Arms and the man.

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Arms and the man 

(G.B Shaw) George Bernard Shaw The Dramatist


Arms and the man.


  1. The title arms and the man has been taken from Dryden’s ‘Virgil’.

  2. Bernard Shaw’s dramatic works were chosen for the special purpose of showing that his plays. They were different that his plays. Were different that his plays were of different kind from those that audiences and readers had been used to up to that time. Previously the two main divisions of drama were tragedy and comedy.

  3. In tragedy, someone had to die before the play ended.

  4. In comedy, there was plenty of amusement.

  5. But in modern life, violent death did not play a large part, for the world wars were then unthought of.

  6. Shaw was more troubled about the many unpleasant social conditions, that made life miserable for the people.

  7. There were other disturbing and less serious aspects of society that might be changed and this could be done by making fun of them.

  8. So, he did use the word ‘tragedy’ & ‘comedy’ but the tragedies were not wholly tragic nor were the comedies free from seriousness.

  9. ‘Arms and the Man’, the earliest of Shaw’s pleasant plays, is both amusing and thought-provoking.

  10. It makes us laugh and it makes us think because they have serious messages. 

  11. What makes Shaw’s plays better than those of his contemporaries is that both the serious and the humorous parts are seen as fresh. They are fresh till date.

  12. Shaw gives the picture of the human follies of his own generation is in such a way that these human characteristics lasted from generation to generation.

  13. Yes, these may change their appearances as time goes on. 

  14. Anthony Hope, an English novelist had written a popular romantic tale - The Prisoner of Zenda. This was about an imaginary called he called, ‘Ruritania’.

  15. Now, this started a fashion for novels and plays with picturesque scenery and dashing uniforms.

  16. Anything of this kind is been called, ‘Ruritanian’.

  17. Shaw took the name of an actual country in Arms and the Man. but it is taken as a Ruritanian play, so far as its outward appearances are concerned.

  18. So, the first important thing to be recognised in Arms and Man, therefore is that it is supposed to take place in Bulgarian in 1885.

  19. The characters here are Bulgarian soldiers and their women folk and a Swiss hotelkeeper’s son. These facts are hardly more important than the scenery and costumes. 

  20. Shaw could have chosen any other country and nationality without altering the nature and the habits of the characters.

  21. Shaw never hesitated to use familiar material than Shakespeare did. 

  22.  Both of them aimed at those kinds of originality, which did not depend upon plot or scenery or costumes.

  23. A Bulgarian setting for Arms and the man made a stage, attractive to the ordinary theatregoers, who only wanted to be amused. 

  24. But once the attention of the theatre goes was captured, Shaw set out to make them think. 

  25. And their reward of thinking was that at the same time, he made them laugh.

  26. Shaw in his play, Arms and The Man wanted two things - one is war and the other is marriage.

  27. These themes are interwoven. Shaw believed that while war is evil and marriage is desirable, both have been wrapped in romantic illusions and these led to disastrous wars and also to unhappy marriages. 

  28. The romantic view of war is on the notion that men fight because they are heroes. 

  29. And that the soldier who takes the biggest risks wins the greatest glory and is the greatest hero.

  30. In Arms & The Man, Raina Petkoff intends to marry Sergius.   Then Sergius was away fighting with the Serbs.

  31. Raina and her mother were informed that Sergius had fought bravely at the head of the Cavalry charge.

  32. Raina is happy to hear this. She believed that her fiancee is, “just as splendid and noble as he looks! That the world is a glorious world for women, who can see its glory and men who can act its romance. 

  33. In the opening scene of the play, after adoring Sergius’s portrait, Raina goes to bed murmuring, ‘my hero! My hero!’

  34. This is a romantic girl’s romantic view of life, but then reality suddenly breaks in upon her. 

  35. An enemy officer with the defeated Serbs rushes into her room from the outside balcony to take refuge. He is desperate through exhaustion and fear, and Raina sneers at him.

  36. But when the pursuers come to search the house, Raina hides the fugitive.

  37. She comes to know that the fugitive was Swiss. He was fighting for the Serbs as a professional soldier.

  38. The soldier tells her that instead of ammunition, he carries chocolates. Raina gets contemptuous.

  39. He tells her that food is more useful in battle than bullets.

  40. Then Raina requested him to tell her about the Bulgarian Cavalry charge Raina knew that this charge was headed by Sergius.

  41. The Swiss soldier tells her that the leader of the charge rode, ‘like an operatic tenor. . . . thinking he had done the cleverest thing ever known.’

  42. He continued saying the leaders should be court-martialled for it. He says he was a fool and the maddest man on the field of battle.

  43. He says that had the Serbs more ammunition, the leader would have left the charge.

  44. In relation to the story, the man falls asleep through uncontrollable weariness.

  45. Raina is moved to pity by the sufferings he endured.

  46. She had imagined war as an exciting sport. She now saw it as a dreadful reality this part of the war was revealed to her with one of the defeated. 

  47. Shaw tried to prove that professional skill and caution and physical courage were equally desirable.

  48. Chocolate symbolizing all kinds of food is as necessary to an army as cartridges.

  49. The war has ended and the soldiers are back home. It seemed as if Sergius had also learned something of the realities of the war.

  50. Sergius sent his resignation, saying ‘soldiering. . . .  is the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly, when you are strong and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak.!

  51. Yet Raina takes him to him as a hero of romance until Captain Bluntshli comes to visit the Petkoff’s house.

  52. It is discovered that he was the fugitive who had taken refuge in Raina’s room.

  53. In the typical style of Bernard Shaw, the dramatist, though Bluntschili shows her real character, that she had worn since childhood.

  54. She had substituted an imaginary Sergius. For the real one. She had also built up an imaginary self.

  55. Bluntschili is not deceived he says to her: “When you strike that noble attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I admire you, but I find it impossible to believe a word you say.”

  56. She pretends to be angry but then asked him, “How did you find me out?.... How strange it is to be talked to in such a way you know I’ve always gone on like that… I did it when I was a tiny child to my nurse she believed in it”.

  57. She said I do it in front of my parents. They believed in it. I do it before Sergius. He believes in it.

  58. But her Swiss visitor does not believe in it. Bluntschili is not deceived by Sergius.

  59. Sergius is also not blind to his own true nature. He tells Lauka, ‘I am surprised at myself Lauka. What would Sergius, the hero of Sylvintza say, if he saw me now? What would Sergius the apostle of higher love say if he saw me now? What would the half dozen Sergiuses who keep popping in and out of his handsome figure of mine say if they caught us here?

  60. Sergius says all this just after an adoring love scene with Raina and thereafter he was flirting with Lauka, the maid of Raina.

  61. Now Raina succumbs to the man, whom she calls her, ‘chocolate cream soldier’.

  62. Now Raina no longer thinks of war as a romantic game.

  63. Her view towards marriage also changes. Now for her marriage is no longer a knot of a beautiful heroine and handsome hero in a lifelong romantic dream.

  64. She decides to take Bluntschili as her husband, the simple man. His common sense and six hotels in Switzerland will give her stability and comfort.

  65. The realities of love and marriage become one of the most frequent themes in Shaw’s plays throughout the remainder of his long life.

  66. For Shaw, marriage was not just for personal desires or strengthening family ties.

  67. For Shaw marriage was the means of bringing birth to a better and new generation.

  68. Shaw also had the conviction that no one could predict with certainty the consequences of any marriage.

  69. Yet at the same time, he had a firm belief that marriage is a solemn contract, marriage was not a frivolous domestic excursion.

  70. It is said that behind the humour of the relationship between Raina and Bluntschili, the memories of his own childhood, and of his own parent’s marriage could be intercepted.

  71. The drama is full of light heartfelt fun and in the fun, there are two types of snobbery.

  72. The snobbery of the manservant Nicold despises his employers. Yet he is humble before them because he says, “That’s what they like and that is how you’ll make most out of them.

  73. Then there is the snobbery of Petkoff, these people think themselves to be better than their neighbours. This is because they have a library and an electric bell.

  74. Shaw was opposed to the notion that servants are inferior. He was of the opinion that all work however menial is valuable as service to the community.

  75. He also believed that possession of wealth or any other material advantage could never be a sign of personal superiority.


(G.B Shaw) George Bernard Shaw The Dramatist


  1. George Bernard Shaw was the greatest Irishman who wrote in the English language. He was born in Dublin on 26th July 1856.

  2. His father was George Carr Shaw. He was a minor official in Dublin court. His mother was a good singer from her Shaw learned music. His mother sang at concerts.

  3. After his schooling, he worked as a clerk for some time. Gradually he developed the spirit to look upon mankind and its affairs, overlooking the customs and conventional ideas of right and wrong. 

  4. Later he took up journalism as a music critic in a London newspaper. He also wrote essays and criticism plays for the ‘Saturday Review’.

  5. Then Shaw started writing plays his depth in music helped him to set the world that made his sentences flow with rhythmical ease.

  6. And it is this quality that makes his audiences hear with attention. His long speeches as we find in Man and Superman (the influence of Opera)

  7. Later Shaw joined the Fabian Society. The Fabians wanted a gradual revolutionary change, not a revolutionary sort.

  8. At the same time, he met Mrs Annie Beasant. Mrs Annie Beasant was in support of the independence of India. Mrs Beasant was a great admirer.

  9. As a socialist, Shaw believed the condition of society could be improved by aiming at equality for the upliftment of the poor.

  10. He realized only the law could not make a good society and those good people would make good laws.

  11. He abandoned Christianity. He felt that the church was misleading. They did not preach Christ but he was a religious man. His sacredness of life, animal, and human purity of living were powerful in him. He insisted that it becomes the duty of men and women to make the world a more beautiful place than they found it, for their future generations. The torch of life should keep burning brighter.

  12. All these beliefs were based on reason and not on faith. He becomes a vegetarian at the age of 25.

  13. He believed that ‘animals are our fellow creatures! He was influenced by Shelley, the English poet.

  14. His widower's house dealt with the evils of slums. The landlord of these slums took rent from these poor people. This was a genuine social evil.

  15. Such themes were new to the English theatre Shaw went on to write about human problems such as war (Arms & the Man).

  16. And on religious in religious intolerance (The devil’s disciple) he took up religious, political and religious problems.

  17. He decided to take up these themes as Henry Isben for the Norwegians. 

  18. He called his man & superman, ‘A comedy and a philosophy’. He was witty and amusing. He made people laugh, even while he was dealing with the most serious topics.

  19. His plays were as the composer of music Shaw was deeply interested in the sound of words as well as in their sense and meaning.

  20. Shaw spend a good time persuading English people to adopt an enlarged alphabet.

  21. Pygmalion was another play on correct pronunciations.

  22. Shaw was the world’s most famous living playwright. He stood second to Shakespeare.

  23. He received the novel prize for Literature in 1925. Glimpses of religion appeared in Saint Joan. There he took Joan of Are as the one who obeyed god and helped the land of France to get free from England. (15th century) Shaw was an internationalist. 

  24. Shaw died in 1950 in his ninety-fifth year. “The apple cart” was his last play. ‘Shaw held that if we desire with the strength of will to be better and finer people, we will certainly achieve it. Further, he says that if will pass on to our descendants, our desires will certainly be brought out. The nations then would rule in wisdom and virtue war and all evils would vanish from the earth. 



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