SOURCE: Berst, Charles A. “Propaganda and Art in Mrs. Warren's Profession.” ELH 33, no. 3 (September 1966): 390-404.

In the following essay, Berst calls Mrs. Warren's Profession one of Shaw's most didactic plays and maintains that “an examination of its achievement as art should prove helpful in assessing the extent to which Shaw's role as a dramatic propagandist limits his accomplishment as an artist.”

Since Mrs Warren's Profession is one of the most openly didactic of Shaw's plays, an examination of its achievement as art should prove helpful in assessing the extent to which Shaw's role as a dramatic propagandist limits his accomplishment as an artist. Few critics nowadays would agree with Percival P. Howe that the preface to Mrs Warren's Profession renders the play unnecessary,¹ or would go so far as Alick West and analyze it in terms of a Marxist tract,² but there is a decided tendency, not unencouraged...