Realist playwright and satirist George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 to George Carr Shaw, a wholesale grain trader, and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly, wonderful musician and daughter of a poor landowner. His childhood was not an easy one as his father was a drunk who his mother did not see cause to attend the funeral of when he died, and Shaw was raised in poverty in a bad area of Dublin. There were, however some better times. In 1866 Shaw and his family moved into a slightly better neighborhood where he attended Wesleyan Connexional School. From there he went onto other various schools to study and complete his education.
In 1876 he moved to London to be near his mother and sister, and shortly after, became a socialist and an incredible speaker. This was a bit of a surprise as Shaw was relatively shy throughout his life; he had however "created the persona of G.B.S., the showman, controversialist, satirist, critic, pundit, wit, intellectual buffoon and dramatist" (imagi-nation). .
In 1898 Shaw was married to Charlotte Payne-Townshend who he remained married to until her death, though he was not the most faithful of husbands.
While his works are not stereotypical realist writings, they still fall under this category because as Professor Dr. Eric W. Trumbull of Northern Virginia Community College comments, "His plays tended to show the accepted attitude, then demolished that attitude while showing his own solutions." Thus, things were shown in a relatively realistic manner, yet Shaw was able to twist them around to get his point across.
Particularly of note is Shaw's play Arms and the Man in which the nation of Bulgaria has gone to war. An enemy soldier runs from the Bulgarian men and ends up in the room of Catharine Petkoff, one of the main characters of the story. She, at the time is not particularly well dressed as she is in her nightclothes, so the soldier allows her to dress. Following this he informs her of how scared he is for his life.
