60 Fun Facts About George Bernard Shaw

In which city was George Bernard Shaw born in 1856?

He was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of the city.

Which part of his full name did the playwright insist on dropping?

He styled himself Bernard Shaw from 1876, and his will licensed publication only under that name.

Roughly how many plays did Shaw write?

They range from contemporary satire to historical allegory.

In which year was Shaw awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Biographer Weintraub wrote that even the Nobel committee could no longer ignore him after Saint Joan.

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

He called the Academy Award for the Pygmalion screenplay an insult, coming from such a source.

Which music teacher who shared the Shaws' house did Shaw suspect might have been his biological father?

Lee shared a house with the Shaws from 1862, and Shaw's mother followed him to London in 1873.

What was Shaw's first job after leaving school in 1871?

He worked hard and quickly rose to head cashier before leaving for London in 1876.

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

He briefly worked for the Edison Telephone Company in 1879-80 and again won rapid promotion.

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

Publishers found it too grim; his novels never sold well.

Which lifelong dietary practice did Shaw adopt in 1881, initially for economy?

He caught smallpox the same year and grew his famous beard to hide the scar.

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?

Shaw said each knew everything the other did not, with brains enough to learn from one another.

Which economist's 1882 lecture and book Progress and Poverty awakened Shaw's interest in economics?

He then spent much of 1883 reading Das Kapital.

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

He wrote its first manifesto, Fabian Tract No. 2, before the year was out.

Under what pen-name did Shaw write music criticism for The Star from 1889?

He moved to The World in 1890 and wrote a weekly column as G.B.S. for over four years.

Which Norwegian dramatist influenced Shaw's drive to bring realism to English-language drama?

Eugene O'Neill became a Shaw admirer at 17 after reading The Quintessence of Ibsenism.

What was Shaw's first play to bring him financial success, in 1894?

Its £341 in first-year royalties let him give up his job as a music critic.

Which Shaw play was written in 1893 but had to wait nine years to reach the stage?

It was also written five years before publication.

Which Shaw melodrama earned him over £2,000 from Richard Mansfield's 1897 New York production?

In the 1890s his plays were better known in print than on the West End stage.

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

Both were 41 at the register office wedding in Covent Garden, and there were no children.

Which monarch reportedly laughed so hard at John Bull's Other Island that he broke his chair?

The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre for fear of the affront it might cause.

Which London theatre staged fourteen Shaw plays from 1904 to 1909 under Vedrenne and Granville-Barker?

Man and Superman was a success there in 1905.

Major Barbara (1905) contrasts the morality of arms manufacturers with which organisation?

The Doctor's Dilemma, about professional ethics, followed in 1906.

Which Shaw comedy about suffragettes had his longest initial run, at 622 performances?

It premiered in 1911.

Which Shaw play was banned on religious grounds by the Lord Chamberlain and produced at the Abbey Theatre?

It filled the Abbey Theatre to capacity.

In which city did Pygmalion premiere in 1913, in German translation?

Its English-language premiere came at His Majesty's Theatre in London in April 1914.

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

Herbert Beerbohm Tree played opposite her as Henry Higgins.

What is the profession of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion?

He bets he can pass off a Cockney flower girl as a lady.

Which musical was adapted from Pygmalion in 1956?

Shaw disliked musical adaptations, saying his plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own.

Who wrote the music for The Chocolate Soldier, the 1908 operetta based on Arms and the Man?

Shaw disliked musical adaptations, saying his plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own.

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

Producer Gabriel Pascal made it at Pinewood, and Shaw was determined Hollywood should have nothing to do with it.

What was Shaw's view of the First World War, expressed in his 1914 tract Common Sense About the War?

His stance made him so unpopular that people left public functions when he arrived.

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

His 10,000-word report on soldiers' lives was well received.

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

Shaw had condemned Britain's coercive postwar policy in Ireland alongside Belloc and Chesterton.

Shaw's five-play cycle Back to Methuselah runs from the Garden of Eden to which year?

He called it his Metabiological Pentateuch and thought it had exhausted his creative powers.

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

It premiered on Broadway in December 1923 and in London the following March.

What did Shaw call his 1928 political treatise, which he described as his magnum opus?

He spent four years writing it and it sold well.

At which festival, founded by Sir Barry Jackson, did Shaw's The Apple Cart have its first British production?

Shaw's friend Sir Edward Elgar was the other great artist associated with the festival.

Which Soviet leader did Shaw meet in 1931 and later call a Georgian gentleman with no malice?

He travelled with a party led by Nancy Astor and said he was terribly pleased by all the terrors he had seen.

Under what name did Shaw parody Hitler in his 1936 play Geneva?

Critics found the portrayal mild, almost sympathetic.

Which 1945 Pascal film of a Shaw play was rated the biggest financial failure in British cinema history?

It cost three times its budget; Shaw called it a poor imitation of Cecil B. de Mille.

Which honour did Shaw decline in 1946, saying only history's posthumous verdict could judge an author?

He did accept the freedom of Dublin and of St Pancras that year.

Shaw's 1949 puppet play Shakes versus Shav has him trading insults with whom?

It is a ten-minute piece written when he was 93.

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

He died of renal failure precipitated by the injuries.

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

He was cremated at Golders Green on 6 November 1950.

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

The house was built in 1902 as the village rectory and is now a National Trust museum.

Which institution did Shaw co-found in 1895 with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas?

It joined the University of London in 1900.

What was posthumously funded by Shaw's will and named after him?

Designed by Ronald Kingsley Read, it aimed to replace the inefficiencies of conventional spelling.

What did Shaw call vaccination against smallpox in 1903?

He argued that decent housing for the poor would eradicate infectious diseases instead.

Which spelling habit did Shaw famously keep all his life?

He also dropped the u in words like honour and favour.

Which fellow writer's bid to reform the society did Shaw's Old Gang see off in 1908?

Wells had joined the socialist society in 1903 and resigned in 1908; Shaw said he annihilated himself.

Shaw invested £1,000 in 1912 for a one-fifth share in which new socialist weekly?

By 1916 its editor was rejecting his contributions, the only paper in the world that refused him, he said.

Where is the Shaw Festival, the second-largest repertory theatre company in North America?

It produces plays by Shaw or written during his lifetime, plus some contemporary work.

Which critic's abandoned collaboration with Shaw became the basis of Widowers' Houses in 1892?

The 1884 plan was for Archer to supply the plot and Shaw the dialogue; the friendship proved invaluable to Shaw's career.

In which year did Shaw, a lifelong British subject, take dual British-Irish nationality?

It came more than a decade after the Irish Free State was founded and long after his move to England.

Which three plays make up Shaw's collection Three Plays for Puritans?

All three centre on questions of empire and imperialism, a live issue in the late 1890s.

In which town did Candida receive its single 1895 performance?

Two years later his Napoleon playlet The Man of Destiny got one staging at Croydon.

In 1897 Shaw filled an uncontested vacancy as a 'vestryman' in which London district?

He initially took his parish-councillor duties seriously even as playwriting crowded out his politics.

Which Shaw play, written in 1916-17, was his first major work staged after the First World War?

Its November 1920 Broadway production was coolly received, The Times finding Shaw had more to say than ever.

Which heavyweight boxing champion was among Shaw's regular correspondents?

Shaw's own boxing novel Cashel Byron's Profession dates from 1882-83; his letters fill several published volumes.