The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw.

The play is
Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first
financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright. It was published in Shaw's 1901
collection Three Plays for Puritans together with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and Caesar and
Cleopatra. Set in Colonial America during the Revolutionary era, the play tells the story of Richard
Dudgeon, a local outcast and self-proclaimed "Devil's disciple". In a twist characteristic of Shaw's love
of paradox, Dudgeon sacrifices himself in a Christ-like gesture despite his professed Infernal
allegiance.

Plot summary

The setting is in the Fall of 1777, during the Saratoga Campaign.

[edit] Act I

Richard "Dick" Dudgeon is an outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire. He
returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father, Dick returns to his childhood home to
hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay. Anthony Anderson, the local minister,
treats him with courtesy despite Dick's self-proclaimed apostasy, but Dick's "wickedness" appalls
Anderson's wife Judith. To everyone's surprise, it is revealed that Dick's father secretly changed his
will just before he died, leaving the bulk of his estate to Dick. Dick promptly evicts his mother from her
home, but also invites his cousin Essie (the illegitimate daughter of Dick's never-do-well uncle Peter),
orphaned by the hanging of her father as a rebel by the British, to stay as long as she wants. At the
end of the Act, Dick proclaims himself also a rebel against the British and scorns his family as
cowards when they flee his home. He warns Anderson that the approaching army hanged his uncle in
error, believing him to be a man of highest respect, unaware of his ill repute, and that Anderson will
be the example set in Websterbridge.

[edit] Act II

While visiting Anderson's home at the Reverend's invitation, Dick is left alone with Judith while
Anderson is called out to Mrs. Dudgeon's deathbed. Perceiving Judith's distaste for him, Dick
attempts to leave, but Judith insists he stay until Anderson returns. While they are waiting, British
soldiers enter Anderson's home and arrest Dick, mistaking him for Anderson. Dick allows them to
take him away without revealing his actual identity. He swears Judith to secrecy lest her husband give
the secret away and expose himself to arrest. Anderson returns and finds his wife in a state of great
agitation. He demands to know if Dick has harmed her. Breaking her promise to Dick, Judith reveals
that soldiers came to arrest Anderson but Dick went in his place. Anderson is stunned. He grabs all
his money and a gun and quickly rides away, ignoring Judith's appeals. Judith believes her husband
to be a coward, while Dick, whom she despised, is a hero.

[edit] Act III

Judith visits Dick and asks him if he has acted from love for her. He scornfully refutes the romantic
notion, telling her that he has acted according to "the law of my own nature", which forbade him to
save himself by condemning another. During the military trial, Dick is convicted and sentenced to be
hanged. This scene introduces General Burgoyne, a Shavian realist, who contributes a number of
sharp remarks about the conduct of the American Revolution. Judith interrupts the proceedings to
reveal Dick's true identity – but to no avail: he will be hanged in any case. News reaches Burgoyne
that American rebels have taken a nearby town, so he and his troops are in danger, especially since
orders from London that would have sent reinforcements were never dispatched. The rebels will send
an "officer of importance" to negotiate with the British. The final scene of the play is the public square
where Dick will be hanged. Like Sydney Carton in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Dick defies his
executioners and prepares to meet his death. At the last minute, Burgoyne stops the hanging
because the rebel officer has arrived. It is Anthony Anderson, who has become a man of action in his
"hour of trial", just as Dick became a man of conscience in his. Anderson bargains for Dick's life, and
Burgoyne agrees to free him. Anderson tells Dick that he (Anderson) is not suited to be a minister and
says Dick should replace him. As the Americans rejoice, the British march to quarters, knowing that
they face certain defeat.

The Devil's Disciple

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in a family belonging to the Irish Protestant gentry.
Apart from the musical education he received from his mother, he was practically self-educated. At
the age of 20 he went to London and set to work as a novelist. He wrote five novels in all, but none of
them made him famous. In 1884 he joined the newly formed Fabian Society, a large society of
socialistic intellectuals whose leader he was between 1884 and 1900. He edited Fabian Essays
(1887) which was influential in forming socialist opinion in Britain.
Before starting his career as a dramatist, G. B. Shaw wrote much theatre and music criticism
for a number of papers. In 1891 he published The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a study on the
Norwegian dramatist whose plays of social criticism impressed him very much for bringing a new
perspective in drama. In Shaw's plays though it is the ideas and not the characters that really matter,
his characters do not talk in order to define themselves but to make speeches.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.
His most famous plays are probably: Man and Superman (1903); Major Barbara(1905);
Pygmalion(1912); Heartbreak House(1917); other plays: in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant(1898) -
Widower's Houses; in Plays for Puritans(1901) - The Devil's Disciple; Caesar and Cleopatra; other
plays after 1918: The Art Cart; In Good King Charles's Golden Days.
The Devil's Disciple, written in 1897, is the first of the Plays for Puritans (published in 1901),
followed by Caesar and Cleopatra (1898) and Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1899).
In order to give his criticism a note of harmlessness, Shaw sets the action of the play in New
England, back in the year 1777, during the rebellion of American colonies against British dominion.
Probably, no description of that year is better then Shaw's: "The year 1777 is the one in which the
passions roused by the breaking-off of the American colonies from England, more by their own weigh
then by their own will […]"
At the beginning of the play we are introduced to Mrs. Dudgeon - sour, shrewish and stupidly
puritanical. The situation in the Dudgeon family is rather tense: Peter Dudgeon, Mrs. Dudgeon's
brother-in-law, was hang on the public gallows as a rebel and his 'irregular child' Essie was brought
into the house. On top of all the disgrace, the death of Timothy Dudgeon, Mrs. Dudgeon's husband,
comes as a terrible shock to her. An equally trying circumstance is the reading of the will, which takes
place in an atmosphere of chilly puritanism. It is the moment when the devil's disciple, Dick Dudgeon,
comes in. Inevitably, the will reveals that Dick is now master of the house. The play nearly reaches a
climax when Richard explains to his awe relatives that he used to pray secretly to the devil - "he
comforted me, and saved me from having my spirit broken in this house of children's tears. I
promised him my soul, and swore on oath that I would stand up for him in this world and stand by him
in the next. That promise and this oath made a man of me."
Minister Anthony Anderson and his pretty young wife Judith also appear in act I. Their
attitude towards Dick Dudgeon is very much the same as that of the others: disregard and contempt,
probably mixed with some pity. But is it only the second act that really makes the two leagues
confront each other. At the minister' invitation, Richard calls on the Andersons and stays on for tea,
while Anderson goes off comfort Mrs. Dudgeon, who is dying. When Judith begins to pour out her
loathing of Dick, the British soldiers arrive and mistake Dick for Anderson and arrest him. Their
intention is to hang someone as an example, regardless of his being innocent. Dick tells Judith to find
her husband and get him out of harm's way. She kisses him before the soldiers take him away, in
order to make things seem as natural as possible. She immediately faints. When Anderson returns,
she cannot tell him what happened and for another quarter of an hour he goes on believing that it was
Dick that the soldiers came for. The tension mounts and this is Shaw's skill as a dramatist is at its
best. For it is Essie who rushes into the house and reveals what really happened. When Anderson
realizes the absurdity of the facts, his true character suddenly emerges; he turns into a man of action,
leaps on his horse and leaves without any explanation. This makes Judith believe that he has simply
deserted Dick, which brings her to despair.
The third act, actually the best in the play, turns all the anxieties and tensions into
melodrama. Judith visits Dick in prison, tells him of her husband's flight and begs him to save himself.
He keeps up to his usual sarcasm and tells her that his death will not by any means break her heart.
Judith, with her hands on his shoulders and looking intently at him, whispers an ambiguous question:
"How do I know?". At this stage Dick makes the speech that is the point of the whole play: "What I did
last night, I did in cold blood, caring not half so much for your husband, or for you as I do for myself."
This is the true revelation of Dick's inner, natural Christianity, a value that Shaw poses against the
false kindness of those who call themselves good Christians before having done anything to prove
their good-heartedness.
The trial scene that follows is another wonderful example of the clash of egos - this time, Dick
and General Burgoyne. The latter is cultured, intelligent and with a vein of self-mockery, an ideal
partner for Dick's witty replies. The trial scene is a masterpiece in terms of witticism and irony with
sarcastic overtones: BURGOYNE: "[…] Let me persuade you to be hanged, Mr. Anderson."
RICHARD: "[…] Hang me, by all means."
In the end, Richard Dudgeon is not hanged because Anderson himself comes with a safe-
conduct at the last minute. He explains that he has found his true profession due to this trial, which
has shown him that he is a soldier at heart, not a clergyman. The plays ends with Dick being carried
off in triumph on shoulders of the townspeople, after promising Judith - who is ashamed of having
doubted her husband - that he will never tell what happened in prison.
Characterization
The so-called 'melodrama' is a very subtle combination of romantic scenes viewed from a
completely unromantic perspective and of gradually accumulation tension. The center of these swirls
is Richard Dudgeon, the rejected eldest son of the recently widowed Mrs. Dudgeon. He has offered
his life to the devil out of a very powerful need to oppose the hypocrisy and false dignity of his
puritanical family. Dick is a rebel and this is what brings about the clash of egos mentioned before.
For Dick's 'glory' as a rebel is displayed at the level of discourse. His humorous and gradually
sarcastic remarks are every time a delight for readers. He seems to possess the art of turning any
absurdity into a laughing stock.
But Dick Dudgeon is not only an outcast, a terrible nonconformist. He eventually proves to be
a far better Christian that anyone else in his family, and he even surpasses minister Anderson when it
comes to endangering his life in order to save the minister's. He is honest in everything he does
starting with his rebellion and up to the confession that he makes to Judith when she visits him in
prison and desperately wants to know why he pretended he was her husband.
The noble human capacity of doing good is unspoiled in him. He is the only one to regard
Essie as a fellow human being, not to speak of his readiness to sacrifice his life for the mere reason
that another man's life is worthier that his own.
In the end, Richard's idealism proves not to have harmed anybody. He is rescued by Anthony
Anderson just two minutes before his execution and this puts an end to British dominion as well.
Style, language
The play is written in such a manner as to more or less give the impression that each
character has his own speech to make. The language therefore is sometimes quite elaborate and
sententious.
What is also remarkable is Shaw's inexhaustible wit, the way in which he mixes irony,
sarcasm and absurdity into a juicy piece of dialogue.
We should also mention, as it was one of Shaw's constants concerns, the simplification of
spelling for such words as: don't, can't, hadnt, wont, youre, theyre, theyve, theyll, thats, theres, dunno
(i.e. "don't know").