Plays Unpleasant

Book excerpt: Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s volume of “unpleasant” plays, Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession—part of the official Bernard Shaw Library A Penguin Classic With Plays Unpleasant, Shaw issued a radical challenge to his audiences’ complacency and exposed social evils through his dramatization of the moral conflicts between youthful idealism and economic reality, promiscuity and marriage, and the duties of women to others and to themselves. His first play, Widowers’ Houses, depicts Harry Trench’s dilemma on learning that the inheritance of his fiancée comes from her father’s income as a slum landlord. In The Philanderer, charismatic Leonard Charteris proposes marriage to Grace, while he is still involved with the beautiful Julia Craven—who is not inclined to give him up so easily. And in Mrs. Warren's Profession, Vivie Warren is forced to reconsider her own future when she discovers that her mother's immoral earnings funded her genteel upbringing. This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. This volume includes Shaw’s prefaces, cast lists from the first productions of the plays, and a list of his principal works.