Shaw’s Style In Context by By Sarah Wansley

What is Shavian?
George Bernard Shaw is one of the very few dramatists who has had an adjective named after him—in fact, Shakespeare and Chekhov are the only other playwrights whose adjectives are recognized by Microsoft Word. This honor not only suggests that his name sounds good when placed before a noun (as in, “a Shavian wit”), but also that his literary style is quite distinct. Shaw’s plays:

• Are plays of ideas—Shaw engages his audience intellectually and his plays are often marked by monologues and dialogues in which characters engage in intellectual debates.
• Are socially conscious—a Fabian socialist, Shaw used the theater to explore social issues of his day and draw awareness to social problems.
• Are often comedic.
• Are marked by clever language.

Shaw and Ibsen: Yin and Yang?
In order to further define what is Shavian, however, we must first talk about what is Ibsenian. Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright whose realistic social dramas often scandalized Victorian-era audiences. His Ghosts, for example, investigates an incestuous relationship and ends in a mother’s choice to euthanize her son who is suffering from inherited syphilis. Before he became a dramatist, Shaw gave a lecture to the Fabian Society, which he later published under the title, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism.” In the 1890 lecture, Shaw highlighted Ibsen’s socialist tendencies and insistence on the absence of moral absolutes. For example, in both Ghosts and his earlier play A Doll’s House, Ibsen questions the necessity of marriage and suggests that under specific circumstances a woman may be morally justified in leaving her husband. The strength of Ibsen’s plays, as per Shaw, is that, “the conflict is not between clear right and wrong: the villain is as conscientious as the hero, if not more so; in fact, the question that makes the play interesting is which is the villain and which is the hero?”.

The same dramatic question could, of course, be applied to Shaw’s own work, which explores social issues. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the audience struggles to evaluate the opposing moral stances of Mrs. Warren and Vivie. Mrs. Warren engages in illicit activities, but does so to provide a better life for her daughter. Shaw’s point, therefore, is that the social circumstances forced upon women of Mrs. Warren’s class allow no moral high road. Several of Ibsen and Shaw’s plays utilize a similar structure: an impossible moral situation is presented in order to illuminate evils in the conventional Victorian social system.

Although their plays often deal with similar themes, Ibsen and Shaw are certainly not interchangeable. The main differences between these two playwrights are the tone and mood of their work. It would be an oversimplification to say Ibsen writes tragedy and Shaw comedy, but that distinction may help us begin to separate the two. Many of Ibsen’s plays are dark, heavy dramas, while Shaw’s rapacious wit keeps the audience laughing while simultaneously confronting tough issues. Shaw’s work reminds us of something Harold Pinter once said about his own work, “my plays are funny…up to a point.” Shaw himself commented on his musical background as influencing the tone of his work, “Nobody nursed on letters alone will ever get the Mozartian joyousness into comedy.” In addition to the musical quality of Shaw’s witty banter, the mood of his work differs from Ibsen in that we rarely see ugliness or suffering on Shaw’s stage. Ibsen’s plays are rife with depictions of illness, deformity and death. To illustrate the overbearing sordidness of Regina’s alleged good-for-nothing father Engstrand in Ghosts, Ibsen gives him a club foot. By contrast, Shaw presents Eliza Doolittle’s good-for-nothing father in Pygmalion as a loveable drunken fool. Shaw’s plays lull the audience into a false sense of security—we believe we are watching just an entertaining play. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, when the curtain closes on Vivie Warren, alone in her office, however, we suddenly realize we have been tricked into watching a political drama. Shaw has educated, challenged and enlightened us in the midst of our laughter. This final perception shift is the quintessence of Shavianism.