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You never can tell by George Bernard Shaw

You Never Can Tell

Act I
In a dentist’s operating room on a fine August morning in 1896. Not the usual tiny London den, but the best sitting room of a furnished lodging in a terrace on the sea front at a fashionable watering place. The operating chair, with a gas pump and cylinder beside it, is half way between the centre of the room and one of the corners. If you look into the room through the window which lights it, you will see the fireplace in the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece………

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George Bernard Shaw

Mrs warren’s profession by George Bernard Shaw 1894

MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION

Mrs Warren’s Profession has been performed at last, after a delay of only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the triumphant amusement of startling all but the strongest-headed of the London theatre critics clean out of the practice of their profession. No author who has ever known the exultation of sending the Press into an hysterical tumult of protest, of moral panic, of involuntary and frantic confession of sin,…………..

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George Bernard Shaw

The perfect wagnerite: a commentary on the niblung’s ring by Bernard shaw

The perfect wagnerite: a commentary on the niblung’s ring by Bernard shaw

In reading through this German version of my book in the Manuscript of my friend Siegfried Trebitsch, I was struck by the
inadequacy of the merely negative explanation given by me of the
irrelevance of Night Falls On The Gods to the general philosophic scheme of The Ring. That explanation is correct as far as it goes; but, put as I put it, it now seems to me to suggest that the operatic character of Night Falls On The Gods was the result of indifference or forgetfulness produced by the lapse of twenty-five years between the first projection of the work and its completion. ………….

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George Bernard Shaw

An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw

An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw

In the dusk of an October evening, a sensible looking woman of forty came out through an oaken door to a broad landing on the first floor of an old English country-house. A braid of her hair had fallen forward as if she had been stooping over book or pen; and she stood for a moment to smooth it, and to gaze contemplatively—not in the least sentimentally—through the tall, narrow window. The sun was setting, but its glories were at the other side of the house; for this window looked eastward, where the landscape of sheepwalks and pasture land was sobering at the approach of darkness. …

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George Bernard Shaw

A treatise on parents and children by Bernard shaw

A treatise on parents and children by Bernard shaw

Childhood is a stage in the process of that continual remanufacture of the Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force either will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low organisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is immortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than their friends the dogs. ..

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George Bernard Shaw

Man and superman A comedy and a philosophy by bernard shaw

Man and superman A comedy and a philosophy by bernard shaw

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……

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George Bernard Shaw

The shewing-up of blanco posnet by Bernard shaw

The shewing-up of blanco posnet by Bernard shaw

This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic
form. If our silly censorship would permit its performance, it might possibly help to set right-side-up the perverted conscience and re-invigorate the starved self-respect of our considerable class of loose-lived playgoers whose point of honor is to deride all official and conventional sermons. ……

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George Bernard Shaw

O’flaherty v.c.: a recruiting pamphlet by George bernard shaw

O’flaherty v.c.: a recruiting pamphlet by George bernard shaw

It may surprise some people to learn that in 1915 this little play was a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer
seldom likes Irish soldiers; but he always tries to have a certain proportion of them in his battalion, because, partly from a want of common sense which leads them to value their lives less Englishmen do (lives are really less worth living in a poor country), and partly because even the most cowardly Irishman feels obliged to outdo an Englishman in bravery if possible, and at least to set a perilous pace for him,…….

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George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion by Bernard shaw

Pygmalion by Bernard shaw

As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but as equel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach
himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen…..

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George Bernard Shaw

Press cuttings by Bernard shaw

Press cuttings by Bernard shaw

General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the general. There is a telephone on the table. Long silence…….

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George Bernard Shaw

Preface to androcles and the lion: on the prospects of christianity Bernard shaw

Preface to androcles and the lion: on the prospects of christianity Bernard shaw

The question seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.” Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of
his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities and churches and political constitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he has had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name and taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of compliment in that. …..

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George Bernard Shaw

The philanderer by George bernard shaw

The philanderer by George bernard shaw

A lady and gentleman are making love to one another in the drawing-room of a flat in Ashly Gardens in the Victoria district of London. It is past ten at night.The walls are hung with theatrical engravings and photographs–Kemble as Hamlet, Mrs. Siddons as Queen Katharine pleading in court, Macready as Werner (after Maclise), Sir Henry Irving as Richard III (after Long), Miss Ellen Terry, Mrs. Kendal, Miss Ada Rehan, Madame
Sarah Bernhardt, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. A. W.
Pinero, Mr. Sydney Grundy, and so on, but not the
Signora Duse or anyone connected with Ibsen.

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George Bernard Shaw

Overruled Bernard shaw

Overruled Bernard shaw

This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people, innocent of all unconventional views concerning
it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of
people in that position……

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George Bernard Shaw

Misalliance by Bernard shaw

Misalliance by Bernard shaw

Johnny Tarleton, an ordinary young business man of thirty or less, is taking his weekly Friday to Tuesday in the house of his father, John Tarleton, who has made a great deal of money out of Tarleton’s Underwear. The house is in Surrey, on the slope of Hindhead; and Johnny, reclining, novel in hand, in a swinging chair with a little awning above it, is enshrined in a spacious half hemisphere of glass which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond it, a barren but lovely landscape of hill profile with fir trees, commons of bracken and gorse, and wonderful cloud pictures………..

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George Bernard Shaw

Getting married, preface to Bernard shaw

Getting married, preface to Bernard shaw

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into
disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. ………

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George Bernard Shaw

The man of destiny Bernard shaw

The man of destiny Bernard shaw

The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon sun is blazing serenely over the plains of Lombardy, treating the Alps with respect and the anthills with indulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine and oxen in the villages nor hurt by its cool reception in the churches, but fiercely disdainful of two hordes of
mischievous insects which are the French and Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow bridge there;..

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George Bernard Shaw

Major barbara Bernard shaw

Major barbara Bernard shaw

It is after dinner on a January night, in the library in
Lady Britomart Undershaft’s house in Wilton Crescent. A large and
comfortable settee is in the middle of the room, upholstered in dark leather. A person sitting on it [it is vacant at present] would have, on his right, Lady Britomart’s writing table, with the lady herself busy at it; a smaller writing table behind him on his left; the door behind him on Lady Britomart’s side; and a window with a window seat directly on his left. Near the window is an armchair…………

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George Bernard Shaw

John bull’s other island by Bernard shaw

John bull’s other island by Bernard shaw

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……….

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George Bernard Shaw

The inca of perusalem: an almost historical comedietta George bernard shaw

The inca of perusalem: an almost historical comedietta George bernard shaw

I must remind the reader that this playlet was written when its principal character, far from being a fallen foe and virtually a prisoner in our victorious hands, was still the Caesar whose
legions we were resisting with our hearts in our mouths. Many were so horribly afraid of him that they could not forgive me for not being afraid of him: I seemed to be trifling heartlessly with a deadly peril. I knew better; and I have represented Caesar as knowing better himself………….

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George Bernard Shaw

How he lied to her husband by George bernard shaw

How he lied to her husband by George bernard shaw

Like many other works of mine, this playlet is a piece
d’occasion. In 1905 it happened that Mr Arnold Daly, who was then
playing the part of Napoleon in The Man of Destiny in New York,
found that whilst the play was too long to take a secondary place
in the evening’s performance, it was too short to suffice by
itself. I therefore took advantage of four days continuous rain
during a holiday in the north of Scotland to write ……

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George Bernard Shaw

Heartbreak house: a fantasia in the russian manner on english themes by Bernard shaw

Heartbreak house: by Bernard shaw

Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded….

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George Bernard Shaw

Great catherine (whom glory still adores) by George bernard shaw

Great catherine by George bernard shaw l

Exception has been taken to the title of this seeming tofooleryon the ground that the Catherine it represents is not Great Catherine, but the Catherine whose gallantries provide some of
the lightest pages of modern history. Great Catherine, it is said, was the Catherine whose diplomacy, whose campaigns and conquests, whose plans of Liberal reform, whose correspondence with Grimm and Voltaire enabled her to cut such a magnificient figure the eighteenth century…………..

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George Bernard Shaw

Fanny’s first play by Bernard shaw

Fanny’s first play by Bernard shaw

Fanny’s First Play, being but a potboiler, needs no preface. But its lesson is not, I am sorry to say, unneeded. Mere morality, or the substitution of custom for conscience was once accounted a shameful and cynical thing: people talked of right and wrong, of honor and dishonor, of sin and grace, of salvation and damnation, not of morality and immorality…….

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George Bernard Shaw

The doctor’s dilemma Bernard shaw

The doctor’s dilemma Bernard shaw

On the 15th June 1903, in the early forenoon, a medical student, surname Redpenny, Christian name unknown and of no importance, sits at work in a doctor’s consulting-room. He devils for the doctor by answering his letters, acting as his domestic
laboratory assistant, and making himself indispensable generally,
in return for unspecified advantages involved by intimate
intercourse with a leader of his profession, and amounting to an
informal apprenticeship and a temporary affiliation. ……..

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George Bernard Shaw

The devil’s disciple Bernard shaw

The devil’s disciple Bernard shaw l

At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a
prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all
night; and Mrs. Dudgeon’s face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride…….

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George Bernard Shaw

The dark lady of the sonnets by Bernard shaw

The dark lady of the sonnets by Bernard shaw

I had better explain why, in this little _piece d’occasion_, written for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton. First, let me say that I do not contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in Mary’s favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair lady, not of a dark one…….

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George Bernard Shaw

Captain brassbound’s conversion Bernard shaw

Captain brassbound’s conversion Bernard shaw

On the heights overlooking the harbor of Mogador, a seaport on the west coast of Morocco, the missionary, in the coolness of the late afternoon, is following the precept of Voltaire by cultivating his garden. He is an elderly Scotchman, spiritually a little weatherbeaten, as having to navigate his creed in strange waters crowded with other craft but still a convinced son of the Free Church and the North African Mission, with a faithful brown eye, and a peaceful soul. Physically a wiry small-knit man, well tanned, clean shaven, with delicate resolute features and a twinkle of mild humor….

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George Bernard Shaw

Candida by bernard shaw

Candida by bernard shaw

A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair and St. James’s, much less known there than the Paris of the Rue de
Rivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle class life; wide-streeted, myriad-populated; well-served with ugly iron urinals, Radical clubs, tram lines, and a perpetual stream of yellow cars;…………..

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George Bernard Shaw

Caesar and cleopatra by george bernard shaw

Caesar and cleopatra by george bernard shaw

An October night on the Syrian border of Egypt towards the end of the XXXIII Dynasty, in the year 706 by Roman computation, afterwards reckoned by Christian computation as 48 B.C. A great radiance of silver fire, the dawn of a moonlit night, is rising
in the east. ……….

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George Bernard Shaw

Preface to major barbara: first aid to critics Bernard shaw

Preface to major barbara: first aid to critics Bernard shaw

N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not by me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor Gilbert Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into our dramatic literature with all the impulsive power of an original work shortly before Major Barbara was begun…………

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George Bernard Shaw

Augustus does his bit: a true-to-life farce George bernard shaw

Augustus does his bit: a true-to-life farce George bernard shaw

I wish to express my gratitude for certain good offices which Augustus secured for me in January,1917. I had been invited to visit the theatre of war in Flanders by the Commander-in-Chief: an invitation which was, under the circumstances, a summons to the necessary passport and other official facilities for my journey. It happened just then that the Stage Society gave a performance of this little play………

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George Bernard Shaw

Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw

Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw

To the irreverent–and which of us will claim entire exemption from that comfortable classification?–there is something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox criticism toward Bernard Shaw. He so obviously disregards all the canons and unities and other things which every well-bred dramatist is bound to respect that his work is really unworthy of serious criticism (orthodox). Indeed he knows no more about the dramatic art than, according to his own story in “The Man of Destiny,” Napoleon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. ………

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George Bernard Shaw

Annajanska, the bolshevik empress by george bernard shaw

Annajanska, the bolshevik empress by george bernard shaw

ANNAJANSKA is frankly a bravura piece. The modern variety theatre demands for its “turns” little plays called sketches, to last twenty minutes or so, and to enable some favorite performer to
make a brief but dazzling appearance on some barely passable
dramatic pretext. Miss Lillah McCarthy and I, as author and actress, have helped to make one another famous on many serious occasions, from Man and Superman to Androcles; and Mr Charles Ricketts has not disdained to snatch moments from his painting and sculpture to design some wonderful dresses for us…………

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George Bernard Shaw

Androcles and the lion Bernard shaw

Androcles and the lion Bernard shaw

A jungle path. A lion’s roar, a melancholy suffering roar, comes from the jungle. It is repeated nearer. The lion limps from the jungle on three legs, holding up his right forepaw, in which a
huge thorn sticks. He sits down and contemplates it. He licks it.
He shakes it. He tries to extract it by scraping it along the
ground, and hurts himself worse……

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George Bernard Shaw