George Bernard Shaw(18561950).ppt
George Bernard Shaw（1856-1950）,Teaching objectives:knowing George Bernard Shaws life and important works,Teaching contents:,1.Introduction:his life2.Main works3.Mrs.WarrensProfession3.1 Main characters 3.2 The plot 3.3 The theme 4.Pygmalion,1.Introduction:his Life,George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950)was born in Dublin,the son of a civil servant.His mother was a talented musician.His education was irregular,due to his dislike of any organized training.At the age of 14,after graduating from middle school,Shaw was placed in a land agents office.At 20,he moved to London as a young man(1876),where he devoted much time to self-education and established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society,for which he composed many pamphlets.He began his literary career as a novelist;as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen(The Quintessence of Ibsenism,1891)he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage.,The front of Shaws Corner as it stands today,Shaws career as a dramatist began in 1892 and lasted substantially until 1939,though he wrote his last play when he was over 90.Bernard Shaw is an outstanding realistic dramatist.His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant(1898).Among these,Widowers Houses and Mrs.Warrens Profession(1898)savagely attack social hypocrisy,while in plays such as Arms and the Man(1894)and The Man of Destiny(1897)the criticism is less fierce.Shaw wrote altogether 52 plays.In some of his plays Shaw relentlessly criticizes the evils of the bourgeois society and tears to pieces the masks of gentlemen and ladies.,The movable hut in the garden of Shaws Corner,where Shaw wrote most of his works after 1906,including Pygmalion.,Fast Facts,Name:George Bernard ShawGender:MaleBirth Date:July 6,1856Death Date:November 2,1950Place of Birth:Dublin,IrelandPlace of Death:Ayot St.Lawrence,EnglandNationality:BritishOccupations:playwright,critic,pamphleteer,2.Main works,Widowers Houses(1892)Mrs.WarrensProfession(1898)ManandSuperman(1903)MajorBarbara(1907)Pygmalion(1914),3.Mrs.WarrensProfession,3.1 Main characters Mrs.Warren:a brothel keeper Sir George Crofts:an old aristocrat,Mrs.Warrens partner Vivie:Mrs.Warrens daughter,3.2 The plot,Mrs.Warrens profession is keeping brothels.Sir George Crofts,an old aristocrat,is her partner in this business.Vivie,Mrs.Warrens daughter,is educated in a very moral atmosphere at Cambridge.Upon graduation,she returns home and by accident discovers the source of her mothers income.Her conversations with Mrs.Warren and Sir George Croft reveal the shamelessness of these members of the ruling class.It must be noted,however,that while protesting strongly against bourgeois exploitation and the immorality of the English ruling classes,Shaw points out no corrective.His heroine Vivie simply leaves her mother and,living independently,tries to earn her bread by honest work.Like Shaw,she is under the delusion that piecemeal,petty and gradual reform will eventually do away with the evils of capitalism.,3.3 The theme,Mrs.Warrens Profession is one of the“Plays Unpleasant”.Unpleasant it is to the bourgeois public because Shaw attacked in the play the vices of capitalist society.He shows that underneath bourgeois respectability horrible crimes and corruption are concealed.In this play Shaw accuses the bourgeoisie of making profit by fostering prostitution.,4.Pygmalion,Pygmalion(1913)is a play by George Bernard Shawbased on the Greek myth of the same name.It tells the story of Henry Higgins,a professor of phonetics(based on phonetician Henry Sweet),who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl,Eliza Doolittle,as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette.In the process,Higgins and Doolittle grow close,but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill a young,poor,gentleman.,First American(serialized)publication,Everybodys Magazine,November 1914,Quotations of Bernard Shaw,Behind every successful man,there is a woman and behind every unsuccessful man,there are two.I was born intelligent-education ruined me.Since light travels faster than sound,people appear bright until you hear them speak.Every man should marry.After all,happiness is not the only thing in life.The wise never marry and when they marry they become otherwise.God made relatives;Thank God we can choose our friends.Thepeoplewhogetoninthisworldarethepeoplewhogetupandlookforcircumstancestheywant,andiftheycannotfindthem,makethem,
