Reviews for Living Will: Shakespeare after Dark

The average rating for Living Will: Shakespeare after Dark based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-24 00:00:00 Roy Samson It's Nobel Revisit Month (it is a very small one-woman festival, so don't worry if you have never heard of it!), and "Man And Superman" is on the schedule, because I need to laugh a bit. I must have been laughing when I took notes on the treatise/reflection/play or whatever else it is, because I can hardly read my handwriting. Well, some people would now claim that it is never possible to read it, and that I should finally give up my cursive, but usually I myself know what I mean. Luckily, Shaw explains what HE means with this strange little book in the beginning, otherwise it would be easy to get lost somewhere in the beginning, middle or end: "Fortunately for us [he means all of us lovely goodreaders!], whose minds have been so overwhelmingly sophisticated by literature, what produces all these treatises, and poems and scriptures of one sort or another is the struggle of life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly stumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance [he is NOT talking about my handwriting!]." So that is the mission on which he sets out, - to make the struggle of life divinely conscious - and he handles it with quite a lot of elegance, while lashing out at his preferred enemies at the same time, holding up a mirror for people to see the uncomfortable truth of the illogical behaviour we are all mastering. I was drawn back to this book because of its reflections on heaven and hell, and namely Dante and Milton. As I have a predilection for authors discussing other authors, I found Shaw's ideas on these giants of literature hilarious. Act three in the play/treatise is mostly concerned with the illogical beliefs connected with heaven and hell, and features an unforgettable dialogue where the devil justifies himself, referring to the bad publicity he has received: "Hell is a place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost, filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when he was not lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom he saw once in the street. The Englishman described me as being expelled from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day every Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the Bible. What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading through." I just love his irreverent comment about Milton. Shaw, I am quite sure, had read him more than once, as his devil is a great reincarnation of Milton's furious individualist shouting: "Better reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!" And as for Dante himself, he didn't manage to depict Heaven as an appealing place either, and Shaw offers the explanation in this brilliantly funny dialogue: "ANA. Can anybody'can I go to Heaven if I want to? THE DEVIL. [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that way. ANA. But why doesn't everybody go to Heaven, then? THE STATUE. [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It's because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that's why." It takes a "divinely conscious" author of Shaw's intellect to make fun of those two giants of literature while showing his deeply rooted respect for them. And he would be a lovely example in the essay I am not going to write about authors quoting Dante's The Divine Comedy. I do think that I still like Pygmalion best of Shaw's oeuvre so far, but it is hardly possible to find a reflection on human brilliance and folly that is equally light-hearted and deep, witty and serious. Shaw deserved his Nobel Prize! And the curtain of his play falls to the stage direction: "Universal Laughter."

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-04 00:00:00 Herbert Jacobi This play is really very learned It was written by this guy Bernard And really I think the title is a bit of a lie Because this Superman doesn't wear a cape or fly Or catch bad guys like Lex Luther or Braniac It seems to be all about an idea invented by that maniac With a name nobody can spell, Friedrich Nietzche About whom GB Shaw is keen to teach ya As for the rest, a smorgasbord of intellectual dumplings Enlivened by the characters' neverending grumblings There's a hypocritical romantic Whose psychology tends to the frantic And another guy who wants a revolution Whose ideas were borderline offensive where they weren't lilliputian There's a hoity-toity mademoiselle And a long debate that takes place in Hell Outrageous opinions are bandied around Shaw's firecracker paradoxes often astound But it's okay, nobody in this play gets hurt And the revolutionary end up happily married (spoiler alert)