This series collects together the best-known aphorisms, epigrams and reflections of a wide variety of figures from antiquity to our own age: humorists and novelists, poets and philosophers, politicians and playwrights.[...]

Foreword by Christopher Moore. Wonderful collection of the greatest and most popular plays of one of our finest playwrights. Includes Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion, Heartbreak House, and the play on which the[...]

Shaw began writing "Man and Superman" in 1901 and determined to write a play that would encapsulate the new century's intellectual inheritance. Shaw drew not only on Byron's verse satire, but also on Shakespeare, the Victorian comedy fashionable in his early life, and from authors from Conan Doyle t[...]

A rousing success on the London and New York stages, a popular film, and a great musical hit ("My Fair Lady"), this brilliantly written play, with its irresistible theme of the emerging butterfly, is one of the most acclaimed comedies in the English language. Includes Shaw's Preface and "Sequel."[...]

When Ellie Dunn joins a house-party at the home of the eccentric Captain Shotover, she causes a stir with her decision to marry for money rather than love, and the Captain's forthright daughter Hesione protests vigorously against the pragmatic young woman's choice. Opinion on the matter quickly divi[...]

This is one of Shaw's most unusual and enduringly popular plays. With "Saint Joan" (1923) Shaw reached the height of his fame and Joan is one of his finest creations; forceful, vital, and rebelling against the values that surround her. The play distils Shaw's views on the subjects of politics, relig[...]

While some of Shaw's earlier plays are still performed, his later plays, such as the ones in this volume, are barely known. As the collective title indicates, the themes here are political; yet, frankly, it is doubtful how seriously we can now take Shaw as a political thinker. Despite writing in the[...]

Professor Higgins succeeds in transforming an unkempt London flower girl into a society belle.

Each play is fully annotated. "Contexts and Criticism" features all-new material on the author and his work, from traditional critical readings to more theorized approaches, among them essays on Shaw's Fabianism and his alleged feminism. Contributors include Leon Hugo, Sally Peters, Tracy C. Davis, [...]