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M.A. SEM 2. SEMINARON CANDIDA ( PREPAREDBY NINAMA SARLA.)
INTRODUCTION
Candida, a comedy by playwright George Bernard Shaw, was written in 1894 and 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 Christian Socialist, allowing Shaw—himself aFabian
Socialist—to weave political issues, current at the time, into the story.
Shaw attempted but failed to have a London production of the play put on in the 1890s, but there
were two small provincial productions. However, in late 1903 actor Arnold Daly had such a
great success with the play that Shaw would write by 1904 that New York was seeing "an
outbreak of Candidamania". The Royal Court Theatre in London performed the play in six
matinees in 1904. The same theatre staged several other of Shaw's plays from 1904 to 1907,
including further revivals of Candida.

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CHARACTER’S
In order of appearance
 Miss Proserpine Garnett—Morell's secretary
 The Reverend James Mavor Morell—a clergyman and Candida's husband
 The Reverend Alexander (Lexy) Mill
 Mr Burgess
 Candida
 Eugene Marchbanks
Plot Synopsis
Candida is set in the north-east suburbs of London in the month of October, 1948.
Candida, the wife of the Reverend James Morell, a popular Christian Solialist in
the Church of England, returns home from a trip with Eugene Marchbanks, a
young poet. Marchbanks plans to woo Candida, and give her an exceptional life
unlike the one she currently lives. When faced with the dilemma of which man to
choose, Candida must make a choice between the man who has given her
everything, and the young man who desires to give her so much more.

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CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION
In Bernard Shaw and the Aesthetes, Elsie Bonita Adams has given this assessment of
Marchbanks, comparing him to two real-life artists:
Though Marchbanks has many of the external characteristics and some of the attitudes of
the aesthete-artist such as Sholto Douglas or Adrian Herbert, he does not pay mere lip-service to
art, his sensitivity is no pose, and he tries to rid himself of illusions.
Shaw himself describes Eugene's story-arc as a realization that Candida is not at all what he
wants from life, that the kind of domestic love she could provide "is essentially the creature of
limitations which are far transcended in his own nature".When Eugene departs into the night, it is
not "the night of despair and darkness but the free air and holy starlight which is so much more
natural an atmosphere to him than this stuffy fireside warmth of mothers and sisters and wives
and so on".Eugene, according to Shaw, "is really a god going back to his heaven, proud,
unspeakably contemptuous of the 'happiness' he envied in the days of his blindness, clearly
seeing that he has higher business on hand than Candida". For her part, Candida is "very
immoral" and completely misreads Eugene's transformation over the course of the play

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LATER PRODUCTION
Katharine Cornell played the lead role on Broadway in five different productions, the last four of
which were for her own production company. She was the actress most closely associated with
this role, and Shaw stated that because of her success, she had created "an ideal British Candida
in my imagination" as she essentially re-envisioned the role of Candida, making her the central
character in the play. Previously, Candida herself was not conceived by directors or actresses as
important as the issues and themes that Shaw was trying to convey. The first time she played the
role in 1924, she was so acclaimed that The Actors' Guild, which controlled the production rights
to the play in the United States, forbade any other actress from playing the role while Cornell
was still alive. In her final production of 1946, a young Marlon Brando played the role of
Marchbanks.
A version for Australian television aired in 1962. Reviewing the adaptation, Sydney Morning
Herald was critical of the production style but praised the cast.
A Court Theatre Company production starring JoBeth Williams and Tom Amandeswas recorded
by the L.A. Theatre Works. In 2003 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a
production of the play. An Oxford Stage Companyproduction of Candida toured the UK in 2004,
with Andrew Havill as Morell, Serena Evans as Candida, and Richard Glaves as Marchbanks. In
February 2009 BBC Radio 7 repeated a broadcast of a radio production of the play
starring Hannah Gordon as Candida, Edward Petherbridge as Morell, and Christopher Guard as
Eugene. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 15 August 1977.

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EARLY PRODUCATION AND CANDIDA MANIA
The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, South Shields on 30 March 1895. It was
revived by the Independent Theatre Company, at Her Majesty's, Aberdeen on 30 July 1897. It
was first performed in London at the Stage Society, The Strand, on 1 July 1900. However, it was
not until late 1903, when Arnold Daly mounted a production in New York that the play became a
success. Daly's production was quickly followed by one in London. The first public performance
in London was on 26 April 1904, at the Royal Court.
The play was so popular in 1904 that the phenomenon was referred to as "Candidamania". In the
words of The New York Sun,
A new complaint has become widespread. It may be described as 'Candidamania.' It is a
contagious disease, frequently caught in street cars, elevated trains, department stores,
restaurants, and other places where people talk about what they did the night before. 'Have you
seen Candida?' is the question of the hour. Thousands are dragging their friends to see Mr.
Shaw's play."
Shaw himself adopted the term, as have later writers. Shaw felt that the play was misinterpreted
by some of its public. He wrote his short 1904 comedy How He Lied to Her Husband, in part as
a kind of reply to Candida. The play depicts a farcical version of the same situation. Shaw's
friend Archibald Henderson described it as "the reductio ad absurdum of the Candidamaniacs"

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Characters The Reverend James Mavor Morell –
The forty year old husband of Candida, Morell gives speeches on a multitude of
topics and is hearty, energetic, handsome and passionate. Eugene Marchbanks - A
young poet who has just turned 18 and fallen in love with Candida. Mr. Burgess –
Candida’s father who is visiting for the day. A sixty year old man with the
tendency to be vulgar and offensive. The Reverend Alexander Mill - A young
gentleman from a university who is learning from and modeling himself after
Reverend Morell Miss Proserpine Garnett – A thirty year old typist. She is as
opinionated as she is sensitive. Candida Morell –Wife of Reverend Morell,
Candida is a beautiful, charming woman.

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George Bernard Shaw George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His
education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working
in an estate agent's office he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he
established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties
and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed
many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist. As a fervent advocate
of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891), he decided to
write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest
dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among
these, Widower's Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social
hypocrisy, while in plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the
criticism is less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of
conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the stage into a
forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the famous discourses on the
Life Force, Don Juan in Hell, the third act of the dramatization of woman's love
chase of man, Man and Superman (1903). In the plays of his later period
discussion sometimes drowns the drama. Although in the same period he worked
on his masterpiece Saint Joan (1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of
the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present. Other
important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled
with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he
exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew
deductions for the Christian era. In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most
successful discussion plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the
witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political

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activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified
as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the
medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as
objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a
clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of
Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It would later become the basis of the
musical, My Fair Lady. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the
social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour. Shaw's complete
works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his
death.

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The Major Plays of George Bernard Shaw
1892. Widower's Houses 1893.
The Philanderer 1893.
Mrs. Warren's Profession 1894.
Arms and the Man 1894.
Candida 1895.
You Never Can Tell 1896.
The Devil's Disciple 1898.
Caesar and Cleopatra 1899.
Captain Brassbound's Conversion 1901.
The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Unrewarded 1903.
Man and Superman 1904.
How He Lied to Her Husband 1904.
John Bull's Other Island 1905.
Major Barbara 1906. The Doctor's Dilemma 1907.
Don Juan in Hell 1908.
Getting Married 1910.
Misalliance 1910.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 1912.

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Androcles and the Lion 1913.
Pygmalion 1916.
Heartbreak House 1923.
Saint Joan (Nobel Prize winner) 1929.
The Apple Cart 1932.
Too Good to be True 1936.
The Millionairess

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Exploring Ideas and Themes in Candida
Christian Socialism In Candida, Morell is a powerful speaker in both the religious
and political arenas. His sermons focus on the teachings of the church as well as on
progressive socialist movements of the time. This blend of spiritual beliefs and
political activism was known as Christian Socialism. The movement grew out of
recognition of the disparity between Christian ideals and the societal effects of
capitalism. Christian Socialist parties were usually led by religious leaders unlike
other socialist unions and parties whose leaders were secular reformists. The
movement began in England in 1848, and was influenced greatly by Chartism,
Fourierism and Henry George's single tax theory, rather than by the revolutionary
communism proposed by Marx. Leaders such as Frederick Denison Maurice and
Stewart Headlam encouraged the laboring masses and the church to cooperate
against the dangers and inequities of capitalism. The Christian Socialists published
periodicals and essays, promoted workers unions, and founded a workingmen's
college. Though the movement eventually dissolved, their traditions were carried
on by the Fabian Society (of which George Bernard Shaw was a prominent
member), the Guild Socialists, and by several Roman Catholic groups.

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Shaw and The Fabian Society
Founded by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the Fabian Society was a socialist political
organization dedicated to transforming Britain into a socialist state, not by
revolution, as Marx suggested, but by systematic progressive legislation, and
educating a select few that actually had the political power to make a substantial
difference. From these educated few, the Fabians believed, reforms would spread
to the rest of society. The society released essays, written by famous Englishmen
including George Bernard Shaw, and attracted prominent speakers in order to
influence British intellectuals and government officials. The Fabians believed that
the system of capitalism had created an unjust and inefficient society of property
and business owners. The reforms that the society fought for centered on the social
ownership of monopolies and property; the Fabians believed that this would
equally distribute wealth among all citizens. Shaw and other intellectuals spoke
and wrote passionately about the goals and promises of the Fabians, and although
Shaw disaffiliated from the group in the 1930's, he continued to support the
London School of Economics and the Labor Party, two important offshoots of the
Fabian Society.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Candida, 2011. Shaw Festival. By Richard Ouzounian. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
Candida. 2008. Berkshire Fine Arts. By Larry Murray. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
"George Bernard Shaw - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB
2013.Web. 31 Mar 2014. .
Michaels, Steven, Janice Paran, and Erica Nagel. "McCarter Theatre - Candida
Guide." McCarter Theatre. McCarter Theatre Education Department, 2004.
Web. Summer 2013. . Shaw, Bernard. Plays by George Bernard Shaw. New York:
New American Library, 1960.
Print. Shaw and Bunch. 1938. Society of Authors, Ayot St Lawrence. Archives
Hub. Web. .
INDEX

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 PLOT SYNOPSIS
 CHARACTERS THE REVEREND JAMES MAVOR MORELL
 GEORGEBERNARD SHAW
 THE MAJOR PLAYS OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
 EXPLRING IDEAS AND THEMES IN CANDIDA
 SHAW AND THE FABIAN SOCIETY
 THE WOMAN QUESTION
 BIBLIOGRAPHY