Saint Joan – 4/5
I don’t know what I actually know about Joan of Arc, and almost all my references points are either the not very good Luc Besson movie “The Messenger” with Mila Jovavich which was interesting in a lot of ways but a failure in many others, from a Simpsons episode, and of course, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I get the impression that there was a kind of cult of Joan throughout the 19th century (where both George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain took a lot of interest in her) and that perhaps her canonization (the event that precedes this play in 1924). If it seems weird that Shaw was still alive in 1924, well, he lived until 1950. Looking over his bibliography this seems to be his last significant work at almost 70.
The play is relatively straight forward and deals with many of the well known scenes from Joan’s life. I don’t know if these are more or less canon scenes, or if this play helped create that canon. But we get the first interaction with Joan and the church, the meeting of the Dauphin and his attempt to test her, the trial, the execution, the fallout, and then the canonization almost 500 years later. What permeates most of these scenes is less about Joan and faith but more about the use of Joan as a political tool against not only the English, but against the figures in France at the time who were opposed to the war itself.
Shaw of course was suspect of organized religion, but he was more fluid in his beliefs in general. The focus of this play is to seek rational explanation for various of the miracles.
And of course, now I know what Joan of Arc felt.