George Bernard Shaw

When a Salvation Army officer learns that her father, a wealthy armaments manufacturer, has donated lots of money to her organization, she resigns in disgust but ultimately realizes that through wealth, people can help each other.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Great George Street, Westminster, is the address of Doyle and Broadbent, civil engineers. On the threshold one reads that the firm consists of Mr Lawrence Doyle and Mr Thomas Broadbent, and that their rooms are on the first floor. Most of their rooms are private; for the partners, being bachelors and bosom friends, live there; and the door marked Private, next the clerks' office, is their domestic sitting room as well as their reception room for clients. Let me describe it briefly from the point of view of a sparrow on the window sill. The outer door is in the opposite wall, close to the right hand corner. Between this door and the left hand corner is a hatstand and a table consisting of large drawing boards on trestles, with plans, rolls of tracing paper, mathematical instruments and other draughts-man's accessories on it. In the left hand wall is the fireplace, and the door of an inner room between the fireplace and our observant sparrow. Against the right hand wall is a filing cabinet, with a cupboard on it, and, nearer, a tall office desk and stool for one person. In the middle of the room a large double writing table is set across, with a chair at each end for the two partners. It is a room which no woman would tolerate, smelling of tobacco, and much in need of repapering, repainting, and recarpeting; but this it the effect of bachelor untidiness and indifference, not want of means; for nothing that Doyle and Broadbent themselves have purchased is cheap; nor is anything they want lacking. On the walls hang a large map of South America, a pictorial advertisement of a steam-ship company, an impressive portrait of Gladstone, and several caricatures of Mr Balfour as a rabbit and Mr Chamberlain as a fox by Francis Carruthers Gould.

Arms and the Man was George Bernard Shaw's first commercially successful play. It is a comedy about idealized love versus true love. A young Serbian woman idealizes her war-hero fiance and thinks the Swiss soldier who begs her to hide him a terrible coward. After the war she reverses her opinions, though the tangle of relationships must be resolved before her ex-soldier can conclude the last of everyone's problems with Swiss exactitude.The play premiered to an enthusiastic reception. Only one man booed Shaw at the end, to which Shaw replied: "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?"

Caesar and Cleopatra satirizes Shakespeare's use of history and comments wryly on the politics of Shaw's own time, but the undertone of melancholy makes it one of his most affecting plays.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological figure. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913. ---------- Also contained in: - [Collected Plays with their Prefaces: Volume IV](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24714049W) - [Complete Plays with Prefaces: Volume I](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15835450W) - [Four Plays by Bernard Shaw][1] - [Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15241070W/The_Complete_Plays_of_Bernard_Shaw) - [Portable Bernard Shaw](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066402W/The_Portable_Bernard_Shaw) - [Pygmalion and Major Barbara][2] - [Pygmalion and My Fair Lady][3] - [Pygmalion and Related Readings][4] - [Pygmalion and Three Other Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15013904W) - [Pygmalion with Connections](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066164W/Pygmalion_with_Connections) - [Selected Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15241059W) - [Selected Plays with Prefaces](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20644026W) - [Six Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17986328W) [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066032W/Four_Plays_by_Bernard_Shaw [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066354W/Pygmalion_Major_Barbara [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15013928W/Pygmalion_My_Fair_Lady [4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8049503W/Pygmalion_and_Related_Readings

Five linked plays that expound Shaw's philosophy of creative evolution in an extended dramatic parable that progresses through time from the Garden of Edesn to AD 31,920. Cf Encyclopaedia Britannica.

From the book:My dear Walkley: You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are for you to justify. You were of mature age when you made the suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets, made an epoch in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in motion. Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests, I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party. I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility, I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow. No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle of twentieth century tumbrils.

Five linked plays that expound Shaw's philosophy of creative evolution in an extended dramatic parable that progresses through time from the Garden of Edesn to AD 31,920. Cf Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological figure. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913. ---------- Also contained in: - [Collected Plays with their Prefaces: Volume IV](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24714049W) - [Complete Plays with Prefaces: Volume I](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15835450W) - [Four Plays by Bernard Shaw][1] - [Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15241070W/The_Complete_Plays_of_Bernard_Shaw) - [Portable Bernard Shaw](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066402W/The_Portable_Bernard_Shaw) - [Pygmalion and Major Barbara][2] - [Pygmalion and My Fair Lady][3] - [Pygmalion and Related Readings][4] - [Pygmalion and Three Other Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15013904W) - [Pygmalion with Connections](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066164W/Pygmalion_with_Connections) - [Selected Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15241059W) - [Selected Plays with Prefaces](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20644026W) - [Six Plays](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17986328W) [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066032W/Four_Plays_by_Bernard_Shaw [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1066354W/Pygmalion_Major_Barbara [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15013928W/Pygmalion_My_Fair_Lady [4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8049503W/Pygmalion_and_Related_Readings

Arms and the Man was George Bernard Shaw's first commercially successful play. It is a comedy about idealized love versus true love. A young Serbian woman idealizes her war-hero fiance and thinks the Swiss soldier who begs her to hide him a terrible coward. After the war she reverses her opinions, though the tangle of relationships must be resolved before her ex-soldier can conclude the last of everyone's problems with Swiss exactitude.The play premiered to an enthusiastic reception. Only one man booed Shaw at the end, to which Shaw replied: "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?"

Caesar and Cleopatra satirizes Shakespeare's use of history and comments wryly on the politics of Shaw's own time, but the undertone of melancholy makes it one of his most affecting plays.

From the book:My dear Walkley: You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are for you to justify. You were of mature age when you made the suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets, made an epoch in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in motion. Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests, I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party. I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility, I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow. No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle of twentieth century tumbrils.