Shaw: Seven Critical Essays

The essays in this collection were read at the Shaw Seminars held at Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, and at the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, during the summers of 1966, 1967, and 1968. The Shaw Seminar is designed to enhance the playgoer's understanding and appreciation of live drama by bringing together people with broad ranges of intersts in the theatre. These essays represent the current thriving interest in both live theatre and engaging criticism.

There is a consumer purpose in the board range of topics in these essays that of examining, from quite different points of view, either Shaw's skill as a dramatist or his relationship to a tradition of ideas that contributed to the shaping of his dramatic technique. In some of the criticism in this collection, there is an analysis of both the shaping of ideas and the playwright's skill. The first essay, for example, written by Alan Dosener, explores Shaw's first produced play, Wildowers' Houses, through what would currently be called "historical" and "new critical" techniques. The second essay, by Stanley Weintraub, deals with the genesis of Man and Superman relying almost exclusively on material and events preceding its production.

Although concerned primarily with Somerset Maugham's play, The Circle, Brian Parker's paper points out contrasts between Shaw and Maugham, "largely in Shaw's favour," that "clarify the qualities that are peculiarly Maugham's." This problem of Shaw's idea and their origins is the topic of the essay by Warren Smith, who analyses Shane's debt to the numerous societies to which he belonged. Similar to the essays dealing mainly with outside influences on Shaw is James Merritt's essay on Shaw and the pre-Raphaelites. Marritt outlines the historical background of the pre-Raphaelite movement and proceeds to point our the characteristics of the movement that influenced Shaw and where they surface again in his drama. Clifford Leech's essay, "Shaw and Shakespeare," is important for the light it casts on two problems frequently associated with Shaw's dramas the first is whether Shaw's play with last; the second is how Shaw ranks in comparison with other playwrights, particularly Shakespeare. The last essay, by Martin Meisel, deals with the relationship between Shaw's plays and his political thinking.

An attempt to reinterpret Shaw for modern audiences, this collection of essays will appeal not only to Shavian scholars, but to anyone who has been delighted and stimulated by the playwright's keen wit and sensitive awareness of social issues

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