Mrs Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
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 - - Mrs Warren's Profession has been performed at last, after a delay of only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the triumphant amusement of startling all but the strongest-headed of the London theatre critics clean out of the practice of their profession. No author who has ever known the exultation of sending the Press into an hysterical tumult of protest, of moral panic, of involuntary and frantic confession of sin, of a horror of conscience in which the power of distinguishing between the work of art on the stage and the real life of the spectator is confused and overwhelmed, will ever care for the stereotyped compliments which every successful farce or melodrama elicits from the newspapers. Give me that critic who rushed from my play to declare furiously that Sir George Crofts ought to be kicked. What a triumph for the actor, thus to reduce a jaded London journalist to the condition of the simple sailor in the Wapping gallery, who shouts execrations at Iago and warnings to Othello not to believe him But dearer still than such simplicity is that sense of the sudden earthquake shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen champions of ten years ago remonstrate with me just as the veterans of those brave days remonstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who first launched my plays on the stage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck, exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals. Actually his ideals What would Dr Relling say? And Mr William Archer himself disowns me because I cannot touch pitch without wallowing in it. Truly my play must be more needed than I knew; and yet I thought I knew how little the others know.“LW. Conolly’s edition of Mrs Warren’s Profession will be exceedingly helpful to readers of all sorts—undergraduate students, Shaw specialists, and general readers alike. Insight into Shaw’s play benefits from a knowledge of its various late-19th-century contexts, and this edition includes a wealth of contextual materials, in areas ranging from prostitution to Cambridge University. This thorough, well-researched edition is a major contribution to everyone’s understanding of Shaw’s always-up-to-date dramatic study of prostitution and capitalism.” — Jonathan Wisenthal, University of British Columbia
“This edition of Mrs Warren’s Profession, with its astonishing range of associated documents, provides an invaluable resource for students and Shaw enthusiasts, and has a good deal to offer to the seasoned Shaw scholar as well. The introduction offers a wonderfully detailed and informative account of the social, political, and theatrical contexts of Shaw’s first major play, and Conolly’s analysis of the dramatic texture of Mrs Warren’s Profession allows insight into the qualities of the play itself and why, despite the excitement of the early scandals, it has more than historic interest, and lives on today’s stage.” — Jean Chothia, University of Cambridge
Daniel O'Leary is Assistant Professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal and a contributor to the Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel and The History of the Book in Canada.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781551116273 |
| ISBN 10 | 1551116278 |
| Title | Mrs Warren's Profession |
| Author | Bernard Shaw |
| Series | Broadview Editions |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Broadview Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2005-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 246 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |