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.
23 (p. 96) “One and another / In money and guns may outpass his brother; ... / But whoe’er can know ... / That to live is happy, has found his heaven”: Shaw has Cusins quote from Murray’s translation of The Bacchae, but he substitutes “money and guns” for Murray’s “gold and power.”
24 (p. 97) “Is it so hard a thing to see ... / And shall not Barbara be loved for ever?”: Cusins continues to quote from The Bacchae, substituting “Fate” for “Hate” in Murray’s original and, as he goes on to indicate, “Barbara” in place of “loveliness.”
25 (p. 106) “That will make the standard price to buy anybody who’s for sale. I’m not; and the Army’s not”: In a Wildean example of life imitating art, in 2002 a Florida chapter of the Salvation Army refused a large donation from an individual who had won the state lottery on the grounds that it would be hypocritical to accept the winnings because many of the Army’s clients had gambled away their families’ financial means of support.
26 (p. 107) incidentally stealing the sovereign on his way out by picking up his cap from the drum: Snobby’s deft theft of Bill’s sovereign parallels Undershaft’s stealthy “removal” of Barbara’s ability to rely on the Salvation Army, which he is in the process of accomplishing underneath the surface of the action.
27 (p. 114) the band strikes up the march, which rapidly becomes more distant as the procession moves briskly away: Shaw controls the mood and emotion of this moment through stagecraft. Having gradually crowded the scene from the beginning of the act to the climax here, he now swiftly removes almost everyone from the stage to enact the sense of Barbara’s feeling of abandonment and loss. Everyone (save Peter Shirley) and everything fades away from her, including the sound of the Salvation Army band, leaving her bewildered and desolate.
28 (p. 114) “‘My ducats and my daughter’!”: Undershaft ironically quotes Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice on the subject of losing both his daughter and the money she stole from him while eloping with Lorenzo (act 2, scene 8). At this moment, Undershaft has “lost” his daughter by deliberately alienating her from her vocation as a Salvation Army savior of souls; and he has lost his money by donating a large sum to the Salvation Army.
29 (p. 115) The mug smashes against the door and falls in fragments: Here Shaw creates in the action a realistic and striking analogue to the shattering of Barbara’s sense of self.
30 (p. 116) “a Rowton doss”: This is a step up from a flophouse: A doss is a crude or makeshift bed; in the late nineteenth century, an organization chaired by English philanthropist Baron Rowton made good, inexpensive lodgings available to the poor.
31 (p. 116) “Tell me about Tom Paine’s books and Bradlaush’s lectures”: American political philosopher Thomas Paine (1737- 1809) and English reformer Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) were radical left-wing thinkers; they appeal to Peter Shirley because of their antireligious (Paine) and unorthodox religious (Bradlaugh) views. Shaw implies that Barbara now needs to rethink how to channel her own deeply religious impulses.