Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read for October 2012!
The nominations will run for up to three days until October 4 or until five works have made the list.
Final voting in a new poll will begin by October 4, where the month's selection will be decided.
The category for this month is:
Plays
In order for a work to be included in the poll it needs four nominations - the original nomination plus three supporting.
Each participant has four nominations to use. You can nominate a new work for consideration or you can support (second, third or fourth) a work that has already been nominated by another person.
To nominate a work just post a message with your nomination. If you are the first to nominate a work, it's always nice to provide an abstract to the work so others may consider their level of interest.
What is literature for the purposes of this club? A superior work of lasting merit that enriches the mind. Often it is important, challenging, critically acclaimed. It may be from ancient times to today; it may be from anywhere in the world; it may be obscure or famous, short or long; it may be a story, a novel, a play, a poem, an essay or another written form. If you are unsure if a work would be considered literature, just ask!
The floor is now open!
*
Nominations through post 23:
Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw - Fully nominated
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill - Fully nominated
The Oresteia by Aeschylus - Fully nominated
The Country Wife by William Wycherley - Fully nominated
Spoiler:
In favour - issybird, fantasyfan, Bookworm_Girl, caleb72
A bawdy Restoration comedy.
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun. It is based on several plays by Molière, with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded: colloquial prose dialogue in place of Molière's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle, and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a rake's trick of pretending impotence in order to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life, especially the fascinating London men.
The scandalous trick and the frank language have for much of the play's history kept it off the stage and out of print. Between 1753 and 1924, The Country Wife was considered too outrageous to be performed at all and was replaced on the stage by David Garrick's cleaned-up and bland version The Country Girl, now a forgotten curiosity. The original play is again a stage favourite today, and is also acclaimed by academic critics, who praise its linguistic energy, sharp social satire, and openness to different interpretations.
Free ebooks available.
The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky - 3
Śakuntalā by Kālidāsa - 2
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello - 2