For instance, 'Do not do unto others as you would them do unto you. The most delightful part, however, is the 'Revolutionist's Handbook' at the end, which contains Shaw's most scandalous anti-Establishment jibes. Though Shaw was not known to have read the works of Bergson at that time, nor to have been conversant with his vitalist doctrine of the Life Force, his use of the Life Force motif and the philosophical underpinnings of the play attest to a pure Bergsonism. The central event of the plot involves the wealthy Tanner, a member of the 'Idle Rich Class' making himself subservient to the Life Force and seeking the perfect woman to marry, who would guarantee him a very special offspring, his ideal, the superman himself. Shaw manages to compress a number of disparate themes into a relatively taut dramatic format, even throwing in a scene in which Don Juan, the Devil and a gang of anarchist brigands make an appearance. Both, however, were characterised by their mordant wit and intellectual cynicism, in which 'Man and Superman' abounds.

The play was first performed in 1895 in London. The play is set in Bulgaria in 1885 when the Serbo-Bulgarian War was ongoing. The play was first produced on 21 April 1894 at the Avenue Theatre and published in 1898 as part of Shaw's Plays Pleasant. Arms and the Man is a play by George Bernard Shaw. Though Nietzsche was an aristocrat and Shaw a socialist, both cherished the dream of the superman and looked forward to the day when he would be realised. Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, in Latin: Arma virumque cano ('Of arms and the man I sing'). George Bernard Shaw was called, with good reason, the 'English Nietzsche'. 'A comedy and a philosophy,' Man and Superman is based on the Don Juan theme and, using all the elements from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Shaw reordered them so that Don Juan becomes the quarry instead of the huntsman. Man and Superman was the first drama to be broadcast on the BBC's Third Programme on October 1st, 1946. First produced on the London stage in 1894, Arms and the Man continues to be among the most performed of Shaws plays around the world.

Arms and man by bernard shaw