Arms and the Man: Bernard Shaw (Summary)

Summary

Raina is in her bedroom on the second floor of the Petkoff house in a small town in Bulgaria when her mother enters to tell her that Sergius has just led the Bulgarians to victory in battle with the Serbs. Raina rejoices; her idealistic expectations of war and soldiers are met. Louka enters to tell them that the army orders them to lock all the doors and windows while enemy stragglers are being pursued. Catherine and Louka leave. Shots are heard outside and a man stumbles into the room. He is a Serbian artillery officer, exhausted, nervous, and hungry. When soldiers appear at the door, demanding to search the room, Raina on impulse hides the man and tells them no one else is there.

Raina and the man talk. She expresses her contempt for his being a coward and for his stuffing his pockets with chocolate instead of ammunition. He tries to explain to her the realities of battle and identifies her portrait of Sergius as the man who led the charge that won the battle; the Bulgarians won only because the Serbians had the wrong-size ammunition. The man describes Sergius as a romantic fool who won by doing the professionally wrong thing. Raina objects strongly to this, but when the man decides to leave, Raina says she will save him and goes in search of her mother; they return to find him fast asleep on the bed.

Four months later, Nicola and Louka are arguing in the Petkoffs’ garden. Nicola wants Louka to be more polite to the Petkoffs because he intends to set up a shop and is counting on the Petkoffs as his principal customers. Major Petkoff returns from the war and is greeted by his wife, Catherine. Sergius is shown in. Bitter because the army refuses to promote him, he declares his intention to resign. Sergius and Petkoff speak of a tale they heard of a Swiss officer being rescued by two Bulgarian women. At this point, Raina leaves, and when Louka enters, Sergius attempts to flirt with her. Louka tells him that she knows a secret about Raina and a strange man. When they are alone, Raina and Catherine discuss the Swiss soldier. Raina leaves and Louka announces a Captain Bluntschli, who comes to return a coat Raina and Catherine loaned him. Catherine begs him not to reveal who helped him. Petkoff appears and asks Bluntschli to stay to help with some transportation matters. When Raina enters, she manages to cover up her surprise at seeing Bluntschli.

After lunch that day, Petkoff and Sergius are in the library, writing orders for troop movements. Petkoff wants his comfortable old coat and Catherine says it is in the closet (where she put it after getting it back from Bluntschli). Nicola returns with the coat and all leave except Raina and Bluntschli, who discuss lies, gratitude, and the differences between practicality and the false ideals of romanticism. Bluntschli sees through her pretense of noble ideals and Raina admits that he found her out. Raina tells Bluntschli that she put a photograph of herself in the pocket of the coat, but Bluntschli never found it. He receives mail that was collected for him, among which is the news that his father is dead and left him a number of big hotels.

In a discussion between Louka and Nicola, Nicola suggests that it would be best if Louka and Sergius marry and become his valued customers. Sergius enters and, after Nicola leaves, flirts again with Louka; he is still disillusioned about life and by his own inability to measure up to his ideals. Louka tells him that Raina is sure to marry Bluntschli, so when Bluntschli enters, Sergius challenges him to a duel. Bluntschli agrees and, being a practical man, chooses machine guns. Raina enters and wants to know why they are going to fight; she suspects what has been going on with Louka and has become disenchanted with Sergius, who concludes that life is a farce and that there is now no need for a duel. Raina says that Sergius should fight Nicola, since he is Louka’s fiancé, information that disillusions Sergius even more.

When Petkoff enters and wants his coat again, Raina helps her father put it on and takes the opportunity to slip the photograph out of the pocket. Her father already found the picture, however, and wants to know the meaning of the inscription, “Raina, to her Chocolate Cream Soldier: a Souvenir.” Thereupon, Bluntschli reveals that he is the chocolate cream soldier; Louka and Sergius become engaged; and Bluntschli laments that despite his practicality he always had a romantic streak—he returned the coat in person, hoping to see Raina again. When he discovers that Raina is really twenty-three, not seventeen, as he supposed, he proposes to her and is accepted. As Bluntschli leaves, Sergius supplies the final comment: “What a man! Is he a man!”

Act 1

It is November 1885, during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian woman, is in her bedchamber when her mother, Catherine, enters and announces there has been a battle close by and that Raina’s fiancé, Major Sergius Saranoff, was the hero of a cavalry charge. The women rejoice that Sergius has proven to be as heroic as they expected, but they soon turn to securing the house because of fighting in the streets. Nonetheless, a Serbian officer gains entry through Raina’s shutters. Raina decides to hide him and she denies having seen anyone when she is questioned by a Russian officer who is hunting for a man seen climbing the water pipe to Raina’s balcony. Raina covers well, and the Russian leaves without noticing the pistol on Raina’s bed.

When Raina hands the gun to the Serbian after the Russian leaves, the Serbian admits that the gun is not loaded because he carries chocolates in his cartridge belt instead of ammunition. He explains that he is a Swiss mercenary fighting for the Serbs because it is his profession to be a soldier and the Serbian war was close by. He adds that old, experienced soldiers carry food while only the young soldiers carry weapons. Shocked by this attitude, Raina criticizes him for being a poor soldier. He counters by describing what makes a real fool, not knowing that his version of the day’s cavalry charge makes fun of her betrothed. She is incensed but agrees to let him stay once he impresses upon her the danger of going back out into the street. She tries to impress him with her family’s wealth and position, saying that they have the nobility to give refuge to an enemy. He pledges her safety and advises her to tell her mother about his presence, to keep matters proper. While she is gone, he falls into a deep sleep on her bed and he cannot be roused by a shocked Catherine. Raina takes pity on him and asks that they let him sleep.

Act 2

On March 6, 1886, Raina’s father, Major Paul Petkoff, comes home and announces the end of the war. Catherine is upset that the Serbians have agreed to a peace treaty, believing that her side should have a glorious victory. Major Saranoff arrives just after Petkoff makes comments indicating that Saranoff is not a talented military leader. Catherine praises Saranoff, but he announces that he is resigning from the army. Raina joins the conversation just before the discussion turns to a Swiss officer who bested the men in a horse trade and who had been, according to a friend’s story, rescued by two Bulgarian ladies after a battle. Catherine and Raina pretend to be shocked by such unpatriotic behavior.

Catherine and Major Petkoff leave the two young people to have some time to alone. Raina and Sergius exchange all the silly platitudes expected of lovers about how much...

Critical Context

Arms and the Man was an important play for Shaw because it was the first of his plays to be a public success; it was certainly an encouragement to Shaw to continue his chosen profession. It was also the first of Shaw’s plays to make money. The play is Shaw’s first fairly direct attack upon false idealism, an attack aimed not so much at his audience’s conscience as at its attitudes. This play produced more laughter than any of Shaw’s plays to that point, and perhaps more laughter than any other play of Shaw’s. It is a laughter different from that inspired by his Unpleasant Plays; in those plays, the laughter is often bitter and ironic. In Arms and the Man, the laughter is less bitter, more natural, and more agreeable to a general audience. Part of the reason for this is that Shaw was using so many of the traditional devices of comedy that the audiences felt quite at home.

In terms of Shaw’s career, the play is most important because it marked the shift from the propagandist Unpleasant Plays to his attacks, in the Pleasant Plays, on the romantic, idealistic follies of mankind. The social reformer of the earlier plays has shifted methods (though not goals), realizing that he must first change attitudes before he can appeal directly to consciences. The same method was used by Henrik Ibsen inEt dukkehjem (pr., pb. 1879; A Doll’s House, 1880) and other plays, and the view recommended by Shaw himself in The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). Whether propagandist or anti-idealist, Shaw did not want simply idle laughter. He maintained that it was easy to make people laugh—he wanted to make people think. The desire to make people think through comedy and laughter, however, presents an automatic problem, one not peculiar to Shaw: If the dramatist succeeds in making people laugh in order to make his points, he runs the danger of having the audience being seduced by the laughter and ignoring the ideas. Shaw continually reprimanded audiences and readers for enjoying his plays but failing to see or appreciate what lay behind the laughter.

The most damaging criticism of Arms and the Man, more common in the past but still heard today, is that Shaw was engaging in mere “topsy-turvyism” in the manner of William S. Gilbert, that he was simply turning things upside down to get a laugh from surprise and paradox in the manner of Oscar Wilde. Shaw consistently maintained that he was not, like Gilbert or Wilde, making fun of people who did not live up to ideals, but that he was making fun of the ideals as being impossible to live up to and contrary to the nature of man.

The Play

Arms and the Man begins in November, 1885. Raina is seen at the open balcony window on the second floor of the Petkoff house in a small Bulgarian town. Her mother enters with the news that Raina’s fiance, Sergius, has just led the Bulgarians to victory in battle against the Serbians. Raina rejoices; her idealistic expectations of war and soldiers have been met. The servant Louka enters to tell them that the army has ordered people to stay indoors and lock and bolt all doors and windows while stragglers are being pursued in the streets. Catherine and Louka leave. There are shots outside, and Raina blows out the candles and takes to her bed. The figure of a man appears in the window and stumbles into the room. He closes the shutters, threatens to shoot Raina if she makes noise, and tells her to light a candle; he is revealed as a Serbian artillery officer, battered and exhausted, nervous and hungry. Soldiers at the door demand to search the room; a man has been seen climbing to her balcony. On impulse, Raina hides the man behind the drapes; an officer enters, is assured by Raina that there is no one else present, and leaves apologizing.

Raina and the man talk, she despising him for being a cowardly and ignoble soldier, he trying to explain to her the realities of battle. When he complains of hunger, she gives him a box of chocolate creams. The man identifies a portrait of Sergius as the man who led the cavalry charge that won the battle—but only because the Serbians had the wrong ammunition for their guns; the man thinks him a romantic fool who won the battle by doing the professionally wrong thing. Raina understandably objects strongly. Further noises from the street move the man, who is not nearly as fierce as he at first seemed, to leave and take his chances, but Raina, at pains to demonstrate her aristocratic ideals and background, says that she will save him. She goes to get her mother; they return to find him asleep on the bed.

Act 2

 begins four months later in the garden of the Petkoff house; it is morning. Louka and Nicola are arguing; Nicola tells Louka that she must not be impertinent to the Petkoffs. If she is, they will discharge her—and he is depending upon the Petkoffs to be his customers when he sets up his shop; if the family turns against her, they will not patronize him. Major Petkoff returns from the war, and Catherine enters to greet him. Sergius, a romantically handsome, Byronic man, is shown in. He is bitter that, having won the battle the wrong way, the army now refuses to promote him; he intends to resign his commission in disgust. Raina enters and there is talk of a tale Sergius and Petkoff have heard of a Swiss officer being rescued by two Bulgarian women. Sergius and Raina are left alone and engage in romantic, high-minded, worshipful talk. Raina leaves to get her hat; Louka enters to clear the table, and Sergius attempts to cuddle and kiss her. Louka taunts Sergius about his lack of high-mindedness where she is concerned and says that she has a secret about his fiancee and a strange man. Louka leaves and Raina enters, but Petkoff calls Sergius into the house to help settle details of getting several regiments back to base. Raina and Catherine are left to discuss the caddishness of the Swiss soldier in revealing to strangers his escape at the hands of two women; Raina then exits. Louka announces a Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss officer. Catherine realizes that he is the man who took refuge in her room; he has come to return the coat he was given as a disguise when making his escape. When he appears, she begs him not to reveal the identities of the women who aided him and tries to get him out of the way quickly. Just as he is going, Petkoff appears and insists that he stay, especially to help with the transport of the regiments. Raina enters and blurts out: “Oh! The chocolate cream soldier!” She manages to cover her mistake, and Bluntschli is prevailed upon to stay as a guest.

Act 3
occurs after lunch the same day. In the Petkoffs’ library, Sergius and Bluntschli are writing orders for the movement of troops while Petkoff reads his paper. Petkoff wants his comfortable old coat but cannot find it. Catherine says that it is in the blue closet (where she has put it after getting it back from Bluntschli). To Petkoff’s amazement, Nicola returns with the coat. All leave except Raina and Bluntschli, who talk of lies (Raina’s), gratitude, and practicality versus the false idealism of romanticism. Bluntschli sees through her pretense of noble ideals, and when Raina suddenly realizes this she admits that he has found her out. Raina says that she put a photograph of herself in the pocket of the loaned coat. Bluntschli, however, pawned the coat; since he never found the photograph, it is presumably still in the coat. Bluntschli receives delayed mail which tells him that his father is dead and has left a number of big hotels to him; he determines to leave for Switzerland within the hour and exits.

Raina leaves, and Louka and Nicola talk. Nicola, a practical man, suggests that in the long run it would be better if Louka and Sergius married and became very profitable customers for Nicola—but Louka must not be impertinent or she will lose her (and his) chances. Sergius enters and, after Nicola leaves, plays up to Louka again, since he is still disillusioned about life and his own inability to measure up to his ideals. Louka tells Sergius that Raina will marry Bluntschli, the secret lover she had intimated to Sergius earlier. Bluntschli enters and Sergius challenges him to a duel; Bluntschli agrees, taking a very practical view of the affair—he chooses machine guns. Raina enters and wants to know why they are going to fight. Raina now suspects what is going on with Louka and becomes disenchanted with Sergius. Sergius concludes that life is a farce and now there is no need for a duel. Raina comments that Sergius will have to fight Nicola, since he is Louka’s fiance; Sergius becomes even more disillusioned with life.

Louka has been listening at the door, and Sergius pulls her in just before Petkoff enters and wants his coat again. Raina gets it from Nicola, helps her father put it on, and slips the photograph (which Petkoff had found earlier and had been mystified by) from the pocket. Bluntschli reveals to all that he was the chocolate cream soldier. Louka and Sergius become engaged. Bluntschli laments that, in spite of his cool, efficient exterior, he has always had a romantic streak which led him to run away from home, to join the army, and to return the coat in person, hoping to see Raina again. When Bluntschli discovers that Raina is really twenty-three and not seventeen, as he had supposed, he swiftly proposes. When challenged by the Petkoffs about his station and prospects, he informs them that he has just inherited six hotels, many horses and carriages, and much equipment. Catherine is now impressed, and Raina, after pretending to sulk, agrees to marry Bluntschli. With a final businesslike remark to Petkoff about troop movements, Bluntschli promises to return punctually in two weeks and takes his leave. Sergius supplies the final comment: “What a man! Is he a man!”