Book description
A tearing, flaring, revivalist drama was how Desmond MacCarthy
described The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet. Set in America s Wild West
and aptly subtitled A Sermon in Crude Melodrama , this single-act play
concerns the conversion of a horse thief desperate to keep the devil
in him and die game. Published in 1909, it brought Shaw into conflict
with the Lord Chamberlain of England, who banned it on the grounds of
alleged blasphemy, and it was twelve years before the play was performed
in a London theatre. In an interview Shaw commented, I am sorry that
Fanny s First Play has destroyed the cherished legend that I am an
unpopular playwright for the first time I have allowed a play of mine
to run itself to death And the worst of it is it will not die. First
performed in 1911, the play is a delightful farce in which Shaw debates
some of his favourite subjects: middle-class morality, marriage, parents
and children and women s rights. And, deliberately concealing his
authorship, Shaw took the opportunity to satirize contemporary drama
critics who, he claimed, do not know dramatic chalk from dramatic
cheese when it is no longer labelled for them.
BERNARD SHAW was born in Dublin in 1856. After his arrival in London
in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform
speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: on Common
Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish
Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman s Guide to Socialism
and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the
British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural
subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre
reviews, which were collected into several volumes such as Music in
London 1890 1894 (3 vols, 1931); Pen Portraits and
Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols,
1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, including
The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and
Cashel Byron s Profession, both published in Penguin s
Bernard Shaw Library.
He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely
associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays
fall into several categories: Plays Pleasant ; Plays Unpleasant ;
comedies; chronicle-plays; metabiological Pentateuch (Back to
Methuselah, a series of plays); and political extravaganzas .
Bernard Shaw died in 1950.
