ROMEO AND JULIET - Stratford Festival

Shaw was an ardent socialist and wrote brochures and speeches supporting the Fabian
Society, whose causes included equal political rights for men and women and alleviating
abuses of the working class.
Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, in 1898, and in 1906 they
moved to a house (now called Shaw’s Corner) in Ayot St. Lawrence, a small village in
Hertfordshire. They remained there their entire lives, although they also maintained a flat
in London.
Shaw’s first financial success as a playwright came from an American production of The
Devil’s Disciple in 1897. He went on to write 63 plays, most full-length. The most
popular of his plays are: Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), Arms and the Man (1894 –
presented at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1982), Candida (1894) and You Never
Can Tell (1897).
Although Shaw is celebrated for his comedy, his most important role was in
revolutionizing British drama. Shaw made the usually frothy, sentimental London theatre
scene into a forum for the discussion of moral, political and economic issues – crediting
Henrik Ibsen, who pioneered modern realistic drama.
During his “middle period,” Shaw wrote Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), Man and
Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905) and The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906). In 1908, a
musical adaptation of his play Arms and the Man, called The Chocolate Soldier, was
presented. He hated it and forbade the musicalization of his work for the rest of his life. It
was only after his death that the Broadway musical My Fair Lady, based on his
Pygmalion (1912), could be produced. His Saint Joan (1923; presented at the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival in 1975) is generally considered to be one of his better plays. It was
an international success.
In his old age, Shaw’s had become a household name in Britain, and famous throughout
the world. Shaw remains the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize (1925)
for his contribution to literature, and the Academy Award (1938) for writing an adapted
screenplay for Pygmalion. Shaw donated his Nobel Prize money towards the publication
of an English edition of the work of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, whose
work had never been honoured by the Swedish Academy in charge of the awards.
Shaw died at his home in Hertfordshire in 1950, at age 94, from chronic injuries suffered
from a fall while pruning a tree. His ashes, mixed with those of his wife, were scattered
along the footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden. His home is
owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. The Shaw Festival, founded in
1982 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is dedicated to producing the works of Shaw and
his contemporaries.
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