Constructing a Cultural Icon: Nomos and Shaw's Saint Joan in

Paris
Craig Hamilton

Modern Drama, Volume 43, Number 3, Fall 2000, pp. 359-375 (Article)

Published by University of Toronto Press

DOI: 10.1353/mdr.2000.0051

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mdr/summary/v043/43.3.hamilton.html

Access provided by Colgate University (10 Sep 2013 12:14 GMT)

 Constructing a Cultural Icon: Nomos
and Shaw's Saint Joan in Paris
CRAIG HAMILTON

'George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan quickly became a play without a passport.
Shaw began writing the play in England in late April 1923 and completed it in
Ireland in August of that same year. After its production in New York in
December t923 and in London in March 1924, the play appeared on the Con-
tinent. In Paris, it ran at the Theatre des Arts from 28 April to 30 June 1925.
The director in Paris, Georges Pitoeff, staged the play with his wife, Ludmilla,
in the heroine's role. While Shaw's Joan is usually seen as the "foremothe. of
Protestantism and of French nationalism" (Kiberd 434), the play can be read
in many other ways, as Saint Joan lends itself easily to several approaches and
parallels. With an eye to Ireland, the play can be read as a gloss on the Charles
Parnell story referred to in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
where the Irish are seen as having betrayed their own MP. Joan's words to
Dunois, "If the goddams and the Burgundians do not make an end of me, the
French will" (102), would be one place to begin such an analysis. The play
could also be seen as a parable for Irish nationalism on the troublesome Prot-
estant question in a society run by Catholics (Kiberd 428). Additionally, it
could be viewed as a running political diatribe on British imperialistic tenden-
cies overseas. However, as its reception in 1925 Paris suggests, Saint Joan
may also be read as an allegory for a France undergoing a painful period of
reconstruction after being shattered by World War I. While most critics are
aware that Shaw's play was very popular in Paris (the Pitoeffs kept it in their
repertory for several years), the reasons behind its popularity have yet to be
adequately explained. Betrayal, sacrifice, dogmatic strife, and nationalist
power plays fully overlap in the play to historicize the well-known story in
terms contemporary audiences, particularly in Paris: found highly compelling.
As I argue in this essay, the popularity of Shaw's Saint Joan in 1925 Paris
involves three factors seldom discussed: the cultural semiotics of constructing
an icon like Joan of Arc, the historical and political context of 1925 France as

Modern Drama, 43 (Fall 2000) 359

 CRAIG HAMILTON

it relates to the play's reception, and the brash display of nomos (i.e., gover-
nance) in the trial scene.' .
Exactly why Shaw's play was successful when so many other versions of
the story were available is not at first clear. By 1925, more than a hundred
plays about Joan had been presented in France since 1890 (Gerould 210), and
by the time Shaw wrote the play seven films on Joan had already been made
(Harty 241). The critic Sheila Stowell recently suggested in these pages that
one inspiration for the play, apart from Shaw's trip to Orleans in 1913 and the
saint's canonization in 1920, was the use of Joan as an emblem for the
Women's Social and Political Union during the suffragette marches in pre-
. World War I London (422). Be that as it may, Shaw's inspiration probably
mattered little to audiences, given the omnipresence of the Joan story in the
192os. For French audiences. connections between its saint and British suf-
fragettes such as Christabel Pankhurst and loan Annan Bryce were probably
not obvious. Of course, in choosing such a well-known historical figure as his
play's protagonist, Shaw dove straight into waters highly familiar to his audi-
ences. One of his reasons for doing so was that he was so disgusted with
"lohannamania" (in Louis Crompton's words) that he desired to strip "loan's
legend of its supernaturalism and I". J the accretions of popular romance"
(Crompton 37). To do this meant revising or recovering wholesale the story of
loan. As Shaw explained in his lengthy "Preface" to the play, the strong and
sophisticated Joan he wished to represent accurately was the heroine who had
plotted and directed the "military and political masterstrokes that saved
France" during the Hundred Years' War (14). His strategy worked. For exam-
ple, the production of the play Jehanne d'Arc by America's Mercedes de
Acosta, in which Eva Le Galienne played loan, ran concurrently with the
Pitoeff production during the last half of June but was less successful. Open-
ing as it did after Shaw's play, this "transatlantique" play, according to one
critic, added nothing new at all to the Joan story (de Flers, "Jehanne"). Pari-
sian audiences appreciated Shaw's refreshingly new presentation of Joan, in
contrast to de Acosta's or even to Fran90is Porche's painfully reverent Janu-
ary 1925 flop, La Vierge au grand elEllr (Tyson 98). Shaw's success, how-
ever, is due to more than just poor competition, as others who have looked
into the reception of Saint Joan in France have suggested.
In a 1964 article, Daniel Gerould was the first to survey the play 's immedi-
ate critical reception in France. Early reviews by such critics as Franyois Mau-
riac and Andre Maurois were, as Gerould concludes, "inseparably linked" to
the Pitoeff production and Ludmilla's role as Joan (206). Georges Pitoeff later
insisted that the most important thing for him in the play was that Joan was,
above all, a saint (Pitoeff 21). While this may have bothered Shaw (Pharand
77), the play's acclaim probably did not. Specific appreciation was showered
on Mme. Pitoeff's performance in the trial scene, regarded as one of Shaw 's
finest. However, favorable reviewers did worry that Joan's Protestantism, and
 Saint Joan in Paris

the favorable light cast on Cauchon, might trouble predominantly Catholic

audiences. Those worries seem to have mattered little: former so-called
romantic versions of Joan were rejected, and Shaw's play "was immediately
accepted as the definitive tIeatment of the French heroine" (Gerould 210).
Why this should be the case is the question Michel Pharand began with in his
1992 essay on the play's French reception. For starters, the Joan-as-martyr
image was crafted by Jules Michelet, the famous historiographer, in his 1834
Histoire de France (Pharand 75). It was Michelet's student Jules Quicherat,
however, who compiled and published, in several volumes from 1841 to 1849,
the authoritative text on Joan's trial. Subsequently translated by T. Douglas
Murray and published in English in 1902, it became Shaw's standard refer-
ence. As Pharand explains, "Shaw had done everything in his power to create
a character of great psychological, physical, and historical verisimilitude"
(76). Shaw's Joan, in essence, was but a faithful representation of the original
woman as understood by Quichera!. For Pharand, three reasons behind the
play's French success were its realism, an improved French translation that
Shaw approved of, and Mme. Pitoeff's performance. And yet, if "[clritics
agreed that their national saint remained historical and heroic" (Pharand 79), a
problem arises: How does a new icon displace an old one while simulta-
neously being celebrated and accepted for its traditional traits? That is, when
Gerould concludes that the French dismissed their traditional view of Joan and
adopted Shaw's as the "definitive treatment" (210), while Pharand concludes
that Joan "remained historical and heroic" (79) in the eyes of the French, some
explanation for this discrepancy is needed. To the lingering question, "What
was it about this particular Joan d'Arc that appealed to the French tempera-
ment?" (Pharand 79), I offer here a three-part answer involving cultural semi-
otics, the reception's context, and the nomoscopic function of the play.

I. CULTURAL SEMIOTICS, OR JOAN OF ARC IS THE

GRAND CANYON OF FRANCE

Any audience's response to art is a complicated matter, and dealing with a fig-
ure like Joan of Arc does not make things any easier. In confronting highly
recognizable cultural icons, OUT experience is shaped by our efforts to com-
pare what we have before us with our previous conception of the object, to
locate variations, and to register OUT satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the
new presentation. A cultural icon is what Walker Percy calls a "preformed
symbolic complex" in his essay "The Loss of the Creature" (513). Percy's
poignant example of such a complex in American culture is the Grand Can-
yon. Tourists who visit the Canyon, he argues, do not experience it in the
same way that the first human to stumble across it did. The difference between
seeing it for the first time, with no preformed ideas about it, and seeing it
today as a tourist is the "preformed" idea of the Canyon that we bring to
 CRAIG HAMILTON

it now (513). Absent at the initial human encounter with the object, such pre-
formed ideas now prevent us from seeing it with new eyes. Our experience of
the Canyon is no longer unfettered, whereas the initial discoverer did not
gauge the extent to which there was compliance and invariance between the
object seen and the object she expected to see. For critics inclined to cognitive
theory, such tension might involve issues of categorization raised two decades
ago by the cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch. For my part, I believe
Shaw's Joan was a preformed symbolic complex that French spectators deter-
mined to be sufficient by embracing the play and privileging this version of
her over former representations of her. Simply put, Joan of Arc is the Grand
Canyon of France. Because Joan was a preformed symbolic complex, specta-
tors brought assumptions about her to the theatre when seeing the play, but
something new about the play enabled them to see Joan with fresh eyes,
thanks to Shaw.
One reason for this acceptance of Joan may be found in the writings of the
German critic Hans Robert Jauss. As Jauss has rather famously put it, our
response to art involves both aesthetic distance and OUf "horizon of expecta-
tions" (Toward 88). Aesthetic distance can be thought of as an interested act
of contemplation between subject and object. It involves a constant negotia-
tion between what is understood to be real about an aesthetic object and what
are understood to be its represented qualities. When it comes to instantly rec-
ognizable icons like Joan, it is clear that her "represented qualities" had
become overbearing and distorted by 1925; hence the appeal of what seemed
to be so "real" about Shaw's heroine. For the cultural semiotics of Shaw's
Joan on the Parisian stage, this suggests three things. First, a Jaussian aesthetic
distance enabled the audience to measure Shaw's Joan adequately against her
prior manifestations. Second, audiences clearly identified with the heroine.
Leading as it does from fear and pity to a final vicarious catharsis whereby a
safe "aesthetic distance allow[s] us to indulge in suppressed, unadmitted, or
openly frowned upon types of identification without fear" (Jauss, Question
59), this identification, for the French, takes on special meaning. One "sup-
pressed" entity in thc 1925 French mind was nationalism, and part of the
play's success may hinge on the pleasurable return of the repressed. In short,
"identification without fear" psychologically lifted the audience that saw Joan
embody a homogenous, unified France. That quality was surely relevant to a
France torn apart from within during 1925, as will be seen below. Third, if the
French audience was predisposed to identify with the saint, its admiring iden-
tification would follow along the lines of behavioral norms that privilege emu-
lation over imitation (Jauss, Aesthetic 159). In other words, the "France for the
French" attitude in the play was not something an audience may have wanted
to imitate, but Joan's positive stance towards France could be worthy of emu-
lation. To say the very least, reactions to Shaw's play in Paris were powerful.
One Academie reviewer noted that the play was a "tableau [ ... ] de
 Saint Joan in Paris

mouvement et de verite [picture of truth and action]" and that it "met chaque
soir les larmes aux yeux des spectateurs [brings tears to spectators' eyes each
night]" (de Flers, "Sainte Jeanne"). In a certain sense, it would appear that
Shaw was able to highlight Joan's "reality" for audiences seeing it represented
for the first time.
With cultural semiotics, constructing an icon like Joan is never as easy as it
seems. For· example, aesthetic distance is problematic when highly charged
concepts such as nationalism appear on stage. If indeed nationalism was sup- .
pressed, the ramifications of one of Joan's lines, such as "France is alone"
(112) - "La France est seule" (Hamon and Hamon 25) - might be that it
voiced for the French what they dared not say.' Shaw certainly pinpoints the
historical birth of nationalism when Warwick asks Stogumber, "Are these
Burgundians and Bretons and Picards and Gascons beginning to call them-
selves Frenchmen, just as our fellows are beginning to call themselves
Englishmen?" (87) ("Est-ce que les Bourguignons, et les Bretons, et les
Picards, et les Gascons commencent as'appeler Franc;ais, exactement comme
nos hommes commencent it s'appeler Anglais?" [Hamon and Hamon 16]). To
voice such concerns is to say the unsay able; and yet, to say them is to alter the
space of the theatre so that the prohibited outside becomes permitted inside.
And, as the French knew by 1925, nationalism was dangerous. Nationalism
was in part responsible for World War I, and Joan's promotion of fighting to
the death is a direct corollary to the staggering numbers of people killed in
trench warfare during the previous decade (Wisenthal 88). For Shaw's audi-
ence, then, nationalism had to be shunned, on the one hand, for its negative,
war-inducing effects; on the other hand, nationalism's conflation with religion
on stage, long after the 1905 French law separating church and state, certainly
factored into the play's reception. Joan's religious status, as it were, makes
nationalism palatable when it goes by another name. The move from Chris-
tianity towards patriotic nationalism has, of course, been seen often when
Western nation-states have gone secular; indeed, to think of nationalism as a
state religion is not at all far-fetched (see Ehrenreich). For the French in 1925,
though, the religious- nationalist theme would have had an impact on their
cultural semiotics because the laussian notion of "imitation" would mean
playing nationalist in post-war France.
Shaw's play is not always easy to swallow, and seeing it must have been an
ambivalent experience for many, given the dangers of too strongly identifying
with Joan and her nationalism. "[TJhe aesthetic experience which catharsis
induces" is, however, also ambivalent: it "may break the hold of the real
world, but in so doing, it can either bring the spectator to a free, moral identi-
fication with an exemplary action ·or let him remain in a state of curiosity"
(lauss, Aesthetic 96). As a result of nationalism, the French catharsis, evi-
denced by the strong emotional reactions to the play that de Flers and Pharand
mention, is a concrete example of this ambivalence. On the one hand, Joan
 CRAIG HAMILTON

behaves in an exemplary fashi on, fighting for a cause larger than herself. On
the other hand, she inspires curiosity for post-war spectators perhaps wonder-
ing about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming into France every
year throughout the 192os. To view the playas an allegory for France during
the post-war period is to view it in these conflicting terms. For showing them
a credible Joan, audiences could thank Shaw for his research. However, in
seeing Saint Joan as "living history" that made distant figures contemporary
to the present world (Gerould 212), the audience had only 10 relate France 's
problems in the spring of 1925 to events in the play to see ilS own course of
events represented on stage. Of course, Shaw had no control over current
events, but they influenced how his play was received. Parallels wilh the
period of crisis were made right away by writers for both the liberal newspa-
per Le Temps and the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, who read contempo-
rary politics into Saint Joan in their search for answers to questions about
Franco-British relations and the power of the Church. Such evidence suggests,
in sum, that cuJtural semiotics is not ahistorical. As it happens, France circa
1925 was a complicated story unfolding ad hoc everyday.

2. THE CONTEXT OF SHAW'S RECEPTION

While mapping out the entire context surroundin g Shaw's play in 1925 Paris
might drown the play in a sea of facts , three issues merit special attention: the
security, political, and religious crises plaguing France as Pitoeff staged the
play. Articles in Le Temps and Le Figaro reveal a France constantly preoccu-
pied with its security, political situation, and religious troubles. On the issue
of security, questions on the disarmament of Germany and the strength of the
post-war alliance filled the papers all spring. After France had occupied
the Ruhr from January 1923 onward, fears ofre-invasion eased in 1925, when
the Locarno Pact stabilized the borders with Germany and Belgium and guar-
anteed the neutrality of the German Rhineland demilitarized zone (Mellas
263, 272). Accounts of negotiations over a joint French-British disarmament
policy for Germany between Briand, the French Foreign Minister, and Cham-
berlain, hi s British counterpart, were daily news items from April to June. The
same is true as well for peace and security concerns. From foreign reports
about France that were in the newspapers. readers could see how
France was viewed from abroad during the time of crisis. Curiously enough,
official election results from Germany indicating that Hindenberg had won
were published the same day Shaw' s play opened. For France, the results were
a defiant step backward, since Hindenberg was seen as representing Imperial
Germany ("Bulletin"). In sum, seven years after the Armistice, France could
not put the war behind it. Indeed, this was exactly the view taken by Paul
Painleve in his "Declaration ministerielle" to Parliament in late April, a week
before the debut of Shaw 's play.
 Saint Joan in Paris

Related to these security concerns was a major political crisis, due in part to
the economy. By 1925, a financial crisis involving th e franc, inflation, and tax
on capital had been dragging on for two years (MeUas 287). Political com-
mentator Franl'ois Coty did not exaggerate when he wrote that the state was in
the grips of a "crise supreme" that it could not handle. The "Cartel des
gauches," having won the 1924 elections, began to crumble in 1925 as a result
of its failure to stabilize the currency (Chevallier and Conac 462). It clung to a
slim majority in Parliament, but Doumergue replaced Millerand as President,
and Painleve replaced Herriot as head of the cabinet in the middle of April
1925 (Chevallier and Conac 462-63). Moreover, party politics in 1925 could
not have been more complicated. The Action Franl'aise was very vocal for the
right, while four parties on the left fought to hold the Cartel together: the
S.F.LO. (Section Franl'aise de l' Internationale Ouvriere), the Radical Social-
ists, the Republican Socialists, and the Communist Radical Left (Chevallier
and Conac 461). While maintaining its ground in the municipal elections of
April 1925, the Cartel was weakened in later cantonal elections when Leon
Blum's Communists split from the Cartel, thus dividin g the left ("Elections au
Conseil general," "Elections cantonales et communisme"). The Sen at, which
had little confidence in the Cartel, openly doubted its power and ability to
govem. From shake-ups at the top to mixed election results at the bottom,
these were the signs of France's schizophrenic feelings about its government
during the spring of 1925. Furthermore, when voting Communist was thought
of as voting against France. social class concerns were pitted against national-
ist worries. Sitting on the fence like this did little to ease the financial crisis,
and long-term effects of the war were Ubiquitous in 1925. If instability seemed
the status quo, for Shaw's audience the following axiom of 1920S France was
probably true: "politiquement Ie creur est a gauche, mais, la poche [est] a
droite [politically, its heart belongs to the Left, but its wallet belongs to the
Right1" (Chevallier and Conac 463). In this light, the galvanization a year ear-
lier of left and right forces to organize large numbers of people along political
lines takes on special meaning. With "the disillusionment of many war veter-
ans" and " the deep fears of socialism that filled the bourgeoisie" ("Ies desillu-
sions de beaucoup d'anciens combattants"; "la peur profonde du socialisme
qui impregne la bourgeiosie" [Mettas 277, my translation)), such political
expressions based on fear, which showed no signs of leveling off in 1925,
indicate a tense nation. Disillusionment and fear probably also led to the
Church 's increased prominence at this time. For Shaw, suffice it to say that his
play appeared before a France divided against itself, if this turbulent political
context is any evidence.
Along with sec urity and political concerns, the question of religion
remained equally worrying. France's religious crisis of the time can be
divided into two parts: schooling in Alsace and Lorraine, and the national/he
de Jeanne d'Arc. Having been part of Germany between 1870 and 1918,
 CRAIG HAMILTON

Alsace and Lorraine had yet to be fully integrated into France by 1925. Their
public schools were, in essence, Catholic schools, leading to a stand-off
between Paris and the Church. Affairs were so tense that France saw no need
for an ambassador to the Vatican. For Herriot, the provinces had to abide by
France's secular laws ("Ies lois 'Iai'ques"). adopted when the provinces
belonged to Germany (Chevallier and Conac 462). On this issue, Herriot was
led to speak about Alsace and Lorraine as integral parts of France before
French law ("/\ la chambre"), while President Doumergue insisted in a speech
delivered in Strasbourg that "I 'assimilation" of Alsace and Lorraine would be
done from the top down, not from the bottom up ("La Chambre"). Painleve
reiterated this policy more diplomatically three weeks later: "I 'assimilation
legislative" of Alsace and Lorraine would be done, he said, but in a manner
respectful to the provinces (2). For its part, the Church took its own hard line.
Bishop Ruch of Strasbourg announced, in a front-page article in Le Figaro on
2 [ April 1925, that parents of children in a local school where an anti-Catholic
teacher taught would not receive absolution or take part in "Ia Table sainte" at
his cathedral (P.L.)! The rhetoric on both sides was rancorous, and debates
about the Church, the recovered provinces, and secular laws clearly compli-
cated questions about religion at the time of Shaw's play. Coming as she does
from Lorraine, Joan was duly appropriated as a weapon against the govern-
ment Cartel on the question of religious schooling.
Of all the events surrounding Saint Joan in spring 1925 Paris, the anxiety
over the Joan of Arc holiday is perhaps the most intriguing. After Joan's can-
onization in 1920, a federal law declared the second Sunday in Maya national
holiday in the saint's name ("La Fete ... supprimee"). Every government
since had supported the holiday; however, in this tumultuous political period,
any opportunity for conservatives to rally was seen as a threat to the Cartel.
This was especially true because, from July [924 onward, large Catholic dem-
onstrations were held in every single French province. Coinciding as it did
with first round of nationwide cantonal elections on 10 May, the holiday was
canceled by the government for fear of violent counter-demonstrations against
fete observers. Such fears were not unfounded: the murder of three conserva-
tives outside a rally of the Ligue republicaine nationale and the Jeunesses
patriotes by two Communists just two weeks earlier had shocked Paris
("Guet-apens"). With its critics in Le Figaro blaming the murders on a weak-
ened state, the Cartel seized the moment to demand law and order. Painleve
prohibited all parades and public gatherings related to the holiday, but his crit-
ics maintained that the government was using the security excuse to punish
the right. The Church, in tum, called the cancellation anti-religious and anti-
nationalist and conflated the religious holiday with patriotism. In a front-page
article in Le Figaro on 3 May 1925, Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Paris,
wrote, "La rete de Jeanne d' Arc est une rete nationale. Partout doivent se
meier les couleurs fran,aises aux couleurs de Jeanne; I 'alliance du drapeau tri-
 Saint Joan in Paris

colore et I'etendard blanc et bleu symbolisent Ie souvenir reconnaissant de la

France et son invincible espoir [The Joan of Arc holiday is a national holiday.
Joan 's colors should blend with France's colors everywhere ... the alliance of
the tricolored flag and Joan 's white and blue emblem symbolize, for a grateful
France, its invincible hope]". When the Painleve government stuck to its posi-
ti on, some commentators claimed that the patron saint of France would have
to content herself with no ceremony because her people were spineless (Rom-
ier). Such was the .furore of the right over the holiday that Charles Maurras,
editor of the Ligue d'action fran9aise newspaper, would end up in court at the .
end of the month for death threats against cabinet members who banned the
fete. The right eventually won out, with the support of many right-wing
groups ("La France fetera"). Such groups included the Ligue d'action
fran9aise, the Ligue des patriotes, the Jeunesses patriotes, the Veterans de
terre et de mer, and the Union catholiques des chemins de fer fran,ais. In
binding religion to patriotism, the right and the Church scared the government
into action, lest the Cartel appear anti-France or anti -patriotic. While it is not
clear whether the leftist government wanted to cancel the holiday to keep con-
servative voters away from the polls, on 8 May the ban was removed. The
government participated as usual in the official ceremonies. The elections and
the fete went off without a hitch. But the cancellation and the debate it sparked
over the fete were unprecedented.
If the anxiety surrounding the holiday tells us anything, it reveals how
important Joan's story was. Controlling how she was to be represented in a
troubled France mattered. If Shaw's Joan demanded to be seen in new terms,
then the French horizon of expectations of its preformed symbolic complex
would have been modified. But the French might have become accustomed to
such modifications. Because Joan links religion, politics, and nationalism, as
the critic Nadia Margolis explains, hers is a one-size-fits-all myth:

Born of the people (Left) of the purest, Aryan, Gallic race (Right), Joan defends the
king (Right) and France (Republican/Right). She reaffirms the dauphin's legitimacy,
cast in doubt by his mother's supposed adultery, by her virginity as much as by her
military exploits (Royalisl/Right). She helps rid France of its worst enemy, the
English (all sides, especially Right) [ ... J she is pious to the point of mystical vision
and divine designation as savior of France (Catholic Right) but is du ped by officials
of church and state (RepubHcan/Left) and is captured and burned as a heretic by the
English and their allies at the Sorbonne (Right/Left [PeguyJ) and by the very church
that had later to canonize her in order to preserve its credibility (Republican/Left).
Among the ashes is found her unburned heart, still full of blood (Catholic Right).
(267--{iS)

The anxiety over Joan in 1925 fits a pattern outlined above by Margolis. As
can been seen in Bishop Ruch's 8 May speech in Orleans, reprinted in Le
 CRAIG HAMILTON

Figaro the next day, when he called Joan "Ia liberatrice de I' Alsace et la Lor-
raine [the li berator of Alsace and Lorraine]" ("La France fetera"), the Church
packaged Joan "as savior of France" (to use Margolis's phrase). Painleve's
government lost the argument against Joan's holiday because the right was
able to concoct a powerful politiCal cocktail of conservative religious nation-
alism that the left could not counter. To return to Shaw, audiences may have
gone to see his play out of anger with the government's attempt to cancel the
holiday, or they may have gone out of a need for a saint who was not quite the
one the Church was packaging at the time.3 They may also have seen the play,
of course, for any number of other reasons that will never be known. Saint
Joan opens possibilities nevertheless: Joan 's origins reminded audiences that
Alsace and Lorraine were indeed French, and her fete on 10 May 1925 finally
united opposing factions. Readings like this are all options available to critics
situating the play in its French context, an exercise that makes sense given that
the context involved what the Paris press called a crisis of an "exceptionelle
gravite" for France ("La crise"). History, in short, clarifies why Shaw's play
meant so much, but another reason for the play's success merits explanation,
given this turbulent context: the display of nomos in the trial scene.

3. NOMOS, OR DRAMA AS CIVICS LESSON

Scene five of Saint Joan, the trial scene, is a significant example of represent-
ing nomos, or governance, on stage. If spectators desire, ultimately, "onl y to
become aware of the laws according to which destiny manifests itself, and to
divine perhaps the secret of its apparitions" (Artaud 75), then Shaw's play
appealed directly to this need. As Brian Tyson has shown, Shaw's text for the
trial follows Murray's translation of Quicherat almost verbatim, so that Joan's
answers are essentially those she gave in Rouen in 1431 (Tyson 48). This hon-
est depiction of Joan and the trial had been lost through the infinite representa-
tions of her over the centuries. During the trial scene, Parisians "wept at a
childlike, pathetic Joan confronting the unrelenting tribunal" (Pharand 77).
Pitoeff aided in this emotional response by having the petite Ludmilla face the
audience from a chair center stage, while members of the court occupied
places behind her on risers a meter or so high (PitoNf 25).4 Clearly, in such a
setting, observing the workings of the court must have been one driving force
behind the audience's engrossment in the play. Spectators of this scene wit-
ness exactly how Joan 's destiny takes its course. Apart from destiny, however,
the trial emphasizes the concept of nomos. As the classics scholar Vassilis
Lambropoulos argues, drama can provide a civics lesson:

Drama, by enacting strife on a public stage, brings civics center stage and so encour-
ages reflection on the political organization of society. Indeed, it is hardly a historical
accident that theater has flourished only in political societies. For our purposes, its
 Saint Joan in Paris

decisive feature is the release of the open space, the unfolding of the agora, the gather-
ing of the assembly, the display of public deliberation, which exposes governance to
the common light of day. In this sense, drama is an eminent example of nomoscopic
inquiry in its own right, for it stages the complex operations of power and justice and
holds them up to the scrutiny of citizens. (875)

From Lambropoulos 's thesis, it follows that judicial drama offers itself openly
to the contemplation of power and governance. This is not to say that Shaw
stuck to some recipe for success (e.g., instant success: just add trial scene).
Rather, it is to say that an important by-product of Shaw 's aim of demystify-
ing Joan was the demystification of one of France's most famous trials. In this
way drama provides a civics lesson: demystification is didactic. Saint Joan's
success in Paris hinges on this scene because, as Lamhropoulos would have it,
the scene "encourages reflection on the political organization of-society." The
court, of course, fully embodies that political organization.
The trial scene, we recall, opens with a conference between Cauchon and
Warwick. Just as Warwick tells Cauchon that Joan's "death is a political
necessity" (II7) ("sa mort est une necessite politique" [Hamon and Hamon
26]), the daily resurrection of her life's story on the Parisian stage was perhaps
also a necessi ty. When Canon de Courcelles of Paris and Chaplain de Stogum-
ber of England are told that the sixty-four charges they have brought against
Joan have been reduced to just twelve, the audience grasps court procedure.
Unfamiliar with the machinations of the court and jurisprudence, Courcelles
and Stogumber are laughed at. Following Lambropoulos, to count as a citizen,
as it were, is to know how trials and courts operate. Those who do not know
are non-citizens. Therefore, to laugh at Courcelles and Stogumber is to
become a citizen, to situate oneself on the side of those who know, those who
set the agenda, those in control. Another opportunity for such a move is Cau-
chon's explanation that "This is not a police court" disposed to wasting time
on "such rubbish" (120) ("Ce n'est pas un tribunal de simple police, ici.
Allons-nous perdre notre temps a de pareilles betises?" [Hamon and Hamon
271). To define the court is to establish boundaries over what the court can and
cannot do. By treating this task with humor, Shaw got a lot oflaughs out of the
audience (Girard). I argue that such scenes serve two purposes: to inform
spectators about the type of court that tries Joan, and to implicate spectators in
governance when they laugh at those who mistake the court for something
else. Each purpose involves nomos and takes on important civic meaning for
the world beyond the theatre. Just as the Inquisitor reminds the court that her-
esy is the most important charge leveled against Joan, so too does the audi-
ence learn this: "Heresy begins with people who are to all appearance better
than their neighbors" and leads to the collapse of "both Church and Empire if
not ruthlessly stamped out in time" (121) ("L'heresie commence avec des
gens qui, selon toutes les apparences, sont mieux que leur voisin [ ... ] [ils]
370 CRAIG HAMILTON

peuvent Stre les fondateurs d'une heresie qui causera la ruine de l'Eglise et de
l'Empire si elle n'est pas vite ecrasee sans pitie" [Hamon and Hamon 28]).
Moreover, the nomoscopic function of the trial is perhaps clearest when the
Inquisitor ends his speech with the declaration that this high court is no place
for pity, anger, or cruelty; only justice and mercy (123; Hamon and Hamon
29). In sum, the court in the play is a site for justice above all else.
The central chalge against Joan is heresy, understood essentially as "Prot-
estantism" (124) ("Protestantisme" [Hamon and Hamon 29]). Cauchon states
that "regular" heresy spreads like the plague, while loan's version is seen as
much more sinister in that it preys upon the strong of mind and will rather
than on the weak and diseased. While Joan does come across as Protestant in
the play, how Shaw's own politics of the time influenced this choice is not
clear. 5 The dilemma behind classifying Joan as Catholic is that if her contact
with God is direct, then she foreshadows Protestant theology. For the Church,
this is heresy, because it is the first step toward weakening Catholicism. This
is one reason for the political necessity of Joan's death. Another issue here,
however, involves nationalism as it factors into the equation. While the right
wing, in spring 1925, managed to conflate nationalism with Catholicism via
Joan and her holiday, Shaw's Joan works in the opposite direction if we recall
that Cauchon had labeled Joan's nationalism "anti-Catholic" eallier on (99).
If the Church tries Joan for heresy, and if that crime is. understood as Protes-
tantism , then Protestantism falls on the side of nationalism and nationalism is
not aligned with Catholicism. For an Irish Shaw, this would be natural: the
nationalist idea of a united Ireland was actually a Protestant desire (Kiberd
435). For France, however, if Catholicism is on the right in the political spec-
trum in 1925, then Shaw's play situates Joan on the left as a Protestant. Thus
Joan's main crime, and her persecution in the trial, could be seen as the
revenge of the left against the right. Such an idea had serious implications, of
course. When Cauchon shouts at Chaplain de Stogumber, in scene four, "If
you dare do what this woman has done - set your country above the holy
Catholic Church - you shall go to the fire with her" (93) ("Si vous osez faire
ce qu'a fait cette femme, en mettant votre pays au-dessus de la Sainte EgJise
catholique, vous irez au bucher avec elle" [Hamon and Hamon r8]), audi-
ences must have wondered where they situated themselves in an officially
secular France with a left-wing government that had caved in to the Church
over the 10 May 1925 CSte for Joan. With the interests of nation and religion
at odds, Shaw's play challenges the Church's view of Joan because it posi-
tions her as a Protestant, against the Church, and thus on the side of the state.
This would all be fitting for the nomoscopic aspect of governance, given the
setting. In short, spectators see a microcosm of France in the mid-I920S, with
a Protestant Joan, this time, left of the center in tenns of the organization of
power.
The most specific problematic of nomos in the scene is perhaps jurisdic-
 Saint Joan in Paris 371

tiDn. When JDan says tD Estivet, "Why dD YDU leave me in the hands 'Of the
English? I ShDUld be in the hands 'Of the Church" (125) ("PDurquoi me lais-
seZ-VDUS aux mains des Anglais? C'est entre les mains de I'Eglise que je
devrais etre" [HamDn and HamDn 29]), jurisdictiDn is questiDned. If indeed
the charge is heresy, the case wDuld fall within the jurisdictiDn 'Of church
CDUrts, nDt royal courts, in medieval France (Timbal and CastaldD 239-41).
This is anDther instance 'Of the playas civics lessDn. One example 'Of the juris-
dictiDn problem CDmes after JDan's cDndemnatiDn and remDval from the great
hall:

INQUISITOR The execution is not in our hands, my lord; but it is desirable that we
should witness the end. So by your leave - [He bows, and goes om through the
courtyardl .
CAUCHON There is some doubt whether your people have observed the forms of
law, my IDrd.
WARWICK I am told that there is saine doubt ·whether your authority runs in this
city, my lord. It is not in your diocese. However, if you will answer forthat I will
answer for the rcst. (140)

L'INQUISITEUR L 'execution .ne nous regarde pas, man Seigncur. Mais cependant it
est desirable que nous assistions ala fm .. . Aussi. VallS permeltez? [II safue et sort
du coti de fa cour].
CAUCHON Mon Seigneur, il y a des doutes que vos gens aient observe les formes
delaloi.
WARWICK On me dit, mon Seigneur, qu'il y a des doutes que votre autorite soit
validc en cette ville qui n'cst pas de vatte diocese,je crois ... Pourtant, si vous
repondez, moi jc reponds du reste. (Hamon and Hamon 34)

LambropDulDs might agree that what "expDses governance tD the CDmmDn

light 'Of day" here is a simple yet crucial questiDn 'Of jurisprudence: WhD can
try JDan? Such interrDgatiDn 'Over jurisdictiDn displays nomos befDre specta-
tors. The executiDn 'Of the sentence, hDwever, reveals IDathing abDut fDIIDwing
the trial tD its end. The Church absDlves itself 'Of responsibility by 'Obliging the
English tD bum JDan. And when CauchDn replies tD Warwick that answering
tD their respective leaders is nDt enDugh, that "[ilt is tD God that we bDth must
answer" (14'0) ("C'est a Dieu que tDUS deux nDUS devDns en repondre"
[HamDn and HamDn 34]), sDmething strange takes place: justice is trans-
fDrmed. In the play's cathartic mDment par excellence, justice becDmes 'Open
fDr definitiDn as respDnsibility fDr the sentence is shared amDng the French
church, the English rulers, and JDan with her self-recriminatiDns. The question
'Of exactly WhD has jurisdictiDn and WhD has the right tD send dDwn such a sen-
tence lingers in the minds 'Of audiences. If anything, French spectatDrs wDuld
have left the play with a sense that the trial was nDt as straightfDrward as they
372 CRAIG HAMILTON

had thought, with the French defending Joan against English prosecutors. At a
time when many of France's problems were simply blamed on wartime Ger-
many, this lesson clearly mattered.
The final aspect of the trial's demystification involves ritual. As Robert de
F1ers wrote in his II May 1925 review in Le Figaro, Shaw's trial scene left
audience members "bouleverses" ("Sainte Jeanne"). Why this should be the
case when seeing a legal institution act in accordance with its duties and its
responsibilities relates to the trial as a sort of ritual of justice. Joan's trial has
always bordered on myth , and, for Jauss, myth "demands the subject's surren-
der to the community of the cultic ritual" (Aesthetic 155). As a "cultic ritual,"
Shaw's trial scene involves the audience as a community. Because Joan's sen-
tence was known beforehand, the emphasis was on the communal deliberation
within the trial. This leads me to disagree with Pharand's view that "the
judges and their interrogation seemed almost irrelevant" (77), because clearly
they were not. Simply put, there is no Joan of Arc if there is no court, just as
there is no drama in the play if there is no trial ritual. Therefore, the trial is rel-
evant. As we know, audiences appreciated Shaw's sober realism when com-
pared to other plays of the time (Tyson 98). Witnessing deliberations about
running the trial , defining charges, and clarifying jurisdictions forged a new
relationship between audiences and Joan that had previously been absent from
French theatre. As a new and improved ritual, the trial scene changed a central
preformed symbolic complex for 1920s France.
In conclusion, to the reasons behind Saint Joan's success in Paris that Ger-
a uld and Pharand offered we can now add the factors of cultural semiotics, a
unique historical context, and nomos. And, although the implications of Larn-
bropoulos's view of drama as civics lesson are more wide-ranging than
addressed here, we have one new starting point for future studies in reception
theory: How does reception change when faced with the unique nature of a
preformed symbolic complex such as Joan of Arc? Is the 1925 French adop-
tion of Shaw 's Joan over other versions simply due to our "aesthetic prefer-
ence for the new" (lauss, "Tradition" 375 and passim)? Are reception and
history separable? These questions remain open, but they may allow us to see
links between Lambropoulos's compelling arguments and those of reception
theory. Of course, not all French theatregoers admired Shaw 's play (see Gra-
ham), but this is to be expected whenever icons like Joan are represented
anew. That having been said, the overwhelming popularity that greeted the
play in Paris was due to audience interaction with Joan, the troubled historical
context of 19208 France, and the trial scene's demonstration of nomos. If
PirandelIo's experience of the play' s New York premiere taught him some-
thing about the American mind, then it would be safe to assume that the play 's
first run in Paris tells us something about the French mind. At the very least,
we are now better able to see why a particular play in a particular time and a
particular place was successful.
 Saint Joan in Paris 373

N OTES

, I thank Jackson Bryer for comments on an early version of this article that supported
a similar position. This article was completed at CREA. Ecole Poly technique. Paris,
during my Chateaubriand fellowship. I thank the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs for supporting my research during thi s lime.
2 The French citations are from the Augustin and Henriette Hamon translation pub-
lished in 1925. reprinted in 1928, and used in the Pitoefr'production. In the transla-
tors' note, the Hamons explain that their translation is from the published English
text, not the American. Any differences between their version and the English text
are due to "quelques Iegeres modifications faites par Bernard Shaw lors de sa revi-
sion de notre textc" (2). Thus, French audiences heard a translati on modified by
Shaw. turning the French text into a joint Shaw- Hamon product.
3 Schrameck. Painlev6's Minister of the Interior. in keep ing with the ban, could not
allow the Pitoeffs to stage Shaw's play on to May, when they applied for permission
to do so through the auspices of the national theatre union (Gignoux). As far as I can
tell, the show on Sunday (10 May 1925) was canceled, but on the nex t day, Monday ,
the PitoHfs placed a new advertisement for Sainte J eanne in the Figaro. At thi s
time, I am not sure why the play was not staged on Sunday 10 May. since the ban on
the Joan of Arc hOlida'y was lifted afler all.
4 For readers interested in the Pitoeffs, the catalogue from the 1996 Bibliotheque
Nationale de France exhibit on them, entitled Les PilOeJ/. destins de theatre, may be
significant. The Pitoeffs were credited with introducing French audiences to Shaw's
work. After Saint Joan , Shaw's reputation in France was firmly established. Ray-
monde Temkine's review of the exhibit, by the same title. is available in the June
J 996 issue of Regards. on-line at <www.regards. fr/archives/ J 996/199606/>.
5 Shaw's socialist politics at the time of Saint Joan have been treated in detail by
Tracy Davis in George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre. Davis reads the
play uniquely as a commentary on Irish nationalism in the early 1920S but does not
mention the legacy of Parnell. While I disagree with her claim that Shaw's motiva-
tion for writing the play did not involve a desire to "set the record straight" (125),
she draws an interesting Communist parallel between Joan and TrotSky (126).

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