Saint Joan (play)

Saint Joan
Saint Joan
	Constable & Co., Ltd. cover, 1924
Written by	George Bernard Shaw
Date premiered	28 December 1923
Place premiered	Garrick Theatre; Manhattan, New York City
Original language	English
Genre	Drama
Setting	15th century France

Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw about 15th-century French military figure Joan of Arc. Premiering in 1923, three years after her canonization by the Roman Catholic Church, the play reflects Shaw's belief that the people involved in Joan's trial acted according to what they thought was right. He wrote in his preface to the play:

There are no villains in the piece. Crime, like disease, is not interesting: it is something to be done away with by general consent, and that is all [there is] 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.

Michael Holroyd has characterised the play as "a tragedy without villains" and also as Shaw's "only tragedy".^[1] John Fielden has discussed further the appropriateness of characterising Saint Joan as a tragedy.^[2]

The text of the published play includes a long Preface by Shaw.

^ Holroyd, Michael (14 July 2007). "A tragedy without villains". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 January 2009.
^ Fielden, John (July 1957). "Shaw's Saint Joan as Tragedy". Twentieth-Century Literature. 3 (2). Hofstra University: 59–67. doi:10.2307/441003. JSTOR 441003.

[1] Holroyd, Michael (14 July 2007). "A tragedy without villains". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 January 2009.

[2] Fielden, John (July 1957). "Shaw's Saint Joan as Tragedy". Twentieth-Century Literature. 3 (2). Hofstra University: 59–67. doi:10.2307/441003. JSTOR 441003.

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