MRS HUSHABYE Sh-sh! Listen: do you hear it now? It’s magnificent.
They all turn away from the house and look up, listening.
HECTOR [
gravely
] Miss Dunn, you can do no good here. We of this house are only moths flying into the candle. You had better go down to the cellar.
ELLIE [
scornfully
] I don’t think.
MAZZINI Ellie, dear, there is no disgrace in going to the cellar. An officer would order his soldiers to take cover. Mr Hushabye is behaving like an amateur. Mangan and the burglar are acting very sensibly; and it is they who will survive.
ELLIE Let them. I shall behave like an amateur. But why should you run any risk?
MAZZINI Think of the risk those poor fellows up there are running!
NURSE GUINNESS Think of
them,
indeed, the murdering blackguards! What next?
A terrific explosion shakes the earth. They reel back into their seats, or clutch the nearest support. They hear the falling of the shattered glass from the windows.
MAZZINI Is anyone hurt?
HECTOR Where did it fall?
NURSE GUINNESS [
in hideous triumph
] Right in the gravel pit: I seen it. Serve un right! I seen it [
she runs away towards the gravel pit, laughing harshly
]
.
HECTOR One husband gone.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Thirty pounds of good dynamite wasted.
MAZZINI Oh, poor Mangan!
HECTOR Are you immortal that you need pity him? Our turn next.
They wait in silence and intense expectation. HESIONE and ELLIE hold each other’s hand tight.
A distant explosion is heard.
MRS HUSHABYE [
relaxing her grip
] Oh! they have passed us.
LADY UTTERWORD The danger is over, Randall. Go to bed.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER Turn in, all hands. The ship is safe. [
He sits down and goes asleep.
]
ELLIE [
disappointedly
] Safe!
HECTOR [
disgustedly
] Yes, safe. And how damnably dull the world has become again suddenly! [
He sits down.
]
MAZZINI [
sitting down
] I was quite wrong, after all. It is we who have survived; and Mangan and the burglar—
HECTOR—the two burglars—
LADY UTTERWORD—the two practical men of business—
MAZZINI—both gone. And the poor clergyman will have to get a new house.
MRS HUSHABYE But what a glorious experience! I hope they’ll come again tomorrow night.
ELLIE [
radiant at the prospect
] Oh, I hope so.
RANDALL
at last succeeds in keeping the home fires burning
lj
on his flute.
ENDNOTES
For many of the footnotes and endnotes of this edition, and especially where I have not been able to track a reference myself, I have relied mainly on two sources: the series of selected Shaw plays
(Major Barbara,
The
Doctor’s Dilemma, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House)
annotated by A. C. Ward in the 1950s and 1960s, published by Longmans, Green and Co; and
The Complete Prefaces,
vols. 1 and 2, annotated by Dan H. Laurence and Daniel J. Leary, published by Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1993, 1995.
MAJOR BARBARA
1
(p. 5)
they conclude that I am echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy:
Shaw is naming several controversial figures of his time: German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900); Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828—1906); Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg (1849—19 12); and Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).
2
(p. 6)
though I already knew all about Alnaschar and Don Quixote and Simon Tappertit and many another romantic hero mocked by reality:
Shaw lists three fictional romantic heroes: In “The Barber’s Fifth Brother,” a tale from
The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,
Alnaschar is a dreamer who invests in glassware in a scheme to become rich and marry the vizier’s daughter, but then shatters the glass in a rage against his imaginary wife; Don Quixote is the idealistic romantic hero of the satirical romance of that name by Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1 616); Simon Tappertit, in Charles Dickens’s novel
Barnaby Rudge
(1841), is a locksmith’s apprentice given to ambitious and romantic delusions.
3
(p. 10)
Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is the victim in England of a single much quoted sentence containing the phrase “big blonde beast”:
The phrase, from Nietzsche’s
The Genealogy of Morals
(1887; First Essay, section 11), refers to the noble animal element that reemerges from time to time in heroic peoples. “Blonde,” according to Nietzsche’s translator, Walter Kaufmann, refers not to the Teutonic races but to a lion’s mane.
4
(p. 15)
His [Undershaft‘s] conduct stands the Kantian test:
The reference is to the categorical imperative—universal rule of ethical conduct—of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17 24-1804): Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become a universal law.
5
(p. 20)
I am met with nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and Nietzsche, and am only too thankful that they are not about Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand:
Shaw uses French writers (and lovers) Alfred de Musset (1810—1857) and George Sand (1804)-1876; pen name of Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dude vant) as representatives of outmoded Romantic thought.
6
(p. 26)
a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red:
The Salvation Army motto, which appears on its flag, is “Blood and Fire.” Shaw explains here that the Blood and Fire are not literal but rather figurative of the beauty and energy of life and joy; like the English artist and poet William Blake (1757-1827), Shaw appreciated the power and exuberance of vital energy.
7
(p. 28) like
Frederick’s grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live for ever:
During the SevenYears War ( 1756—1763), in his failed attack on Kolin (June 18, 1757), King Frederick II of Prussia (known as Frederick the Great) is said to have turned to his hesitant soldiers and urged them on with the taunt, “You scoundrels! Do you want to live forever?”
8
(p. 38) he
launches
his
sixpennorth of fulminate, missing his mark, but ... slaying twenty-three persons, besides wounding ninety-nine.... Had he blown all Madrid to atoms,
...
not one could have escaped the charge of being an accessory, ... themselves also:
Unfortunately, Shaw here seems to sympathize with Morral’s terrorist act (see note on page 37); at the least, he refuses to judge it as something worse than stupidity: The deaths of twenty-three innocent people and the injuring of ninety-nine others provoke him only to note that as participants in a repressive and exploitative capitalist society, they along with everyone else were guilty of allowing that society to continue its evil. It is an abhorrent view. And if it does not sound strange to our ears, that is because we heard this explanation of terrorism often enough after the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
9
(p. 38)
Bonapart’s pounding of the Paris mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by our respectable classes “the whiff of grapeshot”:
“The Whiff of Grapeshot” is the title of chapter 7 in Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle’s 1837 work
The French Revolution
(book 3, part 7). In the chapter Carlyle recounts how Napoleon fired with cannons upon a crowd of insurrectionists, killing 200 of them; he asserts that this action marked the end of the French Revolution.
10
(p. 39)
who can doubt that all over the world proletarians of the ducal kidney are now revelling in “the whiff of dynamite”:
Shaw’s analogy creates a false moral equivalence between a crowd using violence to seize power and in turn being met with violence to a crowd witnessing a wedding and being blown up.
11
(p. 39)
we are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we may regret it, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens:
François Ravaillac (1578—1610) assassinated King Henry IV of France (Henry of Navarre); Robert-Francis Damiens (1715-1757) attempted to assassinate King Louis XV of France. Both men were tortured and executed.
12
(p. 40)
Think of him setting out to find a gentleman and a Christian in the multitude of human wolves howling for his blood:
The outcry against Morral and Nakens (see note on page 40) must have been extraordinary for Shaw to display anger as he does here. One hopes that Shaw’s appellation (howling wolves) was not meant to apply to the families of the twenty-three people killed by Morral, who might justifiably speak against Nakens for harboring a terrorist.
13
(p. 45)
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 ... place them in the lethal chamber:
Shaw was a man of ideas: Many were good; several were bad. The idea of executing incorrigible lawbreakers is an example of the latter. Shaw believed that execution should be reserved only for those criminals who are not capable of reform; he considered that system of dealing with crime to be morally superior for three reasons: He saw punishment of any kind as morally reprehensible and repugnant; he considered capital punishment to be murder and revenge dressed in solemn ritual; and he believed that capital punishment degrades the souls of the executors. Furthermore, he felt repeat offenders should be executed in a nonpunitive way rather than imprisoned because imprisonment is extraordinarily cruel punishment and therefore morally indefensible.
14
(p. 49) Lady Britomart: Lady Britomart is named after Ed mund Spenser’s knight-heroine in book 3 of
The Faerie Queene
(1590) to indicate her formidable strength of character. The name also suggests a range of meanings and associations: British, Mars (god of war in classical mythology), and markets (capitalism) .
15
(p. 54)
“Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone or Disraeli could have openly defied every social and moral obligation all their lives as your father has?”:
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), known as the Iron Chancellor, was the first chancellor of Germany; rivals William Gladstone (1809-1898) and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) were successive prime ministers of Britain.
16
(p.57)
“history tells us of only two successful institutions: one the Undershaft firm, and the other the Roman Empire under the Antonines”:
Antonines is the collective name of the second-century Roman emperors Antoninus Pius and his sons, who succeeded him. Undershaft has borrowed this opinion about the age of the Antonines from English historian Edward Gibbon’s
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788).
17
(p. 60) Adolphus Cusins: Shaw based the character of Cusins in part on his friend Gilbert Murray (1866—1957), a noted scholar of the religion and literature of ancient Greece. Murray’s translations of Euripides (later much criticized by T. S. Eliot for wordiness) were performed alongside Shaw’s plays at the Court Theatre in the first decade of the twentieth century.
18
(p. 63) “pukinon domon elthein”
[transliterated from the Greek]:
The phrase, which means “to enter the thick (compact) house,” is adapted from a passage about the theft of a helmet by Autolycus (son of the messenger god Mercury, in Greek mythology) in book 10 of the Iliad, the epic poem about the siege of Troy attributed to the Greek poet Homer. Gilbert Murray (see note 17, above) furnished Shaw with this gag in a letter of October 7, 1905, by suggesting that the line could also mean that it was a bit thick of Autolycus to break into the house.
19
(p. 78)
“Romola”:
Romola is the eponymous heroine of the 1863 novel by English novelist George Eliot. By his own admission, Shaw “almost venerated” Eliot in his youth; but he later came to regard her as too lacking in hope. By associating Snobby with the Chartists (see note on p. 77) and Rummy with George Eliot, Shaw is distinguishing himself from the previous generation of social reformers.
20
(p. 82) striking her with his fist in the face: Though there are episodes of farcical violence in Shaw, this extended episode of realistic violence is unique. In spite of its realism, however, Bill Walker’s violence toward women has the literary model of Bill Sykes’s brutal treatment of Nancy in Charles Dickens’s novel
Oliver Twist
(1837-1838). The connection between the two Bills was made even more apparent when Robert Newton played both characters in the respective film versions: David Lean, who had been the film editor of
Major Barbara
in 1941, cast Newton as Bill Sykes in the
Oliver Twist
he directed in 1948.
21
(p. 85)
“coroner’s inquest on me daughter”:
As the father of a daughter who has died, Peter Shirley foreshadows Under shaft in his later figurative loss of Barbara.
22
(p. 96)
“Dionysos”:
In Greek mythology, Dionysus, the god of wine, is not one of the original Olympian gods and is consequently something of an outsider—a foundling god, one might say. The Greeks associated Dionysus with wine-drinking and ecstatic reveling, hence with the abandonment (or transcendence) of reason and rational restraint of the appetites. Gilbert Murray’s translation of Euripides’
The Bacchae,
which depicts the seduction and destruction of the young ruler Pentheus by Dionysus, influenced the writing of
Major Barbara,
as did Shaw’s friendship and collegial relationship with Murray. Murray’s translation of Euripides’
Hippolytus
was performed at the Court Theatre the same year
Major Barbara
was performed there.