Skip to main content
Shakespeare & Beyond

George Bernard Shaw on Shakespeare

Shaw
Shaw
Shaw "cutting" Shakespeare in Hades

Kyd. G.B. Shaw “cutting” Shakespeare in Hades. Watercolor and ink on paper, late 19th or early 20th century. Folger Shakespeare Library. ART Box C598 no.4 (size L)

William Shakespeare was, famously, a playwright and an actor. George Bernard Shaw was, famously, a playwright and a critic — and a particularly acerbic critic of Shakespeare, whose cult he insisted had mushroomed by the 20th century far beyond what the man’s dramaturgy merited, and whose characters he declared “have no religion, no politics, no conscience, no hope, no convictions of any sort.”

Whew. Mayhap we should see about renaming the Folger.

Or mayhap not: Shaw was also famously a bombastic old curmudgeon (even in his youth), a genius gadfly given to making outrageous claims to get an audience’s attention, then using his peerless wit and erudition to make a watertight case for the more measured position he’d actually come to argue. (Or the opposite position: Shaw is forever giving equal time to the opponents of his own ideas.)

Indeed he would over the course of his long life shower much praise on Shakespear, to use the spelling Shaw preferred, and would even lend his name and pen to the earliest efforts to establish a national theater in England.

Comments

Bernard Shaw was an opinionated pain as far as William was concerned.

Rachel Bowen — May 1, 2018

The laddie doth protest too much, methinks.

Jacqueline West — May 2, 2018

Trey Graham’s article on Shaw is spot on. Shaw was a provocateur who enjoyed stirring up controversy.

Mary Lyle — May 2, 2018

[…] classic play Saint Joan onstage at the Folger this month, we published Folger Theatre’s playbill essay about Shaw’s acerbic criticism of […]

George Bernard Shaw on William Shakespeare: Ungenial geniuses — May 29, 2018

Sorry, but “Our Boy Bill” is a little to cute for my taste. I also object to writers who call Shakespeare “Will.” But I am perhaps of an earlier generation of Shakespeare lovers!

Joan F. McMurray — June 18, 2018

I am an independent scholar on chosen topics, and a literary translator. I am trying to track down the source of a comment on Shakespeare by Bernard Shaw. Shaw wrote, probably in one of his play prefaces, that he would have given one of Shakespeare’s plays in exchange for a preface by the Bard. I would appreciate any leads as to the source of Shaw’s remark. Thanks.

Christopher Kasparek — September 30, 2018