Shaw and Misalliance: a time line

Cary M. Mazer, University of Pennsylvania

Guest Dramaturg

1856:

• George Bernard Shaw born in Dublin.

• Shaw moves to London and moves in with his mother and her companion/voice teacher.

• Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House.

• Third Reform Bill, granting the vote to all male householders.
• The Fabian Society is founded.
• The London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is founded.
• A steam turbine is used for the first time to generate electricity.

• Gordon is killed at the siege of Khartoum.

• First bicycles manufactured in Britain.
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• "Bloody Sunday" riots in Trafalgar Square.
• Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

• First electric power station in London.
• Jack the Ripper terrorizes the East End of London.

• London dock strikes.

• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

• Six Fabians (including Sidney Webb) are elected to the London County Council.
• First performance of Shaw's Widower's Houses.

• Irish Home Rule bill defeated in the House of Lords.

• Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book.

• London School of Economics founded.
• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.
• Oscar Wilde is convicted and sentenced.
• H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

• Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
• Workman's Compensation Act
• Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
• Bram Stoker, Dracula.

• Spanish-American War.
• Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Shaw's first two anthologies of plays, are published.

• The Boer War.

• The Boxer Rebellion in China.
• First dirigible flight in Germany.

• Queen Victoria dies, succeeded by her son, Edward VII.
• President William Mckinley is assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the United States.
• Roentgen is awarded the Novel Prize for Physics for the discovery of X-Rays.
• Marconi sends a transatlantic wireless message from Cornwall to Newfoundland.

• The Wright Brothers make the first powered flight.
• Shaw's Man and Superman published.
• Emmeline Pankhurst founds the National Women's Social and Political Union.
• First motorized taxi cabs in London.

• J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.
• Shaw's Candida performed in a matinee performance at the Court Theatre.
• Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard.
• Rolls-Royce Motor Company founded.

• Japan defeats Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.
• Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.
• First London motorbuses.
• Sinn Fein founded in Dublin.
• Albert Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity.
• Industrial Workers of the World founded in Chicago.
• 77,988 automobiles are registered in the United States.
• Chekhov dies.

• Shaw's Major Barbara performed at the Court Theatre.
• San Francisco Earthquake.
• Ibsen dies after a long illness.

• J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World opens at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, to riots in the theatre and in the streets.
• August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata.
• Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent.
• The Boy Scouts are founded in England by Robert Baden-Powell.
• First helicopter flight.

• William Howard Taft elected President of the United States.
• Kenneth Grahame, The Wind and the Willows.
• Oscar Straus's musical, The Chocolate Soldier, opens, based on Shaw's Arms and the Man, though without his permission. After legal action, the composer agrees to change the names of the characters and all lines of dialogue taken from the play. Shaw decides never to allow another musical version of any of his plays.

• NAACP founded in New York.
• The Sixteenth Amendment authorizes income taxes in the United States.
• The Girl Guides (the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts) founded.
• Shaw writes Misalliance.

• Misalliance opens at the Duke of York's Theatre.
• Edward VII dies; his son George V becomes king.
• E.M. Forster, Howard's End.
• 122,000 telephones are in use in Great Britain.

• Amundsen reaches the South Poll.
• Joseph Pulitzer establishes the Pulitzer Prize.
• Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering Radium and Plutonium.

• Irish Home Rule bill introduced in Parliament; Ulster threatens civil war if its passed.
• Woodrow Wilson becomes President of the United States.
• Jim Thorpe wins the decathlon and the pentathlon at the Stockholm Olympics.
• The Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks on its maiden voyage, leaving 2,200 dead.

• Marcel Proust, Swann's Way.
• Shaw's Androcles and the Lion premieres at the St. James's Theatre.

• Shaw's Pygmalion premieres at His Majesty's Theatre.
• James Joyce, Dubliners.
• Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo, sparking the First World War.

• Shaw, Saint Joan.

• Shaw is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

• Shaw dies at age 94.