Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

34

34 (p. 144) UNDERSHAFT (enigmatically) “A will of which I am a part.”BARBARA (startled) “father! Do you know what you are saying; or are you laying a snare for my soul?”: Barbara’s response indicates that she interprets her father’s enigmatic statement to mean that God’s mysterious will drives the munitions works. But Shaw has made Undershaft’s self-explanation resemble closely that of Mephistopheles in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s nineteenth-century poetic drama Faust (part I): “I am a part of the part [Chaos] that originally was all there was.” Shaw thus preserves the ambiguity of Undershaft’s agency — that is, whether it is divine or devilish.