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Bernard Shaw on the American Stage is the first comprehensive study
of the production of Bernard Shaw's plays in America. During his
lifetime (1856-1950), Shaw was America's most popular living
playwright; productions of his plays were outnumbered only by
Shakespeare. Forty-four of Shaw's plays were staged in America
before his death, eight more posthumously. Eleven of the
productions were world premieres. Bernard Shaw on the American
Stage tells the story of the fifty-two premieres, which, apart from
a few fragments, is his total dramatic oeuvre. The book also
includes, again for the first time, production data and concise
overviews of dozens of the most notable American revivals of the
plays, from the 1890s to the beginning of the 2020 pandemic.
Illustrations-production photographs, programmes, theatre
buildings, playbills, actors' studio portraits- inform the study
throughout.
The second of Shaw's "unpleasant" plays, written in 1893, published
in 1898, but not performed until 1905, The Philanderer is subtitled
"A Topical Comedy." The eclectic range of topical subjects
addressed in the play includes the influence of Norwegian
playwright Henrik Ibsen on British middle-class social mores (the
second act of The Philanderer is set in the fictional Ibsen Club),
medical follies, the rise of the "New Woman," and, in particular,
the destructive impact of Victorian marriage and divorce laws. Just
as Shaw's other "unpleasant" plays, Widowers' Houses and Mrs
Warren's Profession, call, respectively, for reform of laws that
allow corrupt property owners to exploit the poor and for radical
change to economic structures that drive women into prostitution,
so The Philanderer makes the case for more liberal legislation to
allow easier divorce-particularly for women-when marriages become
irretrievably broken. Shaw's attack on divorce laws becomes even
clearer and stronger in the final act that he wrote for the play
but discarded in favour of the version he published. The discarded
version is published for the first time in this Broadview edition
of the play.
One of Bernard Shaw's early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren's
Profession places the protagonist's decision to become a prostitute
in the context of the appalling conditions for working class women
in Victorian England. Faced with ill health, poverty, and marital
servitude on the one hand, and opportunities for financial
independence, dignity, and self-worth on the other, Kitty Warren
follows her sister into a successful career in prostitution. Shaw's
fierce social criticism in this play is driven not by conventional
morality, but by anger at the hypocrisy that allows society to
condemn prostitution while condoning the discrimination against
women that makes prostitution inevitable. This Broadview edition
includes a comprehensive historical and critical introduction;
extracts from Shaw's prefaces to the play; Shaw's expurgations of
the text; early reviews of the play in the United States, Canada,
and Great Britain; and contemporary contextual documents on
prostitution, incest, censorship, women's education, and the "New
Woman."
The editor of this lively, updated assortment of reviews,
interviews and other critical deliberations on contemporary
Canadian drama has gathered material from books, theatre and
scholarly journals; from major daily newspapers in Canada and
abroad; from critics, academics, journalists and playwrights. This
new expanded and updated edition of Canadian Drama and the Critics
now includes commentary on 43 English-language plays written during
the last 50 years.
"Canadian Drama and the Critics" is an enjoyable read that offers
an intelligent, wide-ranging overview of modern Canadian plays and
playwrights. An ideal companion text to Talonbooks' "Modern
Canadian Plays" Volumes I and II and other anthologies of Canadian
drama, "Canadian Drama and the Critics" also includes detailed
production information for the premiere of each play and a
comprehensive index.
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