Saint Joan
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| Title: | Saint Joan |
| Original title: | Saint Joan |
| Original language: | English |
| Author: | George Bernard Shaw |
| Premiere: | December 28, 1923 |
| Place of premiere: | Garrick Theater in New York City |
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Saint Joan is a drama by the Irish author George Bernard Shaw . He wrote it in 1923, shortly after the Roman Catholic Church canonized Joan of Arc . The dramatic adaptation is based on the lore about her life and on documents of the trial that was carried out on her. In 1925, Shaw received the Nobel Prize in Literature for Saint Joan . The author accepted the award but turned down the prize money.
The play premiered on December 28, 1923 at the Garrick Theater in New York by the Theater Guild with Winifred Lenihan as Johanna. The German-language premiere took place in Berlin in 1924.
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The play begins with Johanna telling a common soldier about their voices. Through her rhetorical skills, she succeeds in getting to Karl , the Dauphin of France. She tells him that her voices ordered her to help him become the crowned King of France by leading his troops and driving the English occupiers out of France. So she wants to restore France's greatness. Johanna is successful with Karl through her charm, her negotiating skills, her leadership talent and her military skills. Eventually she is betrayed and captured by the English after the siege of Compiègne .
The basis for the trial against Johanna is a conversation between the Earl of Warwick and the Bishop of Beauvais . Johanna's nationalism calls into question the feudal system in which the feudal lords are above the nation . At the same time it endangers the power of the church by obeying its inner voices and not the church dignitaries. Warwick "invents" the term " Protestantism " for their attitude . Because of this dangerous attitude, she must be disempowered.
The sixth scene of the drama deals with Joan's trial and its inevitable outcome. She surrenders after being tortured by her persecutors and agrees to make a confession by which she questions the veracity of her voices. This allows her to go on living, albeit with no prospect of pardon. At the last moment (she has the pen in her hand) Johanna thinks about it and withdraws. On the way to the stake she calls out to her tormentors:
- “You think life means nothing other than not being mouse dead. I am not afraid of bread or water. I can live on bread. When would I have asked for more? I am also ready to drink water when it is pure. But to be excluded from the light of the sky, from the sight of the fields and the flowers, to keep my feet in shackles so that I can never ride with soldiers or climb the hills again - I cannot live without all of this. You want to take all this away from me now; and not just me: all people. Now I know that your counselor is the devil and mine is God. "
In the epilogue , Karl has a dream in which Johanna appears to him. She talks happily not only with Karl, but also with her old enemies, who also take shape in Karl's bedroom. The scene ends with Joan's desperation that humanity will never believe in saints. Her last exclamation: “O God, who created this wonderful earth -: how long will it be before it is ready to receive your saints? How long, oh God, how long? "
Shaw's contribution to the subject of "Jeanne d'Arc"
The trial and the cremation of Joan of Arc at the age of 19 in 1431 has been handed down in great detail by contemporary witnesses. Shaw studied the documents in the trial against her. Shaw endeavored to use as many of the original statements as possible in his piece, which critics still consider to be anachronistic .
In particular, he is accused of projecting attitudes that only developed later into the action set in the 15th century . In his obituary for George Bernard Shaw, written in 1950, Thomas Mann criticized Shaw for using the terms Protestantism and nationalism in an anachronistic manner in the fourth scene of Saint Joan .
Shaw explained his motifs in detail in the preface to his play "Saint Johanna", which he completed in May 1924 (after the play's premiere).
In particular, he is concerned with avoiding the "romantic melodrama" with which Schiller endowed his " Maiden of Orléans ". She was a brilliant person who came into conflict with the powers of his time, who should by no means be rated as "evil" ("There are no villains in the play").
Context of the piece
Shaw was a well-known pacifist , and there has been controversy over his stance, which can be found in his anti-war speeches during the First World War. Shaw believed that Britain and her allies were as guilty of the war as Germany, and so he called for peace negotiations during the war (which made him suspicious in the eyes of many compatriots). This skeptical attitude towards arguments of the “reason of state ” can also be found in the drama.
Film adaptation
In 1957 Otto Preminger directed the film Die heilige Johanna based on Shaw's work with Jean Seberg in the title role and Richard Widmark as King Karl VII. The screenplay was written by Graham Greene .
literature
- George Bernard Shaw: Saint Joan. Dramatic chronicle in six scenes and an epilogue . Suhrkamp. Frankfurt / Main. 1990. ISBN 3-518-38361-2
- Horst Meller: George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan . In: W. Hüllen, H. Meller, H. Nyszkiewicz (eds.): Contemporary English poetry. Volume III: Drama . Hirschgraben publishing house. Frankfurt / Main 1968. pp. 75-98
- James Hardin: George Bernard Shaw: Saint Joan. Basics for understanding the drama . Diesterweg publishing house. Frankfurt / Main 1975
Web links
- Young, excessive, uncomfortable. Premiere for "The Holy Johanna" by Bernard Shaw in the Schauspielhaus Chemnitz http://www.in-chemnitz.de/~lange/privat/sides/theater/johanna.htm
- Friedrich Weissensteiner: Silent: George B. Shaw ; in: Wiener Zeitung of July 22, 2006 http://www.wienerzeitung.at/Desktopdefault.aspx?TabID=3946&Alias=WZO&lexikon=Autoren&letter=A&cob=241038 ( Memento of March 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive )