Morality of Mrs. Dulska A Play by Gabriela Zapolska

Born during the tumultuous one-hundred-year division of Poland by Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921) was an actor, journalist, and playwright who wrote over thirty plays in her lifetime. In her best-known work, "The Morality of Mrs. Dulska," a tyrannical landlady harasses, exploits, and even prostitutes the eccentric cast of tenants who occupy her stone tenement building. The petty-bourgeois tragicomedy that ensues is regarded as a landmark of early modernist Polish drama. A cross between Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Patricia Routledge's Hyacinth Bucket, Mrs. Dulska keeps her purse strings tightly drawn and shows no compassion towards the sad plights of her lodgers--until she is forced to come to terms with her own possessive love for her son. Now available for the first time in an English-language edition that firmly situates the play in the context of its performance history, Zapolska's incisive play is an uncompromising look at gender, class, and relationships in fin-de-siecle Poland.Zapolska, Gabriela is the author of 'Morality of Mrs. Dulska A Play by Gabriela Zapolska', published 2007 under ISBN 9781841501666 and ISBN 1841501662.