Publisher's Synopsis
Major Barbara is a 1905 play by George Bernard Shaw. Andrew Undershaft, a wealthy weapons trader, despises poverty believing "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". His daughter, Barbara, devotes herself to charity. When a shelter for the poor is at risk of closure due to lack of funds, the idealistic Barbara, a Major in the Salvation Army must reassess her beliefs and opinions about wealth, poverty and philanthropy. In many of his plays, Shaw writes a preface for the reader which, in some cases, has very little to do with the play itself, but, in some cases, as with Major Barbara, it comments directly on the ideas found in the play. And as with this play, the prefaces are often rather lengthy and are divided into sections.
