A CONNECTICUT YANKEE ON THE COURT THEATRE STAGE: AN ANCESTOR FOR UNDERSHAFT

Abstract

The models Shaw used to create Andrew Undershaft have presented something of a mystery. Stanley Weintraub names four Fathers for Barbara: German arms merchant Alfred Krupp; dynamite king and philanthropist Albert Nobel; globe-trotting arms peddler Sir Basil Zaharoff; and a little-known Confederate arms maker, the father of Shaw's friend, Charles McEvoy.1 He also cites parallels with several industrialists, including steelmaker Andrew Carnegie, and elsewhere, ironically, with the Salvation Army's own founding General, William Booth.2 Sidney Albert mentions Benjamin Disraeli's fictional industrial of Trafford, featured in his 1 845 novel Sybil, and the real village it inspired in the 1850s, Sir Titus Salt's Saltair nestled next to his alpacagarment-producing Palace of Industry. Albert follows this chain of influence to chocolate baron George Cadbury's town at Bourneville in 1879, William Lever's Utopian of Port Sunlight in 1887, and Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow before arriving, once again, at Krupp's impressive industrial empire.3 Shaw's correspondence and other writings make it clear that he was cognizant of most if not all of the above figures. He also, in later correspondence, accepted some parallels with Henry Ford.4 As Stanley Weintraub pointed out to me in e-mail correspondence, though, Ford did not make a major impact until 1908, so he could hardly have been a model for a character that appeared on London's Court Theatre stage in 1905. None of the originals mentioned so far is a perfect fit. None seems to combine the flamboyant personality of Undershaft with both his approach to weapons manufacturing and sales and his building of a Utopian industrial village. There is, of course, no reason why these components should