PREFACE TO MAJOR BARBARA: FIRST AID TO CRITICS

BERNARD SHAW




N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are
not by me, or even directly by Euripides. They are by Professor
Gilbert Murray, whose English version of The Baccha; came into
our dramatic literature with all the impulsive power of an
original work shortly before Major Barbara was begun. The play,
indeed, stands indebted to him in more ways than one.
G. B. S.



Before dealing with the deeper aspects of Major Barbara, let me,
for the credit of English literature, make a protest against an
unpatriotic habit into which many of my critics have fallen.
Whenever my view strikes them as being at all outside the range
of, say, an ordinary suburban churchwarden, they conclude that I
am echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy,
or some other heresiarch in northern or eastern Europe.

I confess there is something flattering in this simple faith in
my accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a
philosopher. But I cannot tolerate the assumption that life and
literature is so poor in these islands that we must go abroad for
all dramatic material that is not common and all ideas that are