Major Barbara in the context of "Soup kitchen"

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876; he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and the Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma, and Caesar and Cleopatra.

George Gilbert Aimé Murray OM FBA (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, who served as Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1908 to 1936. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century. He is the basis for the character of Adolphus Cusins in his friend George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara, and also appears as the chorus figure in Tony Harrison's play Fram.

He served as President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) from 1929 to 1930 and was a delegate at the inaugural World Humanist Congress in 1952 which established Humanists International. He was a leader of the League of Nations Society and the League of Nations Union, which promoted the League of Nations in Britain.

John Eugene Vedrenne (July 13, 1867-February 12, 1930), often known as J. E. Vedrenne, was a West End theatre producer who co-managed the Savoy Theatre with Harley Granville-Barker, and then (from 1904 to 1907, also with Granville-Barker) the Royal Court Theatre. During their time at the latter, they premiered several of George Bernard Shaw's plays, including John Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara. His partnership with Granville-Barker ending in 1907, Vedrenne then became associated with Lewis Waller at the Lyric Theatre, and in 1911 with Dennis Eadie at the Royalty Theatre, and later still at the Kingsway Theatre.

Vedrenne's wife was Phyllis Blair.