Heartbreak House A Fantasia In The Russian Manner on English Themes George Bernard Shaw 9781542373739 Books
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Heartbreak House A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety failed to learn their proper business of political navigation". The "Russian manner" of the subtitle refers to the style of Anton Chekhov, which Shaw adapts.
Heartbreak House A Fantasia In The Russian Manner on English Themes George Bernard Shaw 9781542373739 Books
Ironically, I detest Shaw, and having read a good bloc of his plays and mini-book prefaces to his plays, I detest his plays in general. Shaw's dramatic characters are invariably one dimensional megaphones, put on stage to popularize either his own idiosyncratic ideas, or-this in his prefaces-to trumpet his own peerless genius in coming up with these ideas. His opinion of mankind in general is barely, if at all, charitable, his being thoroughly convinced that the ignorant masses are and have been manipulated and treated as a potter would wet clay by their opportunistic, soulless elite, be they kings, democratic politicos, professors, clergymen, or big businessmen, since the beginning of time. His opinions and purported sparks of polemical genius can usually be narrated in one quarter the number of words it takes to write them out, and are obviously intended to point to his own writing-creative genius. He reviled Shakespeare (who he always managed to misspell) out of sheer envy; he desired to occupy the top spot of English/Western world drama that was unfortunately already occupied by the Bard of Avon. He admired Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler as needed correctives to the sad, feckless world of post-World War I Western democracy and capitalism. And, by 1940, he had written himself out, in plays at least, and with a decade more of life in him, he had few more ideas to peddle an increasingly alien world, no longer-if ever-hanging on his every too-well enunciated syllable. All this being said, however, the Penguin Classics edition of "Heartbreak House" is a splendid, and a very affordable buy for anyone curious about the drama and polemical prose of this man. The well-written introduction by David Hare makes splendid reading, and argues almost convincingly for Shaw's still-active relevance in the world of ideas and of the stage. If you want to defeat an enemy, or someone whose ideas you revile, you must get to know him through and through, and this necessity is well satisfied by this Penguin Classics edition of this play, along with their full line of Shaw's not at all timeless dramatic productions.Product details
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Heartbreak House A Fantasia In The Russian Manner on English Themes George Bernard Shaw 9781542373739 Books Reviews
Bernard Shaw's 1919 play, "Heartbreak House," is a bitterly angry black comedy - a satire against a British imperial culture in the first two decades of the 20th century that gave rise to the excesses of the first World War, and which could (and would) do a lot worse if given the chance. Consciously drawing on a healthy and proud tradition of Irish satirists, including Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, Shaw brings us into a declining English country house, which seems to be run by no one in particular for a party of apocalyptic (in)significance. The house is home to the Shotover family, the eighty-eight year old patriarch Captain Shotover, his daughter, Hesione Hushabye, and her husband Hector. Over the course of three acts, Shaw explores the 'fascinating' qualities and inhabitants of the boat-like house, and its broader implications as a kind of ship of state.
The play opens as a young woman, Ellie Dunn, arrives at the house, ostensibly the guest of Hesione. With no one to greet her, and her bags left on the front porch of the house, Ellie finds her way into the boat-like drawing room, where she meets the indefatigable Nurse Guinness, and the inscrutable Captain Shotover, who is in the midst of his latest plan to usefully dispose of the hoard of dynamite he keeps in the garden. Gradually, the party fills out as Hesione, Hector, Lady Utterword (nee Shotover), Randall Utterword (the melancholy brother-in-law), Mazzini Dunn (soldier of freedom and Ellie's father), and Boss Mangan (capitalist and Ellie's intended) arrive at this bizarre house. Hesione plans to break off Ellie's engagement to the much older Mangan, and free her to follow the course of romance, while Utterwood and Hector variously pursue their sister-in-law. Of course, Shaw does not let his characters, nor his audience, off with a simple comedy of manners.
Shaw uses the play to expose the play of civilization, in which we all have a part, but with much more comic viciousness than Wilde, and with (possibly) more brute directness than Swift. The most explicit butt of Shaw's circuitous and rapid-fire dialogues is Mangan, whose gruff capitalist demeanor and pursuit of money and reputation is ultimately the guidepost of society as Shaw envisions it. As the lowest common denominator, Mangan's crudity reflects upwards at the socially climbing Ellie, the egregious nonchalance of Hesione, and the almost intentional insanity of Captain Shotover. Shaw implies that if Mangan and his ilk are running the show, then everyone who is not working to change it is complicit in its depredations. Listless bohemians, like Hesione and Hector, give the lie to their apparent graces, in an effort to maintain sanity in the midst of their perpetual confinement with each other. Lady Utterword's complaisance belies her loveless existence, and Mazzini Dunn's servility is the mark of an idealist who has given up his ideals in favor of subsistence. Is the refinement we everyday pretend to, nothing more than a thin veneer for the animal instincts that, if broached, would expose us as Swiftian Yahoos, as Shaw implies in his Preface, or as mere children, left in charge of ever more dangerous means of annihilating everyone and everything?
The tool of satire, in the hands of a master like Shaw, compels us to examine our own lives, and the ways we live them. Does Shaw call us to action, or merely to honest self-reflection? Either way, even at this late date, nearly a century later, we are still living in "Heartbreak House" - and Shaw's challenge to us is more urgent than ever. Ultimately, Shaw's message is that we are not dead yet - only asleep; can we awaken before it is too late? If we are monstrous enough to blow up the preacher's house, in the early 20th century or the early 21st, then each of us must be our own Savior - a notion which should be as empowering as it is horrifying.
Merely a warning about the Dover Thrift Edition of "Heartbreak House" Practically every page has omitted apostrophes and/or added spaces wit hin wor ds. For me, it quickly became tiresome.
(Of course it's possible - though unlikely - that I just got a bad copy from a one-time printing glitch. Your call.)
Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw. Published by MobileReference (mobi).
This is a fascinating, fast-paced comedy with dark undertones about a bankrupt society. It is set in the late nineteenth - early twentieth century, but the issues turn out to be very contemporary the question of capitalism, security vs. adventure, gender roles. I recommend it!
Ironically, I detest Shaw, and having read a good bloc of his plays and mini-book prefaces to his plays, I detest his plays in general. Shaw's dramatic characters are invariably one dimensional megaphones, put on stage to popularize either his own idiosyncratic ideas, or-this in his prefaces-to trumpet his own peerless genius in coming up with these ideas. His opinion of mankind in general is barely, if at all, charitable, his being thoroughly convinced that the ignorant masses are and have been manipulated and treated as a potter would wet clay by their opportunistic, soulless elite, be they kings, democratic politicos, professors, clergymen, or big businessmen, since the beginning of time. His opinions and purported sparks of polemical genius can usually be narrated in one quarter the number of words it takes to write them out, and are obviously intended to point to his own writing-creative genius. He reviled Shakespeare (who he always managed to misspell) out of sheer envy; he desired to occupy the top spot of English/Western world drama that was unfortunately already occupied by the Bard of Avon. He admired Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler as needed correctives to the sad, feckless world of post-World War I Western democracy and capitalism. And, by 1940, he had written himself out, in plays at least, and with a decade more of life in him, he had few more ideas to peddle an increasingly alien world, no longer-if ever-hanging on his every too-well enunciated syllable. All this being said, however, the Penguin Classics edition of "Heartbreak House" is a splendid, and a very affordable buy for anyone curious about the drama and polemical prose of this man. The well-written introduction by David Hare makes splendid reading, and argues almost convincingly for Shaw's still-active relevance in the world of ideas and of the stage. If you want to defeat an enemy, or someone whose ideas you revile, you must get to know him through and through, and this necessity is well satisfied by this Penguin Classics edition of this play, along with their full line of Shaw's not at all timeless dramatic productions.
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