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Description
Drama fans who like not only watching plays, but reading them as well, are in for a real treat with Jesse Lynch Williams' Why Marry. Originally written under the title And So They Were Married, the play brought Williams the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1918. Being a very dense play, with a lot to say about the issue brought up in the title, Why Marry? is still played in theaters today and it still gives a lot to contemplate about to readers and theater audiences as well.Why Marry? centers around three characters and their relationship to marriage. The three are siblings: John, a businessman, assuming the traditional role of the powerful husband married to an obedient wife; Jean, a woman who is perfect for the role of the social wife she has been raised to become and is just about to marry Rex, even if she is not very in love with him Helen, who has just been proposed to, but has turned down the proposal and is an independent working woman. The question in the title seems to be addressed to Helen and her co-worker, Ernest. They are in love, but Helen has numerous arguments against marriage and manages to convince Ernest, even though the man would be inclined to marry. The play focuses on issues of love and marriage in ways that make it very modern, relevant and very much enjoyable today as well. Though it is no longer scandalous for a man and a woman to live together without marriage, so one of the central conflicts of the play has lost some of its weight for contemporary readers and audiences, Williams raises a number of other issues pertaining to love, married life, as well as the role of church and state in marriage that are still relevant and worth contemplating and discussing.
Product details
Publication Date:
2016
Publisher:
IDB Productions
ISBN10:
1775424448
