George bernard show (1856 – 1950) Questions and tasks.

1. Pay attention to the pronunciation of the proper and geographical names:

George Bernard Show ['GLG 'bE:nqd SL]

Irish ['aIqrIS] Major Barbara ['meIGq 'bRbqrq]

Caesar and Cleopathra ['sJzq qnd "klIq'pRtrq]

Pygmalion [pIg'meIljqn] Carr [kR]

Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly [lH'sIndq I'lIzqbqT 'gE:lI]

Dublin ['dAblIn] Protestant ['prPtIstqnt]

Catholic ['kxTqlIk] Shakespeare ['SeIkspIq]

Byron ['baIqrqn] Shelley ['SelI]

Ireland ['aIqlqnd] British ['brItIS]

Socialist ['sqVSqlIst]

Fabian Society ['feIbjqn sq'saIqtI]

Pall Mall Gazette [pLl mLl gq'zet]

Victorian [vIk'tLrIqn] England ['INglqnd]

William Archer ['wIljqm 'RCq]

Henrik Ibsen ['henrIk 'Ibsn]

Philanderer [fI'lxndqrq] Warren ['wPrIn]

Puritan ['pjVqrItqn] Devil ['devl]

Brassbound ['brRsbaVnd] Don Juan ['dPn 'GVqn]

Henry Bergson ['henrI 'bE:gsn]

John Bull ['GPn bul] Edward ['edwqd]

Androcles ['xndrquklJz]

Henry Higgins ['henrI 'hIgInz]

Saint Joan ['seInt 'GqVn] Cockney ['kPknI]

Methuselah [mI'TjHzqlq] Greek [grJk]

Aristophanes ["xrIs'tPfqnJz] Charlotte ['SRlqt]

Herfordshire ['hRfqdSIq]

2. Read the text:

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and Socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Among his works are “Caesar and Cleopathra” (performed 1901, published 1901), “Man and Superman” (performed 1905, published 1903) , “Major Barbara” (performed 1905, published 1907) and “Pygmalion” (published 1912).

Early life and career. George Bernard Shaw was the third and youngest child (and the only son) of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw. He was born in Dublin on July 26, 1856. His father was a petty official and then an unsuccessful grain merchant. Bernard attended school which he didn’t like and which he remembered as a “boy prison”. He went to Protestant and Catholic day schools as a “day boy” which meant that he had his afternoons free. At home there was music – always music. His mother had a beautiful voice, he himself and his sisters could sing well enough and there were, besides the piano, many other musical instruments always lying about. The sitting-room was seldom silent in the evening, and music came to play an important educative part of young Shaw’s life.

At the age of fourteen, after graduating from secondary school, Shaw was put into a job as clerk in a land agent’s office. The monotonous daily routine, the endless figures and forms, the feeling that he had become an insignificant part of a machine, all that alarmed him. In many things he was better informed than most of his fellow clerks. Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and many other great poets and writers had been read and reread by him. He could discuss art, for he had studied the best works at the Ireland National Gallery, which even then was one of the world important collections. And when it came to music he could, of course, leave them all far behind. At his job he was quite efficient and he had mastered the problems of his work without any difficulty. Yet he was far from being happy. Though the office was not such a “prison” as his schools, but a prison it was for all that.

Bernard Shaw felt that he had to leave and so in 1876 he said good-bye to Ireland and went to London where he became a journalist and wrote music, art and dramatic critiques for various periodicals. In London he devoted much time to self-education. He spent his afternoons in the British Museum reading room, writing novels and reading what he had missed at school and his evenings in search of additional self-education in the lectures and debates.

He failed as a novelist in the 1880s, Shaw found himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a Socialist, an orator, a polemist, even a playwright. He became the force in the newly founded Fabian Society (1884), a middle-class Socialist group that aimed at the transformation of English society not through revolution but through spreading of the political and intellectual ideas of the country among people. Shaw involved himself in every aspect of its activities, mostly as editor of one of the classics of British Socialism, “Fabian Essays in Socialism” (1889), to which he also contributed two sections.

Shaw’s early journalism ranged from book reviews in the “Pall Mall Gazette” (1885-88) and art criticism in the “World” (1886-89) to brilliant musical columns in the “Star” (1888-90) and in the “World” (1890-1894). He also contributed to the “Saturday Review” as theatre critic from 1895 to 98. He took part in displacing the hypocrisies of the Victorian stage and in introducing a theatre of vital ideas.

First plays. With the “New Drama” in England Shaw began his experiment as playwright in 1884, when the critic William Archer suggested a collaboration. Eight years later, in 1892, Shaw completed his drama “Widowers’ Houses”. It had two performances and created a newspaper sensation. Combining Henrik Ibsen, Socialism and landlordism, it despised the romantic conventions that were still being exploited, even by the new playwrights. Next, unafraid to satirize himself, Shaw in “The Philanderer” invented an “Ibsen Club” and even ridiculed the socially emancipated “New Woman”. Then he produced his sardonic “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”. The lord Chamberlain, as the censor of plays, refused it a license although its subject - “fallen women” was treated remorselessly.

Shaw’s first volume of collected plays, “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant” was published in 1898. “To me”, he explained, “both the tragedy and comedy of life lies in the consequences, sometimes terrible, of our persistent attempts to found our institutions on the ideals suggested to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history.”

Shaw’s next collection “Three Plays for Puritans” (1901) continued his innovation – stage directions and description in narrative form and the texts were made available to the wider reading public. These plays were “The Devil’s Disciple”, “Caesar and Cleopathra”, “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.”

International importance. In “Man and Superman” (1903) Shaw took the legend of Don Juan, and made it a dramatic parable using the philosophy of Henry Bergson. [ By that time Shaw had been established as a major playwright on the Continent by the performance of his plays there, but, curiously, he was not very popular in England. It was only with the production of “John Bull’s Other Island” (1904) in London, with a special performance for Edward VII, that Shaw’s stage reputation was made in England. In these years he wrote “Major Barbara” (1905), “The Doctor’s Dilemma” (1906), “Androcles and the Lion” (1912). Shaw’s way of writing was very peculiar; he said true things in such a way that at first one was not sure whether he was joking or serious. Sometimes Shaw even made a sort of game out of his jokes and witty words.

Possibly Shaw’s comedic masterpiece, and certainly his funniest and most popular play, “Pygmalion” (1913), was claimed by Shaw to be a didactic drama about phonetics, and its anti-heroic hero, Henry Higgins, is a phonetician, however, the play is a humane comedy about love, about a Cockney flower girl trained to pass as a lady and the results of this experiment. ] It has been both filmed (1938), winning an Academy Award for Shaw for his screenplay, and adapted into an immensely popular musical, “My Fair Lady” (1956; motion-picture version, 1964).

Works after World War I. At the beginning of the war he ceased writing plays. Later, in 1920, he published “Heartbreak House”, where he exposed, in a country-house setting on the eve of the war, the spiritual bankruptcy of the generation responsible for the bloodshed. In his last plays “Saint Joan” (1921), “The Apple Cart” (1929), “Back to Methuselah” (1922), “Too True to Be Good” (1934), “On the Rocks” (1934) he turned from discouraging pessimism to tragicomic and nonrealistic symbolism, using the comedy of the ancient Greek master Aristophanes. He touched upon many vital problems: the relations between radical and conservative politicians, the ability of government to rule, the problems of creative evolution.

Works after World War II. After a wartime period, he produced several more plays, mostly fantasies and farces – “Farfetched Fables” (1951), “Shakes Versus Shaw” (1951). They are attempts to see ironically into a timeless future and flashes of the earlier Shaw.

When Shaw’s wife, Charlotte, died in 1943, he moved from his London apartment to his country home in a Herfordshire village in which he had lived since 1906. He died there in 1950, at the age of 94.

Shaw left no school of playwrights as such. Yet his development of a drama of moral passion and of intellectual conflict and debate, his reviving the comedy of manners and its changing into a symbolic farce helped to shape the theatre of his time and after. His work, in general, contributed to the political, economic and sociological thought of three generations.

3. Answer the questions to discuss the text in detail. Use the text for reference.

1. What influenced G.B. Shaw in his childhood? What role did mu-

sic play in the life of their family? What career did he choose and

why?

2. What was the reason for his leaving Ireland? Why did he devote

much time to self-education?

2. Was he interested in journalism? What magazines did he work

for? When did his first play appear?

4. When did G.B. Shaw become popular as a playwright? Which of his plays are considered to be the most popular? What problems did he try to touch upon in them?

5. Prove that Shaw’s plays helped to shape the theatre of his time and after.

4. Translate in writing the passage in brackets.

5. Speak on the life and creative work of G.B. Shaw.

P Y G M A L I O N

(The Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock on the mantelpiece strikes twelve. The fire is not alight: it is a summer night.

Presently Higgins and Pickering are heard on the stairs.)

HIGGINS (calling down to Pickering): I say, Pick: lock up, will you? I shan’t be going out again.

PICKERING: Right. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don’t want anything more, do we?

HIGGINS: Lord, no!

(Eliza opens the door and is seen the lighted landing in all the finery in which she has just won Higgins’s bet for him. She comes to the hearth, and switches on the electric lights there. She is tired; her pallor contrasts strongly with her dark eyes and hair; and her expression is almost tragic. She takes off her cloak; put her fan and gloves on the piano; and sits down on the bench, brooding and silent. Higgins, in evening dress, with overcoat and hat, comes in, carrying a smoking jacket, which he has picked up down-stairs. He takes off the hat and overcoat; throws them carelessly on the newspaper stand; dispose of his coat in the same way; puts on the smoking jacket; and throws himself wearily into the easy-chair at the hearth. Pickering, similarly attired, comes in. He also takes off his hat and overcoat, and is about to throw them on Higgins’s when he hesitates.)

PICKERING: I say: Mrs. Pearce will row if we leave these things lying about in the drawing-room.

HIGGINS: Oh, chuck them over the banisters into the hall. She’ll find them there in the morning and put them away all right. She’ll think we were drunk.

PICKERING: We are, slightly. Are there any letters?

HIGGINS: I didn’t look. (Pickering takes the overcoats and hats and goes downstairs. Higgins begins half singing half yawning an air from “La Fanciulla del Golden West.¹” Suddenly he stops and exclaims.) I wonder where the devil my slippers are!

(Eliza looks at him darkly; then rises suddenly and leaves the room.

Higgins yawns again, and resumes his song.

Pickering returns, with the contents of the letter-box in his hand.)

PICKERING: Only circulars, and this coroneted billet-doux for you. (He throws the circulars into the fender, and posts himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the grate.)

HIGGINS (glancing at the billet-doux): Money-lender. (He throws the letter after the circulars.)

(Eliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers. She places them on the carpet before Higgins, and site as before without a word.)

HIGGINS (yawning again): Oh, Lord! What an evening! What a crew! What a silly tomfoolery’ (He raises his shoe to unlace it, and catches sight of the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks at them as if they had appeared there of their own accord.) Oh! They’re there, are they?

PICKERING (stretching himself): Well, I fell a bit tired. It’s been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the reception! Rather too much of a good thing. But you’ve won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh?

HIGGINS (fervently): Thank God it’s over.

(Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she recovers herself and sits stonily as before.)

PICKERING: Were you nervous at the garden party? I was. Eliza didn’t seem a bit nervous.

HIGGINS: Oh, she wasn’t nervous. I knew she’d be all right. No: it’s the strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn’t backed myself to do it I should have chucked the whole think up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore.

PICKERING: Oh, come! The garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart began beating like anything.

HIGGINS: Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour, with nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell you, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory.

PICKERING: You’ve never been broken in property to the social routine. (Strolling over to the piano.) I rather enjoy dipping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people can’t do it at all: they’re such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There’s always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.

HIGGINS: Yes: that’s what drives me mad: the silly people don’t know their own silly business. (Rising.) However, it’s over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow.

(Eliza’s beauty becomes murderous.)

PICKERING: I think I shall turn in too. Still, it’s been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. (He goes.)

HIGGINS (following him): Good-night. (Over his shoulder, at the door.) Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning: I’ll take tea. (He goes out.)

(Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins’s chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings herself furiously on the floor, raging.)

HIGGINS (in despairing wrath outside): What the devil have I done with my slippers? (He appears at the door.)

LIZA (snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force): There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day’s luck with them!

HIGGINS (astounded): What on earth – ! (He comes to her.) What’s the matter? Get up. (He pulls her up.) Anything wrong?

LIZA (breathless): Nothing wrong – with you. I’ve won your bet for you, haven’t I? That’s enough for you. I don’t matter, I suppose.

HIGGINS: You won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! I won it. What did you throw those slippers at me for?

LIZA: Because I wanted to smash your face. I’d like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn’t you leave me where you picked me out of – in the gutter? You thank God it’s all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you? (She crisps her fingers frantically.)

HIGGINS (looking at her in cool wonder): The creature is nervous, after all.

LIZA (gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her nails at his face)!!

HIGGINS (catching her wrists): Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. (He throws her roughly into the easy-chair.)

LIZA (crushed by superior strength and weight): What’s to become of me? What’s to become of me?

HIGGINS: How the devil do I know what’s to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you?

LIZA: You don’t care. I know you don’t care. You wouldn’t care if I was dead. I’m nothing to you – no so much as them slippers.

HIGGINS (thundering): Those slippers.

LIZA (with bitter submission): Those slippers. I didn’t think it made any difference now.

(A pause. Eliza hopeless and crushed. Higgins a little uneasy.)

HIGGINS (in his loftiest manner): Why have you begun going on like this? May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?

LIZA: No.

HIGGINS: Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs. Pearce? Any of the servants?

LIZA: No.

HIGGINS: I presume you don’t pretend that I have treated you badly.

LIZA: No.

HIGGINS: I am glad to hear it. (He moderates his tone.) Perhaps you re tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne? (He moves towards the door.)

LIZA: No. (Recollecting her manners.) Thank you.

HIGGINS (good-humored again): This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But that’s all over now. (He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She writhes.) There’s nothing more to worry about.

LIZA: No. Nothing more for you to worry about. (She suddenly rises and gets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and hides her face.) Oh God! I wish I was dead.

HIGGINS (staring after her in sincere surprise): Why? In heaven’s name, why? (Reasonably, going to her.) Listen to me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective.

LIZA: I don’t understand. I’m too ignorant.

HIGGINS: It’s only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody’s hurting you. Nothing’s wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you comfortable.

LIZA: I heard your prayers, “Thank God it’s all over!”

HIGGINS (impatiently): Well, don’t you thank God it’s all over? Now you are free and can do what you like.

LIZA (pulling herself together in desperation): What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What’s to become of me?

Questions and Assignments

1. What is the main idea of the play?

1. What is Eliza?

2. What brought her to Mr. Higgins?

3. What did we learn of her life?

4. What was it that helped her to make such remarkable progress?

5. Why was she so upset when the experiment was over?

2. What kind of person is Mr. Higgins?

1. What is Higgins?

2. Why was he attracted by the idea of the experiment?

3. How does his attitude to Eliza characterize him?

3. What is the criticism of the play directed against?