Ptolemaic rule of Egypt lasted until the death of Cleopatra VII (the Cleopatra of Shaw’s play) in 30 B.C.E. The Ptolemaic dynasty transformed Egypt into a Hellenistic kingdom, and the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.E., functioned as the kingdom’s cultural hub. The play takes place in Ptolemaic Egypt, an Ancient Greek state founded around 304 or 305 B.C.E., when Ptolemy I, an Ancient Macedonian general in Alexander the Great’s army, became pharaoh of Egypt. Lawrence, where he would die, in 1950, at the age of 94.Ĭaesar and Cleopatra is Shaw’s fictionalized account of the relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. He moved from London to his country home at Ayot St. Shaw retired from public life following the death of his wife in 1943. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Aside from Caesar and Cleopatra, some of his other notable works include Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw went on to write more than 60 plays over the course of his career. It belongs to a grouping of plays called Three Plays for Puritans (1901), which focused on the politically relevant issues of empire and imperialism. Caesar and Cleopatra is considered Shaw’s first great play. He followed these “unpleasant” plays with four “pleasant” plays, such as Arms and the Man (1894), that were more lighthearted and geared toward audience approval than the first set of plays. Shaw considered these plays “unpleasant,” due to their critical gaze at “unpleasant facts” about British society. His first plays were performed in the early 1890s. In 1885, Shaw found work as a journalist and music critic, enabling him, at long last, to write for a living. Despite these initial career failures, Shaw’s early years in London were also a period of immense personal and philosophical growth for the struggling writer: he became a socialist and joined the Fabian Society, a new socialist organization that sought to reform English society through a transformation of its intellectual and political culture. Publishers rejected his attempts at fiction, and he relied on his mother’s financial support to make ends meet. Shaw’s early years in London were characterized by failure and frustration. Shaw joined them there in 1876, determined to establish himself as a writer. Shaw’s mother left Shaw’s father and moved with her daughters, Shaw’s two sisters, to London in 1872. He was born in Dublin in 1856, the youngest of three children. George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, and political activist.
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