Editing George Bernard Shaw (section)

====Drama====
In Shaw's view, the London theatres of the 1890s presented too many revivals of old plays and not enough new work. He campaigned against "[[melodrama]], [[sentimentality]], [[Media stereotypes|stereotypes]] and worn-out conventions".{{sfn|Berst|1998|p=71}} As a music critic he had frequently been able to concentrate on analysing new works, but in the theatre he was often obliged to fall back on discussing how various performers tackled well-known plays. In a study of Shaw's work as a theatre critic, E. J. West writes that Shaw "ceaselessly compared and contrasted artists in interpretation and in technique". Shaw contributed more than 150 articles as theatre critic for ''The Saturday Review'', in which he assessed more than 212 productions.{{sfn|West|1952|p=204}} He championed [[Henrik Ibsen|Ibsen]]'s plays when many theatregoers regarded them as outrageous, and his 1891 book ''[[Quintessence of Ibsenism]]'' remained a classic throughout the twentieth century.{{sfn|Berst|1998|p=56}} Of contemporary dramatists writing for the West End stage he rated [[Oscar Wilde]] above the rest: "...&nbsp;our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre".{{sfn|Berst|1998|pp=67–68}} Shaw's collected criticisms were published as ''Our Theatres in the Nineties'' in 1932.{{sfn|Evans|2003|pp=210–211}}

Shaw maintained a provocative and frequently self-contradictory attitude to Shakespeare (whose name he insisted on spelling "Shakespear").{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=118–119}} Many found him difficult to take seriously on the subject; [[Duff Cooper]] observed that by attacking Shakespeare, "it is Shaw who appears a ridiculous pigmy shaking his fist at a mountain."{{sfn|Cooper|1953|p=40}} Shaw was, nevertheless, a knowledgeable Shakespearian, and in an article in which he wrote, "With the single exception of [[Homer]], there is no eminent writer, not even [[Walter Scott|Sir Walter Scott]], whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespear when I measure my mind against his," he also said, "But I am bound to add that I pity the man who cannot enjoy Shakespear. He has outlasted thousands of abler thinkers, and will outlast a thousand more".{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=118–119}} Shaw had two regular targets for his more extreme comments about Shakespeare: undiscriminating "[[Bardolatry|Bardolaters]]", and actors and directors who presented insensitively cut texts in over-elaborate productions.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=121 and 129}}{{refn|In a 1969 study, John F. Matthews credits Shaw with a successful campaign against the two-hundred-year-old tradition of [[Shakespeare in performance#19th century|editing Shakespeare]] into "acting versions", often designed to give star actors greater prominence, to the detriment of the play as a whole.{{sfn|Matthews|1969|pp=16–17}}{{sfn|Pierce|2011|pp=120–121}} Shaw was in favour of cuts intended to enhance the drama by omitting what he saw as Shakespearean rhetoric.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=127}}|group=n}} He was continually drawn back to Shakespeare, and wrote three plays with Shakespearean themes: ''[[The Dark Lady of the Sonnets]]'', ''Cymbeline Refinished'' and ''Shakes versus Shav''.{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=131}} In a 2001 analysis of Shaw's Shakespearian criticisms, Robert Pierce concludes that Shaw, who was no academic, saw Shakespeare's plays—like all theatre—from an author's practical point of view: "Shaw helps us to get away from the Romantics' picture of Shakespeare as a titanic genius, one whose art cannot be analyzed or connected with the mundane considerations of theatrical conditions and profit and loss, or with a specific staging and cast of actors."{{sfn|Pierce|2011|p=129}}