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Saint Joan | Introduction

George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan was first produced in New York City in 1923 and in London in 1924. Shaw published it with a long Preface in 1924. When word came out that Shaw, who was known as an irreverent jokester, was writing about a Christian saint and martyr, there were fears that he would not be able to produce something appropriate, but the early reception of the play was generally favorable, although some commentators criticized him for historical inaccuracy and for being too talky or comic. Over the years, the play, a rare tragic work in his generally comic oeuvre, has been seen as one of his greatest and most important. It has been hailed as being intellectually exciting and praised for dealing with important themes, such as nationalism, war, and the relation of the individual to society. The play solidified Shaw’s reputation as a major playwright and helped win him the Nobel Prize in 1925.

Being at least in part a tragedy, though with comic moments, Saint Joan is part of a shift in Shaw’s work from his earlier optimistic comedies to a more melancholy attitude, perhaps in part the result of his reaction to World War I.

Although he had been thinking about Joan of Arc as early as 1913, Shaw did not actually begin writing the play until 1923, three years after Joan’s canonization. He consulted many earlier works on Joan, including the transcripts of her trial. In fact, he modestly said that he had done little more than reproduce Joan’s own words as recorded in the transcripts; however, that statement is unfair to Shaw, who left a distinctive Shavian touch on the story of the martyred saint.

Saint Joan Summary

Preface
Shaw begins his preface to Saint Joan by announcing that Joan, though a professed Catholic, was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs as well as being an apostle of nationalism, a Napoleonic military strategist, and a forerunner of feminism. He adds that by claiming to be in direct contact with Heaven and by acting in a condescending way to men in authority, she created so much resentment that it is no wonder she was burnt.

Of course, he says, Joan was not really guilty of the charges of witchcraft and improper behavior leveled against her, but it is not necessary to prove this nowadays because posterity has vindicated her. Nowadays it is necessary not to defend Joan, but to avoid romanticizing her. She was not a pretty village lass, as some have described her, but a genius and a saint. And she was not an ignorant beggarmaid or servant girl, but came from a higher social class and was even an intellectual, despite being illiterate.

Joan’s visions and voices, Shaw says, were not signs of madness, witchcraft, or sainthood, but simply the sort of inspiration that often comes to people of genius. She was quite sane, and proposed quite sensible policies, even if her imagination tricked her into thinking that those policies were being conveyed to her by visible saints. As for Joan’s belief in baptism and other Catholic rites, which the modern age condemns as superstition, Shaw says that we have our own superstitious beliefs (such as the ‘‘gospel’’ of scientists like Louis Pasteur and belief in the Oedipus complex).

Shaw criticizes earlier writers for saying Joan’s judges were corrupt scoundrels. On the contrary, he says, her trial was as fair as modern trials, perhaps even more fair. It was the later trial, the one that exonerated her, that was corrupt.

Shaw argues that since Joan refused to accept the authority of the Catholic Church, the Church was within its rights to excommunicate her; that would have been a reasonable punishment. However, to burn her was a horrifying thing that cannot be defended.

On the other hand, Shaw says, if the Church had merely excommunicated Joan and allowed her to continue to promote her views outside the Church, that would have meant tolerating a danger to society, and societies have the right to refuse to tolerate such dangers. Society is founded on intolerance, he says, though he also says that all improvements result from tolerance, especially tolerance of apparent heresies like... » Complete Saint Joan Summary