George Bernard Shaw is one of the greatest dramatists to ever lay words to a page. This play deals with one of his recurring themes of class. It begins with Lady Britomart desiring a life of aristocracy to continue for her family. She seeks her former husband to pass his fortune on to their son, Stephen. But, Shaw doesn’t allow this natural taking of the mantle to occur. Instead, we see that Undershaft himself is a foundling who was adopted and given the reigns to the Undershaft kingdom of war.
Where the aristocratic tradition is to carry on the wealth and land holdings of the family by passing them to their heirs, the Undershaft tradition is to give the fortune to a foundling generation after generation. This, Shaw breaks the tradition of the male being the inheritor as Barbara takes on this role, as it will be her family blood that continues the legacy as she will marry whom her father chooses.
Shaw also complicates matters by making Undershaft a war-monger. His power and means of making a fortune is gained by creating weapons to kill men in war. Morally everyone in the play is against Undershaft’s business of death.
But the great paradox is they all clearly understand by the end of the play that the only way to get what they want, that is to help the common man, is to be so powerful that they can literally destroy them. Shaw places before them the choice of struggling in the gutter daily to bring salvation to the poor, or to equip the common man with weapons that can destroy the ruling classes for good and allow them the fluidity of class they have been constantly denied generation after generation.
