Shaw began writing "Man and Superman" in 1901 and determined to write a play tha
t would encapsulate the new century's intellectual inheritance. Shaw drew not on
ly on Byron's verse satire, but also on Shakespeare, the Victorian comedy fashio
nable in his early life, and from authors from Conan Doyle to Kipling. In this p
owerful drama of ideas, Shaw explores the role of the artist, the function of wo
men in society, and his theory of Creative Evolution.
As Stanley Weintraub sa
ys in his new introduction, this is 'the first great twentieth-century English p
lay' and remains a classic expose of the eternal struggle between the sexes.
