Just the other day there was a riot in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was about a 130-year-old play—not even a Bulgarian one— George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. The play is located in a small Bulgarian town during and just after a war between Bulgaria (and Russian allies) and Servia (i.e., Serbia and its Austrian allies). What the mob of right-wing Bulgarian nationalists who blockaded the theater entrance, preventing the paying audience from attending, should have realized is that in Act One the Bulgarians are victorious, chasing the fleeing Servians through the streets of the town.
According to one newspaper report, “[c]ritics in Bulgaria say Shaw presents the Bulgarian soldiers as cowardly and unworthy, and Bulgarians as people who bathe once in their lives and don't read.” (1) Let’s look at these two complaints. First, about the washing:
PETKOFF (over his coffee and cigaret). I don't believe in going too far with these modern customs. All this washing can't be good for the health: it's not natural. There was an Englishman at Phillipopolis who used to wet himself all over with cold water every morning when he got up. Disgusting! It all comes from the English: their climate makes them so dirty that they have to be perpetually washing themselves. (2) Look at my father: he never had a bath in his life; and he lived to be ninety-eight, the healthiest man in Bulgaria. I don't mind a good wash once a week to keep up my position; but once a day is carrying the thing to a ridiculous extreme.
Now, it should be realized (unless I’m very much mistaken) that Irishman Shaw never visited Bulgaria and most likely never met a Bulgarian while living in England. In fact, I believe I could name two more Bulgarians than Shaw could. (3) So, why Bulgaria? He wanted a far-off land as a locale for his satirical purpose—which was to expose the futility of warfare and its romanticizing by the public.
Raina (the Bulgarian ingenue) is enraptured by the report that her fiancé, Sergius, led a cavalry charge against the enemy and routed them.
Man [Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary who fought for the Servians] You never saw a cavalry charge, did you? RAINA. How could I? MAN. Ah, perhaps not—of course. Well, it's a funny sight. It's like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes; then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump. RAINA (her eyes dilating as she raises her clasped hands ecstatically). Yes, first One!—the bravest of the brave! MAN (prosaically). Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse. RAINA. Why should he pull at his horse? MAN (impatient of so stupid a question). It's running away with him, of course: do you suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be killed? Then they all come. You can tell the young ones by their wildness and their slashing. The old ones come bunched up under the number one guard: they know that they are mere projectiles, and that it's no use trying to fight. The wounds are mostly broken knees, from the horses cannoning together. RAINA. Ugh! But I don't believe the first man is a coward. I believe he is a hero! MAN (goodhumoredly). That's what you'd have said if you'd seen the first man in the charge to-day. RAINA (breathless). Ah, I knew it! Tell me—tell me about him. MAN. He did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills.
Later in the play, Sergius himself acknowledges the lack of glory and honor in warfare:
I am no longer a soldier. Soldiering . . . is the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
Arms and the Man was adapted in 1908 as an operetta entitled The Chocolate Soldier by Oscar Straus. That title alludes to the admission by the veteran soldier Bluntschli that he filled his ammunition belt, not with bullets, but with chocolate creams:
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.
*
When I first thought about writing this post, I believed that Arms and the Man was one of Shaw’s Three Plays for Puritans, together with The Devil’s Disciple and Caesar and Cleopatra. I was wrong; Three Plays [the third is Captain Brassbound’s Conversion] was published after Shaw’s trio of Plays Pleasant, of which Arms and the Man is part. (4) Nevertheless, the play is a Play for Puritans, in that, like Caesar in the later play, for example, Bluntschli is an anti-romantic practical man—the kind who gets the job of the world done, as he does at the start of Act III:
Bluntschli is hard at work, with a couple of maps before him, writing orders. At the head of it sits Sergius, who is also supposed to be at work, but who is actually gnawing the feather of a pen, and contemplating Bluntschli's quick, sure, businesslike progress with a mixture of envious irritation at his own incapacity, and awestruck wonder at an ability which seems to him almost miraculous, though its prosaic character forbids him to esteem it.
The play ends with Bluntschli, having done the logistics for Major Petkoff, taking his leave:
You've managed those regiments so well that you are sure to be asked to get rid of some of the Infantry of the Teemok division. Send them home by way of Lom Palanka. Saranoff [Sergius]: don't get married until I come back: I shall be here punctually at five in the evening on Tuesday fortnight.
*
Just as Shaw didn’t need to go to Bulgaria to write Arms and the Man, Shakespeare didn’t have to go to Italy write any of the many plays he based in Italy. However, while Arms could really have been located anywhere from the Balkans to Iberia (since there is nothing specifically Bulgarian about it), The Merchant of Venice would not have made much sense elsewhere—even in another Italian city—because it needed a city with an active maritime commercial culture.
Most people who are only dimly aware of the plot assume wrongly that Shylock is the merchant in the title. Not so. Antonio is the merchant; Shylock is not a merchant, but a moneylender. As an actor, you don’t want to play Antonio; although the title character and central to the plot, he is not the stand-out figure on the stage. Of course, Shylock is the role to play (Portia is second).
The meatiness of the moneylender’s role has had a deleterious effect on the subsequent understanding of the play. A good many years ago, I read a summation of Merchant by a Shakespearean scholar whose name I unfortunately never noted and whose wisdom I can only paraphrase: Shakespeare wrote a play about male friendship, but people read it as a case of discrimination against a set-upon race.
*
If Shaw never knew a Bulgarian, how many Jews did Shakespeare know? Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. However, Roderigo Lopez, a Jew from Portugal became Physician-in-Chief to Queen Elizabeth; he was executed for treason in 1594, accused of attempting to poison the Queen. So, Shakespeare knew of one. Still, he knew enough about Jews to write about one in Merchant. Or did he?
Actually, there are three Jews in the play: Shylock, his daughter, Jessica, and Tubal, described by Shylock as “a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe.” Granted that Tubal has a minor role mostly as a messenger, neither he nor Jessica is in any way an object of anti-semitic abuse. There is no generalized anti-semitism in the play.
But is not Shylock meant to carry the burden of hatred for the Jews? And doesn't he, therefore, become the crier for the common humanity of us all?
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions? . . . If you prick us, do we not
bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
But he turns this commonality into malevolence: “And if you wrong us, shall
we not revenge?”
*
To truly understand Merchant, one must view it in the context of Shakespeare’s other romance comedies, because the play didn’t, like Topsy, grow out of nothing, out of nowhere. This may sound strange to you, but Shakespeare’s romance comedies are filled with overhanging death threats. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, Hermia, who refuses to marry her father’s choice, asks the Prince (Theseus),
But I beseech your Grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.
THESEUS
Either to die the death or to abjure
Forever the society of men.
In As You Like It, both the eventual lovers, Orlando and Rosalind, are in danger of death. When Orlando has decided to wrestle the champion, Orlando’s brother, Oliver, tells the wrestler,“I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger.” After Orlando, against expectations, wins his match, his jealous brother still intends to do him in. Orlando is warned to flee because Oliver means
To burn the lodging where you use to lie,
And you within it. If he fail of that,
He will have other means to cut you off.
Rosalind, meanwhile, is ordered out of the court of Duke Frederick, who tells her,
Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste,
And get you from our court.
ROSALIND
Me, uncle?
DUKE FREDERICK
You, cousin.
Within these ten days if that thou beest found
So near our public court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.
Here we see the comic villains, Hermia’s father (Egeus), Oliver, and Duke Frederick, at work. They bring the threat of death into the play. And who brings the threat (a very real one) into Merchant? Who literally whets the knife that would slice into flesh and make the play, not a comedy, but a tragedy? Shylock!
Shylock the Jew, wields the instrument of destruction. But how much of a Jew is Shylock that he stands for Judaism ? Oh, he mentions the synagogue and he cites a non-religious passage of the Bible. But there is no talk of the Torah, no reference to the Talmud, no citing of Jewish practices. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews were moneylenders in Venice, the comic villain in the play could just as well be from Iceland or Turkey.
And Shylock is really a comic character. Solanio tells of Shylock’s being laughed at in the streets of Venice, as he cries out
“My daughter, O my ducats, O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter,
A sealèd bag, two sealèd bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter,
And jewels—two stones, two rich and precious
stones—
Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl!
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.”
SALARINO
Why, all the boys in Venice follow him,
Crying “His stones, his daughter, and his ducats.”
A comic character, and at the same time, an apostle of death:
I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her
ear; would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin.
*
Near the end of the play, Lorenzo, Jessica’s husband, tells her:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
And who is the man “that hath no music in himself”?
Shylock:
What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica.
Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces,
But stop my house’s ears (I mean my casements).
Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter
My sober house.
*
Psalm 100:
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
And for centuries Jews have been making “a joyful noise.” Offenbach, Mendelssohn, Copland, Mahler, Berlin, Gershwin, Bernstein, Schoenberg, et al.
But not Shylock.
***
(2) Irishman Shaw never misses a chance to give a dig into the English.
(3) Dimitar Berbatov and Alexandar Georgiev.
(4) Well, it’s just about half a century since I wrote my dissertation on Shaw, so, no wonder the mind loses track of dates.
