The College-Level Philosophy Teacher's Field Guide to Man and Superman
Things to Know
Things to Know
1. Plot
Setting: This play takes place in the year 1903 and in such locations as London and the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Spain. The Setup: The plot primarily consists of two storylines. The first is the romantic pursuit of John Tanner by Ann Whitefield. Tanner is a progressive thinker, opposed to nearly all things traditional. At the start of the play, he has been granted co-guardian of Ann Whitefield, a duty he shares with Roebuck Ramsden. Mr. Ramsden is established and conventional to the core, even though he likes to think of himself as progressive. Ramsden and Tanner both appeal to Ann to choose one of them to fulfill her father’s wishes, but she refuses under the pretense of respecting her father’s last wishes. She then humbly says she would like both Tanner and Ramsden to remain co-guardians. This is merely a ruse on her part to get close to Tanner.
Secondarily placed is the story of Violet Robinson and Hector Malone. Violet is the sister of Octavius, a poet who is hopelessly in love with Ann. She announces that she is pregnant (to great shock and embarassment from her friends and family); then she announces that she is married, though she refuses to name her husband. Later, it becomes clear (although only to the audience) that Violet’s husband is wealthy American furniture heir Hector Malone, whose father wishes him to marry a member of the aristocracy, because their wealth cannot buy them a title. Violet has persuaded Hector to keep their marriage secret so that he will not lose his inheritance and current allowance stipend.
Tanner learns of Ann's not-entirely-pure intentions and escapes to Spain with his chauffer, where they are captured by a band of philosophical brigands. In their care, he dreams that he has been sent to hell and occupies the body of his ancestor, Don Juan the legendary libertine. He debates philosophy with the Devil, then awakens when Ann and the rest arrive and free them.
Tanner eventually submits to marriage with Ann, and Violet convinces Malone's father to support them financially.
2. 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 for a while 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, in Back to Methuselah (1921), 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 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 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.
3. Historical PerspectiveWith few exceptions, the cast of character in Superman hails from the wealthy upper-class. Times were good for them, though England was undergoing a distinct change in how it came to view the working class. They went from non-entities, to indispensable parts of the lives of the upper-class.
4. Production History
Man and Superman has enjoyed far stronger popularity in later years than it originally did closer to its publication. A staple of classical theatre it enjoys occasional revival, though rare re-imagining.
Berkeley Rep:
Mozart music will cover all of the scene changes, and in the "Don Juan' section itself, a piano will roll onstage to allow the Devil (Charles Lanyer) to accompany one of his own linguistic arias. "I wanted "Don Giovanni' to permeate the whole production," says Lewis, who at one point contemplated staging a kind of emblematic Don Juan scene as a frontispiece to the evening.
South Coast Repertory:
The play, which Shaw wrote in 1901-02, is filled with complex ideologies that could become ponderous if handled incorrectly. Then there is the problem of the third act, which is dominated by a sequence known as "Don Juan in Hell." This dream scene underscores the play's ideas, yet it is largely expendable and is often cut.
Discussion Questions
1. How might Shaw's philosophy of the "Superman" be linked to earlier Nietzschean ideas about the advancement of humanity via "Ubermensch"? What are the overlaps, if any?
2. In regards to the Latin concept of Amor Fati, how much can this relate to the scene in hell with Don Juan? Can true Amor Fati be present within the bounds of the progression towards Ubermenschen?
3. Shaw mentions the idea of a universal consciousness. How might this concept relate to or differ from Hinduism's concept of the universal soul?
4. Concerning the brigands of the Sierra Nevada, are their actions compatible within the frameworks of each of thier given philosophies? Why or why not?
5. Compare Shaw's "Life Force" with Nietzsche's "Will to Power". How different or similar are they? Also consider how the variant of Freud's "Will to Pleasure" may explain the gap between the two philosophies.
Further Exploration
Hyper History OnlineThis is a convenient resource granting you some historical perspective in a simple way. Browse timelines by date or by category.
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Given the highly philosophical nature of this play, students may appreciate a quick (and comprehensive) reference to many of the ideas touched on by the piece.
http://plato.stanford.edu/
HolyeBooks.org
Here, you can find the entire collected works of Bernard Shaw for additional reading on the subject.
http://www.holyebooks.org/?cat=68
Old Bailey
This site is useful for looking at some of the real cultural and social issues within England at the time of the play.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life19th.jsp
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This website has good summaries of Nietzsche's work, as well as fuel for further thought in regards to Shaw's work.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/
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