Major Barbara
A Salvation Army officer discovers her charity is funded by her arms-dealer father's profits, and has to decide which one of them is the real hypocrite. Shaw was the only person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar, and this play shows why: he could make an argument about capitalism feel like a boxing match. The dialogue moves at the speed of thought.
Shaw's own preface runs long enough that readers review it as a separate, tougher read from the play itself, one calling it “a long-winded, preachy preface designed to hammer home the author's ideology.” The Act III discussion scenes at Undershaft's munitions works draw a related complaint, with some readers left unsure what point Shaw is ultimately making and others calling his overall position philosophically incoherent. The Act II Salvation Army shelter scenes, with their broadly drawn poor characters, annoy other readers too: “Salvation Army scenes got a bit annoying,” one notes. A general crankiness in Shaw's voice wears on some rereaders as well, one admitting they find him “crabbier when I read him” with each pass, and another dismissing entire stretches as “dreary I Am So Keenly Critical and Nuanced dialogue.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
