Book review -- By George Bernard Shaw MAJOR BARBARA February 2012 SPECIAL NOTE ON SPOILERS: This play was written in 1905 and set in 1906. I read Major Barbara in order to think it through and enter into some sort of dialogue with Shaw�s ideas. Thus these comments are not written as a review of something one has not yet seen or read. The comments below will assume that one has read the play and basically knows the text. If you have come across these notes and are not in that situation I would encourage you not to read further notes until you have first read the play itself. Set in 1906, we meet the Undershaft family, British upper class. The father, Undershaft, is the owner of England�s major munitions factory. He has been for years separated from his wife, Lady Britomart and doesn�t at all know his three, now grown, children, Stephen, Barbara and Sarah. Both the girls are involved with men they seem to plan to marry. Sarah is attached to Lomax, a lightweight but cheery fellow and Barbara is going to marry Cusins, seemingly a teacher of Greek.

The play, while set in the events within the Undershaft family, is really about the meaning of human existence, and the nature of individual action and morality. The driving force of the argument is Undershaft and his argument that his munitions work is the right path of human endeavor and that he is actually the humanitarian of the bunch. However, the play is named �Major Barbara� which suggests that Shaw, at least, seemed to think the dilemma of his daughter, Barbara, is more at the center of the play. She is �Major� as a title in the Salvation Army where she tries to help the poor and needy by both feeding them and saving their souls. The play is a debate on which of these two main views of human existence is to be preferred � a sort of Barbara-inspired religious view of human charity and seeking salvation, versus a much more radical individualist view that human beings themselves have to adapt to the reality of the human species, which means creating one�s own values and having the courage to live them out, facing, even, the view that human beings may not be very encouraging or humanistic, loving creatures � a view espoused by Barbara�s father. I would argue that neither of these views is Shaw�s view.

Rather, he uses both Barbara and Undershaft as dramatic persona to represent positions. Shaw�s own view is closer to Undershaft, but not in the dramatically excessive manner. Lady Britomart, a sophisticated rich woman, is much more a common figure of a rather obnoxious rich upper-class women of the time. She controls her house, space and children. Her son, Stephen, age 25, is �correct� and under mom. Sarah is to marry Charles Lomax but both of them are rather lightweight characters without much to contribute to the essence of the play. However �Major Barbara� and her fianc�, Adolphus Cusins are more important voices. The basic setting of the play � not its argument � is that Lady Britomart has summoned Undershaft to the manor home to ask for more money to help support the three �children,� now of age to marry, but her generous income allowance will not support the children in separate homes with families. Their father has not seen them in many years and doesn�t even quite remember how many of them there are.

On Undershaft�s side, he isn�t unwilling to give more support money to the family, but he will not take Stephen into his munitions business since a centuries long family tradition has the owner of the munitions plant to adopt a foundling to become the next own of the factory. He himself was such a foundling. In the meeting of father and children, there is an almost immediate attraction between Major Barbara and her father. Yet they appear so different. She is dedicated to the work of the Salvation Army, especially the feeding and care of the poor in order to lead them toward salvation. Undershaft believes each individual has a single proper goal in life � to have money enough to live as one wishes and to have power enough to protect that life. Actually Stephen sort of sums up the morality of most in his family including his sister Barbara: Stephen: �People may differ about matters of opinion, or even about religion; but how can they differ about right and wrong? Right is right; and wrong is wrong; and if a man cannot distinguish them properly, he is either a fool or a rascal: that�s all.� Undershaft finds that view na�ve and totally in error: �. . .

there is only one true morality for every man; but every man has not the same true morality.� He also sums up his aims in life: ��Money and gunpowder.� In another place he says: � . . . you must first acquire money enough for a decent life, and power enough to be your own master.� In another place he says: �. . . money and gunpowder. Freedom and power.� Undershaft first contributes to destroying Major Barbara�s belief that the Salvation Army�s �conversion� of sinners is an important work. As she takes her father to a visit to their works, the management is having a major problem with money. They come into this family group with the �good news� that a local man has stepped in to solve their financial problems with a huge gift, but it is conditioned on them raising an equal amount of money from other donors. While Barbara has already denounced her father�s work with munitions, the would-be donor has a business that is even more horrific to her � he brews alcoholic drinks, the primary reason so many of her people are ruined and come to the Army in the first place.

And on top of this her father immediately offers the second half the money, which DELIGHTS the leaders of the Salvation Army, but so disgusts Barbara that she breaks off all contact with the religion. The next visit is to the munitions� plant and it turns out to be a virtual utopian village. It is clean, neat, the workers are well-paid, and there are lovely schools, an art museum, health care, very decent wages and quite loyal and loving employees. Even Barbara cannot help being deeply impressed with the utopia her father�s money has created, despite its source, the creation of weapons of mass destruction. The genius in Shaw�s writing of the play is that while he sincerely critiques the religious views of Major Barbara, he is not personally embracing the quite radical views of Undershaft. Note one can�t consistently hold A below, and at the same time embrace B as some universal principle. It can, according to A, only be his own particular view. A. �. . . there is only one true morality for every man; but every man has not the same true morality.� B. He also sums up his aims in life: ��Money and gunpowder.� In another place he says: � . . .

you must first acquire money enough for a decent life, and power enough to be your own master.� G.K. Chesterton, in his 1909 �View of Major Barbara� also attacks Shaw�s view of God, claiming that the God he defines would �not be God to any who understand the concept of God.� However, he has a second argument claiming that Shaw�s notion that increased wealth and ease would create a much better world is mistaken. For Shaw, Chestertains maintains, �The evil is not ignorance or decadence or sin or pessimism; the evil is poverty.� Chesterton replies: �Major Barbara (the play) is not only apart from his faith but against his faith.� That�s the point I was making above. Shaw�s industrialist is quite the humanitarian in his utopian village and �his� people live decent material lives. But that�s not the radical individualism of morality which Undershaft also argues. Another author who has written on �Major Barbara� shares much of this view. Barbara Bellow Watson in �Sainthood for Millionaires� Modern Drama, Vol. II Dec. 1968. Pp.

227-244, claims that Shaw has Undershaft utter his defense of his utopian village as an ironic attack on capitalism�s benefits, and she notes a similarity to Jonathan Swift�s �A Modest Proposal.� � . . . an irony disguised to show that we may not accept the least of capitalism�s benefits without accepting the last of its depredations� � She claims the real aim to Shaw is to embrace � . . . Shaw�s secular religion of Creative Evolution, which is clearly related to his socialism.� A radical individualism. Note the important difference between the capitalist Utopia itself (which is not generalizable) and the potential universality of Shaw�s view of each person�s embracing his or her own morality. The latter is reminiscent of Plato�s view that �The unexamined life is not worth living.� But Shaw�s view goes further and comes fairly close to later 20th century Existentialism. The Existentialist is less interested, as Existentialist, in replacing capitalism or surviving than in choosing his or her own authenticity. Undershaft seems to need both the utopia of his capitalist village and claiming the universality of the need of the individual to choose his or her own personal morality.

The play is a delight to read. It is witty, funny, troublesome, aggravating, but always thoughtful and challenging. I think it�s not only worth reading, but worth seriously engaging as a dialogue on morality. Major Barbara Written by George Bernard Shaw Author George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) Shaw first earned a literary living as a critic. His main talent, however, was for writing scripts and he wrote more than 60 plays during his lifetime. Nearly all his works deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care and class privilege. He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion. PlayMajor Barbara 'Major Barbara' was written and first produced as a play in 1905. The plot centres around an Officer of The Salvation Army; Major Barbara Undershaft when she becomes disillusioned following her section accepting money from an armaments manufacturer and a whisky distiller. The situation is further complicated when we find out that the arms manufacturer in question is also her father. She eventually decides that bringing a message of salvation to people who have plenty will be more fulfilling and genuine than converting the starving in return for bread. Although Barbara initially regards the Salvation Army's acceptance of Undershaft's money as hypocrisy, Shaw did not intend that it should be thought so by the audience. Shaw wrote a preface for the play's publication, in which he derided the idea that charities should only take money from "morally pure" sources.

He pointed out that donations could always be used for good, whatever their provenance, and he quoted a Salvation Army officer, "they would take money from the devil himself and be only too glad to get it out of his hands and into God's". The Bench Production This play was staged at Havant Arts Centre, East Street Havant - Bench Theatre's home since 1977. The company originally staged this play in 1972 at the original Bench Theatre building in West Street , also under the direction of John Scadding. On each Saturday of the run, the company also staged two matinee performances of Old King Cole, by Ken Campbell . George Bernard Shaw - Modernism Lab Essays George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw. Source: BBC News (bbc.co.uk). Wiki Articles by Pericles Lewis The Irish-born playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the leading playwright of modern Britain, wrote frankly and satirically on political and social topics such as class, war, feminism, and the Salvation Army, in plays such as Arms and the Man (1894), Major Barbara ( 1905 ), and, most famously, Pygmalion ( 1913 ).

His work introduced the theater of ideas to the English stage; where Ibsen turned melodrama into naturalism, Shaw parodied melodrama in order to develop an intellectual comedy of manners. Like Wilde , Shaw took hypocrisy as one of his major themes. His best works combined Wilde’s wit and Ibsen’s seriousness of purpose, seeking always to reveal the bogus values of various segments of English society. Shaw left Ireland for England as a young man in 1876 and, like many other modern dramatists, wrote novels and criticism before turning to the theater. The director of the Independent Theater in London, J.T. Grein, who had produced Ibsen’s Ghosts and Zola’s Therese Raquin (1867), encouraged Shaw to start writing plays when he was almost forty. His best early plays treat contemporary social issues humorously through the satirical use of love plots and melodrama.

Although their content challenges the ruling ideologies of the late Victorian period, their form is often, as Shaw put it, “pleasant.” For example, in Arms and the Man, set during a way between Bulgaria and Serbia, a Bulgarian girl falls in love with a cowardly Swiss mercenary, “her chocolate cream soldier,” who carries chocolate instead of ammunition and conveniently inherits a fortune during the denouement. The mercenary’s cowardice and straight talk about war do little to undermine the audience’s pleasure at the well-made plot. Similarly, in Major Barbara (1905) the conflict between the idealism of the inefficient charity and the realism of the benevolent arms manufacturer is resolved by a plot twist out of Wilde that draws on and at the same time parodies the well-made play. After the turn of the century, Shaw increasingly built his still rather conventional forms around a conflict of ideas. He frequently attached long prefaces to the printed version of his plays, which were often published before they had been performed; he also took to an extreme the modern tendency to print long narrative stage directions, by which the playwright tries to indicate how the play should be acted.

Compared with the work of the German expressionists or the French surrealists, Shaw’s major work seems very traditional. The two most important examples of Shaw’s more experimental theater are Man and Superman (1903) and Heartbreak House ( 1919 ). Shaw, who was a leader of the socialist Fabian society, was also an outspoken pacifist and critic of World War I, most notably in Common Sense about the War ( 1914 ). After the war, Shaw attempted some rather grandiose experiments in representing world history on the stage, including Back to Methuselah ( 1921 ) and St. Joan ( 1923 ), a theme taken up again by Brecht in his St. Joan of the Stockyards (1932). The plays tended to become more preachy and less dramatically compelling, but Shaw remained the most important modern British dramatist of his time and defined a uniquely English form of modern drama. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 . [1] ↑ This page has been adapted from Pericles Lewis's Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007), p.

44, 201-3. 5 years 2 months ago Hits: 1555 times Comments: 0 “What are your thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement?” This was the question posed recently to a small group of friends gathered in an aspiring actor’s apartment just north of Harlem, NYC. We went around the room, clockwise, giving cautious opinions on the topic as we sipped from our Amstel Light. The responses were measured, and in line with recent media talking points. Statements such as, “they have no unified message,” to “someone needs to go to jail, anyone.” It wasn’t long however before the conversation took on a more heated tone and unguarded opinions were intensely overlapping each other at an increasingly rapid rate. Now things were getting interesting. “The Federal Reserve should be abolished” and “what Wall Street did wasn’t illegal” were remarks leading the charge. At one point someone mentioned collusion being involved between the government and the banks and I found myself quoting a play I had read just a few days earlier. In fact, I found myself quoting the play quite often on this particular evening.

Written in 1905 by George Bernard Shaw, “Major Barbara” had been recommended for being rather pertinent to the tug-of-war of ideals taking place in our country today, from Occupy Wall Street protests to Tea Party rallies. The play, set in London, confronts moral hazards associated with economic strife. A conflict of principles takes place between Major Barbara, so named for her work with the Salvation Army, and her estranged father Andrew Undershaft, a successful owner of a munitions factory specializing in the production of war cannons. Undershaft’s moral convictions, or lack thereof, are resolute, stern, and in many cases shocking. His candid, unabashed talk is laced with pompous tendencies and carries an air of righteousness. Major Barbara on the other hand is a confident woman seeking to save the souls of those in poverty and convert them to upstanding citizens supported by God. Father and daughter challenge each other to a battle of moral authentication. Major Barbara tells Undershaft that should he spend one day with her at the Salvation Army he would find himself giving up cannon production in response to the effects he will witness.

In turn, Undershaft requests Major Barbara to visit his munitions factory where he wages she’ll give up her career with the Salvation Army in response to a more realistic look at the ways of the world. And so the challenge is set in motion. During Undershaft’s visit to the Salvation Army he witnesses Major Barbara’s interactions with those in poverty as she works towards converting them to goodness. As would be expected, money and its effects on society is a common theme between those involved at the charitable center. However, it’s when Major Barbara’s Superior enters the scene that the play’s conflict comes into full view. The Salvation Army is confronted by serious financial troubles and is seeking donations to assist it in furthering its mission. The head of the charity has accepted a donation from the town’s whiskey distiller, which needs to be matched in order to become valid. Who agrees to kick in the additional sum? None other than Mr. Undershaft himself. Major Barbara objects to the Salvation Army accepting dirty money from those individuals running immoral businesses, the very same companies providing the afflictions facing the members of society she serves daily. She finds that her work is now compromised and quits her job immediately.

The following day Barbara upholds her end of the challenge and visits her father’s munitions factory, which is essentially its own walled-in city. In awe of the clean streets, restaurants, shops and libraries, here Barbara finds a business profiting from war and thereby the death of many people, while simultaneously providing comfortable lives for so many working-class families. She is confronted with the reality of the power of money and those best positioned to expedite positive social change on a large scale. In the end, it is her conclusion that to save the souls of the well-off employees at her father’s factory would be more beneficial to societal betterment, and the eradication of poverty, than the work she had been performing at the Salvation Army. It was this conclusion that I offered up to the debaters discussing the Occupy Wall Street Movement. This is not our Arab Spring, this is not a fight for basic human rights and dignities on par with many of the societies in the Middle East. As faulty as our government may be at the present moment, we live in a democracy where mobilization of the people by the people can achieve the desired results, and it can do so without violence.

It is for this very reason that Major Barbara lends us timely and pertinent advice: Would we not have better results working within the system we have rather than dismissing it completely? What will provide the maximum social betterment? What will work? Let us not scream for the Federal Reserve to be abolished or the banking system to be dismantled, instead let us demand the Jobs Bill is passed, and the tax code be overhauled sans loopholes. Instead of rallying around the dismissal of student loans, let us demand the cost of education be lowered. Instead of demanding oil companies stop drilling, let us fight for natural gas fracking procedures to be better regulated and studied. Let us not decry the wealthy for “hoarding money,” instead let us demand their previous tax cuts be rolled back. Lets take advantage of our collective anger and create a Declaration of Desires designed to maximize both social betterment and government change. By understanding that we are all compromised, that there isn’t a clean dollar in anyone’s pocket, and that the world has rotated too many times to return to as simple a state as we would likely prefer, we can work towards results with broader effect. Is it not the more moral of goals in which the greatest number of people are positively affected?

Major Barbara wasn’t “defeated” by her father, on the contrary, her principles remained steadfast and intact. No, Major Barbara simply grew up. It’s time for our goals to mature as well. It’s time to get things done. Additional Keywords: major barbara, major barbara playwright, major barbara movie, major barbara summary, major barbara aerosmith, major barbara characters, major barbara script, major barbara themes, major barbara 1941 Reviews: BWW Review: George Bernard Shaw's MAJOR BARBARA Aims to Prove Money and Munitions Rule the World BWW Review: George Bernard Shaw's MAJOR BARBARA Aims to Prove Money and Munitions Rule the World Tweet Share George Bernard Shaw is perhaps best known for PYGMALION, the play which inspired the beloved hit musical MY FAIR LADY. Like that play, in MAJOR BARBARA, Shaw shares his take on family, politics, society, love and war with his ever timely, keen wit although his early life in Ireland gave no hint as to the greatness he would achieve.

In 1878 at the age of 22, Show wrote his first of 65 plays and at least 5 novels, going on to win a Nobel Prize and an Oscar during his career's initial stages. While his employment as a clerk and eventually a critic for various periodicals only provided him a means to support his mother with whom he lived and two older sisters in London, thankfully his various jobs did not deter him from his passion for writing. Escaping for brief moments, he found the reading room at the British Museum a sanctuary for creating his characters that continue to walk across the boards to this day. At a time when many considered women to be mentally and emotionally incapable of even voting in elections, Shaw portrayed strong, smart women with the ability to contribute to society at sophisticated levels. Shaw also explored class interactions and inspired audiences to laugh at the absurdities inherent within them. These two themes are certainly apparent in MAJOR BARBARA, now onstage at the Meta Theater in Hollywood, presented by Infinite Jest Theatre Company, directed with passion for Shaw's words by Branda Lock with Assistant Director Bruce Starrett.

Andrew Undershaft (Daniel Muller), a wealthy armaments manufacturer loves money, despises poverty, and prefers to use the money he makes in the lucrative business of war to save the poor from evil. His estranged daughter Barbara (luminescent Samantha Barrios), on the other hand, supports the poor by throwing her energies into her work as a soul saving Major in the Salvation Army and sees her "wicked" father as just another soul in need of saving. Wooed by professor-turned-preacher Adolphus Cusins (William Reinbold), Barbara's hopeful ideals and happy romance are challenged in this clever, resonating battle for men's souls and the rightful place of women in a society ruled by money and munitions. The class struggle between the wealthy and the poor comes into focus with the juxtaposition of scenes between the wealthy household led by Lady Brittomart (the wonderfully uptight yet totally animated Graciela Valderama) who is hoping to marry off her daughters well while caring for her stay-at-home son Stephen Undershaft (tall and handsome Kevin Shiley), and the Salvation Army offices where poor street people hang out to receive a free meal and help recruit others in to the fold.

Both Valderama and Shiley play street people in Act 2, with each part created to perfection. Their Mom and son pairing in the first act is reflected in the friendly demeanor they have for each other as unrelated street people in the second. The same can be said of Douglas Mattingly who portrays the wealthy Charles Lomax and Act I and the menacing street hood Bill Walker in the second. Mattingly disappears into both roles and you would never know the same actor plays both parts without reading it in the program. His fiancée in Act I is Barbara's sister Sarah (Caroline Day) who then plays Jenny Hill, a Salvation Army officer under the care of Major Barbara whose run-in with Bill Walker causes quite an uproar. It is interesting to see the two actors shares these two so different couples with in the play. Michele Schultz and Pete Pano round out the cast in supporting roles that keep the action moving along.

Shaw's plays are known for being rather wordy, and while this production comes in at almost 3 hours running time with 3 acts and two intermissions to allow for costume/character changes within the double casting, the show moves along at a steady pace that's to Branda Lock's efforts to keep the pace moving along as quickly as possible. Set design by Hester Russell Krog centers around an upstage platform and several small furniture pieces which the actors and stage crew move quickly on and off the stage while period appropriate music selections chosen by sound designers Edward C. Esau and Doug Mattingly are very entertaining. Costume Designer Emily Brown-Kucera creates perfect period pieces for all characters from a range of social backgrounds. Although Shaw's theme that money and munitions rule government, just think about how our politicians are reacting to the violence on our street today. It is unfortunate how many parallels can be drawn between our time and that of Major Barbara Undershaft, a strong woman determined to make it in a man's world.

MAJOR BARBARA runs through July 10 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 3:00pm at the Meta Theater, 7801 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles 90046. Special Hot Dogs and Beer Cookout on July 3. Tickets: $25. Bring a non-perishable food item to support the Los Angeles Food Bank and receive $5 off admission at the door. Theater entrance is located around the corner on Ogden Drive just north of Melrose. Wheelchair Accessible by parking in the rooftop lot located off Ogden just north past the theater entrance. KKHSOU 1. What is Shaw’s first novel and when was it published? 2. Which are the plays that Shaw named, “Plays Unpleasant”, and why? 3. What were the ideals of the Fabian Society? 4. Which Norwegian playwright had a great influence on Shaw? BACKGROUND TO THE PLAY MAJOR BARBARA Major Barbara, published in 1905, is a play in three acts by George Bernard Shaw. This play has been called the most controversial one among Shaw’s works.

His apparent criticism of Christianity and the Salvation Army caused some to accuse him of blasphemy, while others defended what they saw as his realistic presentation of religion. In fact, the play shows that Shaw was a religious person who saw religion not as something which comforts the soul but as a power which inspires. But Major Barbara is not predominantly a religious play. It is concerned with the problem of poverty and the importance of money. Major Barbara is a typical problem play where Shaw has dealt with issues like, religion and its reform, value and significance of money, power of Big Capital, satire on contemporary educational system, crime and punishment, criminal law and justice etc. The characters play the role of ‘mouthpiece’ through whom Shaw exposes the social taboos and problems. LET US KNOW The Salvation Army is a Christian organization founded in London in 1878 by William Booth. He called it an Army because he visualized it as a militant organization waging war against all kinds of sins and social evils. Hence its dignitaries used titles of military origin. Thus, Barbara is a Major and Mrs. Baines is a General.

The motto, ‘blood and fire’, inscribed on its flags refers to the Christian belief in the redeeming power of the blood of Christ and the fire of Hell. William Booth wanted to make religion livelier as well as to attract attention to the work done by the Salvation Army. Hence, he made its members march out to their meetings, singing and dancing to the playing of drums, the concertina and the tambourine (all musical instruments). CHECK YOUR PROGRESS 5. What is meant by blasphemy and why did critics accuse Shaw of blasphemy? 6. What are some of the issues that Shaw has dealt with in Major Barbara? The Action of the Play Shaw called the play Major Barbara “a discussion in three long acts” and much of the play’s action consists, in fact, of words. Shaw has added a lengthy preface which contributes to further discussion about the play. The plot of the play is a simple one. Each Act starts with a long and elaborate direction of the setting. Let us now look at what the Acts of the play entail.

Act I of Major Barbara which forms the exposition of the play begins in the library of Lady Britomart’s home in Wilson Crescent with a conversation between Lady Britomart, a woman from the British upper-classes, the daughter of an Earl and former wife of Andrew Undershaft, and her son, Stephen. They are discussing the need for some permanent source of income for the family, especially for Lady Britomart’s daughters, Sarah, who is engaged to Charles Lomax, and Barbara, who is engaged to Adolphus Cusins. The conversation throws light on all the important facts of the Undershaft family. From the conversation we learn that Lady Britomart’s estranged husband, Andrew Undershaft, is a very wealthy and successful businessman who had made millions of pounds from his munitions factory, which manufactures the world-famous Undershaft guns, cannons, torpedoes and submarines. When their children were small, the couple separated due to the question of his property and its inheritance. According to the Undershaft tradition, the heir to the Undershaft fortune must be an orphan who can be trained to run the factory.

Undershaft himself was a poor young man staying at the Salvation Army shelter; he improved himself by working hard, and so, he too wants to give another young man the same opportunity. But this would deprive Stephen, his son, of his inheritance. Moreover, Lady Britomart had some moral disagreement too. So far, she has brought up all her children on her own. Barbara has joined the Salvation Army as Major and is living on a pound a week. Lady Britomart comes to the conclusion that the only solution to the present financial problem is to take monetary help from her estranged husband, Andrew Undershaft. Lady Britomart is apprehensive about Barbara’s reaction on meeting Mr. Undershaft. But Barbara calmly shows her interest in meeting him as this would give her a chance to save his ‘soul’. Mr. Undershaft comes in and is reintroduced to his children amidst a lot of humour. In their conversation, Andrew Undershaft discusses the moral aspects of the cannon business. He is a hardcore realist who is not at all apologetic about the business that he runs.

He says, “My morality—my religion—must have a place for cannons and torpedoes in it.” Then on Barbara’s insistence he promises that he would visit The Salvation Army Shelter of West Ham, east London, the next morning, but under the condition that his family will have to visit his cannon foundry in the Parish of St. Andrew’s. The challenge is accepted and the Act ends with all of them going to the drawing-room to have some fun. Only Stephen keeps himself away from this fun. Lady Britomart feels let down by her children for whom she has done so much, as they seem to be so happy with their father. The Second Act takes us to the shelter of the Salvation Army in West Ham. An atmosphere of extreme poverty and sordidness prevails here. Barbara is seen as an efficient, selfless organizer of her shelter and her ability to control the situation is presented in a very effective way. We are introduced to all the minor characters like Snobby Price, Rummy Mitchens, Jenny Hill, Peter Shirley and Mrs. Baines who are related to the Salvation Army in one way or the other. Through them Shaw introduces us to the functioning of the Salvation Army and the financial hardships that it is going through.

Shaw further introduces us to the ruffian Bill Walker, who gets violent with Jenny Hill of the Salvation Army shelter, where he comes in search of his girl Mog Habbijam. Barbara controls the situation with her formidable attitude. Later, Bill is physically humiliated by Todger Fairmile, who is a sergeant of the Salvation Army. Throughout the scene, Barbara tries to preach to Bill Walker and he starts feeling guilty about hitting Jenny and it is amusing to see how horrified Bill is by Barbara’s preaching to him. Then Undershaft arrives at the Shelter. Till now, Shaw has presented religion and the poverty that goes along with it. He now presents Undershaft as his mouthpiece when Undershaft starts telling Barbara about the importance of money and that his religion is to be a millionaire. A conversation follows between Undershaft and Adolphus Cusins when Barbara goes away to attend a meeting. Cusins is taken in by Undershaft’s honesty and courage when he says that the only wo things necessary for salvation are money and gunpowder. The two men feel a kind of attraction towards each other.

Then Barbara comes back from the meeting in Cripps Lane and Shaw shows us her disillusionment by the act of Snobby Price whose false confession brought four-and-ten pence to the collection. She refuses to accept the offer of two pence from her father as she regards that money as tainted. Bill comes back to the scene, still feeling guilty and offers some money. But Barbara refuses it by saying, “No; the Army is not to be bought. We want your soul, Bill; and we’ll take nothing less”. Barbara’s disillusionment reaches its height when Mrs. Baines, the General of the Shelter, accepts Undershaft’s offering of 5000£ (pounds) to keep the shelter working through the winter. Further, she comes to know that the Shelter has accepted money from Bodger, the wine-maker and she becomes speechless. She is so dispirited that she refuses to go to the big meeting and feels that she will never be able to pray. As the procession goes off, she exclaims, “Drunkenness and Murder! My God!

Why hast thou forsaken me?”, an echo of Christ’s last words, that brought the charge of blasphemy against Shaw, when the play was produced. The Act ends on a note of the frustration of Barbara and when we see her in the next act, she has already discarded the uniform of The Salvation Army. Act III begins in the library of Lady Britomart, in Wilson Crescent with a light talk between Britomart and her children. Adolphus Cusins and Lomax provide some comic relief to the scene. Undershaft comes in to take them all to the model town and factory of Undershaft, Perivale St. Andrews. When everyone goes in to get ready, Undershaft and Lady Britomart talk about the money that the former should give his daughters, Sarah and Barbara to settle in life. Undershaft agrees on that but rejects Britomart’s plea that Stephen should inherit his father’s property. This conversation throws some important light on Shaw’s satirical attitude towards the English education system. Stephen comes in and talks to his father. When asked if he would run his father’s factory, he flatly refuses to do so and says that he wants to prove himself in life.

The scene then shifts to Undershaft’s model town and the cannon foundry in the Parish of Perivale St. Andrews. Everyone is amazed at the idyllic aspect of the place. Cusins remarks, “Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one”. After the visit, even Lady Britomart wants to possess the place, “They belong to me: they are not a man’s business…” Later Adolphus Cusins’ name comes up as the one to inherit Undershaft’s business. Though he is not a foundling, yet his parent’s marriage is not acceptable in England. A bargain is made between Cusins and Undershaft, and Barbara is shocked to see the development. A conversation ensues between Undershaft, Cusins and Barbara, where Undershaft propounds his moral philosophy. Here he voices many of the ideas that Shaw presents in the preface, like “Poverty is the worst of crimes”, “It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible on one hand and a slice of bread in the other”, “I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes”, etc.

He challenges Barbara to try to convert his men, “Whose souls are hungry because their bodies are full”. Everybody then leaves the scene leaving Cusins and Barbara to make the final decision as to whether Cusins will take over the business. Barbara is convinced by her father to some extent and starts believing that running away from the wicked people do not save them. Rather, she feels glad that Cusins has accepted the offer which will give her the opportunity to work among her father’s well-fed and contented workmen and try to save their souls. She is determined to be “Major Barbara” again and decides to live with Cusins in the village near the munitions factory. She will thereby continue her work and bring her message of salvation to the factory-workers. Thus the play ends on a rising note with the themes of religion and social reform closely connected to one another. LET US KNOW Major Barbara is a great problem play where Shaw has discussed a number of burning social problems. It throws light on Shaw’s views on religion and its role as an instrument of social reform, the evils of poverty and its eradication, the value and significance of money, education, contemporary political and social organization etc.

Throughout the play, you can see that Shaw’s wit and humour are very much evident. The serious discussions are presented along with light comical dialogues that make the play more interesting. ACTIVITY 1. Have you taken part in any stage performance? Taking any one Act of the play, try to arrange a stage show in your institution. 2. Read Act II of Major Barbara and see if you can understand the cockney dialect of Bill Walker. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS 1. Why has Shaw called the play Major Barbara? Why has he called it ‘a discussion in three long acts’? 2. What is the name of the ruffian who appears in the Salvation Army Shelter? 3. What are the words that Barbara says that echo the words that Christ uttered on the cross? 4. Why do you think Barbara decides to live with Cusins at the end of the play? 5. Why do you think that Shaw has voiced the idea that ‘Poverty is the worst of crimes’? 6. What do you think about the character of Undershaft? Characters in the Play Major Barbara is a play where Shaw has presented only a few important characters like, Major Barbara, Andrew Undershaft and Adolphus Cusins.

The other minor characters are Stephen, Lady Britomart, Sarah, Lomax and the poverty-stricken characters of the Salvation Army Shelter. Let us have a look at how the characters carry the action of the play forward. Major Barbara Undershaft is one of the prominent characters of the play. She is the daughter of Andrew Undershaft and Lady Britomart. She has een regarded as one of the most lovable female characters of Shaw. She is brought up by her mother who has high hopes for her daughter. But Barbara joined the Salvation Army, discharged her maid and started living frugally on a pound a week. Further, she fell in love with Adolphus Cusins, who is a Professor of Greek with almost no income, and decided to marry him. We get to know about her deeply religious nature when she welcomes her father to their house as he has a soul to be saved. In her Salvation Army Shelter in West Ham, we find her dedication to her work, her selflessness and efficiency in organizing things. Her deep Christian piety and missionary zeal is evident here. We are struck by her formidable nature in her dealings with the ruffian Bill Walker.

By insisting on Bill’s brutality, Barbara reduces him to a state of guilt and to his utter shock speaks of saving his soul. Again, Shaw has presented Barbara as a religious idealist, who has little knowledge of the hard, practical world. She gets disillusioned when she finds Snobby Price making a false confession to collect money. Her disillusionment reaches its zenith when she comes to know that Mrs. Baines is ready to accept money from Bodger, the wine maker and Mr. Undershaft. Earlier she thought this money to be tainted. She is so disillusioned that she refuses to go to the big meeting and even to pray. She exclaims, “Drunkenness and Murder! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” Her frustration is aggravated when she finds out that Snobby Price is a fraud and also that she has lost the chance of converting Bill Walker, as he saw that for the Salvation Army, money seemed to be of greater value than soul. With her visit to the munitions factory of her father, she comes to terms with the practical truths of life and regains her lost faith in religion and The Salvation Army.

She accepts her father’s challenge to save the workers of his factory whose souls are hungry as their bodies are full. She decides to live in the countryside with Cusins near the munitions factory where she will continue her work and bring her message of salvation to the factory workers instead of just to people who are poor and starving. Thus Shaw presents Barbara at the end as a matured person, whose idealistic illusions about religion and life are shattered .She finally comes to he realization that evil cannot be cured by turning one’s back upon any side of life, “There is no wicked side: life is all one.” Sir Andrew Undershaft is the husband of Lady Britomart and the father of Sarah, Barbara and Stephen. He has been separated from his family for a long time now. He is described as “a stoutish, easygoing, elderly man, with a kindly patient manner and an engaging simplicity of character. But he has a watchful, deliberate, waiting, listening face and formidable reserves of power, both bodily and mental, in his capacious chest and long head.” Shaw regards him as the ‘hero’ of the play and the play truly centres on the conflict of ideas between him and Barbara.

He is presented as a ruthless realist, very practical to life and is a mouthpiece through whom Shaw shatters a lot of traditional illusions regarding poverty, money, religion, salvation, crime, power, etc. We are introduced to Undershaft even before his formal appearance. He is presented as the dealer of death and destruction for being a cannon maker and armourer. Following the Undershaft tradition, he was made the heir of the business as he was a foundling. When he decided to deny his son Stephen from inheriting his business and started looking for an orphan as his successor to follow the Undershaft tradition, his wife decided to get separated from him. He has led his life on his own terms. He is never apologetic about his business. Rather, he is proud of the fact that his weapons are the best in Europe. He is a shrewd businessman and an efficient organizer. He believes in the power of money. He knows that without money, even religion cannot function. His skill as an organizer is evident when his family gets amazed at the functioning of his business establishment which is so disciplined and well-organized. He is a practical man to the core of his heart. His realism stands in stark contrast to Barbara’s idealism.

He finds no romance in poverty and suffering. Undershaft’s choice between poverty and wealth is a choice between action and cowardice. He says, “To be wealthy is with me a point of honour for which I am prepared to kill at the risk of my own life.” Undershaft’s religion is money and for him the vilest sin of man and society is poverty. He makes even the idealist Barbara realize that they cannot save the soul of the poor with a Bible in one hand and a piece of bread on the other. Rather she should save the soul of his factory-workers as their souls are hungry because their stomachs are full. Undershaft has been presented as the mouthpiece of Shaw to present his ideas. In fact, Undershaft goes beyond it and presents himself as an individual character. Adolphus Cusins is a poor professor of Greek and earns his frugal livelihood by teaching Greek. He is described as “a spectacled student, slight, thin haired and sweet voiced…………..

He is a most implacable, determined, tenacious and intolerable person who by mere force of character presents himself as — and — indeed actually is — considerate, gentle, explanatory, even mild and apologetic, capable possibly of murder, but not of cruelty or coarseness”. He is in love with Barbara. For his love’s sake he has joined The Salvation Army. He is self confident as he has faced the problems of life boldly. He is a Greek scholar and is proud of the fact that “Greek scholars are privileged men.” He accepts Undershaft’s offer of inheriting the latter’s business because he feels that his idealism and Undershaft’s realism would bring power to the world. He knows the importance of power and realizes that power of all kinds, even spiritual power, can be misused. He tells Barbara, “You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.” Cusins acceptance of Undershaft’s offer makes him apprehensive of losing Barbara. But he is immensely happy when she too says that she has accepted her father’s challenge to convert the workers of the factory.

His bargain with Undershaft shows his shrewdness and businessman-like quality, and therefore he is a befitting heir to Undershaft’s business. Stephen is the son of Mr. Undershaft, who is brought up by his mother. He is a young man of twenty five, who is very serious and correct and yet is under the restrictions of his mother. His boyish habit and shyness is visible when we first meet him, when we see how he is always snubbed by his mother. His individuality is suppressed by his authoritarian mother and he has become incapable of doing anything on his own. He does not have any important role to play in the plot development. Initially he shows his strong dislike for his father and his business. But later we find him talking to his father regarding his future. He does not want to inherit his father’s business, as he wants to do something on his own. He even goes against his mother to prove himself. In fact towards the end, we find a matured Stephen, who is not helpless and dependent. Through his character Shaw shatters the illusion about the elite’s claim that they are born to rule.

Stephen is a representative of the genteel, elite class and Shaw has used his character to throw light on many prejudices of this class. Lady Britomart is the wife of Andrew Undershaft and the daughter of an Earl. She got separated from her husband and had brought up her children on her own. She got separated from her husband not only because Mr. Undershaft had disinherited their son from his property but also on moral differences. She is commanding and authoritarian, but at the same time very caring and responsible. When she finds it difficult to run the family, she seeks Undershaft’s help. She persuades Undershaft to settle a big amount on his daughters so that they can lead a comfortable life. She is very possessive about her son and rebukes him at the slightest cause. This provides comic relief too. Her maternal instinct is always visible in her dealings with her children. Sarah is the daughter of Lady Britomart and Andrew Undershaft and Charles Lomax is her would-be husband. They are a couple to be married soon. Being the daughter of Undershaft, Sarah is going to get a handsome amount from her father. Lomax provides dramatic relief to the play.

It is amusing to see him using slang and colloquial language, for which he gets snubbed by Lady Britomart. The other minor characters like Snobby Price, Peter Shirley, Jenny Hill, Rummy and Bill Walker represent the London poor. Through them Shaw shows the working of The Salvation Army. All these characters give Shaw a chance to shatter the Christian belief,” Blessed are the poor.” CHECK YOUR PROGRESS 1. Who are the major characters in the play Major Barbara? 2. Which Christian belief does Shaw want to shatter through the minor and poor characters? 3. Which class of society does Stephen represent? 4. Why do you think Barbara is a ‘major’ character in the play? Is it because the play is named after her? 5. Why do you think Lady Britomart is regarded as a minor character? 6. Do you think Andrew Undershaft is a shrewd person? Why? LET US SUM UP After going through this unit, we have learnt that Major Barbara is a great problem play in which Shaw deals with many social and religious problems.

In this play, let me tell you, he emerges as an iconoclast who breaks the conventional images of religion, poverty, money, education, and many other important issues. One important aspect that you should notice is Shaw’s use of language. He has used the languages of both the elite and the poor Londoner in this play. The elite characters speak the so-called cultivated English and most of the poor Londoners use the cockney dialect. Much of the play’s action, in fact, consists of words. Through his skillful use of language, Shaw has brought home his views. The play is packed with serious discussions, yet the dialogues are so skillfully managed that the play sparkles with entertainment. As you have already learnt, the characters are the mouthpieces through whom Shaw presents his ideas. In fact, Shaw succeeds in moulding his characters so as to give them his desired direction. The light relief in the play makes it an enjoyable comedy, but its permanent importance lies in its serious discussions. Shaw uses the play to entertain his audience, to make people laugh, while examining issues that are as important today as they were when the play was first written.

FURTHER READINGS George Bernard Shaw | Irish dramatist and critic | Britannica.com Irish dramatist and critic George Bernard Shaw, (born July 26, 1856, Dublin , Ire.—died Nov. 2, 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire , Eng.), Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. George Bernard Shaw, photograph by Yousuf Karsh. Karsh/Woodfin Camp and Associates George Bernard Shaw speaking about the novelty of technology; excerpt from a Hearst Metrotone … J. Fred MacDonald & Associates C.E.M. Joad and George Bernard Shaw, 1940. Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library Early life and career George Bernard Shaw was the third and youngest child (and only son) of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw.

Technically, he belonged to the Protestant “ascendancy”—the landed Irish gentry—but his impractical father was first a sinecured civil servant and then an unsuccessful grain merchant, and George Bernard grew up in an atmosphere of genteel poverty, which to him was more humiliating than being merely poor. At first Shaw was tutored by a clerical uncle, and he basically rejected the schools he then attended; by age 16 he was working in a land agent’s office. Shaw developed a wide knowledge of music , art, and literature as a result of his mother’s influence and his visits to the National Gallery of Ireland . In 1872 his mother left her husband and took her two daughters to London, following her music teacher, George John Vandeleur Lee, who from 1866 had shared households in Dublin with the Shaws. In 1876 Shaw resolved to become a writer, and he joined his mother and elder sister (the younger one having died) in London. Shaw in his 20s suffered continuous frustration and poverty. He depended upon his mother’s pound a week from her husband and her earnings as a music teacher.

He spent his afternoons in the British Museum reading room, writing novels and reading what he had missed at school, and his evenings in search of additional self-education in the lectures and debates that characterized contemporary middle-class London intellectual activities. His fiction failed utterly. The semiautobiographical and aptly titled Immaturity (1879; published 1930) repelled every publisher in London. His next four novels were similarly refused, as were most of the articles he submitted to the press for a decade. Shaw’s initial literary work earned him less than 10 shillings a year. A fragment posthumously published as An Unfinished Novel in 1958 (but written 1887–88) was his final false start in fiction. Britannica Stories EU Considers Rules For Robots Despite his failure as a novelist in the 1880s, Shaw found himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a socialist , a spellbinding orator, a polemicist, and tentatively a playwright.

He became the force behind the newly founded (1884) Fabian Society , a middle-class socialist group that aimed at the transformation of English society not through revolution but through “permeation” (in Sidney Webb’s term) of the country’s intellectual and political life. Shaw involved himself in every aspect of its activities, most visibly as editor of one of the classics of British socialism, Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), to which he also contributed two sections. Eventually, in 1885, the drama critic William Archer found Shaw steady journalistic work. His early journalism ranged from book reviews in the Pall Mall Gazette (1885–88) and art criticism in the World (1886–89) to brilliant musical columns in the Star (as “Corno di Bassetto”—basset horn) from 1888 to 1890 and in the World (as “G.B.S.”) from 1890 to 1894. Shaw had a good understanding of music, particularly opera, and he supplemented his knowledge with a brilliance of digression that gives many of his notices a permanent appeal.

But Shaw truly began to make his mark when he was recruited by Frank Harris to the Saturday Review as theatre critic (1895–98); in that position he used all his wit and polemical powers in a campaign to displace the artificialities and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theatre of vital ideas. He also began writing his own plays. First plays British Culture and Politics When Shaw began writing for the English stage, its most prominent dramatists were Sir A.W. Pinero and H.A. Jones. Both men were trying to develop a modern realistic drama, but neither had the power to break away from the type of artificial plots and conventional character types expected by theatregoers. The poverty of this sort of drama had become apparent with the introduction of several of Henrik Ibsen’s plays onto the London stage around 1890, when A Doll’s House was played in London; his Ghosts followed in 1891, and the possibility of a new freedom and seriousness on the English stage was introduced.

Shaw, who was about to publish The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), rapidly refurbished an abortive comedy , Widowers’ Houses , as a play recognizably “Ibsenite” in tone, making it turn on the notorious scandal of slum landlordism in London. The result (performed 1892) flouted the threadbare romantic conventions that were still being exploited even by the most daring new playwrights. In the play a well-intentioned young Englishman falls in love and then discovers that both his prospective father-in-law’s fortune and his own private income derive from exploitation of the poor. Potentially this is a tragic situation, but Shaw seems to have been always determined to avoid tragedy. The unamiable lovers do not attract sympathy; it is the social evil and not the romantic predicament on which attention is concentrated, and the action is kept well within the key of ironic comedy. Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies The same dramatic predispositions control Mrs.

Warren’s Profession , written in 1893 but not performed until 1902 because the lord chamberlain, the censor of plays, refused it a license. Its subject is organized prostitution, and its action turns on the discovery by a well-educated young woman that her mother has graduated through the “profession” to become a part proprietor of brothels throughout Europe. Again, the economic determinants of the situation are emphasized, and the subject is treated remorselessly and without the titillation of fashionable comedies about “fallen women.” As with many of Shaw’s works, the play is, within limits, a drama of ideas, but the vehicle by which these are presented is essentially one of high comedy. Shaw called these first plays “unpleasant,” because “their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts.” He followed them with four “pleasant” plays in an effort to find the producers and audiences that his mordant comedies had offended. Both groups of plays were revised and published in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898).

The first of the second group, Arms and the Man (performed 1894), has a Balkan setting and makes lighthearted, though sometimes mordant, fun of romantic falsifications of both love and warfare. The second, Candida (performed 1897), was important for English theatrical history, for its successful production at the Royal Court Theatre in 1904 encouraged Harley Granville-Barker and J.E. Vedrenne to form a partnership that resulted in a series of brilliant productions there. The play represents its heroine as forced to choose between her clerical husband—a worthy but obtuse Christian socialist—and a young poet who has fallen wildly in love with her. She chooses her seemingly confident husband because she discerns that he is actually the weaker man. The poet is immature and hysterical but, as an artist, has a capacity to renounce personal happiness in the interest of some large creative purpose. This is a significant theme for Shaw; it leads on to that of the conflict between man as spiritual creator and woman as guardian of the biological continuity of the human race that is basic to a later play, Man and Superman.

In Candida such speculative issues are only lightly touched on, and this is true also of You Never Can Tell (performed 1899), in which the hero and heroine, who believe themselves to be respectively an accomplished amorist and an utterly rational and emancipated woman, find themselves in the grip of a vital force that takes little account of these notions. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest The strain of writing these plays, while his critical and political work went on unabated, so sapped Shaw’s strength that a minor illness became a major one. In 1898, during the process of recuperation, he married his unofficial nurse, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress and friend of Beatrice and Sidney Webb. The apparently celibate marriage lasted all their lives, Shaw satisfying his emotional needs in paper-passion correspondences with Ellen Terry , Mrs. Patrick Campbell , and others. Shaw’s next collection of plays, Three Plays for Puritans (1901), continued what became the traditional Shavian preface—an introductory essay in an electric prose style dealing as much with the themes suggested by the plays as the plays themselves.

The Devil’s Disciple (performed 1897) is a play set in New Hampshire during the American Revolution and is an inversion of traditional melodrama. Caesar and Cleopatra (performed 1901) is Shaw’s first great play. In the play Cleopatra is a spoiled and vicious 16-year-old child rather than the 38-year-old temptress of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra . The play depicts Caesar as a lonely and austere man who is as much a philosopher as he is a soldier. The play’s outstanding success rests upon its treatment of Caesar as a credible study in magnanimity and “original morality” rather than as a superhuman hero on a stage pedestal. The third play, Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (performed 1900), is a sermon against various kinds of folly masquerading as duty and justice . George Bernard Shaw, portrayed by Donald Moffatt, analyzing William Shakespeare’s characterization … Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Lady Flora Hastings In Man and Superman (performed 1905) Shaw expounded his philosophy that humanity is the latest stage in a purposeful and eternal evolutionary movement of the “life force” toward ever-higher life forms. The play’s hero, Jack Tanner, is bent on pursuing his own spiritual development in accordance with this philosophy as he flees the determined marital pursuit of the heroine, Ann Whitefield. In the end Jack ruefully allows himself to be captured in marriage by Ann upon recognizing that she herself is a powerful instrument of the “life force,” since the continuation and thus the destiny of the human race lies ultimately in her and other women’s reproductive capacity. The play’s nonrealistic third act, the “Don Juan in Hell” dream scene, is spoken theatre at its most operatic and is often performed independently as a separate piece. Shaw had already become established as a major playwright on the Continent by the performance of his plays there, but, curiously, his reputation lagged in England . It was only with the production of John Bull’s Other Island (performed 1904) in London, with a special performance for Edward VII , that Shaw’s stage reputation was belatedly made in England.

Shaw continued, through high comedy, to explore religious consciousness and to point out society’s complicity in its own evils. In Major Barbara (performed 1905), Shaw has his heroine, a major in the Salvation Army , discover that her estranged father, a munitions manufacturer, may be a dealer in death but that his principles and practice, however unorthodox, are religious in the highest sense, while those of the Salvation Army require the hypocrisies of often-false public confession and the donations of the distillers and the armourers against which it inveighs. In The Doctor’s Dilemma (performed 1906), Shaw produced a satire upon the medical profession (representing the self-protection of professions in general) and upon both the artistic temperament and the public’s inability to separate it from the artist’s achievement. In Androcles and the Lion (performed 1912), Shaw dealt with true and false religious exaltation in a philosophical play about early Christianity. Its central theme, examined through a group of early Christians condemned to the arena, is that one must have something worth dying for—an end outside oneself—in order to make life worth living.

Possibly Shaw’s comedic masterpiece, and certainly his funniest and most popular play, is Pygmalion (performed 1913). It was claimed by Shaw to be a didactic drama about phonetics, and its antiheroic hero, Henry Higgins , is a phonetician, but the play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system. The play is about the training Higgins gives to a Cockney flower girl to enable her to pass as a lady and is also about the repercussions of the experiment’s success. The scene in which Eliza Doolittle appears in high society when she has acquired a correct accent but no notion of polite conversation is one of the funniest in English drama. Pygmalion has been both filmed (1938), winning an Academy Award for Shaw for his screenplay, and adapted into an immensely popular musical, My Fair Lady (1956; motion-picture version, 1964). Works after World War I World War I was a watershed for Shaw. At first he ceased writing plays, publishing instead a controversial pamphlet, “ Common Sense About the War,” which called Great Britain and its allies equally culpable with the Germans and argued for negotiation and peace.

His antiwar speeches made him notorious and the target of much criticism . In Heartbreak House (performed 1920), Shaw exposed, in a country-house setting on the eve of war, the spiritual bankruptcy of the generation responsible for the war’s bloodshed. Attempting to keep from falling into “the bottomless pit of an utterly discouraging pessimism,” Shaw wrote five linked plays under the collective title Back to Methuselah (1922). They expound his philosophy of creative evolution in an extended dramatic parable that progresses through time from the Garden of Eden to 31,920 ce. The canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920 reawakened within Shaw ideas for a chronicle play about her. In the resulting masterpiece, Saint Joan (performed 1923), the Maid is treated not only as a Roman Catholic saint and martyr but as a combination of practical mystic, heretical saint, and inspired genius.

Joan, as the superior being “crushed between those mighty forces, the Church and the Law,” is the personification of the tragic heroine; her death embodies the paradox that humankind fears—and often kills—its saints and heroes and will go on doing so until the very higher moral qualities it fears become the general condition of man through a process of evolutionary change. Acclaim for Saint Joan led to the awarding of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature to Shaw (he refused the award). In his later plays Shaw intensified his explorations into tragicomic and nonrealistic symbolism. For the next five years, he wrote nothing for the theatre but worked on his collected edition of 1930–38 and the encyclopaedic political tract “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism” (1928). Then he produced The Apple Cart (performed 1929), a futuristic high comedy that emphasizes Shaw’s inner conflicts between his lifetime of radical politics and his essentially conservative mistrust of the common man’s ability to govern himself.

Shaw’s later, minor plays include Too True to Be Good (performed 1932), On the Rocks (performed 1933), The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (performed 1935), Geneva (performed 1938), and In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939). After a wartime hiatus , Shaw, then in his 90s, produced several more plays, including Farfetched Fables (performed 1950), Shakes Versus Shav (performed 1949), and Why She Would Not (1956), which is a fantasy with only flashes of the earlier Shaw. Impudent , irreverent, and always a showman, Shaw used his buoyant wit to keep himself in the public eye to the end of his 94 years; his wiry figure, bristling beard, and dandyish cane were as well known throughout the world as his plays.

When his wife, Charlotte, died of a lingering illness in 1943, in the midst of World War II , Shaw, frail and feeling the effects of wartime privations, made permanent his retreat from his London apartment to his country home at Ayot St. Lawrence, a Hertfordshire village in which he had lived since 1906. He died there in 1950. George Bernard Shaw at his country home in Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, Eng., 1946. Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images George Bernard Shaw was not merely the best comic dramatist of his time but also one of the most significant playwrights in the English language since the 17th century. Some of his greatest works for the stage—Caesar and Cleopatra, the “Don Juan in Hell” episode of Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan—have a high seriousness and prose beauty that were unmatched by his stage contemporaries.

His development of a drama of moral passion and of intellectual conflict and debate, his revivifying of the comedy of manners, and his ventures into symbolic farce and into a theatre of disbelief helped shape the theatre of his time and after. A visionary and mystic whose philosophy of moral passion permeates his plays, Shaw was also the most trenchant pamphleteer since Swift, the most readable music critic in English, the best theatre critic of his generation, a prodigious lecturer and essayist on politics, economics, and sociological subjects, and one of the most prolific letter writers in literature. By bringing a bold critical intelligence to his many other areas of interest, he helped mold the political, economic, and sociological thought of three generations. George Bernard Shaw - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) (1856-1950)."I have been dinning into the public head that I am an extraordinarily witty, brilliant and clever man. That is now part of the public opinion of England; and no power in heaven or on Earth will ever change it." George Bernard Shaw wrote this about himself in 1898. He was then 42 years old.

A tall, thin, red-bearded man, he was already well known in London, England, as a critic of music, art, and drama. He was an influential socialist speaker, and he had written plays that attacked the accepted ideas of his time. Article Contributors Movie Review - - George Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara,' at the Astor, Seen as a Triumph -- 'Lady From Louisiana' Presented at Loew's Criterion - NYTimes.com Movie Review May 15, 1941 George Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara,' at the Astor, Seen as a Triumph -- 'Lady From Louisiana' Presented at Loew's Criterion By BOSLEY CROWTHER Published: May 15, 1941 Produced in a war-wracked England against odds which only the stiffest courage could lick, Gabriel Pascal's delightful picture-version of Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" has finally arrived in this country, and opened yesterday at the Astor Theatre. To call it a manifest triumph would be arrant stinginess with words. For this is something more than just a brilliant and adult translation of a stimulating play, something more than a captivating compound of ironic humor and pity.

This is a lasting memorial to the devotion of artists working under fire, a permanent proof for posterity that it takes more than bombs to squelch the English wit. It is as wry and impudent a satire of conventional morals and social creeds as though it had been made in a time of easy and carefree peace. It is, in short, a more triumphant picture than any the British have yet sent across. To be sure, the major part of "Major Barbara" is more than thirty-five years old—that is, the play which Mr. Shaw presented to the London stage in 1905. Long ago it was acted on Broadway—in 1915 and again in 1928. And the still abundant Shavian idolaters know it like the backs of their hands. Yet for all its comparative antiquity, for all our long acquaintance with its theme, it still has the cogent vitality of an essay struck off only yesterday. It comes to grips with a problem—the problem of the human soul versus poverty—which is quite as perplexing today as it was back in 1905. And it is this major part of "Major Barbara" which Mr.

Pascal has fully and faithfully brought to the screen. As a matter of fact, this screen version probably does better by the play than was ever done by it on the stage, even with Mr. Shaw cracking the whip. For, according to most—of the recorders, it was static and wordy on the stage, inclining to sag in those stretches where the author shook most weight out of his pen. By some careful and thoroughly respectful editing, by moving his cameras artfully about and by badgering Mr. Shaw into writing two or three new connecting sequences, Mr. Pascal has given the film that terseness and illusion of motion which films must have. In the process he has pointed the wit which crackles in Mr. Shaw's lines and has made more apparent the conflict which is joined rather loosely in the play. If, by a possible chance, it should not prove too popular all around, the reason will probably be that Mr. Shaw's wit is still too nimble and his reasoning too bold and abstruse. It takes a powerful lot of listening to follow his logistic line, and the intellect is addressed much more vigorously than are the romantic sentiments.

In the previous Shaw film, "Pygmalion," which Mr. Pascal also produced, an essentially personal complication was impishly satirized. In this one the issue is much broader and cuts across more vital social lines. Major Barbara, the earnest young daughter of the cannon-maker, Andrew Undershaft, is a morally righteous creature who is zealous about saving souls, and through her work in the Salvation Army she feels her efforts properly spent. And the drama—or what there is of it—in the picture is obliquely derived through Barbara's disillusion with the Army when she finds it will take money from her dad; and then from her final persuasion that poverty is the greatest crime of all, that money properly administered is essential to the softening of the soul. It is in this exquisite social paradox that Mr. Shaw's agile wit finds much fun, and also a share of poignant feeling for the idealistic girl who must be shown. He is, of course, at his best when putting words into the mouth of Undershaft, the sardonic philosopher, or poking around among the riff-raff of a London East End shelter. It is definitely Mr. Shaw's film. But Mr.

Pascal, who has directed, and his completely superlative cast have brought it to vibrant life. Wendy Hiller plays Major Barbara with all the starry-eyed exaltation, all the heartbreak and eventual relief of a girl who endures a real soul-shattering trial. Robert Morley is deliciously satanic, profoundly suave and tender, too, as the devil's disciple, Undershaft. Rex Harrison plays Adolphus Cusins, Barbara's professorial fiancé, with buoyant good-humor, and Robert Newton pretty near wins the acting prize with his trenchant performance of Bill Walker, an East End bully whose soul is too tough for salvation. Other fine performances are given by Donald Calthrop as a wretched down-and-outer, Emlyn Williams as an unctuous dead-beat, Marie Ault as a shrill and wrinkled toss-pot and Torin Thatcher as a fighting soul-saver. And, likewise, a word must be spoken for the acting of Mr. Shaw himself. In a highly amusing and deeply affecting introduction which the bearded author speaks for his film, he irrevocably presents himself as a warm, genial, altogether winning exponent of the human race.

Perhaps the old fellow has a temper; perhaps he is as cantankerous as he used to try to be. But thanks to this little preface—and to the greater joy we have found in his works—G. B. S. can rest assured that his triumph is complete. MAJOR BARBARA, scenario and dialogue by George Bernard Shaw; from the play by George Bernard Shaw; produced and directed in England by Gabriel Pascal and released through United Artists. At the Astor. Major Barbara Undershaft . . . . . Wendy Hiller Adolphus Cusins . . . . . Rex Harrison

Question: Which George Bernard Shaw play centres around the Salvation Army?
Answer: Major Barbara