When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, the world lost one of its most well-known authors, a revolutionary who was as renowned for his personality as he was for his humour, humanity, and rebellious thinking. He remains a compelling figure who deserves attention not only for how influential he was in his time, but for how relevant he is to ours. This collection sets Shaw's life and achievements in context, with forty-two scholarly essays devoted to subjects that interested him and defined his work. Contributors explore a wide range of themes, moving from factors that were formative in Shaw's life, to the artistic work that made him most famous and the institutions with which he worked, to the political and social issues that consumed much of his attention, and, finally, to his influence and reception. Presenting fresh material and arguments, this collection will point to new directions of research for future scholars.

The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw is an indispensable guide to one of the most influential and important dramatists of the theatre. The volume offers a broad-ranging study of Shaw with essays by a team of leading scholars. The Companion covers all aspects of Shaw's drama, focusing on both the political and theatrical context, while the extensive illustrations showcase productions from the Shaw Festival in Canada. In addition to situating Shaw's work in its own time, the Companion demonstrates its continuing relevance, and applies some of the newest critical approaches. Topics include Shaw and the publishing trade, Shaw and feminism, and Shaw and the Empire, as well as analyses of the early plays, discussion plays and history plays.

Mr. Whitefield has recently died, and his will indicates that his daughter Ann should be left in the care of two men, Roebuck Ramsden and Jack Tanner. Ramsden, a venerable old man, distrusts John Tanner, an eloquent youth with revolutionary ideas, saying "He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad". In spite of what Ramsden says, Ann accepts Tanner as her guardian, though Tanner doesn't want the position at all. She also challenges Tanner's revolutionary beliefs with her own ideas. Despite Tanner's professed dedication to anarchy, he is unable to disarm Ann's charm, and she ultimately persuades him to marry her, choosing him over her more persistent suitor, a young man named Octavius Robinson.

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright, essayist, novelist and short story writer and wrote more than 60 plays. He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Academy Award (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (an adaptation of his own play) This edition includes: Novels: Cashel Byron's Profession An Unsocial Socialist Love Among The Artists The Irrational Knot Plays: Widowers' Houses The Philanderer Mrs. Warren's Profession The Man Of Destiny Arms And The Man Candida You Never Can Tell The Devil's Disciple Captain Brassbound's Conversion Caesar And Cleopatra The Gadfly or The Son of the Cardinal The Admirable Bashville Man And Superman John Bull's Other Island How He Lied To Her Husband Major Barbara Passion, Poison, And Petrifaction The Doctor's Dilemma The Interlude At The Playhouse Getting Married The Shewing-Up Of Blanco Posnet Press Cuttings Misalliance The Dark Lady Of The Sonnets Fanny's First Play Androcles And The Lion Overruled Pygmalion Great Catherine The Music Cure O'Flaherty, V. C. Macbeth Skit Glastonbury Skit The Inca Of Perusalem Augustus Does His Bit Skit For The Tiptaft Revue Annajanska, The Bolshevik Empress Heartbreak House Back To Methuselah War Indemnities What do Men of Letters Say? On Socialism The Miraculous Revenge Quintessence Of Ibsenism Basis of Socialism The Transition to Social Democracy The Impossibilities Of Anarchism The Perfect Wagnerite Letter to Beatrice Webb The New Theology Memories of Oscar Wilde The Revolutionist's Handbook And Pocket Companion Maxims For Revolutionists The New Theology How to Write A Popular Play Memories of Oscar Wilde George Bernard Shaw The Quintessence of Shaw Old and New Masters...

When an interviewer asked Bernard Shaw whether, "speaking personally", he would prefer to see the English and Americans "become drama and variety fans as of old, rather than movie fans", Shaw replied, "Speaking personally, I should prefer to see them become Shaw fans". With his customary wit and quite often with remarkable prescience, Shaw began a dialogue on cinema that ran almost from the infancy of the industry in 1908 until his death in 1950. Bernard F. Dukore presents the first collection of Bernard Shaw's writings and oral statements about cinema. Of the more than one hundred comments Dukore has selected, fifty-nine -- more than half -- are new to today's readers. Twelve are previously unpublished, one is published in full for the first time, and forty-six appear in a collected edition of Shaw's writings for the first time since their publication in newspapers and magazines. Very early in the life of cinema, Shaw perceived that as an invention, movies would be more momentous than the printing press because they appealed to the illiterate as well as the literate, to the manual laborer at the end of an exhausting day as well as to the person with more leisure. He predicted that cinema would form people's minds and shape their conduct. He recognized that cinema's "colossal proportions make mediocrity compulsory" by leveling art and life down to the blandest morality and to the lowest common denominator of potential audiences throughout the world. By 1908, Shaw was familiar with experiments synchronizing movies and sound. When talkies arrived, he discerned that they would precipitate major changes in acting, writing, and economics. He also saw how they would affect live theatre:"The theatre may survive as a place where people are taught to act", he said in 1930, "but apart from that there will be nothing but 'talkies' soon". At that time, few people in the theatrical profession were making such prophecies, at least not in public.

A dramatic comedy combines high comedy with social commentary in deflating misconceptions about love and warfare.