Analysis of play/Drama Heartbreak House (intrinsic and extrinsic)

INTRODUCTION

A drama unfolds through episodes in which characters interact. The episode is a period of prepay communication between characters who, after communicating, act as players in a game that's constructed through the dialogue between them. The action that follows the episode is the playing out of this game; it sets up the next episode. Most drama-theoretic terminology is derived from a theatrical model applied to real life interactions; thus, an episode goes through phases of scene-setting, build-up, climax and decision. This is followed by denouement, which is the action that sets up the next episode.

Drama theory asserts that a character faced with a dilemma feels specific positive or negative emotions that it tries to rationalize by persuading itself and others that the game should be redefined in a way that eliminates the dilemma; for example, a character with an incredible threat makes it credible by becoming angry and finding reasons why it should prefer to carry out the threat; likewise, a character with an incredible promise feels positive emotion toward the other as it looks for reasons why it should prefer to carry its promise. Emotional tension leads to the climax, where characters

re-define the moment of truth by finding rationalizations for changing positions, stated intentions, preferences, options or the set of characters.

From many of Bernard Shaw’s works, Heartbreak House is one of his dramas. It was written in, and set during, the First World War, though there’s no mention of this in the play until the last 10 minutes, when the English country home in which it’s set is visited by an air raid. Two of the houseguests, a burglar and an industrialist, run for cover and get blown up. The others, residents and visitors alike, stand their ground and even turn up the lights to make things easier for the bombers. They survive this time, but the play ends with them fervently hoping for another raid tomorrow. There is, of course, certain grandeur to their defiance; and this, coupled with the fact that they are by and large the most charming and amusing people in the play, usually means that we end up in their corner. Not so in the revival with which the Shaw Festival begins its 50th season. This time we see the ending as Shaw seems to have meant it: as an image of a useless, used-up ruling class embracing its own merited destruction.

Heartbreak House is not often performed due to its complex structure, however it is argued that the genius of the play cannot be fully appreciated without seeing it in performance. Its subject-matter is the ignorance and indifference exhibited by the upper and upper-middle classes to the First World War and its consequences. The self-indulgence and lack of understanding of the high-class characters are central issues in British society at the time that the play illuminates. A major Broadway revival was mounted in 1984, with an all star cast headed by Sir Rex Harrison as Shotover (a role for which he was nominated for a Tony), and featuring Amy Irving, Rosemary Harris, Dana Ivey, George N. Martin, and Tom Aldredge.

The play was performed at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada in summer 2011. It also forms part of Chichester Festival Theatre's 50th Anniversary Season in 2012. The Denver Center Theatre Company staged it for a run March 30-April 29, 2012.

INTRINSIC

Theme

HECTOR HUSHABYE: There is no sense in us. We are useless, dangerous and ought to be abolished

            In 1914, on the brink of war, Shaw published in his anti-war views in a pamphlet entitled “Common Sense about the War.” This manifesto, which enraged the public, treated such subjects as recruiting, treatment of soldiers, secret diplomacy, militarism, Russia, etc. In 1916 he wrote Heartbreak House, setting the story in a house that resembles a ship, which can be viewed as a metaphor for the ship of state about to crash on the rocks. Sleep is an important theme of the play. The play opens with Ellie dozing over her copy of Othello while upstairs her hostess, Hesione Hushabye, has fallen asleep in an armchair while arranging flowers. When Lady Utterword arrives and no one greets her, she shouts, “Is everybody asleep?” The greatest scene of sleep is Ellie’s hypnotization of Mangan who remains under the spell for a long time. Captain Shotover indulges in a great deal of rum, which causes him to sleep and to dream. All this somnolence is Shaw’s way of displaying England’s inattention to the rumblings of World War I.

            Another prominent theme is money and morals. Shaw believed that “society must organize itself in such a way that makes it possible for all men and all women to provide for themselves decently enough through their work that they should not have to sell their affections.” 1 In the early 1900s opportunities for women to find meaningful jobs were extremely limited as Shaw expresses in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Thus, when Ellie decides to marry Boss Mangan, Hesione counters her argument by saying: “You know, of course, that it’s not honorable or grateful to marry a man you don’t love,” to which Ellie responds: ”Marriage is a woman’s business.”

            Love and marriage are presented in several different ways in the play. Lady Ariadne Utterword used her marriage to the unseen Hastings to escape from Captain Shotover’s Bohemian manners. Hector and Hesione may have had a great romance, but now the spark has fizzled; Hector philanders while Hesione flirts. Ellie has opted to marry a man she doesn’t love in order to ensure a comfortable life. Shaw had strong feelings about the distinctions based on class and social rank that greatly influenced the outcome of a person’s life. Lady Utterword divides the upper class into two groups: “There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian class and the neurotic class. It isn’t mere convention: everybody can see that the people who hunt are the right people and the people who don’t are the wrong ones.” Shaw felt the upper classes had all the big ideas about changing the world, but did nothing.

Characters

Captain Shotover, a white-bearded retired sea captain, the master of Heartbreak House. He is 88 years old, rather eccentric and represents England’s past glory. He  presides over a household of characters like a monarch over his empire. He has two goals left in life: to learn how to explode dynamite with his mental powers, in order to be able to blow up all profiteers and exploiters; and to attain the perfect state of tranquillity he calls “the seventh degree of concentration”. The latter he achieves by drinking vast amounts of rum. “England”,  he says , “is a ship with a drunken captain and a negligent crew; the crew must learn to navigate if the ship is not to go on the rocks.”

THE CAPTAIN:My daughter Ariadne was born when I was forty-six. I am now eighty-eight. (page 5, act I)

ELLIE: “But the old gentleman said he would make some himself”.

ELLIE: “ I had much rather marry you than marry Mangan. Are you very rich?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Living from hand to mouth. And I have a wife somewhere in Jamaica

Lady Ariadne (Addy) Utterword, captain Shotover’s youngest daughter, age forty-two. Very pretty, blonde and disorganised on the outside, she turns out to be very competent. She is married to Sir Hastings Utterword, a character frequently mentioned but never seen in the play. They have been living overseas for more than twenty-three years, and when Ariadne returns home, she finds the house and its inhabitants haven’t changed during that period. According to Hector, Lady Utterword is a plain woman and mad about tales of adventure.

HECTOR. That girl is mad about tales of adventure. The lies I have to tell her! (page 35)

LADY UTTERWORD. Of course.  HECTOR. It will not sound very civil. I was on the point of saying, "I thought you were a plain woman." (page 35, act I)

MRS HUSHABYE. “Tut, tut, Alfred: don't be rude. Don't you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Aren't you happy you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful enough…….” (page 101)

Mrs. Hesione (Hessy) Hushabye, captain Shotover’s eldest daughter, some two years older than Ariadne. Dark-haired, stunningly beautiful and statuesque. She was the one who invited Ellie Dunn to the house. Although she seems to represent the homely virtues, at the end of the play she rebels against the role of domestic hostess she had been forced to play for many years and exults in excitement when the bombs start falling, hoping they will continue to come.

ELLIE [so taken aback that she drops off the table and runs to her]. “Oh, you don't mean to say, Hesione, that your beautiful black hair is false?” (page 38)

Mrs Hushabye bursts into the room tempestuously and embraces Ellie. She is a couple of years older than Lady Utterword, and even better looking. She has magnificent black hair, eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon, and a nobly modelled neck, short at the back and low between her shoulders in front. Unlike her sister she is uncorseted and dressed anyhow in a rich robe of black pile that shows off her white skin and statuesque contour. (page 1, act I)

Hector Hushabye, Hesione’s husband, in his fifties, somewhat of a dandy, a heroic but very shy man. He makes up stories about adventures, even though he has led a very adventurous life himself, of which he doesn’t like to boast. When the bombing starts, he rebels and defiantly starts turning on all the lights in the house.

MRS HUSHABYE [rising in alarm]. Pettikins, none of that, if you please. If you hint the slightest doubt of Hector's courage, he will go straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things to convince himself that he isn't a coward (page 24)

MRS HUSHABYE. He never boasts of anything he really did: he can't bear it; and it makes him shy if anyone else does. All his stories are made-up stories.(page 24)

MRS HUSHABYE :…………Can't you think of something that will murder half Europe at one bang?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband invent something? He does nothing but tell lies to women.(page 42)

Ellie Dunn, a young singer, in love with Marcus Darnley -who later turns out to be Hector Hushabye- but engaged to be married to M. Mangan. The discovery that Marcus is Hector destroys her romantic picture of the world and turns her into a ‘modern girl’. Her disappointment in men leads her to get engaged to the captain. Unhappy as she is, she welcomes the coming of the bombers. Mazzini Dunn, Ellie’s father, a little, earnest man with absolutely no business sense at all. He has spent his life in poverty and fought all those years for liberty. Now, he has resigned to his fate and has become the typical nineteenth century Liberal, the ineffectual good man.

“A young lady, gloved and hatted, with a dust coat on, is sitting in the window-seat with her body twisted to enable her to look out at the view” (page 2, act I)

“She is a pretty girl, slender, fair, and intelligent looking nicely but not expensively dressed, evidently not a smart idler”(page 2, act I)

MRS HUSHABYE. “Tut, tut, Alfred: don't be rude. Don't you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Aren't you happy you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful enough…….” (page 101)

Alfred (Boss) Mangan, fifty-five, businessman, engaged to be married to Ellie Dunn, he confesses to her that he is not in fact a rich man. He is killed during the air raid when he hides in the captain’s cave, where he has stored all his dynamite. Billy Dunn, no relation to Ellie or Mazzini, an ex-pirate now turned burglar. He is captured when he tries to rob Heartbreak House, and is offered a job by the captain. Billy gets killed during the air raid when he hides together with Mangan. Nurse Guiness, casual and impudent, she is the captain’s housekeeper and, as turns out later, Billy Dunn’s wife. Randall Utterword, the younger brother of Ariadne’s husband. He looks like a gentleman and is apparently well-mannered, but he later turns out to be untalented, peevish, and childish. He represents foolish aristocratic pride. He is in love with Ariadne, who in turn treats him like a small boy. Sir Hastings Utterword, Ariadne’s husband. He never appears but is often referred to.

“MANGAN [shuddering liverishly]. Too rich: I can't eat such things. I suppose it's because I have to work so much with my brain. That's the worst of being a man of business: you are always thinking, thinking, thinking” (page 44, act II) ;business

“MAZZINI. I hope poor Mangan is safe” (page 111, act III)

Mazinni

Ellie’s father. He is a good man. He works as businessman but actually he does not have any capability in doing his business. He asked his daughter, Ellie to marry with his friend in business, a fifty-five businessman named Mangan.

“ELLIE. Well, you see, Mr Mangan, my mother married a very good man--for whatever you may think of my father as a man of business, he is the soul of goodness—“(page 47, act II)

“Mazzini, in pyjamas and a richly colored silk dressing gown comes from the house, on Lady Utterword's side”(page 102)

“MRS HUSHABYE [to Lady Utterword]. Her father is a very remarkable man, Addy. His name is Mazzini Dunn. Mazzini was a celebrity of some kind who knew Ellie's grandparents” (page 11, act I)

Plot

EXPOSITION

The story start when Miss Ellie Dunn, a poor but proper young lady, arrives for a weekend visit at the home of the eccentric inventor and retired seacaptain, Shotover. Upon her arrival, she discovers that the rules and manners of society do not apply here. Shotover’s house, a fantastical country estate replicated like a ship, permeates an ambience of unrealized ambitions and unrequited love. Ellie has been invited by Shotover’s daughter, Hesione Hushabye, to Hesione’s weekend house party along with a bizarre collection of characters.

“THE WOMANSERVANT. God bless us! [The young lady picks up the book and places it on the table]. Sorry to wake you, miss, I'm sure; but you are a stranger to me. What might you be waiting here for now?

THE YOUNG LADY. Waiting for somebody to show some signs of knowing that I have been invited here.

THE WOMANSERVANT. Oh, you're invited, are you? And has nobody
come? Dear! dear!” (page 2)

RISING ACTION

The rising action is when Ellie have a talk with Hesione Husabye to “re-think” her impending marriage to stuffy Boss Mangan, a middle-aged industrialist. Hesione will go to any length to stop the loveless match—she even tries to woo Mangan for herself, and succeeds. Yet financial security proves more important to Ellie than love and loyalty. She remains resolved to marry Mangan, despite the fact that she is in love with someone else: a handsome and mysterious stranger.

“ELLIE. Hesione, listen to me. You don't understand. My father and
Mr Mangan were boys together. Mr Ma--

MRS HUSHABYE. I don't care what they were: we must sit down if
you are going to begin as far back as that. [She snatches at
Ellie's waist, and makes her sit down on the sofa beside her].
Now, pettikins, tell me all about Mr Mangan. They call him Boss
Mangan, don't they? He is a Napoleon of industry and disgustingly
rich, isn't he? Why isn't your father rich?

ELLIE. My poor father should never have been in business. His
parents were poets; and they gave him the noblest ideas; but they
could not afford to give him a profession.

MRS HUSHABYE. Fancy your grandparents, with their eyes in fine
frenzy rolling! And so your poor father had to go into business.
Hasn't he succeeded in it?” (page 14-15)

CLIMAX

There was a high tension atmosphere when Ellie and Mangan had dinner together. At first they talk about their engagement and marriage in which Ellie agreed about that.

“MANGAN. Anyhow, you don't want to marry me now, do you?
ELLIE. [very calmly]. Oh, I think so. Why not?
MANGAN. [rising aghast]. Why not!
ELLIE. I don't see why we shouldn't get on very well together.”(page 48)

Then, they come to uncontrolled conversation which opens all that Ellie has hidden. Finally, each person told the truth that they have been falling in love to another guy. And it was no joke.

“ELLIE. If we women were particular about men's characters, we
should never get married at all, Mr Mangan.”(page 48)

“MANGAN. Suppose I told you I was in love with another woman!
ELLIE [echoing him]. Suppose I told you I was in love with
another man!
MANGAN [bouncing angrily out of his chair]. I'm not joking.
ELLIE. Who told you I was?
MANGAN. I tell you I'm serious. You're too young to be serious;
but you'll have to believe me. I want to be near your friend Mrs
Hushabye. I'm in love with her. Now the murder's out.
ELLIE. I want to be near your friend Mr Hushabye. I'm in love
with him. [She rises and adds with a frank air] Now we are in one
another's confidence, we shall be real friends. Thank you for
telling me.”(page 48-49)

FALLING ACTION

It comes to a falling action when Mangan admitted that he is not a rich person. In fact, he is a liar.

“MRS HUSHABYE. But you have factories and capital and things?
MANGAN. People think I have. People think I'm an industrial
Napoleon. That's why Miss Ellie wants to marry me. But I tell you
I have nothing.
ELLIE. Do you mean that the factories are like Marcus's tigers?
That they don't exist?
MANGAN. They exist all right enough. But they're not mine. They
belong to syndicates and shareholders and all sorts of lazy
good-for-nothing capitalists. I get money from such people to
start the factories. I find people like Miss Dunn's father to
work them, and keep a tight hand so as to make them pay. Of
course I make them keep me going pretty well; but it's a dog's
life; and I don't own anything.
MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred, you are making a poor mouth of it
to get out of marrying Ellie.
MANGAN. I'm telling the truth about my money for the first time
in my life; and it's the first time my word has ever been
doubted.” (page 96)

RESOLUTION

In the end of the drama, Mangan would like to go to city. At the time also, Ellie admit that she has been in engagement with Captain Shotover. This make the whole people there shocked.

“MANGAN. I'll do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a child or
a grown man? I won't stand this mothering tyranny. I'll go back
to the city, where I'm respected and made much of.
MRS HUSHABYE. Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city.
Think of Ellie's youth!” (page 98-99)

“MANGAN [altogether]  Bigamy! Do you mean to say you're
married already?
HECTOR.  Bigamy! This is some enigma.
ELLIE. Only half an hour ago I became Captain Shotover's white
wife.
MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie! What nonsense! Where?
ELLIE. In heaven, where all true marriages are made.
LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Miss Dunn! Really, papa!”(page 99-100)

Then, Mangan go outside the house and back to the city. After some minutes his gone, there is an explosion, the sign of war. People in the house were afraid and tried to rescue themselves. Then they come into the house and feel save there. They realize that Mangan is not alive any longer.

“MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I am devoting
myself to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous
presentiment. You bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the
stars. [She drags him away into the darkness].
MANGAN [tearfully, as he disappears]. Yes: it's all very well to
make fun of me; but if you only knew—“ (page 106-107)

“A dull distant explosion is heard.
HECTOR [starting up]. What was that?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Something happening [he blows his whistle].
Breakers ahead!” (page 109)

“LADY UTTERWORD. The danger is over, Randall. Go to bed.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Turn in, all hands. The ship is safe. [He sits
down and goes asleep].
ELLIE [disappointedly]. Safe!
HECTOR [disgustedly]. Yes, safe. And how damnably dull the world
has become again suddenly! [he sits down].
MAZZINI [sitting down]. I was quite wrong, after all. It is we
who have survived; and Mangan and the burglar-“(page 113)

Setting

Setting of Place and Time

The action takes place in Heartbreak House, in a room designed to recreate the interior of an old-fashioned ship. The time setting is some time in September, in the morning and night.

“The hilly country in the middle of the north edge of Sussex, looking very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of September.” (page 1)

“A clock strikes six.” (page 2)

“ELLIE: It would have been, this morning. Now! you can't think how…” (page 46)

 “ELLIE. Perhaps you don't understand why I was quite a nice girl this morning, and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice.”(page 60)

 “CAPTAIN SHOTOVER : [promptly taking his chair and setting to work at the drawing-board]. No. Go to bed. Good-night.” (page 77)

“ELLIE: Good-night, dearest. [She kisses him].
MAZZINI: Good-night, love. [He makes for the door, but turns aside to the bookshelves]. I'll just take a book [he takes one]. Good-night. [He goes out, leaving Ellie alone with the captain].” (page 77)

Conflict

               The conflict in this drama is Man vs Society where Ellie can’t marry with Mangan because she doesn’t love her, in fact she wants to reply his help to her father. Another case is when she has been falling in love with Hesione’s husband which is a liar to Ellie.

               Heartbreak House is Shaw's play about the war, even though the war is never mentioned and (until late in the play) never makes its presence felt. He sets the play, not in the world of plutocrats and government ministers (though representatives from these worlds wander into the house), but among the educated, cultured, leisure classes, what one idealistic character admiringly identifies as "very charming people, most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane, unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people." The "Bohemians" who live in Heartbreak House aren't thinkers or artists; they're what the British call "amateurs," (literally "lovers"), people who pride themselves in knowing about, and being able to talk about, the latest idea and the latest work of art. They and their house guests flirt with one another and talk at prodigious length (as characters do in other Shaw plays). And they use all this talk to break one another's hearts--those among them, at least, who have hearts to break.

Symbol

               The characters’ names are very descriptive and underlie the themes Shaw is addressing, including the sense of the end of an era. For example, Ellie’s last name is Dunn meaning “done;” in Ariadne Utterword, “utter” is the ancient form meaning death; Captain Shotover’s “shot” is tired, and “over” and “bye” suggest endings. 1 The “Hushabye” name implies sleep, which is one of the themes of the play. Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician and journalist who lobbied for the unification of Italy; Mazzini Dunn seems to unify the upper class Utterwords and Hushabyes with the middle class Dunns.

               In addition, three characters have names from Greek mythology. Ariadne was the daughter of Minos and the wife of Dionysus who helped Theseus find his way out of the labyrinth by means of a thread. Hesione was the sister of Priam, the Trojan leader; she was rescued by Hercules (for a pair of horses) while being sacrificed to the god of the sea. Hector was the son of Priam and Hecuba and the mightiest warrior in the Trojan military. Since Hector and Hesione are associated with Troy, could Shaw be suggesting they are doomed to defeat and have no place in the future?

EXTRINSIC

Background of Author

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues which engaged Shaw's attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling from a ladder.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively.^[1] Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of fellow playwright August Strindberg's works from Swedish to English.

Life

Early years and family

George Bernard Shaw was born in Synge Street, Dublin, on 26 July 1856 to George Carr Shaw (1814–85), an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, née Gurly (1830–1913), a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853–1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1855–76).

Education

Shaw briefly attended the Wesley College, Dublin, a grammar school operated by the Methodist Church in Ireland, before moving to a private school near Dalkey and then transferring to Dublin's Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. He harboured a lifelong animosity toward schools and teachers, saying, "Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." In the astringent prologue to Cashel Byron's Profession young Byron's educational experience is a fictionalized description of Shaw's own schooldays. Later, he painstakingly detailed the reasons for his aversion to formal education in his Treatise on Parents and Children. In brief, he considered the standardized curricula useless, deadening to the spirit and stifling to the intellect. He particularly deplored the use of corporal punishment, which was prevalent in his time.

When his mother left home and followed her voice teacher, George Vandeleur Lee, to London, Shaw was almost sixteen years old. His sisters accompanied their mother but Shaw remained in Dublin with his father, first as a reluctant pupil, then as a clerk in an estate office. He worked efficiently, albeit discontentedly, for several years. In 1876, Shaw joined his mother's London household. She, Vandeleur Lee, and his sister Lucy, provided him with a pound a week while he frequented public libraries and the British Museum reading room where he studied earnestly and began writing novels. He earned his allowance by ghostwriting Vandeleur Lee's music column, which appeared in the London Hornet. His novels were rejected, however, so his literary earnings remained negligible until 1885, when he became self-supporting as a critic of the arts.

Personal life

Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist and a charter member of the Fabian Society,^[10] a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means. In the course of his political activities he met Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress and fellow Fabian; they married in 1898. The marriage was never consummated, at Charlotte's insistence, though he had a number of affairs with married women.

In 1906 the Shaws moved into a house, now called Shaw's Corner, in Ayot St. Lawrence, a small village in Hertfordshire, England; it was to be their home for the remainder of their lives, although they also maintained a residence at 29 Fitzroy Square in London.

Political activism

Shaw declined to stand as an MP, but in 1897 he was elected as a local councillor to the London County Council as a Progressive.

Contributions

Shaw's plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established playwright. He wrote sixty-three plays and his output as novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist and private correspondent was prodigious. He is known to have written more than 250,000 letters.^[13] Along with Fabian Society members Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas, Shaw founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 with funding provided by private philanthropy, including a bequest of £20,000 from Henry Hunt Hutchinson to the Fabian Society. One of the libraries at the LSE is named in Shaw's honour; it contains collections of his papers and photographs.^[14] Shaw helped to found the left-wing magazine New Statesman in 1913 with the Webbs and other prominent members of the Fabian Society.^[15]

Final years

During his later years, Shaw enjoyed attending to the grounds at Shaw's Corner. At 91 he joined the Interplanetary Society for the last three years of his life. He died at the age of 94 of renal failure precipitated by injuries incurred by falling while pruning a tree. His ashes, mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, were scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.

Background of Story

·         Author Purpose

Since Shaw was writing with the benefit of hindsight, however, there's something altogether smug about this. Heartbreak House doesn't really stand up to the claim of prescience that endows Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (to which Shaw humbly compared this play in its preface) or Terence Rattigan's 1939 play After the Dance, two similarly themed works the Shaw Festival has presented with aplomb in recent seasons.

What tantalizes about Heartbreak House is less what is overtly depicted and debated than its odd undercurrents. Characters frequently fall asleep or are hypnotized, while there are references to witches, devils and sirens. At the end, real sirens blare as mysterious bombs fall all around the house.

·         Time and Place

Shaw wrote ‘Heartbreak House’ in 1913, on the eve of the First World War, but had to postpone the production of the play until after the war, in 1921. He gave the play the subtitle ‘A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes’, thus inviting comparison with the Russian playwright Chekhov.

·         Social Condition at the time

At the time of writing this drama, the social condition is full of distinction, between upper class and lower class. The world war also inspired this drama.

In 1914, Europe was stumbling toward the most destructive war yet in human history. Intellectual elites failed to do their part to prevent the drift towards this long and bloody fight. In Heartbreak House, Shaw accuses capable people, as individuals and as an entire nation, of sleepwalking through their lives while ‘the war to end all wars’ was brewing on the horizon. People who were well-bred, educated and knew the right people, but were too lazy and too busy pleasure-seeking to keep the country on course and out of conflict.

In Heartbreak House, we hear Shaw’s view that even within the upper class, there are two groups—those Lady Utterword calls the equestrian and the neurotic classes. Shaw himself made this distinction, noticing that one group had all of the big ideas about changing the world, but merely sat by doing nothing as the less educated and less enlightened group did the actual work of running the country.

Shaw was very unhappy with the way English society dealt with the waging of and aftermath of World War I. His disgust with combat and the immediate vilification of anything German was equaled only by his appreciation of the odd beauty of war as viewed from a distance. In this play, the characters live in a society on the brink of war, yet they seem completely preoccupied with trivial romances, unaware of the reality of the destruction they compare to Beethoven.

IMPRESSION

            We like the story because the story is complicated from the love and marriage, social and society, and war. We appreciate to the author who could make drama like this. He succeed to combine almost the aspects of human life, created and showed them in complicated way. We were surprised when Ellie announce that she has married with the captain, the oldest character in this drama, even Ellie is the youngest character in this drama. She refused Mangan (55 years old) for the oldest man. We were challenged to read this drama because the story is unexpected. We also feel sad when Mangan leave the house in war night that cause him die. From the story we can know the social condition and war at that time that there are so many differences of the people in different social rank that shown in this story.

CONCLUSION

            It drama has told us about many aspects of life and what happened in it, like marriage, romance and reality, war at that time, and also society and class. Actually all of them are directed as a satire for human life in England at that time. In marriage side, it drama tells about a complicated marriage that the people in this drama marry people who they do not love as Lady Utterword, marriage was a way to punish and to escape from her Bohemian father. It also happened to Ellie that asked by her father to marry with old man she did not love, because she loved Hector (husband of Hesione) but in the last of drama, she married with the old captain. We think it is a very complicated drama that shows many bad side of human. It also give an allusion for the people at that time that they lies each other to get their each goal in their life. It drama also showed the condition of class and society. In this drama there is told about the distinction based on class and social rank have greatly affected the outcome of individual lives. And in this drama, we have found that Shaw divided the upper class society in two groups, that Lady Utterword calls the equestrian and the neurotic class. It noticed that one group had all the big ideas about changing the world, but merely sat by doing nothing as the less educated and less enlightened group did the actual work of running the country.

SYNOPSIS

Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. —George Bernard Shaw,

Preface to Heartbreak House Ellie Dunn, a poor but proper young lady, arrives for a weekend house party at the country house of Hesione Hushabye. Upon arrival she discovers that no traditions or conventions exist there and the house is in disarray. Hesione’s father, Captain Shotover, is an inventor who wants to create, but can sell only destructive inventions. He doesn’t seem to recognize his eldest daughter, Ariadne, who is returning home after 20 years abroad. Hesione herself has an unconventional marriage; her husband Hector poses as a dashing hero and flirts with young girls. One of Shaw’s last plays, Heartbreak House introduces us to charming, capable, intelligent people who are unaware of the looming peril ahead.

Reference

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http://www.answers.com/topic/heartbreak-house-a-fantasia-in-the-russian-manner-on-english-themes retrieved on march 29, 2013 at 14.00 WITA

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