miércoles, 7 de enero de 2009

Saint Joan



Saint Joan (1923), is generally considered to be one of his better works. Shaw had long considered writing about Joan of Arc, and her canonization supplied a strong incentive. The play was an international success.

Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Joan is a dramatization based on her life and on the substantial records of her trial. The actual trial and burning of Joan in 1431 at the age of 19 was recorded in great detail by reporters of the day.

Shaw portrays Joan as refusing to accept any authority by the Catholic Church, many have taken his play as an argument that Joan of Arc was the first protestant.

Shaw described her as a simple peasant girl who hears voices.

The first act begins in the person of a lowly soldier to whom she gives news of these voices. She tells him that her voices have commanded her to help him become a true king in order to eliminate the English population and to restore France.Joan succeeds in doing this through her excellent powers of flattery, negotiation, leadership, and skill on the battlefield.

She is betrayed, and captured by the English at the siege of Compiègne.

The last act treats by his trial and on his inevitable end.
She at the hands of her oppressors, agrees to sign a confession relinquishing the truth behind her voices although, later on she changes her mind saying these dramatic words as she is leading to the stake:

"You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. 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 climb the hills. To make me breathe foul damp darkness, without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil."'

Fuente: en.Wikipedia.


By Raquel

0 comentarios: