Talk:Heartbreak House
 | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
The metaphor as the ship-like house for the European people is very clear and almost definitely intended.
Comment
[edit]The article 'plays the subtext' to the exclusion of the play itself. Clearly the eponymous house is meant to be England (i.e. Britain); this is more or less stated. Shaw is almost openly writing a cod-Russian play, in which - for instance - the Cherry Orchard might stand for Russia.
But who says that it opens on the eve of the First World War? It is odder than that. There is no suggestion that it is not peacetime until the last Act, when an air-raid suddenly occurs, which the characters neither expect nor are surprised by!