Helpful Score: 1
This is one of Shaws brief plays about persecution, which he sees as an attempt to suppress anything that seems to threatens the establishment. The rather humorous prologue pits husband-wife banter against the fable of the lion and the thorn. Act I opens facetious with dialogue among the Roman guards and several Christians. Had I not known that this was a Shaw play, I would have easily mistaken the dialogue as something from Monty Python, or as Mad Magazine purports, humor in a jugular vein. The seriousness of the underlying theme continues to the end, but not with outbreaks of raillery. But, against whom is this Irishmens thesis really directed? Rome versus the Christians is merely an allegory for the internal conflict within the northern part of his homeland with the British rule.
