Bernard Shaw defines his play: ‘Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultered,leisured Europe before the war.’

“Heartbreak House”,perhaps Shaw’s richest and saddest play about the follies of humanity,as rehearsed by the British upper classes in the shivery days before World Ward I.The main challenge of the play is that heartbreak has become a focuse for analysis of the causes of the first world war and the condition of England.

The play is about war,even though the war is never mentioned and never makes its presence felt.He sets the play not in the world of government ministers ,but among the educated,cultered,leisure classes,what one idealistic character admiringly identifies as “very charmingly people,most advanced,unprejudiced,frank,humane,unconventional,democratic,free-thinking and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people.”

The characters in “Heartbreak House” flirt and pose,but they are hunted,furtive figures too,uneasily aware of the world’s ugliness and their own idle complicity in the pervasive moral darkness. Hesione confesses to Ellie,”I am just wondering how much longer I can stand living in this cruel,damnable world.”

The direct focus of the play on the war and culture includes the important initial emphasis that the people of “Heartbreak House” ‘wished to realize their favourite fictions and poems in their lives’. The corresponding passage in the play is Mrs. Hushabye’s reaction to Ellie Dunn’s romance with Marcus Darnley: “How much better than the happiest dream!... No more wishing one had an interesting book to read,because life is so much happier than any book!” The development of the argument conflates the idea of a catastrophic failure of European culture with the war in the condition of England.This means that the ‘talkers’ of the play are active propagandists of the war.

The war is seen as an occasion of social and cultural change which will lead to the rise of socialist civilization.”Heartbreak House is an expression of well established and continued commitment to a socialist understanding of history and civilization, including even the horror of the first world war.

Bernard Shaw uses a ship metaphor and employs nautical diction to depict the vulnerability of England on the verge of impending war: a notion. Neglected by its educated and cultered elite, is heading for disaster just like a foundering ship destined for the rocks. The play is a drama of a discordant family which undergoes a heartbreaking experience. Metaphorically ,it also portrays the ship of state in disarray and heading for catastrophe.

Bernard Shaw employed a lot of social problems of that period and capitalism is one of them. He does not mention it directly,but implies with the character of Boss Mangan. Alfred (Boss) Mangan, fifty-five, businessman, engaged to be married to Ellie Dunn, he confesses to her that he is not in fact a rich man. He is killed during the air raid when he hides in the captain’s cave.

What tantalizes about Heartbreak House is less what is depicted and debated than its odd undercurrents. Characters frequently fall asleep or are hypnotized. These are the references to witches, devils and sirens. At the end, the real sirens blare as mysterious bombs fall all around the house.

The other social problem mentioned by Shaw is liberalism. He uses the character, Mazzini Dunn, while criticizing liberalism.Mazzini Dunn, Ellie’s father, a little, earnest man no business sense at all. He has spent his life in poverty and fought all those years for liberty. Now he has resigned to his fate and has become the typical nineteenth century Liberal, the ineffectual good man.

Heartbreak House is an allegorical place belonging to a tradition of evil houses which descends through the nineteenth century from The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Faerie Queene. The house is revealed as a place of foolish disorder, perverse practices, spiritual disease, and demonic suffering. In addition,heartbreak is associated with childhood and childish fantasy. Lady Utterword says Heartbreak House is where she was a child, and she describes its disorder as childish, as if it is a place of adult childhood.

For example, at the end of Act Two Lady Utterword reduces Randall to tears and explains at length that his heartbreak is a condition in which he needs to be treated like a child who has been ‘naughty’, and is suffering from ‘nerves’, and needs ‘a good cry and a healty nervous shock’, and she says, “if you were a mother, you would understand.” There is a similar elaborate episode earlier in Act Two, when Mr. Mangan is woken out of his trance and begins to cry like a child, so that Mrs. Hushabye asks, “Have I broken your heart? I did not know you had one. How could it?”

The house symbolizes England and the characters symbolizes the England society of that period. So, Bernard Shaw consists an irony with ‘heartbreak’ to show the unawareness of the England society. The conversation which follows the revelation of Hector Hushabye is Marcus Darnley who is one of the most frequently quated passages in the play. Significantly, It is Mrs Hushabye who first says , “I thought you were going to be broken hearted,” which is followed after some time by Ellie’s choric comment, “I have a horrible fear that my heart is broken, but that heartbreak is not like what I thought it must be.”

The obvious comic irony is that, whereas Mrs Huahabye encourages her to cry, Ellie does not, and it seems that heartbreak makes her heartless , which is why she says that heartbreak is not what she expected.

Another main irony is that Mrs Hushabye says she wants to help, but embroils Ellie in further heartbreak; and at the end of Act One includes the revelation that Hector and Hesione are lacked in a stated of heartbreak which is more extreme version of Ellie’s. The Hushabyes share a vision of life as heartbreak in which love and desire are seen as ‘heaven’ and, in disillusionment , as ‘enchancing dream’, ‘confounded madness’, ‘diabolical… fascination’.

We can see another message given by the playwright in the play, this is the comparision of love with money. Hesione Hushabye has invited the good but penniless Ellie for a weekend in the country. Hesione is determined to prevent Ellie from giving her heart and hand to the boorish but rich businessman Boss Mangan. The plot dizzly turns on the question: Will Ellie marry for money? But Hesione’s plan does not work and Ellie concludes,”If I cannot have love, that is no reason why I sould have poverty.”

In the peculiar last scene the exhausted men and women greet the arrival of bombs as if they were lovely fireworks, or a burst of Beethoven, to borrow Hesione’s macabre metaphor. It is an unsettling and dispiriting image : well-groomed humanity greeting it’s own derstruction with an inviting smile. Shaw surely meant it to shock his countrymen into an awareness of the possibly consequences of a continued political and moral paralysis.

To sum up “Heartbreak House” is not only a comic play. Bernard Shaw reflects the shivery days in the eve of World War I. He criticizes the unawareness of the society. So, we see a lot of themes related with society such as capitalism, liberalism, money, and war. He tries to give messages to readers, not directly but with images, symbols, metaphors and irony.

SETTING The action takes place in Heartbreak House, in a room designed to recreate the interior of an old-fashioned ship where he has stored all his dynamite. It is revealed as a place of foolish disorder, spiritual disease, and demonic suffering. The play consisits of three acts. Act I and Act II take place in the house. Act III takes place in the garden of the house.

LANGUAGE The play has the characteristics of modern drama. As a characteristic of modernism, the language of the play is simple, not ornamental. The readers does not have any difficulty to understand the play although the play was written in 1917.For example; Ellie says to Mrs. Hushabye “There is something odd about this house, Hesione, and even about you. I do not know why I am talking to you so calmly. I have a horrible fear that my heart is broken, but heartbreak is not like what I thought it must be.”