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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) Saint Joan
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Theater
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Saint Joan
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(JANUARY 7, 1924)
</p>
<p> Saint Joan. A curiously conglomerate compound is this latest
Shaw play which the Theatre Guild brought out last week in the
most gorgeous of red, gray and gold bindings. Some of the
chapters are conceived in all the author's shameless artfulness
as a melodramatist. Some of them are born of Shaw's inevitable
penchant for controversial conversation. Christianity is
alternately belabored and immortalized. History is consistently
in caricature. These moods and many more are bundled into three
full hours of changing action. Viewed as a whole, the play
tantalizes. It is a stimulant and a drug mixed in the same
crock.
</p>
<p> Four acts and an epilogue, subdivided into seven scenes, are
required for the author's development of Joan from country maid
to Saint. At the outset she appears at Vaucouleurs, where with
a few brief sentences she persuades the testy Robert de
Baudricourt to grant her soldiers and a horse to carry her to
the Dauphin closeted at Chinon. Her recognition of the latter
in the crowded throne room, his conversion to her standard
follow. Shaw then revels in an arrant trumpery when he changes
before your eyes the course of a contrary wind--the Maid's
"miracle" on joining the French forces before Orleans.
</p>
<p> A brief glimpse of the Ambulatory of Rheims Cathedral,
immediately after the crowning of the Dauphin Charles VII of
France, depicts the beginning of Joan's fall. In the following
trial scene at Rouen, she is condemned by the church and burned
at the stake (off stage) for a heretic.
</p>
<p> Shaw then saw fit to explain significances. He composed a
ponderous epilogue bringing the characters together in a dream
which drifted down the centuries. They settled the merits of
martyrdom and all but settled the play. Possibly Shaw preferred
to have his audience leave the theatre with wrinkled brow rather
than glistening eye. Possible he deliberately stepped on his
climax because he is Shaw and defies the rules.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>