George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan was first produced in New York Metropolis in 1923 and in London in 1924. Shaw printed it with an extended Preface in 1924. When phrase got here out that Shaw, who was often known as an irreverent jokester, was writing a few Christian saint and martyr, there have been fears that he wouldn’t give you the chance to produce one thing applicable, however the early reception of the play was usually favorable, though some commentators criticized him for historic inaccuracy and for being too talky or comedian. Through the years, the play, a uncommon tragic work in his usually comedian oeuvre, has been seen as one in every of his biggest and most necessary.
It has been hailed as being intellectually thrilling and praised for coping with necessary themes, equivalent to nationalism, struggle, and the relation of the person to society. The play solidified Shaw’s repute as a significant playwright and helped win him the Nobel Prize in 1925. Being no less than partly a tragedy, although with comedian moments, Saint Joan is a part of a shift in Shaw’s work from his earlier optimistic comedies to a extra melancholy angle, maybe partly the results of his response to World Warfare I.
Though he had been fascinated by Joan of Arc as early as 1913, Shaw didn’t really start writing the play till 1923, three years after Joan’s canonization. He consulted many earlier works on Joan, together with the transcripts of her trial. In truth, he modestly mentioned that he had accomplished little greater than reproduce Joan’s personal phrases as recorded within the transcripts; nonetheless, that assertion is unfair to Shaw, who left a particular Shavian contact on the story of the martyred saint.

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