Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy

by Bernard Shaw

Overview

Man and Superman is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. Although Man and Superman can be performed as a light comedy of manners, Shaw intended the drama to be something much deeper, as suggested by the title, which comes from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical ideas about the ""Übermensch"". As Shaw notes in his ""Epistle Dedicatory"" he wrote the play as ""a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life"". George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 - 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789356715547
Publisher:	Alpha Edition
Publication date:	11/24/2022
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.39(d)

About the Author

Bernard Shaw

Read an Excerpt

obliged. But I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take myself as I am and get what work I can out of myself. All this you will understand; for there is community of material between us: we are both critics of life as well as of art; and you have perhaps said to yourself when I have passed your windows " There, but for the grace of God, go I." An awful and chastening reflection, which shall be the closing cadence of this immoderately long letter from yours faithfully, G. Bernard Shaw. WOKINC, 1903. ACT I Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, opening the morning's letters. The study, handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of means. Not a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are at least two housemaids and a parlormaid downstairs, and a housekeeper upstairs who does not let them spare elbow-grease. Even the top of Roebuck's head is polished: on a sunshiny day he could heliograph his orders to distant camps by merely nodding. In no other respect, however, does he suggest the military man. It is in active civil life that men get his broad air of importance, his dignified expectation of deference, his determinate mouth disarmed and refined since the hour of his success by the withdrawal of opposition and the concession of comfort and precedence and power. He is more than a highly respectable man: he is marked out as a president of highly respectahle men, a chairman among directors, an alderman among councillors, a mayor among aldermen. Four tufts of iron- grey hair, which will soon be as white as isinglass, and are in other respects not at all unlike it, grow in two symmetrical pairs above his ears and at the angles of his spreading jaws. Hewears a black frock coat, a white waistcoat (it is bright spring weather), and trousers, neither hlack n...