LITMIR.BIZ

One of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, Pygmalion was a rousing success on the London and New York stages, an entertaining motion picture and a great hit with its musical version, My Fair Lady. An updated and considerably revised version of the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, the 20th-century story pokes fun at the antiquated British class system. In Shaw's clever adaptation, Professor Henry Higgins, a linguistic expert, takes on a bet that he can transform an awkward cockney flower seller into a refined young lady simply by polishing her manners and changing the way she speaks. In the process of convincing society that his creation is a mysterious royal figure, the Professor also falls in love with his elegant handiwork.The irresistible theme of the emerging butterfly, together with Shaw's brilliant dialogue and splendid skills as a playwright, have made Pygmalion one of the most popular comedies in the English language. A staple of college drama courses, it is still widely performed.

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The plays of John Millington Synge (1871–1909) are filled with the humors, sorrows, and dreams of the country folk of the Aran Islands and the western Irish coastlands, where, in Synge's works, «we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender.» The Playboy of the Western World, his most famous play, is sweetly funny and ironic as it follows its young hero's progress, in the eyes of others, from timid weakling to paragon of bravery.The shorter one-act play, Riders to the Sea, is a dark elegy to the fragile existence of those who live at the mercy of the sea. Both are beautifully crafted dramas that celebrate Irish gifts for lyrical language. They are reprinted here from authoritative editions, complete with Synge's preface to The Playboy of the Western World.

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Molière understood profoundly what makes us noble, pathetic, outrageous and funny, and in his splendid comedies satirized human folly to perfection. One of the best of his plays — and one of the greatest of all comedies — is The Misanthrope, first performed in 1666, when the King of France himself had assumed patronage of Molière's company, and the actor/playwright was at the height of his career.Spotlighting the absurdities of social and literary pretension, The Misanthrope shows us a man who is quick to criticize the hypocrisies, inconsistencies and faults of others, yet remains blind to his own. As «the misanthrope» grows more and more irritable with others, the play becomes more and more entertaining, even as a happy ending for the hero seems less and less likely.

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In Miss Julie, a willful young aristocrat, whose perverse nature has already driven her fiancé to break off their engagement, pursues and effectively seduces her father's valet during the course of a Midsummer's Eve celebration. The progress of that seduction and the play's stunning denouement shocked Swedish audiences who first attended the play in 1889.Despite its controversial debut, this now-classic drama, inspired by the new ideas of naturalism and psychology that swept Europe in the late 19th century, helped to shape modern theater, and remains one of the most potent-and most frequently performed-of modern plays. The full text of Miss Julie is reprinted here as translated by Edwin Björkman, complete with Strindberg's critical preface to the play, considered by many to be one of the most important manifestos in theater history.

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Fabian socialist and ardent proselytizer, George Bernard Shaw viewed his role as a playwright as far more than that of an entertainer. His audiences heard fully articulated sermons on moral and economic issues, a potentially dry theatrical experience enlivened by Shaw's genius for creating vital characters and scintillating dialogue. Major Barbara offers a sparkling example of its author's unique gift for presenting social theories in an engaging format.The eponymous heroine, an officer in the Salvation Army, is the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, a wealthy armaments manufacturer. When the Army accepts donations from Undershaft and a whiskey distiller, whose money Barbara regards as tainted, she resigns in disgust, but eventually sees the truth of her father's reasoning that social iniquity derives from poverty; it is only through accumulating wealth and power that people can help each other.

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The most famous of all Calderon's varied and romantic dramas, this seventeenth-century masterpiece by the great Spanish playwright explores the conflict between free will and predestination as it focuses on the life of Segismundo, a Polish prince imprisoned at birth by his father, the King. The monarch's heartless action, precipitated by astrologers who predict the boy will one day usurp the throne, paves the way for a series of events that turn the son against the father and lead to rebellion. Years later, following a revolution and the peasants' seizure of power, the grim prophecy uttered at the Prince's birth threatens to become a painful reality. For this edition, Stanley Appelbaum has written an informative introduction and an excellent new literal translation that appears on pages facing the Spanish original. A valuable text for students of Spanish language and literature, this volume will delight any reader interested in classics from Spain's Golden Age of drama.

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One of the foremost dramatists of the 19th century, Russian author Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) created a body of work noted for its realistic dialogue and keen insights into human relationships. This collection of five one-act plays — in the celebrated Constance Garnett translations — shows Chekhov at his witty best.The Anniversary takes a lively look behind the frenetic scenes at a bank: a man overburdened with errands from friends and family gives a nearly maddened but ludicrous account of his chores and obligations in An Unwilling Martyr; and The Wedding depicts scenes from a wedding reception in which the mother of the bride assumes affected airs and deals with quarrelsome guests. In The Bear, a virtuous, spirited widow is pressed to repay a debt and ends up receiving an offer of marriage. The Proposal depicts the trauma of a would-be suitor who winds up in a wrangle over property.Theater lovers, students of drama and literature, and other readers, as well as amateur and professional groups performing these popular works, will welcome this convenient, inexpensive collection of comic gems by one of the masters of modern drama.

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The innovative dramas of Henrik Ibsen created a sensation among 19th-century audiences with their mordant attacks on social conventions. Among the finest of these ground-breaking works was Ghosts, first performed in 1881. In it, the playwright assailed the hypocrisy of moral codes, offering a daring treatment of such then-taboo issues as infidelity, venereal disease, and illegitimacy. Ibsen substituted the modern scientific idea of heredity for the ancient Greek concept of fate, exposing hidden sins of the past as the roots of corruption.The sins of the past are at the heart of the play, whose haunted heroine, Mrs. Helen Alving, has accepted her pastor's counsel and endured her husband's many infidelities in silence. Ten years after Alving's death, she is to dedicate an orphanage in his memory. Her son Oswald, kept innocent of his father's profligacy, returns home for the dedication. Oswald's attraction to the housemaid — in reality, his half-sister — conjures up the ghost of his parents' unhappy marriage. This disastrous romance, along with Oswald's increasing symptoms of the venereal disease inherited from his father, force Mrs. Alving to confront her own «ghosts.»A powerful and engrossing psychological drama, Ghosts serves as an excellent entrée to Ibsen's other works and helps confirm his status as «the father of modern drama.»

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Widely regarded as one of the foremost dramatists of the nineteenth century, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) brought the social problems and ideas of his day to center stage. Creating realistic plays of psychological conflict that emphasized character over cunning plots, he frequently inspired critical objections because his dramas deemed the individual more important than the group.In this powerful work, Ibsen places his main characters, Dr. Thomas Stockman, in the role of an enlightened and persecuted minority of one confronting an ignorant, powerful majority. When the physician learns that the famous and financially successful baths in his hometown are contaminated, he insists they be shut down for expensive repairs. For his honesty, he is persecuted, ridiculed, and declared an «enemy of the people» by the townspeople, included some who have been his closest allies.First staged in 1883, An Enemy of the People remains one of the most frequently performed plays by a writer considered by many the «father of modern drama.» This easily affordable edition makes available to students, teachers, and general readers a major work by one of the world's great playwrights.

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One of the most durable myths in Western culture, the story of Faust tells of a learned German doctor who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Early enactments of Faust's damnation were often the raffish fare of clowns and low comedians. But the young Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) recognized in the story of Faust's temptation and fall the elements of tragedy.In his epic treatment of the Faust legend, Marlowe retains much of the rich phantasmagoria of its origins. There are florid visions of an enraged Lucifer, dueling angels, the Seven Deadly Sins, Faustus tormenting the Pope, and his summoning of the spirit of Alexander the Great. But the playwright created equally powerful scenes that invest the work with tragic dignity, among them the doomed man's calling upon Christ to save him and his ultimate rejection of salvation for the embrace of Helen of Troy.With immense poetic skill, and psychological insight that foreshadowed the later work of Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwrights, Marlowe created in Dr. Faustus one of the first true tragedies in English. Vividly dramatic, rich in poetic grandeur, this classic play remains a robust and lively exemplar of the glories of Elizabethan drama.

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