(ANTI) ROMANTIC COMEDY: ARMS AND THE MAN AND THE QUESTION OF

GENRE

Srimay Sinha, Fakirdanga High School

srimaysinha@gmail.com

Abstract: Shaw has aptly called “Arms and the Man” an anti-romantic comedy. In the

play he exposes the hollowness of the romantic ideas of love and war. The play is anti romantic

because in it Shaw attacks the romantic idealization of life; and it is a comedy because in it he

exposes the hollowness of romantic love and the heroic ideals of war. However, the play’s anti-

romantic message is articulated in the framework of a romantic comedy. The mismatched lovers,

alternative romances, parental opposition and the series of comic applications suggest the

structure of romantic comedy. The title of the play is a generic signifier. However Shaw‘s play

destabilizes this generic identity of the play. This paper attempts to show how Shaw

accommodates his subversion of the romantic notions of war and love within the framework of a

conventional romantic comedy.

“Arms and the man” seems to be Shaw’s simplest, most accessible, least mystifying play.

But the initial audiences were completely confused by it. The actors themselves were baffled by

the audiences response, as Yorke Stephens, who played Bluntschli in the first production, makes
clear in his account of opening night, 21 April 1894: ‘....every evening was a still more puzzling

ordeal. The play created a certain sensation, there is no doubt about that, but the great outer

public simply couldn’t understand—what it was driving at.’ In a letter to Henry Arthur Jones

dated 2 December 1894, Shaw explains his view of why the audience totally missed the point of

“Arms and the Man”: ‘When I present a drama of pure feeling, wittily expressed, the effect when

read by me to a picked audience of people in a room is excellent. But in a theatre, the mass of the

people, too stupid to relish the wit....simply cannot see any drama or fun there at all, whilst the

clever people feel the discrepancy between the real and theatrical feeling...’ Martin Meise traces

that “Arms and the Man” was subtitled “A Romantic Comedy” on its first program, and an “

Anti-Romantic Comedy” in subsequent publications, evidently because original audiences had

tended to enjoy the fun and miss the serious concerns. The play was particularly concerned with

love and heroism. It was a comedy whose point of departure was not Romantic Comedy, but

Romantic drama, and particularly Military melodrama. Shaw’s, subtitle of the play “An Anti-

Romantic Comedy in Three Acts” therefore indicates the serious concern. The key issue seems

to be one of seriousness. Shaw saw it as a “serious play”, but thought his audience

misconstructed it and saw it as a satire on seriousness. Shaw has aptly called “Arms and the

Man” an anti-romantic comedy in which he has exposed the hollowness of the romantic ideas of

love and war. The play is anti-romantic because in it Shaw has attacked the romantic idealization

of life; and it is a comedy because in it he has exposed and ridiculed the hollowness of romantic

love and the heroic ideals of war. By Romanticism Shaw means all that is not based on fact and

reality; all shams and false conventions are romantic for they are not based on facts. Their futility

and absurd nature can be easily confirmed. Shaw laughs but his laughter has a serious intention.

He is both witty and thought-provoking. Although the subtitle indicates “Anti-Romantic”, in

presenting the subversion of the romantic notions of war and love Shaw deliberately used the

framework of a romantic comedy.

The play is anti-romantic and Shaw succeeded fully in exposing the romantic ideas of

life, specially the romantic attitude towards love and war. In fact, there is enough romance. The

play opens on a note of romance: ‘Night: A lady’s bed chamber in Bulgaria...Through an open

window with a little balcony a peak of the Balkans, wonderfully white and beautiful in the

starlite snow, seems quite close at hand, though it is really miles away.’ (p. 1)Shaw’s heroine

Raina, a romantic girl, lives in the world of Byron and Pushkin. She is depicted as role-playing, a

common trait in Shakespearean/Romantic Comedy, and eventually becomes an important factor

for the development of her character. When Raina speaks to Sergius of the higher love, she

conforms to Shaw’s definition of the ‘Womanly Woman’ in “The Quintessence of Ibsenism”:

‘she deceives herself in the idealist fashion by denying that the love which her suitor offers her is

tainted with sexual appetite at all. It is she declares, a beautiful, disinterested, pure, sublime

devotion to another by which a man’s life is exalted and purified, and a woman’s rendered blest.

Raina contrarily is complicated because, unlike a Womanly Woman, she violates custom from

the start. This occurs first when she reveals that she is no coward:

The Man....Ugh! Dont do things so suddenly, gracious lady. Its mean to

revenge yourself because I frightened you just now.

Raina (loftily) Frighten me! Do you know, sir, that though I am only a

woman, I think I am at heart as brave as you. (Arms, p.12)

From the very beginning Shaw makes it clear that Raina’s pose as the idealizing Womanly

Woman is all an act, as she reveals when she learns from her mother that Serguius has become a

hero: ‘ It proves that all our ideas were real after all....Our heroic ideals. I sometimes used to

doubt whether they were anything but dreams.’ (p. 3) Indeed, Raina recalls that before Sergius

left, she realized that both she and he were simply playing heroic roles, not reality: ‘Well, it came

into my head.....Real life is so seldom like that! Indeed never, as far as I knew it then.’ (p.3)

Raina’s aristocratic pose and her ways of playing them, are learnt from fiction and opera, they

are in some sense real for her. These are the only feelings she cherishes. Raina recognizes this in

the third act when she gets down ‘off her high horse’. Once Bluntschli points out to her that these

are not ‘real’ feelings but theatrical ones, she is able to give up the operatic for the real. Since

everyone else accepted the ‘noble attitude’ and the ‘thrilling voice’ as real, she assumed they

were: ‘You know, I’ve always gone on like that ...I do it before my parents. They believe in it. I

do it before Sergius. He believes in it.’(p. 53)

Shaw’s basic ideas related to love and war, as many critics have suggested, is rather practical and

socialistic. He projects few scenes in the play which bear the identity of anti-romantic ideas. For

example,’ the chocolate cream soldier’ episode. The fugitive who is ‘…bespattered with mud

blood and snow’ (p.6), opines the striking truth about soldiering ‘...nine out of ten are born fools’

(p.9). He calls Raina’s dream man Sergius ‘Don Quixote’ for his foolish behavior in ‘cavalry

charge’ and finally the famous utterance:

Ive no ammunition. What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate

instead;…( p.12)
It is practically that bite of reality which reminds us about the starvation in Siberia. Shaw’s pithy

humour however is attacking. Yet he places all these in a romantic setting. Chocolate itself is a

romantic element. And at the end when Raina acts as a kind mother to the fugitive she uses the

word ‘poor darling’ and in an instant Catherine reacts:

Catherine (scandalized) Well! (She strides to the bed, Raina following until she

is opposite her on the other side). He’s fast asleep. The brute!

Raina (anxiously) SH!

Catherine (shaking him) Sir! (Shaking him again, harder) Sir!!(Vehemently,

shaking very hard) Sir!!! Raina (catching her arm) Don’t, mamma: the poor

darling is worn out. Let him sleep.

Catherine (letting him go, and turning amazed to Raina) The poor darling!

Raina!!!! (She looks at her daughter).

Raina’s romantic feelings are coming out through her actions. J Scott Lee analyses that Raina in

the first act of the play is not at all romantically posing, rather she tries to enjoy the romance of

life. She wants to save Bluntschli. The incredible notion of hospitality allows Raina’s disposition

to act in concert with her kindness. Raina yearns to act life’s romance.

Raina Come away from the window. (She takes him firmly back to the middle

of the room. The moment she releases him he turns mechanically towards the

window again. She seizes him and turns him back, exclaiming) Please! (He

becomes motionless like a hypnotized rabbit, his fatigue gaining fast on him.

She releases him, and addresses him patronizingly). Now listen. You must trust
 to our hospitality. You do not yet know in whose house you are. I am a Petkoff.

(p. 17)

Bluntschli, who is supposed to be the realistic hero in the play, is utterly romantic. His actions

from first to last are imbued with romanticism. As a soldier he is not soldier like. He is more like

chocolate cream personality as Raina opines about him. His romanticism is first seen when Raina

accuses him about being a Austrian who ‘set the Serbs on to rob us of our national liberty…’

Bluntschli’s reply is romantic:

The man Austrian! Not I. Donot hate me, dear young lady. I am a Swiss,

fighting merely as a professional soldier. I joined the Serbs because they came

first on the road from Switzerland. (p.11)

He is Raina’s chocolate cream soldier. In the second act when Bluntschli comes back at Petkof’s

house for returning the coat, Raina sees him and at once she without resisting herself utters: ‘Oh!

The chocolate cream soldier!’ (p.42) and immediately manages that with her fabrication of ice

pudding. Even in the third act the conversation between Raina and Bluntschli is comic and

romantic. The final account of Bluntschli we get when he asserts himself as a romantic man and

Raina sardonically terms him as ‘romantic idiot’. When Sergius asks him about the factors that

spoiled Bluntschli’s chances in life, he promptly answers:

 Bluntschli (promptly) An incurably romantic disposition. I ran away from

home twice when I was a boy. I went into the army instead of into my

father’s business. I climbed the balcony of this house when a man of sense

would have dived into the nearest cellar. I came sneaking back here to

have another look at the young lady when any other man of my age would

have sent the coat back…. (p.72)

Shakespearean comedy is known for its happy ending. The relationship between Raina and

Bluntschli ends exactly with the cinematic effect. Their relationship development comes to an

end when clarifies the difference between ‘…a school girl of seventeen and a woman of twenty

three.’ (p.73) Bluntschli settles his mind to marry Raina what she has already determined. In the

last scene Bluntschli holds her and asks whom she will give her heart and she replies the truth:

Bluntschli …. (He catches her by the shoulders and turns her face to-face

with him). Now tell us whom did you give them to.

Raina (Succumbing with a shy smile) To my chocolate cream soldier.

(p.75)

This whole romantic comedy, although termed as ‘anti-romantic’ is not only based on the setting

of Raina-Bluntschli romantic affair. This affair begets because of the mismatched lovers:

Sergius-Raina and Nicola-Louka. Sergius from the beginning of the play is shown as Raina’s

‘hero’ and his relationship with Raina is shown as pseudo-romantic until Bluntschli appears in

the scene. Sergius is worshipped and his figure is charming and therefore romantic as well. Shaw

apparently tries to point out the comic effect of live and war by placing him in contrast to
Bluntschli. However, Sergius too sees the seamy side of life and according to him soldiering is

‘the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong’ (p.30). Instead of that he is

Raina’s Ernani. This setting of Sergius’ wooing Raina when they are left for conversation shows

the idealistic romantic atmosphere:

Raina How I have envied you, Sergius! You have been out in the

world, on the field of battle, able to prove yourself there worthy of any

woman in the world: whilst I have had to sit at home inactive—

dreaming useless—doing nothing that could give me the right to call

myself worthy of any man.

Sergius Dearest: all my deeds have been yours. You inspired me. I

have gone through the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady

looking down at him. (p.33)

This conversation sets the atmosphere somehow ideally romantic. This is however, is in full

contrast when Sergius becomes busy with Louka. The earlier was the aristocratic ‘higher love’

and the second is the baser ‘earthly love’ with physical interest. Sergius’ shift from Raina to

Louka is natural because Shaw wants to show the sham of higher love. Therefore, it becomes

more prominent when Srgius explains to Louka the concept of higher love:

Sergius: ….Louka: do you know what the higher love is?

Louka (astonished) No, sir.

Sergius: Very fatiguing thing to keep up for any length of time,

Louka. One feels the need of relief after it. (p.34)

Naturally, Sergius’ acceptance of the difficulty in continuing higher love with Raina is not only

comic; however, it depicts Shaw’s technique of showing the baselessness of higher love.

Interesting to note that the ambiance does not get out of romanticism. Sergius’ character presents

a prototype, hankering after ‘love’ which is mundane. It is throughout romantic. Shaw therefore,

presents all his anti-romantic notions in a romantic setting.

The final point any one can notice is the ‘confusion’ in the action of the play. This is also a trait

of romantic comedy, particularly Shakepearean comedy. Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” creates

the confusion when the Duke loves Olivia who in turn loves Ceasario and Ceasario on the other

hand loves the Duke. Sergius in “Arms and the Man” loves Louka, although he is in relationship

with Raina, Raina loves Bluntschli, though poses Sergius as her lover. Nicola, the servant of

Petkoff’s house, loves Louka who loves Sergius. The complication is comically romantic:

Petkoff (exasperated) Raina, will you kindly inform me, if I am

not asking too much, which of these gentlemen you are engaged

to?

Raina To neither of them. This young lady (introducing Louka,

who faces them all proudly) is the object of Major Saranoff’s

affections t present.

Petkoff Louka! Are you mad, Sergius? Why, this girl’s engaged

to Nicola.

Nicola I beg your pardon, sir. There is a mistake. Louka is not

engaged to me. (P.69-70)

Thus, not only the characters, the situations are also comic. Shaw’s technique is unique. He gives

the subtitle as ‘An anti-romantic Comedy in Three Acts’, perhaps for breaking the notion of

Shakespearean comedy which are in five acts. Shaw’s attack is on the romantic view of war and

love and I doing so he introduces some romantic characters and certain romantic situations. He

simply plays with the politics of genre. The question of genre has been one of the foremost fields

of studies, debates and discussion in recent time. The question arises precisely because of the

post structuralist intervention. The generic divisions have become loose and fragile, as more and

more forms of intertextual studies and application have begun to come up. Therefore, Shaw’s

“Arms and the Man” should be questioned from its generic perspective. The comedy is full of

romantic and comic elements. The play also indicates socialistic issues. Naturally, it should not

be confined within the structure of an anti-romantic comedy.

WORKS CITED

Meise, Martin , 1984 Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theatre- (New York: Limelight

Editions.

Shaw Bernard, 1891 The Quintessence of Ibsenism; London: Walter Scott,

Shaw Bernard, 1898, Arms and the Man, ed. A.C.Ward.

Stephens Yorke, 1990, “Arms and the Man: III,” in Shaw: Interviews and Recollections,

ed. A.M Gibbs, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, p.130

Lee. J. Scott, 1986, Comic Unity in Arms and the Man, Shaw, Vol. 6, p. 101-122, Penn

State University Press.