Candida by G. B. Shaw - Summary & Analysis

Short summary

• In the Shavian comedy Candida, the plot centres on a clergyman, Reverend James Mavor Morell, his wife Candida, and the young poet Eugene Marchbanks, who becomes the third point of the love triangle.
• Morell’s apparently secure marriage is shaken when Marchbanks, who idealises Candida, openly declares his love for her and attempts to “rescue” her from what he imagines is a dull domestic life.
• The situation seems typical of romantic drama but becomes strikingly unconventional when Candida, instead of eloping with the passionate poet, chooses to remain with her husband after a calm, rational “choice” scene.
• Shaw’s originality lies in the way this decision strips away romantic glamour and forces the audience to rethink its assumptions about passion, security, and strength in relationships.

Plot summary

Candida is set in the drawing room of Reverend James Mavor Morell, a popular Christian Socialist clergyman in the London suburbs in the 1890s. Morell enjoys a strong public reputation as an eloquent preacher and assumes his marriage to his charming wife, Candida, is perfectly secure. His young curate Lexy Mill and his efficient secretary Miss Proserpine Garnett admire him deeply and help with his busy parish work. ​

The play begins with Morell at work when his father‑in‑law, Mr Burgess, arrives. Burgess is a coarse, self‑satisfied businessman whose earlier exploitative labour practices had led Morell to denounce him, but he now claims to have improved and seeks reconciliation, mainly because socialists are fashionable and he wants respectability. This comic clash sketches the tension between Morell’s idealism and Burgess’s materialism.

​Candida returns from a short trip to London, bringing with her Eugene Marchbanks, a shy, sensitive young poet whom Morell once rescued from sleeping in a park. Eugene, the nephew of an earl, is intensely in love with Candida and horrified that she performs ordinary household chores like trimming lamps and running the home. He idealises her as a kind of goddess sacrificed to a dull domestic life and believes Morell is unworthy of her. ​

Left alone with Morell, Marchbanks impulsively confesses his love for Candida and insists she must be “saved” from her husband. Morell at first laughs it off as immature “calf love” but gradually realises that Eugene is serious and that his own complacency about Candida may be misplaced. Their argument becomes heated; Morell, normally gentle, is provoked almost to violence, and he orders Marchbanks out of the house. Candida, entering at this moment, insists that Eugene stay, sensing the tension between the two men.

​The triangle intensifies across domestic scenes that reveal Candida’s quiet authority. She manages her husband’s moods, Burgess’s vulgarity, Proserpine’s sharp tongue, and Marchbanks’s romantic outbursts with tact and humour. Eugene oscillates between exalting Candida and bitterly attacking Morell’s sermons and rhetoric as hollow substitutes for “reality, truth, freedom.” ​

Eventually, Marchbanks presses for a decision, urging Morell to call Candida and let her choose between them. Shaken and insecure, Morell agrees. Candida enters and, confronted with two men demanding her decision, wryly remarks that she seems to “belong” to one of them and invites each to “bid” for her. Morell offers his strength, honesty, industry, and public dignity; Marchbanks offers his “heart’s need” and a life of spiritual exaltation.

​Candida then calmly declares that she will choose “the weaker of the two.” To Marchbanks’s surprise and Morell’s anguish, it becomes clear that the weaker is not the frail poet but the confident clergyman, who secretly cannot live without her support. Marchbanks, capable of living without ordinary happiness in his solitary poetic world, accepts her choice and leaves quietly, keeping a “secret” in his heart. The play ends with Candida and Morell embracing, their marriage newly defined: she reveals that she has always made him “master” at home while actually sustaining him, exposing the real balance of power in their relationship. ​

Publication

Candida was written in 1894 and is a three‑act comedy by George Bernard Shaw. It was first published in 1898 in the volume Plays Pleasant, alongside Arms and the Man, You Never Can Tell, and The Man of Destiny. The time of the plot is also 1894, and the locale is London. Although composed early in Shaw’s career, Candida became one of his first major theatrical successes when it was staged in the early twentieth century, notably in the 1903 New York production that led to the phenomenon dubbed “Candidamania.” ​

Context

Candida belongs to Shaw’s early period and reflects his Fabian socialist politics and interest in challenging Victorian ideals. Written against the backdrop of late nineteenth‑century debates on Christian Socialism, women’s roles, and marriage, the play questions what a woman truly desires from her husband and what “strength” means in a relationship. Shaw had previously written the more aggressively critical Plays Unpleasant, attacking slum landlordism and prostitution, but Candida uses a seemingly gentle domestic situation to probe issues of gender, class, and moral hypocrisy. Its anti‑romantic approach helped establish Shaw as a leading modern dramatist. ​

Characters

Candida Morell

Intelligent, attractive, and in her early thirties, Candida is Morell’s wife and the emotional centre of the play. She manages people instinctively, balancing kindness with ironic insight, and ultimately chooses the “weaker” husband who needs her care.

Reverend James Mavor Morell

A Christian Socialist clergyman, Morell is admired as an eloquent preacher and believes his marriage is ideal. Confronted by Marchbanks’s love for Candida, he discovers his own dependence and emotional vulnerability. 

Eugene Marchbanks

An eighteen‑year‑old poet and nephew of an earl, Marchbanks is shy, hypersensitive, and intensely idealistic. He worships Candida and challenges Morell’s complacency, but in the end accepts that his spiritual love cannot claim her in ordinary life. 

Mr Burgess

Candida’s father, a coarse, prosperous businessman with a history of exploiting workers. He represents the self‑satisfied capitalist class and provides comic clashes with Morell’s socialist ideals.

Reverend Alexander “Lexy” Mill

Morell’s young, idealistic curate, who idolises his superior and echoes his political and religious views. Lexy adds light comedy and highlights Morell’s influence over younger clergy.

Miss Proserpine “Prossy” Garnett

Morell’s brisk, efficient secretary, from the lower middle class, with a sharp tongue and hidden affection for him. Her sarcasm and unrequited love expose both social tensions and the emotional undercurrents around Morell.

Candida by G. B. Shaw – Critical Commentary

Written in 1895, George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida appears in the collection Plays Pleasant and bears the suggestive subtitle “A Mystery”. Often described as a comedy, an anti‑romantic play, and a drama of ideas, it takes the familiar “eternal triangle” situation and uses it in an unconventional, intellectually challenging way. Shaw turns what looks like a simple domestic story into a vehicle for examining love, marriage, gender roles, and social convention in late Victorian society.

Shaw’s purpose and anti‑romantic stance

The play deliberately divests the story of sentimental clichés and “storybook” romance. Shaw uses wit and paradox to attack shallow romanticism and to expose the false ideals that cloud people’s judgment about love and marriage. He emerges as an iconoclastic dramatist, using comedy and lively dialogue to question the social and moral conventions that have long governed the institution of marriage. The result is a drama where ideas and arguments matter as much as feelings, and where rational insight repeatedly punctures romantic illusion.

Characters and the “eternal triangle”

Morell is a Christian Socialist clergyman, admired as an eloquent preacher and apparently proud of his happy married life. His moral earnestness and public advocacy of equality contrast sharply with his unconscious assumption that Candida needs his protection, a contradiction that Shaw uses to reveal the gap between preached ideals and private attitudes. Candida herself is the emotional and intellectual centre of the play: calm, perceptive, and quietly authoritative, she manages both men with a combination of irony, tenderness, and practical good sense. Marchbanks, the young poet, is an idealist whose intense, almost mystical love for Candida is sincere but naïve; he sees her as a suffering angel rather than as the capable, grounded woman she really is.

Shaw also uses names and minor figures suggestively. Burgess, Candida’s father, stands for the coarse, self‑satisfied business class, with its mercenary outlook and lack of refinement. Proserpine, Morell’s secretary, with her sharp tongue and shrewd comments, helps expose the hypocrisy of conventional morality and the limitations of male vanity. These characters, though not central to the triangle, deepen the social context and provide comic counterpoint to the main conflict.

Conflict and structure

The main conflict in Candida arises from the clash between romantic illusion and practical reality, especially in the scene where Candida is asked to “choose” between Morell and Marchbanks. Both men misunderstand their own strength and weakness: Morell is forced to confront his vulnerability and dependence on Candida, while Marchbanks discovers that his idealised love cannot claim her in the real world. This conflict builds gradually through conversation rather than through outward action, reflecting Shaw’s preference for intellectual drama over sensational plot.

There are also important minor conflicts. The quarrels between Morell and Burgess highlight the tension between socialist ideals and capitalist values. The brief exchanges between Marchbanks and Proserpine reveal the absurdities and double standards of respectable morality, especially regarding how men and women are allowed to express their feelings. These sub‑plots are technically important, because they mirror and illuminate the main triangle while keeping the tone lively and varied.

Candida’s choice and the theme of love

The play’s central moment comes when Candida is asked to decide which man needs her more. Instead of dramatising love as a purely passionate, bodily attraction, Shaw presents it as a complex mixture of emotional responsibility, economic reality, and moral insight. Candida ultimately chooses Morell, not simply for “financial security”, but because she recognises his emotional dependence on her and understands that Marchbanks belongs to a different, more solitary world of poetic idealism. Her decision shows intelligence, emotional maturity, and a refusal to be swept away by romantic rhetoric; rather than lacking courage, she quietly accepts the harder task of sustaining an imperfect but real marriage.

In this way, the play contrasts nobility of feeling with practical happiness without simplifying the issue. Marchbanks’ love is noble in its self‑sacrifice, but it cannot provide a workable life for Candida; Morell offers a flawed but shared existence, grounded in mutual need and everyday compromise. Shaw thereby overturns the conventional belief that a woman should always prefer the “stronger” or more dazzling man: Candida chooses the one who needs her help and with whom a real, if limited, life is possible. This reversal is a key element of the play’s anti‑romantic power.

Marriage, gender, and society

Candida offers a sharp critique of Victorian marriage and gender roles. On the surface, the social order places man as master and woman as dependant, and economic factors clearly shape the relationship. Yet the play steadily reveals that Candida, not Morell, holds the real emotional and practical power in the household; she chooses, manages, and protects, while the men compete in fantasies about her. Shaw thus exposes the tension between public ideology (male authority) and private reality (female strength and competence).

At the same time, the play suggests a new image of womanhood. Candida is neither a passive angel in the house nor a melodramatic rebel, but a composed, ironic, and self‑aware woman who insists on her right to choose her own path. Her disapproval of some of Morell’s sermons and her refusal to let either man romanticise her completely mark her as an early example of the modern, emancipated woman in drama.

Dialogue, exposition, and “mystery”

Shaw’s skill in exposition is evident in the opening scenes, which quickly establish Morell’s reputation as a brilliant preacher, introduce the key characters into a single room, and hint at the social and ideological tensions that will unfold. The dialogue is sparkling, witty, and argumentative, serving not only to entertain but also to advance Shaw’s ideas about love, class, and morality. Conversation, rather than spectacle, is the chief instrument of his dramatic art.

The subtitle “A Mystery” does not refer to a hidden plot twist in the detective‑story sense, but to the deeper mystery of human motives and emotional insight. Marchbanks leaves at the end, and much about his inner world remains unspoken, yet the true “mystery” lies in Candida’s vision of the two men and in the quiet complexity of her final choice. Shaw leaves some questions unresolved, encouraging readers and audiences to reflect on what love, strength, and sacrifice really mean in ordinary life.