Publisher's Synopsis
Arms and the Man is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw, and was first produced in 1894 and published in 1898, and has become one of the most popular plays of George Bernard Shaw. Like his other works, Arms and the Man questions conventional values and uses war and love as his satirical targets.Arms and the Man is Bernard Shaw's first great play. It is filled with witty and amusing dialogue, a diverting and well-constructed plot, and charming, well differentiated characters. A perfect light comedy designed to amuse the most jaded audience, it is also a deadly serious play that launches a fierce attack on one of the most destructive beliefs of Shaw's (and any other) time: that war is heroic and magnificent, and that the gallant soldier is the supreme icon of manhood, something to be esteemed and admired.The play, set during the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1885, is the story of the encounter between Raina, a Bulgarian maiden engaged to the young officer Sergius, and the veteran Captain Buntschli, a Swiss mercenary in the pay of the Serbians, who escapes capture after a battle by hiding out in Raina's bedroom. Frightened at first, Raina soon views the captain with contempt, compared to her brave fiancee, for he seems fearful and not at all professional: for example, he carries chocolate in his ammunition bag. ("You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes." Buntschli says. "The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.") Soon the Swiss captain rejoins his regiment, Sergius returns from the war, and then-following Captain Buntschli's unexpected return-Raina begins to realize that perhaps her "chocolate soldier" (as she fondly calls him) may be the best man after all.
