LIFE:

Born in Dublin from a poor family of English origin. His father was a state employee but after having lost his job plays the street trader. His mother was dedicated to music and song. When he's 20 he reaches his mother in London trying, among numerous economic difficulties and uncertainties, his own road.
After having written run-of-the-mill novels (then collected with the title Novels of my Nonage) he becomes musical critic for the magazine "The Hornet" and, later, "The Star", becoming very fond of Wagner music and writing the essay The perfect Wagnerite.
In 1891 he writes The Quintessence of Ibsenism exposing and defending the theories of the Norwegian dramatist of a theatre that was "a forges of thoughts, a guide of conscience, a commentary of the social conduct, an armour against desperation and stupidity and a temple for the elevation of the man", ideas that will be the base of all his dramatic production.
He marries the rich Irish Charlotte Payne-Townshand and begins to dedicate totally to theatre writing tens of really successful plays for the Royal Court Theatre.
In 1925 he is awarded with the Nobel prize for literature.
Gradually his works begin to be more and more shining dialectically but more and more poor of events.
He dies in his house gardens while he was chasing a butterfly.

SUGGESTED WORKS:

Pygmalion, 1914
Perhaps his most famous play, in Pygmalion Shaw faces the fundamental topics of his controversy: language, social discrimination, welfarism and women emancipation.
Henry Higgins, eccentric university phonetics professor, bets of being able to educate to a good pronounce the young florist Eliza Doolittle, who speaks an atrocious cockney, until making her considered a duchess. A rigorous education begins to which will contribute also Higgins' mother. In her house Eliza becomes aquatinted with Freddy Eynsford Hill that is really fascinated by her. Finally Higgins introduces her to en embassy party, passing her of as a Rumanian duchess. But Eliza does not want ever to be treated as a guinea-pig and announces she will marry Freddy.

OTHER WORKS:

Other Show's works are: Candida, 1894-95, Saint Joan, 1923 - perhaps his masterpiece - and The Apple Cart, 1929.

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