Discuss Saint Joan as a high tragedy.
George Bernard Shaw in his Preface to Saint Joan
tells us that it is a high tragedy and not a mere melodrama or a police
court sensation. In a high tragedy, tragedy is brought about not by any
villainy or by a conspiracy of fate, but by pious and innocent persons, acting
in good faith and with the best of intentions. The tragedy is there, the proper
tragic emotion - pity and terror-are aroused in the audience, but there is an
element of comedy as well. The audience might weep at the tragedy but gods in
their heaven do laugh at human folly and ignorance. Saint Joan is a high
tragedy in this sense.
Crime,
committed not by black hearted villains: In a high tragedy like Saint
Joan, there is no conflict of villain and hero. A villain belongs more
properly to the domain of melodrama and not to tragedy proper. A villain is a
mere puppet, a mere machine and not a living breathing human being. Shaw has
introduced no villain in his tragedy. He has whitewashed the characters of
Bishop Cauchon and the Inquisitor. In Shaw’s play, they are worthy and eloquent
exponents of the church militant and the church litigant. They are selfless
representation of the church, who genuinely believes that Joan is threat to the
authority of the church. They kill her only because they sincerely and truly
believe that such killing is necessary. Thus the burning of the maid is not a
crime committed by black-hearted villains-which would be the subject of a
melodrama- but a piece of high tragedy.
Conflict
between genius and discipline: The action in a tragedy develops through
conflict and in a melodrama or in a romantic tragedy; this conflict is between
the hero and the villain. In Shaw’s tragedy, the conflict is replaced by the
conflict between Genius and Discipline, or between Authority and Private
Judgment. This is an eternal conflict. Joan is not a victim of any conflict with
a villain, but a martyr to the cause of liberty of conscience and individual
freedom. The tragedy of Joan has a universal appeal, only because it is a
representation of, an eternal conflict, of an ever- recurring tragic pattern.”
