(Greer’s article appeared in the Guardian, 1/23.)
A long time ago, when I was small, George Bernard Shaw was a very important person. Actors vied to play his heroines, and he was the standby of am-dram groups all over the empire. In 1925, at the age of 69, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, giving him licence to hold forth on every conceivable subject. He was regularly quoted in newspapers throughout the English-speaking world. When Shaw died in 1950, President Truman issued a statement of condolence, and the lights of Broadway were dimmed. At that time he had been considered the greatest living playwright.