5 stars because I enjoyed ‘Mary Rose’ so much that it eclipsed any other thoughts I had

'i'm youth, i'm joy, i'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg'

read peter pan and sobbed my way through when wendy grew up :'( usually skip the afterthought but i needed a good cry

will read the other plays in the future

I would LOVE to see any of these plays performed. J.M. Barrie did not disappoint.

This collection of plays by J.M.Barrie introduces us to his variable writings of staging in theatres. From Peter Pan and its sneak peek When Wendy Grew up: An Afterthought, The Admirable Crichton, What every Woman Knows, and Mary Rose. The plays are formed as friendly guides to the overall experience of theatricality for professonals and amateurs or in another case for critics and theatregoers, and readers and each play involves a mystery in deciding a clear cut definition of its genre.

First of all, the language is highly objective although there are direct references to subjectivity of the text or in other words the play script. That permanent objectivity of the texuality of the play emphasises that it is meant to be performed in order to delve deeper into the work. However, there are descriptive commentaries written in italics about the stage productions and the performance of the characters and their inner feelings and at the beginning of each act there is another overview of the events and the overall circumstances of the plot in a brief way which seems as an add-on. All in all that does not impact on the experience of reading, but does provide a firsthand guide to experience the play.

Another notable aspect of the plays is the ambiguous nature of their generic forms. Firstly, Peter Pan is of course a fantasy or a fantasy to realist play since it involves a comparison between imagination and realism of its events, but the tonal status of the play whether it is tragic or comic is questionable. Also, Mary Rose, which shares the qualities of fantasy with Peter Pan, but with a sense of ghost genre, is hardly decided as a comedy or a tragedy. The Admirable Crichton and What every Woman Knows are both political and social realistic satires, but mostly, they are comedies although the theme of abominable reality of truth sheds light on the tragedy of both plays.

Peter Pan and When Wendy Grew up: Afterthought 4/5 & 4/5

The Admirable Crichton 4/5

What every Woman Knows 2/5

Mary Rose 3/5

Star for the plot, star for the themes, star for the narration, star for characters, but all lack the literary language. (Peter Pan and its sneak peek, and the Admirable Crichton).

Mary Rose could have been competitive with Peter Pan, but the length and the unresolved mystery of the play and the lack of scenes of Mary Rose and what had happened to her made her incomplete not even with the sentimental ending.

What every Woman Knows is simply boring and unworthy of reading to be honest. 2/5

I was shocked to find that the Disney movie is so faithful to the play version of Peter Pan. Hook is (weirdly) the most faithful to the novel.

Edwardian weirdness, involuted fantasies about childhood and sex and death. Peter Pan is one of those texts reduced in valence by the many 20th Century hygienists (mainly Walt Disney but also other filmmakers and everyone else who's put it on at a theatre panto-style). Honestly quite an unsavoury thing, I think. Cruel. Which would be worse: never growing up or living forever?

Peter Pan is really handsome, but I didn't really understand the others plays, maybe my english is not so good.

Aa a father, I understand Hook better than ever. As the father of a young boy, I understand the whole play. Pure magic.

One of my favorite tropes is that of a character pursued by a mysterious, fell, inescapable force.

Decided to read the whole book and I'm glad I did - really enjoyed it.

Liked 'The Admirable Crichton' best of all - kind of reminded me of Downton Abbey.

'Mary Rose' was a bit creepy and more serious than the others.

Lots of funny bits, could imagine it playing out on stage.

Very prosey, bits of the stage directions read like an actual story text.

I didn’t realise I hated Mr Darling so much. And thee characters are super weird. But still a fun story from my childhood that I’ll probably always love.

I'm not a big fan of reading plays - after all, that's not their intended purpose, but Barrie uses a completely different style to any other playwrite I've come across, making this more accessible than most.

Pity the good playwright working at the time of one of the greats: to future generations, your work may be lost in the glare. To some extent, that's been the fate of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe—overshadowed by Shakespeare, although their period is so rich that they and many others get produced sometimes. Similarly, a handful of those fated to write during Shaw's long career would probably shine more brightly away from his light, among them John Galsworthy, Harley Granville-Barker, and J. M. Barrie. A double curse befell J. M. Barrie, who overshadowed himself with Peter Pan.

Of the three other full-length works contained in this volume, at least one seems stageworthy still: The Admirable Crichton, which conducts a social experiment on the theme "Circumstances alter cases" that was later more or less repeated by Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller. Another play, What Every Woman Knows, might hold the stage if, illustrating Barrie's own earlier theme, circumstances hadn't altered the way his portrait of marriage dynamics is likely to be received. But the third play, Mary Rose, is the most intriguing in biographical terms. Put simply, it's a ghost play that represents Barrie's attempt to fix something in his life and his mother's. I regret having missed a New York production of it, but an excellent account of this wistful, curious, and delicate play can be found in John Lahr's New Yorker review.