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In
a historical period and in an atmosphere which was still connected to
the fin de siècle environment, but with an extremely modern and anticipatory
thematic vision, George Bernard Shaw succeeded in creating a woman’s
character which was revolutionary for the society of the time: Candida,
a “mannish” and pleasant woman, capable of choosing her own man and
of asserting herself, whilst discreetly retaining her role as mistress
of the home.
One
of the two male characters of the comedy “Candida” (1895) is
Morell, an evangelical minister, a keen reformer, and an extremely eloquent
preacher, who is highly esteemed by his proselytes. He is the prototype
of the confident man, satisfied and happily fulfilled by his public
mission, but also by his private life, where his wife Candida is an
incomparable and irreplaceable figure, the driving force which spurs
her man in his professional activity in order to come up in the world.
Into this sweet and tranquil family situation Morell himself introduces
a third element, the very young itinerant poet Marchbanks, a tenderhearted
person longing for love. Marchbanks immediately falls for the motherly
and charming Candida. The young man openly tells the minister about
his passion. Morell has no doubt about his dear wife’s loyalty, but
when Marchbanks screams that he is not worthy of a woman of her standard,
Morell wavers. The young artist, apparently defenceless with regards
to life and the world, displays a fibre and braveness that reveal a
really sound and distinct personality; Morell, on the other hand, appears
to be fragile when faced with the truth which has opened his eyes. But
Candida claims she wants for herself the weakest of the two. So she
again chooses her husband, because he would not be able to bear the
weight of a life without the woman who has always loved him, helped
him and lovingly protected him from every daily worry. With Candida,
Shaw creates a being who, in a synthesis of feelings and loving thoughts,
sums up in her person the figure of sister, wife and lover for her man.
Amongst
Shaw’s plays, a very significant success was achieved by “Pygmalion”
(1914), which is also famous in its subsequent musical version, and
in the movie version entitled “My Fair Lady”. The film is about
the eccentric phonetics master Henry Higgins, who makes a bet with Colonel
Pickering that he will succeed in teaching good pronunciation to the
flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who speaks very bad “cockney”, a London
dialect. Furthermore, he bets that he will succeed in his purpose to
such an extent that he will present Eliza to society at a party and
pass her off as an upper-class woman. Higgins wins the bet, but the
woman no longer wishes to be regarded as a case or as a guinea pig,
and announces she intends to marry insignificant Freddy, and finally
departs from her Pygmalion. The whole play is a continuous sequence
of aphorisms, jokes and hilarious remarks, which make this work an amusing,
sparkling and extremely enjoyable comedy. And it is at this stage that
the comedy writer chooses the theatre of words, through an extremely
vivid language, an extremely skilful construction of dialogues and,
above all, a comic vein which uses humour as its weapon, sometimes with
a very sharp tongue and sometimes by picking his words.
In
“St. Joan” (1923) the leading character is the French heroine Joan
of Arc. This is a play in six scenes, which tells the young woman’s
story, from her entrance in “public life” to her condemnation to the
stake. Here and there Shaw’s irony touches and envelops the scene and
especially Joan’s intentions and, in contrast, the narrow-mindedness
of the powerful people opposing her. Joan is depicted as the forerunner
of modern individualism and of Protestantism, in contrast with the other
personalities of History. In all his works Shaw grants his characters
great independence, liveliness and dynamism of action and, in addition,
he allows the comedy to be at the same time witty and full of action,
expressive and meaningful, thus redesigning for the English theatre
of the time a role and a creative peculiarity of its own, which it seemed
to have lost during the previous century.
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