Who's Afraid of Bernard Shaw?
Some Personalities in Shaw's Plays
“Leading us through this amazing wealth of connections, allusions, relationships, and influences, Weintraub never falters in his lucid writing that captures the reader’s interest and fascination.”—SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies
“This collection of essays by one of the world’s leading Shaw scholars makes original and significant contributions to understanding of Shaw on many different fronts. . . . A most welcome addition to a masterly collection of works about Shaw and his contemporaries by Weintraub, a collection characteristically marked, as here, by lively, punchy, and entertaining writing.”—English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920
"Splendid. This book continually surprises and entertains with its revelations about Shaw’s engagement with an impressive array of historical and contemporary figures, ranging from Jesus to Virginia Woolf. This is a virtuoso performance by a maestro of Shaw studies."—A. M. Gibbs, author of Bernard Shaw: A Life
"Ur-Shavian Stanley Weintraub’s great virtues as a writer are stunning erudition and a consistently high level of readability. Again and again, his scholarship is illuminating—alive with original findings that make his essays profitable and exciting to read."—Charles A. Carpenter, author of Bernard Shaw as Artist-Fabian
People known to Bernard Shaw had every reason to fear becoming recognizable characters in his plays. He turned Beatrice Webb into a witchlike virago in The Millionairess, Winston Churchill into an aspiring, blowhard politician in John Bull’s Other Island, and Lawrence of Arabia into the eccentric army private Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek in Too True to Be Good. However, as eminent Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub reveals in this exquisite collection, Shaw’s relationships to real or imagined personalities could be both curiously unexpected and deliciously complex.
Featuring figures as varied as Julius Caesar, Zulu king Cetewayo, Noel Coward, Edward Elgar, and Benjamin Disraeli, this volume brilliantly demonstrates how Shaw put something of himself into all of his "people." The result is a book that is consistently revealing, intriguing, and entertaining.
Stanley Weintraub, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, is the author of over fifty books, including Private Shaw and Public Shaw, Journey to Heartbreak, and Victoria: An Intimate Biography.
