kvmmessenger.blogg.se

The last play, You Never Can Tell, is a sort of a comedy of error featuring rather serious issues of marriage, separation, custody of children, money, etc. It is a pretty good bit of historical fiction and I quite enjoyed it. To me this play seemed the least eager to prove a point. It features the real historical figure of Napoleon Bonaparte along with three fictional characters. The next play is a piece of historical fiction called The Man of Destiny. The way Candida explains her point of view and very casually takes her over confident spouse down a notch makes for a good read. A new twist to the then conventional ideas of freedom, marriage and romance. It has refreshing storyline for the Victorian era in which this play belongs to. The theme of the absurdity of romantic ideas about love and the realities of life is visited once more in Candida.Ĭandida is by far my favorite play of the book. Burgess other than to provide some comic relief. I don’t quite see the purpose of the character of Mr. The change that the characters of Reverend Morell, Candida’s husband and Eugene Marchbanks, her young admirer, goes through is remarkable. The second play, Candida, revolves around the character of Candida, an intelligent and engaging woman who is also a devoted wife and a mother. He’s the only character who’s not pretending to be something he’s not.Īrms and the Man is entertaining but all of the characters are so insincere that after a while it gets really trying. Of all the characters in the play I like the character of Bluntschli the best.

Nicola being polite and proper, without really being sincere about his intentions. Louka trying desperately to better her social position. Petkoff trying to be genteel while in reality they are crude common people with a lot of money. Sergius Sranoff, a reckless and conniving young man, pretending to be a true noble hero. Raina Petkoff is trying to be a romantic heroine pining away for her fiancé to return triumphant from war. All of the characters are pretending to be something or the other. I must confess that as I’ve grown older I’ve liked the characters of Arms and the Man less and less.

It also pokes fun at the idea of heroism and the realities of war. In fact, this particular theme reappears in all of the plays in this book. This was one of Shaw’s first commercially successful plays.Īrms and the Man is essentially a parody about the romantic ideas about love and the realities of life.

“Arma virumque cano” (of arms and the man I sing) The first play of the book, Arms and the Man, takes its title from the opening words of Virgil’s Aeneid, He named it Plays Pleasant in order to set it apart from his previous collection of plays, Plays Unpleasant. The plays are Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny and You Never Can Tell. Plays Pleasant, published in 1898, contains four of Bernard Shaw’s so-called pleasant or comic plays.