George Bernard Shaw wrote a number of what have come to be called philosophical comedies, and three of these--Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and John Bull's Other Island--have been viewed as a trilogy in this genre because all of them deal with the issue of the bankruptcy of nineteenth-century liberalism in the face of the prevailing forces of sex, nationalism, and poverty. John Bull's Other Island specifically represents a counter to the neo-Gaelic movement then under the leadership of William Butler Yeats. Indeed, the "other island" referred to in the title is Ireland, and John Bull is the name for the British government, much as we refer to the American government as Uncle Sam. Shaw does not make an overt Marxian appeal in this play, but his analysis of the exploitation of the Irish by the British demonstrates an understanding of the nature of Karl Marx's ideas on exploitation and on the alienation of the working class because they do not own what they produce. Indeed, Shaw delves into the social structure of society so thoroughly and honestly that he never presents the sort of simple analysis of class conflict that infuses much of Marxist thought.
Louis Crompton is the critic who links Major Barbara, Man and Superman, and John Bull's Other Island as representing a challenge to nineteenth-century liberalism. Shaw himself linked the three plays in a German edition under the title Comedies of Science and Religion, and the plays share a common mood and a common dramatic structure as well as a common theme. The dramatic form of each play has puzzled critics:
What Shaw does is to mix together in each play a MoliFresque comedy and a Socratic dialogue. Each play begins by presenting us with a high-minded idealist, who takes himself with earnest seriousness and looks upon himself as an enlightened reformer. He is then made the subject of a comedy in the style of MoliFre, not with the idea of unmasking his hypocrisy, but o...