Word: victorian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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METHUSELAH is dead. In Shaw goes the last of the Victorian prophets, the last of the long line of young beards who became the great, bearded old gentlemen. Yet, in important ways, Shaw had no connection with the igth Century at all. He was really a man of the 18th Century, closer to Voltaire and Swift than to Marx and Morris. The Anglo-Ireland of 1856, when he was born, was an ossified 18th Century society. It was elegant yet genteel; it was ruled by the blistering aristocratic candor and the simple aristocratic naivety; it was naturally irreverent, as aristocratic...
...instinct for success; innate prudence combined shrewdly with presumption in getting it. Emigration to a duller and richer civilization than his own he saw was the only safe thing for a man who found destructiveness so exhilarating. It was the only sure escape from Irish melancholy and cynicism. In Victorian England, the young Shaw found enough to last him a lifetime. As a middle-class individualist of the highest power, who believed that poverty was a crime, who married a rich and intelligent wife and made a fortune which could be compared with that of any Undershaft, Shaw...
Exasperated critics frequently took the failure of feeling further and said that Shaw's characters were unreal, that they were no more than walking arguments. This is a half-truth, though it is a fact that Shaw did not believe in character for its own sake. Few Victorian writers did. His eye for the middle-class milieu was perfect. He knew exactly the values beneath the humbug and was only rash in assuming that men and women can live without it. Candida is an excellent portrait of a woman and so is the delightful Major Barbara. The theater...
...four players perform bravely, despite a script which is about as suspenseful as "Little Red Riding Hood." The Victorian setting provides the necessaries for melodrama: a heavily-draped living room, flickering candles, and a swinging chandelier. There are other timeless devices, such as nighttime storm and strange offstage noises which supplement the generally trite plot. Bail Langton's direction would be better appreciated if the play were a strong one. It is correctly slow-paced and would emphasize the tension that must be written in as really good melodrama...
...most precocious youth of 14 who ever trod the Victorian stage. He smokes, plays cards, and makes love to his piano-teacher, just as if he were 19 years old. One night he even lures his stepfather to a roisterous dinner at the Hotel des Princes, a genteel Victorian hellspot...