MRS.WARREN'S PROFESSION

The play is a pure tragedy about a permanent and quite plain human problem; the problem is as plain and permanent, the tragedy is as proud and pure, as in OEDIPUS or MACBETH. — G.K. Chesterton, GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Completed in 1893, Shaw was forced to wait nine years before seeing his work on stage—in a private club. Its subject the Lord Chamberlain declared unsuitable for public performance. Mrs. Warren's profession is that of co-owner and operator of a string of brothels, a profession she has learned from the ground up. The tragedy reveals Mrs. Warren’s path to her seemingly successful present and the resulting emotional confrontation with her daughter, who has discovered the truth of her absentee mother’s past. The playwright’s focus, however, is the reality of Mrs. Warren’s story in the lives of thousands of English women who have chosen prostitution over poverty, abuse, hunger, and exploitation and danger in a dead-end factory job. MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION caused a sensation in 1905 when after a public performance in New York, its cast was arrested and the play was forced to close after one performance for violating city obscenity laws. Twenty years later it was finally performed in public in London.

Norma Jenckes, Ph.D. (Illinois), is Associate Professor of English, University of Cincinnati. Among her books are: Arms and the Man: A Facsimile of the holograph Manuscript (1981) and New Readings in American Drama (2002). She is the founding and continuing editor of American Drama and has published essays on Shaw, Albee, Miller, Williams, Wilson, Lawson, and Odets.