The Philanderer is a play by George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

.

It was written in 1893 but the strict British Censorship laws at the time meant that it was not produced on stage until 1902.

It is one of the three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898, alongside Widowers' Houses

Widowers' Houses

Widowers' Houses was the first play by Nobel Prize in literature winner George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It premièred on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society — a subscription club, formed to escape the Lord Chamberlain's Office...

and Mrs Warren's Profession

Mrs. Warren's Profession

Mrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie...

. The volume was written to raise awareness of social problems and criticize capitalist behaviour. The influence of Naturalist playwrights is evident by Shaw's constant reference to Ibsen in the play. The Naturalist theatre movement was a reaction to Melodrama, the Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

theatre tradition of the time.