Candida

Arnold Daly first offered Shaw's play at a special matinee in 1903 with Dorothy Donnelly as Candida and himself as Marchbanks. The reception was such that additional matinees were given and then a four‐month run followed. Curiously, its good reception was largely the result of word of mouth, since many critics initially ignored the play. Its story of a woman who must choose between a visionary and a practical socialist was less beset by matters of passing topical interest and had more of a genuine love story than virtually any other major Shaw play, and so has retained a loyal following. Of its many revivals, most beloved were those by Katharine Cornell, who first played the part in 1924 when she gave it its longest run to date, five months. She brilliantly juxtaposed the heroine's frailty and strength, giving a performance Stark Young found “so delicate and translucent and moving as we rarely see.” Richard Bird was her first Marchbanks, but the role was assumed in her later revivals by such eventually more famous actors as Orson Welles, Burgess Meredith, and Marlon Brando. Other New York productions of Candida featured Olivia de Havilland in 1952, Celeste Holm in 1970, Joanne Woodward in 1981, and Mary Steenburgen in 1993.

Candida (1897), a play by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1894 and partly conceived as a reversal of the portrayal of sex relations in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), showing that ‘in the real typical doll's house it is the man who is the doll’.

Actors Laurie Patton and Blair Williams as Candida and Morell in Candida.

Candida is a comedy by playwright G. Bernard Shaw. It was first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The play questions Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a woman really wants her husband to provide her with. Additionally, because the clergyman is a Fabian Socialist, as was Shaw, various political issues of the time are also part of the plot.

Between 1904 and 1907 The Royal Court Theatre staged several of George Bernard Shaw plays, including Candida.

Plot

The play is set in the northeast suburbs of London in October, and tells the story of Candida, the wife of a first-rate clergyman named James Mavor Morell. Morell is a popular Christian Socialist Reverend in the Church of England, yet Candida is responsible for much of his success. Candida returns home briefly from a trip to London with Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who wants to rescue her from what he presumes to be a dull family life. Marchbanks is in love with Candida, and believes she deserves something more than just complacency from her husband. Both men love her for different reasons, and she is attracted to them both for the different lifestyles they provide. Morell, sensing he is fighting a losing battle, demands Marchbanks to leave at once, yet Candida undercuts her husband and instead invites him to stay at the house. Leaving the two alone together, Reverend Morell observes Candida and the poet growing closer to one another. The men fight over her, and in the end, Candida chooses the man who needs her the most, her husband, and not where her heart is, Marchbanks. The poet leaves with a secret, which neither Morell nor Candida understand.

External links

• Full-text version: ClassicReader.com

The Plays of George Bernard Shaw

Passion Play • Un Petit Drame • Widowers' Houses • The Philanderer • Mrs. Warren's Profession • Arms and the Man • Candida • The Man of Destiny • You Never Can Tell • The Devil's Disciple • The Gadfly • Caesar and Cleopatra • Captain Brassbound's Conversion • The Admirable Bashville • Man and Superman • Don Juan in Hell • John Bull's Other Island • How He Lied to Her Husband • Major Barbara • Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction • The Doctor's Dilemma • The Interlude at the Playhouse • Getting Married • The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet • Press Cuttings • Fascinating Foundling • The Glimpse of Reality • Misalliance • The Dark Lady of the Sonnets • Fanny's First Play • Androcles and the Lion • Overruled • Beauty's Duty • Pygmalion • Great Catherine • The Music Cure • O'Flaherty V.C. • The Inca of Perusalem • Augustus Does His Bit • Macbeth Skit • Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • Heartbreak House • Back to Methuselah • A Glimpse of the Domesticity of Franklin Barnabas • Jitta's Atonement • Saint Joan • The Apple Cart • Too True to Be Good • How These Doctors Love One Another! • Village Wooing • On the Rocks • The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles • The Six of Calais • The Millionairess • Arthur and the Acetone • Cymbeline Refinished • Geneva • In Good King Charles' Golden Days • The British Party System • Buoyant Billions • Farfetched Fables • Shakes versus Shav • Why She Would Not

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