Plays Pleasant

‘Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you are weak … Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms’

One of Bernard Shaw’s most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is also a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valour is revealed. Bernard Shaw mocks self-deluding idealism in Candida when the foolish young poet Marchbanks becomes infatuated with the wife of a Socialist preacher. The Man of Destiny is a witty war of words between Napoleon and a ‘strange lady’, and You Never Can Tell is an exuberant farce, which turns on the chance reunion of a divided family.

While Plays Pleasant were intended by Shaw to be gentler comedies than those in their companion volume Plays Unpleasant, their prophetic satire is still sharp and provocative today. As W. J. McCormack writes, ‘There is amusement but also unease. His wit unsettles us’.

The definitive text, under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence