George Bernard Shaw And His Drama Of Ideas

George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) has been regarded as the most important British dramatist since Shakespeare. In his long life time he has written 51 plays, many of which are still being performed in theaters in Britain and around the world. In 1925 Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature due to the great achievements he made in drama. But Shaw's fame does not only stand on this. He has been widely acclaimed as the precursor of the "New Drama" in England, which is also known as the drama of ideas. Shaw highly respects the importance of ideas, and uses ideas as the basis of dramatic conflicts of his plays. Shaw's plays are mostly battles of ideas and words, characterize by endless talkings and discussions. Shaw is against "art for art's sake", and stresses the utility and social function of the drama. He advocates that drama should be the factory of idea production and the reminder of the conscience. Influenced by Ibsen, Shaw's drama mainly deals with social problems. So Shaw's plays are also labeled as the problem play and the discussion play. As an artist, Shaw is a controversial man, who has been constantly put under the limelight, for the past hundred years, as the object for criticism of all kinds. The critical opinions on Shaw's drama differ extensively in academic circle: some critics regard Shaw as "an artist to the tips of his finger", and others simply call his plays "economic papers", or "propaganda in dialogue form". The major targets of those criticisms are focused on his drama of ideas.In my thesis I will focus on Shaw's drama of ideas, based on the so-called"biographical study approach" and the psychoanalytical method, to find out and...