Editor Leonard Conolly's new edition of Shaw's The Philanderer, published by Broadview Press, has all the features one would expect from such a scholarly work: a learned introduction featuring a thorough review of the production history and critical responses to the play, a careful presentation of the text, including all variants, lucid footnotes, useful appendices, and a full bibliography. And the introduction gives readers a bonus: a detailed, intriguing account of the controversies involving the composition of the play and its production history, particularly focusing on the two versions of Act 3.
Right from the start, the discussion becomes arrestingly personal, rather than drily academic. We learn that the opening scene of the play, with its combustible confrontation between Charteris and Grace versus Julia, was not invented for the play: it was borrowed from life, specifically an incident in which Shaw and actress Florence Farr, in the midst of...
