# Major Barbara: every role by lines, words, and stage time > George Bernard Shaw. 18 speaking roles, 25,797 words, about 184 minutes of speech. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/major-barbara - Last updated: 2026-10-08 **Undershaft** has the most to say in Major Barbara: about 756 lines and 6,321 words, 24.5% of the play. Major Barbara pits a Salvation Army officer against her father, a wealthy arms manufacturer. Undershaft is the largest part, with about a quarter of the words, and speaks in every section. Lady Britomart is second but is absent from Act 2. Barbara and Cusins each hold about a seventh, and Bill speaks only in Act 2. - Speaking roles: 18 - Scenes: 4 - Words: 25,797 - Speech time: 184 min ## Every role, largest first | Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Undershaft | 756 | 6,321 | 24.5% | 45.2 | 4 | | Lady Britomart | 506 | 4,304 | 16.7% | 30.7 | 3 | | Barbara | 463 | 3,808 | 14.8% | 27.2 | 4 | | Cusins | 436 | 3,561 | 13.8% | 25.4 | 4 | | Bill | 223 | 1,874 | 7.3% | 13.4 | 1 | | Stephen | 189 | 1,487 | 5.8% | 10.6 | 3 | | Shirley | 115 | 935 | 3.6% | 6.7 | 1 | | Lomax | 126 | 911 | 3.5% | 6.5 | 3 | | Mrs. Baines | 76 | 629 | 2.4% | 4.5 | 1 | | Price | 70 | 606 | 2.3% | 4.3 | 1 | | Jenny | 59 | 396 | 1.5% | 2.8 | 1 | | Rummy | 47 | 377 | 1.5% | 2.7 | 1 | | The Man | 25 | 225 | 0.9% | 1.6 | 1 | | Sarah | 35 | 216 | 0.8% | 1.5 | 3 | | Morrison | 12 | 75 | 0.3% | 0.5 | 2 | | The Woman | 8 | 39 | 0.2% | 0.3 | 1 | | Paige | 2 | 19 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 | | Bilton | 2 | 14 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 | ## Who speaks in which scene Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: Act 1 = Act 1; Act 2 = Act 2; Act 3 = Act 3; 3.2 = Act 3, Scene 2. - **Undershaft**: Act 1 (777), Act 2 (1,319), Act 3 (1,624), 3.2 (2,601) - **Lady Britomart**: Act 1 (3,067), Act 3 (635), 3.2 (602) - **Barbara**: Act 1 (400), Act 2 (1,875), Act 3 (354), 3.2 (1,179) - **Cusins**: Act 1 (330), Act 2 (1,078), Act 3 (400), 3.2 (1,753) - **Bill**: Act 2 (1,874) - **Stephen**: Act 1 (760), Act 3 (428), 3.2 (299) - **Shirley**: Act 2 (935) - **Lomax**: Act 1 (362), Act 3 (260), 3.2 (289) - **Mrs. Baines**: Act 2 (629) - **Price**: Act 2 (606) ## The longest speeches | Speech | Scene | Words | Lines | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Undershaft: “The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 253 | 26 | | Barbara: “I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place—felt that I must have it—that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude for a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly obliged to them for making so much money for him—and so he ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God’s work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot be done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 225 | 23 | | Undershaft: “To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man, white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop If God Gave The Hand, Let Not Man Withhold The Sword. The second wrote up All Have The Right To Fight: None Have The Right To Judge. The third wrote up To Man The Weapon: To Heaven The Victory. The fourth had no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth wrote up Peace Shall Not Prevail Save With A Sword In Her Hand. The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up Nothing Is Ever Done In This World Until Men Are Prepared To Kill One Another If It Is Not Done. After that, there was nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply, Unashamed.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 200 | 20 | | Undershaft: “I don’t. They do. You see, the one thing Jones won’t stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself and Mrs. Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I don’t even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I don’t order anybody to do them. I don’t say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me.” | Act 3 | 196 | 20 | | Lady Britomart: “I said nine. Ring the bell, please. It is ten minutes to nine yet; and I have to prepare the girls. I asked Charles Lomax and Adolphus to dinner on purpose that they might be here. Andrew had better see them in case he should cherish any delusions as to their being capable of supporting their wives. Morrison: go up to the drawing-room and tell everybody to come down here at once. Now remember, Stephen, I shall need all your countenance and authority. Give me a chair, dear. I don’t know how Barbara will take it. Ever since they made her a major in the Salvation Army she has developed a propensity to have her own way and order people about which quite cows me sometimes. It’s not ladylike: I’m sure I don’t know where she picked it up. Anyhow, Barbara shan’t bully me; but still it’s just as well that your father should be here before she has time to refuse to meet him or make a fuss. Don’t look nervous, Stephen, it will only encourage Barbara to make difficulties. I am nervous enough, goodness knows; but I don’t show it.” | Act 1 | 192 | 20 | | Undershaft: “The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn’t. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.” | Act 3 | 190 | 19 | | Undershaft: “Come, come, my daughter! Don’t make too much of your little tinpot tragedy. What do we do here when we spend years of work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new gun or an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour or another pound on it. Well, you have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or whatnot. It doesn’t fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won’t scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. What’s the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year. Don’t persist in that folly. If your old religion broke down yesterday, get a newer and a better one for tomorrow.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 184 | 19 | | Lady Britomart: “Well, dear, there were other differences. I really cannot bear an immoral man. I am not a Pharisee, I hope; and I should not have minded his merely doing wrong things: we are none of us perfect. But your father didn’t exactly do wrong things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so dreadful. He really had a sort of religion of wrongness just as one doesn’t mind men practising immorality so long as they own that they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn’t forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while he practised morality. You would all have grown up without principles, without any knowledge of right and wrong, if he had been in the house. You know, my dear, your father was a very attractive man in some ways. Children did not dislike him; and he took advantage of it to put the wickedest ideas into their heads, and make them quite unmanageable. I did not dislike him myself: very far from it; but nothing can bridge over moral disagreement.” | Act 1 | 177 | 18 | | The Man: “I’ll tell you why. Fust: I’m intelligent—fffff! it’s rotten cold here —yes: intelligent beyond the station o’ life into which it has pleased the capitalists to call me; and they don’t like a man that sees through ’em. Second, an intelligent bein’ needs a doo share of ’appiness; so I drink somethink cruel when I get the chawnce. Third, I stand by my class and do as little as I can so’s to leave arf the job for me fellow workers. Fourth, I’m fly enough to know wots inside the law and wots outside it; and inside it I do as the capitalists do: pinch wot I can lay me ’ands on. In a proper state of society I am sober, industrious and honest: in Rome, so to speak, I do as the Romans do. Wots the consequence? When trade is bad—and it’s rotten bad just now—and the employers az to sack arf their men, they generally start on me.” | Act 2 | 163 | 17 | | Barbara: “Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power of God. But you came and showed me that I was in the power of Bodger and Undershaft. Today I feel—oh! how can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the earthquake at Cannes, when we were little children?—how little the surprise of the first shock mattered compared to the dread and horror of waiting for the second? That is how I feel in this place today. I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without a word of warning it reeled and crumbled under me. I was safe with an infinite wisdom watching me, an army marching to Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke of your pen in a cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were empty. That was the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for the second.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 154 | 16 | ## Small roles that can be doubled These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way. - Shirley and Lomax - Shirley and Sarah - Shirley and Morrison - Shirley and Bilton - Lomax and Mrs. Baines - Lomax and Price - Lomax and Jenny - Lomax and Rummy - Lomax and The Man - Lomax and The Woman - Lomax and Paige - Mrs. Baines and Sarah ## Questions actors ask ### Who has the most lines in Major Barbara? Undershaft, with about 756 lines and 6,321 words, 24.5% of everything spoken in the play. Lady Britomart is next, with about 506 lines (16.7%). ### How long is Major Barbara? The full text has 25,797 spoken words, about 184 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary. ### How many speaking roles are in Major Barbara? 18 named roles speak in this edition, across 4 scenes. 8 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled. ## How we count Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-shaw/major-barbara) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).