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Title: Major Barbara (Penguin Classics) by George Bernard Shaw, Dan H. Laurence, Margery Morgan, Elizabeth T. Forter ISBN: 0-14-043790-8 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting and worth reading and seeing.
Comment: GBS wrote play with "approaching audiences as citizens capable of thought and prompting them to think imaginatively to some purpose" in mind, as Margery Morgan says. And there are plenty for one to think seriously about in Major Barbara.
The most interesting is his conviction that no money is untainted. That's interesting because it means the donations and public fundings the environmentalists take in come from no less than the evil polluters themselves, perhaps feeling, which GBS rightly agreed, as the Salvation Army would that they "...will take money from the Devil himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." But GBS also wrote in the preface that while he is okay to accept tainted money, "He must either share the world's guilt or go to another planet." From what I can gather from the preface and play, GBS believed money is the key to solve all the problems we have, hence his mentioning of Samuel Butler and his "constant sense of the importance of money," and his low opinion of Ruskin and Kroptokin, for whom, "law is consequence of the tendency of human beings to oppress fellow humans; it is reinforced by violence." Kropotkin also "provides evidence from the animal kingdom to prove that species which practices mutual aid multiply faster than others. Opposing all State power, he advocates the abolition of states, and of private property, and the transforming of humankind into a federation of mutual aid communities. According to him, capitalism cannot achieve full productivity, for it amis at maximum profits instead of production for human needs. All persons, including intellectuals, should practice manual labor. Goods should be distributed according to individual needs." (Guy de Mallac, The Widsom of Humankind by Leo Tolstoy.)
If GBS wasn't joking, then the following should be one of the most controversial ideas he raised in the preface to the play. I quote: "It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices...until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of sympathy and some generosity in complying with their last wishes, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of them." Did he really mean that if you are a rapist once, you can be free and "put up with," but if you keep getting drunk (a vice), or slightly more seriously, stealing, you should be beheaded?
Rating: 5
Summary: A deluge of brilliance, wit, political nonsense
Comment: Shaw can be absolutely captivating even when he is being an evangelist for political philosophies that the twentieth century has proven to be nothing but vehicles for repression and mass murder (Communism - Shaw approved of Lenin even when the evidence showed him to be pure evil). This play-among his best (if you can see the movie with Rex Harrison, do not miss it)- has such brilliant dialogue and sparkling humor that it is easy to forget that one is being preached to. Shaw thinks human evil is due to socially deprived environments. Ergo, pour money into poor neighborhoods and social evils will vanish. Unfortunately for Shaw's argument, poverty and human evil are two different things entirely and only intersect occasionally and coincidently. The poor can be poor due to lack of opportunity or due to a culture of self-destructiveness (illegitmacy, drug/alcohol use, disdain for values that lead to achievement, disdain for skills that lead to steady employability). It is difficult to sustain an argument that the poor in the USA are so due to a lack of opportunity when recent immigrants have pretty much taken the available opportunities and ran with them, rapidly entering the middle classes within a generation of arriving here. Shaw simply cannot believe that anyone would choose to remain poor. Well, they can and do, when getting ahead means putting in 40+ hours a week, and not loafing all day on a street corner in an inebriated/stoned condition. Accepting that fact would have saved millions of lives that were sacrificed in the last century in the attempt to build a perfect "worker's paradise".
Leaving the silly premise behind the play aside, Shaw has crafted a startling piece of theatre and uses his magisterial command of the English language to amuse, provoke, and amaze the audience.
Rating: 5
Summary: comedic masterpiece
Comment: The playwright uncovers the debate about war and pacifism. Shaw also illuminates the poverty industry, and shows that all money is tainted. The play is a vehicle for a debate on philosophies, the burning issues of the day. Shaw shows that the audience can laugh and think, in the same play. Probably Britain's best known playwright, after Shakespeare, Shaw shines in Major Barbara
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Title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade (or Marat Sade) by Peter Weiss ISBN: 1577662318 Publisher: Waveland Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $8.50 |
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Title: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802130348 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Wating for Lefty. by Clifford Odets ISBN: 0822212153 Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $4.50 |
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Title: Statements: Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, the Island, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act/3 Plays by Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona ISBN: 0930452615 Publisher: Theatre Communications Group Pub. Date: August, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Nine Plays of the Modern Theater by Harold Clurman ISBN: 0802150322 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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