The Road to Happiness Bertrand Russell

George Bernard Shaws Saint Joan was first produced in bare-assed York City in 1923 and in London in 1924. Shaw published it with a long Preface in 1924. When word came out that Shaw, who was known as an irreverent jokester, was writing about a Christian saint and martyr, in that respect were fears that he would not be able to produce something appropriate, but the aboriginal reception of the play was generally favorable, although some commentators criticized him for historical inaccuracy and for being withal talky or comic. Over the years, the play, a rare tragic litigate in his generally comic oeuvre, has been seen as one of his greatest and close important.It has been hailed as being intellectually exciting and praised for dealing with important themes, much(prenominal) as nationalism, war, and the relation of the individual to society. The play solidified Shaws account as a major playwright and helped win him the Nobel Prize in 1925. Being at least in part a tragedy, thoug h with comic moments, Saint Joan is part of a shift in Shaws work from his earlier optimistic comedies to a more than melancholy attitude, perchance in part the result of his reaction to World War I.Although he had been thinking about Joan of Arc as early as 1913, Shaw did not actually begin writing the play until 1923, three years by and by Joans canonization. He consulted many earlier works on Joan, including the transcripts of her trial. In fact, he modestly said that he had done little more than reproduce Joans own words as recorded in the transcripts however, that statement is unfair to Shaw, who left a distinctive Shavian name on the story of the martyred saint.