After graduating in 1934, Shaw began his career as a writer by writing serials for radio. Two shows, Dick Tracy and The Gumps, both based on comic strips, were successful. During this time he also wrote his first major play, Bury the Dead, which had an immediate impact when it opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1936. Overnight, Shaw was acclaimed as a promising young playwright.
The plot of Bury the Dead is simple. In "the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night," six dead soldiers refuse to be buried, arguing that society has never given them an opportunity to fulfill their lives. Despite appeals from members of their families and commands from their superior officers, the soldiers do not budge in their convictions. At the end of the play the soldiers and the gravediggers walk off the stage, dramatizing their hatred of war.
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