ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -GB Shaw started writing plays to demonstrate that problem plays of the type that Ibsen was writing could succeed on the stage. His plays are full of witty and intellectual discussions of problems in fine and crisp dialogues but having a little action.

Detailed explanation-2: -As Boas used it, the term “problem play” was originally used to refer exclusively to three plays that Shakespeare wrote between the late 1590s and the first years of the seventeenth century: All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida.

Detailed explanation-3: -The term “problem play” was coined by Sydney Grundy who used it in a disparaging sense for the intellectual drama of the nineties. Shaw defined it as “The presentation parable of the conflict between man’s will and his movement”. The problem play deals with problems.

Detailed explanation-4: -George Bernard Shaw is famous for his role in revolutionizing comedic drama. He was also a literary critic and a prominent British socialist. Shaw’s most financially successful work, Pygmalion, was adapted into the popular Broadway musical My Fair Lady. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.