Man and Superman

Overview

About two hundred and eighty pages, George Bernard Shaw’s comedy in four acts, first performed in 1903, with a preface, a dream interlude and an appended handbook. John Tanner, a rich revolutionary who has written a book on the Life Force, is made guardian of Ann Whitefield and flees to Spain when he realises she means to marry him; she pursues and catches him.

The third act, often played on its own as Don Juan in Hell, is a long debate among Don Juan, Doña Ana, the Statue and the Devil about whether life is going anywhere and what the superman would be. The Revolutionist’s Handbook follows.

What happens

Tanner’s guardianship of Ann. John Tanner, a rich revolutionary and author of a book on the Life Force, is made guardian of Ann Whitefield, an arrangement that will soon prove genuinely inconvenient to his own theoretical independence.

Tanner’s flight to Spain. Tanner flees to Spain upon realizing that Ann intends to marry him, an attempt to escape romantic and biological pursuit through simple physical distance and evasion.

Ann’s successful pursuit. Ann pursues Tanner to Spain and successfully catches him there, demonstrating the Life Force’s genuine power over individual will and theoretical resistance regardless of Tanner’s own considerable intellectual conviction.

The Don Juan in Hell debate. The third act stages an extended dream debate among Don Juan, Doña Ana, the Statue and the Devil, addressing directly whether life is going anywhere and what the superman would actually be.

Philosophical concerns given voice. This debate gives the play’s underlying philosophical concerns direct dramatic expression, characters explicitly arguing positions the surrounding comic plot only dramatizes indirectly through action and character.

The Revolutionist’s Handbook. The Revolutionist’s Handbook follows the main dramatic action, extending Shaw’s political and social thinking beyond the theatrical frame entirely into direct authorial commentary and argument.

How to read it

Read Ann Whitefield’s active pursuit and eventual capture of John Tanner as inverting conventional courtship dynamics with genuine comic force, the supposedly revolutionary theorist of the Life Force finding himself its object rather than its master.

Pay close attention to the third act’s extended debate among Don Juan, Doña Ana, the Statue and the Devil; this gives the play’s underlying philosophical concerns direct dramatic voice, characters explicitly arguing about life’s direction and the superman’s nature.

Notice how Tanner’s flight to Spain, followed by Ann’s successful capture, stages the Life Force as genuinely more powerful than individual will, biological purpose operating through and ultimately overriding personal theoretical resistance.

Consider how the Revolutionist’s Handbook appended after the main action extends Shaw’s political and social thinking beyond the dramatic frame, giving readers direct access to positions the play itself only dramatizes indirectly through plot.

This play pairs naturally with Major Barbara: both stage a Shavian theorist confronting a force, biological instinct here, economic reality there, that proves considerably more powerful than the character’s own confident intellectual system.

Questions it raises

• Does Ann’s successful pursuit and capture of Tanner successfully invert conventional courtship dynamics in a way that illuminates something genuine about biological purpose overriding individual will, or does this comic inversion primarily serve entertainment rather than serious philosophical argument?
• How does the Don Juan in Hell debate relate to and illuminate the surrounding comic plot? Does this philosophically dense interlude successfully integrate with the more conventional romantic comedy framing it, or does it feel like a separate, self-contained work?
• What does the Life Force concept accomplish as explanatory framework for Tanner and Ann’s relationship? Does treating their romance as biological purpose operating through individual characters offer genuine insight, or does it risk reducing romantic choice to deterministic mechanism?
• How should a reader weigh the Revolutionist’s Handbook against the preceding dramatic action? Does this appended nondramatic material clarify or potentially distort how audiences should understand the play’s central concerns as originally dramatized?
• Given that this play combines comedy, philosophical debate and political handbook within a single work, what does this unusual generic combination suggest about Shaw’s broader ambitions for what dramatic form could actually accomplish beyond conventional entertainment?
• What does this play’s continued relevance to discussions of gender dynamics and evolutionary purpose suggest about the durability of Shaw’s specific comic inversion? Does treating courtship as biological pursuit still offer useful satirical resources for contemporary audiences?