Dan H. Laurence byl anglický profesor a literární poradce pro pozůstalost George Bernarda Shawa. Jeho celoživotní dílo spočívalo ve studiu Shawa, kompilaci jeho děl a psaní knih o něm. Laurence prioritizoval své bádání o Shawovi natolik, že opustil profesuru na New York University, aby se mohl věnovat rozsáhlému Shawovu archivu na Texaské univerzitě v Austinu. Jeho odbornost vnesla světlo do díla tohoto významného dramatika.
Slavná komedie o pěti dějstvích nese název podle pověsti o řeckém sochaři, jenž vytvořil sochu tak krásnou, že se do ní zamiloval a na bohyni Afrodité pro ni vyprosil řeč a život. Stala se předlohou slavného muzikálu My Fair Lady. 42. svazek edice D poprvé vychází česky včetně autorovy předmluvy a doslovu, který se věnuje dalším osudům hlavních postav hry.
'A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth' After the death of her father, Ann Whitefield becomes the joint ward of two men: the respectable Roebuck Ramsden and John Tanner, author of 'The Revolutionist's Handbook'. Believing marriage would prevent him from achieving his higher intellectual and political ambitions, Tanner is horrified to discover that Ann intends to marry him, and flees to Spain with the determined young woman in hot pursuit. The chase even leads them to the underworld, where the characters' alter egos discuss questions of human nature and philosophy in a lively debate in a scene often performed separately as 'Don Juan in Hell'. In Man and Superman, Shaw combined seriousness with comedy to create a satirical and buoyant exposé of the eternal struggle between the sexes. This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. This volume includes Shaw's Preface of 1903 and his appendix, 'The Revolutionist's Handbook', the cast list from the first production of Man and Superman and a list of his principal works.
In each of these fifteen short plays, Bernard Shaw displays an immense skill in achieving an immediate dramatic impact - a skill that he recognized as being greatly dependent on the talent of the actors and actresses with whom he worked. Though some of the sketches are slight, others offer short but intense scrutinies of the morality and sensibility of the age. Together they demonstrate a range of moods - comedy, satire, farce and social protest - through which the more familiar Shavian themes emerge, among them the inadequacies of the contemporary government and the "inflated" reputation enjoyed by Shakespeare.