Arms and the Man

Arms And The Man is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw and first published in 1898.

The plot takes place in the context of the Serbian-Bulgarian war of 1885. It tells the story of Raina Petkooff, a young Bulgarian girl who is about to marry officer Sergius Saranoff. The young man is a war hero and Raina idolizes him.

One night Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary fighting for the Serbian army, sneaks into Raina's room through the window, hides behind a curtain and threatens the young woman if she raises the alarm.

Raina is initially frightened and looks down on him. She constantly compares him to her young beloved and sees only negative things in him: fearful and unprofessional for an officer. When the Bulgarian troops come looking for him in the house, Raina saves his life by hiding him so that he cannot be found. In later conversations between the two, Raina's idealistic ideas will clash with Bluntschli's pragmatic attitude and his ideas about war...

"Night. A lady’s bedchamber in Bulgaria, in a small town near the Dragoman Pass. It is late in November in the year 1885, and through an open window with a little balcony on the left can be seen a peak of the Balkans, wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit snow."