Customer Reviews

Mrs. Warren's Profession

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Although it was written in the late 1800s, censorship issues kept George Bernard Shaw's MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION off the stage for close to a decade, and it did not debut publically on the London stage until about 1900. Even after this delay, moralists denounced it as a scandalous play--and it remained controversial well into the mid-20th Century.

The basic story concerns a pragmatic young woman, Vivie, who has spent her life in boarding schools, seeing her mother only on rare occasions. Upon graduation, she now directly confronts her mother and learns the bitter truth: Mrs. Warren is a former prostitute who has risen to the rank of a high class madam, and all of Vivie's education has been built on the profits of her profession. But the play takes an unexpected twist, for instead of sensationalizing or sentimentalizing prostitution, Shaw gives us Mrs. Warren as a business woman who took the only opportunity available to her and through commonsense and a strong work ethic parlayed her meager beginnings into a fortune of note.

The obvious reason for public outcry against the play was Shaw's refusal to condemn Mrs. Warren for prostitution; less obvious but more powerful is the fact that Shaw condemns virtually every character and the society in which they move as grossly hypocritical. It is an incredibly hypocritical society that has forced Mrs. Warren to decide between the virtue of starvation and the sin of success; while easily the most sympathetic role in the play, Mrs. Warren emerges as a garden-variety hypocrite of limited insight; and while we may admire Vivie for her clarity of thought and apparent virtue, she emerges as a young woman of such ferocious self-determination that she is ultimately difficult to like.

MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION was among Shaw's earliest plays, and it pales a bit in comparison to his later, more theatrically sophistocated works; consequently it is seldom revived today. Even so, it is a powerful example of the new style Shaw would forge in theatre, a dark comedy overflowing with complex ideas and wickedly funny ironies. Shaw's tone of voice is both distinct and unique, he reads from the page as well as he plays on the stage, and he would exert a profound influence on drama throughout the 20th Century. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

In this wonderful play Shaw brilliantly takes on a forbidden subject that got him into trouble back in his day but that's now praised as an excellent and insightful masterpiece. I must agree that it is truly excellent even though the subject it takes on is a very uncomfortable one even now.

You can't help but root for Vivie as she cleverly deals with the hypocritical rogues around her in this hilarious tale.

This story was smart and funny. I loved it and wanted more when it was over. I'll have to buy another one of his books. I just love his style.

I can't resist any chance I can get to peek into the mind of a genius, and Shaw was a true genius. This story was delightful and brilliant.

Shaw does a wonderful job at showing her "job" without having to tell you. It gives it more of an off limits feel for the job and also makes the listener feel like they are there. Powerful and compelling.

The play Mrs. Warren's Profession was good, the main charcter was not Mrs. Warren but her daughter Vivie who goes back in and forth in every act between love and hate for her mother who has been a prostitue and ran some brothels. Vivie is convienced her mother could have made a better choice for herself than prostitution. Mrs. Warren has kept Vivie out of the brothels all of her life and gave her the best in education and up bring. But even though she has done all of that Vivie is not content on being there any longer with her mother. End the end Vivie leaves her mother and Mrs. Warren holds her self together unappoligic for anything she has done. This play was a great example of how women had two choices at the time the play was set in marriage or prostitution which were both forms of slavery. Shaw knew how hard it was for women in society and wanted more for them, than just mother hood and marriage.

This was excellent. Shaw has given us yet another strong and intelligent female character in a brilliantly humorous tale that exposes the seedy underbelly of prim and proper Victorian society. It's a powerful indictment of Victorian era society, which exposes its corruption and hypocrisy. Even today the subject matter of this story is shocking, so I can certainly see why it would have caused such a ruckus back then.

As is always the case with Shaw's works, the characters are very well fleshed out and mirror people you know in real life. The circumstances are wildly, laugh-out-loud entertaining, the plot is beautifully ironic, and the message is as serious as a heart attack. In this work he doesn't pull a single punch.

Shaw is my favorite of the Victorian playwrights. His works were revolutionary in many ways. Use of humor was rare and exceptional for playwrights during that era, but Shaw was not afraid to make audiences laugh. He also tackled serious moral, political, and social issues in his plays at a time when sappy dramas were all the rage. He was truly bold and innovative and greatly contributed to dramatic art. He had an amazing gift, the ability to make people think while simultaneously making them laugh.

Reading Shaw's works are a genuine treat. All of his plays are fabulous. His characters are memorable, and his humor is brilliant.
This is a wonderful book, charming, significant, and insightful. I can't recommend it enough.

This is a play by George Bernard Shaw. I played the part of Mrs. Warren. It is a marvelous play that was very scandelous for its time (1895). Beautifully written. Mother-daughter conflict. A jewel in Shaw's crown.

This brilliant play was originally banned as immoral due to its subject matter, though now it's lauded for its astute view of the corruption at the heart of Victorian society. Shaw takes on the topic of poverty vs. immorality in the context of Victorian society with great style and wit.
In this story a very bright young girl begins to grow suspicious about the mystery and people surrounding her wealthy mother, and this leads her to a discovery that shakes her world to its very foundation but also explains the strange behavior of the people around her. This new found knowledge greatly complicates her life but also causes some hilarious situations to arise.
George Bernard Shaw created numerous masterpieces over the span of his writing career. He has the distinction of being the only person to ever be awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a very humble and conscientious man, a political activist and a vegetarian. His conscientiousness shows in his work by his inability to write meaningless fluff at a time when fluff dominated the stage. His trademark is his classic use of ample humor in dramas with serious subject matter. It takes a special kind of genius to be able to pull that off as flawlessly as he did.

The play Mrs Warren's Profession was one of Shaws plays unpleasent and he wrote it at a time when many people shyed away from the mojority of political and social issues of the time. Shaw had an ability however to lay down the facts of many things that were happening in society and he often gave the reader or audience a sense of responsibilty that many of the people involved were receiving. In Mrs Warren's Profession he focusses on the hidden world of prostitution without ever mentioning the word or even spelling it out to the reader/audience. With this he is able to descibe the effects it has without crudly embarking on a course of discrimination. All in all it is a powerful piece which shows how women had had influence over the world in all aspects.

There is a reason this is a free book. The play was only mildly interesting. Don't even TRY to wade through the author's 'apology' at the beginning.