Heartbreak House (Paperback, New Ed)

'Heartbreak House was far too lazy and shallow to extricate itself from this palace of evil enchantment. It rhapsodized about love; but it believed in cruelty.' Into the eccentric household of Captain Shotover and his daughter Hesione comes Ellie Dunn, a young woman ready to marry for money rather than love. Hesione protests vigorously, but her rakish husband, Hector, snobbish sister, Ariadne, and the wealthy industrialist Boss Mangan have also joined the house-party and opinion becomes divided on the matter. Should financial concerns take priority over romantic ones, or should we hold on to our ideals, regardless of the consequences?

Written between 1916 and 1917, this play is Shaw's indictment of the generation responsible for the First World War. As David Hare writes, 'Heartbreak House remains not just, alongside Pygmalion, Shaw's most likeable and profound play, but also a work which has extraordinary historic importance ... it is the [twentieth] century's original state-of-England play.'

The definitive text, under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence