Saint Joan

Summary

Saint Joan is Shaw's chronicle play in six scenes and an epilogue about Joan of Arc, the peasant girl from Domrémy who led the French against the English in the Hundred Years' War. In Scene I, set in 1429 at the castle of Vaucouleurs, the blustering squire Robert de Baudricourt is talked by Joan, and by his own officer Poulengey, into giving her a horse and an escort to the Dauphin; when she leaves, the hens that had stopped laying begin again. In Scene II, at Chinon, the courtiers try to fool her by putting Gilles de Rais in the Dauphin's place, but she picks out the timid, mocking Charles and fires him with the will to fight. Scene III shows Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, waiting on the Loire for a west wind; Joan arrives, the wind changes, and the relief of Orleans begins. Scene IV, the heart of Shaw's argument, takes place in the English camp: the Earl of Warwick, his hot-tempered chaplain John de Stogumber and Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, discuss what Joan means. Warwick fears she will make kings answerable to no peers, which he names Protestantism; Cauchon fears she sets private revelation above the Church and her people above Christendom, which Warwick names Nationalism. Scene V, in Rheims cathedral after Charles's coronation, finds Joan isolated: the Archbishop, the king, Dunois and the court refuse to support her plan to take Paris, and she goes out alone, trusting God. Scene VI is her trial at Rouen on 30 May 1431. Shaw gives the Inquisitor a long, serious speech on how heresy grows from the piety of good people, and shows Cauchon and the Inquisitor genuinely trying to save her soul against English impatience. Frightened by the fire, Joan signs a recantation; but when she hears she will be imprisoned for life she tears it up, declares her voices right, and is burned. Stogumber returns broken by what he has seen, and the executioner reports that her heart would not burn. In the Epilogue, set in 1456 after the rehabilitation trial, Joan appears to the sleeping King Charles, and Cauchon, Dunois, Stogumber, an English soldier who once gave her a cross of sticks, and others gather; a gentleman from 1920 announces her canonization. All kneel to praise her, yet when she offers to return to life each makes an excuse and leaves, and she ends asking how long it will be before the earth is ready to receive God's saints. The library text, from the 1926 Brentano's printing, includes Shaw's long preface on Joan's genius, her voices, the fairness of her trial, toleration and the stage.

Plot or Argument

• Preface

  Shaw argues that Joan was a sane, practical genius and a forerunner of Protestantism and nationalism, that her voices were the form her own insight took, that her trial was fairer than its reputation, and that the play must show her judges as sincere men rather than villains.

• Scene I: Vaucouleurs

  Joan persuades Robert de Baudricourt to send her to the Dauphin with Poulengey and Jack (Jean de Metz); the hens resume laying.

• Scene II: Chinon

  Joan sees through the court's trick with Gilles de Rais, finds the Dauphin, and in private gives him the courage to give her command of the army.

• Scene III: Orleans

  On the Loire Dunois waits for a favourable wind; when Joan comes the wind turns and he follows her to the assault.

• Scene IV: The English tent

  Warwick, Cauchon and Stogumber debate Joan's danger to feudal order and to the Church, naming the coming forces Protestantism and Nationalism and agreeing she must be tried.

• Scene V: Rheims cathedral

  After the coronation the king, the Archbishop and Dunois refuse to back her further, warning that she will be left to the fire if taken; she replies that God is alone and goes out to the people.

• Scene VI: The trial at Rouen

  The Inquisitor explains the gravity of heresy; Joan recants, then tears up the recantation when sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and is burned; Stogumber and the executioner report the end.

• Epilogue: 1456 and 1920

  Joan visits King Charles in a dream after her rehabilitation; her judges and friends reappear, a twentieth-century envoy announces her canonization, and all praise her but none wants her back.

Characters

• Joan, the Maid

  A forthright peasant girl of about seventeen who hears the voices of Saints Catherine, Margaret and Michael and leads France to victory.

• Robert de Baudricourt, squire of Vaucouleurs

  A loud, indecisive captain who first scorns Joan and then sends her to court.

• Charles, the Dauphin, heir and later King Charles VII

  A weak, clever, frightened prince whom Joan makes king and then fails to defend.

• Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, French commander

  A practical soldier who becomes Joan's comrade but warns her that God fights for the big battalions.

• Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, English nobleman

  A cool, courteous politician who wants Joan dead for the sake of the feudal order.

• Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais

  Joan's judge, who sincerely seeks to save her soul and defends the Church's authority against private revelation.

• The Inquisitor, Brother John Lemaitre, Dominican

  A mild, grave judge who explains why heresy must be stopped even in pious beginnings.

• John de Stogumber, Warwick's chaplain

  A fiery English patriot who demands Joan's burning and is shattered when he sees it.

• Brother Martin Ladvenu, young Dominican

  Pleads with Joan to submit and holds up a cross for her at the stake.

• The Archbishop of Rheims, churchman and courtier

  Sees Joan's victories as miracles in the sense of events that create faith, then turns against her pride.

• Gilles de Rais, French nobleman

  The bluebearded courtier who poses as the Dauphin to test Joan.

• An English soldier, visitor from hell in the Epilogue

  Gave Joan a cross of two sticks at the stake and is let out of hell one day a year for it.

Lessons

• Sincere judges, tragic verdict

  Shaw refuses to make Joan's judges villains. Cauchon and the Inquisitor believe they are saving her soul and protecting Christendom, and the Inquisitor's speech gives the strongest case for their duty. The tragedy is that good men acting on serious principles burn a saint.

  • What does the Inquisitor fear will happen if heresy is not stopped in its pious beginnings?
  • Why does Cauchon try so hard to make Joan recant?
  • Does an unjust verdict weigh more heavily when it is given by bad men or by good ones?

• The private conscience and the public authority

  Joan obeys her voices before the Church, and her king and peers alike before her own judgment. Warwick and Cauchon see in this the coming conflicts of Protestantism and nationalism, and the play lets each side argue in its own terms.

  • How does Joan answer when asked to submit her revelations to the Church Militant?
  • Why do Warwick and Cauchon each fear Joan for a different reason?
  • When should a person trust conscience over a lawful authority?

• Alone with God

  In Rheims cathedral, abandoned by king and comrades, Joan answers that France is alone and God is alone, and that she will find strength in that loneliness. Her courage does not depend on others' approval.

  • Why do the king, the Archbishop and Dunois withdraw their support?
  • How does Joan turn the threat of being alone into a source of strength?

• Praising saints and receiving them

  In the Epilogue everyone honours Joan once she is safely canonized, but no one wants her alive again. Shaw asks whether people honour holiness more easily in the past than in their own day.

  • Why does each figure in the Epilogue leave when Joan offers to return?
  • What does Joan's last question ask of the audience?
  • Are there ways in which we welcome holiness only at a distance?

Context

Joan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) left Domrémy in 1429, convinced Charles the Dauphin of her mission, helped raise the siege of Orleans in May 1429 and brought Charles to his coronation at Rheims that July. Captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne in 1430 and handed to the English, she was tried at Rouen by a church court under Bishop Pierre Cauchon with the vice-inquisitor Jean Lemaitre, abjured on 24 May 1431, resumed men's clothing, was judged relapsed and was burned on 30 May. A papally authorised retrial annulled the verdict in 1456. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized by Pope Benedict XV on 16 May 1920, three years before Shaw wrote the play.

Composition

Shaw wrote Saint Joan in 1923, drawing heavily on the published records of the trial and rehabilitation, which had become available in Jules Quicherat's edition and in English translation. The Theatre Guild gave the first performance at the Garrick Theatre, New York, on 28 December 1923; the London premiere followed on 26 March 1924 with Sybil Thorndike as Joan. The play and preface were published in 1924; the library text is a 1926 Brentano's printing.

Reception

Saint Joan was an immediate success and is often counted Shaw's greatest play; it contributed to the Nobel Prize awarded to him for 1925. Catholic and Protestant readers have both responded to it: some admired its fairness to the medieval Church, others questioned its picture of Joan as a proto-Protestant. It has been revived often and filmed in 1957 with a screenplay by Graham Greene.

Comparisons

• the-trial-of-joan-of-arc

  The trial records give Joan's own answers to her judges, from which Shaw took many of the play's lines and situations.

• the-last-days-of-socrates

  Shaw's preface pairs Joan with Socrates: each was tried by sincere fellow-citizens for following an inner voice and chose death over silence.

• the-brothers-karamazov

  Ivan's Grand Inquisitor and Shaw's Inquisitor both argue that the Church must restrain free spirits for the good of ordinary souls, but Shaw's judge is merciful in intention and Dostoevsky's is a cynic.

• henry-v

  Shakespeare dramatises the English victory at Agincourt in 1415; Shaw shows the same war fourteen years later from the French side, as Joan turns the tide.

• the-cost-of-discipleship

  Bonhoeffer's call to costly obedience, written before his own imprisonment, illuminates Joan's refusal to buy her life with a recantation.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The comic signs at the start and end of Scene I (the hens) and at the Loire in Scene III (the wind), and what each suggests about Joan.
• How Warwick and Cauchon in Scene IV reach the names Protestantism and Nationalism from opposite concerns.
• Joan's speech in Rheims cathedral when every ally deserts her.
• The Inquisitor's long speech in Scene VI, and why Shaw gives it so much space.
• Who leaves the stage, and with what excuse, at the end of the Epilogue.

Key terms and names

The Dauphin

The title of the heir to the French throne; Charles is uncrowned until Joan brings him to Rheims.

Church Militant

The Church on earth, distinct from the Church Triumphant in heaven; Joan's judges ask her to submit her revelations to it.

Abjuration

A formal renunciation of heresy; Joan signs one in Scene VI and then withdraws it.

Relapsed heretic

One who returns to heresy after abjuring; in canon law of the time such a person was handed to the secular power for execution.

Secular arm

The civil authority, here the English, to whom the church court handed Joan for punishment.

Rehabilitation

The retrial of 1456 that annulled Joan's condemnation, the occasion of the Epilogue.

Canonization

The Church's formal declaration of sainthood, granted to Joan in 1920 and announced in the Epilogue.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Joan recognise the Dauphin at Chinon, and how does she persuade him to act?
2. Comprehension Why does Joan sign the recantation, and why does she tear it up?
3. Comprehension What news does the gentleman from 1920 bring in the Epilogue?
4. Interpretation Why does Shaw make Cauchon and the Inquisitor sincere and even merciful rather than wicked?
5. Interpretation Is Joan's answer to Robert, that God's messages come through the imagination, a defence of her voices or a concession?
6. Interpretation What does De Stogumber's change after the burning show about the difference between ideas and seeing their consequences?
7. Big Question When conscience and lawful authority conflict, how can a person know which to obey?
8. Big Question Why are saints often honoured after death by those who would resist them in life?

Faith Connections

• Revelation 6:9-10 (Scripture)

  The souls of the martyrs cry, How long, O Lord? Joan's closing prayer takes up their words.

• Acts 5:29 (Scripture)

  Peter and the apostles answer the council that they must obey God rather than men. Joan's judges and Joan both claim to obey God, which is the heart of the conflict.

• Matthew 23:29-31 (Scripture)

  Jesus rebukes those who build the tombs of the prophets their fathers killed. The Epilogue, where all praise the canonized Joan and none wants her back, dramatises this saying.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, a. 5 (Great Conversation)

  Aquinas teaches that an erring conscience binds, so that acting against conscience is always wrong. The play sets Joan's conscience against the Church's judgment and leaves the tension for the audience.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Joan's genius and her faith make her obey God before every human authority. The Church fears private revelation and the nobility fears loyalty to king and nation over peers, and both act in good faith to stop her. Therefore a saint can be condemned by sincere and lawful men, and the world will go on honouring saints only after it has destroyed them.

Rhetorical device: epistrophe and climax. In Scene V Joan repeats alone at the end of successive clauses, France is alone, God is alone, building to her resolve to dare until she dies.

Debate: Resolved: that Joan's judges acted justly according to the law and beliefs of their time.

Memory Work

France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God?

O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?

Writing Prompts

Essay: Shaw says his play is a tragedy, not a melodrama, because there are no villains. Argue whether the Inquisitor, Cauchon and Warwick are truly not villains, using their speeches in Scenes IV and VI.

Comparison with The Trial of Joan of Arc: Compare one of Joan's answers in the trial records with Shaw's version of the same exchange. What did Shaw keep, change or add, and why?

Medical Lens

Shaw's preface is a notable early twentieth-century layman's argument about religious voices and sanity. He rejects the view that Joan was mad, argues that vivid imaginations can present their own insights as heard voices and seen figures, calls her a Galtonic visualizer after Francis Galton's studies of mental imagery, and contrasts her with criminal patients who obey commanding voices. He also takes up the charge that she was suicidal, citing her leap from the tower at Beaurevoir, and answers it by comparing her with soldiers who prefer death to captivity. In the play itself Robert de Baudricourt's objection that the voices come from her imagination is turned by Joan into her own account of revelation. De Stogumber's collapse after witnessing the burning, and his later wandering wits in the Epilogue, give a short study of horror and remorse. These are Shaw's interpretations and dramatic choices; retrospective diagnoses of the historical Joan remain contested and are not settled by the play.

• Preface, Joan's Voices and Visions; Joan a Galtonic Visualizer

  Shaw argues that Joan's voices were the form her own reasoning took and distinguishes her from patients who act on commanding voices.

  Altered States Madness Psychosis
• Preface, Was Joan Suicidal?

  The Beaurevoir leap and the charge of a suicidal tendency, answered by comparison with soldiers' daring.

  Suicide
• Scene I

  Robert says her voices come from her imagination; Joan replies that this is how God's messages come.

  Altered States
• Scene IV

  De Stogumber tells how at Orleans an English arrow pierced Joan's throat and she wept with the pain yet fought on all day.

  WAR Wounds
• Scene VI (close)

  De Stogumber returns from the burning in a state of breakdown and the executioner reports that her heart would not burn.

  Trauma Shell Shock Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Stage Scene IV as a three-way debate: one group argues Warwick's case, one Cauchon's, one Stogumber's, each using only reasons given in the scene.

• Essay

  Shaw claims in his preface that Joan's trial was fairer than its reputation. Using Scene VI and the trial records, argue whether the play persuades you.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Brother Martin Ladvenu and the Inquisitor on the night after the burning.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of the English soldier who tied two sticks into a cross for Joan, up to the day he is let out of hell.

Further Reading

• Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words, Willard Trask (compiler and translator)

• Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Mark Twain

• Joan of Arc: Her Story, Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin

• George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton

• Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd