Shaw’s Ibsen

A Re-Appraisal

Joan Templeton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781137543417
• eBook ISBN: 9781137540447
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism

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 Shaw's initial interest in Ibsen as the poet of Peer Gynt, it chronicles Shaw's 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 Shaw's famous but maligned The Quintessence of Ibsenism reflects Ibsen's own anti-idealist notion of his work and argues that Shaw's readings of Ibsen's plays are pioneering analyses that anticipate later criticism. It offers new readings of Shaw's "Ibsenist" plays as well as a comprehensive account of Ibsen's importance for Shaw's dramatic criticism, from his early journalism to Our Theatres of the Nineties, both as a weapon against the inanities of the Victorian stage and asthe standard bearer for modernism.

Works Cited

Works by Bernard Shaw

1. Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, 1874-1897; 1898-1910 . Ed. Dan H. Laurence. New York: Viking, 1985, 1986.
2. Bernard Shaw: The Diaries, 1885-1897 . 2 vols. Ed. Stanley Weintraub. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.
3. Shaw, Bernard. “A Degenerate’s View of Nordau.” Selected Non-Dramatic Writings of Bernard Shaw . Ed. Dan H. Laurence. Boston: Hougton-Mifflin, 1965. 347-77.
4. ———. “An Aside.” Preface to Lillah McCarthy. Myself and My Friends . New York: Dutton, 1933. 1-8.
5. ———. “Common Sense About the War.” Supplement to The New Statesman 4:84 (November 14, 1914). 3-29.
6. ———. The Drama Observed . Ed. Bernard Dukore. 4 volumes. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1993.
7. ———. Everybody’s Political What’s What? London: Constable, 1944.
8. ———. “How William Archer Impressed Bernard Shaw.” Preface to William Archer. Three Plays . London: Constable, 1927. iii-xl.
9. ———. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism . New York: Brentano’s 1928.
10. ———. The Irrational Knot . New York: Brentano’s, 1918.
11. ———. “Mr. Bernard Shaw’s Works of Fiction Reviewed by Himself.” Novel Review 33 (February 1892): 233-40.
12. ———. My Dear Dorothea: A Practical System of Moral Education for Females . 1879. London: Phoenix House, 1956.
13. ———. Our Theatres in the Nineties . 3 vols. London: Constable, 1932.
14. ———. Plays Pleasant. London: Penguin, 1946.
15. ———. Plays Unpleasant . London: Penguin, 1946.
16. ———. Pygmalion . London: Penguin, 1944.
17. ———. Prefaces . London: Constable, 1934.
18. ———. “Still after the Doll’s House : A Sequel to Walter Besant’s Sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s Play.” Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings . London: Constable, 1934. 125-39.
19. ———. The Quintessence of Ibsenism Now Completed to the Death of Ibsen . New York: Brentano’s, 1913.
20. Shaw, G. Bernard. The Quintessence of Ibsenism . London: Walter Scott, 1891.
21. Shaw and Ibsen. Bernard Shaw’s The Quintessence of Ibsenism and Related Writings . Ed. J. L. Wisenthal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979.

Works by Henrik Ibsen

1. Ibsen, Henrik. Letters and Speeches . Ed. and trans. Evert Sprinchorn. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
2. ———. Samlede Verker [Collected Works]. 3 vols. Gyldendal, 1978.
3. ———. The Works of Henrik Ibsen . Ed. and trans. William Archer. New York: Scribner’s, 1917. 13 volumes.

Other Works

1. Anonymous. “Ibsen and Socialism.” The Daily Chronicle . August 13, 1890. 3.
2. Aarseth, Asbjørn. Dyret i Mennesket [The Beast in Man]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975.
3. Ahlström, Gunnar. Det moderna genombrottet i Nordens litteratur [The Modern Breakthrough in Nordic Literature]. Stockholm: Kooperative Förbundets Förlag, 1947.
4. Andreas-Salomé, Lou. Henrik Ibsens Frauengestalten nach seinen sechs Familiendramen . [Henrik Ibsen’s Portraits of Women in Six Family Dramas]. Jena: Diederichs, 1892.
5. Archer, Charles. William Archer. Life – Work – and Friendships . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931.
6. Archer, William. William Archer on Ibsen. The Major Essays, 1889-1919 . Ed. Thomas Postlewait. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984.
7. Arup, Jens. “On Hedda Gabler .” Orbis Litterarum 12 (1957). 4-37.
8. Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in her Time . 1987. Philadelphia: University of Pen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• The Road to the Quintessence
• The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891
• The Ibsenite in the Theatre, 1892-1898
• The Quintessence of Ibsenism: Now Completed to the Death of Ibsen, 1913
• Back Matter