title: The Devil's Disciple
author:  George Bernard Shaw 
description: BERNARD SHAW was born in Dublin in 1856. After his arrival in London in 1876 he became an active Socialist and a brilliant platform speaker. He wrote on many social aspects of the day: on Common Sense about the War (1914), How to Settle the Irish Question (1917) and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). He undertook his own education at the British Museum and consequently became keenly interested in cultural subjects. Thus his prolific output included music, art and theatre reviews, which were collected into several volumes such as Music in London 1890-1894 (3 vols, 1931); Pen Portraits and Reviews (1931); and Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols, 1931). He also wrote five novels and some shorter fiction, including The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales and Cashel Byron's Profession, both published in Penguin's Bernard Shaw Library. He conducted a strong attack on the London theatre and was closely associated with the intellectual revival of British theatre. His plays fall into several categories: 'Plays Pleasant'; 'Plays Unpleasant'; comedies; chronicle-plays; 'metabiological Pentateuch' (Back to Methuselah, a series of plays); and 'political extravaganzas'. Bernard Shaw died in 1950.
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  # The Devil's Disciple
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### George Bernard Shaw
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  ACT I
  
  
  ACT II
  
  
  ACT III
  
  
  NOTES TO THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
  
  
  
  
  
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  This etext was produced by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### ACT I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry
  
  
  morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting
  
  
  up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the
  
  
  outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing
  
  
  woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and Mrs.
  
  
  Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels
  
  
  into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can
  
  
  pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who
  
  
  has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation
  
  
  in her sordid hom