Page 278 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes • In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They
settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw’s Corner.
• Influenced by his reading, he became a dedicated Socialist and a charter member of the Fabian
Society, a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote the gradual spread of
socialism by peaceful means.
• In 1906 the Shaws moved into a house, now called Shaw’s Corner, in Ayot St. Lawrence, a
small village in Hertfordshire, England; it was to be their home for the remainder of their
lives, although they also maintained a residence at 29 Fitzroy Square in London.
• Shaw’s plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established
playwright.
• Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling
from a ladder.
• 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.
• The play solidified Shaw’s reputation as a major playwright and helped win him the Nobel
Prize in 1925.
• 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.
• There are no villains in the play. Crime, like disease, is not interesting: it is something to be
done away with by general consent, and that is all 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.
• Joan, a teenage country girl, shows up at the castle of Vaucouleurs. She’s determined to kick
the English out of France and to crown the Dauphin, Charles, as King. Joan has heard voices
from God telling her that this is her destiny.
• Joan and company have been busy little bees. They’ve liberated Orleans, won a bunch of
other battles, and have just crowned Charles as King in Rheims Cathedral. Joan, however, is
unsatisfied.
• Twenty-five years later King Charles has a dream, in which Joan and good number of the
other characters show up to have a chat in his royal bedroom. We learn the fate of everybody
and, more importantly, we learn of Joan’s legacy.
• At the end of the play, Joan is left alone in a pool of light. She asks God when the world will be
ready to accept saints like her.

22.4 Keywords

Playwright : A person who writes plays. Or The texts of plays that can be read, as distinct from
being seen and heard in performance.
Novelist : A person who writes novels.
Class privilege : A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed
by an individual, class, or caste. Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a
prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others.
Or protection from being sued for libel or slander for making otherwise actionable
statements in a context or forum where open and candid expression is deemed
desirable for reasons of public policy.
Fabian Society : The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance
the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than

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