"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

"Saint Joan" is a play by George Bernard Shaw about 15th-century French military figure Joan of Arc, also characterized by Michael Holroyd as "a tragedy without villains." In this play, Shaw reflected his belief that the people involved in Joan's trial acted according to what they thought was right. The play has deep moral and philosophic meaning. Shaw proves that true crime is done by people out of their best intentions.

SAINT JOAN OF NEW YORK is a novel about a math prodigy who becomes obsessed with discovering the Theory of Everything. Joan Cooper, a 17-year-old genius traumatized by the death of her older sister, tries to rebuild her shattered world by studying string theory and the efforts to unify the laws of physics. But as she tackles the complex equations, she falls prey to disturbing visions of a divine being who wants to help her unveil the universe’s mathematical design. Joan must enter the battle between science and religion, fighting for her sanity and a new understanding of the cosmos.

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s powerful historical drama about Joan of Arc, which led him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—part of the official Bernard Shaw Library A Penguin Classic With Saint Joan, which distills many of the ideas Shaw had been exploring in earlier works on politics, religion, feminism, and creative evolution, he reached the height of his fame as a dramatist. Fascinated by the story of Joan of Arc, but unhappy with the way she had traditionally been depicted, Shaw wanted to remove “the whitewash which disfigures her beyond recognition.” He presents a realistic Joan: proud, intolerant, naïve, foolhardy, and brave—a rebel and a woman for Shaw’s time and our own. This is the definitive text under the editorial supervision of Dan H. Laurence. The volume includes Shaw’s Preface of 1924; the cast list of the first production of Saint Joan; a chronology; and the essay “On Playing Joan” by Imogen Stubbs.

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre.Pygmalion (1912) was a world-wide smash hit from the time of its premiere in Vienna 1913 and it has remained popular to this day. Shaw was awarded an Academy Award in 1938 for his screenplay of the film adaptation. It was, of course, later made into the much-loved musical My Fair Lady.Heartbreak House (1917), which was finally performed in 1920 and published in 1921, bares the hallmarks of European modernism and a formal break from Shaw's previous work. A meditation on the war and the resultant decline in European aristocratic culture, it was perhaps staged too soon after theconflict; indeed, it did not have the success of his earlier works, which was likely due to his experimental aesthetics combined with a war-weary audience that sought lighter fare. However, while this contemporary reception was muted, it is now recognised as a modernist masterpiece.Saint Joan (1923) marked Shaw's resurrection and apotheosis. The first major work written of Joan of Arc after her canonization (1920), the play interrogates the origins of European nationalism in the post-war era. Like Pygmalion, it was an immediate world-wide hit and secured Shaw the Nobel Prizefor Literature in 1925. Drawing upon the transcripts of Joan's trial, Shaw blended his trademark wit to produce a hybrid genre of comedy and history play. Despite the historical setting, Saint Joan is highly accessible and continues to delight audiences.

The literary genetics of Shaw's most famous play are here examined for the first time. The sources of Saint Joan are closely compared with the original shorthand manuscript and that is compared with its subsequent revisions. This evidence is supplemented by facts drawn from Shaw's correspondence in print, in the British Library, and in private collections, and by accounts both in print and in the correspondence of people who knew Shaw at the time of his writing Saint Joan. The manuscript and its revisions are examined in the light of all that has been written about the play since it first appeared in 1923. Tyson examines the events that led Shaw to write Saint Joan, establishes the times and places of its composition, and speculates on the "models" upon which Shaw may have based his heroine. The scene-by-scene investigation of the original manuscript accounts as far as possible for later alterations and revisions and discusses passages of critical or historical interest. The concluding chapters survey the circumstances surrounding the first production of the play in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany and reflect on the impact that Saint Joan has had on drama for more than half a century.