George Bernard Shaw; His Plays (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "WIDOWERS' HOUSES" " f UST as Ibsen, when he set up shop as a fL dramatist, began by imitating the great men U] A, of his time, so Shaw, when he abandoned i novel-writing for play-making, modeled his opus upon the dramas then in fashion. Ibsen's first play was a one-act melodrama of the old school called " Kiaempehoien" and it has been forgotten, happily, these fifty years. Shaw's bow was made in " Widowers' Houses," a three-act comedy. Begun in 1885, in collaboration with William Archer, the incompleted manuscript was dusted, revamped and pushed to " finis " in 1892. It is not a masterpiece, but its production by the Independent Theater Company of London, served to introduce Shaw to the public, and thus it had a respectable purpose. Admittedly modeled upon the early comedies of Pinero and Jones, it shows plain evidences that it was produced during the imitative stage of the author's growth. It has scenes of orthodox build, it has an " emotional" climax-at the end and there are even soliloquys?but the mark of Shaw is plainly upon every line of it. The " grand " scene between the hero and the heroine might be from "Man and Superman." There is imitation in it, as there is in the earlierworks of most men of creative genius, but there is also a vast deal of originality. At the time the play was begun Shaw was engrossed in the propaganda of the Fabian Society and so it was not unnatural that, when he set out to write a play he made a social problem the foundation stone of it. Harry Trench, a young Englishman but twice removed from the lesser aristocracy and with the traditional ideals and ideas of his caste, is the tortured Prince of this little " Hamlet." Happening in his travels upon two fellow Britishers?father and daughter?he falls in love with the latter and in due course m...