Plays Unpleasant

Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140437935
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s volume of “unpleasant” plays, Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession—part of the official Bernard Shaw Library A Penguin Classic With Plays Unpleasant, Shaw issued a radical challenge to his audiences’ complacency and exposed social evils through his dramatization of the moral conflicts between youthful idealism and economic reality, promiscuity and marriage, and the duties of women to others and to themselves. His first play, Widowers’ Houses, depicts Harry Trench’s dilemma on learning that the inheritance of his fiancée comes from her father’s income as a slum landlord. In The Philanderer, charismatic Leonard Charteris proposes marriage to Grace, while he is still involved with the beautiful Julia Craven—who is not inclined to give him up so easily. And in Mrs. Warren's Profession, Vivie Warren is forced to reconsider her own future when she discovers that her mother's immoral earnings funded her genteel upbringing. This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. This volume includes Shaw’s prefaces, cast lists from the first productions of the plays, and a list of his principal works.

George Bernard Shaw: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Christopher Wixson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192590340
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
George Bernard Shaw has been called the second greatest playwright in English (after William Shakespeare) and one of the inventors of modern celebrity as the most famous public intellectual of his time. Beginning in the 1880s, as a critic and as a playwright, he transformed British drama, bringing to it intellectual substance, ethical imperatives, and modernity itself, setting the theatrical course for the subsequent century. That his legacy endures seventy years after his death is testament to the prescience of his thinking and his prolific creativity. This Very Short Introduction looks at Shaw's life, starting with his upbringing in Ireland, and then takes a chronological approach through his works. Considering Shaw's committed antagonism on behalf of a range of socio-political issues; his use of comedy as a mode for communicating serious ideas; and his rhetorical style that pushes conventional boundaries, Christopher Wixson provides an overview of the creative evolution of core themes throughout Shaw's long career. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description

Plays by George Bernard Shaw

Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101157666
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Book Description
George Bernard Shaw demanded truth and despised convention. He punctured hollow pretensions and smug prudishness—coating his criticism with ingenious and irreverent wit. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, and Man and Superman, the great playwright satirizes society, military heroism, marriage, and the pursuit of man by woman. From a social, literary, and theatrical standpoint, these four plays are among the foremost dramas of the age—as intellectually stimulating as they are thoroughly enjoyable. “My way of joking is to tell the truth: It is the funniest joke in the world.”—G. B. Shaw With an Introduction by Eric Bentley and an Afterword by Norman Lloyd

Three Plays for Puritans

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Egypt
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description

George Bernard Shaw's Plays

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9780393977530
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Book Description
Presents four plays by George Bernard Shaw, incuding "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Pygmalion," "Man and Superman," and "Major Barbara," each with an explanatory annotation, and includes information on the author and his work, a chronology, and a selected bibliography.

Plays Unpleasant

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
"With Plays Unpleasant, Shaw issued a radical challenge to his audiences' complacency and exposed social evils through his dramatization of the moral conflicts between youthful idealism and economic reality, promiscuity and marriage, and the duties of women to others and to themselves. His first play, Widowers' Houses, depicts Harry Trench's dilemma on learning that the inheritance of his fianče comes from her father's income as a slum landlord. In The Philanderer, charismatic Leonard Charteris proposes marriage to Grace, while he is still involved with the beautiful Julia Craven - who is not inclined to give him up so easily. And in Mrs Warren's Profession, Vivie Warren is forced to reconsider her own future when she discovers that her mother's immoral earnings funded her genteel upbringing."--From publisher.

George Bernard Shaw

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Gramercy
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 722

Book Description
A collection of six short plays written by George Bernard Shaw.

Mrs Warren's Profession

Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 9781551116273
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
One of Bernard Shaw’s early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren’s Profession places the protagonist’s decision to become a prostitute in the context of the appalling conditions for working class women in Victorian England. Faced with ill health, poverty, and marital servitude on the one hand, and opportunities for financial independence, dignity, and self-worth on the other, Kitty Warren follows her sister into a successful career in prostitution. Shaw’s fierce social criticism in this play is driven not by conventional morality, but by anger at the hypocrisy that allows society to condemn prostitution while condoning the discrimination against women that makes prostitution inevitable. This Broadview edition includes a comprehensive historical and critical introduction; extracts from Shaw’s prefaces to the play; Shaw’s expurgations of the text; early reviews of the play in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain; and contemporary contextual documents on prostitution, incest, censorship, women’s education, and the “New Woman.”

Collected Shorter Plays

Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030010779X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
O'Neill's themes and concerns find expression in his one-act plays which are the dramatic equivalent of short stories. Here are nine one-act plays that span the playwright's career.