In 1895, Shaw became dramatic critic for the Saturday Review, a London periodical; his provocative reviews galvanized contemporary audiences and introduced a slew of controversial ideas about plays and acting. Meanwhile, Shaw embarked on a playwrighting career, in which he was to achieve lasting success; his first play, Widowers’ Houses, which dealt with the problem of slum landlordism, was produced in 1892. Most of Shaw’s plays explored social issues—prostitution in Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), war in Arms and the Man (1894), and evangelism in Major Barbara (1907). Pygmalion (1912), arguably Shaw’s best-known play to modern audiences, is considered not only an effective comedy, but a brilliant study of the connection between accent and social class in England.
Upstarts, social climbers, and class-consciousness. Early in the play, Henry Higgins declares, “This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with £80 a year and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand” (Shaw, Pygmalion, p. 15). His words accurately describe the changes overtaking British society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although, in theory, society continued to be as rigidly hierarchical as ever, in reality, wealth and power were no longer exclusively held by the landed aristocrats.
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