The Man of Destiny
1897
Set in a dusty Italian tavern in 1796, this sharp little comedy catches Napoleon Bonaparte three days before he transforms from obscure general into the myth who will conquer Europe. He's young, prickly, obsessed with his own destiny, and absolutely certain of his brilliance. Then a strange woman arrives and proceeds to dismantle him entirely. She knows his chess openings, mocks his dramatic gestures, matches his vanity point for point, and seems to know things about his future she shouldn't. What follows is a duel of wits that feels less like Victorian comedy and more like a prizefight conducted in drawing rooms. Shaw takes the legend of Napoleon and examines the machinery behind the man of destiny: the self-fashioning, the need to be seen, the theater of greatness. The play asks whether history makes the man or the man invents history and then believes in his own invention. It's breezy, argumentative, and unexpectedly philosophical beneath its sparkling surface.
