Plays: Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant: The First Volume, Containing the Three Unpleasant Plays

George Bernard Shaw

Written and set in 1892, Widowers' Houses is a hilarious yet scathing look at the ethics of making money. When a young doctor learns that his future father-in-law has earned his wealth by renting slum housing to the poor, the doctor refuses the dirty dowry that awaits him. But he must reconsider his righteous stance when he discovers alarming news about the source of his own income. Widowers' Houses was the first play by Nobel laureate G. B. Shaw and appeared alongside The Philanderer and Mrs Warren's Profession in the collection Plays Unpleasant in 1898. Leonard Chateris is involved with two women at the same time, the jealous Julia Craven and Grace Tranfield, a young widow. He doesn't like this situation as 'he's a man who likes to tell the truth, but doesn't want to hear it'. He resolves to end the affair with Julia, by any means, including marriage for him or her. Written in 1893, The Philanderer is a surprisingly contemporary take on the complications and contradictions that arise in love among self-styled modern-thinking people who regard themselves free of the gender prejudices of the past. Written in 1893, Mrs Warren's Profession was censored for eight years and was finally produced in London in 1902. As the other two plays in Plays Unpleasant, it offers an astute view of the corruption at the heart of Victorian society. The play centers on Mrs. Warren, who, forced by the economic realities of nineteenth-century London, becomes a prostitute and later runs several successful brothels. Through her characterization, Shaw exposes the hypocrisy of the genteel class and explores the personal consequences of such a profession as Mrs. Warren struggles to gain the respect and love of her Cambridge-educated daughter Vivie, who is horrified to discover the truth about her mother.

Constable & Co. 1898

Translated into: Ukrainian

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