George Bernard Shaw

My Dear Watson

Bernard Shaw's Letters to a Critic
Herausgeber: Conolly, L. W.

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Over the course of three decades, George Bernard Shaw and theatre critic Malcolm Watson of the Daily Telegraph carried out an extensive correspondence. My Dear Watson brings together in book form the previously unpublished letters from Shaw to Watson (those from Watson to Shaw are no longer extant): letters that are significant for the light they shed on the working relationship between Shaw and one of London's major newspapers. Many of the letters include self-drafted "interviews" with Shaw that Watson was able to use (sometimes with considerable embellishment) in his columns in the Telegraph. The letters reveal not only Shaw's views on his own plays, but also important theatrical initiatives of the time. Shaw's attempts to educate Watson on theatre censorship add new dimensions to Shaw's deep engagement with the controversial issue, while Watson's "interview" with Shaw about anticipated raucous audience behaviour at the opening night of Pygmalion, and Shaw's subsequent thank-you to Watson for his cooperation in trying to establish a "new code of manners in the theatre," speak to Shaw's serious concern about giving actors a fair hearing. All but one of the letters deal with theatrical matters; the exception deals with a personal income tax question that Watson had raised with Shaw and, apart from revealing Shaw's knowledge of British tax legislation, suggests that the professional relationship between the two men had reached a level of comfort and respect that enabled such discussion of personal matters. Shaw's letters to Watson, and the self-drafted interviews that accompanied some of the letters, provide the backbone of the narrative of their relationship. Editor L.W. Conolly has provided relevant context to link the letters, including transcripts of Watson's columns on Shaw. The book also includes full transcripts of, or lengthy extracts from, Daily Telegraph reviews of Shaw's major plays during the years that Watson worked for the paper. The result is a work that sheds significant light not only on one of the English language's greatest playwrights but also on the practice and profession of theatre criticism. "Conolly's editing, notes and references are thorough and illuminating, and his subtle editorial approach and impeccable scholarship make this slim volume highly entertaining as well as informative." --Dr. Anne Wright, The Shavian

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Rock's Mills Press
• Seitenzahl: 112
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. November 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 6mm
• Gewicht: 175g
• ISBN-13: 9781772441833
• ISBN-10: 177244183X
• Artikelnr.: 58285818

Autorenporträt

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint Joan(1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma and Caesar and Cleopatra. Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award. His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished; by the late 1920s he had largely renounced Fabian Society gradualism and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left-he expressed admiration for both Mussolini and Stalin. In the final decade of his life he made fewer public statements, but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion about his works has varied, but he has regularly been rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of English-language playwrights. The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them.