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La sorpresa
Esta obra teatral de Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) se escribió en 1930, pero ni se publicó ni se representó, quizá para hacer honor a su nombre también póstumamente. La sorpresa, efectivamente, tiene la virtud de pillarnos siempre desprevenidos. Por una parte, confirma que Chesterton era también lo que no sospechábamos ni nosotros ni é un autor de teatro. Al sumarse a Magia y a El juicio del doctor Johnson configura una trilogía teatral digna de consideración. Por otra parte, la obra misma es una catarata de sorpresas encadenadas, no sólo en la trama, hecha de volutas que nos ganan la espalda a cada momento, sino en la intención. De la mera diversión a la verdadera meta, que es la Teología, La sorpresa pasa por el metateatro, la metapoesía, la metacrítica y la metafísica. Todas son metas volantes, porque el vuelo de esta pequeña obra parece no tener fin.
132 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
G.K. Chesterton
3,932 books5,993 followersGilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.
Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 23, 2020
Surprise by Chesterton was surprising. I thought about spoiling it, but I’ll leave that for the thesis. For now, I’ll outline a few brief features that make this posthumous play rather brilliant and something ripe for proper adaptation.
He, in his play-within-a-play, manages to write a story in which (1) all the characters do only goodness and no act of villainy, (2) no evil characters or villains exist, (3) and every character is BOTH surprised AND gets exactly what they most deeply wanted. The author in the story said he did this as a bet and, knowing GK and Shaw’s relationship, it’s likely that the bet was real.
In his attempt to “out Pirandello Pirandello” he succeeds. I can’t go much beyond that, but it’s a clear reversal of Six Characters in Search of an Author and plays directly into both my methodology for Bell Hammers as well as my thesis. I need to get the Dorothy Sayers introduction version from NYPL once COVID stops and it opens up: I'm sure this and The Mind of the Maker interplay if The Poetics of Personification is any indication.
He, in his play-within-a-play, manages to write a story in which (1) all the characters do only goodness and no act of villainy, (2) no evil characters or villains exist, (3) and every character is BOTH surprised AND gets exactly what they most deeply wanted. The author in the story said he did this as a bet and, knowing GK and Shaw’s relationship, it’s likely that the bet was real.
In his attempt to “out Pirandello Pirandello” he succeeds. I can’t go much beyond that, but it’s a clear reversal of Six Characters in Search of an Author and plays directly into both my methodology for Bell Hammers as well as my thesis. I need to get the Dorothy Sayers introduction version from NYPL once COVID stops and it opens up: I'm sure this and The Mind of the Maker interplay if The Poetics of Personification is any indication.
December 25, 2023
No man has ever worked a miracle. The atheists are often right. It is God who works miracles.
I really must read everything Chesterton has written, and it is quite possible that he is my favorite author of all time. & If you have the chance, you should read plays and poems aloud with other people; it is truly the best way to experience them.
Obedience. The most thrilling word in the world; a very thunderclap of a word. Why do all these fools fancy that the soul is only free when it disagrees with the common command? Even the mobs who rise to burn and destroy owe all their grandeur and terror, and a sort of authority, not to their anger but to their agreement. Why should mere disagreement make us feel free?... Do you suppose that nuns are unhappy? I never see them pass, silent and hooded, through their quiet cloisters but I have a vision: a vast vision of Amazons, wilder than any heathen Valkyrs, riders rushing into battle; a charge of chivalry going all one way, and every rider as free as Joan of Arc; galloping, galloping to God.
Chesterton's endings always make me pause, but I think I like that. Go read this play! And everything Chesterton ever wrote. Thank me later.
I have just drunk wine as was never drunk since the feast of Cana... the wine of surprise. Only God could work such a miracle. I never drank that at any banquet or in any tavern; for there I was expecting wine. I never drank it till this night, when I was stunned, blinded, in the black darkness, desperate, believing myself buried alive. But thou hast kept the good wine until now.
December 22, 2018
This is an unusual play, though perhaps not unusual for Chesterton. An over-arching allegory, "The Surprise" is really more of two plays, or a play within a play within a play. In it Chesterton explores original sin and the human will using memorable, colorful characters. After the bizarre and unexpected ending, I'll have to give this another read (or see it performed) to fully grasp what Chesterton is doing with the characters and dialogue throughout it. It's ultimately a demonstration of why God incarnated Himself and came into our own story.
April 30, 2014
The fact that life is magic and tragic…the incarnation was/ is the only way we can be saved... from ourselves as well as our own "good intentions
November 4, 2022
The Surprise begins with a chance meeting between a Franciscan Friar and an Author (we are never told their names). The Author writes plays for a troupe of life-size puppets that he has ingeniously equipped with rather spectacular clockwork innards--ingenious because these remarkable machines, which he calls marionettes without strings, emulate human beings uncannily when they are wound up. He recognizes the Friar as a particularly pious and noteworthy man, one who has been known to perform miracles. (The Friar corrects him: only God performs miracles; he is merely the vessel.)
It turns out that the Author desires a miracle: he wants life for his puppets. He lets the Friar see his play, which is an entrancing comic melodrama about the beautiful and intelligent Princess Christina and a vagabond poet named Oliver who teaches her that what her subjects most want is surprise. Christina learns Oliver's lesson well, and she orchestrates a series of unforeseen events that leave both princess and poet, along with all of the other characters in the tale, entirely happy.
The Author explains, once the little production is through, that he wrote this play in response to a challenge--that it not only contains no villainous characters, but also not one villainous action. Everything that everyone does comes from an impulse to do good, to serve and satisfy others.
The question that Chesterton then poses is this: What will happen when the Author gets his wish? Will the results of this creation miracle be so different from the results of the first one? The answer won't necessarily surprise you, but the route to it--and the play's ultimate conclusion--probably will. And you will likely find food for contemplation as well: Chesterton considers big issues in The Surprise, like the tension between self-interest and fellowship, and the concomitant conflict between virtue and evil.
It turns out that the Author desires a miracle: he wants life for his puppets. He lets the Friar see his play, which is an entrancing comic melodrama about the beautiful and intelligent Princess Christina and a vagabond poet named Oliver who teaches her that what her subjects most want is surprise. Christina learns Oliver's lesson well, and she orchestrates a series of unforeseen events that leave both princess and poet, along with all of the other characters in the tale, entirely happy.
The Author explains, once the little production is through, that he wrote this play in response to a challenge--that it not only contains no villainous characters, but also not one villainous action. Everything that everyone does comes from an impulse to do good, to serve and satisfy others.
The question that Chesterton then poses is this: What will happen when the Author gets his wish? Will the results of this creation miracle be so different from the results of the first one? The answer won't necessarily surprise you, but the route to it--and the play's ultimate conclusion--probably will. And you will likely find food for contemplation as well: Chesterton considers big issues in The Surprise, like the tension between self-interest and fellowship, and the concomitant conflict between virtue and evil.
May 15, 2023
Una pequeña obra maestra, con múltiples giros ("sorpresas") y un trasfondo que hace pensar al lector. El argumento es aparentemente sencillo, pero con varias capas de lectura y manteniendo en todo momento la atención del espectador. La acción se sucede con rapidez, se lee de un tirón y, como todo lo de Chesterton, está muy bien escrito. La Sorpresa se estrenó por primera vez el 17 de mayo de 2019 en español, en la madrileña Sala Arapiles. No quiero dar más detalles sobre la misma para no estropear la lectura; sólo reproduciré aquí las palabras del autor del prólogo, Enrique García-Máiquez:
"En las pequeñas dimensiones de esta obra hay metateatro, metapoesía, metacrítica y metafísica, además de la verdadera meta, que es la Teología. Que todo eso comparezca, y sin forzar la mano, con una naturalidad de cuento de hadas, en una obra de tan pocas páginas y tan pocas pretensiones aparentes, que el autor, tras escribir, arrinconó y que no se publicó hasta después de su muerte, sólo nos habla, si nos fijamos bien, del tamaño desmesurado y creciente del talento chestertoniano."
Ante esto, uno no puede más que lamentar que el autor no haya sido más prolífico, dramatúrgicamente hablando.
"En las pequeñas dimensiones de esta obra hay metateatro, metapoesía, metacrítica y metafísica, además de la verdadera meta, que es la Teología. Que todo eso comparezca, y sin forzar la mano, con una naturalidad de cuento de hadas, en una obra de tan pocas páginas y tan pocas pretensiones aparentes, que el autor, tras escribir, arrinconó y que no se publicó hasta después de su muerte, sólo nos habla, si nos fijamos bien, del tamaño desmesurado y creciente del talento chestertoniano."
Ante esto, uno no puede más que lamentar que el autor no haya sido más prolífico, dramatúrgicamente hablando.
July 4, 2018
Chesterton no decepciona, "La Sorpresa" es una obra teatral sobre la naturaleza humana, lo cual no sugeriría ninguna sorpresa para nosotros, pero sí para su "autor". En verdad me llevé una gran sorpresa en el final al puro estilo de este gran autor inglés sabe dar.
April 21, 2025
No es nada malo. Muy apologético.
September 23, 2018
This was a beautiful, funny, romantic, and heartwarming play. While short, is is surprisingly deep, and you will find yourself coming back to the same passages over and over, reading and rereading, until you feel you have gleaned all there is to know from the passage, only to find there is so much more still to discover.
One of the greatest plays I've ever read. And one that is better each time you experience it. Paradoxically, the surprises inside lose none of their luster with repeated experience.
One of the greatest plays I've ever read. And one that is better each time you experience it. Paradoxically, the surprises inside lose none of their luster with repeated experience.
September 20, 2012
Loved this book. Makes you think. :)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews