Major Barbara
Major Barbara,a play by Bernard Shaw performed 1905 , published 1907 .
It portrays the conflict between spiritual and worldly power embodied in Barbara, a major in the Salvation Army, and her machiavellian father, millionaire armaments manufacturer Andrew Undershaft. While visiting her East End shelter for the poor, as part of a bargain struck between them, he reveals that the shelter's benefactor, Lord Saxmundham , made his money through ‘Bodgers' whisky’, and she suffers a crisis of faith as she glimpses the possibility that all salvation and philanthropy are tainted at the source: the next day, visiting his factory with her mother Lady Britomart and her fiancé, classical scholar Adolphus Cusins , she is further shaken to discover her father is a model employer. Cusins enters the debate, reveals that he is technically a foundling and therefore eligible to inherit the Undershaft empire (as Undershaft's own children are...
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