Book description
Andrew Undershaft, a millionaire armaments manufacturer, loves money
and despises poverty. His estranged daughter Barbara, on the other hand,
shows her love for the poor by throwing her energies into her work as a
Major in the Salvation Army, and sees her father as another soul to be
saved. But when the Army needs funds to keep going, it is Undershaft who
saves the day with a large cheque - forcing Barbara to examine her moral
assumptions. Are they right to accept money that has been obtained by
'Death and Destruction'? Full of lively comedy and sparkling debate,
Major Barbara is one of Shaw's most forward-looking plays, brilliantly
testing the tensions between religion, wealth and power, benevolence and
equality, and metaphors and realities of war. Dublin-born George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an active Socialist and a brilliant
platform speaker. He was strongly critical of London theatre and closely
associated with the intellectual revival of British drama. Dan H.
Laurence has edited Shaw's Collected Letters and Collected Plays with
their Prefaces. He was Literary Advisor to the Shaw Estate until his
retirement in 1990. Margery Morgan is an Emeritus Reader in English of
Lancaster University.
