Fanny's First Play

“Fanny's First Play” is a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.


Fanny's First Play is a play by George Bernard Shaw. It was first performed as an anonymous piece, the authorship of which was to be kept secret. However, critics soon recognised it as the work of Shaw. The mystery over the authorship helped to publicise it. It had the longest run of any of Shaw's plays.

It features a play within a play. The framing play is a satire of theatre critics, whose characters were based upon Shaw's own detractors, in some cases being caricatures of real critics of the day. The main play is a pastiche of the drawing room comedies in vogue at the time.