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Man and Superman by George 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 written in 1903 as a four act drama, responding to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan
Don Juan

Don Juan or Don Giovanni is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, by Tirso de Molina, is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630....
 theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905 without the performance of the 3rd Act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on June 4, 1907 at the Royal Court.






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Man and Superman by George 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 written in 1903 as a four act drama, responding to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan
Don Juan

Don Juan or Don Giovanni is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, by Tirso de Molina, is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630....
 theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905 without the performance of the 3rd Act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on June 4, 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not produced in its entirety until 1915 by the Travelling Repertory Company at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

The long third act of the play is often cut. Don Juan
Don Juan

Don Juan or Don Giovanni is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, by Tirso de Molina, is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630....
 in Hell
Hell

In many religious traditions, Hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife, often in the underworld. Religions with a linear Divinity history often depict Hell as endless ....
 consists of a philosophical debate between Don Juan (played by the same actor who plays Jack Tanner), and the Devil
Devil

The Devil is the title given to the supernatural being, who, in mainstream Christianity, Islam, and some other religions, is believed to be a powerful, evil entity and the tempter of humankind....
 (Mendoza, a Spaniard
Spanish people

Spanish people or Spaniards are a nation or ethnic group native to Spain, in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. They are often considered an amalgam of different ethnic groups, rather than an ethnic group by itself....
), with Doña Ana (Ann) and the Statue
Statue

A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a Bust , and at least close to life-size, or larger....
 of Ana's guardian (Roebuck Ramsden, an aged acquaintance of Tanner's and Ann's Guardian) looking on. Don Juan in Hell is often performed separately as a play in its own right, most famously in the 50's in a concert version with Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer

Charles Boyer was a four-time Academy Award-nominated France-born actor. Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in European and Hollywood movies during the 1930s, and continued to act in films, television and theatre over the next several decades....
 as Don Juan, Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton was an England Academy Award-winning Theatre and film actor, screenwriter, Film producer and one-time Film director.While best known for his historical roles in films, he started his career as a remarkable stage actor....
 as the Devil, Cedric Hardwicke
Cedric Hardwicke

Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke Order of the British Empire was a notable England actor....
 as the Commander, and Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead

Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences for her role as the witch Endora in the t...
 as Doña Ana. This version was also released as a spoken word album
Spoken word album

A spoken word album was a record album that did not consist mainly of music or songs, but of spoken material. It could be said to be the ancestor of today's audiobook format....
 on LP, but has yet to appear on CD.

Although Man and Superman can be performed as a light comedy of manners
Comedy of manners

The comedy of manners satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration comedy, or an old person pretending to be young....
 Shaw intended the drama to be something much deeper, as suggested by the title. This title comes from Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century philosophy Germans philosophy and classical philology. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor and aphorism....
's philosophical ideas about the "Übermensch
Übermensch

The ?bermensch is a concept in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche posited the ?bermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
" ("Superman"). The plot centers on John Tanner, author of "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion," which is published with the play as a 58-page appendix. Tanner is a confirmed bachelor despite the pursuits of Ann Whitefield and her persistent efforts to make him marry her. Ann is referred to as "the Life Force
Life force

Life force is a concept of Energy .Life force may also refer to:* Life Force , an arcade game* Lifeforce , a science fiction/horror movie released in 1985...
" and represents Shaw's view that in every culture, it is the women who force the men to marry them rather than the men who take the initiative.

External links

  • , digitized copy of the first edition from Internet Archive
    Internet Archive

    The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive site of the World Wide Web....
    .
  • "", an appendix to Man and Superman (page images)