* By Wade Curry
On February 5, 2021, the RVA (Richmond) Classics Book Club met via Zoom to discuss Shaw’s, Saint Joan. This play apparently convinced the Nobel committee to confer the Nobel Prize for Literature on him. Shaw (1856-1950) had been the most popular living playwright for about 30 years, but for his comedies, which some valued less highly.
Shaw grew up in poverty in Dublin, then found a very unequal society when he migrated to London. The industrial revolution had devalued skilled labor and worsened working conditions. Shaw became an ardent socialist and remained one. Why didn’t work benefit the worker? And what did nobles contribute? Why should a country have an empire? These views, sometimes masked, appear repeatedly in Shaw’s plays. He also skewers British rigidity and pomposity, sometimes with a witty line and sometimes with witless but wealthy characters. Shaw’s writing got off to a rocky start. His first 13 works, five novels and eight plays, had been failures. Somewhat improbably, his next 42 plays were produced, and most of them were hits. He wrote his most famous play, Pygmalion, in 1917. It was adapted seven years after Shaw’s death into the Lerner and Lowe Tony Award-winning play, My Fair Lady in 1957, and the movie version of it won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1964.
Saint Joan opens in 1429, the 92nd year of the Hundred Years War. King Henry V had won a surprising victory in 1415 at Agincourt, then ruthlessly murdered all the French prisoners. For the next five years, he pursued a scorched-earth campaign, finally taking Paris in 1420. The French ostensibly were governed by Charles VI, known after his death as Charles the Mad, a man who thought he was made of glass and on most days did not know that he was king. Charles signed a treaty making Henry his successor, and Henry married Charles’ daughter, Catherine. In 1422, Henry—although young and vigorous—died of heatstroke. Two months later, Charles also died, the treaty became invalid, and the war resumed. For the seven years prior to the play, France had no king, while the king of England was a small child. In 1429, France controlled no major city except Orleans, which was under siege. Some of its nobles, led by the Duke of Burgundy, fought on the side of the English. France’s situation was desperate.
We first see Joan, an illiterate farm girl of 17, as she convinces her squire to permit her to visit Charles’ oldest son, the Dauphin. Joan is serious and winning but why should anyone take seriously someone who receives divine instructions from voices of saints? Is she sane, as she appears to be as crazy as King Charles? And if the voices are real, why would the saints empower an illiterate, teenage girl? Several characters say, “There’s something about her” and they seem readier to follow her than we might expect. Our group decided that the “something” was probably the strength of her belief, which appears to be the most important leadership quality she had. Belief and self-confidence were in short supply in the French camp, whose territory was reduced to a few square miles surrounding the town of Chinon.
Joan has unshakable belief rather than brilliant insight…
Shaw’s long preface explores the leadership issue. We naively expect inferior people to select superior leaders; instead they often select either charlatans or leaders who have the same flaws that they do. Once in a while, there is a genius who finds and pursues the simple and direct path to success. Joan has unshakable belief rather than brilliant insight; luckily for the French, her voices seem usually to advise bold but reasonable tactics. They follow her because she seems to be an angel from God, not because they expect military greatness. As Dunois says, “Joan, I greet you as a saint, not as a soldier.”
Why is Joan a threat to the church? The Archbishop says that Joan is in love with religion. Apparently, that is all right so long as Joan’s practice of religion is completely under church control. But once people find a more direct communication with the divine, they become dangerous heretics, protestants bent on destroying the church. Heresy is a strange concept to us, who live in a multi-cultural country in which each religion has sects that differ widely. But Shaw does not limit his criticism of intolerance to the church. Society, also, he says, is based on intolerance (caste systems, customs no longer relevant or useful but still compulsory), but society can be improved only when it is tolerant and flexible. Society’s intolerance is compounded when it is adopted by the church.
Why, for example, is it unforgivable that Joan wears soldier’s clothing, one of two charges at her heresy trial? Surely, her clothing is more socially objectionable than a cause for ex-communication and death. Why is Joan a threat to the nobility? Her commitment to the king and country disturbs the power balance. The nobles wanted the king to be first among equals (a small number of equals with autonomy), not a formidable ruler. Joan’s nationalism seemed to be a forerunner to an alliance between the king and the common people. What role would remain for nobles?
Finally, Shaw does not let us escape either. If Joan appeared among us, would we tolerate her arrogance, her criticism, her insistence that we reject our reason and accept the commands of her voices from God? Joan ends the epilogue with, “O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?” This is a poignant question whether addressed to God or to us. Are we too ready to dismiss the unfamiliar and improbable but true? How many of our views only seem to be based on science and reason but are really a product of intolerance, lack of imagination, or too hasty generalization?
Saint Joan Cover Image from www.religiousicons.com
George Bernard Shaw Image from www.Wikipedia.com
*Wade Curry is Dean Emeritus of the College of New Jersey, where he also taught theatre and English courses. Wade also served for 10 years as the national director of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program.
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