Preface to Major Barbara

Preface to Major Barbara carries the subtitle First Aid to Critics and is by Bernard Shaw. A note says that the Euripidean verses in the second act of Major Barbara are not by the writer of the note, or even directly by Euripides, and names Professor Gilbert Murray as their author. The writer protests against an unpatriotic habit into which many critics have fallen, that of concluding he is echoing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, or some other heresiarch in northern or eastern Europe.

The text says that the contrast between madness and sanity was formerly deemed comic, and that Hogarth shows how fashionable people went in parties to Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics. The text says that in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality suddenly begins to germinate again, and that rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from people among whom the depressing noise called sacred music is a standing joke. The text says two things must be set right, or we shall perish, like Rome, of soul atrophy disguised as empire.