Editing George Bernard Shaw (section)

==Legacy and influence==

===Theatrical===
{{quote box|width=300px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote=Shaw, arguably the most important English-language playwright after Shakespeare, produced an immense ''oeuvre'', of which at least half a dozen plays remain part of the world repertoire.{{space}}... Academically unfashionable, of limited influence even in areas such as Irish drama and British political theatre where influence might be expected, Shaw's unique and unmistakable plays keep escaping from the safely dated category of period piece to which they have often been consigned.|salign=left|source= ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre'' (2003){{sfn|Grene 2003 ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre''}}}}
Shaw did not found a school of dramatists as such, but Crawford asserts that today "we recognise [him] as second only to Shakespeare in the British theatrical tradition&nbsp;... the proponent of the theater of ideas" who struck a death-blow to 19th-century melodrama.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=103}} According to Laurence, Shaw pioneered "intelligent" theatre, in which the audience was required to think, thereby paving the way for the new breeds of twentieth-century playwrights from [[John Galsworthy|Galsworthy]] to [[Harold Pinter|Pinter]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=103 (Crawford quotes Laurence, but does not state the source)}}

Crawford lists numerous playwrights whose work owes something to that of Shaw. Among those active in Shaw's lifetime he includes [[Noël Coward]], who based his early comedy ''[[The Young Idea]]'' on ''You Never Can Tell'' and continued to draw on the older man's works in later plays.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|pp=104–105}}{{sfn|Coward|2004|pp=114–115}} [[T. S. Eliot]], by no means an admirer of Shaw, admitted that the epilogue of ''[[Murder in the Cathedral]]'', in which [[Thomas Becket|Becket]]'s slayers explain their actions to the audience, might have been influenced by ''Saint Joan''.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=107}} The critic [[Eric Bentley]] comments that Eliot's later play ''[[The Confidential Clerk]]'' "had all the earmarks of Shavianism&nbsp;... without the merits of the real Bernard Shaw".{{sfn|Bentley|1968|p=144}} Among more recent British dramatists, Crawford marks [[Tom Stoppard]] as "the most Shavian of contemporary playwrights";{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=108}} Shaw's "serious farce" is continued in the works of Stoppard's contemporaries [[Alan Ayckbourn]], [[Henry Livings]] and [[Peter Nichols (playwright)|Peter Nichols]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=109}}

[[File:Set of the complete plays of Shaw.png|thumb|left|Shaw's complete plays]]
Shaw's influence crossed the Atlantic at an early stage. Bernard Dukore notes that he was successful as a dramatist in America ten years before achieving comparable success in Britain.{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=128}} Among many American writers professing a direct debt to Shaw, [[Eugene O'Neill]] became an admirer at the age of seventeen, after reading ''The Quintessence of Ibsenism''.{{sfn|Alexander|1959|p=307}} Other Shaw-influenced American playwrights mentioned by Dukore are [[Elmer Rice]], for whom Shaw "opened doors, turned on lights, and expanded horizons";{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=132}} [[William Saroyan]], who empathised with Shaw as "the embattled individualist against the philistines";{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=133}} and [[S. N. Behrman]], who was inspired to write for the theatre after attending a performance of ''Caesar and Cleopatra'': "I thought it would be agreeable to write plays like that".{{sfn|Dukore|1992|p=134}}

Assessing Shaw's reputation in a 1976 critical study, T. F. Evans described Shaw as unchallenged in his lifetime and since as the leading English-language dramatist of the (twentieth) century, and as a master of prose style.{{sfn|Evans|1976|p=1}} The following year, in a contrary assessment, the playwright [[John Osborne]] castigated ''[[The Guardian]]''{{'}}s theatre critic [[Michael Billington (critic)|Michael Billington]] for referring to Shaw as "the greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare". Osborne responded that Shaw "is the most fraudulent, inept writer of Victorian melodramas ever to gull a timid critic or fool a dull public".{{sfn|Osborne|1977|p=12}} Despite this hostility, Crawford sees the influence of Shaw in some of Osborne's plays, and concludes that though the latter's work is neither imitative nor derivative, these affinities are sufficient to classify Osborne as an inheritor of Shaw.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=108}}

In a 1983 study, R. J. Kaufmann suggests that Shaw was a key forerunner—"godfather, if not actually finicky paterfamilias"—of the [[Theatre of the Absurd]].{{sfn|Kaufmann|1965|p=11}} Two further aspects of Shaw's theatrical legacy are noted by Crawford: his opposition to stage censorship, which was finally ended in 1968, and his efforts which extended over many years to establish a [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]].{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=109}} Shaw's short 1910 play ''The Dark Lady of the Sonnets'', in which Shakespeare pleads with [[Elizabeth I of England|Queen Elizabeth I]] for the endowment of a state theatre, was part of this campaign.{{sfn|Holroyd|1989|pp=270–71}}

Writing in ''The New Statesman'' in 2012 Daniel Janes commented that Shaw's reputation had declined by the time of his 150th anniversary in 2006 but had recovered considerably. In Janes's view, the many current revivals of Shaw's major works showed the playwright's "almost unlimited relevance to our times".{{sfn|Janes, ''New Statesman'', 20 July 2012}} In the same year, [[Mark Lawson]] wrote in ''The Guardian'' that Shaw's moral concerns engaged present-day audiences, and made him—like his model, Ibsen—one of the most popular playwrights in contemporary British theatre.{{sfn|Lawson, ''The Guardian'', 11 July 2012}}

The [[Shaw Festival]] in [[Niagara-on-the-Lake|Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada]] is the second largest repertory theatre company in North America. It produces plays by or written during the lifetime of Shaw as well as some contemporary works.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Walker|first1=Craig S.|last2=Wise|first2=Jennifer|title=The Broadview Anthology of Drama, Volume 2: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries|date=9 July 2003|publisher=Broadview Press|page=205|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_Ocr-WlM7wC&pg=PA205}}</ref> The [[Gingold Theatrical Group]], founded in 2006, presents works by Shaw and others in New York City that feature the humanitarian ideals that his work promoted.<ref>Smith, Wendy. [https://www.americantheatre.org/2014/10/21/the-shaw-must-go-on-david-staller-makes-the-case-for-the-writers-many-facets "The Shaw Must Go On: David Staller Makes the Case for the Writer’s Many Facets"], [[American Theatre magazine|''American Theatre'']], November 2014, accessed 3 June 2018</ref> It became the first theatre group to present all of Shaw's stage work through its monthly concert series ''Project Shaw''.<ref>Keddy, Genevieve Rafter. [https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/Photo-Coverage-Project-Shaw-Presents-SUPER-SHAW-WOMEN-20170718 "Project Shaw Presents ''Super Shaw Women''], 18 July 2017, accessed 3 June 2018</ref>

===General===
[[File:George Bernard Shaw - bust by Jacob Epstein.jpg|thumb|right|Bust by [[Jacob Epstein]], 1934]]
In the 1940s the author [[Harold Nicolson]] advised the [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty|National Trust]] not to accept the bequest of Shaw's Corner, predicting that Shaw would be totally forgotten within fifty years.{{sfn|Dukore ''et al.'' 1994|p=266}} In the event, Shaw's broad cultural legacy, embodied in the widely used term "Shavian", has endured and is nurtured by Shaw Societies in various parts of the world. The original society was founded in London in 1941 and survives; it organises meetings and events, and publishes a regular bulletin ''The Shavian''. The Shaw Society of America began in June 1950; it foundered in the 1970s but its journal, adopted by Penn State University Press, continued to be published as ''Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies'' until 2004. A second American organisation, founded in 1951 as "The Bernard Shaw Society", remains active {{as of|2016|lc=y}}. More recent societies have been established in Japan and India.{{sfn|Weintraub: Shaw Societies Once and Now}}

Besides his collected music criticism, Shaw has left a varied musical legacy, not all of it of his choosing. Despite his dislike of having his work adapted for the musical theatre ("my plays set themselves to a verbal music of their own"){{sfn|Reed|1939|p=142}} two of his plays were turned into musical comedies: ''Arms and the Man'' was the basis of ''[[The Chocolate Soldier]]'' in 1908, with music by [[Oscar Straus (composer)|Oscar Straus]], and ''Pygmalion'' was adapted in 1956 as ''[[My Fair Lady]]'' with book and lyrics by [[Alan Jay Lerner]] and music by [[Frederick Loewe]].{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}} Although he had a high regard for Elgar, Shaw turned down the composer's request for an opera libretto, but played a major part in persuading the BBC to commission Elgar's [[Symphony No. 3 (Elgar/Payne)|Third Symphony]], and was the dedicatee of ''[[The Severn Suite]]'' (1930).{{sfn|Anderson: ''Grove Music Online''}}{{sfn|Reed|1939|pp=138 and 142}}

The substance of Shaw's political legacy is uncertain. In 1921 Shaw's erstwhile collaborator William Archer, in a letter to the playwright, wrote: "I doubt if there is any case of a man so widely read, heard, seen, and known as yourself, who has produced so little effect on his generation."{{sfn|Morgan|1951|p=100}} Margaret Cole, who considered Shaw the greatest writer of his age, professed never to have understood him. She thought he worked "immensely hard" at politics, but essentially, she surmises, it was for fun—"the fun of a brilliant artist".{{sfn|Cole|1949|p=148}} After Shaw's death, Pearson wrote: "No one since the time of [[Thomas Paine|Tom Paine]] has had so definite an influence on the social and political life of his time and country as Bernard Shaw."{{sfn|Morgan|1951|p=100}}

In its obituary tribute to Shaw, ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' concluded:

{{blockquote|He was no originator of ideas. He was an insatiable adopter and adapter, an incomparable prestidigitator with the thoughts of the forerunners. [[Nietzsche]], [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]] (''[[Erewhon]]''), Marx, [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]], [[William Blake|Blake]], [[Dickens]], William Morris, Ruskin, [[Beethoven]] and Wagner all had their applications and misapplications. By bending to their service all the faculties of a powerful mind, by inextinguishable wit, and by every artifice of argument, he carried their thoughts as far as they would reach—so far beyond their sources that they came to us with the vitality of the newly created.{{sfn|Tomlinson|1950|p=709}}}}