Raïhanyat,

Moroccan Writer

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THE PROMETHEAN PASSION
(ESSAYS ON GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S DRAMA & PHILOSOPHY)

George Bernard Shaw:

His Career

          On 26th July 1856 in Dublin, George Bernard Shaw was born in an Irish society distinctly divided into two major social classes: The lower classes, generally Roman Catholics; and the upper classes, mainly Protestants. The Shaws were lower-class people despite their Protestantism. However they regarded themselves superior to the remaining Irish Roman Catholics (1).
Shaw inherited his family’s attitude, and, throughout his life, he dreamt of winning some nobility hands down. He regarded himself as an upper-class man who despises manual labour. Possibly, it is for this reason that he opted for being a man of intellect. This feature-snobbery- is quite dominant in his plays to come .
          Shaw’s mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Gurley, was not devoted to her domestic duties. Rather, she was given to music, caring after her voice with the hope of becoming a concert star. In the same line, George Bernard Shaw, who knew the rudiments of music since he is born in a family of arts, dreamt on his part of becoming a great composer like Verdi.
The irresponsibility of George Carr Shaw, the father, being a drunkard, offended the self-respect of Mrs. Shaw, who went with her daughter, Lucy, to London leaving behind her husband and her son without her address in England.
         Shaw’s uncle, Frederick Shaw, soon found him a job as a clerck in a real estate office, collecting rents in slum tenements . There, Bernard Shaw had a live and close view of the relationships between landlords and tenants, the rich and the poor. At this time, Shaw was sixteen years old and though he had little schooling, he had already given vent to his suppressed opinions writing in newspapers and declaring his atheism:

“Dick Dudgeon, the devil’s disciple, is a Puritan of the Puritans. He is brought up in a household where the Puritan religion has died, and become, in its corruption, an excuse for his mother’s master passion of hatred in all its phrases and cruelty and envy [...] In such a home the young Puritan finds himself starved of religion [...] he pities the devil; takes his side; and champions him [...] He thus becomes like all genuinely religious men, a reprobate and an outcast”.
(Three Plays for Puritans, The introduction, pp. 25-26).

Having read so much of Charles Dickens, he found in himself the skills of a great novelist and he tried novel-writing. He wrote five novels:

1- Immaturity.
2- An Unsocial Socialist (1884).
3- Cashel Byron’s Profession (1885-1886).
4- The Irrational Knot (1885-1887).
5- Love Among the Artists (1887-1888).

All the novels, however, were failures and were refused at publishing:
“Judge then, how impossible it was for me to write fiction that should delight the public. In my nonage, I had tried to obtain a foot-hold in literature by writing novels, and had actually produced five long works in that form without getting further than an encouraging compliment or two from the most dignified and American publishers, who unanimously declined to venture their capital on me”.

(Plays Unpleasant, Introduction, p. 8).

Novel-writing, then, came to a closed door and George Bernard Shaw had to change to journalism:

“My pleasing toil was to report upon all the works of fine art the capital of the world can attract to its exhibitions, its opera house, its concerts and its theatres. The classes eagerly read my essays: the masses patiently listened to my harangues...”

(Plays Unpleasant, Introduction, pp. 9-10).

Shaw worked in various newspapers. As a music critic for the Pall Mall Gazette, the World and the Star until 1894. Then as a drama critic for the Saturday Review from 1895 up to 1898.

This journalistic career would probably mould Shaw’s future style. Shaw’s luxuriance in speech is possibly the result of his early writings in newspapers where he was paid by the number of example, he would get two guineas a thousand words for reviewing books (8).

In 1886, the Fabians tried to permeate Socialism in the Parliament through the Liberal Party (9). In the same time, they tried to impress the public opinion by tracts and public lectures following their slogan:

“Educate, Agitate, Organize” (10):

“I am, and have always been, and shall now and always be a revolutionary writer [...] I am an enemy of the existing order”.
(Major Barbara, Act II, p. 46).

In the following year, 1887, George Bernard Shaw’s experience in the Bloody Sunday demonstration against the 1880’s depression convinced him that Socialism in England through revolution is doomed to failure, and that gradualness and reform through parliamentary means are the only remaining choice (11):

“Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder”.
(Man and Superman, Maxims, p. 214).

Shaw even withdrew his confidence in Democracy:

“Democracy [...] was forced on us by the failure of the other alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which recquires a whole population of capable voters?”
(Man and Superman, Introduction, p. 25).

Shaw refused Democracy, being based on social inequities and supported by the actual race of men who are not worthy of it.

“Our only hope, then, is in evolution, we must replace the man by the superman”.

(Man and Superman, Maxims, p. 244).

Shaw believes in the necessity of breeding another race of men much higher than the present one and worthier of real Democracy, a race of Supermen:

“Until there is an England in which every man is a Cromwell, a France in which every man is a Napoleon, a Rome in which every man is a Caesar, a Germany in which every man is a Luther plus a Goethe, the world will be more improved by its heroes [...] the production of such nations is the only real change possible to us”. (Man and Superman, The revolutionist’s Handbook, pp. 224-225).

Shaw claims, therefore, an entirely new democracy: “A Democracy of Supermen” (12).

In 1898, George Bernard Shaw put an end to his journalistic career by marrying the rich Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian Socialist. In fact, Shaw had accepted working as a journalist only to secure a living like a gentleman. Now that he has a stable living ,a house and a rich wife…His dream of youth to be a gentleman is finally achieved. Now, he would devote himself to play-writing.

“There is an old saying that if a man has not fallen in love before forty, he had better not fall in love after. I long ago perceived that this rule applied to many other matters as well: for example, to the writing of plays; and I made a rough memorandum for my own guidance that a dozen plays before I was forty, I had better let playwriting alone”.

(Plays Unpleasant, Introduction, p. 7).

By this time, 1898, Shaw had published eight plays. His first play was Widowers’ Houses in 1892. But his fame was first established with Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which produced a tremendous outcry and was subjectted to censorship because of the subject-matter it brought to the stage: The relationship between religion and prostitution.
Despite censorship and his opponents’ attacks, mainly Marxists; George Bernard Shaw carried on writing distinguished dramatic works perturbing the monotony of the Victorian dramatic tradition. Among his well-known plays:

* Widowers’ Houses (1893).
* The Philanderer.
* Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1894).
* Arms and the Man (1894).
* Candida (1895).
* The Man of Destiny (1896).
* Your Never Can Tell (1897).
* The Devil’s Disciple (1897).
* Caesar and Cleopatra (1898).
* Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.
* Man and Superman (1901-1903).
* John Bull’s Other Island (1907).
* Major Barbara (1907).
* The Doctor’s Dilemma (1911).
* Getting Married (1911).
* Androcles and the Lion (1916).
* Overruled (1916).
* Pygmalion (1916).
* Heartbreak House (1919).
* Back to Methuselah (1921).
* Saint Joan (1924).
* The Apple Cart (1930).
* In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939).

END-NOTES:

1)-Margery Wilson, Notes On Pygmalion (Beirout: New Press,1980), p.6
2)-Maurice Valency, op.cit., p.11
3)-Ibid., p.5
4)-Ibid., p.7
5)-Ibid., p.10
6)-Ibid., p.11
7)-Ibid., p.13
8)-
9)- Ibid., p.13
10)-
11)-Edmund Wilson, « Bernard Shaw at Eighty »
12)-

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS CAREER

G.B.S, THEORIST OF CHANGE

SUPERMAN & THE IDEAL ORDER

STYLISTICS OF SHAVIAN DRAMA

THE PROMETHEAN PASSION FOR IMPROVING THE RACE

(A STUDY OF THE PROBLEM OF EQUALITY IN SHAW'S MASTER-PIECE, "PYGMALION" )

HOMEPAGE CULTURAL LINKS ONOMASTICS SHORTSTORY CRITICISM ANTHOLOGY WEBMASTER FRANCAIS ARABIC

e-mail: said_raihani@yahoo.com

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