Answer:
Candida by George Bernard Shaw
A Critical Commentary on the Play
Written in 1895, George Bernard Shaw’s play “Candida” comes second in the collection “Plays Pleasant” and is sub-titled “A Mystery”. The play is often categorized as a comedy, an anti-romantic play and a drama of ideas. It is a common plot out of which the theme of the play is spun out. It is the story of eternal triangle that Shaw deals with in an unconventional way.
The plot presents a parson (Reverend James Mavor Morell), his wife (Candida) and a poet (Eugene Marchbanks) involved in the eternal triangle of love. The conjugal relations of the clergyman (Morell) with his wife form the entire content of the play. Marchbanks, a poet, is introduced; he declares his love for the clergyman’s wife. It is rather stock-in-trade domestic affair that is turned into sheer unconventional stuff when the wife decides to stay back with her husband instead of the overtly sentimental poet. The uniqueness of Shaw’s thinking is shown in the final act where the wife rejects the poet-lover in favour of happy conjugal domesticity and financial security.
