Spoilers for Shaw's "Saint Joan"

I don't mean I'm spoiling the historical facts, that Joan went to the stake, and the 7th Cavalry didn't ride in and save her or anything like that, but I'm spoiling a wonderful gimmick--a terrific piece of theatre--that Shaw came up with for an ending to his play.

It's years after the events of the story. One of the characters is old, dying in bed, and he has what may or may not be a dream, and the players in the tale walk again: Joan, her inquisitor, and so on. And there's a soldier, a rough and churlish fellow.

He wasn't a good man, this soldier, but for one night of the year, he walks as a saint. The rest of the days, he is in Hell, and he's actually happier there than he is being a saint, if we can believe his good-natured grousing, but we don't always get to choose, do we?

And his saintly act is, likely enough, the only good thing he ever did: He was at the burning of some witch, a young lass he wouldn't even recognize if he saw her again (spoiler: He's talking to her and doesn't know it.), but he heard her cry out as they were lighting her pyre.

She cried out for a cross, any cross, and this soldier, in a moment of reflexive compassion, held up two sticks in the shape of a cross, and this was her final succor, and it sufficed, and she died easily enough, under the circumstances.

So the soldier is a saint one night a year, and a denizen of Hell all the other nights. He played his part: You could say he was the final friend of the heroine of France. And I think about him and his one worthwhile deed.

I think of politicians, our politicians, who have in some cases done one decent thing that made all the difference. I think of appointees, elected officials, judges, who have chosen the wrong way over and over, and who yet may be our last hope--if they'll just do one good thing.

Maybe as we're watching the flames start to rise, some worthless lackey on the other side will do the one right thing that makes all the difference. Maybe it will be enough. Maybe not. Odds are, it won't even happen. We're not in a play.

Here's to all our hopes in 2020.
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[edited and revised from a thread of tweets from January 1, 2020]