Calling Major Barbara Shaw's "most successful" drama, Kennedy provides an overview and background of Shaw's play in this essay.

Shaw wrote a number of plays concerned with wealth and its distribution, but Major Barbara may be the most complex in theme and the most successful as drama. Barbara Undershaft has defied upperclass conventions by becoming a major in the Salvation Army, dedicating herself to the poor of London, who, naturally enough, resist her ministrations whenever they go beyond food and shelter. Adolphus Cusins, a professor of Greek given to quoting Euripides, pretends an equal dedication in order to be near her. Her mother, Lady Britomart-the owner of one of Shaw's most resounding character names-now needs more money for her children's marriages and turns to her long -es tranged husband, Andrew Undershaft, a munitions maker of low birth but noble proportions. He is "fabulously wealthy, because there is...