One could easily be forgiven, I think, for presuming that a play with such a title as Arms and the Man would be some solemn recounting of a bygone war (or age thereof), raged in those far-off powder kegs of ceaseless conflict, i.e. the Balkans. That assumer would, after all, be half-right, inasmuch as the play does concern sectarian warfare between Serbia and Bulgaria. Yet, their corresponding half-wrongness would reside in the genre classification, as this play is unmistakably comedic. And there are few places in which the expectation-shattering levity of this play is more subversively evident, than the above passage. That in mind, the question is this: in what ways does the title, when retrospectively viewed, indicate its defiant farcicality? Little irony is lost on George Bernard Shaw, as his title derives directly from the opening lines of The Aeneid. I speak of irony because Shaw’s play diverges from Virgil’s poem in far too many ways to even enumerate, let alone justly explain. To focus on just one: the elder work is one of immense violence, solemnity, and historical profundity – yet the younger, its name taken from its Latin forerunner, is anything but. Admittedly, this is only apparent after one has begun to read the play, but its significance cannot be overstated. In simplest terms, the purpose of taking the title from The Aeneid is to make a mockery of that poem’s legacy, and the social messages it entails. After all, what is the most pervasive thematic element of