Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man
Written by George Bernard Shaw
Characters Raina Petkoff
Sergius Saranoff
Captain Bluntschli
Catharine Petkoff
Major Petkoff
Louka
Nicola[1][2]
Date premiered 21 April 1894 (1894-04-21)
Place premiered Avenue Theatre
Subject Love and war[3][4]

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").

The play was first produced on 21 April 1894 at the Avenue Theatre and published in 1898 as part of Shaw's Plays Pleasant volume, which also included Candida, You Never Can Tell, and The Man of Destiny. Arms and the Man was one of Shaw's first commercial successes. He was called onto stage after the curtain, where he received enthusiastic applause. Amidst the cheers, one audience member booed. Shaw replied, in characteristic fashion, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?"[5]

Arms and the Man is a humorous play that shows the futility of war and deals comedically with the hypocrisies of human nature.

Plot summary

The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina Petkoff, is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff, one of the heroes of that war, whom she idolizes. One night, a Swiss mercenary soldier in the Serbian army, Captain Bluntschli, climbs in through her bedroom balcony window and threatens to shoot Raina if she gives the alarm. When Russian/Bulgarian troops burst in to search the house for him, Raina hides him so that he won't be killed. He asks her to remember that "nine soldiers out of ten are born fools." In a conversation after the soldiers have left, Bluntschli's attitude towards war and soldiering (pragmatic and practical as opposed to Raina's idealistic views) shocks her, especially after he admits that he uses his ammunition pouches to carry chocolates rather than cartridges for his pistol. When the search dies down, Raina and her mother Catherine sneak Bluntschli out of the house, disguised in an old housecoat.

The war ends with the Bulgarians and Serbians signing a peace treaty and Sergius returns to Raina, but also flirts with her insolent servant girl Louka (a soubrette role), who is engaged to Nicola, the Petkoffs' manservant. Raina begins to find Sergius both foolhardy and tiresome, but she hides it. Bluntschli unexpectedly returns so that he can give back the old housecoat, but also so that he can see her. Raina and her mother are shocked, especially when her father and Sergius reveal that they have met Bluntschli before and invite him to stay for lunch (and to help them with troop movements).

Afterwards, left alone with Bluntschli, Raina realizes that he sees through her romantic posturing, but that he respects her as a woman, as Sergius does not. She tells him that she had left a photograph of herself in the pocket of the coat, inscribed "To my chocolate-cream soldier", but Bluntschli says that he didn't find it and that it must still be in the coat pocket. Bluntschli gets a telegram informing him of his father's death and revealing to him his now-enormous inheritance. Louka then tells Sergius that Bluntschli is the man whom Raina protected and that Raina is really in love with him. Sergius challenges Bluntschli to a duel, but Bluntschli avoids fighting and Sergius and Raina break off their engagement (with some relief on both sides). Raina's father, Major Paul Petkoff, discovers the portrait in the pocket of his housecoat; Raina and Bluntschli trick him by removing the photograph before he finds it again in an attempt to convince him that his mind is playing tricks on him, but Petkoff is determined to learn the truth and claims that the "chocolate-cream soldier" is Sergius. After Bluntschli reveals the whole story to Major Petkoff, Sergius proposes marriage to Louka (to Mrs. Petkoff's horror); Nicola quietly and gallantly lets Sergius have her, and Bluntschli, recognising Nicola's dedication and ability, determines to offer him a job as a hotel manager.

While Raina is now unattached, Bluntschli protests that—being 34 and believing she is 17—he is too old for her. On learning that she is actually 23, he immediately proposes marriage and proves his wealth and position by listing his inheritance from the telegram. Raina, realizing the hollowness of her romantic ideals, protests that she would prefer her poor "chocolate-cream soldier" to this wealthy businessman. Bluntschli says that he is still the same person, and the play ends with Raina proclaiming her love for him and Bluntschli, with Swiss precision, both clearing up the major's troop movement problems and informing everyone that he will return to be married to Raina exactly two weeks from Tuesday.

Critical reception

George Orwell said that Arms and the Man was written when Shaw was at the height of his powers as a dramatist. "It is probably the wittiest play he ever wrote, the most flawless technically, and in spite of being a very light comedy, the most telling." Orwell says that Arms and the Man wears well—he was writing 50 years later—because its moral—that war is not a wonderful, romantic adventure—still needs to be told. His other plays of the period, equally well written, are about issues no longer controversial. For example, the theme of Mrs. Warren's Profession, which so shocked audiences at the time, was that the causes of prostitution are mainly economic, hardly big news today, and the play Widowers' Houses was an attack on slum landlords, which are now held in such low esteem that the matter is hardly controversial.[6]

Subsequent productions

Adaptations

The scene in The Chocolate Soldier in which Bumerli (the equivalent of Bluntschli) enters the bedroom of Nadina (the equivalent of Raina), in a 1910 London production

Pejorative military use of the term "chocolate soldier"

The chocolate-cream soldier of the play has inspired a pejorative military use of the term. In Israel, soldiers use the term "chocolate soldier" (Hayal Shel Shokolad, חייל של שוקולד) to describe a soft soldier who is unable to fight well.[13] Similarly, members of the Australian Citizens Military Force were derided by the regular army as "chokos" or chocolate soldiers, the implication being that they were not real soldiers.[14][15]

References

  1. "E-NOTES". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  2. "Cliff Notes". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  3. Google Books. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  4. "Encyclopaedia Britannica". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  5. Frezza, Daniel. "About the Playwright: George Bernard Shaw", "Utah Shakespearean Festival," 2007. Accessed 12 February 2008. Shaw's contemporary, William Butler Yeats, was present for the performance, and rendered this quotation differently in his autobiography: "I assure the gentleman in the gallery that he and I are of exactly the same opinion, but what can we do against a whole house who are of the contrary opinion?" (Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, book 4: The Tragic Generation, from Autobiographies, in The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. 3, ed. William H. O’Donell and Douglas N. Archibald (New York: Scribner, 1999), 221).
  6. George Orwell,George Bernard Shaw, Chapter 8 in George Orwell, The Lost Writings, Edited by W. J. West, Arbor House, New York, 1985.This also appears as Chapter 8 in Orwell, The War Broadcasts, Edited by W. J .West, The British Broadcasting Corporation, and The Old Piano Factory, London, 1985.
  7. London Stage in the 20th Century, by Robert Tanitch, Haus (2007) ISBN 978-1-904950-74-5
  8. "Home at BBC Shop". Bbcamericashop.com. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  9. "odysseytheatre.ca". odysseytheatre.ca. 9 December 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  10. http://www.odysseytheatre.ca/index.php/events/theatre-under-the-stars
  11. "History", Shaw Festival, accessed 5 January 2016
  12. 1 2 3 Ellwood Annaheim (February 2002). "Shaw's Folly – Straus' Fortune". Archived from the original on 20 June 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20050620092840/www.geocities.com/musictheater/chocolate/chocolate.html.
  13. Rosenthal, Ruvik. Maariv, 11 September 2007
  14. "Australian Soldier – Kokoda Track 1942", livinghistory.com, accessed 22 September 2010
  15. "Kokoda Trail I", Battle For Australia, accessed 22 September 2010

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