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Using intriguing characters and sparkling dialogue, George Bernard Shaw explored ideas and issues that transformed the conventions of British theater. "Don Juan in Hell" showcases the master's art at its best. An episode from Act Three of Man and Superman, "Don Juan in Hell" is often presented independently of the rest of the play. Rooted in the Don Juan legend--particularly as it appears in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni--this dream sequence forms a play within a play. It consists of a dramatic reading in which three characters from Man and Superman appear in archetypal guises: Don Juan, the libertine turned moralist; Doña Ana, the eternal female; and the Commander, a hypocrite transformed into a statue. The Devil himself joins their spirited debate on the nature of heaven and hell, of good and evil, and of human purpose, for a captivating blend of Shavian wit and Nietzschean philosophy.
Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - To the irreverent - and which of us will claim entire exemption from that comfortable classification? - there is something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox criticism toward Bernard Shaw. He so obviously disregards all the canons and unities and other things which every well-bred dramatist is bound to respect that his work is really unworthy of serious criticism (orthodox). Indeed he knows no more about the dramatic art than, according to his own story in "The Man of Destiny," Napoleon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. But both men were successes each in his way - the latter won victories and the former gained audiences, in the very teeth of the accepted theories of war and the theatre. Shaw does not know that it is unpardonable sin to have his characters make long speeches at one another, apparently thinking that this embargo applies only to long speeches which consist mainly of bombast and rhetoric. There never was an author who showed less predilection for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results. He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the world and he assumed the task of mundane reformation with a confident spirit. It seems such a small job at twenty to set the times aright. He began as an Essayist, but who reads essays now-a-days? - he then turned novelist with no better success, for no one would read such preposterous stuff as he chose to emit. He only succeeded in proving that absolutely rational men and women - although he has created few of the latter - can be most extremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.
In the middle of the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian war, an enemy soldier escapes a cavalry charge by climbing up a drainpipe into Raina Petkoff’s room. Raina is the daughter of one Major and engaged to another, but she chooses to save the soldier’s life by concealing him. Arms and the Man, named after the opening lines of Virgil’s The Aeneid, is a play that humorously deals with the hypocrisy of humanity and the stupidity of war. It was among George Bernard Shaw’s first commercial successes, and was included in a collection of plays he referred to as Plays Pleasant, along with Candida, You Never Can Tell, and The Man of Destiny. Having coined the term “chocolate soldier,” the play has been staged multiple times in London’s West End and on Broadway, and has been adapted into operetta and film.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
In a dentist's operating room on a fine August morning in 1896. Not the usual tiny London den, but the best sitting room of a furnished lodging in a terrace on the sea front at a fashionable watering place. The operating chair, with a gas pump and cylinder beside it, is half way between the centre of the room and one of the corners. If you look into the room through the window which lights it, you will see the fireplace in the middle of the wall opposite you, with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath which stands a writing table, with a blotter and a diary on it, and a chair. Next the writing table, towards the door, is a leather covered sofa. The opposite wall, close on your right, is occupied mostly by a bookcase. The operating chair is under your nose, facing you, with the cabinet of instruments handy to it on your left. You observe that the professional furniture and apparatus are new, and that the wall paper, designed, with the taste of an undertaker, in festoons and urns, the carpet with its symmetrical plans of rich, cabbagy nosegays, the glass gasalier with lustres; the ornamental gilt rimmed blue candlesticks on the ends of the mantelshelf, also glass draped with lustres, and the ormolu clock under a glass-cover in the middle between them, its uselessness emphasized by a cheap American clock disrespectfully placed beside it and now indicating 12 o'clock noon, all combine with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.
Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire armaments dealer, loves money and despises poverty. His energetic daughter Barbara, on the other hand, shows her love for the poor by working as a Major in the Salvation Army. She sees her father as just another soul to be saved. But when the Salvation Army needs funds to keep going, it is Undershaft who saves the day. Is the Army right to accept money that has been obtained by 'Death and Destruction'? Barbara is forced to examine her moral assumptions. Is she tricked into the attempt to unite spiritual goodness with material power? Full of lively comedy and sparkling debate, Major Barbara is also one of Shaw's most powerful and forward-looking plays. - Publisher.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Before becoming a playwright he wrote music and literary criticism. Shaw used his writing to attack social problems such as education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Shaw was particularly conscious of the exploitation of the working class. Major Barbara has been called the most controversial of Shaw's works. His seeming criticism of Christianity and The Salvation Army caused some to accuse him of blasphemy, while others defended what they saw as his realistic presentation of religion. In Major Barbara a woman who has committed herself to work with the Salvation Army faces the dilemma that its support must come from the corrupt rich, a realization which shatters her faith. She finally finds a code by which she can live. Shaw wrote this preface in part to explain his reasons for writing Major Barbara and in part to answer his critics.
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