MAN AND SUPERMAN

Written by George Bernard Shaw and illustrated by Charles Mosley. Published by The Heritage Press, New York. This Heritage Press edition was produced in 1962 and includes the slipcase, and “The Revolutionist’s Handbook & Pocket Companion”, but the “Sandglass” which is Heritage’s information flyer is not with the book.

This play, originally produced by the Stage Society at the Royal Court Theatre, London the 23rd of May, 1905, is a romantic comedy pitting Nietzschean philosophy against Bernard Shaw’s female centered view, turning the Don Juan myth on its head.

The foreword, “A Personal Reminiscence” by Lewis Casson the actor who played Octavius Robinson in the 1905 production.

From Wikipedia:

Man and Superman is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905, but it omitted the third act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on 4 June 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not performed in its entirety until 1915, when the Traveling Repertory Company played it at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

Although Man and Superman can be performed as a light comedy of manners, Shaw intended the drama to be something much deeper, as suggested by the title, which comes from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical ideas about the "Übermensch" (although Shaw distances himself from Nietzsche by placing the philosopher at the very end of a long list of influences). As Shaw notes in his "Epistle Dedicatory" (dedication to theatre critic Arthur Bingham Walkley) he wrote the play as "a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life”. The plot centers on John Tanner, author of "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion", which is published with the play as a 58-page appendix. Both in the play and in the "Handbook" Shaw takes Nietzsche's theme that mankind is evolving, through natural selection, towards "superman" and develops the argument to suggest that the prime mover in selection is the woman: Ann Whitefield makes persistent efforts to entice Tanner to marry her yet he remains a bachelor. As Shaw himself puts it: "Don Juan had changed his sex and become Dona Juana, breaking out of the Doll's House and asserting herself as an individual”. This is an explicit, intended reversal of Da Ponte's Don Giovanni; here Ann, representing Doña Ana, is the predator — "Don Juan is the quarry instead of the huntsman", as Shaw notes.

Ann is referred to as "the Life Force" and represents Shaw's view that in every culture, it is the women who force the men to marry them rather than the men who take the initiative. Sally Peters Vogt proposes, "Thematically, the fluid Don Juan myth becomes a favorable milieu for Creative Evolution," and that "the legend...becomes in Man and Superman the vehicle through which Shaw communicates his cosmic philosophy”.

DESCRIPTION:

138 pages

10 1/2 x 8 inches

Heritage edition hardcover with slipcase & “Handbook”

CONDITION:

This hard-cover book is in bound in faux marbled paper with a maroon cloth spine. The book is clean and shows only slight wear at the corners and spine ends. There is a small spot on the edge of the spine cloth near the title. The interior is excellent with no names, marks, underlining, tears or odor. The hinges and binding are excellent with no loose or missing pages. The Handbook is also fine.

The slipcase is a little rubbed at the corners and has a small wear spot on the front lower corner. It seems a little faded around the edges, but overall the slipcase is very good.

BECAUSE MEDIA RATE SHIPPING IS FREE ON THE BOOKS I SELL, COMBINE THIS WITH OTHER ITEMS FROM MY EBAY STORE.

I AM AN EXPERIENCED EBAY SELLER (23+ YEARS) AND SHIPPER WITH 100% (always!--since 1997!) FEEDBACK RATING.

ALL ITEMS ARE CAREFULLY AND SECURELY PACKED TO REDUCE OR ELIMINATE DANGER OF CRUSHING AND OR WATER/MOISTURE DAMAGE. ALL BOOKS ARE SHIPPED IN STURDY BOXES WITH TRACKING AND DELIVERY CONFIRMATION INCLUDED.

I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE ALL OF THE BOOKS, AUTOGRAPHS AND SIGNATURES ON BOOKS I SELL.