He considered the play a "ghastly failure" (Satran 11) and spent months exchanging furious op-eds with theater critics in the London papers on the proper interpretation of Arms and the Man. Having penned a political play designed to disturb and enlighten, Shaw was appalled when audiences misunderstood and embraced his work as a light-hearted comedy.
Yet Shaw brooded about audience and critical interpretation of the play, which he felt was at odds with his authorial intentions. George Bernard Shaw's first popular play, Arms and the Man opened on April of 1894 to an enthusiastic reception. George Bernard Shaw wrote the play primarily as a vehicle to promote realism and disabuse audiences of their romantic notions of heroism, warfare and marriage. By the end of the play, Raina is engaged to the infinitely practical Bluntschli and Sergius to Raina's servant, the beautiful and grounded Louka. The lady Raina and her fiance Sergius naively view war and life as little more than a stage on which to make grand romantic gestures.
Captain Bluntschli, a fleeing soldier, climbs through a Bulgarian lady's bedroom window, triggering a series of events that push the characters towards realism and pragmatism. Set in the aftermath of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Arms and the Man challenges romantic ideas about war and love.
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