You Never Can Tell

“You Never Can Tell” is a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.


The play is set in a seaside town and tells the story of Mrs. Clandon and her three children, Dolly, Phillip, and Gloria, who have just returned to England after an eighteen-year stay in Madeira. The children have no idea who their father is and, through a comedy of errors, end up inviting him to a family lunch. It was published as a part of Plays Pleasant, which also included Arms and the Man, Candida, and The Man of Destiny. Shaw titled the volume Plays Pleasant in order to contrast it with his first book of plays, Plays Unpleasant.