‘What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?’
(Canny professor of Greek Adolphus Cusins justifying his decision to join her father’s arms company to his fiancée, Barbara, in Major Barbara, Act 3)

‘Arms and The Man’ and ‘Candida’ were disappointing. ‘Major Barbara’ is the first Bernard Shaw play I’ve read that feels really worth reading and staging. Despite its obvious shortcomings, it feels like a major work, if in a slightly idiosyncratic way.

Act 1. Lady Britomart Undershaft’s library

There are three acts. In act 1 we learn that the redoubtable Lady Britomart Undershaft is separated from her husband, the world famous arms manufacturer, Andrew Undershaft. Lady B has three grown-up children:

• Sarah, ‘slender, bored, and mundane’, is engaged to the silly Bertie Wooster type, Charles Lomax, nicknamed Cholly
• Barbara, ‘robuster, jollier, much more energetic’, is a Major in the Salvation Army and going out with Adolphus Cusins, nicknamed Dolly, not quite as posh dim as Cholly; he is a Professor of ancient Greek
• and Stephen

Critics always talk about Shaw’s ‘wit’ but this play is genuinely funny. Not for its wit, though. I’ve just read Oscar Wilde’s plays and Shaw isn’t in the same league. Occasionally a character says something which might be witty if Shaw had taken a few more weeks to hone it. No, what’s funny is the characterisation. Lady Britomart is a very amusing battleaxe who treats Stephen like a poodle which needs training and he jumps at her every command.

The first half or so of the act consists of her telling him the realities of their situation. These comprise two facts. Although she’s separated from Undershaft, the entire household still lives off his money. But now that both Barbara and Sarah look like getting married to unreliable and not-very-wealthy spouses, they will need more money settled on them.

That’s why she’s invited Undershaft to the house this evening. He hasn’t seen his three children for many years and pathetic Stephen is terrified at being confronted by the Great Man after so many years, but Lady B insists the meeting must take place because he and his two sisters are going to need the money.

The second, very odd fact which Lady B reveals to Stephen is that the Undershafts have been running arms factories since the times of King James I (reigned 1603 to 1625) and that each successful Undershaft has adopted a son to succeed him. He might have any number of biological children but the torch can only be passed to an adopted one.

And with this fact – which feels like it’s out of a fairy tale – Lady B calls Stephen’s sisters and their wet boyfriends down from the drawing room and warns them all of Undershaft’s impending arrival. There is a good deal of character comedy regarding Charles Lomax, but it isn’t ‘wit’, it’s crude sitcom-level gags based on the simple notion that Lomax is an upper-class twit who speaks entirely in the slang of an Edwardian Bertie Wooster: ‘Ripping! Oh I say! But really, don’t you know! Must be a regular corker!’

Similarly, when Undershaft arrives, promptly at 9pm, there is some broad humour which has nothing much to do with ‘wit’ because it is farce. This is that Undershaft is so indifferent to his children that he’s forgotten how many he has and initially thinks the two fiancés are his as well. Thus he addresses the other two men as his son, Stephen, before he gets it right third time. He then mixes up Sarah and Barbara. Not much ‘wit’ but it is genuinely funny.

Then there’s a bit of moral lecturing which was boring, with Undershaft shamelessly defending his making money by being an arms manufacturer while Stephen and Barbara mount an attack on his position based on Christianity and morality. They think there is only One Truth, Undershaft thinks there are many ‘truths’. That’s it, really. Not very deep.

But for the sake of having a play at all, Barbara dares Undershaft to come visit her Salvation Army shelter in the East End and Undershaft agrees, on condition that she will visit his munitions factory at Perivale St Andrews. So there you have acts 2 and 3 set up.

Act 2. The yard of the West Ham Salvation Army shelter

Is long and exhausting. It’s set in the yard of the Salvation Army’s Mile End shelter.

First we are introduced to half a dozen working class types down on their luck, being a layabout painter and con artist (Bronterre O’Brien ‘Snobby’ Price), a poor housewife feigning to be a fallen woman (Romola ‘Rummy’ Mitchens), an older labourer fired for being too old (Peter Shirley), and a bully (Bill Walker). Walker has come to find his partner who’s run away from his abusive behaviour. He threatens the others, then pulls the hair and punches the face of one of the working class staff at the shelter, Jenny Hill, who runs inside sobbing.

The striking feature of this scene is that the accents of all the working class characters are depicted using phonetic spelling.

PRICE: Ere, buck up, daddy! She’s fetchin y’a thick slice o breadn treacle, an a mug o skyblue.

Not only that but, on closer inspection, Shaw distinguishes between their Cockney accents. The first 3 or 4 characters are depicted in such a way that most of their words can be spelled conventionally. This is less true of the disruptive figure, the wife beater and violent sceptic, Bill Walker whose speech is that bit rougher:

BILL: If you was my girl and took the word out o me mahth lawk thet, I’d give you suthink you’d feel urtin, so I would. [To Adolphus] You take my tip, mate. Stop er jawr; or you’ll die afore your time. [With intense expression] Wore aht: thets wot you’ll be: wore aht.

Major Barbara emerges and we get an extended and vivid portrait of her ability to upbraid Walker without actually telling him off. Instead he shames him with his actions, adamantly insisting that it is not for her to convert him, it is his own conscience which will convert him. Which makes him wriggle with shame and embarrassment. The older man who’s been let go tells him he’s not so hard, he knows a man could take him on:

SHIRLEY. Todger Fairmile o Balls Pond. Him that won 20 pounds off the Japanese wrastler at the music hall by standin out 17 minutes 4 seconds agen him.

And angry at this insult to his manhood, but also embarrassed by Barbara’s shaming of him, Bill swaggers out of the Army yard to find this Todger Fairmile.

Mr Undershaft arrives and is impressed by Barbara’s handling of these difficult situations. Barbara’s fiancé Cusins is there, helping out, literally banging a big drum as a part of the Army band.

When the others go inside for a moment, Undershaft tells Cusins he knows the latter doesn’t believe any of this stuff, is not a true believer. Cusins readily admits it but says he is interested in all religions. Undershaft tells him about his religion which has two central beliefs: Money and Gunpowder. To be precise:

UNDERSHAFT: There are two things necessary to salvation.
CUSINS [disappointed, but polite]: Ah, the Church Catechism. Charles Lomax also belongs to the Established Church…
UNDERSHAFT: The two things are –
CUSINS: Baptism and –
UNDERSHAFT: No. Money and gunpowder.
CUSINS [surprised, but interested]: That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty is in hearing any man confess it.
UNDERSHAFT: Just so.
CUSINS: Excuse me: is there any place in your religion for honor, justice, truth, love, mercy and so forth?
UNDERSHAFT: Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life.
CUSINS: Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money or gunpowder?
UNDERSHAFT: Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others.
CUSINS: That is your religion?
UNDERSHAFT: Yes.

Can’t be much clearer than that.

The act reaches its climax when Mrs Baines, head of the Army’s local branch, comes out of the shelter to tell Jenny and Barbara the wonderful news that Lord Saxmundham has agreed to make a generous donation to the Army of £5,000. This will keep the shelters open right across London and allow the Army to continue doing its good work. However, there’s a catch. He’ll only give the money on condition they can find five other donors to give £1,000 each, making up £10,000.

Hearing all this, Undershaft sits down to write a check out on the spot. However, some of the others point out that Lord Saxmumdham is the knighted name of Sir Horace Bodger the distiller, whose mass production of alcoholic beverages contributes to the ruin of England’s working classes. And Undershaft, of course, owes his fortune to instruments of death and destruction. This rather inevitably leads to a set-piece debate between Mrs Baines, who says Think of all the good we can do with this money, and Barbara, who says they shouldn’t take it because it is tainted.

One by one all the others come down on the side of taking the money, even her boyfriend Cusins, who is well aware of the multiple ironies or moral dilemmas involved, but jokily calls for a big celebration.

The net effect of all this is devastating on Barbara. During the course of the debate she loses her faith. She ends up taking the Salvation Army lapel badge off her coat and pinning it on her father. The others join the band which is waiting to go marching through the streets to a revivalist meeting, playing Christian hymns, but Barbara is weak with disillusionment and says she won’t be coming.

None of which is helped by thuggish Bill (who’s returned from Canning Town after receiving a beating from Todger) mocking her:

BILL: It’s nao good: you cawnt get rahnd me nah. Aw downt blieve in it; and Awve seen tody that Aw was right… [Turning at the gate] Wot prawce selvytion nah? Ha! Ha!

This is the deciding factor. In Act 3 Barbara spells out what the loss of Bill, who was so close to coming over to her side – to converting – really meant to her:

BARBARA: Do you understand what you have done to me? Yesterday I had a man’s soul in my hand. I set him in the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your money he turned back to drunkenness and derision. [With intense conviction] I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and you destroyed its body with your explosives – if you murdered Dolly with your horrible guns – I could forgive you if my forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is worse than any murder.

Act 3

Scene 1. Lady Britomart’s library

Lady B and her daughters are present. First dim Lomx then smarter Cusins enter and are both startled that Barbara is, for the first time since they’ve known her, not wearing the uniform of the Salvation Army but the outfit of a conventional Edwardian lady.

Turns out Cusins attended the Salvation Army rally the night before, which was a howling triumph with no fewer than 117 conversions, then went back to Undershaft’s place and got heroically drunk on brandy, all the time delving deeper into Undershaft’s glamorous amorality.

When the servant Morrison announces that Mr Undershaft has arrived, Lady B sends all the young people to get dressed for going out (to the arms factory). This means she is alone when Undershaft enters and enables them to discuss the future. First she makes explicit demands for money for Sarah and Barbara which Undershaft immediately agrees to.

This clears the way to the heart of their conversation which is about Stephen. Lady B insists Undershaft makes Stephen his successor at the arms company but Undershaft refuses, saying 1) Stephen is completely unsuitable 2) anyway, the fairy tale tradition requires that he can only pass on chairmanship in the company to a foundling. At this point Stephen enters and disappoints his mother but delights Undershaft by saying he doesn’t want to run the company or go into business; he wants to be a politician. When Stephen claims that, unlike his father, he has a firm grasp of right and wrong, Undershaft has some fun at his expense.

UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled]: You don’t say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you’re a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

And then a satirical dig at politicians such as the English have been making for centuries:

LADY BRITOMART [uneasily]: What do you think he had better do, Andrew?
UNDERSHAFT: Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

When Stephen claims to be angered by Undershaft’s insult to ‘the government of this country’, Undershaft is given a commanding speech:

UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality]: The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn’t. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.

Again we may ask whether very much has changed, especially the reference to the right-wing newspapers which are little more than fronts for the interests of big corporations and the super rich. In fact after Stephen delivers another speech full of canting clichés Undershaft satirically claims he knows just the right career for a pontificating know-nothing – journalism!

All the other characters enter and variously moan and complain about being forced to go on this day outing to a factory. When Cusins asks Undershaft if he is a brutal boss, if he maintains rigorous discipline, Undershaft delivers another long set-piece speech which is an interesting piece of social history, because it describes the role of snobbery in keeping the English working classes in line. The truth is that they repress themselves with little or no help required from their exploiters:

CUSINS: But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain discipline among your men?
UNDERSHAFT: I don’t. They do. You see, the one thing Jones won’t stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself and Mrs Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I don’t even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I don’t order anybody to do them. I don’t say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me.

Scene 2. Among the high explosive shed at the arsenal of Messrs Undershaft and Lazarus near the model town of Perivale St Andrews

Barbara is on the firestep beside an enormous cannon in a set strewn with munitions and some of the dummies they use for target practice. The other characters enter one by one and share their amazement at what a model town it is, with wonderful amenities for the workers, who all love working here and are proud of their master, Undershaft, being such a cunning old rascal.

There is some ripe comedy when it turns out that dim Lomax lit a cigarette and carelessly threw away the match while in the high explosive shed. And again when Lady B says she was presented with a bouquet in the William Morris Labour Church, which contains a quote from the great communist about no man being good enough to be another man’s master.

UNDERSHAFT: It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in church.

In fact this scene is packed with incident. The major one is that the Greek professor, Cusins, the one who got plastered with Undershaft the night before, and has been ribbing him and calling him Machiavelli, well he reveals – to everyone’s amazement – that he is, technically, legally, a foundling, as his Australian parents aren’t legally married. This leads to an extended scene where he and Undershaft haggle about the terms on which he, Cusins, will join the firm, Cusins driving a surprisingly hard bargain which Undershaft is forced, reluctantly, to accept.

But when this is all done it turns out to be just the prelude to a massive set piece exposition of his beliefs by Undershaft. The main thrust of this appears to be Shaw’s own belief, because it is anticipated in the long preface. It is the idea that the greatest crime of our age is poverty, far worse, more degrading, more blighting of society than ‘crime’, afflicting entire cities, stunting the lives of millions.

This turns into a set piece argument with Barbara because she begins to explain the benefits of her charitable work but Undershaft brutally cuts over her, saying that centuries of religious cant have done nothing to end poverty. What ends poverty is giving people a decent job and decent homes.

UNDERSHAFT: Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.
BARBARA: And will he be the better for that?
UNDERSHAFT: You know he will. Don’t be a hypocrite, Barbara. He will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter, chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it.

All good knockabout stuff but at the same time, much the same issue is central to our politics 120 years later as both Labour and Conservatives promise to get more people into work and raise productivity etc etc. Which suggests the weakness of Undershaft’s position which is that it is applicable to some workers, who manage to get into regular well-paid work but simply untrue of a large number of workers who either can’t get regular work, can only get part-time or zero hours jobs, or are too sick and ill to hold down a job. These categories of people are still with us, 120 years later, and still triggering all kinds of useless projects and comments from hapless politicians and windy commentators. But it never changes.

Meanwhile, back in the play, Undershaft continues his rant, moving beyond his point about poverty (which is incontestably true) to assert that sermons and leading articles and even voting never changed anything. Only guns change things.

UNDERSHAFT: Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new.

The play was set less than a year after the 1905 Russian revolution, a people’s uprising which forced the Tsar to establish the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906 so Undershaft is speaking with the force of recent and momentous events behind his arguments.

Anyway, Shaw shapes the narrative so that it comes down to Cusin having to make a choice between Undershaft and Barbara, choose business or the business of souls. After a lot of flannel he throws in his lot with Undershaft, mournfully thinking he has lost his true love.

But the last pages of the play are intended as a surprise because it turns out Barbara approves of his choice. She has seen through the narrowness of the Salvation Army mission just to feed the poor and realises there are men’s souls to save here, in this modern new town, the souls of the well-fed and snobbish and sanctimonious. She will marry Cusins and live here and make a difference of a different sort.

And with her ringing and inspirational declaration of intent, the play ends.

Wit versus humour

As mentioned, most of the comic moments are (in my opinion) broad and farcical in nature (Lomax’s dimwittedness) but it would be inaccurate to deny that there are also some moments of snappy repartee or one liners, epigrams and bons mots. Take this exchange which I suppose an Edwardian audience would have found funny because a bit risqué.

LOMAX: Now the claims of the Church of England –
LADY BRITOMART: That’s enough, Charles. Speak of something suited to your mental capacity.
LOMAX: But surely the Church of England is suited to all our capacities.

Would the implication that the Church of England is a rather dumb form of religion and/or Lomax’s dimness have got a laugh?

The following is a kind of ghostly echo of Wildean wit. When Cusins explains that Undershaft didn’t let it be announced at the revivalist meeting that it was he who had donated £5,000 to the cause dim Lomax says what a noble thing to do but clever Cusins says, No, Undershaft explained to him that if word got out then every charity in England would come down on him ‘like kites in a battlefield’. All of which leads up to Lady Britomart rounding off the passage with a mot:

LADY BRITOMART: That’s Andrew all over. He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

Later on, Undershaft is given a good one-liner:

UNDERSHAFT: My dear, you are the incarnation of morality. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names.

Lady B is given a Wildean speech which contains a kind of panoramic critique of the superficiality of upper class English culture. After she has criticised Lomax for talking drivel she goes on:

LADY BRITOMART: In good society in England, Charles, men drivel at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom. Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out of The Spectator or The Times. You had better confine yourself to The Times. You will find that there is a certain amount of tosh about The Times; but at least its language is reputable.

One hundred and twenty years later, right-wing dimwits still get their formulas out of The Spectator or The Times, the only change is that neither is now reputable.

It’s not so much that the play is full of witty moments like this because it isn’t. The humour is displayed more in the underlying ironies of the situations, of the juxtapositions of people with such clashing opinions and characters. The set-piece speeches by Lady B, Barbara or Undershaft, especially in the latter part of Act 3, are quite thrilling but the humour underlying them derives from the sly ironies, the undercutting of people’s speeches by other characters with satire or drollery, in which the play abounds. It is very cleverly done, often very funny, and leaves an impression of warmth and humour.

Thoughts

Theatre critics are paid to say things like ‘as relevant now as it was in Shaw’s own day’ but this is just boilerplate truism. Any play about war is always relevant because war is always with us. Ukraine, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, all round the Middle East and North Africa men are firing devastating weapons which are assembled in factories by people working for capitalists making a killing.

In fact not just the central subject of the play, war, but the closely related topics of poverty, hunger, the blight of alcoholism, domestic violence and toxic masculinity, they’re all still with us aren’t they, and always will be.

On the one hand it was maybe brave or striking or notable that Shaw wrote a play about a cynical arms’ manufacturer clashing with his principled Christian daughter, especially in a theatrical culture dominated by drawing room dramas about fallen women and shameful secrets etc. Maybe it was, at the time, radically provocative and controversial. And, the more you read through it, the richer and more complex the interplay of character and the multiple ironies becomes.

But on the other hand, it feels hopelessly cartoony and there’s something relentlessly simplistic about the whole thing. Take the painting-by-numbers confrontation at the end of Act 2 where Mrs Baines, Jenny and the rest are happy to take Undershaft’s money for their charity work and only Barbara sees how immoral it is. Take the comic book counter-intuitive fact that the factory Barbara thought would be strangled by smoke and peopled by demons turns out to be a model town with outstanding amenities, no poverty and a grateful populace. Not to mention that the central plotline is based on the fairy tale theme of the rich man who must pass on his fortune to a foundling.

Some of the speeches and some of the issues raised ‘cut through’ to the modern reader but they are embedded in a work which, at the same time, feels strangely childish. The scene where Barbara deprecates her father signing the check to the Salvation Army feels far too pat and simplistic. The whole situation comes from a children’s book, you expect it to have Dickens-style illustrations.

You only have to compare Shaw’s high-spirited simplifications with the role of a modern British arms company in the present context, now, in 2024, supplying weapons and munitions to Israel or Ukraine to feel the shock of the real world.

• Does the UK sell arms to Israel? (Oxfam)

I suppose Shaw is to be praised for raising all manner of political and social issues in his plays but the ones I’ve read feel like toytown entertainments: clever up to a point, funny and well-shaped, twinkling with sly ironies, but ultimately useless for thinking about the issues he raises, as they exist in the modern world, because they’re too simple-minded.

P.S.

Compare Shaw’s light entertainment with the contemporary and unrelenting anti-war art of Peter Kennard.

• Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent @ the Whitechapel Gallery

Related links

• Major Barbara on Planet Gutenberg
• Preface to Major Barbara on Planet Gutenberg

Bernard Shaw reviews

• Arms and the Man (1894)
• Candida (1894)
• John Bull’s Other Island (1904)
• Major Barbara (1905)
• Preface to Major Barbara (1905)
• The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
• Pygmalion (1913)
• Heartbreak House (1919)

• More play reviews