I recently looked up Shaw on the internet, after having read the introduction for his book Plays Pleasant. Guess how many plays he might’ve written? Shaw firstly ventured out to be a novelist, but after writing a few poorly received novels, he understood that he wasn’t up for it. He later became a critic of books and essays, while also involving with activist/political group. It was only later in his life that he turned to writing plays, and became a successful, highly revered, playwright. Fifty-two! That’s how many plays Shaw had written in his life-time.
Last year, one of my reading highlights was not only reading plays for the first time, but reading Shaw as well. Both ‘The Heartbreak House’ and ‘Pygmalion’ fascinated me quite much; although the former more than the latter.
I’m still in the process of breaking off from a reading winter, and a very harsh and unsympathetic one at that. From one book to another, I have but been bitterly disappointed recently. My last book ‘A Little Life’ by Yanagihara did but break that curse ‘a little’ – the story was too self-absorbed to be self-conscious and thereby a more rewarding book for the readers. So, has Shaw broken the curse? He has put the first solid grind on the surface, and I’m sure with the books that I’ve planned for this month, I’m sure that the reading-slum is sure to be broken.
Before I go about talking about this book, I will say this right off the bat: Shaw writes the most excellent dialogues that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.
‘Plays Pleasant’ is book based on four plays, whose nature, as the name suggests, is rather pleasant, gay. They are mix between ‘romance’ and ‘comedy’, with its tone kept on the lighter and comedic side of passionate love and extramarital affairs. Now that I come to think of it, how a fine line romance walks between comedy and tragedy: now a person utterly in heights of buoyant joys, now devastatingly in the depths of agonizing pain. Good for the readers, none of the latter cases in this book.
The first play ‘Arms and Man’ writes about a Serbian soldier who finds himself, during a run out from the Russians after having been defeated, on the balcony of high-class Russian household with a military major and captain in its name. The lady the Serbian soldier meets is the supposed fiancé of the captain, who has led the Russian army to victory in the recent war against the Austrians, and the daughter of the major. Shaw eventually puts the Serb soldier with the whole of this family and has him not only clear his name of any wrong-deeds, but confess, quite successfully, his new love for the lady and in doing so, spell the beans about the captain’s affairs with the housemaid.
‘Candida’, the second play, is about a priest and his lovely wife Candida. They also have an adopted slave-boy, named Eugene, who is young and passionate poet. As so happens, he is madly, but not possessively in love with the beautiful Candida. In the romantic duel of offering the higher bid, that Shaw leads us to between these two lovers, Candida is very wise in choosing one over the other with a noble consideration. This play, more than others, has a lot of thought-provoking claims to make, that between faith and sermons and love and poetry.
‘Man of Destiny’, the third plays, tells the encounter between Napoleon and a beautiful lady, who is out to get the dispatches that a certain lieutenant is to bring to Napoleon. This play takes place in bar/inn and involve confronting dialogues about the greatness of the man in pursuit of his own destiny and the cowardness of that who fights for others.
The last play ‘No One Can Tell’ involves a family reunion that comes through a dentist, who rents his place from a landlord that’s the husband of the lady-patient he treats. Over a lunch, the divided family, unbeknownst of each other, come together, and it is a messy business. This play had the most chaotic atmosphere to it, later involving romantic aspirations between one of the daughters and the dentist. I was reminded of Jane Austen and the histrionics of match-making.
There’s a lightness about these plays; they don’t pretend to speak of great things, but do nonetheless with a sense of playfulness and fresh wit. I’ve come to enjoy the scene-to-scene, dialogue-to-dialogue nature of plays, its wit and quickness, and I’ve a lot to thank Shaw for it.
3.5/5 Sep.13, ‘22