1. Discuss the relationship between Shaw’s Preface and with the drama as a whole. 2. Discuss the various paradoxes and ironies that run throughout the drama. 3. Discuss the differences between Undershaft’s and Major Barbara’s commitments to the improvement of humanity. 4. Discuss Undershaft and Cusins as Shaw’s ideal “superman.” […]

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It is with good reason that Archibald Henderson, official biographer of his subject, entitled his work George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century. Well before Shaw’s death at the age of ninety-four, this famous dramatist and critic had become an institution. Among the literate, no set of initials were more […]

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Summary The setting of this scene is a platform on a hill overlooking the model village of Perivale St. Andrews, and the area is surrounded with “several dummy soldiers more or less mutilated.” Major Barbara — now merely “Barbara,” as in the preceding scene — is seen alone, observing the […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act III (A hill or platform overlooking the town of Perivale St. Andrews)

Summary This act opens the next morning in Lady Britomart’s library, and we are immediately astonished to see Major Barbara dressed not in her Salvation Army uniform but in an “ordinary fashionable dress.” Charles Lomax, trying to console Barbara, makes an inopportune remark about there being “a certain amount of […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act III (Lady Britomart’s Library)

Summary At this moment, Mrs. Baines, a Salvation Army commissioner, arrives and meets Undershaft. She enthusiastically describes the work of the Salvation Army (even to the point of keeping the poor fed enough so that they won’t strike against the capitalists), and she ecstatically tells of the offer made by […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act II (The Appearance of Mrs. Baines)

Summary Major Barbara returns with Shirley, Snobby, and Jenny in an exhilarated mood; the meeting has been a great success. After they count the money, however, they are two pence short of their goal of five shillings. Barbara feels that much of the success of the meeting was due to […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act II (The return of Major Barbara, accompanied by Shirley, Snobby Price, and Jenny Hill)

Summary Undershaft immediately suspects the sincerity of Cusins’ attachment, as well as his involvement with the Salvation Army, and with a flourish of the drum sticks, Cusins lets Undershaft know that he is right in his assumptions, but Cusins points out that he is a “collector of religions,” and he […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act II (Scene between Undershaft and Cusins)

Summary After Bill Walker has been warned that Major Barbara is the granddaughter of an earl, Bill is somewhat subdued, and then Major Barbara enters with a notebook to question the newcomers. Shirley gives his name and occupation and is assured that the Army will find him a job. Bill […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act II (The arrival of Major Barbara at the Shelter, followed by the arrival of her father)

Summary Act II takes place in the Salvation Army Shelter, an old warehouse which has recently been whitewashed. Two people are seen seated in the shelter; one is a man quite “capable of anything in reason except honesty,” whose name is Snobby Price. The other is a woman named Rummy […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act II (Opening Scene)

Summary Morrison, the butler, announces the arrival of Andrew Undershaft, who is an “easy-going elderly man, with kindly patient manners, and an engaging simplicity of character . . . but he has . . . formidable reserves of power, both bodily and mental.” Undershaft greets his wife courteously and graciously. […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Act I (Andrew Undershaft meets his family)