Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only €10,99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Candida
    Candida
    Candida
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Candida

    By Bernard Shaw

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1898
    Candida
    Author

    Bernard Shaw

    Dublin-born Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a playwright, essayist and journalist, prominent socialist, and noted vegetarian. He is best known for his plays, which include Arms and the Man (1894), Man and Superman (1905) and Pygmalion (1913). In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

    Read more from Bernard Shaw

    Related to Candida

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Good Things, Small Packages

      Sep 25, 2019

      Good Things, Small Packages
      11 min read

    • Article

      Not My Type

      Mar 23, 2021

      Not My Type
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble Gene

      Jul 1, 2020

      One clear thing about trouble—it can set you back to zero, a personal cone of silence. And reading, writing, listening allow entry into that troubled solitude; you disappear into it regardless t of the time or place you really are in, be it bed, kitc

      12 min read

    • Article

      Memories Of A Miracle

      Dec 1, 2023

      Memories Of A Miracle
      8 min read

    • Article

      Downtools

      Aug 9, 2022

      Downtools
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    • Article

      Such Sweet Sorrow

      Apr 1, 2022

      NOW THAT NOTHING is much fun any more, what better moment for a proper revival of the “English malady”? No, not sodomy, flagellation, or any of those traditional pastimes, I mean the inclination to melancholy which for centuries was the thing that fo

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cathedral Spotting At Its Best

      Nov 3, 2021

      IF Simon Jenkins were a building, what listing would he receive? Certainly Grade I, but I suspect a special super-plus category would be required. Many people would be content with a career as newspaper editor, columnist, National Trust chairman and

      5 min read

    • Article

      In Pursuit Of The Light

      May 10, 2023

      In Pursuit Of The Light
      6 min read

    • Article

      Monk’s House

      May 2, 2024

      Monk’s House
      6 min read

    • Article

      Pausa Caffè

      Oct 25, 2021

      Pausa Caffè
      7 min read

    • Article

      Following a Thread

      Sep 19, 2019

      Following a Thread
      6 min read

    • Article

      Peace Comes With A Smile

      Nov 11, 2019

      Peace Comes With A Smile
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Midnight World

      Nov 29, 2024

      The Midnight World
      6 min read

    • Article

      On Being a Trend

      Apr 30, 2018

      1. I recently bought some Tupperware with a similar mindset to that of the people who prepare their sports clothes the night before so that exercising is not a decision but a given, as if the presence of the clothes outside the wardrobe were a cataly

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Victorian With Soul

      Apr 2, 2018

      THE WHITE VICTORIAN DOUBLE-STOREY WITH THE VERY GOOD BONES, WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS AND SASH-WINDOW EYES SCREENED BY THE BALCONY WITH FOUR-LEAF-CLOVER TRIM, THIS HOUSE COULD STRETCH TIME. For more than a century its wide Oregon-pine stairway, wooden

      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Call The Junk-monger

      May 27, 2021

      WHENEVER A PRIME Ministerial family is feeling a bit skint it has only to call for Lord Brownlow of Deep Pocket in the County of Dosh and those pecuniary blues will be magicked away. This former rozzer has never needed to importune a passing premier

      3 min read

    • Article

      RECOMMENDED READ: High Praise

      May 16, 2023

      AT SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL in London, you can hear the same bells that Shakespeare paid for to be rung at his brother’s funeral. In the Yorkshire village of North Grimston, 21st-century children are baptised in the same font as those of a thousand years

      3 min read

    • Article

      Austerity And The British Library

      Jun 29, 2017

      It is good if the public library appeals to seniors, but it is not good if seniors are the only people to whom a library appeals. New generations need to use their library, need to need their library, if the library is to remain inside the tightening

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Love Letter To Norfolk

      Apr 27, 2022

      A Love Letter To Norfolk
      5 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    Reviews for Candida

    3.5/5

    46 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A wonderful play about love and need. Candida is one of the strongest female characters I've ever read -- intelligent, intuitive and master of her own destiny, answerable to no one.
    • 5/5
      I'll start with the caveat that I'm a novice when it comes to plays, but that said, this was a thoroughly captivating work that I was able to finish in about 2 hours. It was light but dealt with weighty themes (love, relationships, sexism, etc.). The psychological insights were poignant, if not entirely subtle. I read this only with an idea of getting a better grasp on Shaw, but admittedly was not very enticed by the description of the play. After all of that I was very pleasantly surprised by the experience. For the reading mood I've been in lately, this was the perfect blend of lightness and heft.
    • 3/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether they deserve the labelBook #19: Candida, by George Bernard Shaw (1898)The story in a nutshell:As one of many "comedies of manners" from the Victorian- and Edwardian-era playwright George Bernard Shaw, the actual storyline of today's book under review is much slighter than normal; it is not much more than a breezy 50-page play about a middle-class couple living in the suburban edge of London at the turn of the 20th century, a liberal activist minister and his smart-as-a-tack wife (the "Candida" of the play's title), as well as the young moon-eyed artist they know who has fallen in love with Candida himself. The actual plotline, then, is not much more than that of this minister husband and artist wooer arguing humorously for an hour over which of them loves Candida more, and of what type of man she obviously most needs in her life; Candida herself finally puts an end to the argument by patiently explaining that she doesn't exactly need a man at all, and that the two of them are pretty much morons. Seriously, that's about the entirety of Candida just from a plot standpoint; the main reason to still read and enjoy this script, then, is mostly for the sparkling wordplay and attention to language Shaw brings to the story, as well as its razor-sharp look at the issues and details making up day-to-day life for the British middle-class during these years.The argument for it being a classic:You can't even mention "classic literature" without bringing up Shaw, his fans claim; this was an artist, after all, who both wrote and published new material literally from the 1880s to 1940s, painting an indelible portrait of what was at the time the most literary society on the planet, right during the years that novels and plays were at their most popular with mainstream society in general. By the end of his life, Shaw was considered a literary superhero by most, to this day still the only person in history to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar; that makes a whole ton of his old work worth going back and revisiting, argue his fans, and not only that but also spread out evenly over the course of his remarkable 60-year career. Take 1898's Candida, for example; although not as polished, say, as a late-career classic like Saint Joan, nor as popular as something like Pygmalion (itself adapted into the insanely popular Broadway musical My Fair Lady), it nonetheless was one of the first really big hits of Shaw's career, as well as a great record of what the times were actually like for an average middle-class citizen during the end of the Victorian Age. As such, then, its fans say, Candida rightly deserves to still be read and enjoyed on a regular basis to this day.The argument against:Of course, as we've all learned over the course of this "CCLaP 100" essay series so far, although Victorian and Edwardian literature still continues to be legible and readable to modern eyes, that's a long way from being entertaining or simply not tedious; and critics will argue that Shaw's work is especially guilty of clunky aging, precisely because he wrote about the issues and pumped out the kinds of light, frothy stories that were so popular with contemporary audiences at the time. In fact, you could almost view Shaw as a brilliant television writer more than anything else, in a time when the television industry didn't actually exist; he did crank out over 60 plays over the course of his career, after all, most of which last no more than an hour or so, most of which deal with the same slight plots and family trivialities of a typical B-level network drama on the air right now. If you take a cold, hard look at Shaw's work, critics say, you'll see that they're mostly valuable anymore as historical documents, as records of the times and of what the average citizen of those times found important, a big part of why he was so popular to begin with; the plays themselves, though, are badly dated relics of the Victorian and Edwardian times from which they came, the exact thing a modern show is satirizing anymore whenever you see one of the characters affect a fake stagey British accent and yell, "I say, Lord Wiggelbottom, what a surprise to see you here, old chap!" Shaw's plays are important, the argument goes, just not worth most people these days taking the time to sit down and actually read.My verdict:I have to admit, today I very quickly fall on the side of Shaw's critics, and in fact we can take the printed book version of Candida itself as strong evidence; I find it very telling that of the 140-page manuscript, only 52 of those pages are needed to print the actual play, a whopping 88 pages instead devoted to notes about the play, Shaw's preface to the play, interviews about the play, letters Shaw wrote about the play, etc etc. Because it's definitely true -- there's barely anything to Shaw's actual plays themselves, certainly not the strong three-act structure loaded with suspense and drama like we expect anymore from our live theatre, with their 60-volume cumulative effect being much more important these days than any of the individual volumes themselves. (Want even more evidence? Check out Shaw's Wikipedia bio, and notice that no one's yet bothered creating separate entries for over half his plays, and this from a website that includes detailed plot recaps for every episode of every television show in human history.) I agree that the cumulative effect is important, I want there to be no mistake -- I agree that Shaw is one of the most important figures in the history of the English-language arts and letters, and I agree that there is just a ton of information to be mined from his work concerning real life in the British Empire during both its Industrial-Age height and its eventual downfall. But man, let me admit this as well -- sheesh, was Candida a freaking chore to actually get through. ("I say, Lord Wiggelbottom, what a surprise to see you here, old chap!") Perhaps some of his later, weightier, more mature work (which I definitely plan on tackling in the future) will turn out to be more worth the effort; for now, though, I reluctantly conclude that what is more entertaining for most audience audience members would be an interesting book about Shaw and his work, not the work itself.Is it a classic? No

    Book preview

    Candida - Bernard Shaw

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Candida, by George Bernard Shaw

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Candida

    Author: George Bernard Shaw

    Posting Date: June 4, 2009 [EBook #4023]

    Release Date: May, 2003

    First Posted: October 12, 2001

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANDIDA ***

    Produced by Eve Sobol. HTML version by Al Haines.

    CANDIDA

    BERNARD SHAW

    1898

    ACT I

    ACT II

    ACT III

    ACT I

    A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair and St. James's, much less known there than the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle class life; wide-streeted, myriad-populated; well-served with ugly iron urinals, Radical clubs, tram lines, and a perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown front gardens, untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody else's work, which they would not do if they themselves could help it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up show themselves in cockney cupidity and business push. Even the policemen and the chapels are not infrequent enough to break the monotony. The sun is shining cheerfully; there is no fog; and though the smoke effectually prevents anything, whether faces and hands or bricks and mortar, from looking fresh and clean, it is not hanging heavily enough to trouble a Londoner.

    This desert of unattractiveness has its oasis. Near the outer end of the Hackney Road is a park of 217 acres, fenced in, not by railings, but by a wooden paling, and containing plenty of greensward, trees, a lake for bathers, flower beds with the flowers arranged carefully in patterns by the admired cockney art of carpet gardening and a sandpit, imported from the seaside for the delight of the children, but speedily deserted on its becoming a natural vermin preserve for all the petty fauna of Kingsland, Hackney and Hoxton. A bandstand, an unfinished forum for religious, anti-religious and political orators, cricket pitches, a gymnasium, and an old fashioned stone kiosk are among its attractions. Wherever the prospect is bounded by trees or rising green grounds, it is a pleasant place. Where the ground stretches far to the grey palings, with bricks and mortar, sky signs, crowded chimneys and smoke beyond, the prospect makes it desolate and sordid.

    The best view of Victoria Park is from the front window of St. Dominic's Parsonage, from which not a single chimney is visible. The parsonage is a semi-detached villa with a front garden and a porch. Visitors go up the flight of steps to the porch: tradespeople and members of the family go down by a door under the steps to the basement, with a breakfast room, used for all meals, in front, and the kitchen at the back. Upstairs, on the level of the hall door, is the drawing-room, with its large plate glass window looking on the park. In this room, the only sitting-room that can be spared from the children and the family meals, the parson, the Reverend James Mavor Morell does his work. He is sitting in a strong round backed revolving chair at the right hand end of a long table, which stands across the window, so that he can cheer himself with the view of the park at his elbow. At the opposite end of the table, adjoining it, is a little table; only half the width of the other, with a typewriter on it. His typist is sitting at this machine, with her back to the window. The large table is littered with pamphlets, journals, letters, nests of drawers, an office diary, postage scales and the like. A spare chair for visitors having business with the parson is in the middle, turned to his end. Within reach of his hand is a stationery case, and a cabinet photograph in a frame. Behind him the right hand wall, recessed above the fireplace, is fitted with bookshelves, on which an adept eye can measure the parson's divinity and casuistry by a complete set of Browning's poems and Maurice's Theological Essays, and guess at his politics from a yellow backed Progress and Poverty, Fabian Essays, a Dream of John Ball, Marx's Capital, and half a dozen other literary landmarks in Socialism. Opposite him on the left, near the typewriter, is the door. Further down the room, opposite the fireplace, a bookcase stands on a cellaret, with a sofa near it. There is a generous fire burning; and the hearth, with a comfortable armchair and a japanned flower painted coal scuttle at one side, a miniature chair for a boy or girl on the other, a nicely varnished wooden mantelpiece, with neatly moulded shelves, tiny bits of mirror let into the panels, and a travelling clock in a leather case (the inevitable wedding present), and on the wall above a large autotype of the chief figure in Titian's Virgin of the Assumption, is very inviting. Altogether the room is the room of a good housekeeper, vanquished, as far as the table is concerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, betrays the style of the advertised drawing-room suite of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper and panelling are dark, throwing the big cheery window and the park outside into strong relief.

    The Reverend James Mavor Morell is a Christian Socialist clergyman of the Church of England, and an active member of the Guild of St. Matthew and the Christian Social Union. A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and goodlooking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound, unaffected voice, which he uses with the clean, athletic articulation of a practised orator, and with a wide range and perfect command of expression. He is a first rate clergyman, able to say what he likes to whom he likes, to lecture people without setting himself up against them, to impose his authority on them without humiliating them, and to interfere in their business without impertinence. His well-spring of spiritual enthusiasm and sympathetic emotion has never run dry for a moment: he still eats and sleeps heartily enough to win the daily battle between exhaustion and recuperation triumphantly. Withal, a great baby, pardonably vain of his powers and unconsciously pleased with himself. He has a healthy complexion, a good forehead, with the brows somewhat blunt, and the eyes bright and eager, a mouth resolute, but not particularly well cut, and a substantial nose, with the mobile, spreading nostrils of the dramatic orator, but, like all his features, void of subtlety.

    The typist, Miss Proserpine Garnett, is a brisk little woman of about 30, of the lower middle class, neatly but cheaply dressed in a black merino skirt and a blouse, rather pert and quick of speech, and not very civil in her manner, but sensitive and affectionate. She is clattering away busily at her machine whilst Morell opens

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1