Man and Superman

‘A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth’

After the death of her father, Ann Whitefield becomes the joint ward of two men: the respectable Roebuck Ramsden and John Tanner, author of ‘The Revolutionist’s Handbook’. Believing marriage would prevent him from achieving his higher intellectual and political ambitions, Tanner is horrified to discover that Ann intends to marry him, and flees to Spain with the determined young woman in hot pursuit. The chase even leads them to the underworld, where the characters’ alter egos discuss questions of human nature and philosophy in a lively debate in a scene often performed separately as ‘Don Juan in Hell’. In Man and Superman, Shaw combined seriousness with comedy to create a satirical and buoyant exposé of the eternal struggle between the sexes.

This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. This volume includes Shaw’s Preface of 1903 and his appendix, ‘The Revolutionist’s Handbook’, the cast list from the first production of Man and Superman and a list of his principal works.

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Before becoming a playwright he wrote music and literary criticism. Shaw used his writing to attack social problems such as education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Shaw was particularly conscious of the exploitation of the working class. Since a botched operation on his foot, Shaw had little respect for the majority of doctors. Man and Superman is a tragic comic play in which the pursuit of woman by man is reversed, and Don Juan becomes the quarry instead of the huntsman. On a higher level the author introduces his concept of a life force that seeks to raise mankind to a better and higher existence.

School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up-Based on the Don Juan theme and, using all the elements from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Shaw reordered them so that Don Juan becomes the quarry instead of the huntsman.