Candida was written in 1894, first performed in 1897, and published by Grant Richards in 1898 as part of Plays Pleasant. It is the most intimate of Shaw’s major plays — a three-character drama set in a London parsonage over the course of a single evening — and it contains what Shaw himself considered one of his finest creations: the title character, Candida Morell, a clergyman’s wife who is simultaneously a conventional Victorian helpmeet and the most powerful person in the room.
The Reverend James Morell is a Christian Socialist clergyman — eloquent, popular, self-confident, and entirely unaware that his wife is the foundation on which his entire career and self-image rest. Into the Morells’ household comes Eugene Marchbanks, an eighteen-year-old poet, shy, unworldly, and passionately in love with Candida. Marchbanks forces a crisis by declaring his love in front of Morell, and Candida is compelled to choose between them.
Shaw’s dramatic masterstroke is the moment of choice. Morell, challenged, offers Candida “my strength, my honesty, my ability, my position.” Marchbanks offers “my weakness, my desolation, my heart’s need.” Candida chooses Morell — but her reason demolishes his self-confidence: she chooses the weaker of the two, because Morell is the one who needs her. Marchbanks, for all his apparent fragility, has the strength of his genius; he will survive without Candida. Morell, without his wife, would collapse.
The play has been read as both a celebration and a critique of marriage. Candida is the stronger partner — she manages the household, supports her husband’s career, and makes all the real decisions — but her strength operates within the constraints of a Victorian marriage in which she has no independent existence. She is powerful within the domestic sphere but has no life outside it. Whether this is a satisfying arrangement or a prison depends on how the play is performed, and directors have read it both ways.
Collecting Candida
First edition (Grant Richards, London, 1898): Published in Plays Pleasant. Green cloth.
Market values:
- First edition of Plays Pleasant: $80–$250
- Later separate editions: $5–$15