Summary & Analysis-Arms and the Man

Drama
Fourth year (senior students)

By: Assistant lecturer- Hayder Gebreen
Arms and the Man
By: George Bernard Shaw
Title: Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes
from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, in Latin: Arma virumque cano ("Of arms
and the man I sing"). One of Shaw’s aims in this play is to debunk the romantic
heroics of war; he wanted to present a realistic account of war and to remove all
pretensions of nobility from war. It is not, however, an anti-war play; instead, it is a
satire on those attitudes which would glorify war. To create this satire, Shaw chose as
his title the opening lines of Virgil’s Aeneid, the Roman epic which glorifies war and
the heroic feats of man in war, and which begins, “Of arms and the man I sing. . . .”
INTRODUCTION: Throughout the play, Shaw arranged his material so as to satirize
the glories associated with war and to ultimately suggest that aristocratic pretensions
have no place in today’s wars, which are won by using business-like efficiency, such
as the practical matters of which Bluntschli is a master. For example, Bluntschli is
able to deal with the business of dispensing an army to another town with ease, while
this was a feat that left the aristocrats (Majors Petkoff and Saranoff) completely
baffled. This early play by Shaw, therefore, cuts through the noble ideals of war and
the “higher love” that Raina and Sergius claim to share; Arms and the Man presents a
world where the practical man who lives with no illusions and no poetic views about
either love or war is shown to be the superior creature.
Shaw was already a celebrity arts critic and socialist lecturer when he wrote Arms and
the Man in 1894. One of Shaw’s earliest attempts at writing for the theatre, it was also
his first commercial success as a playwright. Although it played for only one season
at an avant-garde theatre, thanks to the financial backing of a friend, it was later
produced in America in 1895. Accustomed to the melodramas of the age, however,
even sophisticated audiences often did not discern the serious purpose of Shaw’s play.
Thus, Shaw considered it a failure.
True success did not come until 1898, when Arms and the Man was published as one
of the “pleasant” plays in Shaw’s collection called Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant,
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and it subsequently gained popularity as a written work. Included in this collection of
plays are lengthy explanatory prefaces, which note significant issues in the plays and
which have been invaluable to critics. In place of brief stage directions, Shaw’s plays
also included lengthy instructions and descriptions. Another unique aspect of Arms
and the Man was its use of a woman as the central character.
Set during the four-month-long Serbo-Bulgarian War that occurred between
November 1885 and March 1886, this play is a satire on the foolishness of glorifying
something so terrible as war, as well as a satire on the foolishness of basing your
affections on idealistic notions of love. These themes brought reality and a timeless
lesson to the comic stage. Consequently, once Shaw’s genius was recognized, Arms
and the Man became one of Shaw’s most popular plays and has remained a classic
ever since.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Considered one of the greatest English-speaking
dramatist since Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw was born July 26, 1856, in
Dublin, Ireland, and had a long and productive life. He was the only son and youngest
of three children born to George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw, who were
Irish Protestant gentry. Shaw’s education involved tutoring from an uncle and at a
series of schools, but he quit school at fifteen to work in an estate agent’s office for
five years. In 1876, he went to London to join his sister and his mother, who had left
Shaw’s alcoholic father to pursue careers as a music teacher and opera singer.
Shaw was supported by his mother and sister as he wrote five unsuccessful novels. In
1888, he became the music critic for a newspaper, and then in 1895, he took a
position as the drama critic at the Saturday Review, a position he held for three years.
A devotee of Henrik Ibsen, he wrote The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1890) and
modeled his own works after the individualism and the moral and social issues that he
saw in Ibsen’s drama. Through his own plays, Shaw is credited with creatingthe
“drama of ideas.” Among his best-known plays are Arms and the Man (1894), Saint
Joan (1923), Man and Superman (1905), Major Barbara (1905), Candida (1897),
and Pygmalion (first English production in 1914; it was produced in German
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translation in 1913). Pygmalion was made into a movie, for which Shaw won an
Academy Award for best screenplay in 1938. The play was later made into a musical,
My Fair Lady (1964), with book and score by Alan Jay Lerner and music by
Frederick Lowe; the musical version retained the plot, characters, and many of the
lines from the original play.
In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Francis Payne-Townshend, an Irish heiress. Their
marriage lasted until her death in 1943. A vegetarian, teetotaler, and fervent socialist,
Shaw championed the causes of women and the poor. He was an active member in
the Fabian Society, which proposed gradual, non-revolutionary socialist reforms in
the structure of society and the economy. In 1895, with Sidney and Beatrice Webb, he
helped establish the London School of Economics.
Shaw wrote numerous pamphlets and kept busy as a lecturer on issues in politics,
economics, and sociology. He was also a prolific letter writer. Greatly criticized for
his opposition to World War I, Shaw was eventually forgiven by the public as his
predictions about the conflict came true and people started to understand the true
nature of war. In 1925, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died November 2,
1950, at his home in Hertfordshire, England. He left his fortune to the movement for
rational spelling, the British Library, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Context: In 1856 George Bernard Shaw was born in a lower-middle class

neighborhood in Dublin, Ireland, and was the youngest of three siblings. His mother,
who was a professional singer, encouraged his interests in the arts, and eventually left
Shaw’s alcoholic father. In his twenties, Shaw began a course of private reading at the
British Museum, allowing him to engage not only with English poets like William
Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, but with political thought then brewing in the 1870s.
For several years, in his twenties and early thirties, Shaw attempted to supplement a
clerical career—and, eventually, to make up for the loss of steady employment—
through the composition of novels and short stories, which offered him small success.
By the 1880s, Shaw was committed to the ideals of the “Fabians,” a branch of
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socialists operating in England who preferred to transform Britain not through
revolution, but through intellectual pursuits. Shaw wrote newspaper articles and gave
speeches on the subject, and on related issues of social and political concern in
England and continental Europe. He soon met drama critic William Archer, who
asked Shaw to review plays as well. Shaw took Archer’s encouragement to start
writing his own plays, and created the works for which he is now famous: Man and
Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), Saint Joan (1924), along with a great many
others, and with “theoretical prefaces” explaining the construction and political
impact of his works. After a career dotted with commercial and critical notoriety, and
with continued speechmaking on a variety of issues on the political left, Shaw won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, for, as the Nobel Committee put it, “his work
which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being
infused with a singular poetic beauty.”
Written in 1893-4 and first performed in 1894, Arms and the Man is one of Shaw’s
earlier plays, and one that grows out of several contexts. The first is historical. There
was a Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885, and there was, too, an historic Battle of
Slivnitza, won by the Bulgarians. Although Shaw takes advantage of actual historical
information in the construction of the work, he is more concerned not with what
allowed the Bulgarians to gain power in the region, but in broader forces of political
and social agitation, and in the manner by which love can create, and redraw,
relations between groups. Raina, Bluntschli, Sergius, and the rest of the characters are
simply figures through which these political and social forces play out, as much as
they are characters with which the viewer is to identify.
Some scholars have called Arms and the Man a satire, or a work that criticizes
political or social issues of the day through humor or exaggeration. It is also a
comedy, as evidenced from its ending in a flurry of weddings to its continued poking
fun at Bulgarian “refinement.” But there is a great deal of dark comedy evident. The
stakes of the work are high; the characters in it fear death and flee it, and characters
off-stage, like Bluntschli’s friend, suffer terrible ends. This kind of comedy allows
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Shaw to broach serious issues like equality among the sexes, the nature and necessity
of war, and the impact of technological development on European warmaking—but
do so satirically with Louka’s subtle laughter and Petkoff’s buffoonish behavior.
Arms and the Man is a fitting entry-point into Shaw’s career, which goes on to
encompass many more plays investigating the nature of relationships between men
and women. In his prefaces to the works, collected later in his life, Shaw explains
how certain settings, scenes, characters, and dialogue might help the reader or viewer
to find political truths in these works of fiction. It is impossible to read through
Shaw’s career, too, without accounting for the “Great War” at its middle. The First
World War challenged many artists’ assumptions about best methods for social
organization, and about the role of art in a world that seemed more than willing to
blow itself up in order to further small gains along a trench-line. As many scholars
have noted, Shaw’s works can be read against the plays and poems of his fellow
Irishman William Butler Yeats, and the plays, poems, and collected prose pieces of
Oscar Wilde. Both these men were, like Shaw, more than willing to upend social
orders they found stifling, including the behavioral demands on the middle classes.
And though Wilde, Yeats, and Shaw were very different artists working with very
different tones and styles, they nevertheless bridged the 1800s and 1900s, both in
lifespan and in sensibility, as they saw the world change drastically in the first third of
the latter century.
Plot Overview:
The play begins in the fall of 1885 during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Raina, a
Bulgarian woman from a wealthy family, learns from her mother, Catherine, that the
Bulgarian cavalry have won a battle against the Serbs. Catherine adds that Sergius,
Raina’s fiancé, was at the head of the charge, and was as heroic in life as he appears in
the picture Raina keeps in her bedroom. Louka, their servant, enters and warns
Catherine and Raina that escaped Serbs fleeing the battlefield might be in the area,
seeking refuge in the houses of Bulgarian families. Raina is not worried, and chooses
to keep her window unlocked. In the night, a man enters the room through the
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unlocked window and says he will kill Raina if she makes a noise. The man is Swiss
and an escaped soldier, fighting as a mercenary for the Serbians.
Raina is shocked to see that the man is tired and hungry, that he does not glorify
battle, and that he is merely happy to have escaped the carnage alive. Raina helps him
hide behind a curtain just as Catherine, Louka, and a Bulgarian officer enter to search
the room for any Serbs who might be hiding in the area. Raina convinces them that no
one is in her room, and they leave. Raina gives the man chocolate creams, which she
keeps in a box in her room, and is shocked to hear that the man has no ammunition for
his pistol, as he normally only keeps candies in his pockets. The man argues that
Sergius’s cavalry charge against the Serbs was foolish, and succeeded only by sheer
luck. The Serbs had machine guns but were given the wrong ammunition by accident,
and therefore could not mow down Sergius and his men. Raina agrees to help the man
escape later that night, though she rebukes him for making fun of her fiancé Sergius.
The man sleeps as Raina enlists Catherine’s help, and when Raina and Catherine
return, they allow the man to rest since he has not slept for days.
The second act begins in the garden of the same house, though it is now spring of
1886. Louka is engaged to the house’s head male servant, Nicola. Louka tells Nicola
that he will never be more than a servant, and that she has higher aspirations. Louka
tells him she knows many secrets about the Petkoff family, and Nicola says that he
does, too, but would never blackmail his masters. Major Petkoff, the head of the
family, returns from the war. He reports to Catherine that Sergius will never receive
the military promotion Sergius craves, because Sergius has no command of military
strategy. Sergius enters and is greeted warmly by the family, and especially by Raina,
who still considers him a hero. Sergius says he has abandoned his commission in the
army out of anger that he will never move up in the ranks. Sergius and Petkoff tell a
story they heard about this Swiss soldier being hidden by two Bulgarian women
during the soldier’s retreat. Catherine and Raina realize the story is about them, but do
not say anything.
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Sergius speaks with Louka in private, and begins flirting with her. Louka reveals to
Sergius that Raina might not remain faithful to Sergius, and Sergius is taken aback.
They exit. A man named Bluntschli enters the family garden and Louka brings him to
Catherine. Catherine realizes that he is the man that hid in Raina’s room, the same
man that she and Raina helped escape. Catherine worries that Sergius and Petkoff,
who are conferring over military plans in the library, might encounter the soldier.
Sergius and Petkoff have no idea that the story they heard about a soldier being helped
by two Bulgarian women involves the Petkoffs. Bluntschli has come to return Major
Petkoff’s coat that Catherine and Raina lent him to escape. Raina is so happy to see
him that she blurts out, “the chocolate cream soldier!” when she walks in the room,
only to recover herself and blame her outburst, implausibly, on Nicola. Petkoff and
Sergius, who have in fact already met Bluntschli during the war, ask Bluntschli to stay
and pass the time.
In the final act, the various tensions of the play thus far are exposed. Louka tells
Sergius that the man with whom Raina is in love is Bluntschli. Sergius challenges
Bluntschli to a duel because of this, but Bluntschli explains his way out of it. A picture
of herself that Raina placed in her father’s cloak for Bluntschli to find is exposed,
proving that Raina has not been entirely truthful to Sergius. Raina admits that she has
had feelings for Bluntschli since they first met. Major Petkoff is aghast. When
Bluntschli acknowledges that he has loved Raina, Sergius and Louka reveal that they
have been having a secret affair at Sergius’ instigation, and Nicola releases Louka
from their engagement. Bluntschli, whose father has just died, has come into a great
deal of money, so Raina’s parents are glad to marry her off to him and his handsome
fortune. Raina is revealed to be twenty-three rather than seventeen, enabling
Bluntschli in good conscience to ask for her hand in marriage. Bluntschli promises to
hire Nicola, whom he admires, to run the hotels he has just received as part of his
inheritance. Sergius accepts Louka has his lover in public, thus satisfying Louka’s
desire to move up in the social ranks. The play ends with Sergius exclaiming, of
Bluntschli, “What a man!”
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Key Facts:
full title · Arms and the Man
autho · r George Bernard Shaw
type of work · Play
genre · Comedy of manners; social satire
language · English
time and place written · London; 1893
date of first performance · 1894 (London)
publisher · N/A; first performed in London
narrator · Play does not have a narrator, but there are scene descriptions and stage in
addition to the dialogue.
point of view · The play has no “point of view” as in fiction. The audience sees all
characters equally and externally.
tone · Social critique
tense · Present
setting (time) · 1885-6
setting (place) · Bulgaria; the Petkoff estate
protagonist · Raina
major conflict · Catherine and Raina worry that Sergius and Petkoff will realize that
they harbored Bluntschli in their home in secret during the war.
rising action · Bluntschli arrives back at the Petkoff estate in Act Two, to return
Petkoff’s coat.
climax · Bluntschli reveals his love for Raina, Raina her love for Bluntschli;
and Louka and Sergius admit to their affair.
falling action · Bluntschli makes a formal offer of marriage to Raina, who accepts,
and Sergius offers marriage to Louka, who also accepts (after goading him into doing
it).
themes · Disillusionment with war; the complexity of romantic love; the arbitrary
nature of social status
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motifs · Ill-timed entry; romantic affairs; the soul of a servant
symbols · Petkoff’s coat; chocolate creams; the library
foreshadowing · In Act Two, Sergius and Petkoff discuss hearing a story about a
man whom Bulgarian noblewomen hid in their own home, with their husbands and
families away at war. Louka states that she knows secrets about the Petkoffs, and also
will do whatever she can to elevate her social status.
Pejorative military use of the term "chocolate soldier"
The chocolate-cream soldier of the play has inspired a pejorative military use of the
term. soldiers use the term "chocolate soldier" to describe a soft soldier who is unable
to fight well, or chocolate soldiers, the implication being that they were not real
soldiers.
Setting: A small Bulgarian town, near the Dragoman Pass, during the 1885 Serbo-
Bulgarian War.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Raina Petkoff is the protagonist, and her true antagonist is the reality of war and love.
Character List:
Raina: The heroine of the play, Raina’s inner self is more nuanced than her outward
appearances. Her true self is revealed not to be horrible or evil, but simply complex
and human. Raina aspires to a perfect romantic chastity for Sergius, but really harbors
affection toward Bluntschli after their initial encounter. She claims never to have lied
in her life, but admits later to telling strategic lies when they can make a situation
easier to handle. Raina is revealed to be not a symbol of perfect femininity, but,
rather, a human being, deserving of companionship with another human. In
structuring Raina’s character this way, Shaw subverts some of the expectations of
what might have been either a comedy of marriage or a serious play about love and
war. Arms and the Man, and Raina in particular, are instances of the detail of lived
experience complicating broader narratives about what “goodness,” “valor,” or
“truth” ought to be.
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Bluntschli: The “chocolate cream soldier” is the driving force of the plot. Bluntschli
is a rationalist, meaning a man who believes in reacting to situations based on the
facts, not on what is good versus what is bad. This does not mean that Bluntschli is
immaculate. Bluntschli’s pragmatism entails that he will expect himself, sometimes,
to behave irrationally, or to become afraid. He knows that he loves Rainapassionately,
but he is willing to suppress these feelings when he feels the match is impossible.
When Bluntschli realizes Raina is a potential match for him, he does away with his
scruples and carries forward. Bluntschli demonstrates a mode of life that is not
divorced from passion or unreason, but that takes these feelings into account. This,
more than anything, is what seems to inspire such devotion from the other characters
at the end of the play. Sergius in particular is taken by Bluntschli’s command of
himself. Bluntschli’s ability to expertly navigate the social interactions with the
Petkoff family enable him to have come out on top.
Sergius: Sergius is Raina’s foil. He too is revealed to be far different than he first
appears. He is not quite the noble hero of the Battle of Slivnitza. As Bluntschli notes,
his cavalry charge was at best ill-informed, and it played to Sergius’s vanity. On top
of this, Sergius admits to Louka, later in the play that he is a man of “many
personalities.” He is no constant lover, and he has designs on Louka even while he
maintains his engagement to Raina. Whereas Raina is revealed to be complex in a
human and forgivable way, Sergius comes off as duplicitous and willing to
manipulate the truth for his own purposes and at the expense of other people’s
happiness. That Sergius winds up engaged at the play’s end is a jarring example of
Shaw’s moral universe. Shaw does not always punish characters who might seem
deserving of it. But Sergius does marry “below his station,” even as Louka improves
hers.
Louka: Louka, the female servant, is another character who is willing to leverage
what she knows in order to get what she wants. Louka admits to Nicola that she
knows far more about the Petkoff family than they would like. Nicola is scandalized
that she would trade in gossip to gain power over the Petkoffs, but for Louka this is
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not a moral calculation, it’s a practical one. Louka figures that if Nicola wants to
remain a servant, he will, because he knows the rules of that game. But Louka wants
to change the game itself and move up in the social hierarchy. This involves the
violation of norms typical for servant life. It is Louka’s aspiration toward social rank
that enables her to manipulate Sergius, who seemed at first to be manipulating her,
and to arrange for a marriage that will make her a lady.
Catherine: Catherine is another of the play’s benevolent opportunists, making the
most of circumstances as they break in her direction. At first, she is strongly
supportive of the idea that Raina and Sergius marry. She finds Sergius to be a fitting
future husband for her daughter, as he is a man whose bravery has been demonstrated
on the battlefield. But once Sergius reveals that he has major flaws, Catherine and
Petkoff are more than willing to support their daughter’s engagement to Bluntschli.
This is especially true once Bluntschli indicates that he has recently come into a
substantial fortune.
Major Petkoff - Head of the Petkoff family, and Raina’s father. The Major is a
decent if unambitious soldier, and he seems concerned mostly with maintaining his
family’s social position in the rural parts of Bulgaria. He and Catherine are willing to
accept Bluntschli as Raina’s suitor by the play’s end only after he demonstrates just
how wealthy he is.
Nicola - Head male servant of the Petkoff estate. Nicola initially reprimands Louka
for her willingness to leverage information she’s heard as gossip against the Petkoffs.
Louka feels that Nicola is not ambitious enough because he is content to be a servant
for the rest of his life. Nicola ends the play by breaking his engagement amicably
with Louka, allowing her to be engaged to Sergius.
Bluntschli’s friend - A soldier for the Serbian side, who knows Bluntschli. This
unnamed friend meets Petkoff and Sergius during an exchange of goods. He tells
them a story about his friend who hid in a Bulgarian home and escaped with the help
of two Bulgarian women. Petkoff and Sergius have no idea this soldier’s story is
about Bluntschli, Raina, and Catherine.
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Summary: Act One, Beginning of play to Bluntschli’s entry
The play begins in a small town “near the Dragoman Pass” in Bulgaria, in the
bedroom of a young woman named Raina Petkoff. It’s November 1885, and a war is
on between the Bulgarian troops with their Russian allies, and the combined Serbian
forces. The Serbian forces include many soldiers hired from other nations. The scene
description, in italics, sets a pattern for the rest of the play. Although there is no
official narrator and the scene descriptions are in essence only for the eyes of the
company putting on the play, they contain a significant amount of detail not
perceptible to a viewing audience. Only a reader knows these details. This includes,
for example, notes on the mental states of some of the characters. The notes describe
Rainia’s room’s décor as lavish, if somewhat kitschy.. There are chocolate cream
candies visible on a dresser.
Raina gazes out her open window, and her mother, Catherine Petkoff, enters, telling
Raina to close the windows because it’s cold outside. Catherine is excited and
delivers news that the Bulgarian-Russian army has won a great battle at Slivnitza,
against the Serbians and their allies. Catherine also states that a man
named Sergius is responsible for leading the cavalry in the victory. Raina is
overjoyed and relieved on hearing this. Raina admits to Catherine that, in Raina’s
lonelier moments, she has doubted whether the Bulgarians can compare in cultivation
and elegance to the Russians. Raina has also wondered whether men in battle really
are as heroic as she has read about in the works of Pushkin and Byron. Catherine tells
Raina she should be ashamed to have doubted the Bulgarians, and Sergius in
particular.
Louka, their maid, enters, and says that all windows and doors in the house should be
closed and locked because there are fleeing Serbians in the area, and they might try to
hide in Bulgarian houses. Catherine leaves the room to make sure the house is safe
and in order. When Catherine is gone, Louka privately tells Raina that she can push
open one of the shutters against Catherine’s wishes to continue listening to the battle,
as one shutter does not bolt properly. Raina scolds Louka aloud for contradicting
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Catherine’s advice. Louka leaves, and Raina lies awake listening to the gunfire
approach the house. At first Raina finds this exciting, but soon realizes that the
scattered Serbian army is very close by. She hears the shutters rattle, and in a
moment a man strikes a match in the room, telling Raina to be quiet or he’ll shoot
her.
Analysis
Shaw introduces, in this first section of the first act, some of the motivating ideas and
problems of the play. One of them is the nature of “genteel,” or wealthy, society, and
the harsher reality of war, which is, in this sequence, just outside Raina’s windows.
Raina idolizes Sergius, who is conveniently represented only as a perfect photograph
in these scenes. In her own home and bedroom, Raina thinks of Sergius as an
engaging hero in battle. She is pleased, therefore, to have her mother Catherine
corroborate this fantasy.
Shaw’s stage directions demonstrate how descriptions of scenes might undercut the
action that is being performed on the stage, visible to the audience in the theater. The
decorations in Raina’s room appear fancy, but they are a bit tacky on closer
inspection, according to the meticulous stage directions. The decorations are signals,
therefore, not of wealth but of a desire for more wealth, more “cultivation,” than
perhaps the family really has. This, too, is an undercurrent in the play, that Bulgaria
and the Bulgarian nobility exist in the the shadow of more culturally-developed
countries like Russia and the Austrian Empire. The Petkoffs go out of their way to
demonstrate that they just as learned and up to date, but these efforts only point up
their fear that they in fact are not so advanced after all.
Also evident in this sequence is the family’s reliance on Sergius as a kind of savior
figure. If he is the hero of the battle, then he is all the more suited to be Raina’s
husband in the eyes of the Petkoffs. Raina’s marriageability is of prime importance to
the members of her family, and even to the servants in the house, as it will bring
honor to their family. The ideas of reputation, honesty, and honor are complicated
throughout the play. Sergius will prove to be far more three-dimensional than his
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picture in Raina’s room would suggest. Raina’s virtue will also be tested. The
transformation of different characters’ moral states and reputations is one of the great
dramas of the work.
Summary: Act One, Bluntschli’s entry to end of Act One
The man, as the stage notes describe, is of “undistinguished” appearance. He does

not seem as impressive a solider as the picture of Sergius that Raina keeps in her
room. Raina is surprised at the man’s cleverness, and that he seems more interested
in preserving his life than in behaving as a soldier “should.” The man threatens again
to kill Raina if she draws attention to him. Raina counters that she is not afraid to die.
The man responds that, if Bulgarians were to enter and kill him, they would be left
alone in Raina’s room with her only in her bedclothes. The man implies that this
would be a dangerous predicament for Raina, and she agrees, though is revolted. She
gets up to find her cloak to cover herself, but the man takes it, as a guarantee that
Raina will keep quiet, so that no soldiers come in and see her scantily clothed He
calls the cloak a weapon more powerful than a pistol.
A bustling is heard outside the room. Catherine and Louka are coming, and just
before they enter, Raina tells the man to hide behind a curtain. He does, and
Catherine and Louka ask if everything is all right. They bring in a polite young
soldier of the Bulgarian army, who reports that a runaway from the Serbians might be
on the balcony and attempt to get into the house. Raina denies this possibility, testily,
but she allows the soldier to search the area. He, Catherine, and Louka find no one
and wish Raina good night. Raina tells Louka to stay with her mother the rest of the
evening, as she, Raina, pretends to be worried that Catherine will need protection
from the retreating Serbians. In a stage direction, the reader learns that Louka makes
a strange face at Raina when she says this. Louka is aware Raina is up to something
suspicious.
When the three leave the room, the man emerges from the curtain, relieved at not
having been found out. He says he is indebted to Raina for protecting him. Raina
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cries out, realizing that the man has left his pistol in plain sight on the ottoman while
the other three were present. The man says they were lucky, and that Raina shouldn’t
worry, since the gun isn’t loaded. Indeed, he has no space for extra cartridges in his
pockets, because he usually only carries chocolates in them, although he has just run
out. Raina finds this behavior unbecoming for a soldier, but the man says that
carrying candy is a sign of a veteran, rather than a novice.
Raina offers the man her chocolate cream candies, which he loves and eats. The man
discusses the cavalry charge from the earlier in the day. He insults the leader of the
Bulgarian side, which he does not know was Raina’s future husband, Sergius.
Although Raina thinks that Sergius’ behavior was heroic, the man claims that it was
instead foolish, unprofessional, and showy. After all, the man continues, the Serbians
had machine guns and the Bulgarians and Russians had only horses. In most
circumstances, the charge would have been a death sentence for the Bulgarian side,
as the machine guns would have mowed them down immediately. But the Serbian
forces were supplied with the wrong kind of cartridges for their guns, and only
because of this were they defeated by the advancing Bulgarians. Thus Sergius and his
cavalry won the battle, but only from sheer luck, and in the face of his own
catastrophic military decision-making.
Raina is shocked by this news and angry at the man for delivering it. She says she
cannot allow the man to stay in her bedroom, since he has now spoken ill of her
future husband. The man begs to be permitted to hide in her bedroom, because if she
forces him outside, he will surely be killed. He only wants to sleep, but prepares to
leave anyway. Raina stops him and brags that her family is famous for its hospitality.
She says that if the man had asked for her pity instead of pointing a gun at her, Raina
would have helped him. Raina continues bragging about her family’s wealth, and that
they have the only library in Bulgaria. They are so cultured, compared to other
Bulgarians, that they even wash regularly. The man seems subtly amused by this, and
notes that the man’s father owns six hotels, although Raina appears not to notice this
indication of his family’s station in society.
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Drama
Raina tells the man to stay awake and alert while she informs her mother, Catherine,
of the situation, since her father, Major Petkoff, is still off at battle. The man
promises not to sleep. But when Raina is gone, he stumbles over to her bed and falls
asleep instantly. Catherine and Raina return to find the man this way. Catherine is
shocked and wants to wake him, but Raina begs Catherine to let him be.
Analysis
The man, whose name is later revealed to be Bluntschli, is arguably the novel’s most
captivating presence, apart from Raina. He is from Switzerland, and as he notes here,
he fights not out of a sense of patriotism to Serbia. He is a professional soldier, or
mercenary, who fights for whatever army needs soldiers and can pay them. He could
have chosen another career path, but his gift is clearly for the art of war. While he is
talented and knowledgeable about war, Bluntschli the soldier does not have the
idealized version of military behavior. He wants to protect his own life, and he is
willing to ransom Raina’s safety to do so. He carries candy instead of ammunition in
his pockets. He gets scared when Raina screams. And he gets sleepy, although he has
stayed awake, at that point in the play, for days.
In short, Bluntschli, the “chocolate cream soldier,” is not a hypothetical soldier, he is
not simply an abstract idea of a heroic warrior, as Sergius is to Raina. He is a real
man, and his strengths and weaknesses point to something deeper about him, which
is a kind of self-honesty that the other characters do not seem to possess. Bluntschli
is fairly self-aware, and seems to know his motivations and desires very well. He
sees through Sergius’ duplicity and blind heroism, and through the Petkoff family’s
self-aggrandizement. He does this without drawing attention to himself.
Bluntschli implies in this passage that his Swiss family is bourgeois, meaning that
they have perhaps a great deal of money. His father owns six hotels, insinuating that
the money was made through work and not through the inheritance of an illustrious
family, like Raina’s. The Petkoffs’ wealth is of that second kind, and they are sure to
tell to anyone who might ask that they are “old money” in Bulgaria, cultivated and
refined, with enormous social stature. Bluntschli is not as enthused by this as Sergius
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Drama
likely is, and Raina seems to sense that. It is perhaps another reason why she values
Bluntschli’s opinion and eventually becomes upset with Sergius’s hypocrisy.
Raina’s behavior in these scenes is harder to pin down. She clearly takes a liking to
the man from the beginning, but she alternates in her behavior toward him, from
disgust at his apparent fear of battle and willingness to save his life, to maternal care
when he is drowsy and sleeping. Raina is attracted to him but is not sure why, as
Bluntschli seems the opposite of Sergius in so many ways. Bluntschli is pragmatic
and Sergius grandiose. Bluntschli is a logical man who plays according to chance,
while the Sergius drives into battle without any consideration other than how he
might look on a horse. It is a signal of Raina’s character development that she shifts
her devotions from Sergius to Bluntschli, from the apparently classic hero to a soldier
with a deeper kind of steadfastness.
Though Sergius and Bluntschli seem to be opposites, this part of Act One is
important because it debunks the widespread idea that everyone must be good or bad,
heroic or cowardly, perfect or flawed. In reality, nothing is black and white. Even
though Sergius is praised as a hero, we learn that his cavalry charge was in fact
foolish. Likewise, even though Bluntschli isn’t prepared to die for a cause, as
society’s ideal heroic soldier would, he is in fact more knowledgeable about war than
Sergius. Shaw’s characters mirror the complexity and murkiness of war, as the
“hero” turns out to have major flaws, and the more practical, knowledgeable soldier
carries chocolates instead of ammunition. Sergius and Bluntschli seem to destroy the
idea of war as a glorified act.
Bluntschli’s vulnerability at the end of Act One, when he is sleeping soundly despite
having stated that he would not, is an important instance for the play. It marks an
ironic moment in which Raina decides to protect a man whose profession is to
protect others. It also marks the moment when Raina admits to her mother that she
has been harboring a fugitive, and convinces her mother to help her with it. It creates
the central secret of the play that will motivate the second and third acts. That is, at
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Drama
least until other characters reveal secrets of their own.
Act Two
Summary: Beginning of Act Two to Sergius’s first interaction with Louka
The stage notes say that it is now March of 1886. The setting is still the Petkoffs’
house in rural Bulgaria, but the action now takes place in an adjacent garden. Nicola,
the male servant of the home, converses with Louka. Louka complains about her
mistresses, Catherine and Raina, and Nicola scolds her for it. As he does it, he reveals
that he and Louka are engaged. Nicola argues that he could never marry someone
who didn’t behave according to the rules of good service. Louka says she doesn’t
have the soul of a servant like Nicola does. Louka also says she knows many of the
Petkoffs’ secrets, and could use them against the family. Nicola counters that he also
knows many secrets, but warns her that it is a servant’s job never to betray these
secrets to anyone. Nicola reveals to the audience that he one day hopes to purchase
his freedom and open a shop in Sofia, the capital, at which Louka can work.
Nicola and Louka hear a man’s voice outside the gate. The family’s patriarch, Major
Paul Petkoff, has returned from the war. The household scurries about to receive him.
Nicola and Louka provide coffee, alcohol, and cigarettes. Catherine greets her
husband excitedly but modestly. She is surprised and offended when Petkoff reveals
that the Bulgarians and Russians have brokered a peace with the Serbians, instead of
simply vanquishing them without conditions. In response, Petkoff says that it would
have been nearly impossible to achieve total victory. Catherine tells her husband that,
in his absence, they have installed an electric bell for the servants in the house, so no
one needs to impolitely shout for help. Catherine finds the bell more civilized, but
Petkoff thinks it unnecessary. They hear Sergius arriving, and before he enters the
scene, Petkoff tells Catherine she’ll need to get Sergius off Petkoff’s back. Sergius is
angling for a promotion that Petkoff fears will never come, because Sergius has no
tactical military skill or intelligence.
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Drama
Sergius enters, and the stage directions describe him as the true image of his picture
that Raina keeps in her bedroom. The directions say he looks like a genuine soldierly
hero, but is cynical, moody, and thinks the world is unworthy of his ideals. Sergius
announces, however, that he has resigned his commission in the Bulgarian army
because he can no longer tolerate the cowardice of those in command. He repeats that
although his cavalry charge was successful, the officers believed it was foolish and
out of line with military etiquette. Petkoff tries to remain neutral in this,
acknowledging that Sergius has been sorely treated but that being a soldier is a trade.
Raina enters, greeting her father and Sergius excitedly but modestly.
Petkoff and Sergius reminisce about a soldier they met in battle near Peerot, who
tricked them into trading two hundred worn-out horses for fifty strong men. This
soldier was a Swiss hired by the Serbians. This immediately strikes Raina’s and
Catherine’s interest, although they try not to let on that they are thinking
of Bluntschli. Sergius and Petkoff tell a story they heard about this Swiss soldier
being hidden by two Bulgarian women during his retreat. Catherine and Raina’s fear
is confirmed, that this man is the “chocolate cream soldier” they helped, and the
women in the story are themselves. Sergius says the soldier escaped the master of the
house’s cloak.
Raina and Catherine try to pass of their dismay by scolding Petkoff and Sergius for
telling an unseemly story. Sergius apologizes theatrically but Petkoff argues that
women married to soldiers should be up to handling rough words. Catherine and
Petkoff leave, and Sergius and Raina are alone for the first time in the play. Raina
says that she could never remain mad at Sergius, and that she loves him. Sergius says
the same to Raina, and she leaves the scene briefly, at which point Sergius turns his
attentions to Louka and begins flirting with her.
Analysis
This section of the play introduces the servants’ intrigue, and important feature of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century drama and fiction. The actions of servants usually
serve to reflect the actions of the main characters, their employers. Often in these
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Drama
narratives, the servants’ actions disrupt and interfere with the plot. Here, Nicola
indicates that Louka has aspirations “above her station,” that she does not always
want to be a servant. He does not argue when Louka tells him that he, on the other
hand, will be a servant forever, that he will always do exactly what the master and
mistress want at all times. The inclusion of Louka and Nicola’s contrasting
aspirations in this dialogue foreshadows events to come. Louka has no qualms about
using information she gleans about each family member to her advantage. This is
evident early on when Raina is hiding the soldier in her room and Louka senses that
Raina is not being absolutely truthful. Louka has proven to be likely untrustworthy,
but also cunning.
Raina and Catherine have silently agreed to keep up their ruse about the nature
of Bluntschli, the Swiss mercenary they aided. When they hear Sergius and Petkoff
tell the story, which the two men have learned second-hand from Bluntschli's friend,
they pretend to find it scandalous and shocking. Sergius’s apology to Raina for telling
the unseemly story is convincing, but is an exaggerated performance. The manner of
his apology, coupled with the stage direction note of his disillusioned moodiness, is
telling of how his future actions toward Raina will be.
Petkoff, in this scene, is revealed to be a somewhat self-serious and not terribly
insightful mind. Catherine runs the home and colludes with Raina, and the two
women have helped to make improvements to the property in Petkoff’s absence.
Petkoff admits that the Bulgarians had reach a peace agreement, despite winning the
illustrious battle of won by Sergius, because the combined forces of the Serbs and
Austrians are simply too much for Bulgaria to bear. Raina and Catherine are
disappointed by this. They want war to be a clean divide between heroism and deceit,
and Petkoff’s truce clouds what they understood before to be a single shining example
of Sergius’ heroism. This is a further disillusionment for Raina, who has already been
disabused of some of her thoughts about idyllic soldierly life from her interactions
with Bluntschli.
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Drama
There is perhaps another striking feature in this part of the drama, which is the
presence of chance, or coincidence. The story that Petkoff and Sergius happen to have
heard the story about the retreating soldier in fact took place in their very house. This
coincidence, and the coincidences that will occur later on, might seem to strain the
realism of the play. However, they intentionally make a serious matter about war
funny, if not absurd, to the audience. The coincidences can also be seen as narrative
shortcuts, or methods for cutting down the exposition of the play. Tensions between
and within characters are exposed: Raina is forced to choose between honesty and
cunning, and Bluntschli’s self-awareness is a tonic for Sergius’s pompous and
clueless behavior.
Summary: Sergius’s interaction with Louka to end of Act Two
Now alone, Sergius begins to flirt with Louka. He comes on to her brusquely, and
wonders at his own boldness, referring to himself as a hero. Sergius admits that
though he loves Raina, his personality will allow him to go behind her with Louka.
Louka cautions that they should move to where they can’t be seen. Sergius also
bristles at Louka’s mention of Raina, and says that he cannot talk about his
engagement with a servant, thus toggling between wooer and haughty noble. Louka,
angry, tells him that Raina will never marry him because Raina is in love with another
man. Sergius demands to know who that man is, but Louka says she will never tell.
Sergius insults her, calls her a sneak and a bad servant, and grabs her so hard on the
wrist that he bruises her. Sergius regrets that he’s harmed Louka and asks for her
forgiveness right away, but Louka says that such apologies are of no use to servants,
who must do what nobles say.
Raina enters, breaking up their conversation, and asks, jokingly, if Sergius and Louka
have been flirting. This flusters Sergius, and Raina apologizes for what she considers
a harmless joke. Sergius goes to Petkoff’s office to help him with plans for troop
movements in the final stages of the war, despite Sergius’s poor command of military
strategy. Catherine enters and wonders with Raina at the terrible luck of Sergius and
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Drama
Petkoff meeting the soldier that the two women helped. They wonder what to do, and
Catherine worries that if anyone finds out about the soldier’s presence in Raina’s
room, Sergius will break off the engagement. Raina replies bitterly that she
sometimes feels Catherine wants to marry Sergius more than she does. Raina departs.
Louka returns and announces the arrival of a Swiss soldier named Captain Bluntschli.
Catherine realizes that it’s the soldier she and Raina helped.
Catherine conspires to keep Sergius and Petkoff from finding out about the soldier’s
presence. Bluntschli has returned to give back Petkoff’s coat, which Catherine lent
him to stay warm and disguise himself when he left the house. Much to Catherine’s
dismay, Sergius and Petkoff have already seen Bluntschli from the window and come
out to greet him happily, as they have already met him during the war. Raina enters,
sees Bluntschli, and, in a moment of shock, says aloud “the chocolate cream soldier.”
This quietly amuses Bluntschli and confuses Petkoff and Sergius, who assume Raina
and Catherine have never met Bluntschli. Raina clears the confusion by lying that
Nicola has destroyed a soldier ornament she has constructed to place on a chocolate
dessert dish. Nicola returns with Bluntschli’s bag in which Petkoff’s coat is
concealed. Catherine freezes, as she realizes that if Petkoff and Sergius were to see
this exchange, they would know something is amiss. Petkoff asks Bluntschli to stay
with them, as he is happy to have Bluntschli among them and senses nothing of the
drama. Bluntschli smiles to himself and agrees, much to the despair of Catherine.
Analysis
Sergius’s behavior in this section swiftly changes direction. Not only does he flirt
with Louka, he throws caution to the wind and does it with his fiancé in the next
room. Although Louka entertains Sergius’s affections, she is shocked at his boldness.
She is not entirely satisfied with the explanation that Sergius has many kinds of
personalities in him that allow him to behave according to the circumstances.
Sergius’s behavior here sheds more light on his performance during the calvary
charge, as, in that instance, his only hope was to make it seem that he was brave. It
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Drama
also sheds light on his performance of an apology to Raina in just before she exits the
room.
Of note are the instances in which male characters exert themselves over female
characters. Sergius hurting Louka’s arm might raise an eyebrow among readers and
audience members. So too would Bluntschli’s threat of physical harm to Raina in the
first act. The master of the house, Petkoff, and their servant, Nicola, both chide their
female counterparts: Petkoff dismisses Catherine’s improvements to the home while
he was away, and Nicola puts down Louka by telling her she does not have the soul
of a servant. The persistence of male threats and criticisms to female characters is
striking to readers now, and would have been striking at the time of the play’s first
performance. It brings attention to how interactions between men and women were
the same no matter their social standing.
The timing of Bluntschli’s arrival is the single greatest coincidence of the play. But it
also sets up the drama that will eventually spill over in the final act. Bluntschli is
largely unperturbed by what Catherine and Raina see as a fiasco. He is not an
excitable character, although he does alternate between moments of fear, self-pity,
and calm during his initial interaction with Raina in her bedroom. But, largely,
Bluntschli’s feelings are muted compared to the feelings of those around him, and he
tends to excite emotions in others without necessarily experiencing them himself. The
contrast between Bluntschli’s calm demeanor and the frenzy of the other characters
becomes starker as the play progresses. He may not be the classic idea of noble and
heroic, but Bluntschli’s ability to smoothly navigate through difficult situations and
keep his wits about him make both Raina and the audience begin to fall for him.
Raina’s behavior on seeing Bluntschli in her house again is especially striking. She
cannot keep herself from remarking that he is “the chocolate cream soldier.” She does
this because she is so surprised to see him again, but she is clearly flustered, which
signals that she could be falling for him. For Raina, Sergius, and Petkoff, the mess of
war disrupted their normal life. Battles occur outside the house. Bluntschli’s initial
intrusion into the bedroom, as a solider on the lam, quite literally brought war into the
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Drama
home. Raina has to face the unromantic facts of war delivered by Bluntschli, but his
presence also introduces the prospect of another romantic interest into Raina’s life.
Seeing Bluntschli again brings back that initial shock, and makes plain that, although
the war is finished in the fields, the romantic complexities hinged on that war are not
yet over.
Act Three
Summary: Beginning of Act Three to Nicola’s conversation with Louka
The scene shifts to the library, where Bluntschli is drawing up the troop movements
for Petkoff and Sergius, both of who are in awe of his abilities. Petkoff wonders
where his old coat went. He’s wearing a replacement and doesn’t like
it. Catherine tells him his coat is in the closest where he left it, and Petkoff bets a
large sum it isn’t there. When Nicola does in fact bring the coat in, Petkoff is
flummoxed and Catherine and Raina are not surprised, as it was Bluntschli who
returned that coat the same morning. Sergius and Petkoff leave the library, Sergius
somewhat embarrassed by Bluntschli’s expertise and leadership in drawing up the
plans for the troops.
Raina and Bluntschli are alone for the first time since his arrival. Raina says that
Bluntschli looks better than he did the first time they met, and he replies that he’s had
a chance to wash up. Raina, pressing him, gets him to admit that he told the story of
hiding in Raina’s to only one man, whom Bluntschli trusted. But he learns from Raina
that that man relayed this story to Petkoff and Sergius in the encampment. This
worries Bluntschli, and Raina says that, if Sergius finds out that Bluntschli is the
soldier from the story, he’ll challenge Bluntschli to a duel.
Bluntschli replies that Raina should not tell Sergius his identity. Raina is aghast at
this, since it would mean her telling a lie. She says she has only lied one other time in
her life, which was when she told the army officer that Bluntschli wasn’t present in
her room. Bluntschli says that, in his line of work, lying is commonplace, as is people
trying to save their lives. He has no trouble with Raina’s lying, which she sees as a
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Drama
slip in character. He believes she should keep the secret from Sergius. When Raina
becomes even more indignant, Bluntschli tells her to stop acting high and mighty.
This shocks Raina thoroughly. She admits that no man has ever spoken to her
honestly, and without idolizing her. She says that Bluntschli doesn’t take her
seriously, but he replies that he’s in fact the first man to take her seriously.
Bluntschli declares that is infatuated with Raina. She admits to leaving a picture of
herself for Bluntschli in the pocket of her father’s coat that Bluntschli wore when he
escaped the house. She assumed he would have seen it there. But Bluntschli did not
find the picture, and Raina figures it must still be present in the pocket of the coat that
Petkoff is now wearing. Bluntschli admits that he’s not sure whether the picture is
there, on second thought, because he had the coat pawned during the battle before he
reclaimed it. This horrifies Raina. Louka enters to deliver a letter for Bluntschli that
says his father has died. Bluntschli responds with dismay only at all the affairs that
must be sorted out, since, Bluntschli realizes, his father was manager of far more
hotels than he thought initially. Bluntschli leaves to begin planning his departure.
Raina departs, and Nicola enters, finding Louka alone.
Analysis
Bluntschli has an incredible knowledge of warcraft. The nature of how to fight wars is
a recurring topic in the play. Characters wonder whether being a good soldier, for
example, entails being a hero or being valiant in the face of danger. Bluntschli upends
that paradigm. He is someone who understands military tactics better than anyone. He
views this calling as a trade, rather than as an exalted, romantic position demanding
the utmost of him unto death. What makes Bluntschli a good soldier is his ability to
use practicality, reason, and large amounts of information instead of getting caught up
in ego or inflated pride.
Sergius, of course, is the opposite. Although he did in fact lead the successful cavalry
charge, Sergius and his soldiers would have been killed had the Serbs’ machine guns
not malfunctioned. It was only by chance that the guns did not fire and slaughter the
Bulgarians. Sergius goes on to prove his incompetence by failing to earn a promotion,
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Drama
despite his fame for the charge. This causes Sergius to resign his prized military
commission. By contrast, Bluntschli, who does not care much for the trappings of war
and state like officers’ titles, manages to keep his military commission. Bluntschli
helps Petkoff when he is in need by using his reason and patience on a set of maps
and troop guides.
This same level-headedness is at play when Bluntschli tells Rainahow she should deal
with her family and with Sergius, regarding that first night in her bedroom. In short,
Bluntschli tells her to lie, because a lie would be much easier for everyone. Raina at
first protests, saying she never lies, but then realizes that Bluntschli knows she is an
adept liar, than she can manipulate settings to get what she wants from people. The
very fact that Bluntschli is the first to realize this truth about Raina causes her to fall
more deeply in love with him, even though, in a sense, it is the farthest thing from
classic romance. It is indeed a realization that Raina is only a human being and that
she has desires like anyone else. This of course is Bluntschli’s belief: that soldiers,
too, have desires, foremost among them being the desire to stay alive in battles where
a great many must perish. Bluntschli, in short, believes that certain circumstances call
for lying, if the lie is in the service of some greater good, either personal or social.
Here Shaw continues to test the line between truth and falsehood. In getting Raina to
admit that she is sometimes false in order to receive what she wants from people,
Bluntschli arrives at something true about Raina, something that seems to be true of
most people. What makes Raina no longer an exalted presence is what makes her, to
Bluntschli, a real person, capable of love as she is capable of error.
Summary: Nicola’s conversation with Louka to end of play
Nicola notes that Louka’s sleeve is down, but she does not admit that the sleeve is
covering the bruise on her wrist that Sergius gave her. Nicola brags that Sergius has
given him money for no other reason than to demonstrate Sergius’ wealth. Bluntschli,
too, has given Nicola money for “supporting the lies” told to protect Bluntschli’s truth
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Drama
from Sergius and Petkoff. Nicola tells Louka that, if she were more willing to behave
obediently for men like Sergius, she might one day marry a noble. He says this not
knowing that Louka and Sergius are already flirting. Before Nicola leaves, and as
Sergius arrives, Nicola states that although Nicola and Louka are engaged, Nicola
would help her to become a lady if she could arrange it. He is so devoted as a servant
that he would put her interests above his own.
Sergius, alone with Louka, talks about how his confidence initially faltered in battle,
but he quickly gained an overmastering courage. Louka says that if she were Empress
of Russia, she would marry the man whom she loves without a care for public image.
Sergius pledges that Louka will be his and that he has a hold on her. Louka, testing
his influence, reiterates that another man loves Raina, and that Raina is open to this
man’s affections. When Sergius presses her, she tells him that the man is Bluntschli.
Upon this knowledge, Sergius states that Louka is still the object of Sergius’
affection, but that he will challenge Bluntschli to a duel. He says that Bluntschli has
disrespected Sergius’s honor by setting his sights on Raina.
Sergius quickly finds Bluntschli and challenges him to the duel. Bluntschli says he
does not take the charge lightly and says he will fight if he has to. Raina enters. As
she is on the verge of admitting to Sergius that she loves Bluntschli, Bluntschli argues
that Raina only took him in because he threatened her with a gun. He also notes that
the friend to whom he told the story of being helped by Raina and Catherine was
brutally killed by the Bulgarians. Sergius and Raina find this knowledge horrible, and
Sergius compares it to the “horror” of love. At this, Raina snaps that she has seen
Sergius with Louka together, and Sergius seems tacitly to admit that he has been
courting Louka. He has not been aware, until Raina tells him, that Louka is engaged
to Nicola. Sergius is greatly agitated to hear this news. When Bluntschli coolly tells
him to calm down, Sergius becomes doubly angry, figuring that Bluntschli thinks he
is a “cultivated” Swiss telling a “barbarian” Bulgarian to be reasonable.
Sergius asks Bluntschli to render judgment on Louka, who Sergius believes knows
everything about the family and has been eavesdropping so as to gain information on
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Drama
the Petkoffs and use it for blackmail. But Bluntschli says he can judge no one for this
because he’s also eavesdropped in his military days. He says that people will do what
they will do to survive and gain an advantage over others. Petkoff enters, telling
Raina and the rest assembled that he thinks someone has been wearing his coat and
has stretched it out. Raina removes her picture from the coat pocket secretly. Petkoff
reaches for the picture of Raina the he had just discovered in his coat just before.
When he finds it missing, he inquires about it to Raina and Sergius. Bluntschli finally
admits that the picture was meant for him. Raina’s earlier lie about the nature of the
chocolate creams, which she blamed on Nicola, is also revealed. Bluntschli tells
Petkoff that Bluntschli is the man in the story about the soldier being helped by the
Bulgarian women that Sergius and Petkoff heard during the war. Nicola enters and
reveals that he no longer wishes to be engaged to Louka, and that she deserves to be
married to a wealthier nobleman.
Catherine enters as the scene is in progress. After Nicola releases Louka, Sergius
apologizes to her, acknowledging their flirtation. Bluntschli says he will take on
Nicola as the head of some of the hotels he has recently inherited, again hinting at his
wealth. Louka says that Sergius’s touch makes them formally engaged, and Sergius,
pleased, accepts this. Catherine and Petkoff are confused and dismayed, and
Bluntschli reveals that he has long harbored a crush on Raina and that he has a
hopelessly romantic temperament. But Bluntschli says he cannot make a formal offer
of marriage to Raina because he is middle-aged and she is too young at only
seventeen. At this, Raina cries that she is really twenty-three, and Bluntschli
immediately proposes marriage to her. Petkoff and Catherine, judging the reversals
that have taken place to be in their favor, agree, on the condition that Bluntschli can
supply the kind of life to which Raina is accustomed. But when Petkoff and Catherine
realize that Bluntschli has much more money than they do, including more horses and
more property, they agree gaily to the marriage. As the play ends, Bluntschli leaves to
handle his father’s estate, and promises to return to marry Raina. He also asks Sergius
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Drama
to wait to marry Louka until his return so they can all celebrate together. Sergius has
the last words of the play, exclaiming, “What a man! What a man!”
Analysis
Here, the plot of the drama unravels fully, leaving characters to account not only for
what they’ve done throughout the play, but the lies they’ve told in order to justify
their actions. Catherine, Raina, and Bluntschli must admit that they’ve lied about
Bluntschli’s previous presence in the house, and that Bluntschli, too, misled Petkoff
and Sergius earlier in not admitting to his prior acquaintance with the family. Raina
must come clean as to her prior friendship with Bluntschli, and even more so with the
romantic portion of that relationship. And, of course, Catherine must admit that she
has lied to her husband about an intruder in their very own house, and an enemy of
the Bulgarian people at that.
These revelations are, in some sense far, far less than what Sergiusand Louka have to
admit. Namely, that they have been carrying on a secret flirty relationship, and
Sergius’ clear instigation of this while he was engaged to Raina. This, and not Raina’s
love for Bluntschli, is the primary infidelity of the play. Sergius’s flirtation with
Louka is direct and indiscreet, whereas Raina’s love for Bluntschli has only
manifested in a picture that Bluntschli does not even know about. Louka has made
plain, from the beginning of the play, that she has long desired to end up with a man
above her own social rank. For Louka, Nicola is a pawn rather than a fiancé, and
Sergius, though in many ways loathsome, represents a path out of poverty and
servitude for her.
Notable in this part of Act Three is the speed with which these revelations unfold, and
the manner by which characters deal with the information. Petkoff and Catherine are
very quick to understand that Bluntschli is a decent man. But it is only when he
reveals that he is also extraordinarily wealthy, even more so than the noble Bulgarian
Petkoffs, that they acknowledge he is a good match for. This reveals the true values of
the Petkoff family, and of nobility more broadly, which was quick to sacrifice its high
social standing whenever a large amount of money was involved. This all points to
29
Drama
one of the underlying conclusions of the play: that people’s moral codes are not so
much fixed as situational, that people must make their decisions based on the
information available to them, and whatever comes from those decisions is therefore
optimal under the circumstances.
The idea that everyone must behave according to the hand of cards he or she is dealt
is the advice Bluntschli gives to Raina at the beginning of the play. It is certainly
“bad” of him to threaten Raina at gunpoint if she calls out and reveals him, and it is
“good” of him to be nice to her, and to sleep peacefully on her bed. But Bluntschli is
really neither “good” nor “bad” in that scene, or in the rest of the play. He is someone
who takes in information and does what he can with it to stay alive. If this is self-
preservation, it is of a courteous and transparent kind. It might not always inspire
devotion, but it does eventually in Raina, who is accustomed to various performances
of pride and self-importance, mostly by Sergius, that she realizes are without merit.
Bluntschli, perhaps unintentionally, teaches the Petkoffs and those around them to
behave with a degree of moderation, restraint, and shifting ethics that might be
combined into a philosophy called “pragmatism” or “rationalism.” What that really
means, for Bluntschli, is that the world presents a set of decisions to be made, and that
the man best suited to come out on top in such a world is the man who acknowledges
that many of those decisions will have bad and worse, rather than good and bad,
outcomes. One cannot rant and rail against such a world. One can only do well to
accept it, and to move forward without regretting decisions when they come.
This all makes Sergius’s exclamation at the end of the play so poignant, and a fitting
summary of the events that passed. Bluntschli is an estimable man precisely because
he is the man that, in the beginning of the play, no one seemed very eager to imitate.
He was not invested in projecting confidence, heroism, or pride. But it was a sense of
collectedness that allowed Bluntschli to survive his first night with Raina, to escape,
to return to the Petkoff house ostensibly to return his coat, and finally to win over
Raina, for whom he expresses love only after realizing that she very well can be won,
and wed, after all.
30
Drama
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes:
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
DISILLUSIONMENT WITH WAR
The play discusses how war is made, how it is fought, and how parties sue for peace
at the close of it. Indeed, the play’s title is a direct quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, the
Roman epic that glorifies war. Shaw used this quote ironically, drawing attention to
how war should not be seen as romantic.
The Serbo-Bulgarian War is not addressed directly in the text, although that is the
historical template on which Shaw bases his production. Bluntschli is a Swiss
mercenary who has hired himself to the Serb cause, along with soldiers from other
nations. Sergius is supposed to representing the “heart” of the Bulgarian enterprise,
with his gutsy charge at the start of the work demonstrating just how powerfully he
wishes to defend his nation’s honor. What becomes clear as the play progresses,
however, is that war is simply a job for soldiers, and nothing more. Sergius is not the
hero he is initially thought to be. He romanticizes war to such an extent that he leads a
foolish charge against the enemy, and only does so in order to climb the ranks for
recognition. Bluntschli also destroys Raina’s romantic idea of war and heroism when
he proves that the best soldiers are often not identified as such on the outside.
For Shaw, war is simply a way for men to occupy themselves, perhaps in redrawing
small parts of the national borders, while others on the domestic front, who are
predominantly women, shape many more aspects of life. Though Catherine and Raina
are ostensibly dependent upon the outcome of the war, in dealing with Bluntshli they
are also active participants in some of its intrigues. In harboring an enemy and
ultimately marrying him, they add to the argument that war and its divisiveness can
be meaningless.
THE COMPLEXITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE
The interactions of characters are primarily driven by romantic love, or lack of it.
Social conventions of love during Shaw’s time period included public and formal
31
Drama
courting, parental approval, and consideration of social status and wealth of each
partner. However, the characters in this play defy the norms and each end up with a
person that is best suited to them.
Characters slowly disabuse themselves of the features of romantic love they have
most cherished all their lives, and realize that it is far more complex. For example,
Raina does appear to love Sergius in the beginning of the play, but when she falls in
love with Blunstshcli, she realizes her love for Sergius was superficial. Perhaps Raina
only felt this way because Sergius was lauded as a hero and because Catherine and
Petkoff supported the union to maintain the family’s social status.
By contrast, Louka, though engaged to her fellow servant Nicola, does not appear to
have ever been in love with him, and demonstrates that she is willing to work hard to
marry into a higher rank. Romantic love does not seem to be a factor in her decisions.
The beginnings of Louka’s relationship with Sergius are illicit, and defy social norms
of courtship. Bluntschli’s introduction to Raina is also unconventional, as they meet
secretly in her bedroom. And when they finally become engaged, Bluntschli, the
pragmatic and calculating soldier, surprises everyone by revealing himself to be a
lifelong romantic.
THE ARBITRARY NATURE OF SOCIAL STATUS
The social station of the characters in the play is one of the dynamics that becomes
most pronounced by its end. Louka wants to be more than a servant, whereas Nicola
seems content to remain one. Bluntschli appears to be middle class, but reveals later
that he is far, far wealthier than the noble Petkoffs. Petkoff and Catherine want Raina
to reinforce the family’s position however she can, either by marrying the ostensibly
bravest man in Bulgaria, Sergius, or by adding greatly to the family’s coffers by
joining with Bluntschli.
As in any marriage narrative of the nineteenth century, romantic love might be a part
of the marriage calculation, as it certainly didn’t hurt to love one’s partner. But that is
far from the point of marriage in this time period. Characters want to unite noble
families and improve financial situations. What romantic love tends to do in these
32
Drama
situations, then, is cut across and destabilize what might be the otherwise orderly
transfer of money between families.
Romanticism of War: In line after line, Shaw satirizes the romantic notions about war
that glorify a grisly business. If not for the comic dialogue, the audience would more
easily recognize that they are being presented with a soldier who has escaped from a
horrific battle after three days of being under fire. He is exhausted, starving, and
being pursued. Such is the experience of a real soldier. Late in the play, Shaw throws
in a gruesome report on the death of the man who told Bluntschli’s secret about
staying in Raina’s bedroom; there is nothing comic or heroic about being shot in the
hip and then burned to death.
When Raina expresses horror at such a death, Sergius adds, “And how ridiculous! Oh,
war! War! The dream of patriots and heroes! A fraud, Bluntschli, a hollow sham.”
This kind of description caused Shaw’s critics to accuse him of baseness, of trying to
destroy the heroic concept. That a soldier would prefer food to cartridges in his belt
was considered ludicrous by critics, but in the introduction to Plays: Pleasant and
Unpleasant, Shaw was reported to have said that all he had to do was introduce any
doubters to the first six real soldiers they came across, and his stage soldier would
prove authentic.
It is also noteworthy that Catherine is dissatisfied with a peace treaty because, in her
unrealistic vision of glorious war, there is supposed to be a crushing rout of the
enemy followed by celebrations of a heroic victory. Shaw’s message here is that there
can be peaceful alternatives to perpetual fighting. He was dedicated throughout his
life to curbing violence, especially that of wars, and Arms and the Man was one of the
vehicles he used to plead his case.
Romanticism of Love: Shaw was a master flirt and he enjoyed the playful farce of
romantic intrigues. But he recognized that playing a game differed from serious love,
and he tried to convey as much in Arms and the Man, which is subtitled “An Anti-
Romantic Comedy.” In the play, Raina and Sergius have paired themselves for all the
wrong reasons: because their social status requires a mate from the same social level;
33
Drama
and because Sergius plays the role of the type of hero that Raina has been taught to
admire, and Raina plays the role that Sergius expects from a woman of her station.
The problem is that neither is portraying his/her real self, so their love is based on
outward appearances, not on the true person beneath the facade. They are both acting
out a romance according to their idealized standards for courtship rather than
according to their innermost feelings. Just as the cheerleader is expected to fall for the
star quarterback, Raina has fallen for her brave army officer who looks handsome in
his uniform. When Bluntschli and Louka force Raina and Sergius to examine their
true feelings, Raina and Sergius discover that they have the courage and desire to
follow their hearts instead of seeking to meet social expectations.
Class Discrimination: As a socialist, Shaw believed in the equality of all people and
he abhorred discrimination based on gender or social class. These beliefs are evident
in the relationships portrayed in Arms and the Man. Shaw allows a maid to succeed in
her ambitions to better herself by marrying Sergius, an officer and a gentleman. This
match also means that Sergius has developed the courage to free himself from the
expectations of his class and instead marry the woman he loves. The silliness of
Catherine’s character is used to show the illogical nature of class snobbery, as she
clearly makes divisions between her family and the servants, even though, or perhaps
because, the Petkoffs themselves have only recently climbed the social ladder. The
play also attacks divisions of rank, as Captain Bluntschli has leadership abilities that
the superior-ranking officers, Majors Petkoff and Saranoff, do not have, illustrating
the fact that ability has little to do with rank. Ability also has little to do with class, as
exemplified by the character of Nicola, who is declared the ablest, and certainly the
wiliest, character in the play.
Idealism versus Realism: Arms and the Man illustrates the conflict between idealism
and realism. The romantic ideal of war as a glorious opportunity for a man to display
courage and honor is dispelled when Sergius admits that his heroic cavalry charge
that won the battle was the wrong thing to do. His notable action does not get him his
promotion and Sergius learns that “Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of
34
Drama
attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you
are weak.”
Sergius and Raina must face the fact that their ideals about love are false. Fortunately,
both of them are actually released by this knowledge to pursue their true loves. But
first, Sergius goes through a period of despair in which he questions whether life is
futile if the ideals by which he has set his standards of conduct fail to hold up when
exposed to reality. This question is an underlying current throughout the play. Shaw
gives a happy resolution, but it is a serious question that most people must face in life.
Much is made of Bluntschli’s realism—i.e., keeping chocolates instead of
ammunition in his cartridge belt, showing contempt for sentimentality, and reacting in
a practical manner to his father’s death. However, Nicola is the consummate realist in
the play. Nicola’s message is: adapt, exploit, survive. Bluntschli proves to have a
romantic side, after all, and thus is the most balanced character in the play in that he
seems to know when to temper his romanticism with realism and when to stick to his
ideals.
Motifs:
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the text’s major themes.
ILL-TIMED ENTRY
Characters in Arms and the Man seem to always come onto stage at inopportune
moments for the other characters involved. Bluntschli climbs into Raina’s room,
avoiding the Bulgarian army, and then hides from Catherine, Louka, and an officer
with Raina’s help. Petkoff arrives in the second act, only to be followed by Sergius,
whom Petkoff views as a disappointment following the glory of the charge.
Bluntschli, whom Catherine and Raina hope to keep from Petkoff and Sergius, enters
directly after. But the women do not succeed in doing this, and Bluntschli is the
catalyst for many of the events leading to the play’s resolution. The very coincidence
of these characters’ presences on the stage makes the comedic machinery of the work
35
Drama
apparent. Characters have to be allowed to collide to the point of ridiculousness for
the drama of the play to unfold.
ROMANTIC AFFAIRS
There are two simultaneous affairs in the play, Raina and Bluntschli’s, and Sergius
and Louka’s. Both Raina and Bluntschli are responsible for their courtship. Raina
leaves a picture of herself in her father’s coat for Bluntschli to find, and Bluntschli
makes clear at the end of the play that he has been interested in Raina from the outset.
Sergius is the chief instigator in his relationship with Louka, although Louka quickly
realizes, despite Sergius’s quick temper toward her, that she might be able to use him
to help remove herself from a position of servitude. Thus characters who claim to be
noble and pure, and never lie—especially Raina and Sergius—are precisely the
characters whose infidelities will advance the plot of the play, and reveal their and
others’ hypocrisies of conduct.
THE SOUL OF A SERVANT
Initially, Louka criticizes Nicola for having the “soul of a servant” because he
unconditionally caters to the Petkoffs. Nicola retaliates by criticizing Louka for not
being willing to do whatever she can to help the Petkoffs, as that is her job. However,
Sergius later tells Louka that she has the soul of a servant for using the family’s
gossip against them. What gives someone the “soul of a servant” is never clearly
defined in the play, but in any case, Louka defies Sergius’s criticism by doing all in
her power to make sure she has the upper hand within the lord-servant relationship in
the Petkoff home. For example, she knows about Raina’s protection of Bluntschli
earlier in the play, and uses this information to provoke Sergius into challenging
Bluntschli to a duel. This, in turn, is the way Louka navigates herself into a public
relationship with Sergius, and into the social rank of a lady.
Symbols:
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas
or concepts.
36
Drama
PETKOFF’S COAT
Catherine and Raina lend Bluntschli Major Petkoff’s coat to escape the estate in the
fall, under cover of darkness. The coat is a symbol of the various instances of
deception around which the novel unfolds. Bluntschli brings the coat back to the
Petkoffs without realizing that Raina has left an inscribed picture of herself in its
pocket, thus indicating to anyone who might see it that she loves Bluntschli despite
being engaged to Sergius. The coat literally hides Raina’s love for Bluntschli, and this
love is only revealed once Raina’s photograph is removed from the coat. Petkoff
cannot find the coat in his closet until Nicola, on Catherine’s urging, places the coat
there after Bluntschli’s return in an attempt to cover up the story. Major Petkoff is as
sure the coat is not in his closet as he is that nothing is the matter between Raina,
Bluntschli, and Sergius in that moment. When Nicola produces the coat, the turmoil
between the characters is revealed, and Major Petkoff is just as shocked at both
revelations.
CHOCOLATE CREAMS
Raina keeps candies, including chocolate creams, in her bedroom. She appears not to
like chocolate creams, as they’re the only candies left in the box. But Bluntschli loves
them especially, and famished as he is after the battle, he eats them greedily when
Raina offers. From then on, she calls him “the chocolate cream soldier.” Chocolate
creams are a symbol of delicacy and high society, as well as a symbol of
youthfulness. However, Bluntschli’s willingness to stuff them in his pockets in place
of ammunition indicates that they are also a symbol of maturity and knowledge.
Bluntschli knows how difficult war is. He is a veteran, not a rookie. Thus the creams
are over-determined in the play, meaning there is no single significance that can be
placed on them. This is similar to how Raina and Bluntschli are neither paragons of
total good nor total evil, but complex humans who behave practically as best they
can.
37
Drama
THE LIBRARY
For the Petkoffs, the library is a sign of cultivation and status in the family, which
they perceive as rare among Bulgarians. The Petkoffs worry that the Bulgarians are
not as refined as their Russain enemies, and Raina is quick to point out to Bluntschli
that their library is perhaps the only one in the area. But as the Third Act’s stage notes
point out, the library is far from lavish. In fact, it’s only a small room with dusty old
volumes scattered on the shelves. The library symbolizes both the Petkoffs’
preoccupation with what they see as fine taste, and the reality of the family that falls
far short of this ideal.
STYLE:
Ruritanian Romance: Although already established as a model for romances prior to
the publication of Anthony Hope’s popular 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda,
Ruritanian romance takes its name from the imaginary country of Ruritania found in
Hope’s book.
This type of story generally includes intrigue, adventure, sword fights, and star-
crossed lovers, ingredients that are all found in Arms and the Man. However, Shaw
ultimately attacks this genre by exaggerating the absurdities of the plot and by
transforming the typically cookie-cutter characters into people facing reality. He thus
inverts the conventions of melodrama and inserts critical commentary into the
cleverly funny lines of his play. There is the threat of a sword fight that never comes
to fruition, since Bluntschli is too sensible to accept Saranoff’s challenge—which
illustrates Shaw’s belief that dueling is stupid. Romance also plays a big role in Arms
and the Man, but, again, Shaw turns the tables by having the heroine and her fiancé
abandon their idealized relationship, which would have been prized in a Ruritanian
romance, for a more realistic and truer love.
Comedy: One standard trait of comedic plays—often used by Shakespeare and also
used by Shaw in Arms and the Man—is the use of an ending in which all the
confusions of the play are resolved, and every romantic figure winds up with his or
38
Drama
her ideal partner. The gimmicks in Arms and the Man of the lost coat and the
incriminating inscription on the hidden photograph are also ploys that are typical of
comedy. The gimmicks serve as catalysts to spark the humorous confusion, and work
as objects around which the plot turns. In Shaw’s hands, however, comedy is serious
business disguised by farce. Always an innovator, Shaw introduced moral instruction
into comedic plays, rather than taking the conventional route of writing essays or
lectures to communicate his views.
Redefining Romance and Heroism: Shaw does not simply dismiss Raina’s idealism
in favor of Bluntschli’s pragmatism. He replaces her shallow ideals with more
worthy ones. By the end of the play, Raina understands that a man like Bluntschli is
more of a real hero than Sergius. The audience also discovers that Bluntschli’s
practical nature is not without romance because he has come back to see Raina rather
than sending the coat back by courier. In fact, he admits to Sergius that he “climbed
the balcony of this house when a man of sense would have dived into the nearest
cellar.” Together, Raina, Bluntschli, and Sergius attain a new realism that sees love
and heroism as they really should be, according to Shaw. Thus Shaw does not reject
romance and heroism, but rather brings his characters to an understanding of a higher
definition of these values. That is, the course of the play has worked to maneuver the
characters and the audience into a new position and thus redefine romance and
heroism according to the light of realism.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
Victorian Rule: Queen Victoria, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, was
born in 1819 and ruled from 1837–1901. She was married in 1840 to her cousin,
Prince Albert, and it was he who insisted on the straitlaced behavior and strict
decorum that have become known as Victorian values. They had nine children,
whose marriages and prodigy entangled most of the thrones of Europe, including
grandchildren Emperor William II of Germany and Empress Alexandra, wife of
Nicholas II of Russia. Prince Albert died in 1861 and Victoria largely withdrew from
39
Drama
public life, thus damaging her popularity and the political clout she had previously
wielded.
When Benjamin Disraeli became prime minister in 1874, he flattered Victoria into
resuming some involvement in public affairs, and she regained admiration as well as
the title of Empress of India. Disraeli worked for social reform while promoting the
growth of the British Empire. In contrast to Disraeli, Victoria greatly disliked
William E. Gladstone, who served as prime minister four times between 1868 and
1894. Considered a great statesman, Gladstone championed tax reforms, an end to
colonial expansion, and Irish home rule.
Relative prosperity existed in the late 1800s in England, although there were some
years of high unemployment. Agricultural production was at its height. The Crimean
War (1854–1856) had been a disaster for England, but otherwise the empire spread
prosperously around the globe to include Canada, Australia, India, and large sections
of Africa, as well as various Asian and West Indies islands and ports. It is estimated
that at one point, one-fourth of the world’s population lived under British rule.
Consequently, British influence was dominant around the world in this time period
and this legacy has had lasting effects into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Victorian Society: During the second half of the nineteenth century, the family was
considered to be the focal point of society. The term “Victorian” is now associated
with an inflexible set of manners and prudishness. In truth, the morality of the times
was based on a heroic idealism and an honorable work ethic. Character and duty
were the watchwords of the times. Class divisions continued, but individual
advancement within a class was encouraged. As in many societies, there was a
Victorian underworld in which prostitution thrived. It was this conflicting social
situation in such morally high-minded times that led Shaw to write his play Mrs.
Warren’s Profession, a comedy about a prim young lady’s discovery that her mother
is the owner of a series of brothels. This play was refused a license by the ministry
until 1905 because of its unseemly subject.
40
Drama
Victorian Literature: Victorian literature throughout the nineteenth century was
noted for its humor. Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Lewis Carroll were
among the many British writers who were successful with comic fiction. Early
Victorian theatre was characterized by artificial plots, shallow romantic characters,
and melodrama, and played to largely uneducated audiences. By midcentury, Dion
Boucicault and Tom Taylor had gained popularity with their comedic plays, in which
it was fashionable to play upon the titillation of stories about “fallen” women.
Besides farces, many plays of the time were intrigues with complicated and ludicrous
plots.
Realistic drama got a start in the 1860s work of T. W. Robertson, but it was not until
the 1890s that the most prominent dramatists, Sir A. W. Pinero and H. A. Jones, tried
to follow suit. However, neither Pinero nor Jones was able to fully break away from
the usual fare expected by theatergoers. Nonetheless, the influence of Henrik Ibsen
caused Pinero to join in the movement to write serious “problem” plays, such as his
Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893). Ibsen, an enormously influential Norwegian critic
and playwright, attacked social norms and hypocrisies. His plays focus on real
human concerns and portray characters of depth who are trying to make sense of their
lives. Ibsen believed that drama can honestly and meaningfully deal with social
problems. In 1891, J. T. Grein organized the Independent Theatre to present plays by
Ibsen; it was this theatre that staged Shaw’s first plays, which were heavily
influenced by Ibsen. In 1895, Oscar Wilde brought further innovation to comedy
with one of the greatest English plays, The Importance of Being Earnest.
41

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Drama

Fourth year (senior students)

Context: In 1856 George Bernard Shaw was born in a lower-middle class

The man, as the stage notes describe, is of “undistinguished” appearance. He does

Summary: Nicola’s conversation with Louka to end of play

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Summary &amp; Analysis-Arms and the Man

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Summary &amp; Analysis-Arms and the Man

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Summary &amp; Analysis-Arms and the Man

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Drama

Fourth year (senior students)

Context: In 1856 George Bernard Shaw was born in a lower-middle class

The man, as the stage notes describe, is of “undistinguished” appearance. He does

Summary: Nicola’s conversation with Louka to end of play

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Summary & Analysis-Arms and the Man

Summary & Analysis-Arms and the Man

Summary & Analysis-Arms and the Man