Discuss the title of the drama ‘Arms and the Man’.
Shaw is an icon-breaker. He puts his ideas straight in his dramas. ‘Arms and the Man’
belongs to his ‘plays pleasant’ group. Regarding its title shaw himself says that he has taken it
from Dryden’s translation of the opening line of Roman poet virgil’s celebrated epic ‘Aeneid’. The
opening lines of this work as Dryden translated is— “Arms and the man I sing”. It is the
translation form of the root latin phrase ‘Arma Virumque’.
In Virgil we find the celebration of the heroic deeds of the Greek hero Aeneid who after the
destruction of Troy left the city with his old father, wife and children and after numerous odds
and difficulties established the Kingdom is Italy. Virgil in his epic celebrated the glory of war and
sang its valour. It at once puts into our mind the stair and thrill of war, the heroic exploits of the
great warriors. War is here glorified to a lange extent and man is shown as a creature who is in
search of heroic deeds and tries his best to represent himself as a hero. He faces the odds of life
with ease and finally he emerges towering heai and shoulders above his enemies. There is a
rising movement in which the hero gains his position by his successive dead of valour. He
performs his duties with care and in this process he achieves the strature of a hero. Thus in
virgil’s ‘Aenied’ man as well as the arms are highly extolled.
In ‘Arms and the Man’ Virgil’s phrase receives an ironic treatment at the hands of shaw. In
this play shaw bitterly attack the romantic attitude of war. He does not glorify the profession of
the soldiers rathers says it an the ‘coward’s art’. The play, though opens with a note of valour and
romanticism the heroic cavalry charge of sergins, the affectionate love of Raina for sergins, the
dramatist highlights those only for the sake of ironical treatment. Then we have the reference of
the fugitives who are chased by the Bulgarian soldiers. On this context Bluntschli enters into
Raina’s bed chamber, frightens her with his empty pistol, a search goes on in Raina’s room by the
Russian soldiers. Therefore, the atomosphere resounds with war cries and the clang of arms.
The action of the drama deals with men in arms but as it runs the hollowness and sham of
war is exposed and the romantic idealization gets a shattering blow. In course of the drama
sergins blow. In course of the drama sergins, the hero of the slivnitza appears as an idiot, a fool
and ‘only an amateur’. Bluntschli exposes that ‘nine soldiers out of ten are born fools,’ and he
‘always carries chocolate instead of cartridges’ in the battle field. To him a soldier should try his
best to live as long as the could instead of having killed in a battlefield. The action of slivnitza by
sergius is described thus—“ he did it like an operatic tenor. A regular handsome fellow …..
shouting his war cry and charging like Don Quixote’. At the end when sergins realizes that
soldiering means nothing the high romantic ideal of sergins gets the grave.
In ‘Arms and the Man’ shaw shows that the glory of war and the heroism of soldiers are
nothing but vacant illusion. War is the worst method in which the soldiers are doomed. Sergius
emerges at the last as a mere fool, a man of clay and finally entrapped by a maid Louka. The
supremecy of the essential humanity of man is arrested instead of the arms. A soldier’s main
concern is not the glory of war but the preservation of his life. In a battle field he feels the
urgency of food rather than arms. It is for this reason Bluntschli runs away from the battlefield
and instead of cartridges he carries chocolates to the front. Man is not a superman but a mere
creature of flesh and blood.
The title of the drama thus is indicative one. It expresses the dramatist’s satiric intention of
exposing the hollowness of war and the heroism of soldiers. The false romantic motion is
shattered. Man is superior to arms is proved.
