Mrs Warren's Profession (Broadview Editions) - Softcover

Shaw, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551116278 ISBN 13: 9781551116273

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2005

Synopsis

One of Bernard Shaw’s early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren’s Profession places the protagonist’s decision to become a prostitute in the context of the appalling conditions for working class women in Victorian England. Faced with ill health, poverty, and marital servitude on the one hand, and opportunities for financial independence, dignity, and self-worth on the other, Kitty Warren follows her sister into a successful career in prostitution. Shaw’s fierce social criticism in this play is driven not by conventional morality, but by anger at the hypocrisy that allows society to condemn prostitution while condoning the discrimination against women that makes prostitution inevitable.

This Broadview edition includes a comprehensive historical and critical introduction; extracts from Shaw’s prefaces to the play; Shaw’s expurgations of the text; early reviews of the play in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain; and contemporary contextual documents on prostitution, incest, censorship, women’s education, and the “New Woman.”

About this title

Book Description:

Mrs Warren's Profession found its way onto the stage amidst much censorship, and police and public outcry. This book serves as an authoritative student edition to guide exams and essays.

From the Inside Flap:

Modern parallels abound in the plight of Cambridge-educated mathematics wiz Vivie Warren, who discovers that her comfortable upbringing was financed in unspeakable ways. Shaw pits a clever heroine against a memorable gallery of rogues in this superbly intelligent -- and still shocking -- comedy, banned for eight years from the English stage.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Paul Gutrecht, Kaitlin Hopkins, Shirley Knight, Basil Langton, Dakin Matthews and Robin Sachs.

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1551116278
• ISBN 13: 9781551116273
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246
• Editor: Conolly Leonard