#andrew undershaft

Secularist - The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.

Church of Catechism – Catholic Church

Rhapsodize - Speak or write about someone or something with great enthusiasm. (Rhapsodist)

Dithyramb – (dith uh ram) 1.) a Greek choral song or chant of vehement or wild character and of usually irregular form, originally in honor of Dionysus or Bacchus. 2.) any poem or other composition having similar characteristics, as an impassioned or exalted theme or irregular form. 3.) any wildly enthusiastic speech or writing.

Infernal - Irritating and tiresome (used for emphasis).  Characteristic of hell or the underworld.

Calvinism – Predestination, sovereignty of God, the supreme authority of the Scriptures and the irresistibility of grace. Teachings of John Calvin.

Presbyterianism – Branch of Protestant Christianity that adheres to the theologies of Calvinism

Methodism - The name comes from the fact that Wesley sought to understand religion "by rule and method" and follow biblical teachings as interpreted by tradition and reason.

Greek Paganism – is a blanket term, typically used to refer to religious traditions which are polytheistic or indigenous.

Idolaters – worshipper of idols

Mephistopheles is the demon in the Faust legend. He has also appeared in other literature and the name is now used to mean the Devil.

Lyddite - (lid-dite) Lyddite was a form of high explosive widely used during both the Boer War and First World War, most notably during the latter by the British.  Named after the area in southern England in which the substance's initial trials were performed so as to maintain secrecy, Lyddite was actually composed of molten and cast picric acid.

Diapason - a full, rich outpouring of melodious sound. [dahy-uh-pey-zuhn, -suhn]

Donizetti's operas – 1797 – 1848, Italian composer

Immenso giubilo – immense joy

Ducat – [duhk uht] any of various silver coins formerly issued in various parts of Europe.

Doss – makeshift bed

Fitter- a burglar’s locksmith

A brief history/background of George Bernard Shaw and the making of Major Barbara.

·         Won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1925

·         Born 1856

·         Born in Dublin

·         Moved to London in 1876

·         Advocated for the new theater of Ibsen, was very influenced by Ibsen (strong female characters, ex. A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler in comparison to Major Barbara and Candida, described as a “sort of Doll’s House with a happy ending”)

·         Started as a music and theater critic

·         His early plays attacked social hypocrisy

·         Major Barbara was one of Shaw’s most successful discussion plays

·         “The audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual.”

·         http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html#

·         Began writing plays as a way to express his opinions, particularly on injustice.

·         Started writing plays at 36.

·         In the Nobel Peace Prize presentation speech it is said “It is characteristic of Shaw that his orthodox socialistic severity toward the community is combined with a great freedom from prejudice and a genuine psychological insight when he deals with the individual sinner. Even in these early pieces one of his finest qualities, his humanity, is fully and clearly marked.”

·         On Major Barbara it is said “His next great drama of ideas, Major Barbara (1905), has a deeper significance. It discusses the problem of whether evil ought to be conquered by the inner way, the spirit of joyful and religious sacrifice; or by the outer way, the eradication of poverty, the real foundation of all social defects. Shaw's heroine, one of his most remarkable female characters, ends in a compromise between the power of money and that of the Salvation Army. The process of thought is here carried out with great force, and naturally with a great deal of paradox. The drama is not entirely consistent, but it reveals a surprisingly fresh and clear conception of the joy and poetry of the life of practical faith. Shaw the rationalist here shows himself more liberal and more chivalrous than is customary with the type”

·         http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/press.html

·         First production of Major Barbara was November 28, 1905 in the Royal Court Theatre.

·         There was a 1929 revival at the Wyndham Theatre

·         http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library/exhibits/shaw/stage.html

·         Peter Gill’s 1982 National Theater production of Major Barbara; programme excerpt http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/parade/abj76/PG/pieces/george_bernard_shaw.shtml   (1905 production pictures included)

·         Eleanor Robson, an American actress, was the inspiration for Barbara. Shaw wrote letters to her during the writing of Major Barbara. "I have begun another play and lo! there you are in the middle of it ... I swear I never thought of you until you came up a trap in the middle of the stage and got into my heroine's empty clothes and said Thank you: I am the mother of that play ... the heroine is so like you that I see nobody in the wide world who can play her except you."

·         She was slated to play Barbara agreements with her American manager could not be reached.

·         Professor Gilbert Murray, whose translation of Euripides verse had just come out, was the inspiration for Cusins. In fact, Murray wrote the verses that Cusins says in the play and Shaw has expressed his gratefulness for Murray’s work on Major Barbara.

·         Murray was, like Cusins, born in Australia

·         Alfred Nobel patented dynamite, and was recorded as saying “My factories may end war sooner than your peace congresses. The day two army corps can destroy each other in one second, all civilised nations will recoil from war and disband their armies." This is a statement to which Shaw disagreed and says so in the play through Andrew Undershaft  "The more destructive war becomes, the more fascinating we find it."

·         In 1925, Shaw won Alfred Nobel’s Peace Prize, but arranged to not accept the money. He said "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite. But only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel prize."

·         The Salvation Army said of Barbara refusing to take the Bodger and Undershaft money  that it seemed incredible to them.  Any good Salvationist, they said, would, like the Commissioner in the play, take money from the devil himself and make so good use of it that he would perhaps be converted, for there is hope for everybody."

·         http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/parade/abj76/PG/pieces/george_bernard_shaw.shtml