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Bernard Shaw's Unproduced Melodrama: The Gadfly, or The Son of the Cardinal
- English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920
- ELT Press
- Volume 62, Number 4, 2019
- pp. 526-550
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
On 23 March 1898, Bernard Shaw arranged a "copyright performance" of a new play advertised as at the Victoria Hall in Bayswater. Typical for uncommercial exposure, the script was stapled between brown endpapers. Unlike another of his plays also "performed" then to protect the copyright, the delicious farce You Never Can Tell, the melodramatic The Gadfly then vanished from the English stage. He had been asked by Ethel Voynich to adapt her novel for a single, minimally advertised performance to secure it from exploitation by hack dramatists always on the prowl for such prey. This article offers a discussion of all that surrounds the writing of the play, with a close exegesis of the The Gadfly, or The Son of the Cardinal. [122 words]