60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost. He —

      LADY. W-w-w-w-w-wh! Do stop a moment. I want to know how you make me out to be English at this rate.

      NAPOLEON (dropping his rhetorical style). It’s plain enough. You wanted some letters that belonged to me. You have spent the morning in stealing them — yes, stealing them, by highway robbery. And you have spent the afternoon in putting me in the wrong about them — in assuming that it was I who wanted to steal YOUR letters — in explaining that it all came about through my meanness and selfishness, and your goodness, your devotion, your selfsacrifice. That’s English.

      LADY. Nonsense. I am sure I am not a bit English. The English are a very stupid people.

      NAPOLEON. Yes, too stupid sometimes to know when they’re beaten. But I grant that your brains are not English. You see, though your grandfather was an Englishman, your grandmother was — what? A Frenchwoman?

      LADY. Oh, no. An Irishwoman.

      NAPOLEON (quickly). Irish! (Thoughtfully.) Yes: I forgot the Irish. An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general. (He pauses, and adds, half jestingly, half moodily) At all events, YOU have beaten me; and what beats a man first will beat him last. (He goes meditatively into the moonlit vineyard and looks up. She steals out after him. She ventures to rest her hand on his shoulder, overcome by the beauty of the night and emboldened by its obscurity.)

      LADY (softly). What are you looking at?

      NAPOLEON (pointing up). My star.

      LADY. You believe in that?

      NAPOLEON. I do. (They look at it for a moment, she leaning a little on his shoulder.)

      LADY. Do you know that the English say that a man’s star is not complete without a woman’s garter?

      NAPOLEON (scandalized — abruptly shaking her off and coming back into the room). Pah! The hypocrites! If the French said that, how they would hold up their hands in pious horror! (He goes to the inner door and holds it open, shouting) Hallo! Giuseppe. Where’s that light, man. (He comes between the table and the sideboard, and moves the chair to the table, beside his own.) We have still to burn the letter. (He takes up the packet. Giuseppe comes back, pale and still trembling, carrying a branched candlestick with a couple of candles alight, in one hand, and a broad snuffers tray in the other.)

      GIUSEPPE (piteously, as he places the light on the table). Excellency: what were you looking up at just now — out there? (He points across his shoulder to the vineyard, but is afraid to look round.)

      NAPOLEON (unfolding the packet). What is that to you?

      GIUSEPPE (stammering). Because the witch is gone — vanished; and no one saw her go out.

      LADY (coming behind him from the vineyard). We were watching her riding up to the moon on your broomstick, Giuseppe. You will never see her again.

      GIUSEPPE. Gesu Maria! (He crosses himself and hurries out.)

      NAPOLEON (throwing down the letters in a heap on the table). Now. (He sits down at the table in the chair which he has just placed.)

      LADY. Yes; but you know you have THE letter in your pocket. (He smiles; takes a letter from his pocket; and tosses it on the top of the heap. She holds it up and looks at him, saying) About Caesar’s wife.

      NAPOLEON. Caesar’s wife is above suspicion. Burn it.

      LADY (taking up the snuffers and holding the letter to the candle flame with it). I wonder would Caesar’s wife be above suspicion if she saw us here together!

      NAPOLEON (echoing her, with his elbows on the table and his cheeks on his hands, looking at the letter). I wonder! (The Strange Lady puts the letter down alight on the snuffers tray, and sits down beside Napoleon, in the same attitude, elbows on table, cheeks on hands, watching it burn. When it is burnt, they simultaneously turn their eyes and look at one another. The curtain steals down and hides them.)

       Arms And The Man: An Anti-Romantic Comedy in Three Acts (1894)

       Table of Contents

Table of Contents

       INTRODUCTION

       ACT I

       ACT II

       ACT III

      INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      To the irreverent — and which of us will claim entire exemption from that comfortable classification? — there is something very amusing in the attitude of the orthodox criticism toward Bernard Shaw. He so obviously disregards all the canons and unities and other things which every wellbred dramatist is bound to respect that his work is really unworthy of serious criticism (orthodox). Indeed he knows no more about the dramatic art than, according to his own story in “The Man of Destiny,” Napoleon at Tavazzano knew of the Art of War. But both men were successes each in his way — the latter won victories and the former gained audiences, in the very teeth of the accepted theories of war and the theatre. Shaw does not know that it is unpardonable sin to have his characters make long speeches at one another, apparently thinking that this embargo applies only to long speeches which consist mainly of bombast and rhetoric. There never was an author who showed less predilection for a specific medium by which to accomplish his results. He recognized, early in his days, many things awry in the world and he assumed the task of mundane reformation with a confident spirit. It seems such a small job at twenty to set the times aright. He began as an Essayist, but who reads essays now-a-days? — he then turned novelist with no better success, for no one would read such preposterous stuff as he chose to emit. He only succeeded in proving that absolutely rational men and women — although he has created few of the latter — can be most extremely disagreeable to our conventional way of thinking.

      As a last resort, he turned to the stage, not that he cared for the dramatic art, for no man seems to care less about “Art for Art’s sake,” being in this a perfect foil to his brilliant compatriot and contemporary, Wilde. He cast his theories in dramatic forms merely because no other course except silence or physical revolt was open to him. For a long time it seemed as if this resource too was doomed to fail him. But finally he has attained a hearing and now attempts at suppression merely serve to advertise their victim.

      It will repay those who seek analogies in literature to compare Shaw with Cervantes. After a life of heroic endeavor, disappointment,