Customer Reviews

Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics)

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This is a fine, inexpensive edition of four George Bernard Shaw plays. The introduction is helpful and the plays themselves are witty and humorous.

Shaw is the Irish playwright who wrote for the British stage. It was a challenge to get used to his ornate style of prose and his large vocabulary. Shaw seems to be rather impressed with his cleverness, which I suppose is forgivable. There are some essays in the book about the plays and the difficult life of being a playwright and critic. Shaw states that it's hard to write something that will sell tickets and yet have a serious message too. He always wanted to get a point across in his plays. One of his quibbles with Shakesphere is that his plays did not have a serious profound message about life or the world, although he praises his language mastery and characterization.

Shaw believed in "awful" things as a Fabian Socialist. He thought that people should be paid a decent living wage for their labor. Expect to read about greedy, miserly, uncompassionate businessmen in his plays. He also liked to target hypocrisy in people, like most playwrights. Most of his characters are prim and proper in action and speech, even when advocating free love and anarchy. Shaw also liked to make fun of his own left wing political compatriots. Shaw seems to have a lighthearted personality intermixed with seriousness. He could also be elitist at times. My favorite epigram of his was: "The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery."

My favorite play in the book was Mrs. Warren's Profession which deals with a woman who decides to become a high class prostitute and procuress because it beats working in a factory or restaurant for long hours and low wages. Although she pays for her daughter's college education, her daughter coldly rejects her after finding out about her profession.

Shaw has a lot of other standard types of characters you encounter in literature and theatre such as the poetic, effeminate young man who falls for the older married woman. Shaw also creates a rebel who is actually shown in a better light than a pastor. His women characters can be either strong or silly. In Man and Superman, he seems to suggest that the man who is romantic and worships women never marries, but the man who is cynical about them ends up getting the girl. Is he right? I didn't really think so. I thought women liked men who worshipped them.

Two parting questions come to mind regarding Shaw. What would Shaw think of the anarchists and socialists of today? What would he think about Man and Superman inpiring the diehard racist and anti-Semite William Pierce?

GB Shaw is a world class Irish dramatist. If you have not read these plays, add them to your life experience. Each provides reward in immeasurable ways.