"He is something of a pagan," said Chesterton of George Bernard Shaw, "and like many other pagans, he is a very fine man." The assessment hints at the complexity of their relationship.

The prolific playwright, critic, essayist, and Irishman G.B. Shaw first met Chesterton in 1901. They disagreed about nearly everything, but they remained friends for a tumultuous yet playful 35 years.

Of Shaw's more than 50 plays, American audiences are most familiar with Pygmalion, on which the musical My Fair Lady is based. The themes in that story—class division, the power to remake oneself—barely hint at the author's deeper, and to Chesterton's mind more dangerous, ideas about the world.

To frame their differences simply, Shaw believed in man, or Nietzsche's Superman, while Chesterton believed in the Son of Man. Shaw, a socialist, looked for society to develop the values of humanism and thereby help a superhuman "life-force" become a god. Chesterton, who ...

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help