George Bernard Shaw an Irish playwright, critics, polemicist and political activist was born in 26 July 1856and was died in 2 November 1950.he wrote more than 6o play including “Man and Superman”, “Pygmalion”,and “Sanint joan”.His influence on western culture ,politics and Theatre started from the 1880s to death and later. He was born in Dublin and moved to London in 1876
Shaw was born in a lower middle-class family as a youngest child and only one son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth. His father George Carr Shaw was only an unsuccessful member in hi family all other cousins were highly successful member in Ireland .Shaw married Bassie Gurly in 1852 . She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty".
By the time of Shaw’s birth his mother was in affair with George John Lee, his biological father. Young Shaw suffered no harness from his mother, but he later recalled that her indifference lad lack of affection hurt him deeply. He explained that school was like a prison where the parent sends their children just to be relief or to prevent disturbing.
The year 1880 was the turning point for the Shaw ‘s life both from personally and professionally. he began his career as a critic. he had affair with a widow Jenney, she became the part of his success. Shaw’s sex life was always a debate subject among his co-workers
He kept on writing play although they were successful at that time. His first play which helped him financially was Arms and The Man
But the press found the play overlong and accused him a mediocrity, sneering at heroism and patriotism and blamed him copying W. S Gilberts style. He had already earned his followers so he earned $341 royalties.
During the first decade of twentieth century, Shaw secured a film reputation as a playwright.
Shaw later wrote that William Butler Yeats, who had requested the play, "got rather more than he bargained for ... It was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland."
After the First World War began in August 1914, Shaw furnish his territory Common Sense About the War, which argued that the warring nations were equally culpable. Such a view was anathema in an atmosphere of fervent patriotism, and offended many of Shaw's friends; Ervine records that "is appearance at any public function caused the instant departure of many of those present."
The substance of Shaw's political legacy is uncertain. In 1921 Shaw's former collaborator William Archer, in a letter to the playwright, wrote: "I doubt if there is any case of a man so widely read, heard, seen, and known as yourself, who has produced so little effect on his generation." Margaret Cole, who considered Shaw the greatest writer of his age, declared never to have understood him. She thought he worked "immensely hard" at politics, but essentially, she surmises, it was for fun—"the fun of a brilliant artist". After Shaw's death, Pearson wrote: "No one since the time of Tom Paine has had so definite an influence on the social and political life of his time and country as Bernard Shaw."