Widowers' Houses: A Question of Genre

Abstract

IT IS F AIRL Y OBVIOUS that one of Shaw's dramatic strategies consists of thwarting audiences' expectations. "Never mislead an audience, was an old rule," says Shaw in The Quintessence of Ibsenism. "But the new school will trick the spectator into forming a meanly false judgment, and then convict him of it in the next act, often to his grievous mortification." A member of the new school, Shaw employs such strategies in his treatment of genre.