February 2024: George Bernard Shaw

The shortest month of the year goes to George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) - the Irish playwright who changed English drama in ways that are still felt today.

He also wrote reviews, not very successful fiction and had left a huge amount of letters and diaries.

What do you plan to read? Had you seen any of his plays on stage or recorded? Had you listened to any of his plays converted to an audio-play?

I have loved My Fair Lady since I was a little girl and my sister played all the songs in the musical. Ive always wanted to read pygmallion so I guess nows the chance to compare them

I've only ever read Pygmalion after seeing the My Fair Lady musical, so it'll be something else for me.

I've got The Devil's Disciple on my shelf in play form. That will be my read.

i dunno, just started pymallion and I find myself singing the songs as the acts roll along. I know this musical too well and should choose another of his books. any suggestons

BTW my sis and I saw the new version of my fair lady , and I am much more satisfied with the ending. as it should be

I'll be reading:
John Bull's Other Island (1904), about Irish-English relations

and possibly a re-read of
Pygmalion (1914); my edition includes a long epilogue by Shaw, in which he imagines his characters' lives after the play action ends.

Also there's a great old movie of Pygmalion (1938) which stars Leslie Howard and Dame Wendy Hiller. Shaw was involved with the screenplay, so it's interesting to see how he modified the play (especially the ending) for movie audiences. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(1938_film)

>6 cindydavid4: I’m right off Pygmalian. Too many old men go for younger women and try to mold them into an image they developed during their adolescence.

>8 kjuliff: yeah I know; but the music!!!It played in my head while I was reading. still think it was a crime to drop Julie Andrews, who won tons of Tonys her role in the musical and replace her with Audreh Hepburn who could not sing. ah well I do need to pick something else by him..

androcles and the lion its free on Kindle just read the prologue and my cats are looking at me strange as I am ROLFL

>8 kjuliff: In the play, Eliza fights back (as best she can) and at the end she walks out on Higgins. From his epilogue, he suggests that the play is an attempt to flip the Pygmalion/Galatea myth on its head.

>11 kac522: But aren’t we concerned with Bernard Shaw’s book here?

its hard to separate the two or three, since there is a film as well. It would be an interesting discussion looking at the way each media has changed over time: and how they have all taken this story in different ways, I think given what I know about Shaw, it would not bother him one bit

>13 cindydavid4: Thanks. I was unclear. Certainly it’s be interesting to see how the characters have been described differently over time.

>12 kjuliff: Pygmalion is a play, written in 1912 & first performed in 1913; it was never a book. The play was then adapted for film in 1938 during his lifetime; it was then adapted for the musical My Fair Lady in the 1950s, after Shaw's death.

He did write a few novels in the 1880s, but gave that up for criticism and writing plays. I read one of his novels The Unsocial Socialist, which has a rather independent (for the time) female lead character and the novel spends a lot of time discussing the benefits of socialism.

>15 kac522: Thanks for the clarification. I incorrectly assumed Pygmalion was a book.

>16 kjuliff: No problem. The original play is interesting for its time because of how it explores class and language.

>17 kac522: I’ve never read a play, but my parents were in various repertory groups and I remember many a boring afternoon and evening sitting through rehearsals, bored out of my mind. Well that’s not true, I’m not counting Shakespeare plays, but apart from his.

>17 kac522: well, its a play written in book form; the 'book' does exist but its a script for theatre

I will try something other than Pygmalion but don't know what yet.

I have read Mrs Warren's Profession. This play, first performed in 1902, deals with bold themes for the time, with the title character a former prostitute and now owner of a brothel which is a successful business; none of this is explicitly stated, but the inferences are clear. There were some sharp dramatic scenes, after a slow start in what came across to me as a rather inconsequential Act I.

I read The Devil's Disciple. This was a simple play in 3 acts. The protagonist is known to be anti-religion??? However, in the end, we do see that his heart is not all black. Meh........100 pages 2.5 stars

>22 Tess_W: I might read another of his plays before the end of the month, if it fits into my other reading plans.

I started Shaw on Music, a selection of Shaw's writings on music and musical performance collected by Eric Bentley. Shaw was a music critic in the 1890s for various publications and most of these selections are from that era. I will be dipping in and out of this one. My edition is an elderly paperback from 1955.

I read "John Bull's Other Island" by GB Shaw (1904) from this collection of Irish plays.

An Englishman and his Irish engineering partner leave London to visit the home town of the Irishman. Although on the surface the plot is about the engineering firm possibly developing land in Ireland, it's really a discussion of the English and Irish in which Shaw manages to satirize and criticize both. The play was not well received when it was written, either by English or Irish audiences, and in later years was highly criticized in Ireland after Independence in the 1920s.

>24 kac522: I ended up reading here and there in Shaw on Music. Most of the essays date from the 1890s, but there are a scattered few up to the 1930s. Shaw adored Wagner, and he shows up in almost every essay, either as a subject or as a comparison to shame lesser beings attempting composition. There are also many essays on opera and opera performances. The most interesting piece was the beginning essay on his own upbringing and musical education. His description of Handel's "Messiah" being sung (badly) by a cast of thousands is memorable. He reviewed several of Paderewski's performances, not altogether positively. There are a few positive reviews: a performance of Mendelssohn's "Elijah"'; The Hallé orchestra of Manchester performing Symphony Fantastique by Berlioz; and a review of a concert by locals in a remote Welsh village which Shaw found charming and surprisingly good.

I also re-read Pygmalion. I read from the Norton Critical edition Shaw: George Bernard Shaw's Plays, which included the Preface and Epilogue written by Shaw. Shaw's original ending is completely different from the movie versions. In Shaw's epilogue he makes it clear that he intends NO romance between Eliza and Higgins. In fact he imagines that Eliza marries Freddy and they set up a flower shop (financed by Colonel Pickering).

I have one last piece of Shaw's to read which is an introduction he wrote to an early 20th c. edition of Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Since I re-read Hard Times this month, I'm curious to see what he has to say about it.