Major Barbara - Softcover

George-bernard-shaw

3.66

7,133 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140480072 ISBN 13: 9780140480078

Publisher: Penguin, 1982

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Major Barbara, by Shaw, George Bernard - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - No one writes about social issues as entertainingly as Shaw, George Bernard. In Major Barbara, he addresses the problem of poverty and the institutions that are supposed to help. The play centers on an ideological battle between father and daughter: Andrew Undershaft is an arms manufacturer who sees wealth as a social good, his daughter Barbara is a Salvation Army Major who feels her father's money is tainted. Taking aim at religion, charities, and the romanticization of the poor, Shaw makes a case for seeing poverty as a crime and an inexcusable fault in society. Filled with the clever dialogue for which he is famous, Major Barbara is engaging and thoughtprovoking throughout.

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From the Back Cover:

'The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty ... our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor'

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 question her philanthropic motives, and what she discovers tells her something new about the world and its ways.

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 re-appeared.'

The definitive text, under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence

About the Author:

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.

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