Reviews

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“Stafford focuses a sensitive eye on nine of Shaw’s dramas… to show how the dramatist strategically deployed gardens and libraries to convey meaning in a visual and compelling manner.”
--Choice

Stafford’s analysis of the library-garden motif provides insight not only into individual plays but also into Shaw’s development as a playwright. . . .A valuable contribution to Shaw studies and to the scholarship of modern drama through its thoughtful exploration of the convergences, divergences, and resonances of a well-chosen pair of settings.
--Text & Presentation

Will provide valuable illumination to many readers. . . .[Stafford] recognizes and establishes firmly that these plays do need to be approached and discussed as theatrical works and judged accordingly.
--English Literature in Transition

Stafford traces the playwright’s adept and varied deployment of two recurrent settings, the garden and the library, through nine major plays that span three decades, to demonstrate how meaningfully Shaw intertwines stage environment with the verbal pyrotechnics and discussion-based dramatic style for which he is so well known. Stafford approaches the plays as both literary and performance texts and deftly illustrates how Shaw employs these two settings in his campaigns against (among other things) capitalism and romantic idealism
--Comparative Drama

Takes an interesting approach to Shaw’s plays, arguing that libraries and gardens stand for more than background and are metaphors for the drama.
--Books Ireland

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