SOURCE: McFadden, Karen Howell. “G. Bernard Shaw's Political Plays of the Nineteen Thirties.” Nature, Society, and Thought 1, no. 3 (1988): 418-34.

In the following essay, McFadden asserts that Shaw's political plays from the 1930s are “worthy of re-examination, not only for their artistic merit, but also because they provide engrossing images of the kinds of philosophical debates Shaw was constantly waging with himself and others throughout his lifetime.”

The acute social crisis of capitalism in the nineteen thirties produced a literature fraught with ideological implications which retains its relevance for those seeking solutions to the problems of today. In that period G. Bernard Shaw wrote five major political plays, Too True to Be Good (1931), On the Rocks (1933), The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1934), The Millionairess (1935), and Geneva (1938).¹ These plays are worthy of re-examination, not only for their intrinsic artistic merit, but also because they provide engrossing images of the kinds...