Bernard Shaw :: essays research papers

George Bernard Shaw is known by many as the most significant English playwright since the seventeenth century. He wrote fifty-seven plays in his lifetime, and a vast majority of them were revolutionary in their themes. On July 26, 1856, George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland. Shaw was the first son of his parents, George and Lucille, but had two sisters upon his arrival. Although they lived in Ireland, the Shaws were Protestants and George Bernard was baptized in the Church of England; however, he was never very religious and never enjoyed attending church. He also did not care much for his formal education, even though he attended many different schools. He started his schooling at the Wesleyan Connexional School and ended his fifteenth year at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. Overall, Shaw’s childhood was an unhappy one. By the age of fifteen, his parents had split up. His mom deserted her husband and left for England to live with her two daughters. In order to support himself, Shaw left school and got a job working as a clerk and cashier for a firm of land agents for nearly found and a half years. During this time, George Bernard took it upon himself to read and visit the theatre as much as possible. At the age of nineteen, Shaw’s sister Agnes died from food poisoning. Saddened by her death, Shaw left London to live with his mother and sister Lucy in hope of becoming a musician or painter. Being the shy young man that he was, he could not find a place in the arts community there. At the age of twenty-four, Shaw decided to establish himself as a writer. When newspapers and magazines repeatedly rejected his articles, he then decided to become a novelist. Although all publishers rejected his first novel, Shaw continued to write and produced four more novels between 1880 and 1883; he found no publisher for any of them. Finally, in 1886, Shaw’s first novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession was published. This novel was very popular, but after publishing his second novel, An Unsocial Socialist, his novel writing career came to an end.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Shaw finally found his specialty around 1885 when William Archer suggested that he became a playwright. The play he is most well known for is Pygmalion. It is a classic play that comes from an ancient myth in which a statue is made of an ideal woman, and by prayer to the gods she is brought to life.