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 dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts and decided that the concerned people acted in good faith according to their beliefs. He wrote in his preface to the play
Chapter 1 JOAN THE ORIGINAL AND PRESUMPTUOUS
Preface
Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professed and most pious Catholic, and the projector of a Crusade against the Husites, she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was also one of the first apostles of Nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare as distinguished from the sporting ransom-gambling chivalry of her time. She was the pioneer of rational dressing for women, and, like Queen Christina of Sweden two centuries later, to say nothing of Catalina de Erauso and innumerable obscure heroines who have disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers and sailors, she refused to accept the specific woman's lot, and dressed and fought and lived as men did.
As she contrived to assert herself in all these ways with such force that she was famous throughout western Europe before she was out of her teens (indeed she never got out of them), it is hardly surprising that she was judicially burnt, ostensibly for a number of capital crimes which we no longer punish as such, but essentially for what we call unwomanly and insufferable presumption. At eighteen Joan's pretensions were beyond those of the proudest Pope or the haughtiest emperor. She claimed to be the ambassador and plenipotentiary of God, and to be, in effect, a member of the Church Triumphant whilst still in the flesh on earth. She patronized her own king, and summoned the English king to repentance and obedience to her commands. She lectured, talked down, and overruled statesmen and prelates. She pooh-poohed the plans of generals, leading their troops to victory on plans of her own. She had an unbounded and quite unconcealed contempt for official opinion, judgment, and authority, and for War Office tactics and strategy. Had she been a sage and monarch in whom the most venerable hierarchy and the most illustrious dynasty converged, her pretensions and proceedings would have been as trying to the official mind as the pretensions of Caesar were to Cassius. As her actual condition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about her. One was that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable.
Chapter 1 JOAN THE ORIGINAL AND PRESUMPTUOUS
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Chapter 2 JOAN AND SOCRATES
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Chapter 3 CONTRAST WITH NAPOLEON
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Chapter 4 WAS JOAN INNOCENT OR GUILTY
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Chapter 5 JOAN'S GOOD LOOKS
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Chapter 6 JOAN'S SOCIAL POSITION
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Chapter 7 JOAN'S VOICES AND VISIONS
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Chapter 8 THE EVOLUTIONARY APPETITE
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Chapter 9 THE MERE ICONOGRAPHY DOES NOT MATTER
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Chapter 10 THE MODERN EDUCATION WHICH JOAN ESCAPED
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Chapter 11 FAILURES OF THE VOICES
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Chapter 12 JOAN A GALTONIC VISUALIZER
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Chapter 13 JOAN'S MANLINESS AND MILITARISM
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Chapter 14 WAS JOAN SUICIDAL
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Chapter 15 JOAN SUMMED UP
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Chapter 16 JOAN'S IMMATURITY AND IGNORANCE
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Chapter 17 THE MAID IN LITERATURE
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Chapter 18 PROTESTANT MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
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Chapter 19 COMPARATIVE FAIRNESS OF JOAN'S TRIAL
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Chapter 20 JOAN NOT TRIED AS A POLITICAL OFFENDER
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Chapter 21 THE CHURCH UNCOMPROMISED BY ITS AMENDS
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Chapter 22 CRUELTY, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL
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Chapter 23 CATHOLIC ANTI-CLERICALISM
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Chapter 24 CATHOLICISM NOT YET CATHOLIC ENOUGH
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Chapter 25 THE LAW OF CHANGE IS THE LAW OF GOD
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Chapter 26 CREDULITY, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL
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Chapter 27 TOLERATION, MODERN AND MEDIEVAL
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Chapter 28 VARIABILITY OP TOLERATION
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Chapter 29 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GENIUS AND DISCIPLINE
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Chapter 30 JOAN AS THEOCRAT
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Chapter 31 UNBROKEN SUCCESS ESSENTIAL IN THEOCRACY
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Chapter 32 MODERN DISTORTIONS OF JOAN'S HISTORY
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Chapter 33 HISTORY ALWAYS OUT OF DATE
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Chapter 34 THE REAL JOAN NOT MARVELLOUS ENOUGH FOR US
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Chapter 35 THE STAGE LIMITS OF HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION
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Chapter 36 A VOID IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
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Chapter 37 TRAGEDY, NOT MELODRAMA
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Chapter 38 THE INEVITABLE FLATTERIES OF TRAGEDY
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Chapter 39 SOME WELL-MEANT PROPOSALS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE PLAY
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Chapter 40 THE EPILOGUE
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