What Kind of Influence did George Bernard Shaw Exert on the Theatre - Essay Example

What kind of influence did George Bernard Shaw exert on the theatre in the second half of the twentieth century Include and analyze at least two plays. George Bernard Shaw was a giant figure within the intellectual, political and theatrical fields in the Twentieth Century. Because he lived so long (into his nineties), his legacy spread throughout a number of different endeavors, but there is a recurring theme throughout all his work. This theme is the fact that each social class serves its own ends, and that the upper class had essentially won over the lower class. It was this theme that dominated some of his most well-known plays such as Major Barbara and Pygmalion, and it was this legacy, as will be argued in this essay, which effected diverse plays in the second half of the 20th Century. The social themes present within Pygmalion and other more or less "political" plays had a profound influence upon a number of different dramas. While political theatre may in many ways be traced to the very beginnings of Western drama in Ancient Greece (Fischer-Lichte, 2005), in recent times it was Shaw who introduced the idea that a play could be both political and entertaining. The influence of Pygmalion is difficult to exaggerate. First, it provided the opportunity for playwrights to use language in a way that they had not been able to before. Shaw provided playwrights working in the late Twenteith Century with an impetus to use language/plot that was considered scandalous. It may seem quaint today, but at the time the fact that Eliza says "not bloody likely (Shaw, 1980) was seen as scandalous and shocking. Characters in proper drama on the West End simply did not swear. Shaw received complaints about the 'swearing' but kept the language in because he said it was the realistic vernacular of the person within that situation (Innes, 1998). The subject matter of Mrs Warren's Professioni (prostitution), especially the fact that it was tackled in a manner which showed the pressures that society puts on women that causes them to become prostitutes, also received a good deal of public criticism. But because Shaw believed in his own plays, and refused to change a word because of the apparently over-sensitive feelings of some, he paved the way for much later playwrights. Take the example of Edward Bond, whose Saved in 1965 was the subject of much controversy because of its language and subject matter. The young, working-class and unemployed people in the play constantly swear because this is just about all they have left within a society that has brutalized them. It was one particular scene, in which the characters stone a baby to death in its baby carriage, which caused the Lord Chamberlain to ask that that subject be cut from the play or the play would be banned. As in Shaw's day, any play put on in London still had to be officially approved by the Lord Chamberlain, a power dating from a 1737 law. Bond, following the Shavian tradition, refused to change that scene - saying that it was an essential part of the play's climax, showing the depths to which the characters had sunk. The Royal Court Theatre became a "private club" in order to stage the play, but the Chamberlain prosecuted the English Stage Company for producing the play even in that location. Shaw was well-known to have as much sense of humor within his life as within his plays, and was always askance at authority that appeared to be arbitrarily used. He would thus have supported Bond's next theatrical event, Early Morning (1967), a tongue-in-cheek play in which Queen Victoria has a lesbian relationship with Florence Nightingale, the princes are Siamese twins, Prince Albert and Disraeli plan a coup throughout and then the whole cast of characters is damned to be cannibalized in Heaven after falling off Beach Head. This play was perhaps designed to incur the wrath of the Lord Chamberlain in virtually every scene. He banned it, the English Stage Company ignored the banned, and the archaic power curtailment of free speech represented by the Lord Chamberlain's ability to censor was repealed the next year in Parliament. Shaw was convinced that drama both could and should have a very real effect within the world, both by the subjects it raised and the manner in which they were presented. While Early Morning is now a seldom-performed satire that appears to very much belong in the 1960's, it had profound effect upon what could be shown on the British stage. It followed on the tradition that Shaw had started so mildly with the "bloody" in Pygmalion. Beyond the use of what might be regarded as controversial language and subject matter, Shaw provided late Twentieth Century playwrights with the ability to be overtly political within their plays. Part of this ability was provided by the fact that Shaw started to write increasingly long and exhaustive "prefaces" to his plays, many of which are longer than the actual plays. For example, the one-act play called The Shewing-up of Blanco Posent (1909) is 29 pages long. However, the preface is 67 pages long. Shaw saw drama as a vehicle for exploring political ideas as much as one for entertainment. He sought, within his often funny and yet erudite prefaces, to explain the themes of his plays more completely. The tendency to make more or less overtly political statements both within plays and in the accompanying materials when they are published, have been taken on by one of the most influential English playwrights of the last half of the Twentieth Century, Caryl Churchill. In a number of plays, including Cloud Nine (1979), Churchill explores her overtly left-wing politics within an engaging and thoughtful framework. Thus Cloud Nine deals with gender and colonization politics, using cross-gender casting to between the two acts - one set in nineteenth century colonial Africa and the other in modern England - to pose a series of questions for the audience. In many of the books in which her plays are published, Churchill often provides introductions and prefaces that seek to explore the issues of the plays more fully. Similar to Shaw, Churchill is in fact more didactic within these non-play writings than within the dramas themselves. In common with perhaps most successful playwrights, Churchill realizes that presenting a play that is completely one-sided in view of its politics might seem rather bland to the audience. The best drama provides questions rather than offering answers for the audience. If Shaw was suspicious of the subservient roles given to women and the lower class within British society at the time he was writing, and says so explicitly within his various Prefaces, in plays such as Pygmalion he offers a more nuanced view. So when Higgins is left essentially alone at the end of the play, there is some doubt as to the "meeting of the classes" that the play appears to have valorized. In the same way, Churchill is very left-wing, but presents a subtle view of desire within Cloud Nine as the title words refer to the orgasmic sense of release that all the characters are searching for, but which none find. This search is somehow beyond the purely political motivation that Churchill claims in her introductions/prefaces. To conclude, George Bernard Shaw was a highly influential playwright, both within his own time and also after he had stopped producing worthwhile work. His political conscience required him to point out what he regarded as the hypocrisies of his time, and his fidelity to his own artistic vision made him refuse to change the language and/or subjects within this plays. Modern playwrights in the latter half of the Twentieth Century owe much to this legacy. ____________________________________ Works Cited Bond, Edward. Saved. Methuen, London: 1977. ------------------. Early Morning, Methuen, London: 1977. ------------------. The Shewing-up of Blanco Posent, Penguin, New York: 1907. Churchill, Caryl. Cloud Nine. Theatre Communications Group, London: 1995. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. Routledge, London: 2005. Innes, Christopher. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1998. Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion. Penguin, London: 1980. ------------------------------. Mrs. Warren's Profession, Penguin, London: 1978. Read More