"Saint Joan" by Bernard Shaw

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

So you may not know this,

but I have a BA in History.

(I know, random, right?)

Therefore:

I love doing history pieces (inaccurate though they often are).

This week’s play is by Bernard Shaw, who we’ve seen before for Heartbreak House, writing one of History’s greatest, most notable women. Joan of Arc. She was 17, schizophrenic, and led France to victory during the Hundred Years’ War. This in 1429, when women weren’t allowed to own property, much less lead an army. She was (rather famously) burned at the stake in 1431, and later canonized by the Catholic Church. What a woman! Now, there’s something interesting to consider here: Shaw is English. Joan of Arc led the French to defeat England at this point in the war, and therefore by English playwrights is often (literally) demonized. Shakespeare does this when writing her in Henry VI Part I. Shaw refrains from it, and paints a very sympathetic Joan in this play. But he’s still writing from an English perspective, so in performance, adding… insanity? to her might not be uncalled for. Just something to think about.

SAINT JOAN

By Bernard Shaw

#herstory, ammirite?

We enter the play in 1429 with Captain Robert de Baudrincourt, a swaggering squire. His chickens are not laying eggs, and Baudrincourt’s oft-berated servant claims that the cause is a local maid who has taken up at Baudrincourt’s door and won’t be turned away. Already the soldiers are loyal to her. Baudrincourt demands to see her, and Joan enters, young and docile, asking for an escort of three soldiers and a horse to get to Charles, the defeated Dauphin. Her voices have told her that God has commanded her to help Charles drive the English from France. Eventually, Robert gives in. The scene skips to the Archbishop and the rest of the court, arranging a deception for Joan -- she’ll have to spot Charles, even though he’s swapping places with one of his nobles. She does so easily, and the population and Charles are convinced that it is a miracle, giving the reluctant prince the courage (with God) to go to war. He sends Joan to Orleans, and the west wind that had been plaguing the French for months suddenly disappears upon her arrival, earning her a loyal friend in Dunois, Charles’s general. But pride begins to overtake Joan, and as she crowns Charles at Rheims and gains power through her popularity and visions, the members of the court begin to turn against her, most specifically the Archbishop, who vows against her as she demands more battles. She is captured by the English, who try her for heresy after debating the nature of it. She is brought to court, and under the pain of their torture, agrees to sign a confession admitting that her voices are of her own invention. When she learns of the prison sentence still in store for her, she accepts death at the stake in favor of it. They sentence her to burn at the stake and follow her offstage. Warwick reenters alone, and is soon met by the repentant Chaplain and Lavenau, who bear witness to Joan’s generosity, even as she was burning. The final scene is 25 years later, on the night that Joan has been cleared of the charges that burned her, as King Charles (now the Victorious) dreams that Joan and many of the others appear to him, asking Joan for forgiveness. She forgives them one by one, and they are joined from a priest from the 1920s, who announces Joan’s canonization. Joan recognizes that saints can work miracles, and offers to rise from the dead. All characters in the room, including Charles, despising having professed to love her, ask her to remain dead. Joan’s final words are “...”

We are looking at the only woman in this play:

JOAN

Joan actually has two great speeches in this play, one at the end of Scene 5, and this one. This is the final scene. Joan has surrendered the only thing she has left -- the truth of the voices she believes comes from God. Tortured to the edge of sanity, she has finally admitted to preserve herself that the voices are of her own invention, that she lied about being led by God, and that her preference of dress, hair, and warlike spirit are sins. She has given up everything, signed listlessly away. And then they condemn her to perpetual imprisonment: “the sorrow of bread and the affliction of water”. She tears up her confession, and says:

JOAN: Light your fire: do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole? My voices were right. Yes: they told me you were fools (the word gives great offence) and I was not to listen to your fine words, or trust in your charity. You promised me my life, but you lied (indignant exclamations). You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread, when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread is no sorrow, water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers, to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers or climb the hills, to make me breathe foul, damp darkness and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate him. All this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse, I could drag about in a skirt, I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and the soldiers pass me by and leave me behind like they leave the other women if only I could hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young calves crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. I cannot live without these, and by your wanting to take them from me, from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and mine is of God.

Powerful. I'm so into it.

And there you have it! Enjoy! As always, read the play (you can get the .pdf of it online!) and post your version!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!