Part A · Short Questions — Arms and the Man

Captain Bluntschli is thirty-four years old, but Raina at first thinks he is only seventeen.

The cavalry means soldiers who fight on horseback. A cavalry charge is a fast attack by these horse-soldiers with swords and spears.

Captain Bluntschli says this. He is laughing at the foolish way the Bulgarian army fights.

Raina's mother is Catherine Petkoff, a proud and active Bulgarian lady.

To Bluntschli, 'Professional' means soldiering as a job for money, not as heroism. He cares more about being safe and smart than being a hero.

Louka is the Petkoffs' proud servant girl. She dreams of a higher life and finally marries Sergius.

The play is set against the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, a short war between Serbia and Bulgaria, near the battlefield of Slivnitza.

'Arms' means weapons and war, and also noble family rank. The title promises a war story, but the play makes fun of that idea.

Raina fears shame: if people find a strange soldier hiding in her room, her name will be ruined.

Slivnitza is a town in Bulgaria. A great battle was fought there in 1885, and the Serbians (Bluntschli's side) lost badly.

The Chocolate Cream Soldier is Captain Bluntschli. Raina calls him this because he carries chocolates instead of bullets.

An anti-romantic comedy is a play that makes fun of romantic ideas and shows life as it really is. In it, the glory of war and the sweetness of love are shown as foolish dreams.

The title comes from the first line of Virgil's epic 'Aeneid' — 'Arma virumque cano' ('Of arms and the man I sing'). Shaw uses it as a joke, because his 'man' is a chocolate-cream soldier, not a hero.

'To my Chocolate Cream Soldier' was written at the back of Raina's photograph.

Bluntschli calls Major Sergius 'Don Quixote' — a man full of big, foolish dreams who is far from real life.

Raina is proud of her family's old name, high position and fine manners. She boasts that they have the best house and the 'higher love' in Bulgaria.

'Higher love' means the refined, ideal love that Raina and Sergius claim — love of poetry and noble ideas, not common passion. Shaw makes fun of it, because it breaks when real life comes.

The play is set in Bulgaria, at the Petkoffs' house near Slivnitza, in November 1885, just after the war.

An anti-hero is a main character who has no heroic qualities like courage and nobility. He is ordinary and practical, even cowardly — like Bluntschli, the chocolate-cream soldier.