Answer the Questions. 1. What did Oscar Wilde think to be of primary importance both in life and art?

1. What did Oscar Wilde think to be of primary importance both in life and art?

2. What qualities of Victorian society did he attack?

3. Where did he spend his early years?

4. Where did he study?

5. What was his first true achievement?

6. What is Wilde's only novel about?

7. What arc his most important works?

8. What did he ridicule in his plays?

9. What was he imprisoned for?

10.What came from his prison experience?

11. Where did he go after his release?

12.Where did he die?

8.5. George Bernard Siiaw George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950), an Insh-boni drama­tist, critic, and essayist, ranks as one of the most important literary figures of the 1900's. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.

Shaw disliked the romantic and sentimental Victorian theater of the late 1800's. Influenced by the revolutionary social dramas of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, he viewed the theater as a

platform for supporting social reform. In a remarkable career that covered nearly 60 years, he wrote over 50 plays. Most of his plays are comedies. In Shaw's comedies, a debate on ethics is as impor­tant as such traditional dramatic values as characterization and ap­pealing to the emotions of an audience.

Shaw was a mischievous and original thinker. He defended women's rights, became a vegetarian, and promoted a simplified alphabet. He defended his opinions in a series of essays, many pub­lished as prefaces to his plays. Like the plays, the essays are charm­ing for their brilliance and wit, even when the causes they argue no longer seem daring or unconventional.

Early life. Shaw was born in Dublin on July 26,1856. He moved to London in 1876 and became a successful music critic. In 1884, he helped found the Fabian Society, an organization of socialists who believed that political and economic change could be gained through reform. It was for the Fabian Society that Shaw prepared a famous lecture on Ibsen.. This lecture was later published as «The Quintessence of Ibsenism» (1891).

Because of their radical subject matter, Shaw's early plays did not become popular immediately in London. His first play, «Widower's Houses» (1892), attacked slum landlords. «Mrs. Warren's Profession», which deals with the causes of prostitution, was written in 1893. But it was not produced until 1902, and then was immediately banned. «Arms and the Man» (1894), an enter­taining antiwar comedy, was only mildly successful when it first opened.

Mature period. Public hostility to Shaw began to disappear after 1904, when his friend Harley Granville-Barker produced 11 of his plays in less than three years at the Royal Court Theatre. These included «Candida» (1895), «The Devil's Disciple» (1897), «Caesar and Cleopatra» (1898), and «Man and Superman» (1903). This last play contains the celebrated scene «Don Juan in Hell», which is often performed as a separate work.

«Man and Superman» introduced Shaw's theory of what he called the «life force». To Shaw, the «life force» was the energy that dominates people biologically. However, when harnessed by human will, the «life force» can lead to a higher, more creative existence. This concept is central to Shaw's most ambitious play, the five-part «Back to Methuselah» (1918-1920), a fable that traces the entire history of humanity. It foresees a curious future for the human race as a new, more intelligent species, but predictable and unexciting.

«Saint Joan» (1923), a drama about the individual in conflict with historical necessity, is widely regarded as Shaw's masterpiece. But some critics prefer «Pygmalion» (1912). This ironic Cinderella story describes how a professor of phonetics (speech sounds) dem­onstrates the absurdity of class distinctions by changing an igno­rant Cockney girl into a counterfeit aristocrat by changing her speech. The play was adapted into the musical «My Fair Lady» (1956). Shaw's other plays include «Major Barbara» (1905), «The Doctor's Dilemma» (1906), «Androcles and the Lion» (1913), and «Heartbreak House» (1919).