Book Review: Major Barbara (GBS)

Shaw, George Bernard Major Barbara (1906)

Shaw’s Preface is as outrageously wrongheaded as usual: he loved the sound of his own ideas. His comments on the way the world works are as acutely and cynically accurate as always, but his inferences about how we should deal with it simply miss the mark. He is very good at presenting us with real and lifelike characters, but when he thinks about people he goes awry. It’s as if his intellect and his imagination don’t know of each other’s existence. The play works well, and would be a pleasure to see. The plotting is perhaps a trifle too pat, but that’s GBS for you: he will make his plays demonstrate his ideas, and that’s when the machinery creaks. When he just goes with his imagination, as in the Salvation Army scenes, the results are brilliant, witty, emotionally true, and beautifully paced. ***