The Shavian Theatre of Ideas (Modern Drama) Essay Example for Free

The Shavian Theatre of Ideas (Modern Drama) Essay The predominating influence in determining Shaw to turn to the drama was the example of Ibsen and equally prominent was his love of debating, in which he had shown how irresistible it was for him to counter his arguments himself if no one else would. These influential strains compelled him to choose the kind of play in which the characters undertake this dual task of proposer and opposer. In 1892, he made it into Widower’s Houses, and thereafter, for nearly sixty years with unflagging energy he made drama peculiarly his own province. It was not till after Saint Joan that he became the revered elder playwright, a highly respectable figure whom, however, the dramatic critics did not cease to condemn as sharply as before. By then, the old world having been transformed by the war, a new generation had grown up to accept him. Supreme though he had been in his own publicizing of ideas, the parallel preaching of H.G Wells and others had further helped to make his Socialism and his general attitude to ideas and society part of the mind of the age. But socialists as well as others could still be amazed as the old man, with the energy and the unpredictable originality of his genius, produced such plays as The Apple Cart, Too True to be Good, Geneva and In Good King Charles’s Golden Days. In this long period of dramatic writing, Shaw displayed the range of his genius in a great variety of plays. It is hard, however, to discern any clear â€Å"periods† or trends in his development. At most, there is on the whole a change of theme from the particular to the general, from the contemporary scene to the future and of attitude from the satiric and destructive to the philosophic and constructive, from the materialistic to the mystic. If there is any real division to be made in Shaw’s dramatic development it is the First War that marks it. Unable to produce any new work in those four years, when he resumed with Heartbreak House, he was on the whole as a dramatist more philosophic than before, and more concerned with the future. In his own account, Shaw refers to Man and Superman as marking the emergence of what he himself aimed to be as a dramatist, one of â€Å"the artist-prophets† in the succession of men like Goethe and Ibsen. In his summary of his first years as a playwright, he remarks that in the early nineties, he found the existing state of English Theatre ‘intolerable’. The fashionable theatre prescribed one serious subject: clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author. The exuberant high spirits which characterized his plays before 1914, often bringing into his comedy a lively element of farce, did not appear so much afterwards. Instead, something of grandeur and poetry found expression in famous passages of Saint Joan and Back to Methuselah, though hiss comic vision still played freely and variously, fully exemplifying the Shavian wit and humour. Heartbreak House was the first play that had been written with such deep underlying seriousness. He called it ‘a fantasia on English themes in the Russian manner’, by which he alluded to his being partly inspired by Chekhov, and symbolically through its characters it presents a world which has lost its direction, a world of futilities and insincerities struggling to find reality, a world which to one of the characters appears ‘this cruel,damnable world’. In his 1923 cycle, Shaw felt himself to be co-operating with the Life Force, for through his drama he was declaring that, if only mankind had the will to control its evolution, it could in time achieve perfection, and his ‘metabiological pentateuch’ therefore become part of this purposive process. When he had thus fulfilled his great wish to express his fundamental religious faith as a Creative Evolutionist, Shaw returned in Saint Joan to a drama of his normal scope and manner. Its heroine, portrayed as a sane and shrewd country girl of extraordinary strength of min and hardihood of body†¦a thorough daughter of the soil in her peasantlike matter-of-factness and doggedness†, she was however, in her creator’s mind an instrument like himself of the Life force. In The Apple Cart, he turned again to the future and to the dismay of those who had regarded him as an advanced advocate of democracy showed that the highest ability could be found as well in a king as in a peasant.His brilliance was undiminished and to the end his extraordinary vitality of mind animated all he wrote. Shaw’s ideas can never cease to form an important part of his dramatic legacy, any more than we can appreciate Shakespeare without reference to the view of life which lies behind his work. Nevertheless, it is as dramatist upon the stage that Shaw demands primary consideration. In his own day, Shaw’s command over audiences which by no means consisted only of those who shared his ideas was an obvious fact. His wit was always subservient to the total working of the genius of the comic playwright. His dramatic instinct, indeed, was altogether transcendent and so willfully fashioned its own play that the audience almost forgot in its delight the seriousness of the lesson it had been offered. Those who saw Man and Superman at a performance in which in the Third Act of Juan in Hell was omitted were quite justified in not realizing how much lay behind the farcical comedy of John Tanner trying to flee from the pursuing Ann. Hence, the Prefaces which not only took advantage of the success of a play to make a more comprehensive and detailed attack but which had often to make the public fully conscious of matters which the inspired comic Muse had transmuted into laughter. Shaw once spoke of the lightness of heart without which nothing can succeed in the theatre, and in his own paradoxical union of the prophet and the jester lies the assurance of his dramatic survival. Shaw’s plays give the impression of his creative powers working in a spontaneous unity. His success lies partly in the command of stagecraft which instinctively he knows how to turn stage situation to profit. His characterization, however, sometimes lacks the power of fully convincing us, because it does not always arise from such immediate creative insight as does the general idea of the play, but is to some extend dependent on that idea for the nature and variety of its figures. Of outstanding individual characters many surely have the individuality which lives in its own right, a Bluntschli or a Father Keagan, or a Shotover or Saint Joan. Women, above all, he read and presented with a cunning unromantic realism which suggests, like the novelist Richardson, he understood women even better than men: to Saint Joan may be added among his many acutely and vividly realised women Raina, Cleopatra, Candida, Ann Whitefield, Major Barbara Jennifer Dubedat, and Eliza Doolittle, to name only a few. In two directions his characterization possessed special power- in evoking our sympathetic interest in unattractive people like Mrs. Warren and Louis Dubedat, and in creating beings of broad comedy of a Dickensian vitality like Candida’s father, Straker and Alfred Doolittle. Other gifts affecting characterization included his ability to allow for the existence in a character of the intuitive, that ‘sort of sixth sense’ which when it is possessed, gives an extra dimension to personality, and his understanding of good simple souls, as pre-eminenetly in the Saint. â€Å"Effectiveness of Assertion is the Alpha and omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none; he who has something to assert will go as far I n power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will caryr him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet his style remains.† With his union of assertion and provocation, his style is never dull. There is the further animation given by the dramatic clash of dialogue which shares the general effect of spontaneity.

Howards End by E. M. Forster Essay -- Howards Howard End EM Forster E

Howard's End by E. M. Forster Howards End by E. M. Forster deals with the conflict of class distinctions and human relationships. The quintessence of the main theme of this lovely novel is: "Only connect!†¦Only connect the prose and passion†¦and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer." This excerpt represents the main idea that Forster carries through the book: relationships, not social status, are--or at least should be--the most important thing for people.Howards End was written in 1910. That explains the naivete and idealism that permeate the atmosphere of the novel. Written in the beginning of the twentieth century in England about the beginning of the twentieth century in England it reflects the mood that existed in England at that time. It was a time of prosperity. The industrial revolution that started in the previous century made the British Empire a world power. Everyone had a job and the conditions for the workers significantly improved as compared to the past century. Trade unions that never existed before had just begun to form to protect the rights of the working people, and poor children didn't have to work in mines anymore. A bloody and seemingly meaningless war hadn't yet begun to destroy bodies and devastate souls of people. Generally speaking, the times were good, and the future was viewed in an optimistic way. The atmosphere of the book is filled with romance and hope, even though the author is very far from writing an utopian type of description of English society.In fact, the book is very truthful in the description of class problems of the country. In Howards End Forster talks about two classes and two ideologies that are separated by the thick wall of social prejudices and misunderstandings. The two social groups are represented by the cultured, idealistic Schlegels and the pragmatic, business-oriented Wilcoxes. The Schlegel Sisters, who aren't 'pure' English, but people of German origin, personify Forster's dream about what people's philosophy of life should be. They used to think about the class differences as obstacles that do not allow people to fully understand each other. The hope is that if everybody thinks that way, people will just forget about class differences--that's what Forster's dream is. Margaret and Helen Schlegels partly think this way because being part of minority group i... ...ccur. Unfortunately, there was nothing in English society at the beginning of the twentieth century that could have given a hope of such an ending, and there is not too much now.But who cares?We have to be optimistic sometimes and hope for a better future. Too much of Hemingway's "things end badly" approach will make us all sick, tired, incorrigible pessimists. We need novels, movies, cartoons that end happily to bring some hope to our world where--Hemingway was right--too many things end too badly. This lovely and romantic book is worth reading, for it's an excellent candy in the world of our bitter reality. The idea of being comrades and 'only connecting' suits any place in the world at any time. Why not follow it, why not pay attention to personality only instead of making a big fuss about a person's social status or the amount of money an individual has? This book is too romantic, but the ability of being romantic is, after all, our strength. Who knows, maybe things that seem too idealistic to us today will become the fundamental society principles tomorrow. Who knows, maybe in the future people all over the world will "only connect" and be happy. At least, one may hope.

The Woman Behind the Mask Essay

Social media has distorted the views and minds of young women in our society today. Due to being of the female gender, the author of Mascara, Aurelie Sheehan, empathizes with women by diving into the routes and tasks of their everyday lives. When first skimming over and reading Mascara, the mind picks up a routine of young women getting ready for an event. Sheehan is attempting to portray and reveal to the reader that society has put a false image in the minds of young women—if they are not perfect, they are not good enough. Women have been corrupted by society into thinking they must be perfect and have become overwhelmed with doing the simple day-to-day tasks or they will not be accepted in this world. Many men today do not realize that the media is having an effect on how they see women and how they believe women should look. The author is trying to express the fact that women believe they have to become something they are not. This goes back to the title Mascara, which is the Spanish word for mask, and that is exactly what women do today. Women today have become overwhelmed and insecure, and due to the corruption in society and the media they have been tricked into thinking they must be perfect. Today many women have become overwhelmed with doing the simple day-to-day tasks. Most women get up one to two hours before actually starting their day just to feel and look presentable. Throughout the story Mascara, the phrase â€Å"and then she† is displayed in almost every sentence. This story is not just about someone’s routine but it is in fact a list. A list that most women feel they have to go though everyday or every time they are going to go out somewhere. Most women have a false perspective of what they have to look like due to the corruption in today’s society and media. The overwhelming idea that society and the media have put into young women’s minds make them feels as if they have to keep changing who they are. Many people think that women enjoy and are happy to doll themselves up everyday, when in fact everyday they are overwhelmed with trying to look a certain away for either the morning or for going out. A young woman is carrying out a routine of forty-nine things she need to do before going on a date. Needing to do this forty-nine item routine before going out has insecurity written all over it. In the last sentence of Mascara it says, â€Å"And then she went to him† young women today feel as if they need to be all dolled up for a guy. When in fact guys like girls for who they are and not for who they are trying to be. Which goes back to the title Mascara† which is the Spanish word for mask and that is exactly what women do today. They put on a mask. When the young woman in this story is putting on her makeup she applies eight items to her face. Applying all of this to her skin shows the reader how insecure she is to show her true and real self. The saying,â€Å" Yeah. She is pretty now but have you seen her without her makeup on?†, plays a key role in why so many girls are insecure with themselves. Many young women today are afraid of what others will say about them if they show their true self or their true face and this is what the short story Mascara is really about. Thinking she needs to do a forty-nine item routine to her body before going out in public, tells the reader that young women today are always being judged and ridiculed by their piers and by society. This is why young women are so insecure with themselves. Every girl today feels as if they must be perfect. No matter what every girl looks like or who they are, women will find at lest one characteristic that they would change about themselves if they could. Women are rarely happy with who they are and feel as if they need to be perfect to be accepted or liked. The sad truth is that many women will not accept that there is no such thing as perfection. Many have come close to achieving perfection, but they will never actually achieve it. â€Å"And then she realized she had forgotten to weigh herself† the woman that is being spoken about in this story does not feel perfect because she thinks she needs to weigh herself, and in weighing herself it would tell her if she has reached the weight perfection or not. Media today with all the health and weight loss magazines are very misleading to young women into thinking they must be a certain weight and have their body look a certain way or they are not skinny enough. Women have taken this false image to heart and have put themselves at risk by trying to achieve the unachievable â€Å"perfection† statues. â€Å"And then she looked in the full-length mirror†¦.and then she turned to the side to look form a different angle.† Even after completing her whole routine, she has to look in the mirror to see if she had missed anything or if she needs to change anything about herself. Women feel as if they do not just have to weigh a certain amount but also have to look a certain way too. Many women feel the need to possess certain qualities of perfection, such as perfect height, perfect weight, perfect looks, and perfect skin. These thoughts do not just randomly pop into women’s heads, it is society and the media that is putting these false hopes into their minds. For example in every magazine or on every poster the models in them have perfect bodies and you cannot find one flaw in them. There are no overweight or imperfections in the models in this form of media, which has corrupted women into thinking that looking anything other than what they see in this form of media is n ot acceptable. Many men today do not realize that the media is having an effect on how they see women and how they think women should look. The media has also put a false image in men’s heads in thinking that all women need to look the same or they are not good enough. This has put pressure on young women today because they think they need to look and be someone that they are not. A lot of women do not just wake up and look like they do every morning. Many women go though long routines and list to obtain their looks. This is displayed in the short story Mascara because a young woman does a routine of forty-nine items just to go on a date with a guy. She does not just do every thing in her routine once but rather does a few of them at least two times. Men do not realize that women put a lot of time and effort into getting ready, which men take for granted. Mascara is short story that displays the truth on what many women do before going on a date. Many women go though long routines to get ready so they can feel good about themselves. Many women have become insecure with themselves due to the false and negative images in the media that is displayed around them. Many women feel as if they need to look and act a certain way to be accepted and to not be judged by their peers. From how media shows how women are suppose to look, many women have become insecure with themselves, and feel the need to be perfect when in fact perfection is unachievable. Women today have become overwhelmed and insecure due to the corruption in society and the media, into thinking they must be perfect.

Meaning And Foundation Of Knowledge - 2515 Words

Carijo Taro Philosophy 110 Final Paper December 10, 2014 Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analysis the meaning and foundation of knowledge according to the philosopher Plato. A dialectic approach was taken which is simply a question and answer technique used to gain knowledge from philosophical reasoning. Plato and I go back and forth on the meaning and foundation of knowledge along with expressing our opinions on the subject. Plato believes knowledge is a question of the inherent qualities of one’s state of mind along with the idea that the concept of knowledge is unchanging and eternal. However I disagreed with this concept of knowledge, feeling that knowledge is pertained through one’s experiences in life and that†¦show more content†¦Plato continued to state that the states of the mind differ in that knowledge is infallible, whereas opinion may be true or false (Cornford, 1957). I however disagreed with this concept of knowledge; I spoke up and said that I believe that knowledge is gained through oneâ₠¬â„¢s experiences that people learn new concepts and ideas every day. Also, knowledge is an understanding and thought process; people sometimes learn from their mistakes through different experiences and some even gain wisdom through their knowledge. Plato of course chimed in saying; I wish gaining true knowledge was really that simple, but the foundation of knowledge is more complex. For instance knowledge does not arise from sensory experience rather that knowledge is pertained through philosophical reasoning (Copleston, 1946). The idea that knowledge comes from the external world through the senses is wrong that knowledge gained through the senses is actually the lowest type of cognition (Cornford, 1957). The Allegory of the Cave illustrates the progress of the mind from the lowest state of unenlightenment to knowledge of the good. 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