Arms and the Man as an Anti-Romantic Comedy

Or,

Arms and the Man as a Play of Ideas

“I declare that I am tired to utter disgust of imaginary life, imaginary law, imaginary
ethics, science, peace, war, love, virtue, villainy and imaginary everything else, both on the
stage and off it. I demand respect, interest, and affection for human nature as it is.”

- George Bernard Shaw

True to what G. B. Shaw once remarked as quoted above, a play is essentially a drama of real life
for him. His plays are more drama of ideas where his main aim is to discuss his anti-romantic
ideas associated with “imaginary life, imaginary law, imaginary ethics, science, peace, war,
love, virtue, villainy and imaginary everything else” than merely drama of actions. Moreover,
in Shaw’s play, action is subordinated to his ideas which are expressed through his characters
who parallelly play the role of character and also the role of the dramatist’s mouthpiece. As
regards his characters, Shaw once opined, “I do not accept the conventional ideals, to them I
oppose in the play the practical life and morals of the efficient, realist man, unaffectedly
ready to face what risks must be faced, considerate but not chivalrous, patient and
practical.” Arms and the Man truly bears the testimony to this typical Shavian vein. Here the
playwright has exposed the hollowness of the romantic ideas of love and war. More than a
comedy, the play deals with serious concerns regarding love and war as suggested in the sub-title
“An Anti-Romantic Comedy in Three Acts.” In words of A.C. Ward, “The play has two
themes: one is war, the other is marriage. These themes are interwoven, for Shaw believed
that while war is evil and stupid, and marriage desirable and good, both had become
wrapped in romantic illusions, which led to disastrous wars and also to unhappy
marriages.”

When the play opens we find Raina, the heroine, rejoicing at the news of the victorious
cavalry charge led by her betrothed Major Sergius Saranoff. Raina rejoices because she can now
believe that “the world is really glorious world for women who can see its glory and men
who can act into romance”. Moreover, this victory has proved for Raina that all her ideals of
patriotism. honour and selfless love real after all. This is a romantic girl’s romantic view of life,
revealed at the very beginning of the play.

But then reality suddenly breaks in on her. An enemy soldier, “the Man” in the title, who
has been a witness to the great cavalry charge, intrudes into Raina’s room to save his life.
Contrary to Raina’s high ideals, Bluntschli, the fugitive soldier, does not hesitate even to take
advantage of her undress to protect himself. Thus, Raina’s ideal of war receives a serious jolt
because she sees for herself that arms confer no superior status on a man Shaw then enhances his
dramatic irony by offering a second account of the same cavalry charge. He draws a realistic
picture of the battlefield which is the direct negative of the dozens of military paintings showing
the flashing swords and eyes of a thundering avalanche. Bluntschli, therefore, tells the girl that,
far from being heroic, the famous attack was a piece of unprofessional bungling which should
have got the whole regiment killed if the enemy guns had not missed fire.

Till now, Raina thought that “the romantic view of war is based on the idealistic
notion that men fight because they are heroes and that the soldier who takes the biggest
risks wins the greatest glory and is the greatest hero.” But finally, she comes out of such an
illusion after her encounter with the mercenary soldier who makes her aware of the grim realities
of war. Similarly, Sergius is also disillusioned soon and realizes: “Soldiering is the coward’s
art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong and keeping out of harm’s way when you
are weak.” Thus, war has lost its romance for Sergius as it has for Raina.

As a matter of fact, arms do not make a man great nor do they make him a better lover.
For both Sergius and Raina, the notions of love and war are interrelated. As he tells Raina, in a
war he conducted himself as a medieval knight running in a tournament: “I have gone through
the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking down at him.” But, soon he gets
tired of his higher love and flirts with Louka as soon as Raina turns back. He accepts before
Louka that higher love is “very fatiguing thing to keep up for any length of time...One feels
the need of some relief.” Raina also understands that Sergius is fallible and jealous like any
common man and that it is not possible to spend her whole life with such a figure full of
romantic ideals. She opts for Bluntschli whose business-like manner wins her over from
romanticisms in love as well as in war.

To conclude, Shaw is a true artist who once waged war against romantic ideals which had
long been the treatment of subject in conventional romantic dramas. Once he even went to the
extreme in saying, “For art’s sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single
sentence.” Romantic comedy for him was “cheap, vulgar and spurious”. True to typical
Shavian drama, Arms and the Man hardly leaves any stone unturned to lay bare the hollowness
of war and love and in both treatment and style, the play is vindictive to the dramatist’s ideas/ the
play is undoubtedly anti-romantic.