Saint Joan is said to be the ' 'climax" of Shaw's career. Hill explores this concept through examination of the play.

Though in form Back to Methuselah and Shaw's next play stand in sharp contrast, they are similar in two ways both reflect the pressures of the war period on their creator and both deal with religious themes. Shaw once said Saint Joan would not have been written had he not visualized the subject as relevant to "a world situation in which we see whole peoples perishing and dragging us toward the abyss which has swallowed them, all for want of any grasp of the political forces that move civilization."

Other authors had written of the Maid, among them, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Southey, Schiller, Andrew Lang, Mark Twain, Tom Taylor, Percy MacKaye; but Shaw did not learn much from these predecessors in the field. He felt that Voltaire...