George Bernard Shaw was called, with good reason, the "English Nietzsche". Though Nietzsche was an aristocrat and Shaw a socialist, both cherished the dream of the superman and looked forward to the day when he would be realised. Both, however, were characterised by their mordant wit and intellectual cynicism, in which "Man and Superman" abounds. Shaw manages to compress a number of disparate themes into a relatively taut dramatic format, even throwing in a scene in which Don Juan, the Devil and a gang of anarchist brigands make an appearance. The central event of the plot involves the wealthy Tanner, a member of the "Idle Rich Class" making himself subservient to the Life Force and seeking the perfect woman to marry, who would guarantee him a very special offspring, his ideal, the superman himself. Though Shaw was not known to have read the works of Bergson at that time, nor to have been conversant with his vitalist doctrine of the Life Force, his use of the Life Force motif and the philosophical underpinnings of the play attest to a pure Bergsonism. The most delightful part, however, is the "Revolutionist's Handbook" at the end, which contains Shaw's most scandalous anti-Establishment jibes. For instance, "Do not do unto others as you would them do unto you. They might not have the same taste."

In this title, G.B. Shaw outdoes himself. Not only does he manage to turn up with a Don Juan play in our modern day and age, which is full of cynicism, and doesn't give in to 'medieval' codes of behaviour, but he even manages to turn around the table. Here, the hunter becomes the hunted, forced to flee from his pursued/pursuer. Shaw includes in this play an ingenious conversation between the original 15th century characters, which not only explains about Don Juan's philosophy, but shines a new light upon our own lives, here and today.

The writings of Bernard Shaw in this particulat play, invites to you use your mind to understand life and philosphy. It has such great insight into many aspects of human nature and at the same time is exteremely funny and really takes you into it's pages. The writing has impecable style and this is truly a classic play.

To paraphrase W. H. Auden, this is exactly the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing - an overview of the musical life of London and provinces in the late 1800's. It's big. It talks about a lot of people and places you've probably never heard of, and could lead a full and complete life without hearing of. It's informative. It's tremendously funny in places.

Shaw was a master of English prose, and he was writing about a subject he knew and loved. If you are interested in music and good writing, this is a must-read, if you have the endurance.

"...I loathe nothing more than the commonplace that the truth always lies between the two extremes (truth being quite the most extreme thing I know of)..." (page 814

GBS wrote play with "approaching audiences as citizens capable of thought and prompting them to think imaginatively to some purpose" in mind, as Margery Morgan says. And there are plenty for one to think seriously about in Major Barbara.

The most interesting is his conviction that no money is untainted. That's interesting because it means the donations and public fundings the environmentalists take in come from no less than the evil polluters themselves, perhaps feeling, which GBS rightly agreed, as the Salvation Army would that they "...will take money from the Devil himself sooner than abandon the work of Salvation." But GBS also wrote in the preface that while he is okay to accept tainted money, "He must either share the world's guilt or go to another planet." From what I can gather from the preface and play, GBS believed money is the key to solve all the problems we have, hence his mentioning of Samuel Butler and his "constant sense of the importance of money," and his low opinion of Ruskin and Kroptokin, for whom, "law is consequence of the tendency of human beings to oppress fellow humans; it is reinforced by violence." Kropotkin also "provides evidence from the animal kingdom to prove that species which practices mutual aid multiply faster than others. Opposing all State power, he advocates the abolition of states, and of private property, and the transforming of humankind into a federation of mutual aid communities. According to him, capitalism cannot achieve full productivity, for it amis at maximum profits instead of production for human needs. All persons, including intellectuals, should practice manual labor. Goods should be distributed according to individual needs." (Guy de Mallac, The Widsom of Humankind by Leo Tolstoy.)

If GBS wasn't joking, then the following should be one of the most controversial ideas he raised in the preface to the play. I quote: "It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices...until they give more trouble than they are worth, at which point we should, with many apologies and expressions of sympathy and some generosity in complying with their last wishes, place them in the lethal chamber and get rid of them." Did he really mean that if you are a rapist once, you can be free and "put up with," but if you keep getting drunk (a vice), or slightly more seriously, stealing, you should be beheaded?

Shaw can be absolutely captivating even when he is being an evangelist for political philosophies that the twentieth century has proven to be nothing but vehicles for repression and mass murder (Communism - Shaw approved of Lenin even when the evidence showed him to be pure evil). This play-among his best (if you can see the movie with Rex Harrison, do not miss it)- has such brilliant dialogue and sparkling humor that it is easy to forget that one is being preached to. Shaw thinks human evil is due to socially deprived environments. Ergo, pour money into poor neighborhoods and social evils will vanish. Unfortunately for Shaw's argument, poverty and human evil are two different things entirely and only intersect occasionally and coincidently. The poor can be poor due to lack of opportunity or due to a culture of self-destructiveness (illegitmacy, drug/alcohol use, disdain for values that lead to achievement, disdain for skills that lead to steady employability). It is difficult to sustain an argument that the poor in the USA are so due to a lack of opportunity when recent immigrants have pretty much taken the available opportunities and ran with them, rapidly entering the middle classes within a generation of arriving here. Shaw simply cannot believe that anyone would choose to remain poor. Well, they can and do, when getting ahead means putting in 40+ hours a week, and not loafing all day on a street corner in an inebriated/stoned condition. Accepting that fact would have saved millions of lives that were sacrificed in the last century in the attempt to build a perfect "worker's paradise".
Leaving the silly premise behind the play aside, Shaw has crafted a startling piece of theatre and uses his magisterial command of the English language to amuse, provoke, and amaze the audience.

The playwright uncovers the debate about war and pacifism. Shaw also illuminates the poverty industry, and shows that all money is tainted. The play is a vehicle for a debate on philosophies, the burning issues of the day. Shaw shows that the audience can laugh and think, in the same play. Probably Britain's best known playwright, after Shakespeare, Shaw shines in Major Barbara

Bernard Shaw is a great playwright. In this particular play he exposes the shortcomings of English upper classes. They only think of mariage, business, politics, but England is in fact a drunken skipper, a skipper on which every sailor and even the captain are drunk with rum and unable to see the danger coming up and to deal with it. So the skipper is condemned to break on the rocks. England in the same way is condemned to break on the rocks because no one, in the upper classes, thinks beyond their interest. This catastrophe coming up is shown by some kind of supernatural explosion at the end of the play and the members of these upper classes admire the event as being beautiful and they are totally unable to cope. The picture given by Shaw of England is particularly pessimistic. Their is no future and no hope for that country. Along the way he discusses important issues such as the liberation of women within their enslavement and their power is nothing but hypnotism or drowning men in a sea of words and charm. The only sane man in the play is the captain, with an allusion to Whitman, « Captain my captain », who sees the catastrophes coming and is unable to convince his own daughters or their husbands and friends that they have to control the boat if they don't want it to capsize. But does he really want to convince them ?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I recently saw the production of this play in Atlanta and I was blown away. This is a fascinating, fast-paced comedy with dark undertones about a bankrupt society. It is set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth c., but the issues turn out to be very contemporary: the question of capitalism, security vs. adventure, gender roles... I recommend it!

THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA is one of Shaw's most biting critical commentaries...this time on doctors. Shaw hated doctors, as a result of a botched operation on his foot, so here he portrays them as a group of ignorant, bull-headed windbags. All, that is, except for one doctor, who has actually found a cure for tuberculosis. The "dilemma" in the title is whether to use the cure on a talented young painter who is a moral and ethical sleazebag, or on an upstanding middle-aged physician who is a good soul, albeit a boring and relatively mundane one. All this is complicated by the fact that the doctor is in love with the painter's wife! The biggest problem with the play is that it has lost some of its impetus in the last century. Antibiotics can now cure tuberculosis, and the medical profession is far more restricted in its use of "experimental" treatments than it was then. However, Shaw's wit and invective is still poignant even at the end of the twentieth century. A must-read for Bernard Shaw enthusiasts....

The plays of Bernard Shaw span many years and cover many topics. While many of Shaw's works are entertaining as well as enlightening, the plays in this volume (written very early in his career) tackle complex issues that concern society. These plays force us to critically view how success in the world is judged. They demonstrate how any of us may unknowingly be an accomplice to or a participant in activities to which we stringently object on a moral basis. This is pertinent in society today! The works in this volume open our eyes. . .and we may not like what we see. In summary, the plays in this volume are important, although they will hopefully make the reader feel somewhat uncomfortable. A well planned anthology of Shaw's work should be part of any college education

In one surviving account, Joan of Arc was quoted as saying that her judges were merely putting her on trial because they were members of the pro-English faction and therefore her "capital enemies"; unfortunately, this play tries to claim otherwise. One of Shaw's primary themes is the notion that Pierre Cauchon and Joan's other judges were acting as "sincere" defenders of the Church in their prosecution of her, a view which is contradicted by document after document as well as the above quote from Joan herself. Cauchon and his cronies are well known to historians as having been long-term supporters of the English and Burgundian factions, and the eyewitnesses said repeatedly that they prosecuted Joan out of revenge for the defeats that their side had suffered at the hands of her army, rather than out of any genuine belief that she was guilty of heresy. Cauchon even allowed her to take final communion (which was never done in the case of heretics), indicating that even he didn't truly believe the charges against her. As Shaw was aware, these charges were soundly debunked when the case was appealed after the English were finally driven from Rouen in 1449; and the arguments put forward in this ruling have been confirmed as accurate by experts in medieval theology and canon law, whereas Cauchon's arguments can easily be refuted by consulting medieval theological works - his arguments are, at best, merely distortions of what the medieval Church actually taught. Here are some specific examples which factored prominently in Shaw's play:
- Shaw, like Cauchon, claimed that Joan was guilty of heresy for wearing male clothing allegedly as a personal preference, despite the fact that both of these men were aware of her own statements to the contrary. She was quoted as saying that she wore soldiers' clothing (of a type which had "laces and points" by which the pants and tunic could be securely tied together) primarily to protect herself, as her guards had tried to rape her on several occasions; this reason is also given in some of the 15th century chronicles, along with similar quotes from Joan herself on the need to protect her chastity while surrounded by the men in her army. The medieval Church allowed an exemption in such cases of necessity (read St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica", or St. Hildegard's "Scivias", for example): the practice of so-called "cross-dressing" was only condemned if it was done as a preference. Shaw rejects all of the above based on the specious argument that the "other women" who accompanied armies in that era didn't wear such clothing, ignoring the fact that these "other women" were: 1) prostitutes, who wore provocative dresses because they were trying to encourage sexual encounters rather than the opposite; and 2) aristocratic women sometimes were given command of their family's armies in the absence of their husband or son, but these women did not bed down at night among the troops in the field, as Joan often did. Shaw chooses to ignore these circumstances.
- On a somewhat related subject, Shaw tries to portray her as a rebel against "gender norms", again ignoring her own statements and the circumstances of the era. She was quoted by one eyewitness as saying that, quote, "I would rather stay home with my poor mother and spin wool [rather than lead an army]", which hardly sounds like someone who is trying to reject traditional gender roles. When another woman, Catherine de la Rochelle, wanted to get involved, Joan told her to "go home to your husband and tend your household". At no point do we find her making any 'feminist' statements. She was given titular command of an army for the same reason other religious visionaries sometimes were given such a role in that era, not as part of a "feminist crusade".
- Shaw admits that Joan was a devout Catholic and yet claims her as "the first Protestant martyr" - in the same sentence. This seems to be a rather willful contradiction, and the claim of "Protestant tendencies" is merely based, once again, on the old business of accepting Cauchon's claims about her at face value while ignoring the circumstances. If you read the documents you will find that Joan never opposed the Church as a whole: she merely stated her objection to being tried by a panel of pro-English clergy, and repeatedly asked to be given a non-partisan group instead or to be brought before the Pope. It was a violation of Inquisitorial procedure to stack the panel of assessors with people who were pursuing a secular vendetta against the accused: what Cauchon and his cohorts were doing, as Inquisitor Brehal later pointed out during the appeal, was itself an act of heresy. The notion that the medieval Church viewed all Inquisitorial panels as "infallible" and therefore not open to question is just a stereotype, bluntly contradicted by actual medieval theological writings: St. Hildegard, in her 12th century book "Scivias", warns the clergy against judging someone in error or out of anger, as it would be the offending clergy who would be punished for it by God. Joan was perfectly within her rights, even under the rules of the medieval Church, to question her biased judges, and was declared a martyr for Catholicism by Inquisitor Brehal when her execution was declared invalid in 1456. Shaw ignores this. The claim that his play is somehow vindicated by the fact that it was "vetted" by one Catholic (out of the hundreds of millions of Catholics worldwide) is a pointless argument: there are "Catholics" who claim that Joan was having adulterous sex, and all sorts of defamatory allegations. The bottom line is: this play does little more than repeat the slander leveled at Joan by the men who cruelly put her to death, despite the work of generations of scholars to bring a more accurate picture of the issue to light.

when i read this play for my junior AP english class, i truly enjoyed it and thought that while joan is rather naive and intolerant, she is a feminist icon--rebellious and unconventional. she is portrayed as being brave, unlike the romantic fluff-chick that various publications make her out to be. while i did enjoy the informative preface, there were sections in which shaw sounded like a typical elitist male and that disappointed me very much.
all in all, i'd like to think that it was a decent play, and definitely worth reading.

Shaw was a close friend of a Benedictine Abbess, Dame Laurentia, who "vetted" his plays for fairness to the faith. This play is fun, takes lots of bites out of politicians and clergy, and says something beautiful about the imagination. This Joan is no dolt and had to be burnt at the stake. That is a complement to her faith.

This is the third volume of a three-volume collection of musical criticism by one of the most renowned English-language authors of the last 120 years. Unfortunately, he was losing his powers in the period which this volume covers, and it's not nearly as good as the first two. Might be worth having for the reprint of his short book on Wagner's Ring