Part 1 of Essay
When Bernard Shaw was writing 'Arms and the Man' in 1893-1894, Romantic ideals concerning love and war were still widely accepted and considered normal; an attitude that did not change, even with Bernard Shaw's efforts to the contrary, until the dreadful losses of the First World War. Shaw, a socialist, was greatly influen ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... the characters to realise for themselves the absurdity of their attitudes. Yet, strangely, perhaps because he realised that his play still had to be acceptable to a wide audience, he seems to allow Romantic ideas to re-emerge at the end. During the Romantic period exaggeration of things such as love was common, and was, in fact, the basis of the Romantic culture. In ‘Arms and the Man’ there an even greater extent of exaggeration than was common. The characters, the situations and to some extent the pl ....