ShawAEs Ibsen: A Re-Appraisal (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)

This book argues that Shaw was a masterful reader of Ibsen's plays both as texts and as the cornerstone of the modern theatre. Dismantling the notion that Shaw distorted Ibsen to promote his own view of the world, and establishing ShawÆs initial interest in Ibsen as the poet of Peer Gynt, it chronicles ShawÆs important role in the London Ibsen campaign and exposes the falsity of the tradition that Shaw branded Ibsen as a socialist. Further, this study shows that ShawÆs famous but maligned The Quintessence of Ibsenism reflects IbsenÆs own anti-idealist notion of his work and argues that ShawÆs readings of IbsenÆs plays are pioneering analyses that anticipate later criticism. It offers new readings of ShawÆs ôIbsenistö plays as well as a comprehensive account of IbsenÆs importance for ShawÆs dramatic criticism, from his early journalism to Our Theatres of the Nineties, both as a weapon against the inanities of the Victorian stage and as the standard bearer for modernism.

• | Author: Joan Templeton
• | Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• | Publication Date: Feb 17, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 385 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/Performing Arts
• | ISBN-10: 1137543418
• | ISBN-13: 9781137543417