Major Barbara

by Bernard Shaw

Overview

Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire armaments dealer, loves money and despises poverty. His energetic daughter Barbara, on the other hand, shows her love for the poor by working as a Major in the Salvation Army. She sees her father as just another soul to be saved. But when the Salvation Army needs funds to keep going, it is Undershaft who saves the day. is the Army right to accept money that has been obtained by 'Death and Destruction'? Barbara is forced to examine her moral assumptions. Is she tricked into the attempt to unite spiritual goodness with material power?

Full of lively comedy and sparkling debate, Major Barbara is also one of Shaw's most powerful and forward-looking plays. As Margery Morgan says, while Shaw was responding to 'a material and cultural situation that is now part of history', his work still has relevance 'in a period when new technologies drive the globalization of trade and the migration of populations ... and ancient forms of brutality and carnage have reappeared.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789359257648
Publisher:	Writat
Publication date:	04/05/2024
Pages:	106
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.25(d)
Language:	German

About the Author

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an Irish playwright and critic, whose plays are famous for their wit, eloquence and interest in provocative ideas. Inspired mainly by the social dramas of Ibsen, he began to write plays of his own while working as an arts critic, though they were not performed until later. His play Mrs Warren's Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain until 1925. Unable to find commercial audiences for his plays, Shaw wrote extensive Prefaces for them, elaborating on the social and moral themes that they explore. Subsequent plays include Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, and Saint Joan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925, and an Academy Award in 1938, for the screenplay of the film adaptation of Pygmalion, a film which would later form the basis for My Fair Lady.

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has published widely on Shakespeare and on Irish literature: his books include The Politics of Irish Drama (1999), Shakespeare's Serial History Plays (2002), Yeats's Poetic Codes ( 2008),and Home on the Stage (2014). With Chris Morash he is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre (2016).

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
	Preface to Major Barbara
	First Aid to Critics	9
	The Gospel of St Andrew Undershaft	15
	The Salvation Army	24
	Barbara's Return to the Colors	27
	Weaknesses of the Salvation Army	30
	Christianity and Anarchism	39
	Sane Conclusions	43
	Major Barbara	51
	Principal Works of Bernard Shaw	155