Shaw, George Bernard

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Irish dramatist, critic, and novelist, and an early member of the socialist Fabian Society, although he resigned in 1911. His plays combine comedy with political, philosophical, and controversial aspects, aiming to make an impact on his audience's social conscience as well as their emotions. They include Arms and the Man (1894), The Devil's Disciple (1897), Man and Superman (1903), Pygmalion (1913), and St Joan (1923). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Shaw was born in Dublin, and went to London in 1876 to work as a critic. He became a brilliant debater. Shaw combined treatment of social issues with a comic technique that relied on brilliantly witty serio-comic dialogue and playfully ironic inversion of audience expectations about character and situation. As a result, he put himself in the front line of the intellectually serious and progressive English theatre, yet also became a successful popular playwright. Altogether Shaw wrote more than 50 plays and became renowned for his wit. His theories were further explained in the voluminous prefaces to the plays, and in books such as The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Capitalism, Socialism and Fascism (1928). In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend (died 1943). He was a strict vegetarian, and still active and writing until his death at age 94.

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