Who's Afraid of Bernard Shaw? : Some Personalities in Shaw's Plays

People known to Bernard Shaw had every reason to fear becoming recognizable characters in his plays. He turned Beatrice Webb into a witchlike virago inThe Millionairess, Winston Churchill into an aspiring, blowhard politician inJohn Bull's Other Island, and Lawrence of Arabia into the eccentric army private Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek inToo 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, Victoria: An Intimate Biography, and Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.