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    Androcles and the Lion
    Androcles and the Lion
    Androcles and the Lion
    Ebook72 pages

    Androcles and the Lion

    By George Bernard Shaw

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "Androcles and the Lion" by George Bernard Shaw is a delightful and thought-provoking play that blends humor, compassion, and social commentary. Set in ancient Rome, the play tells the story of Androcles, a gentle and kind-hearted Christian tailor who finds himself thrown into the brutal world of gladiatorial combat. The play opens with Androcles fleeing from his cruel master, escaping into the wilderness where he encounters a wounded lion. Showing compassion, Androcles tends to the lion's injury and forms an unlikely bond with the fierce creature. Little does he know that this act of kindness will change his life forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateAug 17, 2018
    ISBN9781787247857
    Androcles and the Lion
    Author

    George Bernard Shaw

    George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and moved to London in 1876. He initially wrote novels then went on to achieve fame through his career as a journalist, critic and public speaker. A committed and active socialist, he was one of the leaders of the Fabian Society. He was a prolific and much lauded playwright and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in 1950.

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    Reviews for Androcles and the Lion

    3.5/5

    59 ratings4 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Shaw's bombast gets in the way of the play. He was really so full of himself that he could write a pedantic 100 page preface to a 42 page play? Even after the play is over Shaw appends another ten pages of lecture, just in case you fell asleep or skipped through the first hundred pages.
    • 4/5
      This play, set in Imperial Rome, is the story of a Christian being thrown to the lions. However, the play is a lot more than just a poor defenceless soul being ripped apart by a ravenous beast, nor is it an attack upon Christianity, but rather a critical look at the church in modern times. The intention of the play seems to be to remind Christians of where they have come from and what they have become.The play was released in 1913, during a time when the Church still had a significant influence over society, though it was beginning to face attacks from scientific rationalism and modernism. It was the eve of World War I: a war in which both sides claimed divine support which resulted in one of the bloodiest wars humanity had experienced. However this relates more to the time in which the play was written rather than the play itself because at the time nobody actually believed that they were on the brink of war.The book in which the play was published contains one of Shaw's characteristic prologues, and in fact the prologue to this play is longer than the play itself. In this prologue Shaw examines each of the gospels and concludes that Jesus was an exceptional man who had a lot to say regarding the way humans lived. However it is clear that he did not accept Christ's divinity, nor does he accept the resurrection but rather he believes that the true teachings of Christ were lost with the crucifixion and where then manipulated by the early apostles, with a particular focus on Paul, for their own purposes. What Shaw does not realise was that Paul, up until his conversion, was a very devout Jew who went around persecuting Christians. Paul was not the type of person to have radically changed his beliefs without some form of epiphany upon which there was some factual basis.The play is based on an earlier story where the hero, Androcles, runs away from his master and hides in a cave where he meets a lion. He removes a thorn from the Lion's foot and bandages it and as a result the lion becomes his friend. Years later Androcles returns to Rome, is arrested as a runaway slave, and thrown to the lions. It turns out that the lion in the arena is the same lion that Androcles helped in the past and as a result the lion does not attack him: thus Androcles is spared.Shaw uses this tale as a vehicle for his philosophy and analyses true religious values: which he believes is earnestness and lack of hypocrisy. While the lack of hypocrisy is important, and Jesus has much to say to the hypocrites of his day, the earnestness is not clearly something that is helpful. The key to Christianity is faith is an objective truth. It is all well and good to have faith, but if one has faith in something that is not true, then that faith comes to nothing. A great example is of an aeroplane. We may get onto the plane convinced that the plane will take us where we want to go, but no amount of faith is going to stop the plane's engines from exploding if there is a fault in those engines. Simply ask somebody who has survived a plane crash.
    • 4/5
      Shaw uses the framework of Aesop's tale of Androcles and the lion to examine how different people exhibit (or fail to exhibit) Christian virtues. In particular importance in the play is the Christian ideal of turning the other cheek. There were many ideas similar to those in "The Devil's Disciple" but as a play I think that this one isn't as good entertainment as "The Devil's Disciple" was.
    • 3/5
      A fun little work, short and to the point, based on the old fable, but with more wisecracking and dialogue. Shaw does not go out of his way to make any side of this look good, and Androcles himself is a wimpy sort of guy, lacking in any real courage except where animals are concerned. The Christians are not the bad guys, but neither are the pagans. They are all just sort of strange, with odd beliefs that at least some of them are willing to die for. Shaw skewers everyone equally, but there is a gentleness to his fun, and many of the characters are actually likeable. This was worth the time I spent.

    Book preview

    Androcles and the Lion - George Bernard Shaw

    cover.jpg

    George Bernard Shaw

    Androcles

    and the Lion

    Published by Sovereign

    This edition first published in 2018

    Copyright © 2018 Sovereign

    All Rights Reserve

    ISBN: 9781787247857

    Contents

    PROLOGUE

    ACT I

    ACT II

    PROLOGUE

    Overture; forest sounds, roaring of lions, Christian hymn faintly.

    A jungle path. A lion’s roar, a melancholy suffering roar, comes from the jungle. It is repeated nearer. The lion limps from the jungle on three legs, holding up his right forepaw, in which a huge thorn sticks. He sits down and contemplates it. He licks it. He shakes it. He tries to extract it by scraping it along the ground, and hurts himself worse. He roars piteously. He licks it again. Tears drop from his eyes. He limps painfully off the path and lies down under the trees, exhausted with pain. Heaving a long sigh, like wind in a trombone, he goes to sleep.

    Androcles and his wife Megaera come along the path. He is a small, thin, ridiculous little man who might be any age from thirty to fifty-five. He has sandy hair, watery compassionate blue eyes, sensitive nostrils, and a very presentable forehead; but his good points go no further; his arms and legs and back, though wiry of their kind, look shrivelled and starved. He carries a big bundle, is very poorly clad, and seems tired and hungry.

    His wife is a rather handsome pampered slattern, well fed and in the prime of life. She has nothing to carry, and has a stout stick to help her along.

    MEGAERA (suddenly throwing down her stick) I won’t go another step.

    ANDROCLES (pleading wearily) Oh, not again, dear. What’s the good of stopping every two miles and saying you won’t go another step? We must get on to the next village before night. There are wild beasts in this wood: lions, they say.

    MEGAERA. I don’t believe a word of it. You are always threatening me with wild beasts to make me walk the very soul out of my body when I can hardly drag one foot before another. We haven’t seen a single lion yet.

    ANDROCLES. Well, dear, do you want to see one?

    MEGAERA (tearing the bundle from his back) You cruel beast, you don’t care how tired I am, or what becomes of me (she throws the bundle on the ground): always thinking of yourself. Self! self! self! always yourself! (She sits down on the bundle).

    ANDROCLES (sitting down sadly on the ground with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands) We all have to think of ourselves occasionally, dear.

    MEGAERA. A man ought to think of his wife sometimes.

    ANDROCLES. He can’t always help it, dear. You make me think of you a good deal. Not that I blame you.

    MEGAERA. Blame me! I should think not indeed. Is it my fault that I’m married to you?

    ANDROCLES. No, dear: that is my fault.

    MEGAERA. That’s a nice thing to say to me. Aren’t you happy with me?

    ANDROCLES. I don’t complain, my love.

    MEGAERA. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

    ANDROCLES. I am, my dear.

    MEGAERA. You’re not: you glory in it.

    ANDROCLES. In what, darling?

    MEGAERA. In everything. In making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I’m good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you’re always driving me to do things I’m sorry for afterwards, people say Poor man: what a life his wife leads him! Oh, if they only knew! And you think I don’t know. But I do, I do, (screaming) I do.

    ANDROCLES. Yes, my dear: I know you do.

    MEGAERA. Then why don’t you treat me properly and be a good husband to me?

    ANDROCLES. What can I do, my dear?

    MEGAERA. What can you do! You can return to your duty, and come back to your home and your friends, and sacrifice to the gods as all respectable people do, instead of having us hunted out of house and home for being dirty, disreputable, blaspheming atheists.

    ANDROCLES. I’m not an atheist, dear: I am a Christian.

    MEGAERA. Well, isn’t that the same thing, only ten times worse? Everybody knows that the Christians are the very lowest of the low.

    ANDROCLES. Just like us, dear.

    MEGAERA. Speak for yourself. Don’t you dare to compare me to common people. My father owned his own public-house; and sorrowful was the day for me when you first came drinking in our bar.

    ANDROCLES. I confess I was addicted to it, dear.

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