Who's afraid of Bernard Shaw? : some personalities in Shaw's plays / Stanley Weintraub ; foreword by R. F. Dietrich.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weintraub, Stanley, 1929-2019.

Series:

Florida Bernard Shaw series

The Florida Bernard Shaw series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950--Criticism and interpretation.

Shaw, Bernard.

Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xv, 223 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Gainesville : University Press of Florida, [2011]

Summary:

People known to Bernard Shaw had every reason to fear becoming recognizing characters in his plays. He turned beatrice Webb into a witchlike virago in The Millionaries; former prime ministers H. H. As quith into an aloof, incompletent fuddy-duddy in Back to Methuselah; Winston Churchill into an aspiring, belowhard politician in John Bull's Other Island, and Lawrence of Arabia into the eccentric army private Napoleon Alexandet Trotsky Meek in Too Trueto Be Good. However, as emraent Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub reveals in this exquisite volume, Shaw's relationships to real or imagined personalities could be both curiously unexpected and deliciously complex.

Featuring figures as varied as Julius Caesar, Zulu king Cetewayo, Noël Coward, Edward Elgar, Virginia Woolf Benjamin Disraeli, and Edward VIII, this volume brilliantly demonstrates how Shaw put something of himself into all of his "people." The result is a book that is consistently revealing, intriguing, and entertaining. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Shaw's Jesus and Judas: Passion without "Passion" 1

2 A Shavian Caesar 17

3 Schiller's Die Räuber and Shaw's Don Juan in Hell 29

4 Shaw's "Secretary for America" and General John Burgoyne 39

5 Cetewayo: Shaw's Hero from Africa 51

6 Disraeli in Shaw 65

7 Shaw's Musician: Edward Elgar 79

8 Shaw's Goddess: Lady Colin Campbell 99

9 Shaw's Sculptress: Kathleen Scott 118

10 Eugene O'Neill: The Shavian Dimension 139

11 Noël Coward and the Avuncular Shaw 161

12 King Magnus and King Minus: A Play and a Playlet 175

13 Who's Afraid of Bernard Shaw? Virginia Woolf and GBS 194.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9780813037264

0813037263

OCLC:

707260815