You never know
You never know is a drama in four acts by George Bernard Shaw (original: You Never Can Tell , previous translation under the title The Lost Father ). The comedy was born in 1895 in London and is one of the Erquicklichen pieces ( Plays Pleasant ) that Shaw published 1898th
First performance: November 26th, 1899 at the Royalty Theater , London .
Playing time: approx. 2 hours
Place and time of the action: An English seaside resort in the late 19th century.
content
Successful author and suffragette Margaret Clandon is returning to England with her children Gloria, Dolly and Philipp, which she left 18 years ago. In the Seehotel they can enjoy themselves, looked after by the head waiter. Mrs. Clandon not only meets her old comrade, friend and lawyer McComas there, she also meets, somewhat surprisingly, her abandoned husband, the father of her children. This reunion and getting to know each other takes place under bizarre circumstances first in a dental practice and later over a completely messed up lunch. With the parents, the encounter opens old, unhealed wounds on both sides. The children react to the meeting sometimes with blunt cheek and serenity, sometimes seriously and very directly. Ultimately, however, they realize that, in addition to the modern mother, the emotional father is also right in many things. The eldest daughter, Gloria, eventually falls in love with the charming but penniless dentist Dr. Valentine. In the war of the sexes, the two pull out all the stops and, to the horror of both parents, end up in each other's arms.
Emergence
In 1895 Shaw wanted to give up his work as a playwright . As a theater reviewer, however, he remained confronted with the undemanding offerings of the London stages and tried again with a counterpart. Shaw began a comedy in July 1895, but put it aside a little later. He only resumed work in December and finished You never can tell in May 1896. A first production by the Haymarket Theater had to be stopped in 1897 during rehearsals because the actors declared the play unplayable. An attempt at rescue, which would have mainly affected the passages on the mode of action of love in the second act, was rejected by Shaw: Otherwise there would have been only a farce that he actually wanted to subvert. It was important to him to have written a serious counterpart to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest ( Bunbury ), whose witty jokes and puns seemed unbearable to him because they only amused him but didn't touch him.
Publication / premieres
In 1898 Shaw temporarily turned away from the theater business and published his previous dramas, including You Never Know , in book form. It was not until November 26, 1899 that the Stage Society performed the play in public for the first time at the Royal Theater in London, after a copyright performance at the Bijou Theater on March 23, 1898. The German-language premiere took place in Berlin in 1906 under the title The Lost Father .
Shaw about you never know
The thing is a poem and a document, a sermon and a festival, all rolled into one.
literature
- Bernard Shaw: The Devil's Disciple / You never know . Suhrkamp publishing house. ISBN 3-518-38352-3 .