SOURCE: Small, Barbara J. “Rhetorical Style in Shaw's Plays.” Shaw Review 22, no. 2 (May 1979): 79-88.

In the following essay, Small contends that Shaw's plays were conceived and written more in the rhetorical tradition than in a realistic style.

What Raina wants is the extremity of style—style—Comedie Francaise, Queen of Spain style. Do you hear, worthless wretch that you are?

—STYLE.

—G. B. S. to Lillah McCarthy, 6 February 1908

Although Shaw, for the most part, used realistic subject matter and language that on the surface appears realistic, his plays and characters transcend realism. It is clear that he never intended to write strictly naturalistic plays:

Life as we see it is so haphazard that it is only by picking out its key situations and arranging them in their significant order (which is never how they actually occur) that it can be made intelligible.¹

It was the playwright's duty to...