Mrs Warren in Context

Mrs Warren in Context Reviewed by Lagretta Tallent Lenker Bernard Shaw. Mrs Warren's Profession. Edited by L. W. Conolly. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005. 243 pp. Select Bibliography. No index. $12.95. [End Page 233] Mrs Warren's Profession (1893), one of Shaw's most intriguing early plays, is currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity, certainly among my own students immersed in gender studies and also in the theatrical community, with recent productions in New York and Athens. Thus, Leonard Conolly has excellent timing in publishing his latest work, a critical edition of the infamous play with its infamous character, Kitty Warren. A student interested in Shaw, whether novice or seasoned scholar, will, with one look at the table of contents, recognize the value of this volume. Conolly has provided an insightful and erudite introduction; the definitive edition of Mrs Warren's Profession (ed. Dan H. Laurence, Penguin, 2000); extracts from Shaw's prefaces to the play; his expurgations of the text; early reviews of the play in the United States, Canada, and Britain; and contemporary contextual documents on social issues such as prostitution, incest, censorship, women's education, and the New Woman. This compendium provides substantial assistance, certainly for students and teachers but also for scholars working on other phases of Shaw's play. Conolly's edition focuses on performance, interpretation, textual matters, and the overarching issue of stage censorship, which plagued Shaw for most of his working life. This thoughtful editor also includes delightful Max Beerbohm caricatures along with other illustrations pertaining to this most controversial of Shaw's early plays. Interestingly, Conolly, a Canadian scholar writing about an Irish playwright, opens his introduction with a performance history of Mrs Warren's Profession in the United States. Having been banned in England (the 1902 London performance staged by Shaw and J. T. Grein was for a private audience), the notorious play hit New England with a bang. Conolly vividly describes the public's mood in New Haven and later in New York, where performances were met by howling audiences who made it impossible for Mary Shaw (producer Arnold Daly's Mrs. Warren) to complete the second act without modifying her portrayal of Kitty Warren to resemble Lady Macbeth (p. 14)! This account, partially in the actor's own words, provides insights into the performative aspects of the play that are seldom noted in studies of the play's exceptional stage history. Conolly details Shaw's "long-distance" combat with U.S. censors, which involved not only the American theater community but also the press, always eager to quote the outraged and outrageous Shaw, the New York police, and ultimately the New York State courts (pp. 13–20). This passage about the play's American history prepares the reader for Shaw's never-ending battle with censorship. Conolly has a talent for capturing the essence of the ever-elusive Shaw in a single sentence. While no substitute for serious Shaw study, this is a real gift to those attempting to build an understanding of Shaw's long life and career: [End Page 234] By 1905 Shaw was no stranger to controversy. There was little, however, in his family background or early career that hinted at how frequently during his life he would be embroiled in theatrical, intellectual, social, and political controversies big and small, profound and trivial, earnest and whimsical. (p. 20) The critical debate about Shaw—a maker of puppets who spout, often tediously, his theories, or a creator of vibrant and complex characters who live his ideas—continued to his death, and much beyond. (p. 26) These two examples give an inkling of this scholar's insight into his subject. In this relatively brief introduction, Conolly considers Shaw's early life and development as well as his interactions with playwrights, scholars, actors, politicians, intellectuals, theatrical managers, and everyday people of his time. His footnotes are particularly informative and scholarly, as he documents episodes in Shaw's life with citations about...

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.