Bernard Shaw

"Disgusted and bored by the trend for titillation and sham on the London stage, Shaw wrote these plays both to educate and entertain his audiences. In The Devil's Disciple, a clergyman turned soldier and the Shavian ideal of a Puritan hero - 'like all genuinely religious men, a reprobate and an outcast' - willingly risks his life for a stranger. Caesar and Cleopatra, a brilliant satire on contemporary Britain, contains an utterly unexpected portrait...

Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor who falls in love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in...

The world of George Bernard Shaw -- Introduction / by John A. Bertolini -- Preface to Mrs. Warren's profession : mainly about myself -- Mrs. Warren's profession -- Preface to Candida : plays pleasant -- Candida -- Preface to The devil's disciple : three plays for Puritans -- The devil's disciple -- Shaw's notes to The devil's disciple -- Epistle dedicatory to Man and superman -- Man and superman -- Excerpts from The revolutionist's handbook and pocket...