Fanny's First Play

“Fanny's First Play” is a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Fanny's First Play is a play by George Bernard Shaw.

• It was first performed as an anonymous piece, the authorship of which was to be kept secret.
• However, critics soon recognised it as the work of Shaw.
• The mystery over the authorship helped to publicise it.
• It had the longest run of any of Shaw's plays.
• It features a play within a play.

• The main play is a pastiche of the drawing room comedies in vogue at the time.

The framing play is a satire of theatre critics, whose characters were based upon Shaw's own detractors, in some cases being caricatures of real critics of the day.