Penguin Classics: Saint Joan: A Chronicle - Play I

With Saint Joan, Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist, and it was this play that led to his Nobel Prize for Literature for 1925. This powerful historical drama distils many of the ideas he had been exploring in earlier works on politics, religion, feminism and creative evolution. 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, naive, foolhardy and brave – a rebel and a woman for his time and ours.

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 and a chronology.