60 Fun Facts About George Bernard Shaw

In which city was Shaw born in 1856?

Dublin: Shaw said he owed 'much of the only real education I ever got' to the city's public art gallery, and he remembered it in his will.

Which form of his name did Shaw insist on for the title pages of his plays?

Bernard Shaw: he said nothing enraged him more than to be 'Georged in print', though he happily signed his reviews with all three initials, G.B.S.

About how many plays did Shaw write in his lifetime?

About 60: counts run from fifty to sixty-two; his first was not staged until he was 36, and he was still writing them at 93.

Shaw refused his 1925 Nobel money, which instead funded what?

Swedish translations: Shaw said his readers and audiences already gave him 'more than sufficient money for my needs', so the prize set up a foundation to put Swedish literature into English.

Shaw was the first person to win both a Nobel Prize and what other award?

An Oscar: it came for his 1938 Pygmalion screenplay, and Shaw scoffed that it was 'an insult for them to offer me any honour'.

What did George John Lee, whom Shaw long suspected might be his real father, teach Shaw's mother?

Singing: Lee trained her mezzo-soprano voice and shared a house with the Shaws, and when he left for London she followed him there.

Which organisation did Shaw choose to take over his Hertfordshire house, Shaw's Corner?

The National Trust took the house even though Harold Nicolson, advising it, doubted that Shaw 'will be a great literary figure in 2000 A.D.'

Where did the young Shaw spend most weekdays educating himself after arriving in London?

The British Museum Reading Room was Shaw's university and office in one: with no degree and no job, he wrote his five unsold novels at its desks.

What was Shaw's first completed novel, written in 1879 but not published until the 1930s?

Immaturity repelled every publisher in London, as did the four novels that followed, and that run of failure turned Shaw to journalism and then the stage.

Which lifelong dietary practice did Shaw adopt in 1881?

Vegetarianism: Shaw credited the poet Shelley, 'who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet'.

Why did Shaw grow his famous beard?

He suffered an attack of smallpox in 1881.

Which civil servant did Shaw meet at the Zetetical Society in 1880, beginning a lifelong friendship?

Sidney Webb: Shaw called him 'the ablest man in England' and 'greatly my superior in political knowledge', and the two stayed allies for life.

Before he read Marx, which author of Progress and Poverty turned Shaw to economics with a lecture he heard in 1882?

Henry George: Shaw later wrote that five-sixths of those swept into the socialist revival of the 1880s with him 'had been converted by Henry George'.

Which socialist group did Shaw join in 1884, becoming its most prominent pamphleteer?

The Fabians were only months old when Shaw joined; before the year was out he had written their manifesto, and he soon became the force behind the whole society.

Under what pen-name did Shaw write music criticism for The Star?

Corno di Bassetto is Italian for the basset horn; Shaw said he chose it because it 'sounded like a foreign title, and nobody knew what a corno di bassetto was'.

Which playwright did Shaw champion in an 1891 book, before any play of his own had been staged?

Henrik Ibsen: Shaw's book The Quintessence of Ibsenism argued for the Norwegian's new kind of drama, and he then began writing plays himself to show the English stage what he meant.

Which play of 1894 gave Shaw his first success with the London public?

Arms and the Man drew one boo amid the first-night cheers, and Shaw answered from the stage that he quite agreed with the man, but what were the two of them against so many.

Which Shaw play did the censor ban because its subject was organised prostitution?

Mrs Warren's Profession argues that poverty and underpaid work, not depravity, drive women into prostitution; written in 1893, it reached a stage only in 1902, at a private club.

Which Shaw melodrama, set in the American Revolution, became a hit in America in 1897 and ended his poverty?

The Devil's Disciple turns stage melodrama upside down, and Richard Mansfield's production made Shaw's name and fortune in America years before London took to his plays.

Whom did Shaw marry in June 1898 after she nursed him through a breakdown?

Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress, had proposed the year before and been refused; Shaw gave in only while she was nursing him back to health.

Which monarch reportedly laughed so hard at Shaw's John Bull's Other Island that the chair gave way?

Edward VII saw it at a command performance, and the broken chair was news: after a decade of writing plays, Shaw's reputation in his adopted country was finally made.

At which London theatre did Vedrenne and Granville-Barker begin their seasons of Shaw's plays in 1904?

The Royal Court: a 1904 staging of Candida there led the pair to go into partnership, and their seasons finally made Shaw's reputation as a dramatist in England.

Shaw's Major Barbara sets the morality of an arms manufacturer against that of which organisation?

The Salvation Army disillusions Major Barbara when it accepts donations from a whisky distiller and from her own father, the arms maker.

Which Shaw play contains the dream scene 'Don Juan in Hell', often performed on its own?

Man and Superman is usually staged without the scene, so Don Juan's long debate in the underworld has taken on a stage life of its own.

When England's censor banned Shaw's The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet in 1909, which Irish theatre staged it anyway?

The Abbey Theatre could do it because the Lord Chamberlain's powers stopped at the Irish Sea; Lady Gregory called the struggle with the authorities 'the fight with the Castle'.

In which German-speaking capital did Shaw's Pygmalion have its world premiere in 1913?

Vienna: the comedy was first heard in German, in Siegfried Trebitsch's translation, almost six months before it opened in English in London.

Who played the Cockney flower girl in the 1914 London premiere of Shaw's Pygmalion?

Mrs Patrick Campbell caused a sensation with Eliza's 'Not bloody likely', and 'not Pygmalion likely' caught on as a polite stand-in for the swear word.

What does Henry Higgins do for a living in Shaw's Pygmalion?

Phonetician: Higgins trains a Cockney flower girl to pass as a lady, and the play turns on what is to become of her once his experiment succeeds.

Which musical was adapted from Shaw's Pygmalion in 1956?

My Fair Lady had to wait for Shaw's death: asked in his nineties to let the play be set to music, he wrote, 'I absolutely forbid any such outrage.'

Which 1908 operetta was based, much to his disgust, on Shaw's Arms and the Man?

The Chocolate Soldier: Shaw called its libretto 'a putrid opéra bouffe in the worst taste of 1860', and the experience turned him against musical versions of his plays for good.

Who played Higgins and Eliza in the 1938 film of Shaw's Pygmalion?

Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller end the film together, Eliza coming back to Higgins's study, whereas Shaw's own ending has her marry someone else.

What did Shaw's 1914 tract Common Sense About the War argue?

All the warring nations were equally to blame, Shaw argued, and it made him notorious: a fellow writer recalled guests walking out of public functions when he appeared.

Which field marshal invited Shaw to visit the Western Front in 1917?

Haig asked because the army wanted Shaw's pen on its side, and the long dispatch Shaw sent home carried the impish title 'Joy Riding at the Front'.

Which Irish leader impressed Shaw when they met in August 1922, three days before the man's death?

Michael Collins: Shaw wrote to Collins's sister that he would not 'snivel over his valiant death', and told her to 'tear up your mourning'.

Shaw's five-play cycle Back to Methuselah opens in which setting?

The Garden of Eden: the cycle runs from there to AD 31,920, and Shaw wrote it to keep from falling into 'an utterly discouraging pessimism'.

What event prompted Shaw to write his 1923 play about the Maid of Orleans?

Her canonisation in 1920 sent Shaw back to a subject he had long had in mind, and the acclaim for the play he made of it led to his Nobel Prize.

Shaw's 1928 book on socialism and capitalism was titled as a guide for whom?

The Intelligent Woman was real: Shaw's sister-in-law had asked him to explain socialism, and he dedicated the book to her as the woman 'to whose question this book is the best answer I can make'.

Which English spa town began a summer festival in 1929 devoted to Shaw's plays?

Malvern: Shaw was the festival's patron and gave it new plays to launch, among them Geneva and In Good King Charles's Golden Days.

Which Soviet leader did Shaw meet at length when he toured the USSR with Nancy Astor?

Stalin: at a dinner in his honour on the same trip, Shaw told his hosts, 'I have seen all the terrors, and I was terribly pleased by them.'

Under what name did Shaw parody Hitler in his play Geneva?

Herr Battler obeys a summons to stand trial at The Hague, as do Bombardone and Flanco, the play's stand-ins for Mussolini and Franco.

Which 1945 film of a Shaw play came to be regarded as the biggest financial failure British cinema had seen?

Caesar and Cleopatra cost about a million and a quarter pounds, more than double its budget, which made it the most expensive film yet made in Britain.

Shaw reportedly turned down which honour by saying he had already conferred it on himself?

The Order of Merit: Shaw also refused a knighthood, though he did accept the 1925 Nobel Prize, without its money.

In a 1949 puppet play, Shaw's marionette trades punches and insults with the puppet of which rival dramatist?

Shakespeare lands the first punch in the ten-minute piece, which Shaw wrote for a marionette company, and the two go on bickering over who is the better writer.

What activity led to the fall that caused Shaw's death at 94?

Pruning a tree, he fell only weeks after finishing his last play; confined to bed by his injuries, he developed kidney failure and died that November.

Around whose statue in his garden were Shaw's ashes scattered, mixed with his wife's?

Saint Joan: Shaw had put the statue up after writing his play about her, and the couple's mingled ashes were scattered around it and along the paths.

In which Hertfordshire village is Shaw's Corner, his home from 1906 until his death?

Ayot St Lawrence: in the grounds Shaw wrote in a tiny hut built to revolve, so that he could turn it to follow the sun through the day.

Which institution did Shaw help to found in 1895 with three fellow socialists?

The London School of Economics leaned on money from Shaw's wife in its early years, and its Shaw Library is named after her, not her famous husband.

Shaw's will left money to create a new what for English?

An alphabet: the courts first ruled the bequest void, but his play Androcles and the Lion was still printed in the new letters, named Shavian after him.

Which medical practice did Shaw denounce as 'a peculiarly filthy piece of witchcraft'?

Vaccination: Shaw predicted that 'the whole business' would 'probably be exploded even in parliament soon'.

Which punctuation mark did Shaw leave out of his printed plays wherever he could?

The apostrophe: Shaw called the marks 'uncouth bacilli' and had words like dont, wont and thats printed without them.

Which fellow writer tried to take over Shaw's socialist society, only to be seen off by its 'Old Gang'?

H. G. Wells was no match for Shaw in open debate and soon resigned; 'the Old Gang did not extinguish Mr Wells,' Shaw said, 'he annihilated himself.'

Which socialist weekly, first published in 1913, did Shaw help to fund as a founding director?

The New Statesman was soon turning down Shaw's articles, which made it, he complained, 'the only paper in the world that refuses to print anything by me'.

Which Canadian town is home to the Shaw Festival, founded in 1962?

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario: the festival began when a local lawyer, Brian Doherty, staged eight performances of Don Juan in Hell and Candida in the town's old courthouse.

Which play about slum landlords, begun with critic William Archer, was Shaw's first to be staged?

Widowers' Houses: Archer was to supply the plot and Shaw the dialogue, but the scheme foundered and the draft lay abandoned for years until Shaw finished it alone.

Shaw borrowed the title of one of his comedies from the opening words of which ancient epic?

The Aeneid opens 'Arma virumque cano', and Shaw borrowed the English of Virgil's heroic first words for a comedy that makes fun of romantic ideas about war.

Shaw published a 1901 collection under the title Three Plays for whom?

Puritans: the preface explains that Shaw had 'always been a Puritan in my attitude towards Art' and wanted them to rescue the stage from its pursuit of pleasure.

In the Greek myth that gave Shaw's Pygmalion its title, Pygmalion falls in love with what?

A statue he has carved: in Ovid the ivory figure comes to life for him, whereas Shaw's flower girl, once remade, refuses to stay her maker's creation.

In Shaw's Candida, the heroine must choose between her clergyman husband and which admirer?

A young poet: Candida stays with her husband, not out of duty but because she judges the confident preacher to be the weaker of the two men.

Which Shaw play, written during the First World War, ends with its idle gentry thrilled by an air raid?

Heartbreak House ends with a bomb falling in the grounds, and the survivors, bored again the moment it is over, hope the raiders will come back tomorrow.

Which heavyweight champion of the 1920s became Shaw's friend and correspondent?

Gene Tunney and Shaw spent a 1929 holiday together on the Adriatic island of Brioni, and the press reported the boxer and the playwright as boon companions.