Heartbreak House

"Heartbreak House" is George Bernard Shaw's 1919 drama that is the story of Mazzini Dunn and his employer, Alfred Mangan, who is about to marry Mazzini's daughter. In these two characters Shaw draws a sharp contrast between the realist Mangan and the idealist Dunn, a contrast that Shaw uses to express the idea that a cultured and leisured Europe was in his opinion drifting towards destruction. A critical commentary of the European upper class is at the heart of this tragic dramatic work.