Customer Reviews

Androcles and The Lion

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the story sets a scene of serenity, but later the plot thickens and complications trouble androcles and his lion friend, but old friends remain friends, and it is their friendship that saves them in the end.

I first this read this book in Baltimore, MD at the tender age of 7, 1952. I thought that I would never see this book again in my life time. But fate has it that I'm able to read it again. I've used this book in my lectures and motivational speeches. Because I love the message that it portrays and illustrate to children as it did mine. Thanks for letting me share. I'm 57 yo now.

Do not be tempted to pass over the essay that begins this book. It is a delightfully thought provoking essay that sets up the story of the play. Shaw writes of his views of organized religon with support for his thesis. It is important to read this before diving into the play itself.

The play is wonderful, but the theater program must be 200 pages long. You need all the 111 pages before the play to get all of the meanings of the play.

Androcles and the Lion is an allegorical work which points out that kindness is not necessarity altruistic - it can be of worth. Shaw's writing is brilliant and well worth the reading.

With Shaw's plays, the point is in the preface. In the case of Androcles and the Lion, the preface is Shaw's disquisition on Christianity -- he explains it and the Gospels, in his inimitable way -- for over a hundred pages. The preface to Androcles and the Lion is one of Shaw's masterpieces...and is MISSING from this edition. Could it possibly be that this is because those putting this travesty of Shaw's work out do not want Christian readers seeing Shaw's explanation?

I teach 7th grade learning disabled students world history and I use Androceles and the Lion to teach sequencing skills. After I read the story, I ask the students to number in order in which they occur, several events in the story.

To prick a thorn out of a lion's foot one will surely gain new friends and old enemies. The story of Androcles, a Christian who is about to be sent to the lions for being a heretic in the Roman Empire. A cynical, humerous, poignant, and hypocritical story of religion versus humanism. The book is intended with the introduction with Shaw's discourse on Jesus and Christianity. Although I found it dryly written, which some wit involved, he makes some good remarks on the problems of Christianity. Mainly is the devout in which they will surely go to the lions before giving up their gods. Hypocritically the Romans could care less who their gods were or whether they believed in them, so long it was not a Christian god. The introduction acts as a set-up to put one in the mind set of Shaw and to understand his point of view which makes the play that much easier to understand and funnier to read. The play itself is a wonderful entry into the classics of the thearter.