Talk:The Good Person of Szechwan

Comment

The sentence:

Eventually Shen Te's role-playing is uncovered by the townspeople, and her personal trials climax as she is brought into court to face charges for her duplicity.

is incorrect. Only one person learns of her dual identities. Shui Ta is brought to court over the possible murder or illegal incarceration of Shen Te. 127 00:37, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

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"[Brecht was] living in temporary self-imposed political exile" - there's so much wrong with this sentence, I don't know where to start...

Can someone put a spoilers warning before the plot summary? MlleDiderot 01:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I know it's not easy to write a plot summary but I think this needs some work. The pilot Sun doesn't get a mention here. Nor does the baby that Shen Te is expecting by him and they are both at the absolute centre of the piece and what unravels 'Shui Ta'. The baby is the embodiment of Shen Te's absolutely normal - and natural - humanity. But in this world - it's her undoing... That's the dialectic at the heart of the piece.

The plot summary and the introduction need to take that into account. Charlesp 13:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's in great need of serious attention, yes. Care to have a go? If you do, I would recommend trying to distinguish between a neutral, objective description of the events of the plot, of which the synopsis ought to consist, and interpretation and analysis, which should come in a later section--that is to say, the synopsis should not be a Fabel.

DionysosProteus 14:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

What about Sun?

I think one of the key sub plots in this story is of the love she has for sun and how he uses this to her advantage. its a beautiful scene when the first meet him desperate and about to end his life and then they share their first kiss. and we are lead to think this is love, infact it is sun using her from the very start but i do think he likes her really but is to desperate to care. Adam Varey 19

The Good Person of Sichuan?

I'm wondering what the logic is of using the title of The Good Person of Szechwan? My understanding is that WP either uses the original title (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) or a translation into modern English, which in this case would be The Good Person of Sichuan. ('Szechwan' is a 19th-century, unorthodox spelling, popularized by a postal service.) --Kleinzach 00:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

WP, iirc, favors "the title best known to English speakers" which would be an actual translation of the play. I'm confused by footnote 4: "Sichuan ^ Variously spelt Setzuan, Szechuan, Szechwan or Sichuan in different published editions of the play." which I suppose means "published translations" (first ed. & Suhrkamp collected both have "Sezuan"). Didn't Brecht experiment with Sezuan vs. Setzuan? Somewhere someone (Bently maybe?) once claimed that bb preferred a misspelling as more 'epic' than a real placename; this might be fun to debunk... Dionysus, you removed the word "mythical", do you have the straight dope? Sparafucil (talk) 07:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sezuan was an old German pre-Pinyin spelling, see [1]. It wasn't a misspelling.--Kleinzach 07:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I knew about Sezuan; what about Setzuan? Sparafucil (talk) 08:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The Good Person of Szechwan is the translation in the standard critical edition of the plays of Brecht in English. See Bertolt Brecht for details. DionysosProteus (talk) 10:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

That bibliography would be a lot more useful if it listed contents and translators! Does the commentary have nothing to say on alternate German titles?Sparafucil (talk) 20:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I assume we are agreed that 'Szechwan' is an anachronism. So, what is the logic here in favour of using one? I don't really get it. Ironically Sichuan has a larger land area and population than present-day Germany. --Kleinzach 05:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... if the language I remember from The Apartment can be copied, we might say The Good Mensch of Szechwan... otherwise... "human-being" is a bit strange (though isn't "person" too?); perhaps the Romance translations lead the way who say The Good Soul of Szechwan.--93.135.37.249 (talk) 01:52, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Sichuan

Sichuan is not a city but a province. This should be mentioned. --188.99.140.215 (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Wang or Wong?

The name of the water boy appears in the article as Wang and as Wong. One of them must be chosen... I googled it and found both: 441.000 results for one of them, 448.000 for the other. So I didnt't edit the article... Betty VH (talk) 16:30, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

To do

Article currently needs:

• List of musical numbers
• More citations for productions and adaptations
• A note about Tony Kushner ’s version, currently mentioned in the article but without any context

Feel free to strike though these items once added. Morganfitzp (talk) 20:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I would add that the notes and references in this article are inter-mixed, while they should be separated. Moreover, some of what are functionally notes have references in them, and thus those references should each have their own reference entry, coming from the notes (and elsewhere, if applicable). (Current "references" 1 and 4 on the page are examples of what should be notes.) I’m picturing a setup like is seen in this example: Help:Explanatory notes#Footnotes with separate explanatory notes.

For now, I changed the section title from "Notes" to "References & notes" to indicate that that section contains both (mixed together), but once disentangled, they should have separate sections.

(As a note to anyone who is working on correcting this in the future: Wikipedia style guidelines state that the Notes section would immediately precede the References section when separate. Source is the highlighted (via URL) text here, in the "Citation types" section, "Short and full citations" subsection: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#:~:text=As before, the list of,full citations to the source. )

Phatmatt12188 (talk) 17:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)