This book analyzes the interaction of crimes, punishments, and Bernard
Shaw in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores crimes
committed by professional criminals, nonprofessional criminals,
businessmen, believers in a cause, the police, the Government, and
prison officials. It examines punishments decreed by judges, juries,
colonial governors, commissars, and administered by the police, prison
warders, and prison doctors. It charts Shaw's view of crimes and
punishments in dramatic writings, non-dramatic writings, and his actions
in real life. This book presents him in the context of his
contemporaries and his world, inviting readers to view crimes and
punishments in their context, history, and relevance to his ideas in and
outside his plays, plus the relevance of his ideas to crimes and
punishments in life.