Talk:George Bernard Shaw

Colour image

Not that it makes a huge difference but what do you think is dodgy @Tim riley? This is the frontispiece from his authorized biography. GordonGlottal (talk) 17:09, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

To my eye the artificial colouring is awful, and I am surprised to read of an authorised biography of GBS. Whose would that be − the main editors of the article must have missed it? It took my late co-editor much research to find what we agreed as the right image for the version agreed at FAC, and I honestly can't see the bogus coloured version as an improvement. Tim riley talk 17:22, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh I see what you're missing -- it's not artificial! This is a real color photo, just with very early tech. You can read more about the process at Autochrome Lumière. The biography says "authorized" on its title page; you can see that here, though Google didn't scan the frontispiece: https://books.google.com/books?id=twQBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false GordonGlottal (talk) 19:04, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, if other editors prefer that image I'll go with the consensus. Tim riley talk 19:08, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Navy ship removal from article

I added to the Shaw article the fact that an Irish navy ship was named after him. Another editor has removed this addition to the article twice, latterly arguing that it is merely "trivia."

The naming of a navy ship after someone is a significant event, not trivia, especially in a very small navy. In such circumstances with few vessels it is a particularly notable honour in the writer's memory. There are four ships in the Irish navy named after Irish writers: Beckett, Joyce, Shaw, and Yeats. It cannot seriously be held that such rare honours (rare because the Irish navy is tiny) can be dismissed as mere trivia.

Other people who have ships named after them have the fact recorded in their articles in the encyclopaedia. It is normal practice to include such facts.

The editor who twice removed mention of the ship left the edit summary: Shaw has numerous things named after him: why single out a boat rather than the London theatre, Parisian street etc? No need to trot them out.

The purpose of Legacy or Honours sections in articles is precisely to trot them out. The theatre and street may be added by any editor who wishes to do so.

If the ship is removed again from the article without a credible justification and consensus from a number of other editors that it should be removed, I will take this dispute further.

There is nothing illegitimate whatsoever about adding the ship to the article – a common feature of the encyclopedia – and an additional removal will simply be a peculiar personal bias against recording such a (literally) large honour to Shaw. O'Dea (talk) 23:43, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

O'Dea, the onus is on you to establish consensus for your proposed addition - please do not restore it until that happens.

Rarity is not automatically correlated with significance. Do you have sourcing to support your belief that this is a significant event in Shaw's biography? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:49, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

The notion that there is an onus on an editor to acquire consensus from anyone to add anything to any article is a delusion. By that bizarre logic, nobody could add anything to an article without getting permission from other editors first.

By the way, the ship in question has its own article (LÉ George Bernard Shaw (P64)), establishing it's non-trivial notability even further. O'Dea (talk) 23:53, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

O'Dea, WP:ONUS is policy; your claim here, on the other hand, does not seem to be based in any policy at your claim here, on the other hand, does not seem to be based in any policy at all. Please self-revert until you have established consensus for your proposed addition. The existence of an article on the ship does not satisfy that requirement. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:01, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Mentions in articles of navy vessels (and many other things) named after people are a commonplace and uncontroversial feature in biographical articles. Indeed, in some biographical articles, the list of things is so long, it is broken out into its own stand-alone article, dedicated to all the things named after the article subject. A few illustrative examples follow to demonstrate the widespread principle in action:

• USS Ronald Reagan

• USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67)

• Queen Elizabeth 2

• Nimitz-class aircraft carrier

• List of things named after Louis Pasteur

• List of awards and honors received by Albert Einstein

• Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier

• Ships, aircraft, and locomotives named after the 1st Duke of Wellington: List of titles and honours of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

• USS George H.W. Bush

• French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle

• Lists of things named after scientists

• Lists of things named after people

• List of things named after Roald Amundsen

• List of things named after Fidel Castro

• List of things named for Henry Clay, including navy vessels

• List of memorials to Dwight D. Eisenhower, including military vessels

• List of things named after Elizabeth II, various modes of transport

Accounts of honours such as these cannot be casually dismissed when they are a form of calibration of national esteem and notability. An honour – paid by a nation! – cannot with any seriousness be sneered at as trivial. It is notable – by definition.

Reply to Nikkimaria ("your claim here, on the other hand, does not seem to be based in any policy at all"):

I invoked Wikipedia:Consensus, one of the best-known foundation principles of the encyclopaedia.

Reply to Nikkimaria ("The existence of an article on the ship does not satisfy that requirement"):

The existence of the article establishes the notability of the vessel.

Reply to Nikkimaria ("Rarity is not automatically correlated with significance"):

This logic is entirely upside down. Rarity means that the honour is even more significant because there are so few of them available to be given. O'Dea (talk) 02:45, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

WP:NOCON indicates that a lack of consensus results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the bold edit - ie in this case the version without your proposed addition. There's certainly nothing in that policy that supports an WP:OTHERCONTENT-based argument like the one you suggest. And the existence of an article on some topic does not require that that topic be included in other articles, especially where proponents cannot present sourcing to support its significance to those other articles. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:03, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

How can an honour to a playwright by a nation not be notable? To claim that something so significant is "trivial" is senseless on its face. Naming a national vessel after a literary figure is exceptionally rare. Outside of Ireland, I know of no other examples. Most ships are named after military and political figures.

Nikkimaria demands "sourcing to support its significance", i.e. a source saying that naming a ship after someone is a notable event. That is not how honours are reported, so no such sources are liable to be discoverable, nor are they needed.

It is common sense that an honour is notable. A newspaper report describing somebody receiving a Nobel prize does not waste time saying "this is a notable and significant achievement." It is understood to be so throughout society and does not need saying.

The same is true when somebody is given an award for acting or courage or if a ship is named after a playwright. It is perfectly obvious to the community at large that the award or the honour is intrinsically significant and it does not need to be said. How could a source ever be found to say that the honour is significant?

"Peter Higgs won the Nobel prize for physics for his work on the mass of subatomic particles." The fact that he won the prize implies its notability, importance, and significance. No newspaper would continue by saying "This is a very significant honour for Higgs."

Therefore, demanding a source to prove that the honour of naming a ship after someone is to demand something that cannot be found because something so obvious is not documented, therefore the request is unreasonable. If a newspaper reports that a war has broken out, it does not say "This is a terrible event" because it is widely understood to be so and does not need saying.

If this ridiculous and protracted wrangling over the addition of a single, verifiable, uncontroversial sentence to the article about something that is intrinsically and self-evidently a significant national honour – and not a piece of trivia, as ridiculously claimed – then I will have to request outside opinions in the hope of discovering common sense. O'Dea (talk) 04:07, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, you have misunderstood consensus. You made an addition to an FA which was reverted. The onus is therefore on you to establish consensus on the Talkpage for the inclusion of your edit, not for others to gain consensus for its exclusion. To an extent, that is what you are doing. However you should not put the disputed edit back while discussion is ongoing, and I would ask that you revert it. Secondly, you might find it easier to gain support for your view if you moderated your approach. Throwing around words like “ridiculous”, “delusion” and “senseless”; making appeals to “common sense” (always a dodgy position); and threatening to “take this dispute further”, are unlikely to bring other editors to your way of thinking. Lastly, you might want to think about placement. FAs are hard to write - the Summary style required means that many undeniable facts about the article topic won’t be included. You have chosen to place a fact that you deem important in a highly prominent position, at the article’s very conclusion. It is possible, though not certain, that a less prominent placing would meet with less opposition. An alternative would be for you to write an article Things named after George Bernard Shaw, along the lines of the articles you quote above. KJP1 (talk) 07:15, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I have already mentioned two others to the new editor: the theatre in London and the street in Paris. I'm pleased to see KJP1's shrewd comment about the structure of the article: the bathos of the mention of the boat after the peroration is almost comical in its ineptness. Tim riley talk 07:30, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Correction of publication titles

See here for the Fabian Tract - check downloadable photographs for confirmation - and here for To-Day. Harfarhs (talk) 17:27, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Forenames, usage and acceptance of

"..after 1876, he dropped the "George" and styled himself "Bernard Shaw"."

This may have been the case in conversation, though direct evidence as opposed to subsequent self-reporting appears to be lacking. It is certainly not the case as regards writing; in the Collected Letters 1874–1897 one can readily see that Shaw, predominantly throughout 1885 and for a time into 1886, signed himself "George Bernard Shaw" alike to strangers and intimates. Writing in March 1885 to the wife of William Archer, his valediction is

yours faithfully

George Bernard Shaw

(I am forming the habit of signing the name by which posterity will revere me)

and therefore, as a writer who at that stage was barely published and thus entirely uncommitted to a particular pen name, he is highly likely to have had no revulsion at the thought of in future being revered under the name of "George".

Moreover, it follows that we need not refer to him in other articles as "Bernard Shaw" if, as is the case, he is more familiar to the general reader as "George Bernard Shaw". Harfarhs (talk) 15:07, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

That is why the article uses both his Christian names. But if you glance at the list of sources you will that almost all reputable authorities respect his wishes and refer to him simply as "Bernard Shaw". It behoves us to follow suit. Tim riley talk 16:33, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

While I am fascinated by the question of why he dropped "George" for professional work (while not disavowing it privately) and I wonder why the general public has taken to using "George" to the exclusion of his preference, it is nonetheless the case that that is what has happened. Wikipedia has guidelines that the most common name be used. We may defer to the preferences of a living person, but we have no such obligation to the dead. So he is George Bernard Shaw here.128.151.71.7 (talk) 13:05, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Another matter which the article really ought to touch upon, and which is invisible otherwise, is the pronunciation of the name Bernard. In Ireland and the British Isles generally, this name has its emphasis upon the initial syllable, as Bernard; and the vowel of the second an unstressed schwa. Whereas, it is typically pronounced in North America with the emphasis reversed, i.e., Bernard.

Nuttyskin (talk) 08:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a soundclip somewhere of Shaw introducing himself on the radio, and I think, from memory, that he stressed both syllables of 'Bernard' equally. That doesn't and probably shouldn't affect where English and American speakers stress the name. I don't think any of the three is more correct than the others. Tim riley talk 08:38, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

GBS and Stalin

Bernard Shaw was born in 1856; Josif Djhugasvili was born in 1879. In other words, GBS was twenty years Stalin's senior.

In 1929, Stalin's 50th birthday was widely celebrated and he began to acquire the status of a demi-god; soon he overshadowed his contemporaries -- many of whom he would eliminate in the Show Trials of 1936-1938 and the Great Terror of 1937-1938 -- and even supplanted his patron Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), 1870-1924, in the Soviet pantheon. Bernard Shaw was, and remained, an irreverent critic of the British Establishment: he knew French but no Russian.

A fuller account of his 1931 interview with Stalin, reference supplied in text, suggests that he egged on his friend Nancy Astor in her sustained attack on the Georgian "gangster" (as she called Stalin). Shaw insisted, for example, that the unfortunate and reluctant interpreter translate all her questions into Russian. As author James Fox notes, the two of them were subsequently impressed by Stalin's self-restraint. Privately, the dictator told his daughter Svetlana that the meeting had been "most disagreeable" and that Shaw was, in his opinion, an "awful man".

This doesn't make the 'revolutionary tourism' of his brief 1931 visit to the USSR, or his serial infatuation with a succession of Bolshevik and fascist dictators, any less reprehensible. It does cast his character and attitude in a more nuanced and different light.

John Crowfoot aka Rustat99 (talk) 09:11, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure why Stalin's age is of any relevance. Let us see if other interested editors agree with you. Tim riley talk 11:38, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

the-anti-semitism-of-george-bernard-shaw

https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/the-anti-semitism-of-george-bernard-shaw/2015/05/06/ »No doubt Jews are obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed.«

»I think we ought to tackle the Jewish Question by admitting the right of the States to make eugenic experiments by weeding out any strains that they think undesirable, but insisting that they do it as humanely as they can afford to.«

General inhumanity: »I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly-appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioner, and say every five years, or every seven years, just put them there, and say, “Sir, or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?” If you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the big organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself…. I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. In short, a gentlemanly gas – deadly by all means, but humane not cruel.«

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw More quotes on Hitler (admiration for the Nazi regime) and Jews: tickle me 15:30, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Have you actually read the article? If you do, you will see that Shaw called antisemitism "the hatred of the lazy, ignorant fat-headed Gentile for the pertinacious Jew who, schooled by adversity to use his brains to the utmost, outdoes him in business". He was invited to write for The Jewish Chronicle, where he wrote in 1932, "In every country you can find rabid people who have a phobia against Jews, Jesuits, Armenians, Negroes, Freemasons, Irishmen, or simply foreigners as such. Political parties are not above exploiting these fears and jealousies." Tim riley talk 16:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I know that I am late to this, but I have to add that the article itself is a dog's dinner of mangled quotes that does not do its own case any good. The quote above under General inhumanity might serve as a good example. The first part of the quote before the ellipsis is taken from a YouTube snippet that ostensibly is taken from a speech on capital punishment. The part after the ellipsis is taken from a speech called "Whtither Britain?", where he discusses possibilities of the future of warfare, and how the half-measures taken by the League of Nations was insufficient to meet them. These have been juxtaposed by right-wing ideologues looking to smear Shaw for the last decade or so. If a source uses it, it is a surefire way to know that they've relied on secondary sources that are… dodgy, to put it mildly. 45.13.191.45 (talk) 21:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)