Heartbreak House

Heartbreak House Summary

Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw is a tragicomic indictment of British society on the eve of World War I. Styled after Chekhov’s country-house dramas, it paints a decadent, disoriented upper class entertaining itself while the world teeters toward catastrophe. Shaw’s wit exposes social decay and moral inertia with chilling clarity.

eBook download options

Format	Price	Download
azw3	Free
Mobi	Free
Epub	Free
pdf	Free

Heartbreak House Excerpt

Short Summary: A house adrift, its inhabitants charming and lost. Shaw critiques the upper class with Chekhovian grace—and unflinching judgment.

"This is not a house, but a ship. And the captain’s asleep."

At Captain Shotover’s estate, eccentrics gather to talk, flirt, philosophize, and ignore the world’s tremors. Young Ellie Dunn enters seeking love or liberation, only to find a society riddled with contradictions and comfortable decay. Around her spin bohemians, intellectuals, and idle dreamers—Shaw’s stand-ins for a society awaiting disaster without ever waking up.

Filled with paradoxes and provocations, Heartbreak House combines farce and fatalism. Shaw dissects British complacency and the failure of intellect to act, exposing a class structure unable or unwilling to steer the ship of state.

The play’s philosophical edge is tempered by theatrical brilliance—characters speak in dazzling exchanges, filled with ironic reversals and sudden epiphanies. Yet beneath the comedy is foreboding. War looms. And no one at the party seems to care—or notice.

In this late work, Shaw turns from revolution to reckoning, offering a haunting satire of a civilization content to entertain itself while the lights go out.