As a lifelong (qualified) Shavian, I would urge anyone who wants a balanced portrait of the man to separate their study of him into two sections: pre-1914 and post-1914. (Shaw was fifty-eight in 1914; he lived to be ninety-four, dying in 1950). The Great War shattered Shaw's faith (as it did that of so much of humanity) in the purposefulness of human existence; with him, as with so many, the postwar world sent him on a search for forces that could somehow redeem the gargantuan death and destruction of 1914-1918. ("God-hunger" -- a subject Shaw had written about at length in his plays, and which can lead people either to the gates of Heaven, or to perdition, our flawed race being what it is.) As we all know, three false creeds soon arose that promised to put humanity on a road to a glorious future: Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. (I separate Fascism from Nazism because, even though all forms of Fascism are contemptuous of the value of human life, and have the death rolls to prove it, only Nazism took that nihilism to the level of outright genocide.) I don't blame Russell for his disgust with Shaw's cruel words to that poor woman, because I share it. (Hard as it is to believe, this isn't even the worst Shaw quotation from that period.) I prefer to believe that the pre-1914 man was the real Shaw, while the later admirer of Lenin, Stalin, and Mussolini was the survivor of a catastrophic accident that left him with some of his faculties impaired. The best illustration that I know of of the way in which a human life can be cut in two in this manner was Emile Verhoeven, a Belgian humanist and pacifist, who found himself transformed by the savage German invasion of his homeland in 1914 into a raging jingoist and xenophobe. He completed an autobiography during the war, and took note of the degree to which he was now a changed man. He concluded the book: "Since it seems to me that, in my current state of mind, my humanity has been appreciably diminished, I dedicate this book, with regret, to the man I used to be."
@Kieran Gallagher I would say that the only three elements of Shaw's prose works that equal his plays in both artistic and historic significance are: 1. His drama criticism (published under the title "Our Theater In The Nineties" -- the 1890s, of course. Even if you have never heard of the plays and performers involved, it is a delight); 2. "The Quintessence of Ibsenism", an excellent look at how the great Norwegian playwright's works were initially received, and 3. "The Perfect Wagnerite", which does for the German composer what "Quintessence" did for Ibsen. Shaw is, without question, the greatest playwright in the English language next to Shakespeare. "Heartbreak House" is, in my opinion, his masterpiece: an exquisitely precise diagnosis of the spiritual disease that has plagued the Western world since 1914. It is also a GORGEOUS piece of theater. I had the great good luck to see it performed at the Circle-in-the-Square in New York in the 1980s, with Rex Harrison, Rosemary Harris, Philip Bosco, and Amy Irving. Unforgettable. Here are my choices, in no particular order, of Shaw's greatest plays: 1. Heartbreak House 2. Major Barbara 3. The Doctor's Dilemma 4. Saint Joan 5. You Never Can Tell 6. Androcles and the Lion 7. Pygmalion 8. Misalliance 9. Getting Married 10. Mrs. Warren's Profession 11. The Millionairess 12. Caesar and Cleopatra If your schedule makes it difficult for you to read whole plays, here are some select passages that will give you the flavor and spice of Shaw at his best: 1. Caesar's opening address to the Sphinx in "Caesar and Cleopatra", and his denunciation of Cleopatra's vengefulness near the end of the second-to-last act; 2. Lina's speech about the joy of being a woman who lives a free and productive life, near the end of "Misalliance"; 3. Barbara interviewing the woman-beater Bill Walker in Act Il of "Major Barbara"; 4. Joan's "God is alone" speech near the end of Act V of "Saint Joan"; 5. Lilith's lengthy meditation on the past, present, and future of humanity, at the conclusion of "Back to Methuselah". 6. Louis Dubedat's death scene in "The Doctor's Dilemma". I'd be interested in hearing your impressions of these passages, or anything else pertaining to Shaw. If you're so inclined, drop me a note here, in this "Comments" section.
@UC0q4hwKMMOyfY2qNYP1mD9g Did I say they didn't meet? What is insight? *an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something* Just because Russel said it, does that make it true? Is it possible that Russel was wrong in his "insight" that Shaw was a "silly" man? Was he absurd and foolish? Or are _you_ the foolish one, accepting without question the views of someone else. What do you know of Russell's philosophy, by the way? Do you agree with him? Because I certainly do not. In fact I believe many of his views to be _absurd and foolish_ Do keep up.
I understand that I am related to Russell through my mother. His assessment of Shaw and his report of his conversation with Lenin have significantly increased my estimation of Russell. I might even acknowledge that we are related now.
It's interesting that Shaw was almost regarded as the equivalent of Shakespeare for his time but has now become somewhat forgotten. Even in England the name Ibsen or Bertolt Brecht would likely get much more of a reaction.
@@ardakolimsky7107 I can assure anyone who is in any doubt on the subject that the last thing Shaw is is "forgotten". The Shaw Theater Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario does lavish -- and first-rate -- productions of his plays every year, while its sister festival, the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, periodically performs him as well. (One of the last roles of the late Christopher Plummer was as Caesar in a wonderful production of Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" in Stratford, which I was lucky enough to see.) The Gingold Theater Group in New York also does Shaw regularly, and has, just within the past few years, put on acclaimed productions of "Saint Joan" and "Heartbreak House". No playwright, ncluding Shakespeare, ever wrote so many masterful leading roles for women as Shaw, which in itself will guarantee him theatrical immortality. The one drawback to performing Shaw is the same one that applies to Chekhov and Ibsen: the fact that so many of his plays require large, proficient (and therefore expensive) casts. (A good many of Shaw's supporting parts are as substantial as the leads in lesser plays.) In the United States, we can thank our theatrical unions for much of this problem, with their demands that producers hire more people, at full salary, than they actually need. Shaw stands today exactly where he has stood ever since the opening years of the twentieth century: as the greatest playwright next to Shakespeare in the English language.
His alliance with the same IDEOLOGY as hitler and indeed his ADMIRATION of Stalin hitler Mussolini & the DEATH CAMPS FOR UNDESIRABLES Should NEVER be removed from our lives . The equation of education & power that leads to the ideology/ BIGOTRY of eugenics socialism gulags death camps & use of abortion SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN EVER YEAR OF SCHOOLING So that No generation No people FORGET THE EVIL OF THE EDUCATED FOOL & TYRANT.
Shaw was perhaps someone quite psychologically disturbed. Radical socialism and vegetarianism were a way of "compensating" for what inwardly he actually felt for people, an expression of narcissism and sadism.
Bertrand Russell would be right at the top of my 'all time dinner party' guest list. A brilliant and fascinating mind while twinned with a beautiful heart. What a wonderful, wonderful man he was.
LOL! What a joke! The man was a well know Eugenicist; and he should also be equally ridiculed, for his very overall Elitist disposition. I'm really beginning to question a lot of things, which I've been taught about his so-called brilliance. I did enjoy, however, his expansive volume on "The History of Western Philosophy." But at the end of the day, I still can't just co-sign a Eugenicist, such as him; and that's also while despite the fact, that he was undoubtedly a brilliant person.
@@ALIENDNA14 Eugenics. An opinion. Ridiculed? You say it as if he had stated that the earth were flat. For ridiculing the opinions of others...you might be ridiculed yourself ;)
My grandmother on my father's side was a prominent figure in the theatrical life of progressive "left-wing" Welwyn Garden City in the 1920s and 30s. She was no ones fool; a school teacher of martinet strictness, razer sharp critic of folly, vanity, and immaturity of thought or feeling. She loved Shaw, especially his Prefaces and writing on Wagner. It's never entirely clear whether GBS's off hand provocations and cranky fads were merely a continuation of theatre by other means (a playwriter crafting his own persona for effect), or genuine and thus genuinely contemptible and risible. However, the author of Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra.and The Perfect Wagnerite can never properly be off the shelves of great writers and great public intellectuals. It might indeed be thought a piece of childlike naivety to expect writers (especially male writers) to be both brilliant and cuttingly insightful and revolutionary, yet also charming and morally impeccable. That is indeed pure fantasy. Musicians get away with much worse - Stravinsky was an impeccably well-dressed sarcastic bitch. Wagner a left-wing radical humanist yet a totalitarian megalomaniac. Brahms a cold and mocking romantic. Dvorak an utterly unworldly though very endearing child of nature. Bruckner thought he regularly communed with god. Beethoven an insufferable prig and prone to childish self-pity. Ravel obviously suffered from OCD. Etc, etc, etc Love andrea
Well, that’s a disturbing story. The more I think about it, though, the more in character it seems for Shaw, I’m sorry to say. Russell is certainly right to call Shaw’s views about medicine silly. I would say the same about Shaw’s about orthography, although these were more innocuous, if nevertheless indefensible and absurd. Shaw was still a great playwright, if not quite as great as he imagined himself to be, and his “Joan of Arc” is superb.
This is a withering assessment by Russell and I have no doubt Shaw had his idiosyncrasies and faults: I have read the four volumes of Michael Holroyd's biography. In some ways he was a product of his times - his support of eugenics, for example. I agree with much of what @tadimaggio says. For me, Shaw is the greatest playwright in English since Shakespeare: his dramatic output is staggeringly ambitious. Shaw's plays are lastingly popular and delightful; he was brilliant at stagecraft, dialogue and dramatising ideas and conflicting viewpoints. He is the greatest satirist since Swift, the best music critic ever, one of the best theatre critics and a pamphleteer par excellence. His prose is scintillating, scarcely ever bettered. Just read one of the beautiful prefaces to his plays or 'The Intelligent Women's Guide to Socialism'. No wonder the Nobel Committee spoke of his work being 'infused with a singular poetic beauty'. I was introduced to his plays at 15 in a secondary school in Scotland. I have read more of his plays and prefaces since then. Seeing one of his plays performed is a joy. I feel blessed indeed at having discovered Shaw.
Many of the past Philosophers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists were men who had interests in Life, Thoughts, Behaviours, Repetitions and Outcomes....yet almost all had very difficult beginnings which formed a basis of negativity as their starting point, hoping to find the positive through study....most never found it....leaving future students of their teachings to repeat the negative narrative without understanding that all studies and viewpoints should be viewed with doubt through kindly feelings rather than believing Tutors dogmatic certainties.
Interviewer: and Shaw? Russell: What do you say? Interviewer: Shaw. Russell: yes? Interviewer: what was he, rather inhuman by his writings, maybe he wasn’t a man at all as he didn’t feel the things most men feel- except- except- uh- vanity. Russell: he felt vanity and that was the whole of him. There was nothing more. I knew a lady who was secretary of the Labour Party in the University of London. And she got gradually more and more towards communism, and at last became a communist, and married a Russian and went to live out there. And in Stalin’s purge, this Russian was taken away, and she never heard from him again, or heard of him, or didn’t know what happened to him at all. She was absolutely devoted to the man, and she came to England to see if anybody could do anything to influence Stalin. And she came to me among other people, and I said, “well, Shaw has persona grata in Russia, perhaps he’ll do something.” And so, we approached Shaw about it, and he wrote her a letter which I saw, saying, “My dear lady, you have no idea how comfortable Russian penal settlements are. I’m quite sure your husband is much happier there than he would be being nagged by you”. I never spoke to the man again. I thought it one of the most horrible things I’d ever known done, because the poor lady was utterly heartbroken. He was a very cruel man. Very cruel if his vanity was hurt. And his vanity was hurt in this because it threatened his judgement of the Soviet Union. You see what I mean? It’s not obvious that his vanity was involved, but it was, because it was a suggestion that perhaps he was wrong in praising the Soviet Union. And that would be a suggestion that he wasn’t as wise as he thought. And therefore the lady was to be punished. By means of wit, he concealed that fact that he was silly. Wit is a wonderful thing for concealing- I mean all his views about medicine for instance: totally silly.
In the end Shaw's artistic achievement outweighs his disgusting character. We don't have to live with the man, but Russell was right never to speak to him again. Many great artissts were miserable human beings.
True but Shaw chose to inject himself into the limelight of public affairs constantly. It’s one thing for a great artist to be a miserable person privately but Shaw insisted on making a public display of his character and opinions.
“Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel Fuck Shaw's opinion on this subject
No problem at all with criticising Shaw in his awful support for Stalin -- SO LONG as we're also prepared to do likewise regarding the murderous attrocities which Western so-called civilisation was built upon.
Muz Wot no problem at all doing that, but the west’s murderous atrocities weren’t discussed in this vid though.... For the record I am against murderous atrocities 🤷♂️
We are forgetting -- occasionally, specific experience is capable of clouding a man's judgement. Let us remember what John Stuart Mill said: "I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two genders, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another". A person can not be judged in one frame. So, we are no Freud that in one second we can judge a Shaw or likes. Scientific (rational) approach of analysis of an event or an utterance can't stop at its face-value (the apparent worth or implication of something). Had Sigmund Freud been in place of Russell, discussion would have continued, I guess; he would not have jumped into conclusion. By the way in the same breath, too much honesty got some impeccable link with a bit of cruelty. Somebody said "our society is interwoven in very fine threads of immorality. But, already Shaw said: “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
G. B. Shaws plays are today largely forgotten. I have to say I never saw half the point of what he wrote except to rile the establishment of his day. Something that Ibsen did with far superior panache. The social comments they contained which were at the time considered sharp and challenging were really not well constructed. Anyone (like me) who suffered the tedium of "The Apple Cart" or "Major Barbara" will perhaps agree with me. As for his so called comedies... The man had no sense of humour. The only claim to immortality he has (and OMG he would hate it) is that his play "Pygmalion" was the basis for "My Fair Lady".
Shaw's light is rather dim at the moment. A decade or two after his death, his collected plays and collected prefaces were on every bookshelf, but he is hardly spoken of or performed at the moment. Maybe a new biographer will unearth some scandal - he was secretly a woman, perhaps? - and Channel Four will fund a film about him which we'll all have to watch.
@@overman2306 Shaw was a man of principle sometimes, but at other times just a contrarian. We've all known fellow students like that. That's what Russell meant by calling him "silly."
Shaw was something of an ass. And his politics were not based in reality. But-- dammit-- so many of his plays are virtually unparalleled in theater. The man that wrote Heart Break House can never permanently fall from my esteem.
Have you ever read “ The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism “ I know you are not going to but if you did you definitely would not make that comment.
Russell shows himself to be unideological and pure compared to the marxist/soviet apologist hacks of his age. Absolutely absurd that Call of Duty has Shaw quotes but not Russell on war.
This interview, I think takes place in 1960 or several years earlier. Shaw died in 1950. Close. He was still of recent memory with many who knew him personally alive.
@@matthewlaurence3121 Shaw died after falling out of a tree when he was in his 90s. What was he doing up trees at his age? This was not the only bad story I heard about G.B.Shaw. A female fan wrote to him for advice, after suspecting she had been given the wrong baby at hospital. She had seen her real child at the school gate or somewhere. Shaw advised her strongly not to approach the other child's parents, but to let both children believe they were with their real families. The way the families solved the situation was better than the advice she received from Shaw.
Shaw and his wife were great supporters of T E Lawrence, and helped him create the myth of the Saviour of the Arabs. Having just read Richard Aldington's book on Lawrence (who had a very odd antipathy to women), I'm convinced that Lawrence was a fraud and Shaw was a very poor judge of human nature.
Shaw was an outsider, an eccentric and a contrarian. He was also Irish!..When we think of the outlandish things Churchill said to women over the years what Shaw said to this lady seems very tame indeed. Bertrand Russell could also be very cutting in his remarks when the mood took him. Shaw had an unfortunate demeanor which made him appear very stern and somewhat rude, but his writing shows him as a person who had a very great understanding of the human condition and also as a man who was not without sympathy for the less fortunate of society. He was one of those people who could express his feelings far better through the written word rather than through conversation.
In spite of his writings about understanding the human condition, this act says that he was not very sympathetic, regardless of whatever he wrote. In other words, actions speak louder than words.
Tame?! Great Artist or not he deserved to be horse whipped. I mean that literally. English/Irish wit can be cutting alla Churchill or Oscar Wilde. Russell knew that as well as anyone, but to speak to a desperate woman in that manner does not constitute a somewhat nasty witicism. It is criminal, the deliberated infliction of mental distress.
A BLITHERING IDIOT RACIST BIGOT EUGENICS SUPPORTER AND ALL ENCOMPASSING FOOL who’s claim to fame is Hatred of the “ undesirables” That “ do not punish the imbeciles but Kill kill kill kill them “. What a Great example of the progressive leftist socialist democrat party today .
@@arunn2000 Cerebral narcissism is hyper-vigilant and spontaneously reactive, but it has no moral objective beyond self-preservation and self promotion.
That's show business! Shaw was both an entertainer AND a public intellectual. British culture prefers its intellectuals to keep us amused, and so they risk going too far because we ask comedians to comment on the most serious of subjects. A case in point: Boris Johnson.
@@ardakolimsky7107 "Britons" have a deep-rooted suspicion of brainpower, so those cursed with it have to hid it under a cloak of silliness. Whereas those not so afflicted get a free pass.
Shaw was not being cruel. He was making his point. You wish to love a society which slaughters 66 million of their own by Gulag prisons and the separation of families and sorrow of all, but this woman loves communism and idolizes it and then realizes what it brings. Shaw is saying "You made your bed, now lie in it." The answer was exactly right. By Shaw defending communism through the answer it shows the truth of it all. Communism is right woman and you know it. Would the woman accept the answer if it didn't come from a communist? She honors communism. Let her have it.
It is like a woman of the West entering into Islam and then realizing what it is. She had the knowledge at her finger tips and took it all anyway because she refused to look at every Quranic verse about women. "She made her bed, now lie in it." Who should answer her? A Muslim man obviously, and probably from the Quran to boot. How else is one to turn to truth of Yahweh and the Bible and all the verses defending women, unless they first hear the reality from the side they chose?
@@mikeoglen6848, a lot of people are stupid, but here is a test for you to take. You pick one bad Bible verse and we debate it. If you fail on the first verse pick a second bad Bible verse and we debate it. If you fail on the second verse, then pick a third Bible verse. If you fail on all three when you picked them WHAT WOULD YOU LEARN??? Yahweh is always to be glorified and all Bible verses can be defended. But by all means take the test, if you think yourself wise. You seem to think you will do well if you choose the topic of women so offer up the first verse about women you can't understand, but if you never offer a verse I'll assume you looked some up and then looked at the context and grew up to think smarter.
@@ReligionOfSacrifice OK Mr Sacrifice. You've given me an interesting challenge. I can't quote the bible off the top of my head but I'll take it off the shelf, dust it down and try and send you a verse or two...
@@mikeoglen6848, please do. I can't wait to defend the Bible by logic and context to show you that Yahweh is always to be glorified. I know I can do it for any verse. The only question is whether you are man enough to begin with a verse you pick and then upon the challenge being put before you do you have any debate skills and finally do you have enough humility to admit you are wrong and can find nothing wrong with Yahweh. So please begin. If you don't I'll assume you either got wise or refused to become wise.
![My Grandfather Met Napoleon: Bertrand Russell Interview 1952 - Enhanced Video & Audio [60 fps]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4OXtO92x5KA/mqdefault.jpg)
As a lifelong (qualified) Shavian, I would urge anyone who wants a balanced portrait of the man to separate their study of him into two sections: pre-1914 and post-1914. (Shaw was fifty-eight in 1914; he lived to be ninety-four, dying in 1950). The Great War shattered Shaw's faith (as it did that of so much of humanity) in the purposefulness of human existence; with him, as with so many, the postwar world sent him on a search for forces that could somehow redeem the gargantuan death and destruction of 1914-1918. ("God-hunger" -- a subject Shaw had written about at length in his plays, and which can lead people either to the gates of Heaven, or to perdition, our flawed race being what it is.) As we all know, three false creeds soon arose that promised to put humanity on a road to a glorious future: Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. (I separate Fascism from Nazism because, even though all forms of Fascism are contemptuous of the value of human life, and have the death rolls to prove it, only Nazism took that nihilism to the level of outright genocide.) I don't blame Russell for his disgust with Shaw's cruel words to that poor woman, because I share it. (Hard as it is to believe, this isn't even the worst Shaw quotation from that period.) I prefer to believe that the pre-1914 man was the real Shaw, while the later admirer of Lenin, Stalin, and Mussolini was the survivor of a catastrophic accident that left him with some of his faculties impaired. The best illustration that I know of of the way in which a human life can be cut in two in this manner was Emile Verhoeven, a Belgian humanist and pacifist, who found himself transformed by the savage German invasion of his homeland in 1914 into a raging jingoist and xenophobe. He completed an autobiography during the war, and took note of the degree to which he was now a changed man. He concluded the book: "Since it seems to me that, in my current state of mind, my humanity has been appreciably diminished, I dedicate this book, with regret, to the man I used to be."
@Kieran Gallagher I would say that the only three elements of Shaw's prose works that equal his plays in both artistic and historic significance are: 1. His drama criticism (published under the title "Our Theater In The Nineties" -- the 1890s, of course. Even if you have never heard of the plays and performers involved, it is a delight); 2. "The Quintessence of Ibsenism", an excellent look at how the great Norwegian playwright's works were initially received, and
3. "The Perfect Wagnerite", which does for the German composer what "Quintessence" did for Ibsen.
Shaw is, without question, the greatest playwright in the English language next to Shakespeare. "Heartbreak House" is, in my opinion, his masterpiece: an exquisitely precise diagnosis of the spiritual disease that has plagued the Western world since 1914. It is also a GORGEOUS piece of theater. I had the great good luck to see it performed at the Circle-in-the-Square in New York in the 1980s, with Rex Harrison, Rosemary Harris, Philip Bosco, and Amy Irving. Unforgettable.
Here are my choices, in no particular order, of Shaw's greatest plays:
1. Heartbreak House
2. Major Barbara
3. The Doctor's Dilemma
4. Saint Joan
5. You Never Can Tell
6. Androcles and the Lion
7. Pygmalion
8. Misalliance
9. Getting Married
10. Mrs. Warren's Profession
11. The Millionairess
12. Caesar and Cleopatra
If your schedule makes it difficult for you to read whole plays, here are some select passages that will give you the flavor and spice of Shaw at his best:
1. Caesar's opening address to the Sphinx in "Caesar and Cleopatra", and his denunciation of Cleopatra's vengefulness near the end of the second-to-last act;
2. Lina's speech about the joy of being a woman who lives a free and productive life, near the end of "Misalliance";
3. Barbara interviewing the woman-beater Bill Walker in Act Il of "Major Barbara";
4. Joan's "God is alone" speech near the end of Act V of "Saint Joan";
5. Lilith's lengthy meditation on the past, present, and future of humanity, at the conclusion of "Back to Methuselah".
6. Louis Dubedat's death scene in "The Doctor's Dilemma".
I'd be interested in hearing your impressions of these passages, or anything else pertaining to Shaw. If you're so inclined, drop me a note here, in this "Comments" section.
I found this to be a very interesting comment.
@@tadimaggio High praise, indeed.
Lenin and Stalin are based though.
That's a dang good comment well written. What do you mean by qualified? Do you have a degree or a clause to add?
Superb insight into Shaw: “by means of wit he concealed the fact that he was silly...” 😆
How is that insight?
Did you know Shaw?
@UC0q4hwKMMOyfY2qNYP1mD9g Did I say they didn't meet?
What is insight?
*an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something*
Just because Russel said it, does that make it true?
Is it possible that Russel was wrong in his "insight"
that Shaw was a "silly" man?
Was he absurd and foolish?
Or are _you_ the foolish one, accepting without question the views of someone else.
What do you know of Russell's philosophy, by the way?
Do you agree with him? Because I certainly do not. In fact I believe many of his views to be _absurd and foolish_
Do keep up.
@@ardakolimsky7107 It's called twit identification.
I understand that I am related to Russell through my mother. His assessment of Shaw and his report of his conversation with Lenin have significantly increased my estimation of Russell. I might even acknowledge that we are related now.
It's interesting that Shaw was almost regarded as the equivalent of Shakespeare for his time but has now become somewhat forgotten. Even in England the name Ibsen or Bertolt Brecht would likely get much more of a reaction.
But not in his native country...
@@ardakolimsky7107 I can assure anyone who is in any doubt on the subject that the last thing Shaw is is "forgotten". The Shaw Theater Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario does lavish -- and first-rate -- productions of his plays every year, while its sister festival, the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, periodically performs him as well. (One of the last roles of the late Christopher Plummer was as Caesar in a wonderful production of Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" in Stratford, which I was lucky enough to see.) The Gingold Theater Group in New York also does Shaw regularly, and has, just within the past few years, put on acclaimed productions of "Saint Joan" and "Heartbreak House". No playwright, ncluding Shakespeare, ever wrote so many masterful leading roles for women as Shaw, which in itself will guarantee him theatrical immortality. The one drawback to performing Shaw is the same one that applies to Chekhov and Ibsen: the fact that so many of his plays require large, proficient (and therefore expensive) casts. (A good many of Shaw's supporting parts are as substantial as the leads in lesser plays.) In the United States, we can thank our theatrical unions for much of this problem, with their demands that producers hire more people, at full salary, than they actually need. Shaw stands today exactly where he has stood ever since the opening years of the twentieth century: as the greatest playwright next to Shakespeare in the English language.
@@tadimaggio Well Thomas, that pretty much says it all.
Well said.
🙇♂
His alliance with the same IDEOLOGY as hitler and indeed his ADMIRATION of Stalin hitler Mussolini & the
DEATH CAMPS
FOR UNDESIRABLES
Should NEVER be removed from our lives .
The equation of education & power that leads to the ideology/ BIGOTRY of eugenics socialism gulags death camps & use of abortion SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN EVER YEAR OF SCHOOLING
So that
No generation
No people
FORGET THE EVIL OF THE EDUCATED FOOL & TYRANT.
Ireland named a naval ship after him
It is about Freda Utley, she wrote many great books about WWII and her tragic experience
Thank you.
Shaw was perhaps someone quite psychologically disturbed. Radical socialism and vegetarianism were a way of "compensating" for what inwardly he actually felt for people, an expression of narcissism and sadism.
Evil incarnate = shaw ideology & heart
Bertrand Russell would be right at the top of my 'all time dinner party' guest list. A brilliant and fascinating mind while twinned with a beautiful heart. What a wonderful, wonderful man he was.
LOL! What a joke! The man was a well know Eugenicist; and he should also be equally ridiculed, for his very overall Elitist disposition.
I'm really beginning to question a lot of things, which I've been taught about his so-called brilliance. I did enjoy, however, his expansive volume on "The History of Western Philosophy."
But at the end of the day, I still can't just co-sign a Eugenicist, such as him; and that's also while despite the fact, that he was undoubtedly a brilliant person.
@@ALIENDNA14 Eugenics. An opinion. Ridiculed? You say it as if he had stated that the earth were flat. For ridiculing the opinions of others...you might be ridiculed yourself ;)
He's known to hit on other men's wives at dinner parties.
My grandmother on my father's side was a prominent figure in the theatrical life of progressive "left-wing" Welwyn Garden City in the 1920s and 30s.
She was no ones fool; a school teacher of martinet strictness, razer sharp critic of folly, vanity, and immaturity of thought or feeling. She loved Shaw, especially his Prefaces and writing on Wagner.
It's never entirely clear whether GBS's off hand provocations and cranky fads were merely a continuation of theatre by other means (a playwriter crafting his own persona for effect), or genuine and thus genuinely contemptible and risible.
However, the author of Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra.and The Perfect Wagnerite can never properly be off the shelves of great writers and great public intellectuals.
It might indeed be thought a piece of childlike naivety to expect writers (especially male writers) to be both brilliant and cuttingly insightful and revolutionary, yet also charming and morally impeccable. That is indeed pure fantasy. Musicians get away with much worse - Stravinsky was an impeccably well-dressed sarcastic bitch. Wagner a left-wing radical humanist yet a totalitarian megalomaniac. Brahms a cold and mocking romantic. Dvorak an utterly unworldly though very endearing child of nature. Bruckner thought he regularly communed with god. Beethoven an insufferable prig and prone to childish self-pity. Ravel obviously suffered from OCD. Etc, etc, etc
Love andrea
Well, that’s a disturbing story. The more I think about it, though, the more in character it seems for Shaw, I’m sorry to say. Russell is certainly right to call Shaw’s views about medicine silly. I would say the same about Shaw’s about orthography, although these were more innocuous, if nevertheless indefensible and absurd. Shaw was still a great playwright, if not quite as great as he imagined himself to be, and his “Joan of Arc” is superb.
Shaw is was and will always be a
Blithering idiot of bigotry & EVIL comparable to the LIAR Lucifer .
This is a withering assessment by Russell and I have no doubt Shaw had his idiosyncrasies and faults: I have read the four volumes of Michael Holroyd's biography. In some ways he was a product of his times - his support of eugenics, for example.
I agree with much of what @tadimaggio says. For me, Shaw is the greatest playwright in English since Shakespeare: his dramatic output is staggeringly ambitious. Shaw's plays are lastingly popular and delightful; he was brilliant at stagecraft, dialogue and dramatising ideas and conflicting viewpoints. He is the greatest satirist since Swift, the best music critic ever, one of the best theatre critics and a pamphleteer par excellence. His prose is scintillating, scarcely ever bettered. Just read one of the beautiful prefaces to his plays or 'The Intelligent Women's Guide to Socialism'. No wonder the Nobel Committee spoke of his work being 'infused with a singular poetic beauty'.
I was introduced to his plays at 15 in a secondary school in Scotland. I have read more of his plays and prefaces since then. Seeing one of his plays performed is a joy. I feel blessed indeed at having discovered Shaw.
Many of the past Philosophers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists were men who had interests in Life, Thoughts, Behaviours, Repetitions and Outcomes....yet almost all had very difficult beginnings which formed a basis of negativity as their starting point, hoping to find the positive through study....most never found it....leaving future students of their teachings to repeat the negative narrative without understanding that all studies and viewpoints should be viewed with doubt through kindly feelings rather than believing Tutors dogmatic certainties.
so cool
Is there a transcript of this interview? It is kinda hard for non-british to cope with that accent tbh :D
Interviewer: and Shaw?
Russell: What do you say?
Interviewer: Shaw.
Russell: yes?
Interviewer: what was he, rather inhuman by his writings, maybe he wasn’t a man at all as he didn’t feel the things most men feel- except- except- uh- vanity.
Russell: he felt vanity and that was the whole of him. There was nothing more. I knew a lady who was secretary of the Labour Party in the University of London. And she got gradually more and more towards communism, and at last became a communist, and married a Russian and went to live out there. And in Stalin’s purge, this Russian was taken away, and she never heard from him again, or heard of him, or didn’t know what happened to him at all. She was absolutely devoted to the man, and she came to England to see if anybody could do anything to influence Stalin. And she came to me among other people, and I said, “well, Shaw has persona grata in Russia, perhaps he’ll do something.” And so, we approached Shaw about it, and he wrote her a letter which I saw, saying, “My dear lady, you have no idea how comfortable Russian penal settlements are. I’m quite sure your husband is much happier there than he would be being nagged by you”. I never spoke to the man again. I thought it one of the most horrible things I’d ever known done, because the poor lady was utterly heartbroken. He was a very cruel man. Very cruel if his vanity was hurt. And his vanity was hurt in this because it threatened his judgement of the Soviet Union. You see what I mean? It’s not obvious that his vanity was involved, but it was, because it was a suggestion that perhaps he was wrong in praising the Soviet Union. And that would be a suggestion that he wasn’t as wise as he thought. And therefore the lady was to be punished. By means of wit, he concealed that fact that he was silly. Wit is a wonderful thing for concealing- I mean all his views about medicine for instance: totally silly.
@@Ekvitarius Thank you!
It’s the quintessential English accent :-)
@@Ekvitarius It's "persona grata" that he says, which translates as "personally acceptable or welcome."
Jonathan Morrow thank you. I’ll remedy that right away!
There's a similar story about Brecht.
There are similar stories about everyone. Even you...
@@Dacre1000 no
In the end Shaw's artistic achievement outweighs his disgusting character. We don't have to live with the man, but Russell was right never to speak to him again. Many great artissts were miserable human beings.
Can you explain to me this whole thing?
True but Shaw chose to inject himself into the limelight of public affairs constantly. It’s one thing for a great artist to be a miserable person privately but Shaw insisted on making a public display of his character and opinions.
@@syourke3 I don't disagree
“Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel Fuck Shaw's opinion on this subject
@Oona Craig Agree. Elie Wiesel is by far the worst.
Shame to hear that about GBS
No problem at all with criticising Shaw in his awful support for Stalin -- SO LONG as we're also prepared to do likewise regarding the murderous attrocities which Western so-called civilisation was built upon.
Muz Wot no problem at all doing that, but the west’s murderous atrocities weren’t discussed in this vid though....
For the record I am against murderous atrocities 🤷♂️
@@muzwot9603 what-aboutism, bothsidesism, shameless and shameful false moral equavalency
I think Shaw simply fooled people.
Didn't fool most of the Irish.
We are forgetting -- occasionally, specific experience is capable of clouding a man's judgement. Let us remember what John Stuart Mill said: "I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two genders, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another". A person can not be judged in one frame. So, we are no Freud that in one second we can judge a Shaw or likes. Scientific (rational) approach of analysis of an event or an utterance can't stop at its face-value (the apparent worth or implication of something). Had Sigmund Freud been in place of Russell, discussion would have continued, I guess; he would not have jumped into conclusion. By the way in the same breath, too much honesty got some impeccable link with a bit of cruelty. Somebody said "our society is interwoven in very fine threads of immorality. But, already Shaw said: “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
G. B. Shaws plays are today largely forgotten. I have to say I never saw half the point of what he wrote except to rile the establishment of his day. Something that Ibsen did with far superior panache. The social comments they contained which were at the time considered sharp and challenging were really not well constructed. Anyone (like me) who suffered the tedium of "The Apple Cart" or "Major Barbara" will perhaps agree with me. As for his so called comedies... The man had no sense of humour. The only claim to immortality he has (and OMG he would hate it) is that his play "Pygmalion" was the basis for "My Fair Lady".
Shaw's light is rather dim at the moment. A decade or two after his death, his collected plays and collected prefaces were on every bookshelf, but he is hardly spoken of or performed at the moment. Maybe a new biographer will unearth some scandal - he was secretly a woman, perhaps? - and Channel Four will fund a film about him which we'll all have to watch.
Yes, wouldn't they love that? Shaw would rocket back up to the top of the pops.
@@overman2306 Shaw was a man of principle sometimes, but at other times just a contrarian. We've all known fellow students like that. That's what Russell meant by calling him "silly."
This was based actually
based on what?
Now, tell me what you really think about GBS.
I wish Russell had met Wilde instead of Oul Barney Shaw.
One silly person instead of another?
@@DellDuckfan313 If he interviewed you, then it would be three.
Justify your existence!
"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction." -- Ayn Rand, Anthem, 1946
Shaw was something of an ass. And his politics were not based in reality. But-- dammit-- so many of his plays are virtually unparalleled in theater.
The man that wrote Heart Break House can never permanently fall from my esteem.
Have you ever read “ The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism “ I know you are not going to but if you did you definitely would not make that comment.
P.G. Wodehouse wasn't fond of Shaw.
Russell shows himself to be unideological and pure compared to the marxist/soviet apologist hacks of his age. Absolutely absurd that Call of Duty has Shaw quotes but not Russell on war.
Was he dead by then? Shaw lived till he was about 90.
This interview, I think takes place in 1960 or several years earlier. Shaw died in 1950. Close. He was still of recent memory with many who knew him personally alive.
@@matthewlaurence3121 Shaw died after falling out of a tree when he was in his 90s. What was he doing up trees at his age? This was not the only bad story I heard about G.B.Shaw. A female fan wrote to him for advice, after suspecting she had been given the wrong baby at hospital. She had seen her real child at the school gate or somewhere. Shaw advised her strongly not to approach the other child's parents, but to let both children believe they were with their real families. The way the families solved the situation was better than the advice she received from Shaw.
Shaw also genuinely hated women IIRC so there's that.
Shaw and his wife were great supporters of T E Lawrence, and helped him create the myth of the Saviour of the Arabs. Having just read Richard Aldington's book on Lawrence (who had a very odd antipathy to women), I'm convinced that Lawrence was a fraud and Shaw was a very poor judge of human nature.
Shaw was an outsider, an eccentric and a contrarian. He was also Irish!..When we think of the outlandish things Churchill said to women over the years what Shaw said to this lady seems very tame indeed. Bertrand Russell could also be very cutting in his remarks when the mood took him. Shaw had an unfortunate demeanor which made him appear very stern and somewhat rude, but his writing shows him as a person who had a very great understanding of the human condition and also as a man who was not without sympathy for the less fortunate of society. He was one of those people who could express his feelings far better through the written word rather than through conversation.
He was an asshole to that lady. Let's not qualify with an appeal to Shaw's career.
Tim mcCaffrey - he was a sociopathic socialist who cheered the nazis implementation of the final solution
In spite of his writings about understanding the human condition, this act says that he was not very sympathetic, regardless of whatever he wrote. In other words, actions speak louder than words.
Tame?! Great Artist or not he deserved to be horse whipped. I mean that literally. English/Irish wit can be cutting alla Churchill or Oscar Wilde. Russell knew that as well as anyone, but to speak to a desperate woman in that manner does not constitute a somewhat nasty witicism. It is criminal, the deliberated infliction of mental distress.
Ele não entendia literatura bem.
Seems to be lot of haters of GBS..but I like him for what he is 😎
A BLITHERING IDIOT RACIST BIGOT EUGENICS SUPPORTER AND ALL ENCOMPASSING FOOL who’s claim to fame is Hatred of the “ undesirables”
That “ do not punish the imbeciles but
Kill kill kill kill them “.
What a Great example of the
progressive leftist socialist democrat party today .
All his views on the Soviets were also totally silly, obviously.
Both these men had an irrational fear of hedgehogs & pork pies, but oddly enough, only on the third Tuesday of the month
care to elaborate ?
Huh?
Baneva firsattan istifade
Wit is natural, God gifted, no emotions need to be hidden..by wit.. probably Russell is not in a vantage point as GB Shaw was.
God gifted you foolishness.
@@dreamdiction if being natural is foolishness, so be it!
@@arunn2000 "natural" means - the same as any other animal.
@@dreamdiction Betrand doesn't even stand a match to the quickest, spontaneous retorts of Shaw. That's what I mentioned as a god's gift.
@@arunn2000 Cerebral narcissism is hyper-vigilant and spontaneously reactive, but it has no moral objective beyond self-preservation and self promotion.
I still have a pint of ale with Shaw, top bloke
He wouldn’t drink it...or pay for it.
Russel só falava lógica judaica. Não entendia nada de língua inglesa.
Shaw was an intolerable self promoter, who, when given the chance would utter much tripe about the nothing.... a real horrid little man...
That's show business! Shaw was both an entertainer AND a public intellectual. British culture prefers its intellectuals to keep us amused, and so they risk going too far because we ask comedians to comment on the most serious of subjects. A case in point: Boris Johnson.
That's neither accurate nor balanced.
@@ardakolimsky7107 "Britons" have a deep-rooted suspicion of brainpower, so those cursed with it have to hid it under a cloak of silliness. Whereas those not so afflicted get a free pass.
@@faithlesshound5621 He was Irish
@@ardakolimsky7107 And so proud of it, eh.
Oh vanity! Mao could barely swim. And putin....
Shaw is inexplicably overrated.
I read some of his poems and don't remember being blown away, I think he has deservedly been a bit forgotten now.
Both despicable
I'm unaware of why Russell was despicable. What did he say or do? Just curious. Ta
@@yehudimcewan5167 Advocated preemptive nuclear strike against USSR before he became antiwar activist.
Shaw was not being cruel. He was making his point.
You wish to love a society which slaughters 66 million of their own by Gulag prisons and the separation of families and sorrow of all, but this woman loves communism and idolizes it and then realizes what it brings. Shaw is saying "You made your bed, now lie in it."
The answer was exactly right. By Shaw defending communism through the answer it shows the truth of it all. Communism is right woman and you know it. Would the woman accept the answer if it didn't come from a communist? She honors communism. Let her have it.
It is like a woman of the West entering into Islam and then realizing what it is. She had the knowledge at her finger tips and took it all anyway because she refused to look at every Quranic verse about women.
"She made her bed, now lie in it."
Who should answer her? A Muslim man obviously, and probably from the Quran to boot.
How else is one to turn to truth of Yahweh and the Bible and all the verses defending women, unless they first hear the reality from the side they chose?
@@ReligionOfSacrifice I've herad it said that the bible is very misogynistic.
@@mikeoglen6848, a lot of people are stupid, but here is a test for you to take. You pick one bad Bible verse and we debate it. If you fail on the first verse pick a second bad Bible verse and we debate it. If you fail on the second verse, then pick a third Bible verse. If you fail on all three when you picked them WHAT WOULD YOU LEARN???
Yahweh is always to be glorified and all Bible verses can be defended. But by all means take the test, if you think yourself wise. You seem to think you will do well if you choose the topic of women so offer up the first verse about women you can't understand, but if you never offer a verse I'll assume you looked some up and then looked at the context and grew up to think smarter.
@@ReligionOfSacrifice OK Mr Sacrifice. You've given me an interesting challenge. I can't quote the bible off the top of my head but I'll take it off the shelf, dust it down and try and send you a verse or two...
@@mikeoglen6848, please do. I can't wait to defend the Bible by logic and context to show you that Yahweh is always to be glorified. I know I can do it for any verse. The only question is whether you are man enough to begin with a verse you pick and then upon the challenge being put before you do you have any debate skills and finally do you have enough humility to admit you are wrong and can find nothing wrong with Yahweh. So please begin. If you don't I'll assume you either got wise or refused to become wise.
hahaha Bernard Shaw did not mince his words. Women can't appreciate that.
They can when they want to take you down a peg.
at least your name is accurate
@@TomorrowWeLive Your name seems quite accurate, also...
You sound like another misogynist. Incel?