Androcles and the Lion

play by Shaw

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Androcles and the Lion, drama consisting of a prologue and two acts by George Bernard Shaw, performed in Berlin in 1912 and published in 1916. Using the Roman story of Androcles, Shaw examines true and false religious exaltation, combining the traditions of miracle play and Christmas pantomime into a philosophical farce about early Christianity. The play’s central theme, recurrent in Shaw, is that one must have something worth dying for—an end outside oneself—to make life worth living.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.