st. joan monologue

SAINT JOANGeorge Bernard Shaw

Thiin'tovthedel

The story of Joan of Arc, the illiterate teenage girlwho hears voices and leads soldiers into battle, islegendary. But this play does not romanticize her orpresent her only as a courageous visionary. Instead,the play shows Joan as a girl who wants to lead aman's life, a girl too young to understand tact and,yet, old enough to be shrewd. The author portraysJoan's enemies not as villains but as men convincedthat they are doing the right thing.

The setting of the play is fifteenth-century France.The following monologue takes place on May 30,1431, at Rouen in the great stone hall of the castle.The hall has been arranged for a trial-at-law, ratherthan a trial-by-jury. Joan, chained by the ankles,has just been told by her inquisitors that insteadof being burned at the stake for heresy, she will beimprisoned for life.

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..•..JOAN.

Yes: they told me you were fools [the w,great offence], and that I was not to list,fine words nor trust to your charity. Y,

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SAINT JOAN 19

ised me my life; but you lied [indignant exclama-tions]. You think that life is nothing but not beingstone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: Ican live on bread: when-have I asked for more?It is no hardship to drinkwater if the water beclean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and waterno affliction. But' to shut me from the light ofthe sky and the sight of the fields and flowers;to chain my feet so that I can never again ridewith the soldiers nor climb the hills; to makeme breathe foul damp darkness, and keep fromme everything that brings me back to the loveof God when your wickedness and foolishnesstempt me to "hate Him: all this is worse thanthe furnace in the Bible that was heated seventimes. I could do without my' warhorse; I coulddrag about in a skirt; I could let the banners andthe trumpets and the knights and soldiers passme and leave me behind as they leave the oth-er women, if only I could' still hear the wind inthe trees, the larks in the sunshine, the younglambs crying through the healthy frost, and theblessed blessed church bells that send my angelvoices floating to me on the wind. But withoutthese things I cannot live; and by your wantingto take them away from me, or from any humancreature, I know that your counsel is of the devil,and that mine is of God .