Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy

About the book

John Tanner's appointment as one of Ann Whitefield's guardians places an outspoken critic of respectable society in a relationship he does not fully control. Ann's apparently conventional manner conceals a formidable ability to direct the people around her, including those who believe themselves more perceptive. Their conflict carries the comedy through travel, argument, and reversals of the expected roles of pursuer and pursued. A dream sequence expands the play into a philosophical encounter involving Don Juan, the Devil, and rival accounts of pleasure, purpose, and human development. Shaw allows the intellectual debate to become part of the theatrical adventure. The work's provocative ideas about the life force and the future of humanity remain entangled with the practical question of whether a clever person can recognize the forces shaping his own conduct.

• Courtship and agency
• Ideas and conduct
• Human purpose

Why read it

For a courtship comedy whose verbal contests open into a much larger and deliberately provocative argument about human purpose.

Four-act comedy with philosophical material · English text