‘I might almost as well have been a man … I should not have bothered you all so much then’

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 Shaw had been exploring in earlier works on the subjects of 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. This volume includes Shaw’s Preface of 1924 and the cast list of the first production of Saint Joan.