Heartbreak House
In a rambling country house built to resemble a ship, an aging inventor, his willful daughters, and a weekend’s worth of guests drift through flirtation, self-deception, and idle talk while the world outside moves toward catastrophe. Shaw wrote it during the First World War and modeled its mood on Chekhov, portraying a cultured, leisured class that has grown clever and charming yet utterly rudderless, unfit to steer the society it presides over. Beneath the drawing-room comedy runs a bleak warning about a civilization sleepwalking toward ruin, sealed by the sound of bombers overhead. Published in 1919, it counts among his most somber and haunting works. This free PDF and EPUB edition includes the complete play and Shaw’s preface.
About the Author
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irish playwright, critic, and socialist polemicist who became the leading English-language dramatist of his era. A co-founder of the Fabian Society, he used comedy to attack social hypocrisy and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
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