Mrs. Warren's Profession E-Book

Bernard Shaw

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Classic Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 97

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'I am my mother's daughter. I am like you. But my work is not your work, and my way is not your way.' Vivie Warren is a woman ahead of her time. Estranged from her wealthy mother, she delights in a glass of whisky and a good detective story, and is determined to carve herself a sparkling legal career in an age ruled by men. Her mother, however, is a part of that old patriarchal order. Exploiting it has earned Mrs. Warren a fortune and paid for her daughter's expensive education – but at what cost? Bernard Shaw's incendiary moral classic was written in 1893, but, after being banned by the Lord Chamberlain, didn't receive a full public production in London until 1925. This version of the play, edited and introduced by director Dominic Cooke, was produced at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End in 2025, starring real-life mother and daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter.

Leseprobe

Bernard Shaw

MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION

Edited by Dominic Cooke

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Original Production Details

Characters

Mrs. Wareen’s Profession

About the Authors

Copyright Information

IntroductionDominic Cooke

I have long been fascinated by Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Its bold confrontation of moral hypocrisy and the constraints faced by working-class women remain shocking and relevant. While the play primarily focuses on society’s treatment of women, its central critique is more universal: capitalism is intrinsically corrupting and exploitative, and all of us who live in a capitalist society are inextricably bound up in its corruption and exploitation. Yet this is not just a play of ideas; its insights into parent–child relationships are profound and psychologically acute. Shaw, it turns out, is a writer of deep feeling as well as ideas.

Whilst one common misconception about Shaw is that he is purely cerebral, the other is that he is a garrulous and didactic windbag. ‘Oh, that Bernadette Shaw! What a chatterbox!’ remarks the delightfully camp Captain Terri Dennis in Peter Nichols’ 1977 play Privates on Parade, echoing a sentiment that has been frequently, though less wittily, expressed elsewhere.

In directing the play for a 2025 audience, I wanted to defy these expectations while being true to Shaw’s radical vision and preserving the richness and complexity of his language. As I searched for a way to do this, the answer came in the play’s classical dramaturgy. When delving deeper into the text, I noticed how closely its structure resembled that of a Greek tragedy. As with Sophocles and Euripides, the conflict in Mrs. Warren’s Profession is the inevitable culmination of choices made many years earlier. With this understanding, I wondered what would happen if I approached the play as if it were a Greek tragedy rather than a product of the more literal-minded, illustrative realistic theatre of the nineteenth century. This felt like a liberating idea, and it guided my approach going forward.

With that in mind, in editing the play I started by trimming away naturalistic detail, such as excessive information about the content of the offstage supper in Act Two. I also removed repetition. In today’s fast-paced world of information technology, modern audiences process information far quicker than they did in 1893, when the play was written. They don’t need to be told something twice. By reducing the time spent reminding the audience of plot points, I aimed to encourage them to lean into the story, wanting to learn more.

Next, I took out unnecessary exposition, allowing characters to reveal their intentions through action rather than verbal statements. In the original play, characters often elaborate on past events unnecessarily. For instance, in Act One, when Praed and Vivie discuss her Cambridge Tripos achievement, they refer to the history of the exam and its previous female winner. This sort of detail felt pedantic and would slow the momentum of the play in performance, so I excised it.

Finally, and most crucially, I clarified and simplified characters’ through-lines. Throughout the play, everyone is struggling to navigate their society’s impossibly harsh judgements regarding sex. I wanted to highlight this dynamic by removing extraneous biographical detail and diversionary wordplay, adhering to the dramatic principle of ‘show, don’t tell’.

As I write from halfway through rehearsal, I am continually impressed by the depth and insight of Shaw’s writing, even in its edited form. I am genuinely excited to see how a modern audience will respond to the play’s stinging political critique. Regrettably, we live in a time marked by increasing wealth disparity that disproportionately affects women. I hope the play will speak to this problem, just as powerfully as it did in 1925 when it was finally allowed a London production after a thirty-two-year ban. And maybe, just maybe, some of the modern-day Terri Dennises will take a fresh view of Shaw, one of the world’s true theatrical revolutionaries.

April 2025

This version of Mrs. Warren’s Profession was first produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and performed at the Garrick Theatre, London, on 10 May 2025. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:

VIVIE WARREN

Bessie Carter

MR. PRAED

Sid Sagar

MRS. KITTY WARREN

Imelda Staunton

SIR GEORGE CROFTS

Robert Glenister

FRANK GARDNER

Reuben Joseph

REV. SAMUEL GARDNER

Kevin Doyle

ENSEMBLE

Rob Alexander-Adams

Liz Izen

Lizzie Schenk

Benjamin Westerby

Director

Dominic Cooke

Set & Costume Designer

Chloe Lamford

Lighting Designer

Jon Clark

Sound Designer

Christopher Shutt

Composer

Angus MacRae

Casting Director

Amy Ball CDG

The production was presented by Sonia Friedman Productions, with Gracey Delman, Playing Field, Tilted, Rupert Gavin/ Mallory Factor, Richard Batchelder, Sayers & Sayers Productions, Tulchin Bartner Productions in association with Heni Koenigsberg/Wendy Federman.

Characters

VIVIE WARREN

MR. PRAED

MRS. KITTY WARREN

SIR GEORGE CROFTS

FRANK GARDNER

REV. SAMUEL GARDNER

ACT ONE

Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a little south of Haslemere in Surrey. A YOUNG LADY is reading and making notes. Within reach of her hand, is a common kitchen chair, with a pile of serious-looking books and a supply of writing paper on it. A GENTLEMAN walking comes into sight. He is hardly past middle age, with something of the artist about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed.

He seems not certain of his way. He sees the YOUNG LADY.

PRAED. I beg your pardon – can you direct me to Hindhead View?

VIVIE. This is Hindhead View.

PRAED. Indeed perhaps – may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?

VIVIE. Yes.

PRAED. I’m afraid I appear intrusive. My name is Praed. Oh, pray don’t let me disturb you.

VIVIE. Mr. Praed. Glad to see you.

She proffers her hand and takes his with a resolute and hearty grip.

PRAED. Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. Has your mother arrived?

VIVIE. Is she coming?

PRAED. I hope I’ve not mistaken the day. That would be just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to you.

VIVIE. Did she? Hm! My mother has rather a trick of taking me by surprise – to see how I behave myself while she’s away, I suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting me beforehand. She hasn’t come.

PRAED. I’m really very sorry.

VIVIE. It’s not your fault, Mr. Praed, is it? And I’m very glad you’ve come. You are the only one of my mother’s friends I have ever asked her to bring to see me.

PRAED. Oh, now this is really very good of you, Miss Warren!

VIVIE. Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here and talk?

PRAED. It will be nicer out here, don’t you think?

VIVIE. Then I’ll go and get you a chair.

She goes for a garden chair.

PRAED (following her). Oh, pray, pray! Allow me.

He lays hands on the chair.

VIVIE (letting him take it). Take care of your fingers; they’re rather dodgy things, those chairs.

She goes across to the chair with the books on it; pitches them, and brings the chair forward.

PRAED (who has just unfolded his chair). Oh, now do let me take that hard chair. I like hard chairs.

VIVIE. So do I. Sit down, Mr. Praed.

PRAED. Hadn’t we better go to the station to meet your mother?

VIVIE. Why? She knows the way.

PRAED. Er – I suppose she does.

VIVIE. Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are disposed to be friends with me.

PRAED. Thank you, my dear Miss Warren; thank you. Dear me! I’m so glad your mother hasn’t spoilt you!

VIVIE. How?

PRAED. Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child; even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It’s such a relief to find that she hasn’t.

VIVIE. Oh! Have I been behaving unconventionally?

PRAED. Oh no, oh dear no. At least, not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly splendid!

VIVIE. Eh?

PRAED. When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! Gentlemanly chivalry! Always saying no when you meant yes! Simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.

VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time. Especially women’s time.

PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing in third place.

VIVIE. It doesn’t pay. I wouldn’t do it again for the same money.

PRAED. The same money!

VIVIE. Yes. Fifty pounds. Mrs. Latham, my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. I said flatly that it was not worth my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I offered to try for fourth place or thereabouts for fifty pounds. My mother closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than my bargain. But I wouldn’t do it again for that. Two hundred would have been nearer the mark.

PRAED. Lord, bless me! That’s a very practical way of looking at it.

VIVIE. Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?

PRAED. But surely it’s practical to consider not only the work these honours cost, but also the culture they bring.

VIVIE. Culture! My dear Mr. Praed: do you know what the mathematical tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics. I’m supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers, electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance. I don’t even know arithmetic well. Outside mathematics, lawn tennis, eating, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I’m a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could possibly be who hadn’t gone in for the tripos.

PRAED. What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system! I knew it! I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood beautiful!

VIVIE. I don’t object to it on that score in the least. I shall turn it to very good account, I assure you.

PRAED. In what way?

VIVIE. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I’ve come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.

PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

VIVIE. I don’t care for either, I assure you.

PRAED. You can’t mean that.

VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it.

PRAED. I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. It’s only that you haven’t discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.