Saint Joan is considered to be one of George
Bernard Shaw's greatest works. In the play, Shaw avoids many problems
identified by critics as prevalent in some of his other writing. Some have criticized Shaw, claiming that he
tends to portray unrealistic archetypal characters, rather than well-rounded
believable individuals. His plays have
also been described as lacking action and being too didactic. In Saint Joan, Shaw reduced the intensity of
these previously criticized typically Shavian elements and thus, met with much
critical success.
However, in my view,
the play's epilogue is redundant and unnecessary. It essentially repeats and reinforces the
events of the play without enhancing the drama. and serves to add historical
facts which are either familiar to the audience or which could have been
inserted skillfully into the body of the play with greater dramatic
effect. It seems almost as if Shaw was
afraid that his audience would not understand the play and he felt compelled to
make his ideas clearer in the epilogue.
The action of the epilogue takes place 25 years
after Joan has been burned. King Charles has a dream in which many of the
characters of the play appear. These
characters, including Joan, either explain their behavior that we've seen
throughout the play or relate some historical fact that Shaw must have seen as
necessary for the audience to be aware of.
The first character that appears at Charles' bed is Brother Martin
Ladvenu, who in Scene VI participated in the trial of Joan. During the examination, Ladvenu makes every
effort to save Joan from being declared a heretic and tries to give her the
opportunity to be "saved." He
praises Joan when she answers a question well.
In addition, he says to her, "Joan: we are all trying to save
you. His lordship is trying to save
you. The Inquisitor could not be more
just to you if you were his own daughter."
He shows that he is earnest in his desire for the truth to come out, and
for Joan to be saved. After Joan has
been burned, he is one of the first to recognize that a mistake has been
made. Describing her burning, he says
"...she looked up to heaven. And I
do not believe that the heavens were empty.
I firmly believe that her Savior appeared to her...This is not the end
for her, but the beginning."
In the epilogue, Ladvenu's main function is to
relay the fact that Joan has been absolved and rehabilitated and that he was a
primary mover toward such absolution. He
says, "Twenty-five years have passed since [Joan's burning]: nearly ten
thousand days." This is pure
exposition necessary only to orient the audience. He continues, "And on every one of those
days I have prayed God to justify His daughter on earth as she is justified in
heaven." This just illustrates that
Ladvenu believes that Joan was unjustly burnt, repeating the same information
that was conveyed with greater dramatic effectiveness in Scene VI. He goes on to give more historical information;
the judges of Joan were declared corrupt and malicious. Having conveyed these facts, Ladvenu leaves
and his entire appearance in the epilogue seems unnecessary and does not add
dramatically to the play.
After Ladvenu's departure, Joan herself appears
to Charles, informing him (and the audience) that she is only in his dream, and
not an actual ghost. Like Ladvenu,
Charles announces historical data about himself; he has turned into a great
fighter and he is called Charles the Victorious. In their conversation, Joan spells out
information about herself that has been clearly illustrated throughout the
play, without adding anything substantial.
She says, "I was no beauty; I was a regular soldier. I might almost as well have been a man. Pity I wasn't...But my head was in the skies;
and the glory of God was upon me..."
She continues on to state the obvious.
"I shall outlast the cross.
I shall be remembered when men have forgotten where Rouen
stood." Anyone reading or seeing
the play knows that this is true.
Shaw's pattern of giving historical information
and explaining and summarizing characters' behaviors continues throughout the
epilogue. The next character to arrive
in the scene is Peter Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais who like Ladvenu,
participated in deciding Joan's fate. He
starts off by providing the facts of his life after Joan's death. "Dead.
Dishonored. They pursued me
beyond the grave. They excommunicated my
dead body: they dug it up and flung it into the common sewer." Shaw's intention may have been to show that
society is too quick to judge and, as a result, goes to extremes beyond what is
reasonable and necessary. Cauchon says,
"The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men
and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their
wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart." This statement can be interpreted as a theme
of the play since Joan's story illustrates exactly the point that Cauchon is
making. By explicitly stating such
theme, Shaw undercuts the power of the preceding action and weakens the
dramatic effect of the play. Cauchon
continues on to summarize his action which we've already seen throughout the
play. "...I was just: I was
merciful: I was faithful to my light: I could do no other than I
did." As was with Ladvenu, the
audience saw Cauchon behaving exactly the way he describes. Thus, his words add nothing to the play and
are redundant.
Next to appear is Dunois, the Bastard of
Orleans. Like all the others in the
epilogue, he immediately explains his actions that we've already seen. He says, "Perhaps I should never have
let the priests burn you; but I was busy fighting; and it was The Church's
business, not mine." He had already
made it clear that fighting the war was his priority in Scene V. Referring to Joan, he says, "The day
after she has been dragged from her horse by a goddam or a Burgundian, and he
is not struck dead: the day after she is locked in a dungeon, and the bars and
bolts do not fly open at the touch of St. Peter's angel: the day when the enemy
finds out that she is as vulnerable as I am and not a bit more invincible, she
will not be worth the life of a single soldier to us; and I will not risk that
life, much as I cherish her as a companion-in-arms."
Appropriately, following Dunois into King
Charles' dream is a soldier. We learn
from Joan that the soldier had made an erstwhile cross out of two sticks and
handed it to Joan when she was about to be burned. This cross made out of sticks is alluded to
at the end of Scene VI. It is unnecessary
to introduce the soldier in the epilogue.
The only new concept brought forth by his appearance is his description
of hell. He says hell is "Like as
if you were always drunk without the trouble or expense of drinking. Tip top company too: emperors and popes and
kings and all sorts." This is
reminiscent of Shaw's Man And Superman, where Shaw explored similar themes definitively in the "Don
Juan In Hell" sequence. Not many
would argue that these ideas need revisiting and are especially unnecessary in
Saint Joan.
The remaining characters that appear in the
epilogue similarly rehash their earlier actions. John De Stogumber, the Chaplain, recounts his
own cruelty and relates that he is now old, but is a changed man due to his experience
with Joan. This is foreshadowed by the
Chaplain's extreme self-repulsion after Joan has been burnt. This abhorrence of his own action need not be
repeated, as it is in the epilogue. In
addition, the Earl of Warwick the makes his way in, asserting, "The burning
was purely political." This is a
point that is also touched on clearly throughout the earlier scenes. Finally, a modern gentleman arrives and
announces that Joan has been canonized.
This fact need not be relayed to the audience, especially the audience
of Shaw's day, given the fact that Joan achieved sainthood only four years
prior to the play's first performances.
Following the modern gentleman's announcement,
all the characters pay homage to Joan.
However, when she threatens to return to earth, they are all terrified
by this idea. Shaw's point here may be
that the world is never ready to accept the truly divine. By stressing this point so overtly, Shaw is
beating the audience over the head, once again undercutting the subtlety of the
rest of the play.
Shaw's repetition in the epilogue of the
content and themes contained in Saint Joan, combined with the insertion of
purely historical facts lacking in dramatic relevance, is a flaw in what is
otherwise a brilliant work of art.
Shaw's need to explain his work, as evidenced by his lengthy prefaces to
many plays, most likely compelled him to include the epilogue. However, the explicit explanations contained
in the epilogue lessen the power of the action that precede it. As a result, an audience is likely to come
away from the performance easily able to conclude what Shaw's intentions were,
rather than coming to the ideas that Shaw wanted to present by reflecting on
the events of the play.
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