Heartbreak House
ShawChicago
Written in 1897, when Shaw was in his early 40s, The Devil’s Disciple focuses on two men, seemingly polar opposites, who exchange places after each recognizes his true self in the other. Reverend Anthony Anderson is a pacifist Presbyterian parson in 1777 New Hampshire, a seat of colonial conflict that for Shaw was a thinly disguised surrogate for British-occupied Ireland. Dick Dudgeon, the “devil’s disciple,” is a scoundrel who delights in mocking conventional morality. But his scandalous posturing disguises a nobility of spirit he denies even to himself. Returning after a long absence to claim his inheritance, Dudgeon is drawn to Anderson’s young wife, Judith–an attraction that’s mutual though she can’t admit liking such a rogue. But when a British officer arrives to arrest Anderson as a rebel, Dudgeon allows himself to be arrested in Anderson’s place, posing as a preacher and thus setting the stage for Anderson to find his calling as a militiaman. Putting his own satiric twist on the conventions of melodrama, Shaw toys with traditional notions of honor and duty yet remains confident in the essential heroism of the human spirit.
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Hesione’s indulgence is abhorrent to her sister Ariadne, the wife of a colonial governor who insists on being called “Lady Utterword” even by her family. Returning home after a 23-year absence, Ariadne–the kind of proper English country gentlewoman for whom the definition of “the right people” is “people who ride”–is appalled at what she considers the intellectual and emotional disorder of her family, yet she strikes up a flirtation with Hector right under her own husband’s nose. Meanwhile Hesione teases Ellie’s fiance–Boss Mangan, a middle-aged millionaire whom Ellie plans to marry out of gratitude for his assistance to her bankrupt father. Hesione wants to break up their engagement, especially when it’s revealed that Mangan was in fact responsible for Ellie’s father’s financial ruin. This revelation is yet another phase of Ellie’s education–her “heartbreak,” which she describes as “a pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling.” In Heartbreak House’s bizarre climax the characters wait, paralyzed, to see whether a bombing raid will destroy them or pass them by: “Heaven’s threatening growl of disgust at us useless futile creatures,” Hector calls it.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Hearbreak House theater still by Dan Rest; The devil’s Disciple theater still by Robert Nick.
