Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Notes 247
difficult to obtain, but both preface and appendixes are reprinted in Prefaces by
Bernard Shaw (1934). The preface, without the appendixes, is reprinted in Volume 1
of Bernard Shaw: The Complete Prefaces, Vol. 1: 1889– 1913 (1993), edited by Dan
Laurence and Daniel J. Leary. The first appendix is reprinted in The Drama Observed
(1:210–18), edited by Bernard Dukore. The second appendix, which I cite several
times in the following paragraph, is a collage of excerpts from letters Shaw wrote to
the press about the play, interlarded with additional comments by Shaw. The letters
are reprinted in the first volume of The Drama Observed as “Bernard Shaw Replies
to the Critics of Widowers’ Houses” and “Unconscious Villainy and Widowers’
Houses” (1:203–10). Since I cite material from both the letters and Shaw’s comments,
which are reprinted only in the 1934 edition of Shaw’s prefaces, I have, for the
sake of consistency, made all references to that volume.
3. Elle était une de ces femmes créées pour aimer et pour être aimées. Partie de
très bas, arrivée par l’amour dont elle avait fait une profession presque sans le savoir,
agissant par instinct, par adresse innée, elle acceptait l’argent comme les baisers,
naturellement, sans distinguer, employant son flair remarquable d’une façon irraisonnée
et simple, comme font les animaux, que rendent subtils les nécessités de
l’existence. (My translation.)
4. Bertolini makes a similar point in his perceptive analysis of the play (Playwrighting
Self of Bernard Shaw, 34).
Chapter 5. Major Barbara
1. A thorough and informative discussion of Shaw’s numerous and substantial
revisions of the play can be found in Bernard Dukore’s Introduction to Major Barbara:
A Facsimile of the Holograph Manuscript. Dukore’s analysis details the many
ways in which Shaw’s changes improve the dramatic structure of the play.
2. Shaw implies at the end of the preface that the play should be considered as a
parable when he “solemnly” denounces anyone foolhardy enough to claim it as a
record of actual fact. Lest anyone miss the point, he made it utterly explicit for the
British version of the film: “What you are about to see is not an idle tale of people
who never existed and things that could never have happened. It is a parable” (Collected
Screenplays 485).
3. Shaw further emphasized the difference between Undershaft and his successor
in his revision for the 1931 standard edition by changing “Six o’clock tomorrow
morning, my young friend” to “Six o’clock tomorrow morning, Euripides.” See
Dukore, “Toward an Interpretation of Major Barbara.”
4. In the Derry manuscript, Undershaft explicitly tells his daughter that the issue
between them is whether or not he is, as Cusins had said, “a most infernal old scoundrel.”
5. It is possible that Shaw got the expression from T. H. Huxley. In an essay called
“The Struggle for Existence in Human Society,” Huxley expresses very Undershaftian
ideas. He discusses the difficulties in trying to achieve cooperation and