Raina, having discovered that war and soldiers are nothing like her romantic fantasies, rebels against the pretense of nobility. Shaw uses her awakening to satirize romantic idealism and class hypocrisy.
Act 1, Raina's bedroom in a Bulgarian house during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian war. The speech sits early in the play, after Raina's mother Catherine has rushed in with news of her fiancé Sergius's cavalry charge — he has, against all military sense, led a heroic attack and triumphed. The two women rhapsodise about Sergius's nobility, his Byronic gallantry, the romance of war. Catherine leaves. Raina, alone or with the maid Louka, picks up Sergius's photograph and addresses it — and the air around her — with a speech in which she examines her own capacity for heroic feeling, half worried she has been pretending, half determined to be worthy of him. The fugitive Swiss soldier who will demolish all of this is minutes away from climbing through her balcony window.
Raina is twenty-three, intelligent, theatrically educated by opera and Pushkin, and trying very hard to be the heroine of a novel. What she wants from the photograph — and from the absent Sergius — is permission to feel as grandly as she has been taught she ought to feel. Underneath the rapture is a sliver of honest self-suspicion: she half-knows the "noble attitude" is a performance and is testing it for cracks. Shaw is fond of her; she is not stupid, she is young and ideologically furnished. The psychological state is exhilaration shading into a private worry that she may be a fraud. The actor's job is to play both the genuine romantic conviction and the small, intelligent voice underneath that is already preparing to be disabused. When Bluntschli arrives, that voice will turn out to have been the real Raina.
Shaw is not Wilde; the wit is structural, not epigrammatic, and the speech rewards an actor who plays the situation rather than the cleverness. Do not signal that you know Raina is silly — she does not know it yet, and the comedy dies the moment you wink. Mark the moment she says she was almost ashamed — that is the speech's hinge, the half-second of honesty before she retreats into rapture again. Use the photograph as a real object; talk to it, not at it. Tempo should be elevated, lyrical, slightly above conversational pitch, but never declamatory. The accent question matters: Shaw does not require a Bulgarian accent and most productions play it in received or neutral English; do not invent one. Watch the breath — Raina's sentences are long and her enthusiasm should ride the breath rather than chop it. Find the physical vocabulary of someone who has rehearsed being a heroine in front of mirrors. The audience should fall a little in love with her precisely because she is trying so hard.
Strong for young women being seen for classical and shavian repertoire, comedy of manners, and ingenue-with-brains casting. Excellent showcase piece for drama school finals and MFA acceptances because it demonstrates language work, status play, and the ability to land comedy without italicising it. Less common in audition rooms than Wilde or Shakespeare, which is an advantage — auditors are more willing to listen. Demonstrates that you can play period, hold a long thought, and find self-awareness inside apparent earnestness. Useful for productions of Shaw, Coward, Wilde, Stoppard, and screen period work (Austen adaptations, Merchant Ivory territory). Not ideal for gritty contemporary screen casting. If you are auditioning for Raina herself in a regional production, bring a different speech — the panel will want to see something other than the piece they are casting.
I always feel a longing to do or say something dreadful to him—to shock his propriety—to scandalize the five senses out of him. I don't care whether he finds out about the chocolate cream soldier or not.
I half hope he may. It would serve him right! It would serve them all right! Yes: I've been a romantic girl all my life, filling my head with fairy tales about noble soldiers. And now I've found out that the bravest of them all is just an ordinary man who runs away from danger and stuffs himself with sweets like a schoolboy.
It's all a sham! The higher love, the noble attitude—all pose and pretense! And I've been pretending too—oh, I've been the greatest fraud of all! But I won't pretend anymore. I'm tired of being noble!