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A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan"
A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan"
A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan"
Ebook41 pages27 minutes

A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 3, 2016
ISBN9781535836968
A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan"

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    A Study Guide for Bertolt Brecht's "The Good Person (Woman) of Szechuan" - Gale

    1

    The Good Person of Szechwan

    Bertolt Brecht

    1943

    Introduction

    Bertolt Brecht’s parable The Good Person of Szechwan is one of the playwright’s major plays, popular and regularly produced because of its universal themes. Many critics believe the play is one of the best examples of Brecht’s epic theater because it challenges the audience. Although Brecht worked on the idea behind the play as early as the late 1920s, it was primarily written from 1939-43 in various European countries and the United States while in exile from his native Germany during World War II. Brecht tried to get Good Person produced in the United States in 1941, but the play did not make its debut until February 4, 1943, at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, in Zurich, Switzerland. The play was produced throughout Europe in the 1940s. The first English-language production of The Good Person of Szechwan in the United States took place in either Cleveland’s Eldred Theater or Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1948. Many American colleges and universities put on the play after this date. The Good Person of Szechwan was first produced professionally in New York City in late 1956, shortly after Brecht’s death.

    The play has continued to be performed throughout the world to the present day, in part because it seems to be a modern parable about a basic human issue: how to be a good person in an imperfect, money-centered, class-divided society. Because of this focus, the play does not seem to be intended to be a reflection of the actual social, cultural and political life in China at that time, although the play uses some conventions of Chinese theater and is set in China. Brecht’s original setting for the play was Berlin, and some recent productions have adapted the story to reflect the time and location of production. As John Fuegi wrote in The Essential Brecht, The profound metaphysical question of why evil is permitted, indeed encouraged, in the world has seldom been asked with such force.

    Author Biography

    Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of a Catholic father, Friedrich Brecht, who worked as a salesman for a paper factory, and a Protestant mother, Sofie. Brecht grew up in a middle-class household, and was precociously intelligent in school. He began writing poems while still in secondary school and had several published by 1914. By the time Brecht graduated, he was also interested in the theatre. Instead of continuing on this path, however, he studied science and

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