George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw's 1898 take on the storied love affair between the Egyptian queen and Roman leader offers new insight into the political machinations that spurred the romance. Throughout the subtly layered drama, Shaw tackles weighty questions about the value of forgiveness and the true impact of civilization and human progress.
If you could choose to save the life of either a brilliant but unbalanced artist or a stable, kindly medical student, what would you do? That's the dilemma at the heart of Shaw's play The Doctor's Dilemma. This fascinating work delves into a Pandora's Box of ethical and moral questions about the value of human life and the decision-making process itself.
Although George Bernard Shaw is today best remembered for his work as a playwright, he also penned numerous novels over the course of his creative career. Cashel Byron's Profession explores class issues in a story that follows the blooming love affair between a prizefighter and his upper-class inamorata.
Arms and the Man was George Bernard Shaw's first commercially successful play. It is a comedy about idealized love versus true love. A young Serbian woman idealizes her war-hero fiance and thinks the Swiss soldier who begs her to hide him a terrible coward. After the war she reverses her opinions, though the tangle of relationships must be resolved before her ex-soldier can conclude the last of everyone's problems with Swiss exactitude.
The
...Famed playwright George Bernard Shaw's quirky version of the ancient Androcles fable deftly combines elements of satire and humor along with a surprisingly philosophically complex view of Christianity and religious belief systems in general. This playful take on the issues of persecution and martyrdom is as timely today as it was when initially published a century ago.
Dive into the drama and action of the American Revolution in The Devil's Disciple, George Bernard Shaw's only play set entirely on U.S. soil. The protagonist, Richard Dudgeon, is a misfit and self-proclaimed "devil's disciple," but when the chips are down, he displays a level of courage and virtue that few others possess.
Major Barbara is a 1905 play by George Bernard Shaw. Andrew Undershaft, a wealthy weapons trader, despises poverty believing "The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty ... our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor". His daughter, Barbara, devotes herself to charity. When a shelter for the poor is at risk of closure due to lack of funds, the idealistic Barbara, a Major
...8) Pygmalion
In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion a phonetician believes the power of speech is such that he can introduce a Cockney flower girl to polite society after careful language and etiquette training, and no one will discern her true roots. The professor and the flower girl grown close, but after her successful debut she rejects the professor and his overbearing ways for a poor gentleman.
The most famous adaptation of the play is the 1964
...Packed with the spot-on social commentary that George Bernard Shaw is known for, the five plays that comprise Back to Methuselah are an engaging read for lovers of classic drama and science fiction fans alike. In an effort to shed light on what he regards as a pervasive failure of modern governance, Shaw projects his imagination backwards and forwards in time, dissecting what went wrong and what could have been in a series of five set pieces
...Though remembered primarily as a playwright and novelist, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw was an insatiably curious intellect whose interests encompassed a broad array of topics. This exegesis on Wagner's Ring cycle relates the opera series to ideas like capitalism and mythological archetypes.
11) Candida
Delve into a hilarious examination of Victorian love, manners, morals, and marriage written by the author of Pygmalion. In Candida, George Bernard Shaw gives us the story of the misbegotten love triangle that springs up between a reverend, his putatively prim and proper wife, and a love-struck and starry-eyed young poet.
Written in 1919, George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House is equal parts tragedy and comedy. Centering on a dinner party, held as Europe teeters on the brink of the First World War; Shaw's play is as much about the inexorable drift of the British gentry toward catastrophe as it is about the love triangle that seems to take centre stage.
This hilarious comedy of errors is sure to please fans of Shakespeare's comedies who are looking for a quick and rewarding read. The action centers around the quirky and whimsical Clandon family, four women who have lived abroad for years. The sassy Clandon daughters don't know who their father is and frankly aren't too bothered by that fact. Hilarity ensues when their biological dad stumbles into their lives through sheer happenstance.
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
...Fans of thought-provoking drama will relish George Bernard Shaw's classic take on gender roles and relations, Man and Superman. Packed with plenty of big ideas, this engaging work helped rank Bernard Shaw among the most significant and influential dramatists of his era.
Read the controversial play that caused an international sensation when it was first performed. George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession takes a frank and matter-of-fact look at the world's oldest profession and makes an explicit link between the second-class citizenship that has been foisted upon women for thousands of years and the persistence of prostitution as an occupation.
Renaissance man George Bernard Shaw dabbled in economics, criticism and activism, but was best known for his large body of dramatic work, including his 1903 masterpiece Man and Superman. Dedicated to developing fully fleshed-out characters, Shaw wrote The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion in the guise of the protagonist of Man and Superman, John Tanner. The booklet lays out the character's philosophy and political
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