Saint Joan (play)

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Sybil Thorndike as Joan.
Sybil Thorndike as Joan.

Saint Joan is a 1923 play by Irishman George Bernard Shaw written shortly after the Roman Catholic Church canonized Joan of Arc. It is a dramatization based on what is known of her life and on the substantial records of her trial. It premiered on Broadway in 1923 by the Theatre Guild with Winifred Lenihan as Joan. Its London premiere starred Shaw's friend Sybil Thorndike, the actress for whom he had written the part. Shaw's personal reputation following the Great War was at a low ebb, and it is thought that he wanted to first test the play away from England. Saint Joan is often credited for Shaw's 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, but in actuality he refused the award.

Caught between the forces of the Church and the Law, Joan is the personification of the tragic heroine and the part is considered by actresses to be one of the most challenging of roles to interpret (see below). It is sometimes played by small feminine women and sometimes by tall strong women. Because of the challenges of the role, it is often played by very experienced actresses who are much older than the age of the character. As an interesting exception, for the movie version Joan was played by Jean Seberg who actually was 19 at the time of filming and who, according to the views of many critics, was not very good, due to her lack of dramatic experience.

The actual trial and burning of Joan in 1431 at the age of 19 was recorded in great detail by reporters of the day. Shaw studied the transcripts, decided that the concerned people acted in good faith according to their beliefs, and took a neutral point of view. He wrote in his long preface that "There are no villains in the piece. Crime, like disease, is not interesting: it is something to be done away with by general consent, and that is all [there is] about it. It is what men do at their best, with good intentions, and what normal men and women find that they must and will do in spite of their intentions, that really concern us."

The play takes few liberties with the factual record of her short life. It begins with her first approaching a lowly soldier about the voices she hears. She then visits to the Dauphin to persuade him that she will help him become a true king by rallying the troops to drive out the English occupiers and restore France. Joan succeeds in all this through her excellent powers of negotiation. After she does this, she is betrayed and captured at the siege of Compiègne. After her trial the play draws to a close with a dream sequence in which Joan visits the king along with other characters from the play and a man from the future who tells of Joan's canonization. The plotting of the story is straightforward, and Shaw allows himself to spin the ending and amuse himself (and his audience) with a coda to the play showing Joan in heaven, joking with her old friends and enemies, and looking forward to her rehabilitation by the Church nearly 500 years later. Some productions choose not to use this epilogue. It is in the to and fro thrill of words used in the art of debate that elevates the play, and is the mainstay of most of Shaw's plays.

There has been controversy over Shaw's approach, which was consistent with his anti-war speeches at the time of the First World War, a conflict in which he stated that Great Britain and its Allies were equally culpable with the Germans, and argued for negotiation and peace (which damned him in the eyes of many).

Shaw was a famous pacifist and his interpretation of the events in Joan's life and times has upset historians many of whom regard the play as highly inaccurate, especially in its depiction of medieval society. Shaw states that the characterization of Joan by most writers is "romanticized" to make her accusers come off as completely unscrupulous and villainous. These same unnamed writers claim that Shaw attempts to wrongly rehabilitate Cauchon, the powerful Bishop of Beauvais, and the Inquisitor, who were most instrumental in sending Joan to the stake. It is worth noting that Shaw takes no position on whether the sentence was just or otherwise. He does however dabble in psychological insight when he claims that Joan wore male clothing as a reflection of personal preference rather than out of necessity. Certainly the wearing of armor was never a female pursuit. The opposing point is made that Joan wore male clothes to protect herself from rape, especially towards the end of her life in the dungeon.

Modern historians have the advantage of recent translations into English of voluminous French transcripts, and have concluded that Joan was in fact "beautiful and shapely".

Members of the world of literature, and audiences, do appreciate, however, that Shaw's creation is one of the greatest plays in the English language. Shaw's last words for Joan, before she was taken by her jailers to the stake, are:

JOAN: "You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again climb the hills. To make me breathe foul damp darkness, without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil."'

Contents

[edit] Notable Joans and Stage Productions

Other notable Joans include Judi Dench, Zoe Caldwell, Elisabeth Bergner, Constance Cummings, Ann Casson[citation needed], Roberta Maxwell, Barbara Jefford[citation needed], Pat Galloway[citation needed], Sarah Miles, Ellen Geer, Jane Alexander, Lee Grant, Janet Suzman, and Eileen Atkins.

[edit] References

  • Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses by Regine Pernoud
  • Joan of Arc: Her Story by Regine Pernoud
  • Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words by Willard Trask
  • Joan of Arc: Playing Joan: Actresses on the Challenge of Shaw's Saint Joan by Holly Hill

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


The Plays of George Bernard Shaw
Plays Unpleasant : The Philanderer, Mrs Warren's Profession, Widowers' Houses
Plays Pleasant : Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell
Three Plays for Puritans : Caesar and Cleopatra, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The Devil's Disciple
Back to Methuselah, a cycle of 5 plays : In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920
Other Plays : Androcles and the Lion, The Apple Cart, The Doctor's Dilemma, Fanny's First Play, Geneva, Heartbreak House, John Bull's Other Island, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Misalliance, Pygmalion, Saint Joan
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