George Bernard Shaw

This is a collection of the plays of George Bernard Shaw that includes "The Millionairess", "Too True to be Good" and "The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles".

While some of Shaw’s earlier plays are still performed, his later plays, such as the ones in this volume, are barely known. As the collective title indicates, the themes here are political; yet, frankly, it is doubtful how seriously we can now take Shaw as a political thinker. Despite writing in the 1930s, he has little to say of the nature of totalitarianism: although he satirises Fascist dictators in “Geneva”, the satire is disappointingly mild. Neither did Shaw appear to foresee (on the evidence of these plays, at least) the imminent collapse of the British Empire.But it is Shaw the dramatist rather than Shaw the political philosopher who still holds our attention – even in plays as explicitly political as these. He had a sharp intellect and a quirky sense of humour, and his dialogue still glints and sparkles: he couldn’t write a dull line if he tried. No matter how serious the themes he addresses, the crispness of his writing and his lightness of touch still scintillate.Shaw seems, perhaps unfairly, out of fashion nowadays. But even in these lesser-known works, he demonstrates his matchless ability, still undimmed, to provoke and to entertain.

This selection comprises: "THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE" "HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND" "PASSION, POISON AND PETRIFACTION" "THE GLIMPSE OF REALITY" "THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS" "OVERRULED" "THE MUSIC-CURE" "GREAT CATHERINE" "THE INCA OF PERUSALEM" "O'FLAHERTY V.C." "AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT" "ANNAJANSKA, THE BOLSHEVIK EMPRESS" "VILLAGE WOOING" "THE SIX OF CALAIS" and "CYMBELINE REFINISHED".

Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw. The five plays are:In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden); The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day; The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170; Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000; As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920 The plays were published with a preface titled The Infidel Half Century, and first performed in 1922 by the New York Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre.

Shaw's humorous satire of the medical profession.

Androcles and the Lion is a 1912 play written by George Bernard Shaw.Androcles and the Lion is Shaw's retelling of the tale of Androcles, a slave who is saved by the requited mercy of a lion. In the play, Shaw makes Androcles out to be one of many Christians being led to the Colosseum for torture. Characters in the play exemplify several themes and takes on both modern and supposed early Christianity, including cultural clash between Jesus' teachings and traditional Roman values.

From 1879 to 1883, before he turned to writing plays, Shaw wrote five novels. An Unsocial Socialist, the last written, concerns the activities of one Sidney Trefusis, a rich Marxist whom women find completely exasperating, or irresistible, or both, and who has definite ideas about reforming personal and political relationships. Shaw develops a plot that overturns the pieties of the middle class--including the expectations of the novel-reader--and in so doing suggests some new structures for both society and literature.