of Dreams (1899); The Divine Adventure: Iona: and other Studies in Spiritual History (1900), and Winged Destiny (1904).
SHARPE, DANIEL (1806–1856), English geologist, was born
in Marylebone, London, on the 6th of April 1806. His mother
was a sister of Samuel Rogers, the poet. At the age of 16
he entered the counting-house of a Portuguese merchant in
London. At the age of 25, after spending a year in Portugal,
he joined his elder brother as a partner in a Portuguese mercantile
business. As a geologist he first became known by his researches
(1832–1840) on the geological structure of the neighbourhood
of Lisbon. He studied the Silurian rocks of the Lake District
and North Wales (1842–1844), and afterwards investigated the
structure of the Alps (1854–1855). He was elected F.R.S. in
1850. He published several essays on cleavage (1847–1852),
and showed from the evidence of distortion of organic remains
that the direction of the pressure producing contortions in the
rocks was perpendicular to the planes of cleavage. Most of his
papers were published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society, but one “ On the Arrangement of the Foliation and
Cleavage of the Rocks of the North of Scotland,” was printed in
the Phil. Trans. 1852. He was author also of a Monograph on the
Cephalopoda of the Chalk, published by the Palaeontographical
Society (1853–1857). In 1856 he was elected president of the
Geological Society, but he died in London, from the effects of
an accident, on the 31st of May that year.
SHARPSBURG, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania,
U.S.A., on the Allegheny river, opposite the N.E. part of Pittsburg.
Pop. (1900) 6842 (1280 foreign-born); (1910) 8153.
Sharpsburg is served by the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore &
Ohio railways. Coal is mined in the vicinity. Among the manufactures
are iron pipes, truck and bar iron, wire, stoves, paint and
lubricating oil. Sharpsburg was settled in 1826, was named
in honour of James Sharp, the original proprietor, and was
incorporated in 1841.
SHASI, a city in the province of Hu-peh, China, on the left
bank of the river Yangtsze, about 85 m; below Ich'ang. Pop.
about 80,000. It was opened to foreign trade under the Japanese
treaty of 1895. The town lies below the summer level of the
Yangtsze, from which it is protected by a strong embankment.
Formerly Shasi was a great distributing centre, but the opening
of Ich'ang to foreign trade diverted much of the traffic to the
last-named port. It is the terminus of an extensive network
of canals which run through the low country lying on the north
bank of the Yangtsze as far down as Hankow. Native boats,
as a rule, prefer the canal route to the turbulent waters of the
Yangtsze, their cargoes being transhipped at Shasi across the
embankment into river boats. Foreign residents are few, and
the trade passing through the maritime customs is comparatively
insignificant. The place is still, however, a large distributing
centre for native trade, and is the seat of an extensive manufacture
of native cotton cloth. The British consulate was
withdrawn in January 1899, British interests being placed under
the care of the consul at Ich'ang.
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD (1856– ), British dramatist
and publicist, was born in Dublin on the 26th of July 1856.
His father, George Carr Shaw, was a retired civil servant, the
younger son of Bernard Shaw, high sheriff of Kilkenny. His
mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly, was a good musician, who
eventually became a teacher of singing in London. G. B. Shaw
went to school in Dublin, and began to earn his living when he
was fifteen. He was for five years a clerk in the office of an Irish
land-agent, but came to London with his family in 1876, and
in 1879 was, according to his own account in the preface to
The Irrational Knot, in the offices of the Edison telephone
company. He had begun to write novels, which did not immediately
find their market. The Irrational Knot, written in 1880,
and Love among the Artists (written in 1881) first appeared as
serials in Our Corner, a monthly edited by Mrs Annie Besant;
Cashel Byron's Profession (reprinted in 1901 in the series of
“ Novels of his Nonage ”) and An Unsocial Socialist first appeared
in a Socialist magazine To-day, which no longer exists. Shaw
joined the Fabian Society in 1884, a year after its formation,
and was active in socialistic propaganda, both as a street orator
and as a pamphleteer. In 1889 he edited the Fabian Essays,
to which he contributed “ The Economic Basis of Socialism ”
and “ The Transition to Social Democracy.” He began journalism,
through the influence of William Archer, on the reviewing
staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885; he then became art and
musical critic, writing from 1888 to 1890 for the Star, where
his articles were signed “ Corno di Bassetto,” and then in 1890
to 1894 for the World. In 1895 to 1898 he was dramatic critic
to the Saturday Review, his articles being collected in 1907 as
Dramatic Opinions and Essays. He was an early champion of
Richard Wagner and of Henrik Ibsen, and indicated his aesthetic
point of view in the pamphlets, The Quintessence of Ibsenism
(1891) and The Perfect Wagnerite (1898). His first play, Widowers’
Houses, two acts of which had been written in 1885 in collaboration
with Mr William Archer, was produced by the Independent
Theatre under the management of Mr J. T. Grein at the Royalty
in 1892. This found few admirers outside Socialist circles, and
was hooted by the ordinary playgoer. In 1893 he wrote The
Philanderer, a topical comedy on Ibsenism and the “ new
woman,” for the same theatre, but the piece proved technically
unsuitable for Mr Grein's company. To replace it Mr Shaw
wrote Mrs Warren's Profession, a powerful but disagreeable
play, which was rejected by the censor and not presented until
the 5th of January 1902, when it was privately given by the
Stage Society at the New Lyric Theatre. When it was played
in New York by Mr Arnold Daly's company in 1905 the actors
were prosecuted. These three plays were classed by the author
as “ unpleasant plays ” in the printed version. Arms and the
Man was produced at the Avenue Theatre (21st of April 1894)
by Miss Florence Farr, who was experimenting on the lines of
the Independent Theatre, and by Mr Richard Mansfield at the
Herald Square Theatre, New York (the 17th of Sept. 1894).
The scene was laid in Bulgaria, the piece being a satire on
romanticism, a destructive criticism on military “ glory.”
Candida was written in 1894 for Mr Mansfield, who did not
produce it until December 1903; but it was played in Aberdeen
in July 1897 by the Independent Theatre Company. This
defence of the poetic point of view against brute force and
common sense was admirably constructed and it proved one of
the most popular of his plays. The pieces which followed are:
The Man of Destiny (written in 1895, played at Croydon in
1897 by Mr Murray Carson), a Napoleonic drama, which was
revived at New York by Arnold Daly in 1904; You Never Can
Tell (written in 1896, produced at the Strand Theatre in 1900),
a farcical comedy; The Devil's Disciple (produced at New
York by Richard Mansfield in 1897, and in London in 1899),
the scene of which is laid in the War of American Independence,
Caesar and Cleopatra (1898) and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
(1898)—printed as Three Plays for Puritans (1900); The
Admirable Bashville (Stage Society, Imperial Theatre, 1903),
a dramatization of Cashel Byron’s Profession.
He had found no regular English audience when he published Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (2 vols.) in 1898, and his pieces first became well known to the ordinary playgoer by the performances given at the Royal Court Theatre under the management of Messrs Vedrenne and H. Granville Barker. Man and Superman (published in 1903) was produced there on the 23rd of May 1905, in a necessarily abridged form, with Granville Barker in the part of John Tanner, the author of the “ Revolutionists's Handbook and Pocket Companion,” printed as an appendix to the play. Mr Shaw asserted that the piece originated in a suggestion from Mr A. B. Walkley that he should write a Don Juan play, which he proceeded to do in a characteristic topsy-turvy fashion. John Tanner (Juan Tenor) is a voluble exponent of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who finally falls a victim to the life force in Ann. Major Barbara (Court Theatre, Nov. 1905), a “ discussion in three acts,” placed the Salvation Army on the stage. The Vedrenne-Barker management also revived Candida (April 1904), You Never Can Tell (May 1905), Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (March 1906) and John Bull’s other Island (November 1904), a statement of the Irish land
