In his play Misalliance, the young (and engaged-to-be-married) Hypatia overtly tries to seduce the brutish Joseph Percival, in Overruled Shaw creates a situation which can only be described as a blatantly sexual Victorian wife-swap aboard a cruise ship, and in The Music Cure a sadomasochistic relationship is born.
In addition to rivalling Wilde in sexuality, Shaw could also rival (if not surpass) him in wit. Among the well-known quotations attributed to Shaw are: ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach’; ‘Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalised by music.’; and ‘England and America are two countries divided by a common language.’ Shaw was a man of many opinions on a variety of subjects and he often publicly expressed his beliefs. With the publications of his plays he included a preface. According to Shaw, these prefaces were not introductions to the plays themselves, but rather opinionated essays included so that the purchaser would get good value for his money. This way (in a true socialistic spirit), reading material was provided for everyone in the family – those who enjoyed reading essays and hated drama, and those who enjoyed reading plays and disliked essays. However, if one does read the preface before reading the play, one will get a better idea of the Victorian stereotypes represented by the play’s characters.
Despite being sculpted by Renoir and haunted by the idea that he was the reincarnation of Shakespeare, Shaw was incredibly human. He didn’t finish writing his first play, Widower’s Houses, until the age of thirty-six. He was totally dependant on his wife financially for a good part of their marriage, and he grew a beard in an effort to hide the marks left on his face by smallpox. In addition to being highly critical of others, he was often extremely critical of himself. After the
opening of Arms and the Man, Shaw wrote in a letter to British playwright Henry Arthur Jones:
I had the curious experience of witnessing an apparently insane success, with the actors and actresses almost losing their heads with the intoxication of laugh after laugh, and of going before the curtain to tremendous applause, the only person in the theatre who knew that the whole affair was a ghastly failure.
Shaw was a playwright with a socialistic purpose, and although he expressed himself through drama (mainly comedic), he did not go for cheap laughter. He used comedy and wit as a means to an end, and if he did not feel this end was met, he deemed his efforts a failure. He even considered too much laughter at his comedies a failure, as he believed it was distracting and physically exhausting. And even though it would be easy to interpret some of Shaw’s remarks, witticisms and opinions as harsh and conceited, the truth is he wrote for an audience whom he believed to be intelligent, and with the faith that society had hope to improve.
Although Shaw’s 150th anniversary has passed relatively quietly, it is important that the national theatres of England and Ireland, which Shaw supported in their infancy, continue to perform his works. For within Shaw’s works are found desire, wit, intelligence, humour, and most importantly, hope for a brighter future. Though written in the Victorian era, the themes found within his plays – including marriage, war, money, slum landlordism, sexual desire, fidelity and parent-child relationships – are still relevant today, and the humour and philosophy of his works transcend both time and generation. As Shaw wrote in his preface to Widower’s Houses:
It is not my fault, reader, that my art is the expression of my sense of moral and
intellectual perversity rather than of my sense of beauty. My life has been spent mostly in big modern towns, where my sense of beauty has been starved, whilst my intellect has been gorged with problems.
