Bernard Shaw’s Plays—Not in This Family

The plays of Bernard Shaw feature new, sometimes daring ideas intended to jolt the audiences of his day into recognizing the multifarious problems of their society and acting accordingly. Shaw frequently employs interior authors, characters who create works that in many ways underscore his own message, to deliver his strongly held opinions on everything from family life to the Life Force. This chapter not only considers Shaw’s interior authors but also examines the nexus of censorship and modernism in one facet of his oft-censored plays: his creation of characters who either self-censor their own published or highly publicized work, or who are censored themselves by their fellow characters. I identify Shaw’s interior authors as Mrs. Clandon in You Never Can Tell, John Tanner in Man and Superman, Fanny O’Dowda in Fanny’s First Play, the Brothers Barnabas in Back to Methuselah, and the eponymous protagonist of Saint Joan. I also discuss Shaw’s secondary or exterior authors who write, although their works are not central to their respective plays. Chapter 3 considers censorship and modernism in You Never Can Tell, Man and Superman, and Fanny’s First Play.