When I sat to analyse Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man

Many days before, when I was in A Muslim family I heard this play. The play was again repeated to me in my professional life when I struck myself herein to analyze Raina’s remarks-‘Oh! The Chocolate Cream Soldier’--

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“And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”

After some reluctance, Raina also accepts him saying that she is accepting him as her ‘chocolate cream soldier’ and not as a rich businessman. Bluntschli looks at his watch and becomes business like. He instructs Petkoff to be ready to deal with the infantry of the Timok division. He requests Sergius not to get married until he comes back. He promises to be back at five in the evening of Tuesday night. Then, with a military bow to the ladies, he goes out.

Sergius [enigmatically]: The world is not such an innocent place as we used to think,Petkoff.

The play is the best of Shaw’s plays from the point of view of stage craft. Shaw has shown excellent brilliance in contriving the stage situations. The actions take place in a garden and two rooms only. We feel the tension that Raina feels. All the situations are well controlled. The plot is simple and actors are alive. Although audiences are kept tense but all the bitter truths have been sugar coated and the ion is removed with laughter. The Puritarian setting of the play also goes a long way to make it popular.

The title of the play, Arms and the Man, as Shaw himself acknowledges in the Preface to Plays Pleasant, is taken from “the first line of Dryden’s Virgil.” The Aeneid, the famous epic of the Latin poet Virgil, begins with the Latin phrase ‘Arma virumque cano’. In his translation of The Aeneid, Dryden skillfully renders this phrase into English, ‘Arms and the Man I sing’. Dryden’s line is one of the most heroic lines in heroic poetry.

“Raina enters and exclaims, “Oh! The chocolate cream soldier!” ‘

To make the situation worse, Bluntschli comes back to return the coat. Catherine tries to send him away secretly, but her husband and Sergius see him and, as he is known to them, they receive him cordially. They make him stay, for they need his help in the dispersal the troops. Meanwhile Raina noticed her ‘hero’ flirting with her maid. Louka excites jealous in Sergius by telling him that Raina is in love with the Swiss who took refuge in her bedroom and whom she is sure to many if he returns as she had overheard their conversation.

Raina: “…Oh,I see now exactly what you think of me ! You were not surprised to hear me lie. To you it was something I probably did every hour.”…

War is over, and Major Petkoff and Sergius return home. After the first raptures of re-union, the soldiers settle down. Sergius starts flirting with Louka, the maid-servant.  One day, he speaks of a Swiss officer of the Serbian Army who told the romantic story of his being sheltered and saved by a young Bulgarian lady into whose bedroom he had entered. Raina and her mother are shocked and worried.

Again Bluntschli’s friend tells the story to the father of the same young lady whose house is the only private house with windows and who does not suspect his own daughter at all. Of all the days in the year Bluntschli comes to return the coat on the 6^th of March, 1886, and is seen by Petkoff remains unaware, rather he is fooled by his wife and daughter.

“A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Loitered about that vacancy; a bird

Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:”

Bluntschli is Shaw’s idea of a soldier. He marches and fights like the real man with his stomach. Other things being equal, he prefers life to death. Long fighting leaves his nerves on edge. He is uncontrollably sleepy after being awake for two nights.  He eats cream chocolates when they are offered to him. Such an idea of a soldier was revolting to Raina, as it was to Shaw’s first audiences, but it will be recognized as the reality by all who have been soldiers. Everyone knows that the ideal soldier of poetry and fiction is mere saw-dust and that, if he existed, he would be the laughing stock of the Army.

There are not many diversions and the plot is simple, the play is divided in three acts only. In the First Act, we have a melodramatic setting. There is the army—adoring heroine fully absorbed in the romantic thought of war and love, with a midnight entry of a fugitive in her bedroom. Directly or indirectly we are introduced to all major characters of the play in an ‘atmosphere of military drama’. Shaw is ever disengaged, composed, deliberate, good humoured - all these qualities are reflected in his style.

One will look in vain for the softer graces of sentiment, for the tendered play of fancy. His style is characterized by a hard glitter of wit, the Bandying of argument, the close reasoning. And his style is very well adapted for the propagation of his ideas. His aim is always to drive the point home. He has well succeeded in it. In Act-II, Shaw attacks romantic illusions of war and love, thus takes the theme of the play in hand. Two strands of plot now become clearly separate- the ‘Bluntschli-Raina Episode’. The romantic illusions about love have been shattered mercilessly here, where two events mix, the plot becomes complicated but the action advances considerably. The Third Act has no suspense. The climax comes and illusions about war are also shattered and right pairs of lovers have been made. So there is simplicity and clarity in the plot and the play is not presenting a bundle of complications. Shaw, with his frank and free style, his mixture of humour and wit and his unconventional characters, has been able to catch the attention of the audience and has been a successful playwright to maintain his popularity and hold it as well.

“I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish

With themselves, remorseful after deeds done;”

Shaw’s plays are always argumentative and full of ideas. As in Major Barbara he is discussing poverty, so in Arms and the Man, he is discussing and arguing about the real nature of love and war. Both are esteemed by people in the wrong light but both are very different from what we think they ought to be. This technique of using ideas adds meaning to his plays and makes them more useful. Arms and the Man displays Shaw’s favourite device of inversion of conventional situations regarding the relation of men and women. Contrary to the established conventions, Catherine is the ‘’boss’’ in the Petkoff establishment, not her husband. Nicola pays reverences to her. Bluntschli says, “The officers send for their wives to keep discipline.” Louka is the force and energy in her romance with Sergius. She takes the initiative although he wanted flirtation; she sees to it that it becomes something more serious.

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monostrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.”

Bluntschli then gives her his introduction that he is a Swiss serving Serbian Army as a professional. He shocks her by his attitude to war. He tells her that war is a folly and that soldiers are fools and about himself he says that he would prefer carrying chocolates with him to cartridges. He says that soldiers are not heroes but ordinary men who like food and value life above everything else. Raina asks him to describe the great cavalry charge that brought the Bulgarians victory. He vividly pictures the Quixotic bravado of the leader of the attack and denounces the whole thing as unprofessional and suicidal. Raina’s dream castle collapses, a sort of realistic reaction starts in her and she begins   to see the Swiss in a new light. She is so much fascinated by him that she conceals her photograph in the pocket of the coat with an inscription, “Raina, to her chocolate cream soldier.”

 “Let those who go home tell the same story of you:

Of action with a common purpose, action

None the fruitful if neither you nor we

Know, until the judgement after death,

What is the fruit of action.”

Literature reflects the life. The mirror that an artist holds up to the world is the mirror of his own personality. In theory, drama does not permit a writer to represent his life but in practice, writers do make their personalities felt. He makes his presence felt through the utterances of his various characters, in their personalities and makes the reality felt by the audiences also. Shaw makes fun of the Army by his term ‘chocolate cream soldier’. At a time when chocolate did not secure the approval of the Army dieticians as a battleworthy concentrated food, he made a soldier get the nickname ‘chocolate- cream soldier’ by gobbling chocolate creams enthusiastically. The term ‘the chocolate cream soldier’ is quite amusing, while Shaw’s purpose is serious so, it’s doubtful whether it would have been a suitable title for Shaw’s play. Shaw exposes in this play the falsity of the order that denies the man bound by the romantic bonds of arms. He builds his play not on the fun, given by a particular soldier, but on the true relation between man and his arms. Hence,” Arms and the Man “and not ‘the chocolate-cream soldier’ seems to be an appropriate title.

Louka [wistfully]: “I wish I could believe a man could be as unlike a woman as that. I wonder are you really a brave man?”

Louka enters the room and informs them that all the windows are to be closed and shutters made fast, because there will be shooting in the street as the Serbs are being chased by Bulgarian Army. She closes the windows and fastens the shutters and then she and Catherine leave. Raina is left alone in her bedroom. She gives a kiss of approval to her hero’s portrait and starts reading before going to sleep.

Shaw’s real intention in the play is to unmask love and war. He wants to tell the world that war is not a chivalrous sport. Sergius, who n is responsible of romanticism of war, becomes wiser through the experience of war. Through his disillusionment, Shaw is conveying the great truth about the unheroism of successful fighting. Shaw’s mouthpiece, Bluntschli, cares more for chocolates than for bullets and says the first duty of every soldier, being a human being, is to save his own life. 

Bluntschli enters her life quite dramatically; he is a fugitive who is pursued by Bulgarians soldiers, climbs up the water pipe to the balcony of her room. At first Raina is compelled to receive him, but later, when the pursurers come seeking him, she pities him and saves him. This is the beginning of her attraction for him.

Catherine: “You will marry Louka! Sergius you are obliged to marry Raina.

Sergius (adamantly folding his arms). Nothing can oblige me.”

Chocolates symbolize food, the necessity of life, bullets symbolize the arms, the romance of life, food sustains life is more precious than the glory of war. In the same way, Shaw denounces love and marriage.  For him ‘higher love’ is nothing but list. Raina and Sergius both are lost in such romance but ultimately they are disillusioned. Sergius gets ready to marry a housemaid who has no special understanding and Raina accepts Bluntschli, the unheroic but practical man. The two marriages might seem improbable but they do symbolize the realities of life. Shaw proves through them marriage is the procreation of generation, which is more important than the romance.  So the conflict between romanticism and realism, which was the main target of his psychological treatment of the play, ends with the victory of realism.

“I would not be Sisyphus,

there were things that I should learn to break.”

On the morning the 6^th March, 1886, Sergius sees Louka, it seems for the first time. There is no indication in the play that she was not in the family when Sergius left for the battlefield. If she was in service with the Petkoffs even then, there is no reason why Sergius had not fallen in love with her earlier. On the day of the action of Act II, Sergius is least disposed to pay attention to Louka is busy making love to his fiancé whom he has met after a period of four months. When Raina goes to fetch her hat he wants her to return at once because time hangs heavy upon him in her absence. After she has gone we are told that his face is “radiant with the loftiest exaltation” rising out of romantic love. It is difficult to reconcile with his behavior a minute afterwards. Again, we are told Raina is at this time spying upon him but she does not understand what the matter is. There is no reason why Raina should not have spied from the beginning to the end when once her suspicion, and then her jealousy have been aroused. Instead she goes in to fetch the hat and does not follow Sergius and Louka to the stable yard.  Further, one day is too short a time for all the events to happen without appearing to be improbable.

Raina [bitterly]: “Major Saranoff has changed his mind. And when I wrote that on the photograph, I did not know Captain Bluntschli was married.

Bluntschli [startled into vehement protest]: I’m not married.”

In this farcical comedy, the dialogue keeps pace with situations. Right from the time Bluntschli comes on the scene, the conversation becomes alive. When Raina asks him, “I suppose, now you have found me out, you despise me” he answers with a sparkle of wit “I’m your infatuated admirer”. All the dialogues are spicy and lively with wit and humour.It is obvious why the play has gained a continuous success till today, but after World War-II its popularity increased still more. The soldiers who came back from war justified Shaw’s view on war. The peculiar charm of Arms and the Man is that it is professing to be anti romantic, but it is gaily romantic besides being rich in wit and character.

Catherine:”He certainly ought to be promoted when he marries Raina. Besides, the country should insist on having atleast one native general.’”

It is one of Shaw’s earlier plays, and it does not totally break away from the old tradition. The main plot is divided in three main Acts and each Act has got separate scenes and with each scene the characters change. In the First Act all the characters have been introduced and in the Second Act the plot rises to a climax with many intrigues. In the last Act each thread has been knitted to its separate and proper place and the conclusion is drawn.

Raina [succumbing with a shy smile]: To my chocolate cream soldier.

Critics have often criticized Shaw for making his characters his mouthpieces. But of, in reality even if Shaw is presenting his ideas through his character he is not murdering their individuality; rather he has not made his characters classical heroes “all perfect”. They have the weaknesses of their own and that is why they are humans and are real, Bluntschli being the most attractive of them. He is a fine figure, comic in his talk and behavior with an infectious exuberance. Sergius excites laughter with his pompous pretensions while Raina enchants. The adventures of Major Petkoff invoke sheer fun; all these are excellent acting parts are extremely effective on stage.

Bernard Shaw has used the stage as a pulpit to communicate to the public, directly or indirectly, and whatever he said, heroes entertainingly. And that is why the interest of people in his plays has never abated, but has only grown with the passage of years. His farcical comedy Arms and the Man has attracted all classes of people. The play has always been extraordinarily effective in the theatre and there are many reasons for its popularity.

Again, when she senses the figure of Bluntschli in her room, she is described as “crounching on the bed” which once again suggests her timidity and lack of courage, but Raina’s conversation with Blutschli doesnot reveal any timidity in her inspite of the pistol in his hand. We even hear her asking Bluntschli boldly how he knows that she is afraid to die. Here she is not the same Raina that she was a few minutes earlier. She has been to behave inconsistently by Shaw; just to make the dialogue crisp and interesting Shaw has ignored the reality of the character.

Sergius: “Dearest, all my deeds have been yours. You inspired me. I have gone through the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking down at him.”

Shaw has written discussion dramas. There are two kinds of discussions mainly, the discussion of problems for their inherent interest. In such dramas we have nothing more important than the discussion itself. For example Don Juan in hell. Secondly, the discussion as an emanation of conflict between persons. Shaw is a known expert in writing verbal duels in which acerbity and interest derive   not from the question discussed, but from situation and character. The villain in his plays is civilization, regarding some special problem framed for the occasion, constitutes the drama.

Sergius: “Allow me to see, is there any mark? (He moves up the bracelet and examines the bruise caused by his tight grasp. She stands still, not staring at him, liking it but not displaying it). Ffff!Is there any pain?”

The very first act takes place in Raina’s bed-chamber, and it brings before one’s mind’s eye all the articles of her room, the window curtains, the  Turkish Ottoman, the counterpane and hangings of the  wall, the painted wooden shrine,  the little carpet and all the oriental textual fabrics, the wash stand consisting of an enamelled  iron basin with a pail beneath it in a painted metal frame, the dressing-table, covered with  a cloth of many colours, with an expensive toilet mirror on it, the chest of drawers, also covered with  a variegated cloth. Through an open window with a little balcony, a peak of the Balkans is seen, as if it were quite close at hand, and as it is night it appears wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit snow. Through this vivid picture Shaw has given us an understanding of Raina’s character. She is intensively conscious of the romantic beauty of the atmosphere and of the fact that her own youth and beauty are part of it. These facts we cannot gather only from dialogues, these are marked by the spectator or with Shaw’s description to the reader also they become significant.

We may take Arms and the Man as a compromise between a well made play and a thesis play. Although there is not much action in the play but the compromise has been made by a good development of character and proper use of dialogues.  The opening of the play is very dramatic; at first Raina is enjoying the night and is happy over the victory of her lover but all of a sudden scene changes, shots are heard and a Swiss soldier, unknown to her, enters her room.  Then, again audiences are relieved from the tension with the entrance of a stupid Russian officer and still the scene is further vitalized with the dialogue between Raina and the fugitive. He tells her that the cavalry officer of Bulgarian Army, who is her lover, also, is a humbug, perhaps even a pretender and a coward. And somewhere in her heart the girl agrees with him. Her mother too participates in the intrigue and lends the fugitive her husband’s coat (in which Raina hides her snap also with an inscription for the soldier) to make his escape easy.

“I’d study those red and blue mountain

Ranges as on a map that offered escape,

The veins and arteries the roads

I could travel to freedom when I grew.”

Again, when Bluntschli picks up the dressing gown of Raina as the best weapon for his protection, he throws his pistol on the divan and hides behind the curtain that was later on another circumstance was noticed even by a maid. It is nothing but a mock-search serving the purpose of the dramatist to prove something indifferent who must keep also the military man, Bluntschli alive if the play has to go on till the Third Act.

Raina is a girl with a romantic disposition and is influenced by the operas she has watched. Sergius too is a Bulgarian Byron. Raina and Sergius both suffer from psychological criss-crossing. Raina and Serrgius say something, think something else and yet something else; so they are always indecisive. There is no consistency between their intention and action. Shaw fought against show and hypocrisy. Though stark, his realism is healthy. Through Arms and the Man he has depicted the healthy realism and the unaffected realistic view of life.  This view is embodied in Bluntschli who is a personification of realism of Shaw. Romantic Raina, after meeting him, begins to see everything in a new light. She discovers that what he says is true. He removes her illusionary ideas and false romantic conceptions of war and love and thus makes her realize her real self. Louka and Nicola are in the same line. In his own life, which is certainly better, because it is based on reality, as contrasted with that of Sergius, he shows the hollowness of the pomp and pageantry of war. Then again Sergius, with his higher love himself stands exposed, baited as he is by Captain Bluntschli. The aim of Shaw in writing the play is just the reverse to that of Virgil in writing his epic, Aenid.

Shaw in Arms and the Man has declared that war is dangerous and its consequences are bitter. People, who have witnessed the horrors of the two world wars, can well appreciate the anti-war cries of Shaw. Shaw asserts the supremacy not of a war hero, but that of a real human being. Every man is a human being and wants to live long as possible. This is what Bluntschli says.

After analyzing the title of the play, we come to the conclusion that the play is intended to show the weakness in warfare, according for “Arms” and to provide an example of a “Man” who understands fighting and yet gives it up because he considers it more important to become a normal man attending to his natural business. This is what both Bluntschli and Sergius feel about. They know how to fight, yet they are not in favour of warfare.

Virgil’s phrase, as understood from Dryden’s translation, praises ‘the soldier and the weapons of war’. It is a heroic expression that brings to the mind the sparkle of arms, and glory of the warrior. But of, Shaw has given a different picture in his play. Instead of glorifying war and heroism like Virgil, he exposes the romantic glamour attached with war and the profession of a soldier. Though the opening of the play creates an atmosphere of war and heroism but the end strips it of all its romantic glamour. Shaw shows chivalry of love and chivalry of war to be fake. Raina, as the play develops, goes through a process of disillusionment; all her romantic ideals are shattered and she sees what war, after all, is and how false and insincere ‘higher love’ proves to be. Captain Bluntschli opens her eyes to the truth about these concepts.

“Be through my lips to unawken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Arms and the Man is having two themes-love and war- closely knitted with a single yarn with great skill. Shaw has shown how the romance of war leads to the romance of love. ‘Arms and the Man’ portrays this having ruthlessly thrown among the idealisms. With a joy akin to that of Moliere, Shaw turns on the absurd impulses in men and women to lie and pose; and in Arms and the Man he subjects every lie to ludicrous exposure. He wanted to make fun of popular romantic false ideas regarding love and marriage. Shaw believed in marriage as a necessary and desirable institution.

There is a subtle suggestion that arms is perhaps referring to the embraces of lovers, thus giving a double meaning to the title.  The story is dealing with both, love and war.  Raina’s love for Sergius is based on her romantic notions of love which are soon shattered by a practical professional soldier-Bluntschli. He appeals to Raina so much that she develops a liking for him and ultimately the play terminates in their engagement. Again, Louka entraps Sergius, who is bethroned to Raina and at the end; -both are engaged to become husband and wife. Moreover war is there at the back of love-on the stage it’s love which people see most of the time. War only prepares a background for love theme. So, we may say that the title has a double meaning.

But of, he was of opinion that the romantic halo generally given to it led ultimately to disillusionment and unhappiness. This is the point of view that he projects through the love-theme in the play. When Sergius turns from the mistress to the maid without any apparent loss of intensity or sincerity in passion and when Raina abandons the copy-book here for her ‘chocolate-cream soldier’, Shaw succeeds in breaking the myth of romance that surrounds love and marriage in the popular imagination.

Major Petkoff: “Luckily he is no more our enemy. (In a worried tone) I think you have come here as a friend, not for striking deal on horses or prisoners.”

Shaw’s Arms and the Man evolve out of the background of war and deals with the man-in-arms. It’s purpose is to ridicule the ‘fictitious morals’ of war and to show up the interior of the man bound by the romantic bonds of arms. Shaw proves that war is run by pathetic chivalry, cheap egoism, and pompous inefficiency and that a soldier is, in reality, more interested in chocolates (symbolizing food) than in cartridges (symbolizing arms).

Shaw is the giant master of human psychology. This statement is absolutely true. He probes deep into the various aspects of human psychology which he presents through his characters. In Arms and the Man he has successfully delineated the psychological conflict between romanticism and realism and two sets of characters depicting these two ways of life.

The Man (feigns as if highly impressed) “A Major! Oh, God such a high position. It is hard to think!”

At the beginning of the play, we meet Raina Petkoff living in a world of which Sergius Saranoff is the central figure. She considers herself in love with him. She has gathered her ideas of that passion from Byron and Pushkin,and  from operas she  witnessed during her visits to the cities. She believes that what holds her and her Sergius together is “higher love” and that it will lead them into a married life of never-ending happiness. Her ideas about Sergius receive a rude awakening when she listens to the matter-of-fact, frank and lively Bluntschli, but even then she persists in believing that her lover is a hero of romance. When he is back from the war she receives him with warmth and calls him her hero and her king, confident that they have realized “higher love”. 

Sergius too, is in love, and finds the higher reaches of that passion realized in his romance with Raina.  When he returns, after a rapturous show of joy, he is ready to make love to the maid as soon as his “queen’s” back is turned. Then he openly, and with some conviction, chooses Louka as his life partner. All his empty pretensions fade away, and he is ready to find sober and sure happiness in Louka’s company. Raina maintains very lofty and romantic ideals, based on the romantic concepts of war and love. She glorifies war and sentimentalises love, but she has her own dreams or misgivings. She doubts Sergius, but the moment she hears the news of the triumphant cavalry charge led by him, all her doubts dispel and when she talks to Bluntschli, she forms an entirely different opinion about Sergius. She keeps on changing her mind.

A few minutes later, her vision founders, when she sees Sergius shamelessly making love to Louka, her maid.  The apostle of higher love falls down from the pedestal where her imagination had placed him. Hence she is unmoved, when he decides to marry Louka. She herself is ready to find happiness with Bluntschli.

When Shaw makes Sergius marry Louka and Raina consents to become Bluntschli’s wife, he enforces his notion that marriage is not the combination of high-flown desires and romantic passion, but a contract which is a means of bringing into being a better generation. As in Major Barbara, Barbara, ‘mother of creation’ selects Cusins as her life partner to produce a better generation, not because of ‘Idealistic love’. In Arms and the Man the “heroic” soldier is dumb before the professional military expert, so the bubble of the “higher love”, as proclaimed by Sergius and Raina, is pricked by the real thing, introduced by those masters of reality, Bluntschli and Louka. Yet Louka has her glamorous moods, rebuked by one even nearer the disillusioned heart of things.  “You have the soul of a servant, Nicola.”- “Yes, that’s the secret of success in service.

Intellectually, the play is a setting in opposition to the clear, actual, apparently cynical view of things as they are, voiced by Nicola and presently elaborated by Bluntschli, against the racial way taken by Sergius and Raina of making believe that the facts of life are romantically different. Even Raina’s parents, who pride themselves much on their wealth and honour, are at least convinced of the worth of Bluntschli as their son-in-law by his most unromantic enumeration of his possessions-many horses, so many carriages, so many pairs of sheets and blankets, etc. the very triumph of the character is the antithesis between the conventional standard of life and the real motive in human life.

Then, by the end of the First Act, Raina has been shown to be stripped of her romanticism regarding war and heroism of Sergius, but in the Second Act when she neets Sergius she behaves as though no change has occurred in her. She continues to pretend in front of Sergius.

Bluntschli: “Never mind whether it’s heroism or baseness.  Nicola’s the ablest man Ive met in Bulgaria. I’ll make him manager of a hotel if he can speak French and German.”

Then Serbian artillery discovers of its not having proper ammunition; at the last moment which is hard to believe. Bluntschli carries chocolates in his cartridge box instead of bullets and ammunition, at the time when he should be worried about his safety he can think of chocolate creams seems improbable. Then again in the cold weather in which one would like to wear a coat or sit near the fire, Bluntschli had not even once put his hands in his coat’s pocket to discover Raina’s photograph.

The romantic view of war, which has sought to dispel, is based on the idealistic notion that men fight because they are heroes, and that the running of the greatest risk brings the brightest glory. It is such a bloated notion that Raina Petkoff has about her Sergius. She believes that the world is a happy place where heroes partake in such adventures and their heroines feel the glory.  Then suddenly reality dawns upon her in the form of the weary, dirt-stained Swiss soldier. His very appearance and his notions about a soldier’s duty alarm yet impress her as nearer truth than her own high-flown notions.

Raina (To Louka). “Do not fasten the shutters. I can do it on hearing any disturbing noise.”

The title which has been taken from Virgil carries its own significance. Chesterton calls it a “mounting and ascending phrase”, conveying the idea that man is more than his weapons. It cannot be said that Shaw seeks to express through his play a total antipathy towards war, as is seen in Tolstoy and other modern humanitarians and pacifists.  Shaw is more concerned with abolishing romantic ideas war; he wants to denude it of such an attractive garb. We are apt to appreciate Shaw’s outlook when we realize how war has survived as a method of settling human disputes, because it has also been looked upon as an opportunity for the display of all that is best in man.

When she meets the stark realist, Bluntschli, her romantic notions start getting cold at once. When Sergius comes back from the war, her old romantic mood revives. It seems she cannot think anything herself. She thinks what she is made to think by others and works under their influence. When her contact with Bluntschli is renewed and Sergius proves inconsistent in love; she leaves Sergius to ‘his kind’ and marries the ‘chocolate cream soldier’, Bluntschli.  This is a process of Metamorphosis from Romanticism to Realism.

Shaw has shown the war in the light of the common sense- a matter of business and superior forces, devoid of romance and heroism, except for featherbrained fools like Sergius. The genuine glamour of war is that felt by the man who stays at home and makes a fortune out of it, and a rhapsodic exponent of this position is given to us in Andrew Undershaft.

The crowning point of the disillusionment is in Sergius himself. He returns from the war a sadder, but wiser man. He has been disillusioned, and as he puts it, the cavalry charge was the cradle and the grave of his military reputation.  He has sent in his resignation, and is not going to withdraw it. Raina remained unconscious of this effect of disillusionment in her fiancé for a long time. It is interesting to note that, Bluntschli’s story of the cavalry charge has partly shaken.  Raina’s faith in her romantic idealism about war, Sergius seems to be quite sobered by his experience. He has come to realize that soldiering is “The coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm way when you are weak.” The wisest maxim of war is never to fight any enemy on equal terms. He realizes that the hotel keeper’s son with all his knowledge of horses came better equipped for the army than for himself.  Through the disillusionment of Sergius, Shaw succeeds in dispelling the common notions of the heroics of war.

Raina: “Our relationship constitutes a very beautiful and sublime part of my life. I think you can understand my feelings.”

The chief vitality of the plays of Bernard Shaw lies in their invariably didactic intent and tone. His plays present ideas and project the author’s attitude towards it.  when this play was first presented on the  London stage , Shaw was accused of making fun of the Army, because in those days  the Army , even though it had lost some  of its importance as a weapon of national defence,had still some glamour about it. Kipling was singing the praise of the “officer and the gentleman.” The lasting appeal of this “pleasant” comedy can be traced to the fact that in a word more bitterly conscious of the miseries of war than the Europe of the 1890’s, it gives food for thought on a subject of immediate and urgent importance.

Shaw himself once said, “I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions,” hence we see him tackling, in his plays, a large variety of themes, bringing them, and adding to the wisdom and gaiety of the world. There are few things in human life, from eating to love making, on which Shaw has not something both sensible and witty to say. Arms and the Man is not an exception to it. The greatest shock to Raina’s romantic ideals comes when Bluntschli describes Sergius’s cavalry charge. He derides him most devastatingly. He ridicules him, likening him to Don Quixote against the windmill and says that he looked like a foolish drum-major, who should have been court-martialled for his folly.

Bluntschli knows out and out the reality and futility of war, and as such “save your skin” is the policy which he follows most unhesitatingly; he declares that all the soldiers are afraid to die, and that soldiers are born fools. Shaw has criticized the days when “the officer and the gentleman” was a respected figure in English society and when Kipling had glorified the noble art of fighting. It was into such any atmosphere that Shaw, with his characteristic ruthlessness, introduced Bluntschli. Through this Swiss officer, Shaw presented soldiers pretty much as soldiers appeared to themselves and to one another.

The Swiss soldier attributes the Bulgarian victory to sheer ignorance of the art of war. First, he criticizes the cavalry charge, which decided the day. It is unprofessional –a rash act and quite unthinkable. Raina wants to hear the details of the cavalry charge, but of Bluntschli a realist, makes fun of Raina’s her” a handsome fellow, shouting his war-cry, and fighting like Don Quixote at the windmill.” Later, it was learnt that the Serbs had the wrong ammunition sent the portrait of hero, and tells him that she is bethroned to him. He apologises to her.  Yet he insists on calling him Don Quixote and laughs. Then he gives out the truth that perhaps the gentleman got wind of the enemies being without the right cartridge and ran no risk in charging so rashly. Raina is annoyed to see that her hero is figured out as a pretender and coward .Thus Shaw has treated both the themes (Love and War) unconventionally in his play Arms and the Man. He has successfully managed to keep them knitted with the same yarn by treating both in the same manner. Both Love and War had been highly romanticized by the Victorians and pre-Victorians, bit Shaw has brought the reality of the two on earth and has proved that having ideals about them bring nothing except disillusionment. Chesterton has rightly remarked that “The world does not encourage a quiet rational lover, simply because a perfectly rational lover would never get married. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational army, because a perfectly rational army would run away.”Now all these coincidences provide the backbone to the play and are obviously contrived by the dramatist to serve his purpose. Coincidences do happen in our real life also but they seldom happen in such a close succession as in Arms and the Man.

“I observe a famine at sea- I observe the sailors casting lots

who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;”

Shaw has written this play with the object of exposing the idle romantic notions held by people regarding war and love. He had created Bluntschli to serve as his spokesman and to express his realistic and commonsense points of view to put through his satire on romantic idealism about war and love.  And Bluntschli admirably serves the purpose-we hear him give outspoken expression to the dramatist’s favourite ideas and opinions. Shaw generally represents the person who derides convention and walks the path chalked out by his own individuality as right and sensible. Here it is Bluntschli who opposes traditional notions and bluntly expresses the practical point of view of all romantic and fanciful illusions. Bluntschli is a typical Shavian hero.

Bernard Shaw is a playwright who writes to sell his ideas, and like most propagandists, he is a little impatient to make his point. The effectiveness, with which Bluntschli conveys Shaw’s ideas on war, is remarkable indeed. His categorization of soldiers into young and old is very succinct. The immature young ones are rash and enthusiastic, whereas the old experienced ones are skeptical and reluctant; the former carry ammunition, while latter prefer grub on the battlefield.  Here Shaw is overdoing a little, but deliberately so in order to hold up to ridicule the whole business of fighting. Bluntschli shocks Raina by eating like a child.

He showed that soldiers were afraid; that they would carry with them to the field chocolates rather than bullets; that, other things being equal, they preferred life to death; and that they were bound to be sleepy after fighting for three days on end. We are told that what caused great indignation in 1890’s against the play was the confectionery, the way in which  a soldier was shown gobbling up cream chocolates which were then the ammunition for armour rather than arms .

Another God whom Shaw has attacked fiercely here is the romantic lover, the bold hero enveloped with a poetic halo in the popular imagination. It was a part of Shaw’s deliberate crusade against all empty Victorian idols. Here, he not only reveals their hollowness of romantic love, but presents a matter-of –fact practical attitude towards marriage. Nothing could express it as forcibly as Sergius’s preference for the maid and Raina’s for the unromantic hotelkeeper’s son. 

Shaw was a professed social reformer, and satire was the weapon he used to convert the nation to his own point of view. In play after play, he lashes out at the social evils prevalent in the society. In Arms and the Man he has satirized the romantic ideals of love and war, soldering and social snobbery.

Raina, in particular lives in a dreamland. She talks of the ‘higher love’ which nothing can defile. Sergius, more than fully, reciprocates is his “queen” and he has gone through the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking at him. And yet all their love is superficial. It is more of a show than a reality. Hot on the heels of his professing   higher love for Raina, Sergius’s gaze is caught by the poor but attractive maid, Louka. It comes as a shock to the readers to find this apostle of higher love, most unceremoniously, making advances to Louka. He confesses before Louka that ‘higher love’ is a very “fatiguing” thing. She makes a thorough idiot of him, making him dance to her tunes and all his declarations of “higher love” for Raina prove to be deceptive.

The love between Raina and Sergius is generated by external charm and by the family and position of the beloved. Such a love is based on old fashioned notions of romance and chivalry and is bred by the readings of poetry of Byron and Pushkin and visits to the opera. Shaw has delineated the psychological changes in a very correct manner. His psychology moves from sentimentalism to realism. This is in fact, the key to his dramatic psychology. Thus we see that in Arms and the Man Shaw exposes the fallacy of the romantic conception of war and love, thereby scandalizing the comfortably compromised Victorian public.  He also lets us see the absurdity of class-consciousness. He does overstate the case but only in order that we may be provoked to thinking about the problem from the rational point of view.

The most impressive and engaging character in Arms and the Man is Bluntschli, who makes a dramatic enter into it, who dominates it throughout and who carrries it to a happy ending. He is the most important character, not because he is theatrical as well as the real hero of the play, but because through him Shaw expresses his own ideas and opinions-he is his mouthpiece, his spokesman. He is created to show to the reader that in the world of today in which people’s ideas and ideals, viewpoints and attitudes, of life in general and to war in particular, are mostly confused, there are some persons like Bluntschli who can keep the balance, who can view and think without prejudice, even in the midst of thousands of conventions. 

Raina (grasping her arm). “Do not mamma: the wretched darling is totally exhausted. Allow him to sleep.”

Bluntschli is introduced to us as a fugitive running away from his pursuers, and trying to save himself by climbing up a drainpipe and entering a young lady’s chamber.  Shaw has not presented a hero devoid of all faults and defects. Instead, he has portrayed a man who has remarkable qualities of head and heart but also has the weakness of human beings.

In Victorian society, marriage was supposed to be the sacred act between two people of same status with higher spiritual values but when Raina marries Bluntschli and Sergius with Louka, Shaw proved that marriage is a licentious evil and is done for economic gains, eg. Louka and Raina both see the economic gains, e.g. Louka and Raina both see the economic gains in selecting their partners so marriage too is a target of satire in Arms and the Man. At times Bluntschli might appear to be rude and rough but he is polite and civilized, when Raina offers him her hand, he looks dubiously at his own and says, “Better not touch my hand, dear young lady, I must have a wash first.” Inspite of this, when Raina offers her hand as a token of safety, he kisses it with hands behind his back. Not only this, when the Russian officers, brought in by Raina’s mother, are about to enter Raina’s room, Bluntschli prepares himself to fight and gives Raina her cloak. He could easily have kept it, thereby preventing Raina from opening the door, but his civilized upbringing doesnot allow this. It may, however, be added here that Bluntschli knows full well that even if Raina doesnot open the door he is not safe because then Russians will break the door and kill him. Again when all is safe and clear, he asks Raina to inform her mother of his presence, because, says he, “I hid better not stay here secretly any longer than is necessary.”

Bluntschli [promptly]: “… I came sneaking back here to have another look at the young lady when any other man of my age would have sent the coat back-“

In the play, Shaw describes him as ‘’a man of about 35…he is of a middling stature and undistinguished appearance with strong neck and shoulders, roundish obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze curls, clear quick eyes and good brows and mouth; hopelessly prosaic nose like that of a young minded baby, trim soldier like carriage and energetic manner, and with all his, wits about him…”

A hint of his shrewdness is dropped by Major Sergius in the Second Act of the play while mentioning the exchange of prisoners. He humbugged Major Petkoff and Sergius into giving him fifty able bodied men for two hundred worn-out chargers. They were not even eatable. His apparent listlessness covers his sense of humour and shrewdness. He has deep insight into human character and is a prudent soldier. He knows perfectly well that nine soldiers out of ten are born fools, but he himself does not belong to that category. When Raina tries to hide him from Bulgarians, he tells her that she can do so if she keeps her head because he knows perfectly well that nine soldiers out of ten are born fools.  The Russian officer comes in; he just looks in the balcony and goes out thanking Raina. He doesnot care to search the room or look behind the curtain. Bluntschli’s judgment turns out to be correct and the Russian officer is proved to be a fool.

Bluntschli has a wonderful sense of humour. He laughs at romanticism, but he does so in a very subtle manner. His talk with Raina and Sergius sparkles with touches of his humour. The way he tries to pronounce ‘Petkoff’ also shows his sense of humour. His caricaturing of Sergius as Don Quixote is another example of his humour. Infact, he attracts us by his liveliness and his exuberance. From the moment he enters the scene, the mood is transformed and we watch for the unexpected and the original in word and deed. His exuberance is irrepressible, and nothing can prevent his bubbling forth continuously.

He is not fickle-minded and unbalanced like Sergius who is completely a different man at different times. Though Raina worships Sergius like a priestess, Bluntcshli succeeds in winning her. He offers her his hand not as the King of Switzerland but merely as a ‘chocolate cream soldier’, but he is sincere..when he is alone with Raina in her bedroom he asks her to inform her mother of his presence; like a real man, he does not take the opportunity to flirt but Sergius does. He never lives like Sergius , in a fool’s paradise or in a dreamland. Moreover he never entertains high opinions about himself, he judges everything right at its face. He is a very practical and balanced man.

Bluntschli himself tells Raina, “I am a Swiss fighting merely as a professional soldier. I joined the Serbs because they came first on the road from Switzerland.” According to him, it is the duty of every soldiered to live as long as is possible instead of being killed in the battlefield even when there is a chance to escape. Not only this, he judges everything according to strict military rules. A cavalry charge for him is “like slinging a handful of peas against him, and then all the rest in a lump.” He does not speak in high terms about it and about Sergius.  He tells Raina. This account offends Raina. Bluntschli in despair tells her, “It’s no use dear lady; I can’t make-you see it from the professional point of view.” Moreover he takes war as mere art and the cavalry charge appears to him as something very unprofessional. He can also distinguish between the old soldiers and the young ones. This shows that he is really a very experienced soldier and knows all the tactics of war. Once more he gives an example of his experience. “You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones grub.”

Raina Petkoff is the heroine of the play as Bluntschli is the hero of the play. Hence both of them stand head and shoulders above other characters of the play. She has extraordinary physical charms; her intelligence is also extraordinary; her attitude towards life is quite abnormal- her whole make –up is attractive and beautiful.  Shaw presents her as typical of the upper middle class in its philistinism and ridiculous ineptitude. She is the type also of general humanity that clings, in spite of common sense, to romantic notions regarding life and things.

Catherine [severely]: “My daughter, sir, is accustomed to a first-rate stable.

Raina : Stop,mother, you are making me laughable.”

Sergius too maintains a kind of ‘higher love’ with Raina, but in reality, as a human being he cannot neglect his natural sex-instinct and starts flirting with Louka, a maid-servant although his sense of ‘higher love’ and romantic heroism abuse him consciously. At last he gets fed up with his Byronism and adopts a matter-of-fact attitude and marries Louka. Here again we find the conversation of Romanticism into Realism.

Bluntschli: “If you were twenty-three when you said those things to me this afternoon, I shall take them seriously.”

When we first meet Raina, we see that she is a brooding romantic girl contemplating the distant view of the Balkan hills, but she seems to possess a strong common sense; from the beginning there is a doubt in her mind whether the heroic ideals, which she cherishes in her heart, for her fiancé, are after all true. Her mother, who comes running in to infirm her of Sergius’s splendid cavalry charge which decided the day for the Bulgarians, dispels all her doubt. She blames, now, herself for entertaining the doubts. It appears that Raina’s romantic idealism is buttressed –up affair; it needs to be stimulated and reinforced.

 Raina lives in the realm of romantic idealism, far from the world of grim reality. She looks upon Sergius with a view of the knights of ancient days of chivalry come to life again. This view of hers has been created and pampered by the romantic dreams of life gathered from Byron, Pushkin, and from the several operas she has witnessed she takes his portrait in her hands and elevates it like a priestess. When she meets him after his return from the front, she most romantically calls him, ‘My hero, my king’, but it is a sceptic attitude...there is a good deal of doubt in it. She keeps on watching Sergius and he does betray her. So their ‘higher love’ turns to ashes.

Captain Bluntschli is a man of remarkable qualities; but he is not an ideal hero devoid of all faults. Rather he is a character very much true to life. He exhibits the sense of humour with brutal frankness’. He is in fact the mouthpiece of Shaw. The rare gift of irony enables him to see through all kinds of dealings. He is not led by blind love or unfaithful emotions. He is a true lover. In short, he is a cool and I, partial man, susceptible to the charms of beauty and youth. He is a shrewd judge of character. His sincerity of purpose is admirable and his sense of duty praiseworthy. In fact, he is the most loving and living character of the play.

Raina poses to be an idealist too. She idealises the world as “really a glorious world for women who can see its glory and men who can act its romance.” In a solemn tone she tells Sergius,”I think we two have found the ‘higher love’.” she wants to make Bluntschli realise that her “relation to him (Sergius) is the only really beautiful and noble part” of her life. She often strikes a ‘noble attitude’, ‘speaks in a thrilling voice’ and looks like a great idealist. Her father wonders and admires her, her lover is kept spell-bound, but empty vessels make more noise..she cheats Sergius and Sergius betrays her, so two ‘apostles of higher love’, two idealists, prove what they are in reality. It is a hoax, an empty show.

Petkoff [with childish awe]:”Are you Emperor of Switzerland?

Bluntschli: My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I am a free citizen.”

Like her parents, Raina is a snob. She is proud of her family’s social status and riches.  Very proudly she tells Bluntschli that her father is a “Major”, that her family has a “library”, “the only one in Bulgaria” and that people of her position “wash their hands nearly everyday”. When Louka, says “My love was at stake”, she taunts as if it were ridiculous for a maid-servant to have a lover. And destiny snatches her own ‘King’ and puts him in the lap of the same maid servant.

Sergius: “The glimpses I have had of the seamy side of life during the last few months have made me cynical;but I  should not have brought my cynicism here:least of all into your presence, Raina.”

There is always a clash between Rain’s perception of reality and her romantic illusion. Sometimes she seems to be in despair whether she can be true to her romantic ideals, e.g. when Bluntschli tells her about Sergius and calls him a fool..which shows that, to keep her confidence she needs continuous pampering because the moment she gets the news of the splendid cavalry charge led by Sergius, her faith is revived.

Louka calls Raina a ‘liar” and a “cheat” and Bluntschli openly pointed out her lies and pretentions. Raina, however, deliberately deludes others. When she is caught by Bluntschli in her imposture, in the last Act of the play, she at first tries to register indignation, but finding Bluntschli unimpressed, she admits the truth about her “noble attitude” and “thrilling voice.” The way in which Raina readily transfers her affection from Sergius to Bluntschli is strange and may lead one to doubt reasonably the very depth of her devotion.

Raina is bold and intelligent. She does not get nervous when a stranger enters her room with a ready revolver. She had no idea that there was no cartridge in the revolver. She had no idea that there was no cartridge in the revolver. She does not get upset when the Russian officer comes to search her room, she did her job before the officer smartly and intelligently and makes a fool of him. She offers Bluntschki her hand twice for security. She even gives the old coat of her father to him while leaving because the weather was cold. Again very boldly she puts her photograph in the pocket of the coat and when her father wears it when it is brought back; cleverly she takes out the photograph. William Archer has accurately observed her as “a deliberate humbug, without a single genuine or even self-deluding emotion in her bloodless frame.” A dramatist must keep his action moving and his characters coming and going. Usually he tries to make their entrances and exits unobtrusive; they must leave the stage or enter on it naturally, not as though on an obvious cue.

Although Raina is a coquette, Shaw has not made her a fiendish figure. She feels for wretched fugitives and feelingly questions: “what glory is there in killing wretched fugitives?’ she saves Bluntschli at a great personal risk and she has no motive behind this act. Raina Petkoff, with a contradictory and complex character, enchants the readers of the play from beginning to end. As the plot develops, her personality also develops rapidly. She is not the “all perfect” Victorian heroine, rather with all her follies and illusions she appears to be more human and real.

Sergius: “I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way. In short,  I upset their plans, and wounded their self-esteem. Two Cossack colonels had their regiments routed on the most correct principles of scientific warfare. Two major generals got killed strictly according to military etiquette.  The two colonels are now major-generals, and I am still a simple major.”

Bluntschli’s personality affects not merely her notions about war, it breaks all her illusions of ‘higher love’ too. She feels attracted by the plain-spoken Swiss, with a gleam of mischief in his eyes and a practical attitude towards everything. When he comes back, his influence becomes stronger. He alone has the frank courage to tell her that when she strikes a noble attitude and speaks in a thrilling voice, he is led to admire her, but not to believe one word of what she says. Her protest against this is half-hearted, even though she manages to act as if she were shocked.

Her conception of ‘higher love’ collapse completely when she sees Sergius making advances to Louka and finds her hero really attracted towards a maid. All her rosy visions fade away, and she is ready to face life as it is. And when, finally she accepts the offer of marriage from Bluntschli, she is absolutely cured of all the delusions she has entertained about life.

“She runs to the dressing table, blows out the light there, and hurries back to bed in the dark…”

Shaw describes Sergius in Arms and the Man as “a tall, romantically handsome man, with the physical manhood, the high spirit, and the susceptible imagination of an untamed mountaineer chieftain. But of, his remarkable personal distinction is of a characteristically civilized type. The ridges of his eyebrows, curving with an interrogative twist round the projections at the outer corners; his jealousy observant eye; his nose, thin, keen and apprehensive in spite of the pugnacious high brigade and large nostril; his assertive chin, would not be out of place in a Parision salon, shewing that the clever imagination barbarian has an acute critical faculty which has been thrown into intense activity by the arrival of western civilization in the Balkans…” He is what may be called a Byronic hero and his personal appearance shows clearly that he is in love with Byronic romanticism.

Both are proud, beautiful and spirited, but of status wise, they belong to two different stations of life, Raina has learnt her behavior from the sophisticated society of Vienna and her ideas of life from operas but Louka came there as a simple country maid with unpolished habits and behavior, but she was tutored in the ways of civilized behavior by Nicola who has plans to marry her. Under his eyes she has learned to be neat and clean and behave daintily.

“Life is for one generation; a good name is forever”

The technical novelty of Arms and the Man lies in the extensive use of bathos or anti-climax. Both Raina and Sergius – romantic fools- talk of higher love keep boring the audiences for a long time. Sergius’s love for Louka is based on passion. Initially his aim is to flirt with her but manipulating Louka weaves a web around him. She makes him realize that a man must have a woman’s heart as well as convinced that he would do much better with her and openly accepts her. This is nothing but the conquest of passion and reality over romanticism. He tries to cheat both Raina and Louka but ultimately he surrenders before reality.

Raina’s outlook is one of satisfaction with her material lot, Louka is ambitious and ever anxious to improve her social position. Both are ruled by the illusions of life though their illusions are different. Raina has the romantic views of war and love, Louka has the romantic notions about the power of her defiance and revolutionary spirit, but her illusions do not make her sentimental like Raina. She has no idea about romantic love. She loves but her’s a plain, practical love with the sole aim of marriage.

Bluntschli [before he can speak]:”It’sno use. He never apologizes.

Louka: Not to you, his equal and his enemy. To me, his poor servant, he will not refuse to apologize.

Sergius[approvingly]: “you are right. [he bends his knee in his grandest manner] Forgive me.”

Sergius is a wild rebel-rebel both as a soldier and as a lover, though his revolt is made cruelly ridiculous by contrast with the matter-of-fact, plain Bluntschli. He has the courage to point out the hollow sham of war and tender his resignation from this mean business. For, whereas Bluntschli wisely caricatures the attractiveness of war, Sergius boldly denounces the very method with which a war is fought. As a lover, Sergius is not a bit coward. He faces the reality of his love courageously and is not afraid of the opinion of his class in the matter of his decision to marry Louka-“If I choose to love you, I dare marry you, in spite of all Bulgaria.”

Shaw had kept himself engaged in a continuous struggle with critics and the public. There are two chief grounds for this struggle- A revolt against the life of the stage, its artificiality, unnaturalistic and hopelessly sentimental standard and a resolute effort to make the reading and theatre-going public accept him as a stark realist.

Raina: [pretending to sulk]: “The lady says that he can keep his tablecloths and his omnibuses. I am not here to be sold to the highest bidder. [She turns her back on him].

Sergius has absolute faith in his concepts and despises the world because it disregards them; this makes him a constant prey to petty disillusion, with the result that he has acquired the half-ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the suggestion of a strange and terrible history that has left nothing but undying remorse. Sergius has always a pose, and sometimes it makes him ridiculous, but he seems to be hardly conscious of it. When he says that he never apologises or he is never sorry, he makes himself ridiculous, but at last he recognizes Bluntschli’s superiority and bows to it.

Action is said to be the very core of drama and characters acquire their significance from the action and in turn action revealed characters by bringing them into clash with one another and dialogue is the instrument used by the characters for some action. Shaw, in this play, is not unobtrusive. He leaves the characters he desires on stage, but dismisses the others in an unnatural manner.  We must never forget that the focal interest is in the dialogue, not in the action, so the free movement of the characters is essential. We should not then be exceptionally surprised when Shaw dismisses his superfluous characters in all arbitrary fashion. Our senses may be jarred, but we have to accept the situations. Bathos is a device used by the dramatist to create ridiculous effects. In this device, the action, instead of moving upwards towards a climax, moves downwards towards anti-climax.

Bluntschli and Louka know that ‘higher love’ is not real- it is farce, it is the love at the earthly and physical level that is worth enjoying. The anti-climax lies in the fact that Bluntschli and Louka do not soar to the romantic heights of Sergius and Raina; instead Sergius and Raina come down to the level of Louka and Bluntschli. Chesterton   has rightly written, “Arms and the Man is a play which is built not on pathos but on bathos.”

Raina: “I thought you might have remembered the great scene where Ernani, flying from his foes just as you are tonight, takes refuge in the castle of his bitterest enemy, an old Castilian noble. The noble refuses to give him up. His guest is sacred to him.”

A.C. ward is right to some extent when he writes, “Shaw as a playwright, as a dramatic artist was not a realist.” But of, as far as his ideas are concerned he is original and real. It is only in the presentation of his characters and action that he is using each as a tool to solve his problem only and produce humour.

Shaw has revived a type of drama in which the action consists almost exclusively of a valuable discussion of the mental revolutions and spiritual conversion which takes place in the minds of characters and changes even their souls. Down to the time of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, standard commercial plays consisted of an exposition in the First Act, a situation in the Second and a sort of tidying up and bowing the audience out in the Third.

Bluntschli (in his driest military manner): “I am at Madam’s orders.”

Thus, when Shaw sends Raina indoors to fetch her hat, we know that Louka and Sergius must be left together; Sergius and Bluntschli are to be alone, so that Sergius can suggest a duel; Louka finds the door left open for her, and makes an exit. Nicola’s exit also should be watched for its “obviousness”, Raina’s entrances are always well –timed; they, however, are permissible because we know that Raina has a highly dramatic character. Shaw’s basic unit of construction is a short scene, usually consisting of an exchange of ideas or opinions between a few chararacters. Shaw’s plots donot flow forward in a single uninterrupted line. Instead short scene follows short scene rapidly, with each scene there is a change in the persons on stage.  Characters and topics often drop out of sight for long periods of time until Shaw is ready to take   them up again. This style of construction allows Shaw to develop several stories (Bluntschli- Raina; Raina-Sergius; Sergius-Louka, Louka-Nicola) during an act and, by emphasizing personal relations and discussion; it allows him to show the effect of ideas and opinions on behaviour.

Sergius being provided by Louka, addresses Captain Bluntschli gravely, and charges him with being his rival and having deceived him. He challenges Bluntschli to meet him in the parade ground on Klissoura Road, alone on horseback with his sword. It proves Sergius’s stupidity and the effect of Byron on him that in an age of pistols he is talking about swords. Bluntschli says that if he goes, he shall take a machine gun and not a sword, and this time there will be no mistake agrees with him as he had often acted as sword instructor. Sergius offers to lend him his best horse but Bluntschli says he would prefer to fight on foot, for he does not want to kill Sergius if he could help it.

Psychologically, Sergius seems to be a complex character. One does not know what he will do and when. His ideas and actions are not reconcilable; on the one hand he tells Louka that “a gentleman never discusses his lady with her maid” but, on the other hand, when she tells him about Raina’s attraction towards the fugitive, he, a gentleman, makes love with a maid at his lady’s back. He is a living anomaly.

Bluntschli: “Shot in the hip in a woodyard. Couldn’t drag himself out. Your fellows shells set the timber on fire and burnt him, with half a dozen other poor devils in the same predicament.

Raina: How horrible”

Shaw’s characteristics are different from typical Victorian characteristics. They are not saying what they were supposed to in the royal manner but they are saying what they want to in their own simple vocabulary. They express their ideas not seriously but comically. So they are able to hold the attention. Other characteristics of Shaw’s dramatic style include the use of coincidence, anticlimax, quick transitions in a character’s behaviour, the construction of plot around much short character’s behaviour, the construction of plot around many short scenes, and the use of dialogue, instead of action, to advance the plot.

“The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent

The earth is covered thick with other clay

Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,

Rider and horse,-friend, foe,-in one red burial blent!”

Sergius, in the beginning, is not merely a romantic soldier but he is also the apostle of ‘higher love’, but his ideas of love are as romantic and fanciful as his ideas of war. He is engaged to a lady of his class and professes to have “higher love” for her. He considers himself her worshipper, ready to die in her service. He calls her “My Queen” in Byronic manner, but all the time he is assailed by the doubt whether all this is not just a pose, an attitude assumed for a dubious self-satisfaction. He also realizes that it is difficult to keep up the attitude for any length of time. He too goes through a process of disillusionment like Raina. The weakness of his old character, as he perceives, leads him to the temptation of making love to Louka.  About ‘higher love’ he says, “It’s very fatiguing thing to keep up for any length of time.” Although while making love to Louka he says,”What would Sergius, the apostle of higher love, say if he saw me now?” but he finds consolation in the news that Raina too has a lover.

He has something of a cynic as well as an egoist in him. His own power of introspection makes him realize that he is a bundle of contradictions. He tells Louka that he is half-a-dozen Sergiuses in one. He is not able to judge the real Sergius in the midst of this muddle, at least not before the end. Shaw is a rebel to tradition. He has written plays not for the purpose of self-expression, but for the purpose of propaganda, he converts the stage into a forum. As his plays are of ideas, dialogues become more important element in his play than either character or action. .

Sergius is an interesting character, a good subject for an analytical study. Shaw once said that his character was an attempt at a comic Hamlet. Certainly there is something similar between the gloomy prince of Denmark who suffers from his inability to do his duty as he sees it, and the romantic Bulgarian hero who is tormented by the difficulty of accommodating his idealistic notion to the stern realities of life, but it is really comic to place Sergius against Hamlet. Sergius was created to be the hero of the play, but he is degraded to the position of a villain with a second rank.

Sergius: “And how ridiculous! Oh, war! War! The dream of patriots and heroe! A fraud, Bluntschli. A hollow sham, like love. “

As Louka is a foil to Raina, Sergius is a foil to Bluntschli. He acts as a background to Bluntschli and highlights his realism. And other practical qualities. This rebel is made a fool of by the all conquering ‘chocolate-cream soldier’. And in his last exclamation “What a man! Is he a man!”is echoed the envious admiration of a disappointed soul. The rebel in Sergius is silenced by the realist in Bluntschli. The hero in Sergius is silenced by the realist in Bluntschli. The hero in Sergius is beaten both in courtship and soldier ship. Eclipsed by Bluntschli’s intelligence and promptitude, Sergius is only left to stand and stare with a defeatist mentality. Sergius is not comical. His failure is essentially tragic, though the tragedy of his lot is deftly turned into an amusing sport by the comic element of the play.

Shaw’s characters may be somewhat unnatural in their eloquence but they are not wooden beings. The distinct individuality of each character is present all through the play. There is no confusion between Raina and Louka; both are distinct. Similarly both Sergius and Bluntschli’s words in Sergius’s mouth or Sergius’s actions in Bluntschli cannot be shown. Although Petkoff and Catherine are Shaw’s caricatures but even they are not without soul. With all their semi-barbaric notions, their idiotic extravagances, they remain quite interesting figures on the stage. And all his characters are not mere abstract ideas; they are attractive and alive on the stage.

Sergius is arrogant but his condition is miserable now when he finds himself to be at fault. He is asked to apologise by Bliuntschli but he replies “I never apologise”. Raina complains to Bluntschli about Sergius for spreading this horrible story about her. Bluntschli assures her that he is dead-burnt alive. Serius, when he hears the account of his death of being set fire to, cries out against war. He says-“war is a fraud, a hollow sham, like love.” Raina protests against his latter remark. But of, Sergius is not willing to believe that Bluntschli has come back and has no interest in Raina. He tells Raina that Louka had given him all this information and Raina discovers his baseness. She discovers that very morning he was with her maid all the time. She confesses that she looked out of the window as she went upstairs, and at that moment did not understand what was going.

Louka:”Did you find in the charge that the men whose fathers are poor like mine were any less brave than the men who are rich like you”?

Sergius:”You’ve no magnetism: youre not a man: youre a machine.”

Some of Louka’s actions may be called mean. She does not treat everybody at his or her level. She tries to blacken the character of Raina in the eyes of Sergius by telling him that Raina makes love to Bluntschli at his back. She does not talk decently about the Petkoff family. When Nicola advises her to be respectful to the family, she replies, “I know some family secrets, they would not care to have told, young as I am, let them quarrel with me if they dare”. This maid is always ready to blackmail someone. She has the habit of eavesdropping. This she does out of curiosity, but ultimately it pays her. When she is caught red-handed, eavesdropping, she defends, “My love was at stake. I am not ashamed.”  She is a scheming woman-she makes a calculated play for Sergius, correctly guessing Raina’s changed feelings. She is sharp-tongued, sharp-witted and far-sighted. Sergius rightly calls her, “a provoking little Witch.”

After all, in this play, character and action are of minor importance and ideas are all in all. It is doubtful whether a thesis play can have any recognized technique. Yet Shaw’s plays are quite good for the stage, they are not merely academic exercises.

Sergius is an unprofessional, enthusiastic and inexperienced soldier. The fact becomes obvious from the cavalry charge which he leads on the enemy equipped with machine guns. His cavalry would have been destroyed mercilessly by the enemy if at all they had the ammunition. He had won the battle just as a mere chance.

Bluntschli: “I wont take that answer. I appealed to you as a fugitive, a beggar, and a starving man. You accepted me. You gave me your hand to kiss, your bed to sleep in, and your roof to shelter me.”

Sergius sees romance everywhere, even in war.  War is full of military glory for him and he never bothers to look at its terrible consequences. The victory swells him with pride and joy but when he is not promoted, he feels completely dejected and resigns his job, so like Raina he needs continuous pampering to keep his faith in his own illusions. He does not have that power in himself; Sergius calls soldering “the cowards act of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you are a weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your name at a disadvantage, and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.” This is his estimate of war and soldering. He is rightly called ‘Don Quixote at windmills’ by Bluntschli. He is new to the trade of war. He appears merely as a theorist devoid of practical sense.

Louka is quite realistic and practical in her attitude towards life. She has no illusions about rank, position, gentility, etc. all the affected airs are blown out of Sergius by the breath of her sharp wit and sharp tongue. She uses the secrets and situations to her own benefit. She uses Raina’s jealous in winning over Sergius. She does not hesitate to play upon Sergius’s vanity and finally envy and secures him for herself.

When Raina impulsively addresses Bluntschli as the ‘chocolate cream soldier”, and Catherine tries  to save the situation  by concocting a story about Nicola dropping the plates over a soldier’s figure in  cream chocolate made by Raina, he gets suspicious. He doubts Raina’s suddenly developed culinary interest and Nicola’s carelessness.

The Man [with grim good humor]: “All of them, dear lady, all of them, believe me. It is our duty to live as long as we can. Now, if you raise an alarm-“

Although Major Petkoff is a ridiculous character but he is not insignificant as far as his place in the entire play is concerned. The ‘coat episode’ ,which helps the plot to develop further, moves around him too and it is to clear  his doubts that Bluntschli discloses everything and thus paves the way for his own marriage with Raina. He also points out the foolishness of Sergius and his views and snobbery affect the heroine of the play who too is a snob. So we just cannot avoid this character. Apart from that, he adds to the humour of the play.

Bluntschli: “But now that you’ve found that life isn’t a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there to your happiness?”

Catherine is a formidable housewife. It is fairly obvious that she rules the home. She is a successful wife. She not only keeps her husband happy but she also keeps her servants under control. She runs the home smoothly and efficiently. The Major, once his routine wants are looked after, is ready to leave everything entirely in her hands. She contemplates her husband with a little amusement, putting up with his weakness that at times borders on the childish. Louka, though insolent, fears Catherine and never behaves towards her as she does towards Raina. Major Petkoff is worldly minded. When Bluntschli proposes for Raina’s hand, he demurs at first, because Bluntschli appears to him to be only a soldier of fortune, possessing nothing of his own. But of, his father’s heart is soon satisfied when Bluntschli enumerates in detail all that he possesses. His pride is not hurt at all, therefore, when Raina, instead of marrying Sergius, a man of his own set, bestows her choice on Bluntschli.

Petkoff: “No longer the enemy, happily. [Rather anxiously] I hope you’ve called as a friend, and not about horses or prisoners.”

Although Major Petkoff has been presented as a simpleton, yet there is a spark of intelligence in him. As soon as he comes home from the battlefield, he tries to inquire about his old coat. He had heard the story of a Swiss soldier being given shelter in a Bulgarian house and having been sent away disguised in an old coat of the master of the house. Probably, he wants to ascertain that the story did not occur in his own house. When Catherine talks about Sergius’s promotion, Petkoff immediately points out his foolish action on the battlefield and says that he does not deserve it. This shows that he knows which man should be given which status.

Catherine Petkoff is the wife of Major Petkoff and mother of Raina. She is the true representative of Balkan society, anxious to raise itself from barbarism to civilization. Shaw has described her as:

“Catherine Petkoff, a woman over forty, imperiously energetic, with magnificient black hair and eyes, who might be a very splendid specimen of the wife of a mountain farmer, but is determined to be a Viennese lady, and to that end wears a fashionable tea gown on all occasions.”

Catherine is keenly conscious of her aristocracy and also of her husband’s official and social position. That is why, the dramatist calls her a ‘specimen’ determined to be a Viennese. She apes western manners. Social status and financial position are her chief considerations in deciding the eligibility of a man for Raina. She accepts Bluntschli when she comes to know that he satisfies both these qualities.

Raina: “ Well, it came into my head just as he was holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes that perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are so fond  of reading Byron and Pushkin, and because we were so delighted with the opera that season at Bucharest. Real life is so seldom like that! Indeed never, as far as I knew it then.”

But of, with Major‘s characteristic simplicity, he drops the matter. He is again doubtful when he finds his missing coat replaced, but he attributes it to the weakness of the age; when he puts on the coat, he finds it out that it has been deformed and rightly says that it has been put on by somebody else. This shows that he uses his brain. Raina manages to deceive him by removing her portrait from the pocket of the coat while helping him on with it, but he realizes that something is wrong somewhere; he is not satisfied with the explanation given by Raina and backed by Catherine. They also try their best to hide the fact about his old coat and the photograph in its pocket that intrigues him very much. He does not drop the topic until the truth is revealed by Bluntschli and the entire mystery cleared.

Raina: “Allow me. [she sails away scornfully to  the chest of drawers, and returns with the box of confectionary in her hand.] I am sorry I have eaten them all except these. [She offers him the box].”

Catherine is very much concerned about her social status and the need to live up to it. As a member of a rich reputed family she is conscious of her superiority and is anxious to exhibit it. She is proud of having a library in her house and flight of stairs. Her new acquisition is an electric bell, and with that she feels she has reached the acme of civilized life. She washes her face and neck daily not with a purpose of personal hygiene but to become a modern woman. She is proud of her lineage which she terms historical, even though it can be traced back to a mere twenty years. Like others of her class, she is blissfully unaware of the comic effect of it all.

Major Petkoff is not a strict disciplinarian. He cannot plan out the demobilization of the forces and seeks the help of Catherine and Sergius; but even then the problem remains unsolved. When Bluntschli, superior to them (as he is more practical and can take immediate decisions), asks him to look to the proper sending of soldiers, he takes  his wife along with him saying that she would manage it better. This shows that he does not have control over persons on whom he should have.

Petkoff: “Oh, I shall be only too glad. Two hundred horses! Whew! “

Louka says that Raina would prefer to marry Bluntschli. Agaist which Bluntschli protests saying that the gracious young lady meant nothing; it was just out of pity that she saved his life. He says that he is not even fit for these last 15 years he had been wandering in barracks and battles. He says he is very old for this school-girl of seventeen, he is thirty five..he cannot believe that awoman  who took the affair so seriously, could have sent him this photograph with the inscription. All the mystery of the coat is made to clear to Petykoff. Bluntschli poses to be satisfied that he has put everything right, but Raina is annoyed that she has been taken as a school-girl of seventeen and declares that she is a woman of twenty –three. Raina snatches her photograph from his hands, tears it up and throws the pieces in his face. Sergius seems to enjoy his rival’s discomfiture.  Bluntschli repeats Raina’s age to himself and thinks over it. He makes up his mind to propose her.

Raina [crunching on the bed]: “Who’s there? [The match is out instantly] Who’s there? Who is that?

A Man’s Voice [in the darkness, subduedly but threatingly]: Sh-sh!”

Catherine, in spite of all her skillful management of the household and with all her commanding personality, does not possess common insight in human character. Raina, Sergius, Louka behave differently at her back but she never senses the fun or mischief behind any of their actions. She behaves as a typical rich aristocratic foolish wife who claims education or experience or culture.

Catherine intervenes politely and tells bluntschli her daughter’s position, who is used to luxury and comfort. She says that Sergius keeps 20 horses,  Bluntschli grasps the papers in a blue envelope and declares that if Sergius  has got 20 horses, he has got 200 horses, Sergius  has 3 carriages and he has 70 . He has 4,000 table cloths, 9,600 pairs of sheets and blankets, 2,4oo cider down quilts, 10,000 knives, forks and dessert spoons, 300 servants, 6 palatial establishments, 2 livery stables, a tea garden and a private house. He has four medals for distinguished services, he has the rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman and he knows three languages. Catherine now withdraws her objection and adds that she will not stand in the way of her daughter’s happiness. Petkoff agrees to his wife’s wish.

As a mother, Catherine is very fond of her daughter. She is very solicitous about her health and happiness. That is why she wants her to be married to a rich person. She is rather an over affectionate mother. Even when Raina is impertinent towards her and does something which is not to her liking, she puts up with it. When Raina gives shelter to Bluntschli against the wishes of Catherine, she bears with it, rather she tries her best to keep it a secret by telling many lies. Later when Raina gets so impertinent as to say that Catherine should marry Sergius, if she thought so much of him, Catherine simply bears it. She had able to keep her loyalty to Raina.

Catherine’s resourcefulness and presence of mind are seen on several occasions. It is to her that Raina turns with a confidence on the eventful night of the fugitive’s appearance. Again, when Bluntschli reappears, she at once surmises that he has come to return the coat. She knows that his presence can create trouble so she wants to get rid of him at the earliest. She takes care that her husband does not learn of Bluntschli’s coming and so she gets the door of the library closed. When she learns that Petkoff has come to know about Bluntschli’s coming. She manages to save the situation. Similarly, she tides over the ‘chocolate cream incident’ with a quick and ingenious explanation that satisfies her husband to some extent. In the affair of the coat too, she acts smartly. She also prepares her husband for Raina’s marriage with Bluntschli by telling him of Bluntschli’s possessions.

The Man:”Stairs! How grand! You live in great luxury indeed, dear young lady.”

Major Petkoff is a somewhat misunderstood character. He is neither a simpleton nor very sharp. The secret of his character seems to be that he does not give expression to his real self even before his wife or daughter or friends but, he is a loving husband, a  dutiful father and a generous friend; he takes everything in the spirit of resignation and that is why he is not discontented like Sergius or fussy like Catherine though Shaw meant this character to be ridiculous; we  shut  the book with the feeling that he is slightly stupid, whimsical, vain member of the Bulgarian nobility whose main consideration is what others think of him, but he is not a romanticist like his wife and daughter and, like them, he does not like foolish modernism. He shows his practical attitude towards life by giving permission to Bluntschli to marry his daughter even when she was engaged to Sergius. He creates a good impression upon the readers by his simplicity even while remaining in the background.

 “What would my wife be thinking of her man so strong and grown,

If she could see me sitting here, too weak to stand alone?

Could my mother have imagined, as she held me to her breast,

That I’d be sitting here one day with this pain in my chest?’

Bluntscli’s return with Petkoff’s coat makes the situation and the plot complicated. Catherine, with her true womanly resourcefulness, smuggles away the coat very cleverly and saves the situation. This is the minor climax of the plot.

The fugitive expresses his views about soldiers and says there are only two types of soldiers- old ones and young ones. He has served fourteen years.  The talk drifts somehow to the cavalry charge that decided the day’s battle. The soldier describes the Bulgarian who led the cavalry as Don Quixote. Who succeeded because Serbians did not have the right ammunition. Raina finds her dream castle shattered. With apologies Bluntschli still calls the man a fool who knowingly led his corps in the mouth of death. Raina cannot forgive Bluntschli for talking about her hero in such a manner. She suggests that he should go back the way he came. He replies that he is too tired to do it and it is beyond him to get down through the pipe. But of, when he braces himself up to it as inevitable, she stops him out of pity. She feels like calling him her ‘chocolate cream soldier’, he requests Raina to put out the candle so that they shall not see the light when he opens the shutters. Raina drags him back and begs him to accept her hospitality. She now tells him her name and that her father is a Major in the Bulgarian Army. She also tells that their’s is the only private house that has two rows of windows and a flight of stairs inside.

The Man [dreamily lulled by her voice]: “No: capture only means death; and death is sleep: oh, sleep, sleep, sleep, undisturbed sleep! Climbing down the pipe means doing something-exerting myself- thinking! Death ten times over first.”

Realism is a much misused and confused term. Fortunately Shaw himself has explained (Quintessence of Ibsenissm, Ch. II) what he means by realism. Man, as he progresses from barbarism to civilization, adopts certain institutions which are neither perfect nor divine., but as time passes and these institutions  are handed  on from generation to generation, people come to believe that they are of supernatural origin and are  to be accepted and glorified as such. Those who do so, even when they are convinced that they are not so from their own experience, are idealists, in one sense of the term. In another, idealists are those who imagine institutions as they ought to be, neither natural nor holy, they are only human inventions which should not be allowed to outlast their earthly utility. It is in this sense that Shaw is a thorough realist. Once he declared that he was a specialist in social disease and he always probes social sores without flinching.

Raina wants to impress upon him that he is in the house of civilized people and not in that of the country folk who might see his Serbian uniform and kill him. She pledges herself for his safety. The man refuses to take her hand as he must have a wash first. Raina is pleased to tell that Bulgarians of really good standing wash their hands daily. She offers her hand and the man kisses it with his hands keeping on the back. Then he begs her to inform her mother, for he would not like to stay there longer than was necessary.

Raina is scared when she sees the fugitive with a pistol in his hand, she cannot shout for help. The fugitive throws his pistol on the divan and picks up Raina’s dressing gown. He tells her that if she shouted for help she will have to receive the soldiers in her present half naked state. In the mean time soldiers are heard knocking at the door of Petkoffs as they suspect the entry of a fugitive in the room through a window.  Louka, the maid servant, knocks at Raina’s door and asks her to get ready to receive the soldiers. Bluntschli realizes that she’ll have to open the door; he returns her gown so that she could receive the soldiers.  He says that he is ready to submit to the inevitable and fight with the soldiers who are coming to search the room. He warns Raina to be cautious and to remain away from the scene because his death is sure though he promises that he would fight till his death.

“The face of an old woman on the ground

Was marred with suffering, but she made no sound.

Silence was common to us all. I heard

No cries of anguish, or a single word. “

Sergius and Petkoff recognize Bluntschli as their acquaintance and invite him in the house. Again the situation becomes tense with Raina’s entrance when she shouts to Bluntschli,”Oh! The chocolate cream soldier.” Again Catherine and Nicola manage the situation by making a story of a cake soldier. Sergius, insinuated by Louka, blames Raina for making love to Bluntschli at his back. To this, Bluntschli discloses the whole story of ‘chocolate cream soldier’ and tells Sergius that Raina had to receive him on the point of his  pistol otherwise she is  chaste. Sergius is defeated, but the denouement of the play is postponed a little until the defeat of Sergius is complete. He has himself being untrue to the romantic ideal of love,but he still believes Raina to be fully inspired and exalted by it. Louka disillusions him and finally he surrenders to her. Bluntschli goes on demolishing all the romantic sentiments ruthlessly, at last snatches off Raina. When her parents come to know about Bluntschli’s wealth, they do not obstruct her way. With this the play ends. The very triumph of the character is the antithesis between the conventional standard of life and the real motive in life.

Petkoff and Sergius come back and the plot is made complicated by the return of Bluntschli. By now everyone has come to know the story of his escape; the only fact hidden is Raina and her mother’s hand in it. Shaw never forgets the double purposes of the play. Sergius’s ‘higher love’ for Raina proves false when he starts flirting with the maid-servant, Louka. The play has reversed the traditional theory of play-making in the last Act with its conclusion. The plot rises to its height in the First Act and wanders off into mere dialogue. As Chesterton has pointed out, “apart from the problem raised in the play, the very form of it was an attractive and forcible innovation.” Classic plays which were wholly heroic and comic plays ironical were common enough. Commonest of all in this particular time was the play that begun playfully, with plenty of comic business, and was gradually sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos. Shaw reversed this process. He has built the play not on pathos, but on bathos.

The play moves from sublime to ridiculous. It is, thus, an anti-romantic and anti-climatic comedy. All the interest of the play centres around the triangular fight between Raina, Sergius and Louka, to be concluded by the debasement of Sergius, whose real self is revealed in the process, and all the stupidity of romantic idealism is laid bare. It should be noted that Petkoff’s coat plays an important part in the resolution of the plot.

Bluntschli:”I know it doesn’t sound nice; but it was much safest plan. I redeemed it the day before yesterday. Heaven only knows whether the pawnbroker cleared out the pocket or not.”

***“I don’t recall what happened then. I think I must have cried;

I put my arms around him and I pulled him to my side

And as I held him to me, I could feel our wounds were pressed

The large one in my heart against the small one in his chest.”***

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