Misalliance, The Dark Lady Of The Sonnets And Fanny's First Play

It is with fine pleasure I may now comment on these quite informative and entertaining works of George Bernard Shaw. In the beginning Shaw shews us an essay on Parents and Children which is George's opinion on formal schooling and home schooling. Some interesting comments on adult morality imposed upon children's psyche, and of course delivered with Shaw's biting tongue on his own experience through the school system. It really is about self-learning, and although it seems that Shaw can find no adequate conclusion or summary to the problems he sees between parents and their offspring, there are always hints on new directions families can go in upbringing intelligent self thinkers, perhaps by asking parents themselves to begin the self thinking process initially. This essay precludes Misalliance which is very much an illumination on some of the problems Shaw sets out in his essay on parents and children. It's a splendid play, with wit and perception on social standing and filial relations. As always, Shaw provides enough wit to make the serious issues digestible; one of the fathers in the play made his fortune in making underpants!

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, has a prologue of typical Shaw attention to detail, that gives us the background to the short play about Shakespeare, in which George stages a response to a play written by Frank Harris on Shakespeare. Essentially the idea is to whittle at the myth perpetrated by those who suffer from 'Bardolatary', a position of idolising Shakespeare to the extent of ignoring circumstance, personality, company and class of the poet. It's a comic play written with brevity, and sharply executed. I can't write about the plot, as it would spoil the surprises.

Finally, my favourite, Fanny's First Play, George describes it as a potboiler which examines the substitution of custom for conscience. Which is an interesting view of morality and immorality, and how these words have become the blanketed statement for anything which is considered either good or bad, without actually determining what exactly the goodness or badness is of the matter. Shaw takes a few swipes at critics of the day (The play was initially performed as an anon but later Shaw's authorship was attributed to it). It's a play within a play, and Shaw brings himself into the dialogue of the critics - an in-joke I much enjoy, as I've experienced with some other authors, of whom I forget, I've got Mayakovsky on my mind but I don't think it was him. Or maybe it was Pope. Or perhaps it was actually a previous work of Shaw that I've read. Never matter. It's always mirthful to come across the author poking fun at himself/herself. "Great brain but no heart" was one of Shaw's comments about himself as spoken by a critic.

I recommend these works by Shaw, they topple with Shaw's arrogance at times, but also let loose with playful wit, they provide pockets of insight to what pretences families operate under, and they are concerned with personal liberties and freedoms that are pertinent parts of our human function, in a timeless fashion.