George
Bernard Shaw, the greatest of the many Irishmen who have written fine plays in
the English language, was born in Dublin on 26 July 1856.
In his early
years as a socialist Bernard Shaw believed that if the condition of civilised
societies was to be improved, it must be done by legislation aiming at
equality, reducing in various ways the fortunes of the rich in order to help
and uplift the poor. Later he came round to the opinion that the first thing
required in the making of Good society
is not so much good laws as good men and women- men and women, “that is, who
are righteous in spirit and not merely well intentioned and kind-hearted. Good
people will make good laws, but good laws passed by a few do not necessarily
make a good society.
He became a
vegetarian when he was twenty –five. His reading of the work of the English
poet Shelley had some influence in leading him to refrain from eating meat, but
the stronger motive was his deep feeling that “animals are our fellow
creatures”, not to be slain for human food.
Shaw was
always deeply interested in the sound of words as well as in their sense and
meaning. As a young man he learned shorthand and always wrote his plays in it
for his secretary to type out in longhand. This choice of shorthand as a
working language was due both to its time- saving advantage and to its being
based on phonetics, which always uses the same symbol for the same spoken
sound. Shaw spent a good deal of time trying to persuade English people to
adopt an enlarged alphabet. He also wrote one of his most popular plays
“Pygmalion”, on the subject of correct pronunciation.
From 1905
when “Man and Superman”, his first great play, was performed, Shaw was the
world’s most famous living playwright though he long remained unpopular with
those who disliked his advanced views and his wish to reform society.
Nevertheless it was at length widely recognised that he stood second only to
Shakespeare among all the British playwrights, and his writings were known and
valued in all countries long before he received the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1925.
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