The comic play ‘Arms and The Man’ by George Bernard Shaw was first staged in 1894. It was published in 1898 as part of Shaw’s ‘Plays Pleasant’ volume which also included ‘Candida’, ‘You Never Can Tell’, and ‘The Man of Destiny’.

I’ve been reading about Shaw’s plays for decades but have never actually managed to read any. This one has a strikingly heroic title, the first words of John Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, so I was surprised to discover that it is a light and rather silly social comedy.

Act 1. A lady’s bedchamber in Bulgaria

The play is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War, a comically short conflict that lasted from 14 to 28 November 1885.

We are in the bedroom of Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian woman, daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the land and a high-minded naive romantic. Her grand and domineering mother, Catherine, tells her that the Bulgarian cavalry have won the Battle of Slivnitza against the Serbs and that Sergius Saranoff, Raina’s fiancé, was at the head of the charge. Raina keeps a picture of Sergius in her bedroom and is girlishly thrilled that he is as heroic in real life as in his picture.

Louka, their attractive and sometimes impudent young servant, comes in to warn the ladies that escaped Serbs fleeing the battlefield might be in the area, seeking refuge in the houses of Bulgarian families, and they are promptly terrified to hear firing and shots in the streets.

Raina refuses to be scared and defiantly keeps her window unlocked but this turns out to be unwise because during the night an unknown man climbs up the drainpipe, onto the balcony and into her room. When terrified Raina calls out to ask who it is, he says he will kill Raina if she makes a noise and gives him away.

Overcoming her initial terror, Raina gets talking to the (unnamed) man who turns out to be very calm and reasonable and not at all a threat. He tells her he is not himself a Serb but a Swiss mercenary fighting for the Serbs.

The point of the scene and of the whole play is that this (still unnamed) soldier mocks soldiers and warfare. He tells her that ‘nine soldiers out of ten are born fools’. Nonetheless, Raina warms to him so that when there’s a knock at the door, Raina helps him hide behind a curtain just as Catherine, Louka, and a Bulgarian officer enter to search the room for any Serbs. 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 uses his holster to store chocolate. 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 goes to sleep and Raina goes to see her mother to ask for her help. When Raina and Catherine return, they allow the man to rest since he has not slept for days. A little later Raina and Catherine sneak the still unnamed enemy soldier out of the house, disguised in one of Raina’s father’s old coats.

The second act begins in the garden of the same house, though it is now the spring of 1886. The war is over and the Bulgarians and Serbians have signed a peace treaty. The pretty servant girl 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 he craves because he 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.

Rain and Catherine go indoors and the second her back is turned Sergius reveals what a creep he is by trying to chat up the pretty Louka. To his surprise, Louka warns Sergius that Raina might not remain faithful to him Sergius before they exit.

Into the civilised peaceful garden of the Petkoff family comes a Serbian soldier named Bluntschli. The serving girl 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 meet Bluntschli and learn that the story about the two Bulgarian women who helped an enemy soldier refers to them!

On questioning Bluntschli tells her he has come to return Major Petkoff’s coat that Catherine and Raina lent him to escape. Raina walks in and is so happy to see him that she blurts out ‘the chocolate cream soldier!’ only to try and recover herself and blame her outburst, implausibly, on Nicola.

But it turns out that Petkoff and Sergius already know Bluntschli, they met him during the war. Now they ask him to stay for lunch and help them solve a tricky military problem which is how to send the troops home now the war is over.

Act 3. In library of major Petkoff’s house after lunch

In the final act all the different strands unravel, are reconnected and happily tied up.

Left alone with Bluntschli, Raina realizes that he sees through her romantic posturing but that he respects her as a woman in a way her formal fiancé, Sergius, does not. She reveals that she put a photograph of herself in the pocket of the greatcoat they lent him, inscribed ‘To my chocolate-cream soldier’. Bluntschli tells her he never found it and that it must still be in the coat pocket.

Meanwhile Sergius has a second crack at seducing the serving girl, Louka, who maliciously tells him that Raina is not in love with him (Sergius) but with Bluntschli. She reveals that Raina and Catherine are the two women in the story of the Bulgarian women who helped a Serb officer and that Bluntschli is that officer. As a result Sergius challenges Bluntschli to a duel but the non-aggressive Bluntschli manages to talk his way out of it.

It’s at this point that the picture of herself which Raina slipped into her father’s coat for Bluntschli to find is discovered, proving that Raina has not been entirely truthful to Sergius and Raina admits that she has had feelings for Bluntschli since they first met. Sergius and Raina break off their engagement, with some relief on both sides.

Major Petkoff is aghast. When Bluntschli acknowledges that he loves Raina, Sergius and Louka reveal that they, too, have been having a secret affair at Sergius’ instigation, with the result that Nicola graciously releases Louka from their engagement.

During all this Bluntschli had received a telegram informing him of his father’s death and that he has inherited the family business, several luxury hotels in Switzerland. Now, recognising Nicola’s dedication and ability, he offers him a job as hotel manager.

For some reason Bluntschli had been labouring under the misapprehension that Raina was just 17. Now she declares she is in fact 23 there is nothing to stop Bluntschli asking for her hand in marriage. The revelation of Bluntschli’s newfound wealth and good prospects mean that Raina’s parents are glad to marry her off to him.

Hankering after her former simplicity, Raina says that she would prefer her poor ‘chocolate-cream soldier’ to the man who is now revealed to be a wealthy businessman but Bluntschli insists he is still the same person, and the play ends with Raina growing up a bit and proclaiming her love for him.

As to the logistical problem which Sergius and Petkoff were fretting about, Bluntschli, with Swiss precision, solves the problem of the major’s troop movements (‘Send them home by way of Lom Palanka!’) then goes on to inform everyone that he will return to be married to Raina exactly two weeks from that day. The play ends with Sergius exclaiming, of Bluntschli, ‘What a man!’

What a load of twaddle.

Verbosity

Isn’t Shaw verbose? Some playwrights leave the actors and director to deduce the characters from their behaviour and dialogue but not Shaw. He can’t stop himself giving immense long prose descriptions of each of the characters. Here’s just one sentence from his page-long description of Sergius:

By his brooding on the perpetual failure, not only of others, but of himself, to live up to his imaginative ideals, his consequent cynical scorn for humanity, the jejune credulity as to the absolute validity of his ideals and the unworthiness of the world in disregarding them, his wincings and mockeries under the sting of the petty disillusions which every hour spent among men brings to his infallibly quick observation, he has acquired the half tragic, half ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the suggestion of a strange and terrible history, that has left him nothing but undying remorse, by which Childe Harold fascinated the grandmothers of his English contemporaries.

This more like a novelist than a playwright, or the notes a novelist might make about a character. However you approach it is, above all, very wordy. Coming to Shaw after reading Wilde, Ibsen and Strindberg, the most obviously distinctive thing about Shaw is the fantastic, obsessive detail of his stage and dialogue descriptions. He thinks like a novelist, pointing out exactly how each gesture should be made and each phrase spoken. He has none of a playwright’s tact and restraint, no ability to let go and trust the director and actors. Take this little comic moment:

NICOLA: (after a moment’s bewilderment, picking up the bag as he addresses Bluntschli with the very perfection of servile discretion). I beg your pardon, sir, I am sure.

Note how the stage direction is longer than the dialogue. Another playwright would rely on the dialogue to convey the tone of voice, and/or trust the director and actor to deduce it from the words. Shaw is incapable of doing this. He has to explain exactly how every single utterance should be delivered.

• BLUNTSCHLI (confidentially)
• PETKOFF (officiously)
• BLUNTSCHLI (deeply concerned and half incredulous)
• RAINA (full of reproach for his levity)

After a while I began to wonder if Shaw was doing this partly to guy directors and actors, aiming not to help but to mock theatre’s unavoidable staginess.

• BLUNTSCHLI (sceptically)
• BLUNTSCHLI (dubiously)
• RAINA (superbly)
• BLUNTSCHLI (promptly)
• RAINA (wonderingly)

All these ‘-lys’. I began to suspect Shaw was having a private joke to see just how many adverbs he could attach to the dialogue without repeating himself.

• RAINA (quickly)
• SERGIUS (cordially)
• RAINA (indignantly)
• SERGIUS (tormentedly)
• PETKOFF (heartily)
• SERGIUS (commandingly)
• BLUNTSCHLI (warmly)
• SERGIUS (cynically)
• BLUNTSCHLI (goodhumoredly)
• RAINA (sarcastically)
• BLUNTSCHLI (apologetically)

But Shaw not only explains his characters but goes on to give opinions about them. Shaw overflowed with opinions about everything and so do his stage directions. Take the start of Act 3:

In the library after lunch. It is not much of a library, its literary equipment consisting of a single fixed shelf stocked with old paper-covered novels, broken backed, coffee stained, torn and thumbed, and a couple of little hanging shelves with a few gift books on them, the rest of the wall space being occupied by trophies of war and the chase…

The same quality of verbosity which makes his notorious prefaces such a trial to read also informs the long-winded directions.

At the head of [the table] sits Sergius, who is also supposed to be at work, but who is actually gnawing the feather of a pen, and contemplating Bluntschli’s quick, sure, businesslike progress with a mixture of envious irritation at his own incapacity, and awestruck wonder at an ability which seems to him almost miraculous, though its prosaic character forbids him to esteem it.

I suppose Shaw’s plays had ‘subjects’ and dealt with ‘issues’ but a) in such a journalistic, superficial way as to make them, nowadays, appear almost ridiculously superficial; and b) his thoughts and conclusions, at the time of their staging provocative and controversial (war isn’t as glorious as people think it is), now seem so prehistorically dated that they made no impression on me at all.

To put it mildly, as an anti-war play ‘Arms and The Man’ was to be swept away in the deluge of writing which followed the First World War, vastly eclipsed and outclassed. Then again, maybe I’m taking far too seriously a play which was designed to be a light and frivolous comic entertainment, a charming evening out at a London theatre, with only the hint of a ‘serious’ subject underlying it. Yes, maybe that’s the way to think about it, a frivolous and funny comic play with as much serious content as Anthony Hope’s exactly contemporary novel, The Prisoner of Zenda.

Completely ignoring whatever ‘message’ there’s meant to be, I found myself fascinated by the way that Shaw’s plays are so obviously really novels manqués, comic novels cut and spliced into the two-hour traffic of the stage with the severe constriction of the limitations of a fixed location, but overflowing with a novelist’s unstoppable impulse to describe every aspect of their characters.

Credit

‘Arms and The Man’ by George Bernard Shaw was first staged in 1894 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’. I read this in the 1946 Penguin paperback edition, 1964 reprint.

Related links

• Arms and the Man online

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