Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy
"Man and Superman" shows Shaw's wit at its most brilliant and his speculations at their boldest.The play, as Shaw explains in the preface, is on the Don Juan theme. Taking all the ingredients of the legend, as used by Mozart in "Don Giovanni," Shaw reordered them to write a four-act play in...
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"Man and Superman" shows Shaw's wit at its most brilliant and his speculations at their boldest.The play, as Shaw explains in the preface, is on the Don Juan theme. Taking all the ingredients of the legend, as used by Mozart in "Don Giovanni," Shaw reordered them to write a four-act play in which, characteristically, he turned the story on its head so that Don Juan becomes 'the quarry instead of the huntsman'. While "Man and Superman" contains high comedy of the order of Congreve, it is also a powerful drama of ideas in which Shaw explores the role of the artist, the function of women in society and his theory of Creative Evolution, a theme to which he returned twenty years later in his great dramatic cycle "Back to Methuseleh."
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780140450194 (014045019X)
Publish date: January 18th 1989
Publisher: Penguin
Pages no: 272
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Literature,
European Literature,
Cultural,
20th Century,
Irish Literature,
Plays,
Drama,
Theatre,
Philosophy,
Ireland,
English Literature
"... the book about the bird and the bee is natural history. It's an awful lesson to mankind. You think that you are Ann's suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down qua...
Look, there are three awesome acts in this and then there's that whole thing in the middle where Don Juan argues with the devil. Is the rest of the play just an excuse for Act III? Is it, like, the bread around a Don Juan / Satan sandwich? I preferred the bread.I didn't hate the Don Juan / Satan par...