Item 36: Mr. George Bernard Shaw—Capitalist (1901)

The almost universal shunning of Oscar Wilde after his 1895 conviction for “gross indecency” opened the way for another Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, to become Britain’s most famous, controversial playwright. He and Beerbohm thought highly of each other, but disagreed over everything from Shaw’s worship of Henrik Ibsen as a social reformer to his support of feminism and women’s suffrage. Beerbohm especially disapproved of Shaw’s left-wing political activism. He delighted in pointing out the irony of someone calling himself a socialist and denouncing the middle classes, while becoming a rich celebrity thanks to popularity with bourgeois theatergoers. Beerbohm caricatured the lean, plainly dressed Shaw as a supersized tycoon, expensively bedecked for a night out.