The Philanderer

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is revered as one of the great British dramatists, credited not only with memorable works, but the revival of the then-suffering English theatre. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, left mostly to his own devices after his mother ran off to London to pursue a musical career. He educated himself for the most part, and eventually worked for a real estate agent. This experience founded in him a concern for social injustices, seeing poverty and general unfairness afoot, and would go on to address this in many of his works. In 1876, Shaw joined his mother in London where he would finally attain literary success, and went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. "The Philanderer" was written in 1893 as a critique of capitalist behavior, among other social conditions he saw as problematic. Due to British censorship laws, "The Philanderer" didn't see the stage until 1902.