[In the following essay, Solomon explores the consequences of synthesizing epic and tragic elements in Saint Joan.]

Several of the critical problems related to Saint Joan stem from the unusual nature of the play—unusual, that is, for Shaw, for in no other Shaw play do we have a predominantly tragic tone.¹ In the numerous commentaries on the play, we find three key questions frequently recurring: 1) Is Joan a tragic heroine with a tragic flaw or an innocent victim of circumstances? 2) Although Joan has our sympathies throughout, why does Shaw go to such elaborate lengths to align us intellectually on the side of her opposition? and 3) If the play is a tragedy, what is the purpose of the epilogue? In dealing with the above questions, I propose to consider Saint Joan as indeed a tragedy, but a special kind of tragedy, one that encompasses an epic design. The play is as consistently tragic in tone (at least from the first third of it to the end), as it is epic in structure. We may speculate on Shaw's reasons for not using the conventional tragic structure for Joan's story, but it is perhaps more rewarding to concern ourselves with the effects that Shaw achieves by coordinating epic and tragic elements.

SAINT JOAN AS EPIC DRAMA

The significant structural feature of epic drama is that emphasis is placed on important incidents in the history of an event or in the life of a hero. Naturally, the epic play is essentially dramatic, and therefore conflicts must arise, but the play does not raise the central issue of conflict as quickly as is done in tragedies. In the development of the action, long periods of time often elapse between scenes.² Epic drama is related to epic poetry in the sense that both strive for an heroic representation of character: the contending parties are never merely involved in a personal conflict, but rather one nation against nation, or one hero against a representation of evil, such as Ulysses against Polyphemus or Beowulf against the dragon. The greatness of the hero is measured by the strength of his opposition. The chronicle structure becomes necessary to the epic play in order to build up both forces of contention to formidable size, not just to increase the hero's reputation. Thus, Shaw keeps Joan off-stage for an entire scene in which he depicts the coalescence of Joan's three opposing forces: the feudal system (Warwick), the Catholic Church (Cauchon), and, the least formidable, the English nation (de Stogumber).

The scope of the material handled in the epic play is generally of greater social significance than that of the tragedy, which is concerned with the fall of a single person. The fall of Joan is tragic in itself, but the focus of the play is often on the social significance of the conflict between the established order of the Church and the feudal system on the one hand, and society's disruptor, the heretical saint, on the other. Therefore, because of the scope of epic drama, the playwright requires more than a single dramatic situation to develop the ideas and the conflicts at the heart of the play. The action of such plays usually necessitates the use of more scenes than ordinary plays have. We can readily see that the dramatist's technical ability is severely tested, inasmuch as the artistic harmony and unity of the play depend upon the theme and the repetition of patterns of action or the development of character. The two key patterns that are found in Saint Joan are the repeated demonstrations of Joan's pride and the several anticipations of future events. Both patterns will be discussed later.

Since each force in the epic conflict represents great, if not equal, power, the dramatic form might naturally tend to allow the decision of the conflict to be determined by the circumstances of the clash. Not so with Saint Joan; the failure of Joan lies in herself, not in her environment. The seemingly unsolvable problem of Saint Joan—that Joan's voices make her a saint and a dangerous heretic at the same time—is not, as we will see, the reason for her misfortunes. The play is not nearly as pessimistic in its conclusion as Joan is in hers: “O God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy Saints? How long, O Lord, how long?”³ Contrary to a good deal of critical opinion,⁴ Joan is not defeated—though she may think so—by forces beyond her control.⁵ Shaw portrays a willful Joan who continually provokes those forces which later become her enemies, but which at the beginning neither care about nor are conscious of her existence. Furthermore, the epic structure of the play impresses us not so much with the unsolvable conflict of church and state versus the individual, but with the possibility that such a conflict arises from the weakness of the two great opponents, both of whom would be greater than they are if they had the understanding necessary to surmount the conflict.

Shaw spends about four-fifths of the play highlighting Joan's character and the character of her enemy, Established Order (collectively), particularly to impress upon us the flaws in the two clashing points of view. It has become a cliché of criticism to mention that Shaw balances the argument for the Church and for Joan in the fairest manner imaginable.⁶ Some critics even believe that Shaw's true sympathy was on the side of the Church, and the dialectic may indeed be slanted in favor of the intellectuals, Cauchon and the Inquisitor (as it is earlier in the case of the Archbishop). But it is not Shaw's intention to engage in an apologetic for either side. Both sides are wrong, and to stress this Shaw develops two parallel lines of action in the play. The first demonstrates the rise of Joan, the nature of her challenge to the mores of society, her traits of innocence and conviction which attract followers, and her passionate self-absorption (that is, her pride) which destroys her ability to comprehend any point of view other than her own. The second line of action shows us the crystallization of the challenged forces—the feudal system, the Church, and the English state—into a unified opposition.

The first developing action reaches its climax in the fifth scene. Here Joan discovers that neither Dunois (representing the army), the Archbishop (the Church), nor Charles (the political arm of the state) will support her because—and this she does not understand—the barrier that her obstinacy sets up between her and her potential supporters cannot be crossed by tact or compromise. Nevertheless, at the climactic moment she determines to continue in her course of action, heedless of the warnings about her pride. The predictable fall that follows an outburst of a tragic hero's pride comes quickly, as the next scene opens on the day of her trial.

The second development of the plot in Saint Joan concerns the coming together of the three forces in opposition to Joan. She is the natural enemy of the Church, since she not only believes in her Voices but cannot resist proudly publicizing her direct communication with the divine. The English nation, of course, hates her for her military achievements. The aristocracy of feudal lords condemns her for her nationalism which represents a direct threat to their sovereignty. Joan would have the King supersede the feudal lords in a strong centralized government and have the people owe allegiance primarily to the King. All three forces are not simply opposed to the symbol which the Maid has established for herself, but they are also opposed to one another. The dislike each has for the other's views, as expressed by the antagonism among de Stogumber (the voice of the common man and of the rising bourgeois spirit of nationalism), Cauchon, and Warwick reveals an animosity toward each other as bitter as that shown toward the Maid. The vital difference is that while the Church, the aristocracy, and the nationalists are in the midst of a slow-moving dispute that is to last hundreds of years, the threat posed to them by Joan is immediately dangerous. They intuitively recognize this, and in the climax of this part of the plot (scene four), they form a temporary coalition for the purpose of destroying a mutual enemy.⁷ At the end of this scene, we are made aware of what will happen to Joan should her enemies triumph.

The primary action of Joan's rise and fall is developed in several stages, corresponding to the development of her characteristic traits. In the first scene at the castle of Caucouleurs, Joan performs her earliest significant action when Robert de Baudricourt is persuaded to give her a horse and armor and an escort to the Dauphin at Chinon. Her attractive traits of enthusiasm and determination serve her well here, as she is able to win over de Poulengey. Similarly, in scene two the same traits attract such men as Charles and La Hire. Another attraction of Joan is her innocence which springs from her basically good nature; it is this trait that originally gains her the favor of Dunois and the Archbishop. Above all, perhaps, is her persuasive ability, which is a shrewd mixture of flattery and sincerity. The rise of Joan is not, however, portrayed in a simple pattern of continual success. She meets several obstacles—represented by the skepticism of such men as Robert, the Archbishop, and Charles—and only partially overcomes them. Her later fall is prepared for by her inability to gain the complete support of all her allies.

One of the numerous levels of irony underlying the play concerns Joan's reactions to her early successes, and these reactions point up the development of her pride. She believes that the miracles spoken of as having been performed by her should be performed by her; that is, she feels that God has favored her in the past and that she can count on miracles in the future. Now the question of whether the incidents in which the hens lay eggs, the wind over the Loire shifts, and the English are defeated at Orléans are really miracles or merely luck is irrelevant to the fundamental matters of the play. Certainly, for the purposes of Saint Joan, Shaw intends for the audience to accept the proposal that St. Catherine and St. Margaret have spoken to the Maid, regardless of whether one can accept the Voices of the historical Joan. Nevertheless, although we cannot blame her for believing in the miracles, we can still condemn her arrogance in demanding more miracles for the future (and a miracle would be required to take Compiègne), and for demanding that everyone else expect the miracles to occur. Despite a good deal of intelligence, Joan is an anti-intellectual who, with the impatience typical of very active and enthusiastic people, despises—or at best tolerates—the theoreticians on war (Dunois), politics (Charles), and religion (the Archbishop). What Joan cannot understand is why these men will readily grant her previous miracles and yet have no faith in her ability to command future help from her sources of inspiration.

THE ANTICIPATORY SCENES

In writing a play about a newly canonized saint, Shaw was faced with an unusual additional difficulty. He wanted to make Joan a tragic figure only three years after the Catholic Church had proclaimed her a saint, a proclamation which, in effect, ruled out the possibility of her own shortcomings around the time of her trial. Yet Shaw wished to avoid the debunking play like Caesar and Cleopatra, which is more suitable to comedy. The task that Shaw attempted would be comparable to a late eighteenth-century American playwright's attempt to depict George Washington as a tragic figure suffering from hubris and falling victim to nemesis.

How in such a situation does a playwright portray a victim of pride without either antagonizing the audience or being too subtle to be understood or too obvious to be artistic? Shaw solved his problem by trying out a new technique which allowed him to present his story sympathetically from the point of view of Joan, without alienating his audience with iconoclasm. Of course, Shaw is almost fully sympathetic to Joan as a fellow mystic and an individualistic woman, but this is not artistically to the point. The technique which Shaw here adopts is the use of anticipatory discussions. Formerly, as in Getting Married and Man and Superman, Shaw's characters discussed the situations they participated in, basing their comments on observed facts. But in Saint Joan, Shaw tries out predictive exposition, and thereby completely eliminates melodramatic surprises.

Aside from eliminating melodramatic incidents, the technique of having a character anticipate the actions (and influence) of Joan serves at least two other important functions in the play. First, it achieves the effect of revealing Joan's alienation from her environment. She is an emotionally impulsive person acting on inspired decisions in an environment where other characters are making intellectual—or at least rational—decisions. Aware of alternatives and possible dangers that Joan refuses to consider, these other characters can analyze situations and make calm predictions about the outcome of Joan's actions. Secondly, this technique helps to account for the plane of reality on which one level of the plot moves in contrast to the spiritual and personal level on which the tragic movement of Joan takes place. In other words, the rise and fall of Joan, all her actions, are explained on both the level of the miraculous and that of the natural. We are not to choose one level and reject the other. Warwick, Cauchon, Joan, the Inquisitor, all do reject one level of the plot movement and thereby reveal a “tragic” limitation.

The first example of the anticipation of an action occurs in scene one. Robert de Baudricourt, after listening to Joan's impetuous speech against the English, says to Poulengey:

This may be all rot, Polly; but the troops might swallow it, though nothing that we can say seems able to put any fight into them. Even the Dauphin might swallow it. And if she can put fight into him, she can put it into anybody.

(p. 69)

Thus, the realistic movement of the action is carefully delineated. The military miracles that Joan is to achieve are explained in an offhand but natural manner. Of course, Robert's explanation, even if reiterated after the victories, does not in the least way invalidate the supernatural explanation advanced throughout by Joan. The purpose of the parallel movement of the two levels is to have the spiritual explanation exist side by side with the natural and to produce a constant tension between the believers on each extreme—but given the dialectic of the play, we cannot prove or disprove either viewpoint.

The second anticipation occurs in the next scene. Before Joan presents herself to the Dauphin, Captain La Hire suggests the miracle which is later attributed to Joan. The French army under Dunois has been attempting to raise the siege at Orléans, but the wind across the river Loire is against the French. La Hire, addressing the court of Charles proposes support for the Maid:

What he [Dunois] needs is a miracle. You tell me that what the girl did to Foul Mouthed Frank [whose death Joan predicted] was no miracle. No matter: it finished Frank. If she changes the wind for Dunois, that may not be a miracle either; but it may finish the English. What harm is there in trying.

(p. 77)

Like Robert, La Hire is a practical, though desperate, soldier. Again, the realistic and the supernatural elements surrounding the reputation of Joan merge, and a third attitude is expressed—that of the disinterested party concerned not with the means but the ends.

A more interesting example of an action of Joan's which is anticipated by a realist occurs immediately before Joan enters into the presence of the Dauphin. The courtiers have decided to test Joan's ability to pick out the Dauphin, who is to change places with Gilles de Rais for the purpose of the experiment. With only the Lord Chamberlain, La Tremouille, on stage, the Archbishop calmly predicts that Joan will discover Charles because “she will know what everybody in Chinon knows: that the Dauphin is the meanest-looking and worst-dressed figure in the Court, and that the man with the blue beard is Gilles de Rais.” (pp. 77-78) The Archbishop then claims that Joan's picking out the Dauphin from among the courtiers will nonetheless be a miracle, which is defined as an event that causes belief on the part of witnesses.

This brief scene symbolizes the basic matter of the play: the essential ambiguity of the line that divides the supernaturally inspired from the natural. The Archbishop in this scene represents the possible synthesis of the contending points of view which arise later in the play. He has the intellectual perception necessary to see on both sides of the line. The miraculous and the real are, for him, coexistent:

Parables are not lies because they describe events that have never happened. Miracles are not frauds because they are often—I do not say always—very simple and innocent contrivances by which the priest fortifies the faith of his flock. When this girl picks out the Dauphin among his courtiers, it will not be a miracle for me, because I shall know how it has been done, and my faith will not be increased. But as for the others, if they feel the thrill of the supernatural, and forget their sinful clay in a sudden sense of the glory of God, it will be a miracle and a blessed one. And you will find that the girl herself will be more affected than anyone else. She will forget how she really picked him out. So, perhaps, will you.

(pp. 78-79)

Shaw might have thought “and so, perhaps, will the audience,” for when Joan does discover Charles, the illusion of the theater can be powerful enough to catch up the audience in Joan's enthusiastic belief. The scene concludes on a sublime theatrical underscoring (which certainly defies paraphrase) of the theme:

ARCHBISHOP:
If I were a simple monk, and had not to rule men, I should seek peace for my spirit with Aristotle and Pythagoras rather than with the saints and their miracles.
LA Tremouille:
And who the deuce was Pythagoras?
ARCHBISHOP:
A sage who held that the earth is round, and that it moves around the sun.
LA Tremouille:
What an utter fool! Couldn't he use his eyes?

(p. 79)

SAINT JOAN AS TRAGEDY

Since the opposing forces of church and state do not enter until scene four, the episodic development of Joan's story requires some early indications of the trouble that lies ahead. Otherwise, we would have a play in which the main character's sudden fall comes about either through no fault of her own or through an error of judgment not related to an important flaw in her personality. Shaw prepares us for the defeat of Joan by tracing the development of her character from self-conviction to pride. Joan's extreme belief in herself at the very outset is, of course, a form of pride, but it is balanced by the innocence and humility of a yet unproven country girl. With each success, Joan becomes more confident of herself and her Voices. We cannot, obviously, blame her for this natural reaction to her peculiar situation. However, her increased pride is accompanied by an increasingly blurred vision of what is occurring in the world. She chooses to see all events in terms of her own predicament. After succeeding in her audiences with Robert de Baudricourt and with the courtiers of the Dauphin, she is able to put her case to Charles in such terms as, “Art for or against me?” (p. 86) In other words, she quickly goes a little beyond the original intention of her divine mission by initiating the personal standard of “for me” or “against me,” rather than “for France and God” or “against France and God.”⁸ The spiritual lesson that Joan needs desperately to learn is told to her by Dunois:

I think that God was on your side; for I have not forgotten how the wind changed, and how our hearts changed when you came; and by my faith I shall never deny that it was in your sign that we conquered. But I tell you as a soldier that God is no man's daily drudge, and no maid's either. If you are worthy of it He will sometimes snatch you out of the jaws of death and set you on your feet again; but that is all: once on your feet you must fight with all your might and all your craft. For He has to be fair to your enemy too; don't forget that. Well He set us on our feet through you at Orleans; and the glory of it has carried us through a few good battles here to the coronation. But if we presume on it further, and trust to God to do the work we should do ourselves, we shall be defeated; and serve us right!

(p. 114)

Joan is not completely blinded by her egotism for she is sensitive to the fact that she is not beloved by her countrymen. “I have brought them luck and victory … why do they not love me?” she asks of Dunois. (pp. 108-109) Nevertheless, she makes no attempt to better her relationships with her allies. Joan's trouble is that she cannot hide a somewhat contemptuous attitude toward authority. The Archbishop speaking on religion and Dunois on war can hardly hold her attention. Joan as a rebel against the established order of society appears to be too obviously impatient with men who act from the lessons of their experience (i.e., men who do not act from enthusiasm or inspiration). If she were simply impatient and yet able to control her emotional reactions, perhaps she could have avoided the animosities that spring up around her.

Scene five, the climax, presents the final breach between Joan and her supporters. Toward the beginning of the scene, they are becoming intolerant of her pride. In a short exchange of dialogue among the King, Joan, and the Archbishop, Shaw telescopes the development of Joan's tragedy, once more predicting the course of events:

ARCHBISHOP:
(sternly) Maid: the king addressed himself to me, not to you. You forget yourself. You very often forget yourself.
JOAN:
(unabashed and rather roughly) Then speak you; and tell him that it is not God's will that he should take his hand from the plough.
ARCHBISHOP:
If I am not so glib with the name of God as you are, it is because I interpret His will with the authority of the Church and of my sacred office. When you first came you respected it, and would not have dared to speak as you are now speaking. You came clothed with the virtue of humility; and because God blessed your enterprises accordingly, you have stained yourself with the sin of pride. The old Greek tragedy is rising among us. It is the chastisement of hubris.
CHARLES:
Yes: she thinks she knows better than everyone else.
JOAN:
(distressed, but naively incapable of seeing the effect she is producing) But I do know better than any of you seem to. And I am not proud: I never speak unless I know I am right.

(p. 112)

Partially, we can attribute her plight to her immaturity, but youthful inexperience alone would not completely alienate her supporters. It has been said that the play's theme is “the homelessness of genius,”⁹ but Joan is hardly a genius in the usual sense of the word, unless we allow her a genius for offending people.

She turns next to Charles and demands that he take Compiègne, for his throne is of doubtful value while the English hold French territory. Then Joan presses her attack on Dunois, accusing him of being an ineffective general: “You don't know how to begin a battle; and you don't know how to use your cannons and I do.” (p. 113) Dunois defends himself, arguing as a shrewd and successful military man who is trying to explain a difficult strategic problem to a novice. Joan will not consider his arguments, but instead advances her own Her arrogant remarks against conventional warfare prompt Gilles de Rais's comment, “Not content with being Pope Joan, you must be Caesar and Alexander as well,” and the Archbishop adds sententiously, “Pride will have a fall, Joan.” (p. 115)

Immediately after portraying the height of Joan's folly, Shaw constructs a climax out of the three key reactions to her exhibition of pride. First Dunois, supremely eloquent, turns from her:

And now tell me, all of you, which of you will lift a finger to save Joan once the English have got her? I speak first, for the army. The day after she has been dragged from her horse by a goddam as a Burgundian, and he is not struck dead: the day after she is locked in a dungeon, and the bars and bolts do not fly open at the touch of St. Peter's angel: the day when the enemy finds out that she is vulnerable as I am and not a bit invincible, she will not be worth the life of a single soldier to us; and I will not risk that life, much as I cherish her as a companion-in-arms.

(p. 116)

Then Charles, pleading poverty, admits that he too will not try to save her once she is captured. Joan, as a last resort, puts her future safety in the hands of the Archbishop. He is powerless to oppose the Bishop of Beauvais, but he cannot even be in sympathy with the Maid while she remains proud and, to his way of thinking, disobedient. As soon as he pronounces his decision, he hardens his heart against her. Now she is alone. Her capture, her imprisonment, her eventual solitary position, and her burning have all been predicted. We are not to be surprised by the development of the future events, and we know that once she determines on her course, friendless and impotent, she will be destroyed. Joan goes from them recognizing her uniqueness, the superiority of her personal insight, which, since it is mystical, cannot be fully appreciated by others.

The next scene, the trial of Joan, takes place almost two years after the climax. The epic structure of Saint Joan permits the author a wide choice of scenes to include, and significantly enough, Shaw omits Joan's capture and imprisonment. The omission is certainly justified by the structure which has already predicted the facts of her downfall. By the time of the trial, we are convinced that Joan cannot be saved. Since she has never before shown much respect for the opinions of intellectuals, we do not expect her to agree with the brilliant logicians, Cauchon and the Inquisitor. The outcome of this scene, too, has been well prepared for. When Joan momentarily loses faith in herself and recants, we have what at first appears to be an anti-climax. However, this reversal of plot is itself quickly reversed, and the play proceeds according to the plan of Joan's opponents.

Because the dialectical arguments of the play seem to be so well balanced between the Maid and her persecutors, the trial situation has sometimes been felt to be an inextricable problem.¹⁰ Both sides seem to be right. Of course, an audience is predisposed to favor the historic Joan, and surely the great actresses from Sybil Thorndike to Siobhan McKenna who have played her are likely to influence the audience further. Nevertheless, the fact is that Shaw does strengthen the case for the Church, and not merely for the sake of fairness, either. It is not enough that both sides are right and self-justified from their own points of view. If it were enough, then we would indeed have an unsolvable problem, and all that we would be left with at the end of the play would be a depressing sense of the paradoxical in life. But Shaw is mainly aiming at the narrowmindedness of both sides. Joan, the individualist, the rebel against Established Order, sees nothing significant in the orderly way in which some institutions of society function; instead she sees only the spiritual movement of her own life. The Church and the aristocracy, representing the intellectual segments of society, no longer really understand the religious spirit, their business is only with the orderly institutions of this world. Would the clash between the inspired idealist and the intelligent defenders of an institution be unavoidable if both a Joan and a Cauchon had an enlarged world-view which took in opinions other than their own? The failing seems to be in human nature more than in situation, and Shaw wrote an epilogue to point up these human failings.

THE EPILOGUE TO SAINT JOAN

One of the critical problems associated with the play concerns the necessity for the epilogue. William Irvine is representative of a large segment of critical opinion in denouncing the epilogue, which he calls “a vulgarization and a lengthy elucidation of the obvious.”¹¹ Shaw's preface contains a feeble three-sentence defense of the epilogue:

As to the epilogue, I could hardly be expected to stultify myself by implying that Joan's history in the world ended unhappily with her execution, instead of beginning there. It was necessary by hook or crook to shew the canonized Joan as well as the incinerated one; for many a woman has got herself burnt by carelessly whisking a muslin skirt into the drawing room fireplace, but getting canonized is a different matter, and a more important one. So I am afraid the epilogue must stand.

(pp. 52-53)

Actually, the structure of the play demands an epilogue or the meaning as well as the story would be incomplete. We must remember that Saint Joan is not merely the tragedy of the main character. It is also the story (perhaps equally tragic) of her opposition. Joan herself understands this, and in the last scene, bemoans our civilization for not welcoming saints. Therefore, it becomes structurally necessary for Shaw to give us an epilogue that will demonstrate how both sides suffered and continue to suffer from an inability to comprehend more than their own level of existence. The inquisition scene brought out Joan's failure to understand the position into which she had forced the Church. Another scene is needed to equalize the criticism which the play directs toward all the characters. After Joan has been canonized and has received the praises of such as Cauchon, Dunois, Warwick, de Stogumber, Charles, and the Inquisitor, all the characters who formerly opposed or deserted her turn in horror from the thought that Joan might return to the world. Their previous errors, pointed out to them and admitted by them, still do not increase their ability to realize another kind of existence. Where would they place Joan? She has not changed; there is no place for her in their society.

In a practical sense, these men are right once more to deny Joan (who has not changed either). Yet the moral is clear enough. By having an inadequate understanding, they are condemning themselves, and their souls are in jeopardy. Nonetheless, when Joan cries, “O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?” (p. 163), she has only expressed half of the problem. A more cynical playwright than Shaw might have added another speech to the ending, one spoken in unison by Cauchon and Warwick: “O God, when will Thy saints be ready to accept Thy less understanding people?” To avoid such tragic situations as that of Saint Joan, perhaps the future saints, as well as the apologists for Established Order, must be more understanding.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the problem of Christian tragedy in regard to Saint Joan, see Louis L. Martz, “The Saint as Tragic Hero: Saint Joan and Murder in the Cathedral,” Tragic Themes in Western Literature, ed. Cleanth Brooks (New Haven, 1955), pp. 150-177.

2. e.g., Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, and Brecht's Mother Courage.

3. Saint Joan: A Chronicle, and The Apple Cart: A Political Extravaganza (London, 1953), p. 163. All subsequent references to the play are incorporated in the text.

4. e.g., see the contention of H. Lüdeke, “Some Remarks on Shaw's History Plays,” English Studies, XXXVI (October, 1955), p. 245.

5. Only in Shaw's earliest and, curiously, last plays do we find “victims of circumstances” such as Trench and Mrs. Warren and some characters in The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles.

6. Alick West, George Bernard Shaw: “A Good Man Fallen Among Fabians” (New York, 1950), p. 164; Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw (Norfolk, 1957), p. 171.

7. It has been frequently noted that this scene is one of the great moments in epic drama, and Shaw is at his best in drawing the forces together. To do this, he makes use of what critics have called a “symphonic structure.” Cf. William Irvine, The Universe of G. B. S. (New York, 1949), p. 324; Arthur Mizener, “Poetic Drama and the Well-made Play,” English Institute Essays, 1949 (New York, 1950), pp. 47-48; E. J. West, “Saint Joan: A Modern Classic Reconsidered,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, XL (October, 1954), p. 257.

8. Her first attempt to rally public support right after winning over Charles is “Who is for God and his Maid?” (p. 86).

9. Eric Bentley, The Playwright as Thinker (New York, 1955), p. 119.

10. e.g., Eric Bentley, in Bernard Shaw, p. 169, refers to the play as the only one “in which Shaw essays what … he called a tragic conflict—that is, an irreconcilable conflict.” I think that historically, from Aristotle to Shaw, the words “tragic” and “irreconcilable” have been understood more as antonyms than as synonyms.

11. Op. cit., p. 325. Cf. St. John Ervine, Bernard Shaw, His Life, Work and Friends (New York, 1956), p. 498; Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century (New York, 1956), p. 600.