Abstract
What constructive effect, if any, do problem plays or literary works of impassioned propaganda have on the life of society at a given time? Specifically, what changes for the better do they help to bring about? The problem of social causation is so complex, the variables in the equation so numerous, that the answer to questions of this type is hard to arrive at objectively. On the one hand, as measured in terms of the social changes literature directly or indirectly initiates, its impact would seem to be of negligible importance. On the other hand, the literature of power, as distinguished from ephemeral journalism or discursive writings of topical interest, does serve to enlarge the horizons of the mind, does provoke discussion and debate, and thereby in the long run works its subtle alchemy in transforming the attitudes of men open to its beneficent influence. It stirs the imagination and makes the audience or readers aware of evils to which hitherto they had been blind or which they could grasp only in abstract intellectual terms.
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References
Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948, pp. 165–196.
Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism. The Ayot St. Lawrence Edition of The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw. Vol. IX (New York: William H. Wise and Company, 1930), p. 10.
Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet. New York: Appleton & Co., 1932, p. 7.
Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. New York: Brentano’s, 1928, p. 199.
Bernard Shaw, Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1905, II, p. xxvi.
Bernard Shaw, Nine Plays. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1947, p. 31.
“The full-dress Shavian preface, written after the play is produced, is not an introduction but a series of after-thoughts on the play or — more often — a treatise on the subject out of which the play arose.” Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw. New York: New Directions, 1947, p. 215.
Robert W. Corrigan (ed.), The Modern Theatre. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964, pp. 972–973.
Bernard Shaw, Collected Plays. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1963, I, 305.
For a close analysis of the social implications of the play, see Louis Crompton, “Major Barbara: Shaw’s Challenge to Liberalism,” in Literature and Society. Edited by Bernice Slote. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964, pp. 121–141.
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Glicksberg, C.I. (1972). Shaw the Social Prophet. In: Literature and Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_7
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