George Bernard Shaw
21) Overruled
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Gregory Lunn and Mrs. Juno are in love, having met during a sea voyage. On a sofa in a hotel where both are staying, they discuss their feelings. They are both already married, so they decide they must part, but are unable to do so. They then recognize the voices of their respective spouses, apparently staying together at the same hotel. They leave in confusion. Mrs. Lunn and Mr. Sibthorpe Juno enter and sit together on the same sofa that the other...
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George Bernard Shaw, one of Britain's most acclaimed playwrights, produced a large wealth of dramatic and comedic plays during his lifetime. In "Man and Superman and Three Other Plays," four of his most famous works are presented. In 1903's "Man and Superman," we find a play that on the surface is a mere comedy of manners but upon deeper examination delves into the philosophic themes outlined by Nietzsche's "Ubermensch," or more distinctly man's journey...
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Captain Charles Edstaston is assigned to the Imperial Russian court in Saint Petersburg, during the 34-year rule of Empress Catherine the Great, and brings his fiancée, Claire, with him. In the midst of court intrigue and palace politics, primarily instigated by Catherine's favored statesman and military leader, the drunken, ill-mannered, but crafty Prince Patiomkin.
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It is midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four quarters and strikes eleven. The Man arrives at Whitehall where he meets a Beefeater guard. He persuades the Beefeater to allow him to stay to meet his girlfriend, a lady of the court, who will be arriving soon for a secret tryst. The Man notes down various interesting phrases used by the Beefeater. The Lady arrives, cloaked, but it...
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Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, by George Bernard Shaw, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
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26) Getting Married
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Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirizes the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalizing divorce laws.
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"The Man of Destiny" is one of Shaw's shorter works, just a one-act play, in which we see the mastery of character development that is so common to the playwright's works. The play is an investigation of a young twenty-seven year old general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte who has yet to achieve the accomplishments for which make him such an important figure in world history. In the play, we find him waiting impatiently at an inn on the road between...
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An Unsocial Socialist begins in an unruly girl's school, comically portraying their tricks and pranks. The narrative then moves to a seemingly ill-bred laborer, who is in fact a wealthy gentleman in disguise. He wishes, in part, to avoid his overly-affectionate wife, but also to preach socialism, of which he is a staunch convert. The story is then largely subsumed in a discussion of socialism and briefly concludes with the suitable marriages of the...
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Hailed by T. S. Eliot as "a dramatic delight," George Bernard Shaw's only tragedy traces the life of the peasant girl who led French troops to victory over the English in the Hundred Years' War. An avid socialist, Shaw regarded his writing as a vehicle for promoting his political and humanitarian views and exposing hypocrisy. With Saint Joan, he reached the height of his fame, and it was this play that led to his Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925....
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"How He Lied to Her Husband" is the story of Henry Apjohn how is having an affair with Aurora Bompas, the wife of Teddy. "The Fascinating Foundling" is the story of how a lawyer and his aide unwittingly help two very picky people, when it comes to dating, find each other. Also contained in this volume is "The Glimpse of Reality".
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Caesar and Cleopatra is a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw that depicts a fictionalised account of the relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. It was first published with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans. It was first performed in a single staged reading at Newcastle upon Tyne on 15 March 1899, to secure the copyright. The play was produced in New York...
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In this 1891 essay, Shaw champions the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, praising his social realism and his characters' struggles against a hypocritical society. Shaw then pushes farther, dividing humankind into three categories-of which, he declares, "Out of a thousand persons, there are 700 Philistines, 299 idealists, and only one lone realist."
34) Widowers' Houses
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First performed in 1892, "Widower's Houses" was the first of Shaw's plays to see the stage. This play was included in a collection of plays called "Plays Unpleasant", named so because Shaw's intention in writing them was not to entertain, but to raise awareness in certain areas of social concern. The source of social concern here in this play is the income derived from slum housing and the play focuses on the rift it forms between the two main characters,...
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"The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Sermon in Crude Melodrama" is a 1909 play in one act by George Bernard Shaw. Described by Shaw as a religious tract in dramatic form, it was originally refused a performance license due to comments made by the protagonist about God, considered blasphemous at the time.
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Originally published in George Bernard Shaw's 1901 collection "Three Plays for Puritans" and first performed in 1900, "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" is the drama of its title character, a sort of refined latter-day pirate who resides in Morocco. When two jaded English tourists, Sir Howard Hallam, a judge of the criminal bench, and Lady Cicely Waynflete, his sister-in-law, arrive at the Moroccan coast and endeavor to explore the interior, Captain...
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This pamphlet was written as a philosophical commentary on Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Shaw believed that most people could not understand the drama, and wanted to bring them the knowledge of the adepts who see in the operas the "whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the dilemmas from which the world is shrinking today."
39) Press Cuttings
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A room in the War Office on 1 April 1912. General Mitchener is in a state of considerable anxiety about the number of Suffragettes chaining themselves to government buildings. He has had all the railings removed, but is informed by an orderly that another suffragette has padlocked herself to the door scraper. Surprisingly, he has received a letter from the Prime Minister, Balsquith, telling him to release the woman and let her into the building. When...
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This volume contains George Bernard Shaw's collection of short stories entitled "The Black Girl in Search of God, and Some Lesser Tales". It was first published in 1934. "The Black Girl In Search Of God" is a short story that follows a young girl who is newly converted to Christianity - and who embarks on a literal search for God. On her way, she comes into contact with a number of religious figures, each trying to convert her to their own faiths....