Bernard Shaw calls “Arms and the Man” an anti-romantic comedy. The main purpose of the playwright is to satirize the romantic conception of life. Shaw has no faith in emotions and feelings. Throughout the drama he denounces idealism and insists on realism. He does it through the humor of the character and the humor of the situation at the same time.
The play “Arms and the Man” is not a sham, a real comedy. The purpose of a comedy is to ridicule and expose some humor or social weakness or defect. He laughs at human weakness or defect, but the purpose of laughter is to further the defect. Although there are many ridiculous and loud laughs in the play, it serves a serious purpose and in this way makes the difference from a sham. Shaw, thus a comedian but with a serious purpose. He awakens joy but also awakens thought.
In “Arms and the Man” the playwright’s intentions are comic and the use of anticlimax is the tool through which he achieves his comic intent. Sergio and Raina become comic figures when their romantic love insincerity and romantic attitude is exposed. Raina and Sergio go down to the level of Louka and Bluntschli. The playwright has succeeded in his comic intention. It shows that it is not heroic but something horrible and brutal because soldiers are not heroes but fools and cowards who fight just because they are compiled to fight. Sergio’s heroic victory comes in a comic light when it is discovered that he was only able to win because the Serbian gunmen had the wrong ammunition. Sergio makes love to Louka as soon as Raina turns her back on him, shortly after “the superior love scene”. In this way, Shaw has shown the flaw of the romantic ideals of love and war, his purpose in writing the play. It has provided a series of fun and humor to its readers and audience, but at the same time it has also achieved its serious purpose.
Shaw wanted a technical novelty for modern drama that consists in making the spectators themselves the people of the drama and the incidents of their lives their incidents, the disuse of the old theatrical tricks by which the public had to be induced to take an interest in unreal people. . and unlikely circumstances. Think that Shakespeare has put us on stage but not our problems. Shaw believes that the most important peculiarity of modern art is the discussion of social problems. Shaw points out that Shakespeare’s drama is a specimen of inferior art because it is romantic in situation, conventional in ideas, and pessimistic in temperament. Shakespeare generally borrows the plots from the dramas of others. These stories are mostly romantic and wonderful, introducing all kinds of quirky incidents and situations. Shaw is opposed not only to the romantic feelings in Shakespeare’s drama, but also to the romantic situations found there. But it confuses genuine romances and their sensational counterpart. In fact, Shakespeare chooses extraordinary incidents in order to portray the deepest passions. In Shakespeare’s great dramas there is no extraordinary situation that is not related to human emotions. Situations can be extraordinary, but they are made real by the authenticity of the passions that have been struck.
In Shakespearean dramas there are no heroes by Shaw’s standards. His lovers do not act on their own. He is forced to borrow motifs for the most energetic actions of his characters that come from the common well of the melodramatic plot.
Shakespeare’s dramas are based on a fundamentally different view of life and art than Shaw’s. Shaw’s philosophy of life has no connection to the existence of art in human nature. He thinks that the really bad man is as rare as a really good man and for him life is, despite poverty, disease and misfortune, a great game or spectacle, while Shakespeare regards evil as an essential element in common human nature.
Shaw insists that “The business of a playwright is to make the reader forget the stage and the actor to forget the audience, not to remember both of them at all times” ….. His plays generally have very slender plots , denying the artistic interest more the exhibition of the character through surprising situations than from the fabric of a complex story.
Shakespeare’s genius is so different in almost every way from Shaw’s that, despite Shaw’s conventional claim to despise Shakespeare’s intelligence, any comparison between them is foolish. Most of Shakespeare’s great characters are creatures of passion: love, hatred, jealousy, lust for power and the reality of the characters, combined with the wonderful power and beauty of the language in which they are revealed, it alienates the reader and the viewer by conquering their imagination. Shakespeare is supreme in the realm of poetic drama; Shaw’s greatest gifts are not in the sphere of poetry, but in the field of wit, ideas, and dazzling intelligence. He cannot and does not want to imitate Shakespeare as a character maker, because he is too preoccupied with his own problem.
