Widowers' Houses
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Widowers' Houses (1892) was the first play by G. Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright and Nobel Prize winner.
It is one of the three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898, because its purpose is not to entertain its audience - as the traditional Victorian theatre was supposed to - but instead to raise awareness of social problems and serve as a criticism of capitalist behaviour. The other two plays were The Philanderer and Mrs Warren's Profession.
It comprises three acts, in the first a young doctor named Harry Trench and his friend William Cokane are vacationing at Remagen on the Rhine. It is revealed that Trench has fallen in love with Blanche, who is the daughter of Mr Sartorius, a self-made businessman and they become engaged. The second act opens with Sartorius talking to Mr Lickcheese, who he employs as a rent-collector. Trench and Cokane soon arrive and Trench discovers that Sartorius makes his money from renting slum housing to the poor. He is disgusted by this and tells Blanche that they should live off his own income and not take money from her father. They fight about this and although Sartorius eventually convinces Trench that his own money is just as dirty as the money he makes from a mortage on some of the same housing, Blanche wants nothing to do with him. In the third act, Trench, Cokane and Lickcheese return to Sartorius' house to discuss a business venture and Trench and Blanche are re-united.
| The Plays of George Bernard Shaw |
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| Plays Unpleasant : The Philanderer, Mrs Warren's Profession, Widowers' Houses Plays Pleasant : Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell Three Plays for Puritans : Caesar and Cleopatra, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The Devil's Disciple Back to Methuselah, a cycle of 5 plays : In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920 Other Plays : Androcles and the Lion, The Apple Cart, The Doctor's Dilemma, Fanny's First Play, Geneva, Heartbreak House, John Bull's Other Island, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Misalliance, Pygmalion, Saint Joan |
