Although the importance which Bernard Shaw attached to the work of John Bunyan has often been remarked, no one has systematically explored the many passages concerning Bunyan scattered through Shaw's prose in order to determine what Bunyan meant to him and what influence Bunyan may be assumed to have had on his art. Aside from its intrinsic interest, such a study is of considerable importance because of the widespread acceptance, especially by hostile biographers and critics, of G. K. Chesterton's idea that Shaw was in a quite unmetaphorical sense a puritan. A study of Shaw's responses to the puritan Bunyan suggests that the famous Shavian “puritanism” was merely one of the many masks which G.B.S. held between himself and a world which he meant to irritate, entertain and instruct.