If you follow the link above you will find an online version of the full text of Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw.
Not only does this play literally fit the Victorian era's taste for all things foreign and old (as it is set in ancient times). But it also fits the era's flare for dramatics. The entire play is a mockery of the fad of the Toga play. This mockery is relevant because, through the overabundance, over exaggeration, and sometime complete lack of historical accuracy of toga plays the people of the Victorian era managed to mock much of Roman history. The Victorian people did not, of course, mock these years of history purposefully but mocked them subconsciously due to their sheer enthusiasm for the Roman time period. They embraced things of that era so much that they made very important historical occurrences almost trivial. Shaw mocks Victorian society through his play like Victorian society accidentally mocks Roman history but his mockery is on purpose and much more targeted. In a sense it is like the circle of life Rome is mocked by Victorian society and Victorian society is mocked by Shaw using the vehicle of Rome.
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| "Androcles and the Lion" performed by students from the Willesden County Grammar School in 1947. |
Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion" (1913) ends the era of overly epic plays set in the ancient world and often inspired by pious Christian novels. As Richards 23 explains, Shaws play parodies and mocks Wilson Barrett's 1895 play "The Sign of the Cross". We'll see a similar development with our movies, where decades of serious, epic movies are also followed by parodies such as "Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1966) and Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" (1979).
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