The Rest of the Arms and the Man Post

I haven't been able to get to it until now. As I noted before in the earlier posting, I like Shaw. He seems harmless enough to me in 2017, but that obviously cannot be true, since all authors worth reading must be dangerous in some way. Arms and the Man spoofs romanticism, or the romantic mindset, but in a fun rather than seething or contemptuous way, I think. Here is a note I wrote about it in 2001, Lincoln's birthday to be precise, which was a later reading after my initial one, dated March 5, 1999:


--Much more impressed with the play the second time around, the conflict between ideality and "reality" is quite clear really, I'm not sure why I wasn't "struck" by it before. I think it seems apparent that Shaw is skeptical of the idealists, though I think he understands the need for these feelings--in his society I believe he felt their aims--and people's energies--were often misplaced.--

That doesn't say much. One ought to be able to say something intelligent about a work one likes--the point of the exercise is otherwise lost. I like that all of the characters in this, as well as in other Shaw plays, are willful and individualized protagonists whose personas impose upon each other (with the possible exception of the servile Nicola, who is however so aggressively dedicated to his servility that it achieves a kind of force in itself).


My edition is a Penguin paperback proclaiming itself "the Definitive Text". It contains just the single play though it seems to belong to a broader set of "The Penguin Shaw". The last copyright date is 1958, but it looks to be of a much later date than that, 80s or even possibly early 90s. The publisher's price was $3.50. Probably not the 90s then. I noted that I bought it in Concord. The used book store we used to have in town must still have been open then, though it did not last much longer.

This is my edition, but not my book. Someday soon I hope to have the technological capacity to take and post my own photos again.


A few favorite quotes to mark the occasion:


RAINA: ...But they don't know that it was in this house you took refuge. If Sergius knew, he would challenge you and kill you in a duel.
BLUNTSCHLI: Bless me! then don't tell him.


SERGIUS: You have deceived me. You are my rival. I brook no rivals. At six o'clock I shall be in the drilling-ground on the Klissoura Road, alone, on horseback, with my sabre. Do you understand?
BLUNTSCHLI: ...Oh, thank you: that's a cavalry man's proposal. I'm in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun.


PETKOFF: We should be most happy, Bluntschli, if it were only a question of your position; but hang it, you know, Raina is accustomed to a very comfortable establishment. Sergius keeps twenty horses.
BLUNTSCHLI: But who wants twenty horses? We're not going to keep a circus.


Bluntschli is obviously, like Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra, the Shavian alter ego in this play.