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Candida (play)

 
Candida (play)

 
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Candida (play)
 
 
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Candida, a comedy
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
 by playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 G. Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
, was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a woman really desires from her husband.






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Candida 1
Candida, a comedy
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
 by playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 G. Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
, was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a woman really desires from her husband. The cleric is a Fabian Socialist
Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is a United Kingdom intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of Social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary means....
, allowing Shaw—himself a Fabian—to weave political issues, current at the time, into the story.

Between 1904 and 1907 The Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a West End Theatre#London's non-commercial theatres theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea....
 staged several of George Bernard Shaw plays, including Candida.

Plot and characters


The play is set in the north-east suburbs of London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 in the month of October. It tells the story of Candida, the wife of a first-rate clergyman, the Reverend James Mavor Morell. Morell is a Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
 Socialist
Socialism

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or Egalitarianism method of compensation....
, popular in the Church of England
Church of England

The Church of England is the State religion Christianity Ecclesia in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches....
, but Candida is responsible for much of his success. Candida returns home briefly from a trip to London with Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 who wants to rescue her from what he presumes to be her dull family life. Marchbanks is in love with Candida and believes she deserves something more than just complacency from her husband. He considers her divine, and his love eternal. In his view, it is quite improper and humiliating for Candida to have to attend to petty household chores. Morrel believes Candida needs his care and protection, but the truth is quite the contrary. Ultimately, Candida must choose between the two gentlemen and she reasserts her preference for Morell, the "weaker of the two."

The character of Mr Burgess, Candida's father, an unrepentant capitalist
Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are private property and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled....
, adds humour to the play.

In Bernard Shaw and the Aesthetes, Elsie Bonita Adams has given this assessment of Marchbanks, comparing him to two real-life artists:

Adaptations


A Court Theatre Company production starring JoBeth Williams
JoBeth Williams

JoBeth Williams is an United States Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated television and film actor, and an Academy Awards-nominated Film director....
 and Tom Amandes
Tom Amandes

Tom Amandes is an American actor and a veteran of both film and television.Amandes was born the sixth of eleven children in the small town of Richmond, Illinois, population: 6....
 was recorded by the L.A. Theatre Works.

In 2003 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , a Canada crown corporation, is the country?s national public radio and television broadcaster. In French, it is called la Soci?t? Radio-Canada ....
 broadcast a production of the play.

In February 2009 BBC Radio 7 broadcast a radio adaptation of the play starring Hannah Gordon
Hannah Gordon

Hannah Cambell Grant Gordon is a Scottish people actor who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television work, including Upstairs, Downstairs, Telford's Change, My Wife Next Door and an appearance in the Things Aren't Simple Anymore of One Foot in the Grave....
 as "Candida" and Edward Petherbridge
Edward Petherbridge

Edward Petherbridge is a United Kingdom actor. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in several screen adaptations of Dorothy L....
.

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