Candida
1898
A young poet storms into a respectable suburban home and declares his love for the wife of a Christian Socialist clergyman. So begins Shaw's mischievous comedy, which takes what sounds like a melodrama and turns it into something far more dangerous: a witty interrogation of Victorian marriage, gender, and what anyone really wants from life. Reverend James Morell has purpose, principles, and a cause. Eugene Marchbanks has poetry and passion. But Candida, the woman at the center of their rivalry, has something neither man fully understands: her own quiet, devastating agency. Shaw dismantled Ibsen's domestic dramas while borrowing their force, then filtered everything through his revolutionary's grin. The result is a play that asks what women actually desire from marriage and has the audacity to let one answer for herself. More than a century later, Candida still provokes because it refuses to be the story anyone expects.
Editions
X-Ray
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.””
— Bernard Shaw
“Oh, well, if you want original conversations, you'd better go and talk to yourself.””
— Bernard Shaw
“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.””
— Bernard Shaw
“Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore, they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because the don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give.””
— Bernard Shaw
“I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.””
— Bernard Shaw
“That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them””
— Bernard Shaw
“That is what all the poets do: they talk to themselves outloud and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.””
— Bernard Shaw
“Nothing that’s worth saying is proper.””
— Bernard Shaw
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466be"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Candida by Bernard Shaw free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466be)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466be][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Candida by Bernard Shaw free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466beCite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Shaw, Bernard. Candida. Lex, lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466be.Shaw, B. (1898). Candida. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466beShaw, Bernard. Candida. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/candida-2fee31d7-abda-4ed9-9320-e266300466be.
