Welcome back to The Deep Dive, where we take
the sources you share with us, filter out the
noise, and deliver the essential mind -expanding
knowledge you need. Today we are plumbing the
depths of a writer so prolific, so witty, and
so utterly contradictory. He really didn't just
define the role of the public intellectual. He
practically invented it for the entire modern
age. We are deep diving into the life and influence
of George Bernard Shaw. And we should probably
honor his preference right from the start. We
must. Though he was christened George, he insisted
on being known simply as Bernard Shaw. Bernard
Shaw, a fascinating figure whose writing career
stretched from the Victorian era all the way
into the 1950s. And a man who uniquely left his
mark on both the West End stage and, you know,
the political manifesto. It's just astonishing
when you think about that trajectory. This is
a person who produced well over 60 plays. revolutionized
English drama with this radical dose of realism.
And he achieved that ridiculously rare double
feat. The one that connects high literature and
Hollywood spectacle. Winning both the Nobel Prize
in Literature and an Academy Award. I mean, who
does that? Exactly. Indeed. Shaw was so much
more than an Irish playwright and critic. He
was a relentless... Polemicist, a political activist.
His influence really shaped Western theater culture
and especially progressive thought. Oh, absolutely.
Starting in the 1880s and continuing long, long
after his death. When we study Shaw, you're forced
to confront this dual nature of his work. The
dazzling, unforgettable entertainment on one
hand. And then the fierce, uncompromising political
sermonizing he wrapped around it. So our mission
today for you, the learner, is to synthesize
this complex, contradictory identity. We've pulled
together a stack of detailed biographical and
scholarly sources to really try and understand
the man. The man who made even dense, difficult
topics not just palatable, but captivatingly
entertaining. We'll move from the challenging
circumstances of his Dublin birth and the political
transformation he engineered for himself. Into
the groundbreaking realism of his plays. And
then, look. We have to tackle the truly provocative
and often deeply uncomfortable social beliefs
he championed. Right down to alphabet reform
and his controversial support for dictators.
It is the journey of a self -taught outsider
who became the voice of his age. We really need
to look closely at the nuggets in the sources.
For instance, we have to get our heads around
why a man who wrote these passionate socialist
tracks also championed the forced evolution of
humanity through eugenics. It's a huge contradiction.
We're going to trace how his desire to fix the
world led him down some fascinating yet deeply
troubling paths. OK, let's unpack this epic journey.
Let's start at the beginning. So the early years
of Bernard Shaw, they were anything but privileged,
right? Despite his family's background. Well,
that's the key tension right there. He was born
in 1856 in Portobello, Dublin, into what the
sources describe as shabby, genteel poverty.
That phrase is so important. It is. It means
they have the family name, the inherited status,
the heirs and expectations of the gentry. But
none of the money. Absolutely none of the money
to back it up. His father, George Karshaw, was,
well, he was an ineffectual alcoholic, working
irregularly after being pensioned off from a
minor civil service role. So you have this constant
strain between aspiration and reality defining
his entire youth. And what was the domestic atmosphere
like? Emotionally difficult is the short answer.
His mother, Bessie Shaw, she married partly to
escape a tyrannical great aunt, but she came
to deeply resent her husband. And his drinking.
And his drinking. Young Shaw, he didn't endure
physical harshness, but he later said he was
profoundly scarred by her indifference, her lack
of affection. He called his home life not cruel,
but... Emotionally desolate. So if his home was
cold and his education was, by his own account,
a disaster. He hated it. Hated the four schools
he attended. Called them prisons and turnkeys.
So where did he find the resources to become,
well, to become Bernard Shaw? He found it in
music and literature. Right. His mother, Bessie,
she became very close to George John Lee, a charismatic
music teacher. And the sources note their house
was just constantly filled with music. It was
a solace for the young Shaw. And it was through
Lee. and the access he got to Lee's students
who lent him books, that Shaw acquired this thorough
knowledge of music and literature. It basically
compensated for that disastrous formal schooling.
He rejected the structure, but he clearly loved
learning. He did. He quit school at 15 to work
as a junior clerk, rising quickly to head cashier
in a Dublin land firm. Before resigning in 1876.
And that resignation was the real turning point.
At 20, he leaves Ireland for good, for London.
Following his mother and sister who had already
moved there. Right. And he refused to take up
clerical work again. Instead, remarkably, he
was subsidized by his mother for four years while
he just dedicated himself to writing. This was
his university. This was his true university
face, yes. This whole self -education project
in London is legendary. It's where the critical
intellectual Shaw was really forged. It certainly
was. He secured a reader's pass for the British
Museum Reading Room. That was his workshop. He
spent most weekdays there just reading and writing.
Embarking on what biographers call a rigorous
process of self -education. He didn't just read.
He systematically devoured philosophy, political
economy. Building his own intellectual framework
from scratch. But the writing, it didn't immediately
yield results. The sources mentioned these early
literary failures. Oh, yes. his first attempts
at drama were abandoned he wrote five novels
in this early period all rejected all of them
his first completed novel immaturity from 1879
right yeah that one it was considered too grim
by publishers it wasn't actually published until
the 1930s when he was famous enough that you
know anything he wrote was marketable and we
see the origins of his famous persona during
this lean time too absolutely he adopts this
strict lifestyle Becomes a principled vegetarian
in 1881. Initially for economy, but then he maintained
it for life. Right. And he grew his famous beard
to hide facial scars from a smallpox attack.
These pragmatic choices that quickly became iconic
parts of his whole persona. The eccentric intellectual.
So we have the self -taught, struggling vegetarian
writer living off his mother. What was the catalyst?
What turned him from an obscure novelist into
a passionate, radical political activist? That
turning point came in 1882. He went to a lecture
by the political economist Henry George. And
it just gripped him. Utterly gripped him. It
sparked his interest in economic justice, which
led him to read Karl Marx's Das Kapital in 1883.
He came out of that phase deeply committed to
socialism. But he didn't stick with the revolutionary
Marxists at the time. He gravitated toward a
more intellectual circle. That would be the Fabian
Society. He joined in 1884 and he very quickly
became its most persuasive and public voice.
Its most prominent pamphleteer. Exactly. His
first public contribution was the society's first
official manifesto, Fabian tract number two.
And that's where he declared that the system
resulted in the division of society into hostile
classes with large appetites and no dinners at
one extreme and large dinners and no appetites
at the other. It's a powerful summary, isn't
it? So how did that early socialist zeal get
translated into the core Fabian philosophy? Well,
Shaw was instrumental in charting the course
toward pragmatism. He went to meetings of the
British Economic Association, which he ironically
called his closest approach to a university education.
Right. And he moved away from Marxism's call
for immediate violent revolution. He became the
chief apostle of gradualism. The belief that
socialism should be achieved not through upheaval,
but through cautious incremental change. Through
legislation. And this gradual approach relied
on a specific mechanism. Permeation. Permeation.
The Fabian strategy of infiltrating existing
political parties, institutions, the civil service
with socialist ideas. The goal was to subtly
steer society leftward, convincing the ruling
classes of the rational need for reform one law
at a time. It was a strategy based on intellect
and persuasion. perfectly suited to Shaw's style.
And this was all cemented in the influential
Fabian essays in socialism in 1889, which he
edited. He was becoming a serious political force.
And he eventually put these principles into practice
himself. He did, though he often found municipal
politics a bit tedious compared to writing tracks.
I can imagine. In 1897, he served as an uncontested
vestryman for St. Pancras. The sources say he
took his duties very seriously. Health. Public
lighting. Proving he was willing to put his gradualist
philosophy into action on the local level. He
served until the Metropolitan Borough of St.
Pancras was formed in 1899. And before we shift
to the theater, a quick note on his personal
life. After a major health breakdown from overwork,
he marries Charlotte Payne Townsend in 1898.
Charlotte, a wealthy Anglo -Irish woman in the
Fabian Circle. The sources suggest the marriage
was entirely felicitous in terms of compatibility.
But it's widely believed to have been unconsummated.
A source of endless speculation. Crucially, her
wealth gave Shaw the financial freedom he needed
to write without commercial pressure. And in
1906, they established their country home, Shaw's
Corner, where he lived for the rest of his life.
That stability was vital. It was everything for
his dramatic output. Okay, so the political ideals
were settled, the critical mind was honed, and
the financial foundation was set. Did this stability
finally free him to start building the new English
theater he dreamed of? Absolutely. The transition
from critic to playwright was a conscious campaign.
It was a political act as much as an artistic
one. And he was profoundly influenced by the
Norwegian playwright. Henrik Ibsen. He dedicated
himself to introducing a powerful new realism
in the English language drama, fundamentally
disrupting the stale conventions of the Victorian
stage. He saw the stage not as just a place for
entertainment, but as a kind of legislative chamber.
Exactly. His plays were explicitly designed to
be vehicles for his ideas. Political, social,
philosophical. He wanted to challenge bourgeois
morality. And he used his critical platform brilliantly
to prepare the way. From 1895 to 18... as the
theater critic for the Saturday Review. Writing
as GBS. And he did not mince words. He demanded
theater of real ideas and true characters. He
was a revolutionary critic. He campaigned relentlessly
against melodrama, against hypocrisy. He basically
laid out the blueprint for the very dramas he
was about to write himself. Saying he had to
manufacture the evidence to support his case.
He needed plays that actually discussed things
that mattered and since they didn't exist. He
had to write them. And that manufacturing process
started with his notoriously provocative Plays
Unpleasant. Why that title? Because they address
subjects that the comfortable, middle -class
audience did not want to confront. Widowers'
houses. Slum landlords. And the complicity of
the respectable class in poverty. The Flanderer
was a satire on new sexual ethics. And then there
was the most challenging one, Mrs. Warren's profession.
This play, written in 1893. was a searing indictment
of the entire social structure. I mean, it exposed
Mrs. Warren's literal profession, a prostitute
and brothel owner. But Shaw made it clear her
trade was just a symptom. It was a metaphor for
a wider prostituted society, where all successful
enterprises, whether it's banking or brothel
keeping, were based on economic exploitation.
That public reaction was? Outrage. Complete outrage.
It was deemed so immoral it was banned from public
performance in London until 1925. That ban was
crucial, wasn't it? It cemented his reputation
as this dangerous radical. And it proved his
point. The theater establishment preferred sentimental
lies over uncomfortable truths. After that shock,
he released The Play's Pleasant, which finally
brought him success. Yes. Arms and the Man in
1894 was a breakthrough. It's a delightful mock
Ruritanian comedy that satirizes love, military
honor. He subverted the idea of the heroic soldier.
Introducing characters who are pragmatically
interested in food and comfort, not death and
glory. The press initially hated it, didn't they?
Accused him of sneering at heroism and patriotism.
But the audience loved its wit and cynicism.
The financial success was significant. It earned
him enough to finally resign his last salary
job. It proved you could rate intellectually
challenging plays that were also hugely entertaining.
He followed this up with three plays for Puritans,
focusing on empire and imperialism. Right. The
Devil's Disciple and Caesar and Cleopatra. He's
using historical allegory to talk about contemporary
power. Showing that empire, whether it's Roman
or British, often rests on questionable moral
foundations. And moving into the 20th century,
we hit the royal court era where his dominance
was really established. A golden age for Shaw.
Between 1904 and 1909, the management team of
Vidran and Granville Barker staged an incredible
14 of his plays in just five years. And one of
the biggest talking points of that era was John
Bull's Other Island. A comedy about an Englishman
in Ireland that became a phenomenon. It's famous
for the story that King Edward VII saw it and
laughed so hard he broke his chair. But the content
itself was radical. It was a candid, non -romanticized
assessment of Irish nationalism. Which is precisely
why Yeats in the Abbey Theatre declined to stage
it in Dublin. They were afraid it would cause
affront. Because Shaw refused to treat Ireland
with sentimental reverence. His commitment was
always to truth and political efficacy, which
often superseded national sentiment. This period
also gave us one of his most philosophical works,
Man and Superman. A major text. It was a huge
commercial success, but it was also the primary
vehicle for his philosophical system, which he
called creative evolution. And the play blended
dramatic text with a long printed philosophical
section. The Revolutionist's Handbook. It was
a complex statement on purpose and procreation.
Let's just clarify creative evolution here because
it's essential for his later, more controversial
politics. Right. So creative evolution was Shaw's
attempt to provide a kind of quasi -religious
engine for his socialism. It went beyond simple
Darwinian natural selection. He believed humanity
had to consciously strive toward its own betterment.
Driven by a non -supernatural life force. It
suggested humans should consciously manage their
own destiny, which, as we'll see, dangerously
morphed into support for eugenics. And the thematic
diversity just continued with plays like Major
Barbara. A brilliant exploration of morality,
money, and war. Major Barbara contrasted a Salvation
Army major with her estranged, cynical father.
Who's a massively successful arms manufacturer.
And Shaw doesn't just contrast them. He forced
the audience to realize that the good moral action
of the Salvation Army requires funding and that
money, regardless of its source, holds the ultimate
power. Classic Shavian paradox. And then came
the plays that cemented his international immortality,
Pygmalion and St. Joan. Pygmalion, 1912, a masterful
study of language, class, and social mobility.
It's a comedy, but it deeply explores how your
place in society is determined not just by birth.
But by the language you use, it was a phenomenon.
But he had a constant battle with the actors
and producers who wanted to impose a romantic
happy ending. And that detail, that fight against
the happy ending, tells you everything about
his dedication to ideas over sentiment. He was
so determined to prevent the romance between
Eliza Doolittle and Professor Higgins that he
had to revise the ending, explicitly writing
a postscript to clarify that Eliza marries a
minor character, Freddie. He felt the play was
ruined if the audience thought love triumphed
over intellectual independence. And then St.
Joan in 1923, perhaps his greatest artistic triumph.
Written shortly after Joan of Arc's canonization,
the play received enthusiastic acclaim everywhere.
He treated Joan as a no -nonsense mystic, Protestant,
and nationalist before her time. Stripping away
the sentimental religious veneer. To focus on
her revolutionary individuality and her conflict
with the established church and state. And these
two plays. along with his entire output, led
to that incredible recognition we mentioned at
the top. He achieved something unprecedented.
First, he was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in
Literature. And true to form, he accepted the
distinction but rejected the prize money. Said
it was a life belt thrown to a swimmer who has
already reached the shore. He used the funds
to sponsor the Anglo -Swedish Literary Foundation.
Took the prestige, redirected the cash. And then
came the ultimate collision with the lowbrow
world of entertainment. Exactly. He later provided
the screenplay for the 1938 film of Pygmalion
and subsequently received an Academy Award for
Best Written Screenplay. Which made him the first
person ever to win both a Nobel Prize and an
Oscar. And, entirely predictably, he called the
Oscar an insult. Adding, it was like giving a
statue to the King of England for being king.
Yeah. Yet the sources confirm he did keep the
golden figurine on his mantelpiece. Okay, winning
the Oscar and the Nobel proves he mastered the
stage. But long before that, he was using a different
weapon, the critic's pen. GBS, the unapologetic
witty opinion machine. Let's start with music.
Shaw's criticism was always brilliant, opinionated,
and exceptionally written. As a music critic,
he first wrote as Coro di Bassetto for the star.
A name he chose because he thought it sounded
dashing, despite disliking the instrument. Right.
He later wrote as GBS for the world. So what
were his main campaigns in the world of classical
music? He was a fierce polemicist. His biggest
campaign was promoting the music of Richard Wagner,
whom he saw as a revolutionary. And conversely,
he waged war on the conservative establishment
of Brahmsian composers in England. He saw them
as creatively stagnant. He also attacked performance
conventions, insisting on smaller professional
choruses over huge amateur choirs and Handel,
and campaigning against opera being sung in languages
unknown to the audience. He demanded clarity
and integrity. Always. And he brought that same
relentless drive into his drama criticism. He
championed Ibsen. He praised Oscar Wilde, whom
he called our only thorough playwright. Appreciating
Wilde's witty play with the established form.
And then there's Shakespeare. His relationship
with the Bard was famously and deliberately complicated.
He insisted on spelling his name Shakespeare.
And he famously claimed, With the single exception
of Homer, there is no eminent writer whom I can
despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare
when I measure my mind against his. That quote
is often taken as evidence he hated Shakespeare,
but that wasn't the whole story, was it? Not
at all. He immediately followed that up by saying,
but I am bound to add that I pity the man who
cannot enjoy Shakespeare. So his main targets
were not the plays themselves. No, it was the
bardolaters, the uncritical worshippers of Shakespeare,
and crucially the actors and directors who, in
his view, butchered the texts with insensitive
cuts and sentimental productions. For Shaw, theater
was a living, practical enterprise, not a holy
text. Exactly. He even wrote three plays incorporating
Shakespearean themes, so he couldn't actually
leave the subject alone. This inherent drive
to provoke, to challenge. It defined his political
activity, especially when the world collapsed
into war. Let's start with WWI. When the First
World War broke out, Shaw authored the contentious
tract Common Sense about the war. where he argued
controversially that all warring nations were
equally culpable. Which must have been immediately
toxic in the fervent patriotic atmosphere of
the time. It was career damaging. Biographers
note his appearance at any public event caused
the instant departure of many of those present.
He was ostracized. He was being logical when
the public demanded pure emotion. It was the
lowest point of his popularity. So how did he
recover his standing? Well, his propaganda skills
were eventually recognized as too valuable to
ignore. In 1917, Field Marshal Haig invited him
to visit the Western Front. And his resulting
10 ,000 word report was well received. It focused
with his characteristic clarity on the human
element of the soldier's life. It began the slow
process of rehabilitating his public image. Shifting
to Ireland, he was an advocate for home rule,
but remained deeply skeptical of violent action.
He was a gradualist at heart. The Easter Rising
in 1916 surprised him. And he expressed horror
at the summary execution of the rebel leaders.
A colossal political blunder, he argued. He was
dismayed by the 1921 partition, but he maintained
an admiration for effective, strong leadership.
Which brings us to his meeting. with Michael
Collins. Yes. In 1922, shortly before Collins's
death, Shaw met him and was immensely impressed
by his effectiveness. He wrote to Collins's sister,
saying he rejoiced in Collins's memory, refusing
to snivel over his valiant death. That admiration
for strong, decisive action is the emotional
bridge to the truly controversial period of his
life, isn't it? It is. This is the core of the
moral challenge for any admirer of Shaw. In the
late 1920s and 30s, his disillusionment with
the slow pace of Fabian democracy led him to
an unnerving admiration for authoritarian leaders.
But wait, isn't that a massive contradiction?
How does the man who dedicated his life to gradualism
suddenly embrace Mussolini and Stalin? That's
the key question. The sources suggest his admiration
stems from a philosophical failure of the pragmatic
idealist. He saw that democracy in the interwar
period was bogged down in inefficiency. He became
desperate for leaders who could simply get things
done. So he welcomed Mussolini's accession in
1922, calling him the right kind of tyrant. In
the face of what he called indiscipline and muddle,
this flirtation with authoritarian regimes was
rooted in his belief that the ends A stable,
socialist -leaning society justified the means.
Even if the means were dictatorial, and the most
egregious example was his support for the Soviet
Union. He visited the USSR in 1931 and met Stalin,
his assessment. Alarmingly uncritical, he described
Stalin benignly as a Georgian gentleman with
no malice in him. He uncritically championed
the Soviet regime throughout the 1930s, even
supporting the Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact. And
this political blindness extended to Hitler,
too. Though his principal admiration was for
Stalin, he did praise Hitler as a very remarkable
man, a very able man, primarily for his ability
to mobilize public will. He was drawn to power
and efficacy above all else, tragically failing
to recognize the moral catastrophe these men
represented. And this intellectual failure is
impossible to separate from his major political
treatise of the era and his deeply unsettling
social ideas, particularly eugenics. His manifesto
during this time was The Intelligent Woman's
Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Yes, his magnum
opus political treatise. Hailed at the time,
but later critics found it rambling and outdated.
And central to this thought, linking back to
man and Superman, was creative evolution, which
had now metastasized into his version of eugenics.
That's a painful truth. Shaw's version of eugenics
was the belief in, essentially, purposeful human
breeding. He argued that if we can breed animals
for specific traits, we should apply the same
rational principles to humans to improve the
species. And this thinking led to the most controversial
statements of his entire career. Give us the
most critical, chilling statements. By 1933,
in the preface to his play On the Rocks, he made
the notorious declaration that if we desire a
certain type of civilization and culture, we
must exterminate the sort of people who do not
fit into it. And five years later, in Liberty
Magazine, he stated even more explicitly, there
are many people in the world who ought to be
liquidated. How do we reconcile that specific...
chilling language exterminate liquidated with
the witty, humane reputation he cultivated for
decades. That is the ultimate interpretive dilemma,
and critical opinion is sharply divided. Some
scholars argue these comments must be understood
in the context of his theatrical persona as the
outrageous buffoon. The idea that he was trolling
the public for a good cause, a purposeful prank.
Exactly. Using hyperbolic language to shock the
conventional audience into taking social reform
seriously. But there is a powerful opposing view.
That this wasn't irony, but evidence that the
Shavian outlook had become passé and contemptible.
They see his extreme language as a genuine reflection
of his philosophical impatience. The radical
idealist who believed so deeply in the goal of
creative evolution that he became blinded to
the monstrous implications of his own methods.
And crucially, that language was published and
promoted at the exact moment actual fascist regimes
were putting extermination into horrifying practice.
That parallel is unavoidable. Regardless of Shaw's
personal intent, the sources confirm these incredibly
inflammatory quotes were a consistent feature
of his public commentary in the 1930s, casting
a dark shadow over his otherwise progressive
career. It's the point where his desire for efficiency
and reform fundamentally compromised his humanitarian
ideals. It's remarkable to think this man was
already past 70 during that turbulent, controversial
period. The sheer tireless energy, how did he
navigate his final decades? The 1930s were marked
by extensive travel. He discovered that ocean
liners offered him a unique source of peace and
quiet, allowing him to write plays like The Millionaires
while at sea. In 1933, he finally visited the
United States. lecturing to a massive audience
in the Metropolitan Opera House. He'd previously
been deeply critical of the U .S., calling it
that awful country, and he remained characteristically
unimpressed by Hollywood. He seemed determined
to offend the majority of his audience throughout
his life. Did that continue in his later works?
Absolutely. His only subsequent major piece of
fiction, The Adventures of the Black Girl in
Her Search for God, caused immediate offense
to some Christian groups and was outright banned
in Ireland. The drive to question and provoke
never left him. What about the Second World War?
He was in his 80s when it started. The war actually
saw a massive revival of his earlier classic
plays in the West End, featuring huge stars like
Laurence Olivier. The Shaws lived full -time
at Shaw's Corner throughout the Blitz. He continued
writing journalism prolifically. His final years
were marked by loss and continued refusal of
establishment honors. Tragically, his wife, Charlotte,
died in 1943. He continued to write into his
90s, though his final works were often criticized
as rambling. In 1946, he declined the order of
merit. Believing an author's true merit is determined
only by the posthumous verdict of history. He
lived until 1950, dying at the remarkable age
of 94. What led to his death? He died of renal
failure, precipitated by serious injuries from
a fall, while pruning a tree at Shaw's Corner.
A fittingly active end for such an energetic
man. His ashes, mixed with Charlotte's, were
scattered there. The sources spend significant
time detailing his final, incredibly specific
and utterly quixotic gesture, the will. It's
the ultimate Shavian prank on posterity. He was
a lifelong spelling reformer, and his will stipulated
that most of his remaining assets were to form
a trust dedicated to the fundamental reform of
the English alphabet. He wanted to replace the
26 letters with a new phonetic version of 40
letters, the Shavian alphabet. Precisely. He
believed current spelling was illogical and hindered
learning. However, his drafting of the will was
flawed, and the courts initially ruled the trust
void. A reformer even after death fighting the
system. Indeed. The final resolution was an out
-of -court agreement that secured a lesser sum,
£8 ,300 for the cause. The bulk of his massive
fortune ultimately went to the British Museum,
Proidier, and the National Gallery of Ireland.
So what remains of this monumental figure today?
What is the Chavian legacy? The sources consistently
rate him as second only to Shakespeare among
British dramatists. Scholars credit him with
pioneering intelligent theater, the theater of
ideas. He fundamentally changed what an audience
expected when they entered a theater. He forced
them to think. And his influence permeated subsequent
generations of writers. Noel Coward, Eugene O
'Neill. O 'Neill said Shaw opened doors, turned
on lights, and expanded horizons. And more recently,
Tom Stoppard is often called the most Shavian
of contemporary playwrights. The term Shavian
itself has entered the language. But the greatest
irony of his legacy is probably tied back to
his biggest commercial play, Pygmalion. This
is the perfect poetic injustice that encapsulates
his whole career. Despite Shaw's expressed dislike
for musical comedy, which he saw as sentimental
fluff, the adaptation of Pygmalion into the musical
My Fair Lady became a global smash hit. And it
generated several million pounds for the Shaw
estate. More money, in fact, than all his plays
and publications put together during his lifetime.
The man who disdained sentiment, rejected the
happy ending, and fought for intellectual purity
ended up funding his entire literary estate through
the success of a genre he hated. complete with
a romantic happy ending he explicitly wrote against.
It's the ultimate failure of the author to control
the cultural reception of his work. That final
assessment from the Times literary supplement
obituary summarizes him perfectly, doesn't it?
That he was no originator of ideas, but an insatiable
adopter and adapter. It is the final, sharpest
nugget of knowledge. He wasn't inventing entirely
new philosophies. Instead, he took the radical
thoughts of his forerunners. Nietzsche, Marx,
Dickens, Wagner, and acted as an incomparable
intellectual prestigitator. He amplified, clarified,
and carried those ideas with his inextinguishable
wit, so far beyond their original sources that
they came to the masses with the vitality of
the newly created. He was a unique force, blending
entertainment with relentless social engineering.
Hashtag, hashtag, outro. So to synthesize the
monumental figure of Bernard Shaw. You have to
see him as the self -taught Dubliner who transformed
himself into this political and cultural force.
By blending serious economics with unforgettable
prose. He was defined by his commitment to socialism,
starting with Fabian Schreck No. 2, and his deep
yet dangerously pragmatic relationship with power.
He morphed from advocating gradualism to expressing
that alarming admiration for dictators like Stalin.
Men who possess the immediate force to enact
sweeping change. And that ultimately is what
he was always aiming for, change. The necessity
of human improvement through proactive effort.
He wasn't interested in making you comfortable.
He was forcing you to confront uncomfortable
social truths, whether it was the root of poverty
in widowers' houses or the morality of war in
Major Barbara. His wit was his weapon, used ruthlessly
to challenge assumptions and to make the argument
so entertaining you couldn't look away. He absolutely
believed in the constant necessity of upending
established norms for the sake of progress, even
if it meant adopting radical and unsettling methods.
So as we close this deep dive, let's leave you
with this provocative thought based on Shaw's
own restless desire for radical reform. Shaw
once wrote that after six years of service, the
Borough Council should be abolished. Right. So
given his lifelong quest for societal restructuring
and his later flirtation with authoritarianism
that favored bold, immediate action, consider
this. If Bernard Shaw were alive today. What
modern institution, seemingly immutable, be it
a major social media giant, the structure of
global finance, or the established political
media ecosystem, what would he argue must be
liquidated for the sake of creative evolution?
And why would we find his proposal simultaneously
hilarious because of his signature wit and deeply
unsettling because of its sheer radical purpose?
Something to mull over until our next deep dive.