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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 1
SHAW'S MAN AND SUPERMAN &
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
Notes
including
• Life and Background of the Author
• Introduction to Man and Superman
• Critical Commentaries
• Character Analyses of Man and Superman
• Critical Essay on Man and Superman
• Essay Topics and Review Questions
• Selected Bibliography
Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman
by
James K. Lowers, Ph.D.
Department of English
University of Hawaii
Cliffs Notes on Caesar and Cleopatra
by
Marilynn O. Harper, M.F.A.
University of Oklahoma
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 68501
1-800-228-4078
www.CLIFFS.com
ISBN 0-8220-7285-8
© Copyright 1982
by
Cliffs Notes, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 2
LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
It is with good reason that Archibald Henderson, official biographer of his subject, entitled his work
George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. Well before his death at the age of ninety-four, this famous
dramatist and critic had become an institution. Among the literate, no set of initials was more widely
known than G.B.S. Born on July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland, Shaw lived until November 2, 1950. His
ninetieth birthday in 1946 was the occasion for an international celebration, the grand old man being
presented with a festschrift entitled GBS 90, to which many distinguished writers contributed. A London
publishing firm bought space in the Times to voice its greetings:
GBS
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Shaw was the third child and only son in a family which he once described as "shabby but genteel." His
father, George Carr Shaw, was a second cousin to a baronet. For a time, he was employed as a civil
servant and later became a not-too-successful merchant. Shaw remembered especially his "alcoholic
antics," for the father was a remorseful, yet unregenerated drinker. But from him the son inherited his
superb comic gift. Lucinda Gurley Shaw, the mother, was the daughter of a country gentleman of Carlow.
A gifted singer and music teacher, she led her son to develop a passion for music, particularly operatic. At
an early age, he had memorized, among others, the works of Mozart, whose fine workmanship he never
ceased to admire. Somewhat later he taught himself to play the piano--in the Shavian manner.
One of the maxims in The Revolutionist's Handbook, appended to Man and Superman, reads: "He who
can does. He who can't teaches." Shaw, who was to insist that all art is didactic and viewed himself as a
kind of teacher, had little respect for schoolmasters and formal education. First his uncle, the Reverend
George Carroll, tutored him. At the age of ten, he became a pupil at Wesleyan Connexional School in
Dublin and later attended two other schools for short periods of time. He hated them all and declared that
he learned absolutely nothing. But Shaw possessed certain qualities which are not always developed in
the classroom: an acquisitive mind and the capacity for independent study. Once asked about his early
education, he replied: "I can remember no time at which a page of print was not intelligible to me, and
can only suppose I was born literate." He went on to add that by the age of ten, he had saturated himself
in Shakespeare and the Bible.
A depleted family exchequer led Shaw to accept employment as a clerk in a Land Agency when he was
sixteen. He proved to be an efficient, dependable employee and was properly rewarded at intervals. But
he was never satisfied with such an occupation. Determined to become a professional writer, he resigned
after five years of service and joined his mother, who was then teaching music in London. The year was
1876.
During the next three years, he cheerfully permitted his mother to support him and concentrated largely
on trying to support himself as an author. No less than five novels came from his pen between the years
1879 and 1883. The first, Immaturity, remained unpublished for some fifty years; four later ones finally
did make their way into print. Best known is Cashel Byron's Profession, the story of a prize fighter. It was
quite apparent that Shaw's genius was not that of the novelist.
In 1879, Shaw was induced to accept employment in a firm promoting the new Edison telephone, his
duties being those of a right-of-way agent. He detested the task of interviewing residents in the East End
of London and endeavoring to get their permission for the installation of poles and equipment. A few
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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 3
months of such work were enough for him. In his own words, this was the last time he sinned against his
nature by seeking to earn an honest living.
The year 1879 had greater significance for Shaw. He joined the Zetetical Society, a debating club, the
members of which held lengthy discussions on such subjects as economics, science, and religion. Soon he
found himself in demand as a speaker and a regular participant at public meetings. At one such meeting,
held in September 1882, he listened spellbound to Henry George, apostle of Land Nationalization and the
Single Tax. Shaw credits the American with having roused his interest in economics and social theory;
theretofore he had concerned himself chiefly with the conflict between science and religion. Told that no
one could do justice to George's theories without being familiar with those of Karl Marx, Shaw promptly
read a French translation of Das Kapital, no English translation being then available. He was now
converted to socialism.
The year 1884 is also a notable one in the life of Bernard Shaw (as he preferred to be called). After
reading a tract entitled Why are the Many Poor? and learning that it was published by the Fabian Society,
he appeared at the society's next meeting. The intellectual temper of the group, which included such
distinguished men as Havelock Ellis, immediately attracted him. He was accepted as a member on
September 5 and was elected to the Executive Committee in January. Among the debaters at the Zetetical
Society was one Sidney Webb, whom he recognized as his "natural complement." He easily persuaded
Webb to become a Fabian. The two, with the gifted Mrs. Webb, became the pillars of the society which
preached the gospel of constitutional and evolutionary socialism. Shaw's views, voiced in public park and
meeting hall, are expounded at length in The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
(1928); many of his ideas find a place in his dramas, including Man and Superman.
In the next stage of his career, Shaw emerged as a critic. Largely through the good offices of William
Archer, distinguished dramatic critic now best remembered as the editor and translator of Ibsen, Shaw
became a member of the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. Earlier he had ghost-written
some music reviews for G. L. Lee, with whom his mother long had been associated as singer and music
teacher. But this new assignment provided him with his first real experience as a critic, initially as a book
reviewer at two guineas per thousand words. Not long thereafter, and again through the assistance of
William Archer, he added to these duties those of art critic on the widely influential World. Archer
insisted that Shaw knew very little about art but thought that he did, which was what mattered. As for
Shaw, he blandly explained that the way to learn about art was to look at pictures: He had begun doing so
years earlier in the Dublin National Gallery.
This was just the beginning. When T. P. O'Connor, a leading advocate of Irish Home Rule, founded The
Star in order to publicize his political views, Shaw was hired as a political writer in 1888. His socialistic
philosophy was too extreme for O'Connor, who shifted Shaw to writing regular columns on music under
the pseudonym "Corno di Bassetto." Two years later, he succeeded Louis Meyer as music critic of The
World; his lively style and often daring pronouncements won him a wide and appreciative audience. Shaw
once remarked: "If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may just as well not say it at all." And
it must be conceded that he had affiliations, at least, with what may be called the Hatchet School of
Criticism. Typical is the following: "During the past month Art has suffered an unusually severe blow at
the hands of the Royal Academy by the opening of the annual exhibition at Burlington House." As music
critic, he once described the program given before the visiting Shah of Persia at Covent Garden as "the
most extravagantly Bedlamite hotch-potch on record, even in the annals of State concerts." To paraphrase
Shaw's own words, he never aimed at impartiality. He aimed at readability and individuality, and he
rarely missed. Moreover, as the courageous champion of Wagner, whose music was not accepted in
England, and of the neglected Mozart, Shaw distinguished himself.
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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 4
Shaw's close association with William Archer was paramount in his championing of Henrik Ibsen as a
new, highly original dramatist whose works represented a complete break with the popular theater of the
day. "When Ibsen came from Norway," Shaw was to write, "with his characters who thought and
discussed as well as acted, the theatrical heaven rolled up like a scroll." Whereas the general public,
nurtured on the "well-made" romantic and melodramatic play, denounced Ibsen as a "muck-ferreting
dog," Shaw saw him as a great ethical philosopher and social critic--a role which recommended itself to
Shaw himself. On July 18, 1890, he read a paper on Ibsen at a meeting of the Fabian Society. Amplified,
this became The Quintessence of Ibsen (1891). Sometimes called The Quintessence of Shaw, it sets forth
the author's profoundest views on the function of the dramatist, who should especially concern himself
with how his characters react to various social forces and who should concern himself further with a new
morality based upon an examination and challenge of the conventional.
In view of what Shaw had written about Ibsen (and himself) and of his activities as a socialist exhorter,
The Widowers' Houses, his first play, may be called characteristic. Structurally, it represents no departure
from the tradition of the well-made play; that is, the action is plotted so that the key situation is exposed
in the second act, and the third act is devoted to its resolution. But thematically, the play was
revolutionary in England. It dealt with the evils of slum-landlordism, a subject hardly calculated to regale
the typical Victorian audience. Produced at J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre in London, it made a
sensation because of its "daring" theme but never was a theatrical success. Shaw was not at all
discouraged. The furor delighted him. No one knew better than he the value of attracting attention. He
was already at work on The Philanderer, an amusing but rather slight comedy of manners.
In 1894, Shaw's Arms and the Man enjoyed a good run at the Avenue Theatre from April 21 to July 7, and
has been revived from time to time to this very day. Now the real Shaw had emerged: the dramatist who
united irrepressible gaiety and complete seriousness of purpose. It has been described as "a satire on the
prevailing bravura style" and sets forth the "view of romance as the great heresy to be swept from art and
life," a theme which was to find its place in Man and Superman.
In the same year, Shaw wrote Mrs. Warren's Profession, which became a cause célèbre. Shaw himself
grouped it with his "Unpleasant Plays." Dealing with the economic causes of prostitution and the conflict
between the prostitute mother and her daughter, it created a tumult which was kept alive for years on both
sides of the Atlantic. It may well be argued that in this play he was far more the polemist than the artist,
but it has its place among the provocative dramas of ideas.
The indefatigable Shaw was already at work on his first unquestionably superior play, Candida. First
produced in 1895, it has held the boards ever since and has found its place in anthologies. Notable for
effective character portrayal and the adroit use of inversions, it tells how Candida and the Reverend
Morrell, widely in public demand as an advanced thinker, reached an honest and sound basis for a lasting
marriage.
Early in January 1895, Shaw became the drama critic for The Saturday Review, edited by Frank Harris,
who was wise enough to give him free rein. His essays now fill two volumes which were first published
in 1931 and are indeed a valuable record of "Our Theatres in the Nineties." Sir Max Beerbohm,who
succeeded Shaw in May 1898, testified as follows: "I never tire of his two volumes. He was at the very
top of his genius when he wrote them." Although Shaw often had kind words to say about Oscar Wilde,
Henry Arthur Jones, and others, he was as outspoken and irreverent in his drama reviews as he had been
in those of music, for he was determined to reform Victorian drama, to transform it into a vehicle for the
dissemination of significant ideas. Characteristic are his comments on Wilde's The Importance of Being
Earnest, surely as good a farce as there is in the language, one which Wilde himself called "a trivial
comedy for serious people." Shaw joined the audience in laughing heartily at the many farcical situations
but firmly concluded that it was no more than "a silly play with a flippant wit." To Sir Henry Irving,
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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 5
England's premier Shakespearean actor, Shaw became practically an anathema. Long since the
playwright-critic had begun a running battle with Shakespeare--at first to help win recognition for Ibsen;
thereafter, in all probability, to attract attention to himself. But what especially offended him was Irving's
propensity for drastic cutting of the Shakespearean text.
While working with the Fabians, Shaw met the personable Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress
deeply concerned with the problem of social justice. He was immediately attracted to her. After she had
helped him through a long illness, the two were married in 1898. She became his modest but capable
critic and assistant throughout the years of their marriage.
During this period, there was no surcease of play writing on Shaw's part. He completed You Never Can
Tell, The Man of Destiny, and The Devil's Disciple. The last-named play, an inverted Victorian-type
melodrama first acted in the United States, was an immediate success, financially and otherwise. By the
turn of the century, Shaw had written Caesar and Cleopatra and The Admirable Bashville. He was now
the major force in the new drama of the twentieth century. Even William Archer acknowledged his
supremacy. At first insisting that Shaw knew no more about plays than he did about art, Archer was
completely won over by Mrs. Warren's Profession.
The year 1903 is especially memorable for the completion and publication of Man and Superman. It was
first acted (without the Don Juan in Hell intermezzo which constitutes Act III) in 1905. Some twenty-
three other plays were added to the Shavian canon as the century advanced toward the halfway mark. Best
known among these are Major Barbara (1905), Androcles and the Lion (1912), Pygmalion (1912),
Heartbreak House (1916), Back to Methuselah (1921), and Saint Joan (1923). In 1930-32, the Ayot St.
Lawrence Edition of his collected plays was published. Shaw's literary preeminence had found worldwide
recognition. He refused to accept either a knighthood or the Order of Merit offered by the Crown, but in
1926, he did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was quite typical of him to state that the award was
given to him by a grateful public because he had not published anything in that year.
Shaw had persistently rejected offers from filmmakers. According to one story, when importuned by
Samuel Goldwyn, the well-known Hollywood producer, he replied: "The difficulty, Mr. Goldwyn, is that
you are an artist and I am a business man." But later the ardor and ability of Gabriel Pascal impressed
him, and he agreed to prepare the scenario of Pygmalion for production. The film, released in 1938, was a
notable success. Major Barbara and Androcles and the Lion followed: The Irish-born dramatist had now
won a much larger audience. My Fair Lady, a musical adapted from Pygmalion, opened in New Haven,
Connecticut, on February 4, 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was and remains a
spectacular success.
Discussing Macbeth, Shaw once wrote: "I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I
work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' for me. It is a sort of
splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as
possible before handing it on to future generations." Life indeed was a bright torch which burned long for
Bernard Shaw. Almost to the very end, when he was bedridden with a broken hip, he lived up to his
credo. He was ninety-two years old in 1949 when Buoyant Billions was produced at the Malvern Festival.
In the same year, his highly readable Sixteen Self Sketches was published. He was planning the writing of
still another play when he died on November 2, 1950.
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Cliffs Notes on Man and Superman & Caesar and Cleopatra © 1982 6
MAN AND SUPERMAN
INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY
In the stimulating and amusing Epistle Dedicatory, a letter addressed to Arthur Bingham Walkley.
dramatic critic of The Times, Shaw provides, among other things, the details relating to the genesis of
Man and Superman and an exegesis of his current philosophy and of certain dominant ideas in the play.
Although Walkley had praised Shaw as "a man who can give us a refined intellectual pleasure," he did
not rate his friend very highly as a dramatist. Since Shaw had been conducting a running battle against
current romantic drama, Walkley playfully suggested that Shaw show how the love theme should be
developed by writing a Don Juan play. And the dramatist complied. Aware that Walkley believed that he
wrote dialectic, not drama, which (in the words of Aristotle) should be an imitation of an action, Shaw
wittily concedes that he has the "temperament of a schoolmaster" and identifies himself as a reformer
expressing his annoyance at the fact that people remain comfortable when they ought to be
uncomfortable. The implication is clear: When one is comfortable, he has no desire for change, and thus
progress is impossible. "If you don't like my preaching you must lump it," Shaw concludes. All these give
some insight into Shaw's comic theory. In his Praise of Comedy, Mr. James Feibleman defines comedy as
the "satiric criticism of the present limited historical order and a campaign for the unlimited logical
order." This involves a departure from an older view which called for approval of the conventional. Shaw
would have endorsed Feibleman's view. To be sure, brilliant comedies had been based on the older
theory. Henri Bergson, developing his ideas of the comic chiefly with reference to the plays of Molière,
insisted that such ridiculous figures as Harpagon and Tartuffe placed themselves outside the pale of the
conventional because they suffered from an inelasticity--they had become automations and thus invited
derisive laughter. Shaw went further. He believed that it was not just the occasional individual who made
himself ridiculous; it was the larger society, and it was the conventional itself which often was absurd. So
long as it was so afflicted, society had no right to be comfortable.
Shaw dismisses current romantic plays as "childish" and insists that
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