1 “George Bernard Shaw: the Playwright as Producer,” Modern Drama, VIII, 4 (February, 1966), 357. In going on to provide examples of such communications Armstrong unfortunately makes two factual errors in his very next sentence, citing a Shaw “letter to Charles Calvert during rehearsals of Major Barbara in 1907.” The actor was Louis Calvert and the rehearsals took place in November, 1905.

2 Typewritten copy in Bernard Shaw Papers, British Museum, MS 50532, Letter No. 98. Quoted by kind permission of The Trustees of the British Museum. I am particularly indebted to The Public Trustee and The Society of Authors for permission to quote from the various Bernard Shaw writings used in this article, including the letters, published and unpublished, and the manuscript notebook. The Public Trustee as Trustee of the Estate of George Bernard Shaw 1969.

3 For a discussion of the process of revision, see Albert, Sidney P., “‘In More Ways Than One’: Major Barbara's Debt to Gilbert Murray,” ETJ, XX, 2 (May, 1968), 123–40.Google Scholar

4 Quoted by permission of the Academic Center Library, The University of Texas.

5 New York, 1957, pp. 36–51.

6 London, 1956, pp. 49–55.

7 Purdom, p. 50.

8 Victoria and Albert Museum. I have made a number of minor corrections of the text in Purdom (pp. 74–5), based on the original manuscript letter, but, as he does, I have emended Shaw's slip in writing “is” instead of “it” in the second sentence.

9 Extracts from the Annie Russell talk are quoted by permission of Mrs. Rhea Marsh Smith and the Theatre Collection, New York Public Library.

10 Letter, January 5, 1966. Quoted by the kind permission of Mrs. Belmont.

11 London, 1911, pp. 258–60.

12 New York, 1958, pp. 106–10.

13 A version of this letter in the Boston Transcript, October 23, 1915, Part 3, 6: 5–7 differs from that of West in Shaw on Theatre only in some of its punctuation. Additional dissimilarities, both in punctuation and text are to be found in the abridged and highly edited versions in Calvert's, Mrs. book and in Vanity Fair, V (February, 1916), 33.Google Scholar The copy in the Annie Russell Papers (Manuscript Division, New York Public Library) has numerous typing and spelling errors; some problems in transcription are also indicated in it by the retention of alternative words in some sentences. Yet it has words and phrases not to be found in the other versions and I have inclined towards its language in a few places. This particular letter to Calvert is lacking from the sequence of Shaw letters in the New York Times, December 5, 1915.

Apart from considerable variation in punctuation, the more noteworthy discrepancies are: “obvious” (Mrs. Calvert, Annie Russell Papers, Vanity Fair) instead of “oblivious” (Transcript, West) in the second sentence; the absence of the emphasis from “you” in the ninth sentence (Transcript and West only); and “one of” before “your Sweet Nell” in the thirteenth sentence (Vanity Fair and Annie Russell Papers). The Annie Russell Papers' text has the following wholly distinctive phraseology: “horrors of” before “his business” in the tenth sentence; “both of him” instead of “of both him” in the eleventh; “does not” (with “know” omitted) instead of “doesn't” and “but” before “then” in the thirteenth; and, in the last paragraph, “noble” before “heroic” in the first sentence and “great” instead of “big” in the second.

14 The Shaw letters to Annie Russell are in the Manuscript Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, whose permission, along with that of Mrs. Rhea Marsh Smith, I gratefully acknowledge.

15 The reference is to Undershaft's use of a conundrum to introduce his description of government as depending on the courage to kill. The conundrum approach of the earlier version had vanished by the time the play was published.

16 “At Rehearsals of Major Barbara,” pp. 12–13.

17 The collated text of this letter draws heavily on the typed copy included in the Annie Russell Papers, which, unlike its companion copy of the November 18th letter to Calvert, is very clear and has fewer misspellings. The numerous discrepancies among the sources of this particular letter—excluding the Mrs. Calvert and Vanity Fair abridgements and most of the variations in punctuation—include: at the end of the first sentence, “that you are the most infamous…” (West); the intentional omission of Cremlin's name in all but the New York Times and Annie Russell versions; the italicizing of “unact” in the fifth sentence in the New York Times (and of the first syllable of the word in Vanity Fair); “lines” instead of “liver” in the sixth sentence (New York Times); in the seventh, “maligner” instead of “malingerer” (Transcript), and, at the end of the sentence, “or ever will” (New York Times), “or that ever will live” (West). More seriously, West and die Transcript have “Barbara” instead of “Barker”; they also omit the “thunderbolt” sentence. West, the New York Times, and the Transcript do not underscore “I'll” in the next to last sentence. West alone has “without a shilling” as the final phrase in the letter. Finally, the New York Times and Vanity Fair close with “Yours ever.” If one adds to these the spelling and punctuation variations, only a single sentence (the third) and the initialled signature read exactly alike in all versions!

18 F. Cremlin was the Peter Shirley and Clare Greet the Rummy Mitchens of this production.

19 This extract follows the original letter rather than the slightly edited text in Belmont, pp. 49–50. It is quoted by permission of the owner of the manuscript, the Columbia University Libraries.

20 Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats: Letters, ed. Clifford Bax (London, 1946), p. 25.

21 John Bull's Other Island, How He Lied to Her Husband, Major Barbara, Standard Ed. (London, 1931), p. 316.