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Abstract
By 1897, Bernard Shaw had already written several plays, but critical and commercial success continued to elude him. The Devil's Disciple was written in a popular dramatic idiom (melodrama), for a popular stage (the Adelphi Theatre), and for a popular actor (William Terriss): the result of this combination was Shaw's first commercial success, allowing him to resign from his journalistic posts and focus on playwriting. Despite the success of The Devil's Disciple, the play has never been fully edited. This thesis attempts to fill this gap by providing the first fully-annotated text of the play alongside a selection of contextual material that is relevant and contemporary to the setting of the play. This edition also provides a critical introduction that sets the play in the context of Shaw's career, reviews the principal critical approaches to the play, and suggests a new reading that focuses on Shaw's usage of religious iconography. A comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources is also included in order to provide the reader with the first fully edited and contextualized edition of The Devil's Disciple to date.
