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Arms and the Man (Shaw Library)

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George Bernard Shaw takes the title for this play from the opening life of Virgil's epic poem the "Aeneid," which begins "Of arms and the man I sing." Virgil glorified war and the heroic feats of Aeneas on the battlefield. However, Shaw's purpose in this play is to attack the romantic notion of war by presenting a more realistic depiction of war, devoid of the idea that such death and destruction speaks to nobility. Still, "Arms and the Man" is not an anti-war drama, but rather a satirical assault on those who would glorify the horrors or war.

Shaw develops an ironic contrast between two central characters. The play begins with accounts of the glorious exploits of Major Sergius Saranoff, a handsome young Bulgarian officer, in a daring cavalry raid, which turned the war in favor of the Bulgarians over the Serbs. In contrast, Captain Bluntschil, a professional soldier from Switzerland, acts like a coward. He climbs up to a balcony to escape capture, he threatens a woman with a gun, and he carries chocolates rather than cartridges because he claims the sweets are more useful on the battlefield.

In the eyes of Raina Petkoff, the young romantic idealist who has bought into the stories of battlefield heroism, Saranoff is her ideal hero. However, as the play proceeds, we learn more about this raid and that despite its success, it was a suicidal gesture that should have failed. Eventually Saranoff is going to end up dead if he continues to engage in such ridiculous heroics. Meanwhile, we realize that Bluntshcil has no misconceptions about the stupidity of war and that his actions have kept him alive.

"Arms and the Man" is an early play by Shaw, first performed in 1894, the same year he wrote "Mrs. Warren's Profession." The ending is rather tradition for comedies of the time, with all the confusion between the lovers finally getting cleared up and everybody paired up to live happily ever after. The choice of a young woman as the main character, who ultimately rejects her romantic ideals to live in the real world, is perhaps significant because serving in the army and going to war is not going to happen. Consequently, her views are not going to be colored by questions of courage in terms of going to war herself. I also find it interesting that this play understands the horrors of war given that it was the horrors of World War I that generally killed the romantic notion of war in Britain.

This play particularly wins you over if you see it performed live with a particularly acerbic, not too tall Bluntschli--it is a romantic farce that critiques Romanticism (but ends up in love with it, although in a roundabout way) and embraces early 20th c Realism and Capitalism, all through some fairly simple but very captivating characters. Good social sendup, a Shaw for people who still have soft hearts and want a quick read.

A starving, exhausted soldier running for his life bursts into a young woman's room, finds outrage, criticism, solace, chocolate creams, and unexpected love -and that's just the opening scene. This clever, witty, subtle, and surprising treat from the author of Pygmalion still holds up well more than 100 years after its writing. Shaw fashions the subjects of false ideals, heroism, romanticism, and the fake glories of war into a well-constructed farce which sustains through the very last line. Can't wait to see a new production of the play, and a great read meanwhile....

One of the most important times,if not the most important,in English literature history was the 19th. century when a plethora of genres of fiction writing were flourishing with gay colours. Victorian literature was perceiving society and its swelling decay from various perspectives,stretching from Charles Dickens's depiction of destitutes and middle-class people to George Eliot's rustic illustration and even as far as Anthony Trollope's revelation of the dark end of the parliamentary tunnel. But a major fraction of the myriad distinguished novelists employed humour and comedy to focus on the social unstability and on conventions and traditionalism. Be it Jane Austen in "Pride and Prejudice" or Oscar Wilde in "The Importance of Being Ernest",humour always plays a distinct role in taming reality and simultaneously mocking it when other means of attack prove futile.

George Bernand Shaw might not be the most serious of prechers of the application of comedy to prove a grave point but in this drama,"Arms and the Man",by the late Victorian playwright,there's a vivid usage of sardonic humour and playful comedy to convey the futility and harm of old-fashioned social analysis. The theme is effectively that of war and love---and by extension marriage---and a combination of both. "Arms and the Man" is a short play of three acts that endeavours to decipher te compatibility between love and war and to portray how these apparently diametrically opposite truths of life are interwoven with each other.

The action takes place in Bulgaria in 1885 against a backdrop of war between bulgarian forces and Serbian and Austrian coalition army. Raina Petkoff is the young,beautiful and dreamy daughter of the Bulgarian Major Petkoff and is engaged to Major Serguis Saranoff who is out in the battles. She is standing on the balcony of their house near the Dragoman Pass and is conjuring up heroic images of her lover and seems to feel the "romance" of war and heroism herself. But then an enemy soldier,Captain Bluntschli,takes refuge in her room and this is what makes the whole drama happen. Bluntschli and Raina at first exchange certain comments of sceptism towards each other between them but then Raina's sympathy and compassion overcome her nad she protects him from his enemies. Next morning she and her mother Catherine see him off but consequences of sheltering an enemy soldier are not to be waved off so easily.

As the play shifts from one act to another,so does the focus;from war to love and then to the amusing connection between them. Raina's "hero" Serguis comes back from the war with the aura of heroism and gallantry and victory firmly round his head,and so does her father,Major Petkoff. And from this act onwards other characters of the play,namely the servant maid Louka and the manservant Nicola---who's actually engaged to Louka---are called into action and the plao now commences to branch out. the numerous dimensions of human nature are poignantly penned down into words and the characters's masks are exposed and each one of them is stripped down into imperfect and susceptible individuals. Serguis is proven to be a flirt andfar from a contented happy model of a soldier;Major Petkoff is discerned to be a man allof of anything beyond the battlegrounds,a man who cannot translate his nous on the military front to daily household activities;Louka and Nicola bring valuable import of snobbish humility of servants in to the story;and even Captain Bluntschli,who makes a dramatic and eventually crucial entry into the plot again,is transgressed from a mere "professional" Swiss soldiers to one who shatters the veil that society,and the individual in the realm,wares.

"Arms and the Man" then is both an amusing and thought-provoking play that retains its relevance even today,more than a century after it was first conceived. George Bernard shaw mocks at the popular theories on war and love and coalesces a military satire with a taunt on love and family structure. The play is replete with brilliant dialogue,flashing wit,buoyant humour and bitter sarcasms which reach their acme in this statement of Captain Bluntschli to Serguis:"I'm a professional soldier:I fight when i have to,and am very glad to get out of it when I haven't to. You're only an amateur;you think fighting's an amusement". Indeed as a Swiss hotel-keeper's son,Bluntschli had no reason whatsoever to get involved in war and it's in this absurdity that Shaw questions patritic sentiments. Shaw explores the whole concept of war and military both from the victors as well as the vanquished's angles and in the end shows that the feelings surfacing in both the camps aren't different at all.

The precision of language,piecing and biting mockery on the common notions of life are entangled with a gentle assurance of the gradual movement of the story towards a fairytale gratification. The end where all charactes are rendered happy and lovers change and love shifts is what underlines the essence of this drama as a comedy. First published in 1894,"Arms and the Man" is also remarkable for its explicit treatment of sexuality which was either denied or shyly elucidated in early Victorian literature and in this feature George Bernard Shaw paves te way for other writers to make their respective marks. This is a play that sustains its image of possessing a universal appeal and of the hopelessness of misconceptions of the basics of life and is apt in this modern day culture when the concepts of war and patriotism and love and marriage have taken massive blows. George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" would maintain its ambition and relevance as long as there're things like love and war.

Comedies are often stuck with the unfortunate reputation of having little real depth. Arms and the Man, however, is one of those comedies that proves that notion to be false. Shaw's play is quite the masterpiece of comedic drama, combining an utterly entertaining plot with true philosophical depth.

On the plot level, Arms and the Man is a successful, and somewhat unique, romantic comedy. The young, melodramatic, and rather superficial Raina comes from a military family deeply involved in a war, her fiancé and her father both being officers. She is surprised, though, one night by the arrival of an enemy soldier. She rescues him, knowing that she'll have to keep the episode a secret from her family forever, and the soldier eventually leaves. Of course, once the war is over, that soldier comes back, forcing each of the primary characters to reevaluate their values and their relationships.

It's really quite surprising how Shaw layers meaning within the somewhat standard comedic plot. Shaw manages to comment philosophically on class constructs, on the absurdity of war, and even on the nature of love. And, of course, he does so quite wittily and within a satisfying plot. A lot of times, Arms and the Man is thought of as one of Shaw's lesser plays, but that's really not accurate. There is so much here to think about that I think a lot of people miss. Arms and the Man is truly a masterpiece of comedic theater and is definitely one of Shaw's very finest works.

Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

This is witty, subtle, and surprising treat from the author of Pygmalion. Shaw fashions the subjects of false ideals, heroism, romanticism, and the fake glories of war into a well-constructed farce which sustains through the very last line.

Another of Shaw's great masterpieces. To fully understand this play, you should have a basic understanding of Fabian Socialism and the conditions under which Shaw was writing. A very important play of his era and one which still speaks volumes about society today.

Shaw, who more than any of his contemporaries dealt provocatively with the crucial issues of his day, has not worn well. In a 1971 encyclopaedia I had as a child, the entry on GBS called him the greatest dramatist since Shakespeare. That's better than Moliere, Sheridan, Strindberg, Ibsen, Wilde, Jarry, Chekhov, Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett! Such a laughable proposition is untenable today, and we can now see Shaw for what he is - a superficially amusing farceur, who squandered this modest gift on deadly social comment, deadly because he reduced issues that effected real people to theorems, and reduced those people to mere mouthpieces. There is no subtext in Shaw - everything is expounded tediously and teeth-grindingly on the surface. ARMS AND THE MAN is one of his better efforts, and, after an uncertain start, settles into some nice old-style farce - hidden identities, buffoonish heroes, scheming servants, crusty old majors; when, though, the puppets start lecturing us on war, idealism, class, gender etc., one's heart sinks, not because what Shaw says isn't true, but because a letter to the Times would have been a better place to say it. While Wilde's plays grow with the years, seeming richer, more meaningful, brutally satiric, bursting with complex and fluid themes, Shaw's work, in their steadfast refusal of mystery and ambiguity, seem chilly and remote.

First staged in 1894, ARMS AND THE MAN might best described as a comic opera without music. The story concerns Raina Petkoff, a young woman given to melodramatic displays of emotion who has recently seen both her husband and her would-be husband off to war. She is most disconcerted to find an enemy solider hiding in her bedroom following a decisive battle--but fancying herself in the role of romantic heroine, she elects to help him escape. Trouble is, he comes back.

This is in some ways among the least of Shaw's work. Still, the nonesensical situations, witty dialogue, and delicious ironies of the situation make for a memorable package, a package which Shaw ties up in ribbons of ideas about the illusions of romance, the realities of love, and the practicalities of war and peace. The result is a delightful confection with unexpected depth, and the combination has caused ARMS AND THE MAN to be among Shaw's most often revived works. Not among Shaw's great masterpieces, but worthy reading all the same.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

In the opening scene of Arms and the Man, which establishes the play's embattled Balkan setting, young Raina learns of her suitor's heroic exploits in combat. She rhapsodizes that it is "a glorious world for women who can see its glory and men who can act its romance!" Soon, however, such romantic falsifications of love and warfare are brilliantly and at times hilariously unmasked in a comedy that reveals George Bernard Shaw at his best as an acute social observer and witty provocateur.

-- From the back of the Dover Thrift Edition

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I honestly had no desire to read this book. I was going to read it for school, but I most definitely wasn't excited about it. I'd read the back about three times but could never remember what it was about and didn't really care to. But I am so, SO glad I read this book. It was witty, adventurous, and "romantic". Shaw's intention was to make fun of romance, in a way, but I still thought the romance was adorable. Because I'm cheesy like that.

Favorite character: Sergius, despite his idiocy. He was hilarious, because of his idiocy. He's a gentleman in high society and a rogue at heart. Raina comes in as a close second and so does the Swiss.

Favorite aspect: The Swiss's affect on the story. "Chocolate cream soldier"!

One word to sum it up: Two-timing. Trust me, this is a good thing! :) You'd have to read it to understand what I mean.

And do I want you to read it?

Answer: YES!