Born: 26 July 1856
Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
Died: 2 November 1950 (natural causes)
Best Known As: The author of Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw was a superstar playwright and tart-tongued literary personality of the early 20th century. He first gained fame as a music critic under the pen name 'Corno di Bassetto,' but by then had already begun writing essays, political pamphlets, books and (eventually) plays. Among his most famous plays are Arms and the Man (1894), Major Barbara (1905), Saint Joan (1923), and Pygmalion (1914). The last was adapted 50 years later into the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. (Shaw also won an Oscar in 1938 for his screenplay for a non-musical movie version of Pygmalion.) For all these successes, Shaw is still better known for his famously large ego and sometimes prickly personality: He was a vegetarian and teetotaler, a radical socialist and social reformer, and a noted caustic wit who remained active until his death at age 94.
Shaw won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature. He remains the only person to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. (American politician Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and also starred in the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, but was not himself awarded an Oscar for the film)... Shaw's ascerbic style is sometimes described with the adjective Shavian.
The most famous and possibly the most controversial of 20th‐century English dramatists was described by the Times in its review of the first major American production of Arms and the Man as “the eccentric and able London socialist, essayist, music critic, Ibsenite, and wearer of gray flannel clothes.” With occasional shadings of difference, critical opinion of Shaw in America has remained much the same ever since. Especially in early years his subjects offended many playgoers and critics, dealing as they did with such matters as prostitution, religious hypocrisy, slum landlordism, profiteering, and, of course, socialism.-
He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion, respectively. Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honors, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.
======
THE NEW WOMAN
Mrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Warren, a prostitute, described by Shaw as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman," and her "prudish" daughter, Vivie.[1] Mrs Warren is a middle-aged woman whose Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie, is horrified to discover that her mother's fortune was made managing high-class brothels. The two strong women make a brief reconciliation when Mrs Warren explains her impoverished youth, which originally led her into prostitution. Vivie forgives her mother until learning that the highly profitable business remains in operation.
Shaw said he wrote the play "to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together."
======================
PEACE WITH HONOUR
49 BC Cicero "Until we know whether we are to have peace without honour or war with its calamities, I have thought it best to for them to stay at my house in Formiae and the boys too."[3]
ca. 1145 Theobald II, Count of Champagne "Peace with honor" written in a letter to King Louis VII of France.[4]
1607 William Shakespeare "That it shall hold companionship in peace/With honour, as in war."[5]
1775 Edmund Burke "The superior power may offer peace with honor and with safety....But the concessions of the weak are concessions of fear." [6]
1878 Benjamin Disraeli (British prime minister) "Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace—but a peace I hope with honour, which may satisfy our sovereign and tend to the welfare of our country."[7] Said upon returning from the Conference of Berlin. Wags paraphased this as "Peace with honour -- and Cyprus too."
1916 Wilson Business Men's League "Wilson and peace with honor or Hughes with Roosevelt and War?" Part of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's reelection campaign.[8]
1938 Neville Chamberlain (British prime minister) "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is 'peace for our time.' Go home and get a nice quiet sleep." Said upon returning from the Munich Conference.[9]
1973 Richard Nixon "I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia."[2]
ART FOR ART'S SAKE
- a slogan translated from the French l’art pour l’art, which was coined in the early 19th century by the French philosopher Victor Cousin. The phrase expresses the belief held by many writers and artists, especially those associated with Aestheticism, that art needs no justification, that it need serve no political, didactic, or other end.
The concept was adopted by a number of French, British and American writers and artists, and by proponents of the Aesthetic Movement such as Walter Pater. It was a rejection of the accustomed role of art, since the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century, in the service of the state or official religion, and of Victorian-era moralism. It opened the way for artistic freedom of expression in the Impressionist movement and modern art. The slogan continued to be raised in defiance of those, including John Ruskin and the more recent Communist advocates of socialist realism who thought that the value of art lay in serving some moral or didactic purpose. The concept of “art for art’s sake” continues to be important in contemporary discussions of censorship, and of the nature and significance of art.
Note: none of the above is original; all are quoted from articles available on the internet
