WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? I've had a hankering to read and half-liveblog all of Shakespeare's plays (again)... in chronological order, starting with Henry VI, Part 1: written by Shakespeare (b. 1564) in 1591. I'm using an old Complete Works of Shakespeare edition from the Clarendon Press.
See also: Previous Henry VI blog posts, Act I Scene 1, and Act I Scene 2, 3 & 4.
***
12:45 p.m.
ACT I. Scene V.
We near the end of Act I with two brief, bustling scenes set again in the French town of Orléans.
Joan of Arc chases a group of English soldiers across the stage, and Lord Talbot appears and tells the audience of his despair at his troops' rout.
Ever the feminist, he calls her "devil's dam," "witch," and "strumpet" as Joan reappears and he engages her in combat.
He does not win. But fortunately Joan is more interested in relieving the besieged French in Orléans than in fencing with the English lord. She breaks off the fight:
Talbot, farewell; thy hour is not yet come:
I must go to victual Orleans forthwith.
Mixing metaphors again, Shakespeare leaves Talbot to soliloquize sadly, "My thoughts whirl like a potter's wheel"
A witch, by fear, not force, like Hannibal,
Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists:
So bees with smoke, and doves with noisome stench,
Are from their hives and houses driven away
He feels as if the soldiers, who should represent the lion of England, have the souls of sheep on the battlefield...
***
1:05 p.m.
ACT I. Scene VI.
King Charles VII gushingly praises Joan of Arc for her role in the victory at Orléans and adds,
Recover'd is the town of Orleans:
More blessed hap did ne'er befall our state.
Reignier, Duke of Anjou:
Dauphin, command the citizens make bonfires
And feast and banquet in the open streets,
To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.
Duke of Alençon:
All France will be replete with mirth and joy,
When they shall hear how we have play'd the men.
'Played' is a backhanded compliment, to my modern ears, although I think it's clear the Duke was praising himself without irony. But Charles instantly deflates the Duke's pretensions:
'Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won;
For which I will divide my crown with her;
And all the priests and friars in my realm
Shall in procession sing her endless praise.
[Given the multiplicity of female monarchs on the British Isles starting in the ten years before Shakespeare was born – 'Bloody' Mary (regnant 1553-1558, predating Shakespeare's play much as Margaret Thatcher would predate a drama written in 2024), Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and Mary, Queen of Scots – I am tempted to see a broader historical insight into how men were(n't) able to deal with women in traditionally male positions of power.
We haven't entirely lost this mindset that powerful women must be subdued into a domestic position if we agree with them, or demonized and destroyed if we disagree with them. Nor was this mindset absent in earlier times than Shakespeare's: in a Byzantinian literature seminar, my class once read the 12th-century epic Digenís Akrítas (Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας), where the Amazon fighter Μαξιμώ isn't treated very kindly.
In 2024, for example, American voters had reservations about Kamala Harris's candidacy for the presidency, not due to her policy but due to gender roles. Secretary of Defense nominee Peter Hegseth insists that female soldiers should not take on combat roles. Perhaps the world hasn't changed much 433 years after the Bard wrote Henry VI, except that (I think) it's no longer trendy to accuse women of witchcraft.]
Despite — or because of — Shakespeare's over-the-top writing style in Henry VI, the descriptions of celebrations, and his heavy use of fight scenes, are picturesque and entertaining: miles more readable, perhaps, than works by his contemporaries. I know too little of Elizabethan drama and of theatre technique to draw comparisons of stageworthiness.
Returning to the text, I'm not sure if Shakespeare's writerly judgment was dominant, however, when he closes Act I by making the Dauphin anticipate Joan of Arc's funeral as they're celebrating their military victory:
In memory of her when she is dead,
Her ashes, in an urn more precious
Than the rich-jewell'd coffer of Darius,
Transported shall be at high festivals
Before the kings and queens of France.
Imagine President Biden greeting a military general who has served with distinction by telling the officer that he, she, or they will have a beautiful tomb in Arlington National Cemetery.
But it can also be a 'rapprochement' to Shakespeare's Elizabethan, English audience. They would have known that what the Dauphin predicts is true:
No longer on Saint Denis will we cry,
But Joan la Pucelle shall be France's saint.
End of ACT I.
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