1911 Vintage Hardcover Published by Brentano's New York Three Plays from George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. presents: The Doctor's Dilemma The Doctor's Dilemma is a play by George Bernard Shaw first staged in 1906. In the play a number of dilemmas crop up, of which the main one is that of a doctor who has developed a new cure for tuberculosis, but has only enough of it for one patient. He then has to choose which patient he is going to give it to: a kindly poor medical colleague, or an extremely gifted but also very unpleasant young artist with a young and vivacious wife with whom the doctor is somewhat in love, which makes it even harder for the doctor to separate his motives for the decision. The extensive preface to the play points out that there is another dilemma: poor doctors are easily tempted to perform costly but useless (and in the best case harmless) operations or treatments on their patients for personal gain. "Can this man make better use of his leg than I of fifty pounds?" This was reportedly inspired by the behaviour of a prominent Ear Nose and Throat specialist in London who had developed a simple and harmless operation to remove the uvula. This did not benefit any of his patients but made the surgeon a great deal of money. The play also mentions (then) new developments in the germ theory of disease, namely opsonins, and included socialist and anti-vivisectionist viewpoints. Specifically, it could be considered as advocating a National Health Service, such as was created in Britain four decades later - since a doctor who is employed by the state and gets a fixed salary for treating whoever needs medical attention would not face the dilemma discussed in the foreword. The theme of the play remains current: in any time, there will be treatments that are so scarce or costly that some people can have them while others cannot. Who is to decide, and on which grounds is the decision to be taken? and Getting Married Getting Married is a play by George Bernard Shaw. First performed in 1908, it features a cast of family members who gather together for a marriage. The play analyses and satirises the status of marriage in Shaw's day, with a particular focus on the necessity of liberalising divorce laws. and The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet (1909) Hardcover with normal age discoloration. Binding solid.

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