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Arms and the Man

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Arms and the Man
Shaw at the time of the production of Arms and the Man
Written byGeorge Bernard Shaw
CharactersRaina Petkoff
Sergius Saranoff
Captain Bluntschli
Catherine Petkoff
Major Paul Petkoff
Louka
Nicola[1][2]
Date premiered21 April 1894 (1894-04-21)
Place premieredAvenue Theatre
SubjectLove 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").[5]

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 on to stage after the curtain, where he received enthusiastic applause. Amidst the cheers, one audience member booed. Shaw riposted, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?"[6]

Arms and the Man humorously exposes the futility of war and the hypocrisies of human nature.

Plot summary

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Production photograph of Florence Farr portraying Louka in Arms and the Man, 1894
Actors of the Smith College Club of St. Louis are sketched rehearsing for an all-woman amateur benefit performance of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" in December 1908. No men were allowed in the rehearsals or at the performance. The illustration is by Marguerite Martyn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.[7]

The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina Petkoff, is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff, a battlefield hero whom she idolizes. On the night after the Battle of Slivnitza, Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary in the defeated Serbian army, climbs in through her bedroom balcony and threatens her not to give the alarm. When Russian and Bulgarian troops burst in to search for him, Raina hides him. He tells her that "nine soldiers out of ten are born fools" led to slaughter by heroic fantasies. Bluntschli's businesslike attitude to war shocks the idealistic Raina, especially after he admits that he uses his ammunition pouches to carry chocolates rather than pistol cartridges. When the search dies down, Raina and her mother Catherine sneak him out of the house, disguised in one of Raina's father's old coats.

The war ends and Raina's father, Major Paul Petkoff, returns home with Sergius. Raina begins to find Sergius bombastic and tiresome, but she hides it. Sergius also finds Raina's romantic ideals tiresome, and flirts with Raina's insolent servant girl Louka (a soubrette role), who is engaged to the Petkoffs' manservant Nicola. Bluntschli unexpectedly returns to give back the old coat, but also to see Raina. Raina and her mother are shocked when Major Petkoff and Sergius reveal that they have met Bluntschli before and invite him to lunch (and to help them figure out how to send the troops home).

Left alone with Bluntschli, Raina realizes that though he sees through her romanticism, he respects her, as Sergius does not. She reveals that she left a photograph of herself in a pocket of the coat, inscribed "To my chocolate-cream soldier", but Bluntschli says he did not find it, and it must still be in the coat. Bluntschli gets a telegram informing him of his father's death: he must now take over the family's luxury hotels in Switzerland.

Louka gossips to Sergius that Raina had protected Bluntschli and is in love with him. Sergius challenges Bluntschli to a duel, but Bluntschli evades it. Sergius and Raina break off their engagement, with some relief on both sides. Major Petkoff discovers the photograph in the pocket of his old coat; Raina and Bluntschli try to dispose of it, but Petkoff is determined to learn the truth and claims that the "chocolate-cream soldier" is Sergius. After Bluntschli confesses the whole story to Major Petkoff, Sergius proposes marriage to Louka (to Major Petkoff and Catherine's horror); the manservant Nicola quietly and gallantly lets Sergius have her; and Bluntschli, recognising Nicola's merits, offers him a job as 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 and shows her the telegram announcing his inheritance. Raina, realizing the hollowness of her romantic ideals, protests that she would prefer him as a poor "chocolate-cream soldier" than as a wealthy businessman. Bluntschli protests that he is still the same person, and she proclaims her love for him. The play ends as Bluntschli, with Swiss precision, arranges the major's troop movements and informs them he will return to marry Raina in exactly two weeks.

Critical reception

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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."[8] 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, today a common opinion, and the play Widowers' Houses was an attack on slum landlords, who have since become stock villains.[9]

Subsequent productions

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Flyer for Birmingham Open Air Theatre, 1941, with plays including Arms and the Man performed in municipal parks during World War II.

Adaptations

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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 "chocolate soldier"

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The chocolate-cream soldier of the play has inspired a pejorative military use of the term.[citation needed] Israeli soldiers use the term "chocolate soldier" (hayal shel shokolad, חייל של שוקולד) to disparage a soldier not tough enough to fight.[22] The Australian Citizens Military Force were derided by the regular army as "chokos" or chocolate soldiers, implying they were not real soldiers.[23][24]

References

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  1. ^ "E-NOTES". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  2. ^ "Cliff Notes". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  3. ^ Bernard Shaw (1990). Arms and the Man. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-26476-9.
  4. ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica". Retrieved 20 November 2013.
  5. ^ Shaw, Bernard (1898). "Arms and the Man". Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. Vol. The Second Volume, Containing the Four Pleasant Plays. London: Grant Richards. pp. 1–76 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ^ Frezza, Daniel. "About the Playwright: George Bernard Shaw" Archived 19 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine, "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).
  7. ^ Martyn, Marguerite (13 December 1908). "College Girls Swear Real Swears in "Arms and Man". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. Part 6, Page 1.
  8. ^ "Arms and the Man | Western Washington University". cfpa.wwu.edu. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ London Stage in the 20th Century, by Robert Tanitch, Haus (2007) ISBN 978-1-904950-74-5
  11. ^ Variety staff (8 July 1953). "Brando Picks Barn Trek (At Nominal $125 Wage) to Give Jobs to Friends". Variety. pp. 1, 14. Retrieved 21 November 2021.
  12. ^ Dias (15 July 1953). Legitimate – Straw Hat Reviews: Arms and the Man. Variety . p. 58. Retrieved 21 November 2021.
  13. ^ "Players to Give Drama by Shaw". The Minneapolis Star. 3 May 1954.
  14. ^ Studio Arena (1 January 1984). "Playbill for Arms and the Man". Studio Arena Programs.
  15. ^ "IMDB BBC production Arms and the man (1983)". IMDb.
  16. ^ "Home at BBC Shop". Bbcamericashop.com. Archived from the original on 11 March 2012. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  17. ^ "odysseytheatre.ca". odysseytheatre.ca. 9 December 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  18. ^ "Odyssey Theatre / Theatre Under the Stars".
  19. ^ "History", Shaw Festival, accessed 5 January 2016
  20. ^ Keddy, Genevieve Rafter. "Photos: ARMS AND THE MAN Cast and Creative Meets The Press". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
  21. ^ a b c Ellwood Annaheim (February 2002). "Shaw's Folly – Straus' Fortune". Archived from the original on 20 June 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20050620092840/http://www.geocities.com/musictheater/chocolate/chocolate.html.
  22. ^ Rosenthal, Ruvik. Maariv, 11 September 2007
  23. ^ "Australian Soldier – Kokoda Track 1942" Archived 2 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine, livinghistory.com, accessed 22 September 2010
  24. ^ "Kokoda Trail I" Archived 25 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Battle For Australia, accessed 22 September 2010
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