Saint Joan is a historical play in the sense that this drama is based on the facts of history and its chief characters and events are taken from history. But as ‘Saint Joan’ is a drama, it is not a mere transcript of history, but an imaginative treatment of the facts of history blended with fiction. In spite of much authenticity, there is much modification in details and minor matters, much shifting, ordering, condensening and compressing of material. In this way this historic play is a blend of fact and fiction.

“Joan of Arc, a village girl from Domrémy, was born in about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431… declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages.” These are Shaw’s words to describe Jeanne d’Arc. She was a teenage peasant girl who crowned a reluctant king, rallied a broken people, reversed the course of a great war, and pushed history onto a new path. Both warrior and mystic, reviled as a heretic and witch, revered as a savior and eventual as a saint, Joan of Arc strikes a chord in history that reverberates across the centuries and calls out to us even today. She is a woman about whom Shaw said there were only two opinions: “One was that she was miraculous; the other that she was unbearable.”

Life and Career of Joan: In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, the presentation of the Maid ends in mere scurrility, Schiiller’s account of her has no contact with history and Voltire has made her ridiculous. But as for Saint Joan of Shaw, she was gifted with sound commonsense, and her cuccessful plans were rational and wise; but her faith is religion was mystical. “Her powers were human, but her confidence was devine.” “ The romance of Joan’s rise, the tragedy of her execution, and the comedy of the attempts