Plays Pleasant (Shaw George Bernard)(Paperback)

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw's volume of 'pleasant' plays, Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, and You Never Can Tell--part of the official Bernard Shaw LibraryA Penguin Classic

One of Bernard Shaw's most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valour is revealed. Shaw mocks deluded idealism in Candida, when a young poet becomes infatuated with the wife of a Socialist preacher. The Man of Destiny is a witty war of words between Napoleon and a 'strange lady,' while in the exuberant farce You Never Can Tell a divided family is reunited by chance. Although Shaw intended Plays Pleasant