Reality in the Unreal: A Different View of Richard III, Saint Joan, and Galileo

Many critics have argued again and again that Shakepeare's Richard III, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, and later Bertolt Brecht's Galileo are plays that, because of the ways they are written, are considered "bad" history plays. However, I don't think those critics are being as fair to Shaw (and Brecht) as they could be. If a playwright is going to take on writing a history play, that playwright should model more of the ways that Shaw uses to make Saint Joan more accessible (and the paths Brecht takes), rather than what Shakespeare was attempting to do when he wrote Richard III.

Effective history seems to beg that it have within it the ability to be readily understood by as many people as possible. That said, Shaw seems to realize this because he has made the choice to write Saint Joan in a form that is mostly novelistic but that still maintains the script-like conventions of earlier plays like Shakespeare's Richard III. Shaw said, "art should try to change the world." This was the main idea behind his propagandistic nature when it came to writing his plays and speaking out in his public life. I think that his decision to write Saint Joan more as a novel, rather than a conventional-looking play, speaks toward his 'change the world' declaration, because since the time Saint Joan was written, the genre of history plays was never quite the same; certainly not reverting back to the conventions that Shakespeare communicated in Richard III.