George Bernard Shaw gives us a snapshot of a legend before he was a legend. In The Man of Destiny, we meet a 27-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, brash and brilliant, but still just a general for the French Republic. The year is 1796, and he's halted at a small inn in Tavazzano, Italy. He's waiting for a courier to bring him important military dispatches that have gone missing.

The Story

The play kicks off with Napoleon in a foul mood, hungry and impatient. The scene is set with his bumbling lieutenant. The tension snaps into focus with the arrival of a Strange Lady—charming, witty, and completely unflappable. She has the missing dispatches. What follows isn't a sword fight, but something Shaw does better: a verbal duel. Napoleon and this mysterious woman parry and thrust with words, lies, and psychological jabs. She challenges his ideas about himself, his destiny, and even the nature of English people (a favorite Shavian topic). The whole play is this delicious, tense conversation where power keeps shifting. Who will end up with the letters, and what will they cost?

Why You Should Read It

Forget dry history. This is about character. Shaw takes the marble statue of Napoleon and shows us the living, breathing, irritable man. He's genius, yes, but also petulant, vain, and thrown completely off balance by a woman he can't intimidate. The Strange Lady is fantastic—she's his equal in intelligence and his superior in cool-headed strategy. Their battle is about information, but it's really about ego, perception, and the stories we tell to make ourselves great. It's incredibly funny in that sharp, wordplay-heavy way Shaw mastered. You're watching two master manipulators try to out-con each other.

Final Verdict

This is a perfect bite-sized Shaw. It’s for readers who love dialogue-driven stories and seeing historical giants brought down to human scale. If you enjoy plays where the action is all in the conversation—think of a more historical Oscar Wilde—you’ll love the sparring here. It’s also great for anyone curious about Napoleon beyond the battlefield. You get his mind at work, his insecurities, and a brilliant foil who makes him earn his future title. A swift, smart, and surprisingly playful hour of reading.