Shaw's Sense of History

This book examines George Bernard Shaw's engagement as a dramatist with historical issues. It explores his sense of history in plays set in the past such as "Saint Joan" and "Caesar and Cleopatra".;It also demonstrates that many of Shaw's plays, although set in the present or future, can be seen as history plays in that they dramatize historical issues.;Thus "Man and Superman", "John Bull's Other Island", "Major Barbara", "Heartbreak House", "Back to Methuselah", and other works not usually thought of as history plays, occupy a significant place in the study.;The author places Shaw's work in the context of Victorian historiography with emphasis on the conflicting attitudes of Carlyle and Macaulay. He shows how Shaw's interest in the historical process, the design of history, is given dramatic expression.