Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198793286
Category : Social classes
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre.Pygmalion (1912) was a world-wide smash hit from the time of its premiere in Vienna 1913 and it has remained popular to this day. Shaw was awarded an Academy Award in 1938 for his screenplay of the film adaptation. It was, of course, later made into the much-loved musical My Fair Lady.Heartbreak House (1917), which was finally performed in 1920 and published in 1921, bares the hallmarks of European modernism and a formal break from Shaw's previous work. A meditation on the war and the resultant decline in European aristocratic culture, it was perhaps staged too soon after theconflict; indeed, it did not have the success of his earlier works, which was likely due to his experimental aesthetics combined with a war-weary audience that sought lighter fare. However, while this contemporary reception was muted, it is now recognised as a modernist masterpiece.Saint Joan (1923) marked Shaw's resurrection and apotheosis. The first major work written of Joan of Arc after her canonization (1920), the play interrogates the origins of European nationalism in the post-war era. Like Pygmalion, it was an immediate world-wide hit and secured Shaw the Nobel Prizefor Literature in 1925. Drawing upon the transcripts of Joan's trial, Shaw blended his trademark wit to produce a hybrid genre of comedy and history play. Despite the historical setting, Saint Joan is highly accessible and continues to delight audiences.

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198793286
Category : Social classes
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book

Book Description
Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre.Pygmalion (1912) was a world-wide smash hit from the time of its premiere in Vienna 1913 and it has remained popular to this day. Shaw was awarded an Academy Award in 1938 for his screenplay of the film adaptation. It was, of course, later made into the much-loved musical My Fair Lady.Heartbreak House (1917), which was finally performed in 1920 and published in 1921, bares the hallmarks of European modernism and a formal break from Shaw's previous work. A meditation on the war and the resultant decline in European aristocratic culture, it was perhaps staged too soon after theconflict; indeed, it did not have the success of his earlier works, which was likely due to his experimental aesthetics combined with a war-weary audience that sought lighter fare. However, while this contemporary reception was muted, it is now recognised as a modernist masterpiece.Saint Joan (1923) marked Shaw's resurrection and apotheosis. The first major work written of Joan of Arc after her canonization (1920), the play interrogates the origins of European nationalism in the post-war era. Like Pygmalion, it was an immediate world-wide hit and secured Shaw the Nobel Prizefor Literature in 1925. Drawing upon the transcripts of Joan's trial, Shaw blended his trademark wit to produce a hybrid genre of comedy and history play. Despite the historical setting, Saint Joan is highly accessible and continues to delight audiences.

The Marriage of Contraries

The Marriage of Contraries PDF Author: J. L. Wisenthal
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674550858
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This reading of Bernard Shaw focuses on his habit of seeing the world in terms of contraries, a habit related to his basic rejection of absolutes, his distaste for finality. The author examines nine of Shaw's finest plays: Man and Superman, Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Pygmalion, Misalliance, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, and Back to Methuselah. The book takes seriously Shaw's claim that all of his characters are "right from their several points of view." We are compelled to respect the qualities and values of opposing and very different characters in these plays, and we also have a sense of their complementary defects. J. L. Wisenthal's commentary sheds light on Shaw's techniques of portrayal as well as his dialectical habit of mind. This finely written essay is for all lovers of Shaw and the theater.

Four Plays: Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion [and] Heartbreak House

Four Plays: Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion [and] Heartbreak House PDF Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description


Saint Joan

Saint Joan PDF Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Methuen Drama
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The New Mermaids series is first choice for univeristy courses.

CliffsNotes on Shaw's Major Barbara & St. Joan

CliffsNotes on Shaw's Major Barbara & St. Joan PDF Author: Jeffrey Fisher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544182685
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
This CliffsNotes guide includes everything you’ve come to expect from the trusted experts at CliffsNotes, including analysis of the most widely read literary works.

Plays by George Bernard Shaw

Plays by George Bernard Shaw PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101157666
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
George Bernard Shaw demanded truth and despised convention. He punctured hollow pretensions and smug prudishness—coating his criticism with ingenious and irreverent wit. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, and Man and Superman, the great playwright satirizes society, military heroism, marriage, and the pursuit of man by woman. From a social, literary, and theatrical standpoint, these four plays are among the foremost dramas of the age—as intellectually stimulating as they are thoroughly enjoyable. “My way of joking is to tell the truth: It is the funniest joke in the world.”—G. B. Shaw With an Introduction by Eric Bentley and an Afterword by Norman Lloyd

Heartbreak House

Heartbreak House PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1473375002
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
This vintage book contains George Bernard Shaw's 1919 play, "Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes". Ellie Dunn, her father, and her fiancé attend one of Hesione Hushabye's notorious dinner parties. However, Ellie's partner is a rake, her father is an idiot, and she has amorous feelings for Hesione's husband. It is an adventurous farrago of comedy, tragedy, and satire that can only lead to disaster. George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) was an Irish playwright who co-founded the London School of Economics. Many antiquarian books like this are increasingly rare and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Heartbreak House

Heartbreak House PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1877527718
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
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.

1992, Shaw and the Last Hundred Years

1992, Shaw and the Last Hundred Years PDF Author: Bernard Frank Dukore
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271013244
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In 1892 the first production of Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, heralded the birth of modern drama in the English language. One hundred years later a group of Shavians gathered to examine the significance and influence of Shaw's drama in the English-speaking world. The conference, sponsored by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, brought together theater scholars, critics, and artists from Canada, England, Ireland, and the United States. The conference also featured productions of The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, The Man of Destiny, and Farfetched Tales, each followed by a symposium. The centennial conference not only marked the importance of the event but also stimulated new ways of regarding that historic moment, reexaminations of the significance of Shaw's plays, and explorations of their consequences. Some speakers reevaluated the genesis of the first production of Widowers' Houses and its social, cultural, and theatrical context. Some brought to bear on the subject of Shavian drama recent critical perspectives, such as feminism, deconstructionism, and the type of close textual and intertextual scrutiny seldom accorded Shaw. Others explored his impact in England, America, Ireland, and the Antipodes. Still others examined the relationship of comedy and ideas, subtext, and how this Victorian dramatist remains pertinent today. The conference concluded with a symposium that aimed to assess what might lie ahead for Shaw on page and stage in the next hundred years. This volume records the proceedings of the conference as well as reviews and the continuing checklist of Shaviana. Contributors are Peter Barnes, Charles A. Berst, Montgomery Davis, Bernard F. Dukore, Martin Esslin, Joanne E. Gates, Nicholas Grene, Christopher Innes, Katherine E. Kelly, Frederick P. W. McDowell, Rhoda Nathan, Christopher Newton, Michael O'Hara, Jean Reynolds, Irving Wardle, Stanley Weintraub, and J. L. Wisenthal.

Heartbreak House and Misalliance

Heartbreak House and Misalliance PDF Author: Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Bantam Classics
ISBN: 9780553214420
Category : Architecture, Domestic
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
In Heartbreak House, a visit to an eccentric gentleman's home reveals surprises in gender and identity, while in Misalliance, an underwear tycoon and his daughter find adventure after a plane crash. Reissue.