Plays Unpleasant

Bernard Shaw's unique place among English critics has been recognized since the time he wrote the famous weekly assessments of the contemporary theatre in The Saturday Review from January 1895 to May 1898. The author collected those essays in the three volumes titled Our Theatres in the Nineties, but the present selection is the first to appear in a single volume. It contains some forty complete essays chosen to provide a representative cross-section of English theatre history in the eighteen-nineties. The Introduction examines Shaw's qualities as a critic, pointing to the remarkable body of knowledge with which he sustained his judgments and the invariable intellectual courtesy and serious consideration with which he approached his weekly task, and to the wit with which he lightened it. Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wilde, and Pinero are among the playwrights, Irving, Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Forbes-Robertson, Bernhardt, and Duse, among the players, to whom Shaw's attention was particularly given in the essays reprinted here. He is seen championing Shakespeare the poet as emphatically as Isben the social thinker, while his campaign to convert Irving to Ibsenism is seen in the essays and is discussed temperately in the Introduction.Keywords: Bernard Shaw Mrs Patrick Campbell Nineties English Critics Contemporary Theatre Theatre History Complete Essays Ellen Terry Remarkable Body Pinero Duse Body Of Knowledge Unique Place Bernhardt Playwrights Cross Section Judgments Forbes Wit English History