Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 by Various

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Of this prologue it has been justly said, that it might as well have
been the first scene of the first act: for it is as essential to the
progress of the piece as any one scene in the play; and the speakers
re-appear, and for very important purposes, in the body of the drama.
For our part, we look upon prologues of this description as little else
than a device of the poet to gain more space than his five acts afforded
him. When it has no connexion with the action of the piece, we wish to
know what claim it has to be there at all; and when it is so connected,
we are at a loss to perceive what end it answers, which could not be as
legitimately prosecuted under the old title of Act I. Scene 1.

The nominal first act opens with the little court of Charles at Chinon.
Here all is verging towards a state of desperation. Finances exhausted,
troops threatening to disband, and a deputation from Orleans to inform
the king that the town had agreed to surrender, if, within fourteen
days, effectual succour was not sent to relieve it. Charles answers in
despair:--

"Can I by stamping with my feet
Raise armies from the ground? Can I
Pour granaries from this bare and naked palm?
Rend me in pieces! Tear me out this heart,
And coin it for gold! Blood have I for you,
But silver have I none, nor corn, nor soldiers."

Agnes Sorel enters with a casket of jewels in her hand. Although she has
always refused to accept of the king any more costly present than a rare
flower, or an early fruit, she now comes to devote all her wealth and
possessions to his service. But her aid affords him little more than a
noble proof of her love and generosity: it can effect nothing to the
restoration of his shattered fortunes. He dismisses the deputies from
Orleans with permission to make the best terms they can for themselves.
Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, who has eloquently protested against
this desponding desertion, as he deems it, of his own cause, quits the
king in anger. Sorel dispatches La Hire after him to persuade him to
return. La Hire re-enters.

"_Sorel_. You come alone, you bring him not with you.
_[then observing him more closely._
La Hire! What is it? What means this kindled look?
Alas! Some new misfortune.

_La Hire_. Misfortunes
Are overblown--'tis sunshine, lady, sunshine!

_Sorel_. What is it?--I entreat--

_La Hire to the King_. Call back the embassy,
The deputies from Orleans!

_Charles_. Why? What is this?

_La Hire_. Haste! call them back! Thy fortunes change,
A battle has been fought, and thine the victory.

_Sorel_. Victory! Oh, heavenly music!

_Charles_. La Hire,
Some fabulous report has cheated you.
Victory! I believe no more in victories.

_La Hire_. You will believe--in greater wonders still
Here comes the archbishop, and with him Dunois.

And with them comes also a knight, who relates how this victory has been
won by the sudden appearance of an armed virgin, who scattered dismay
and terror amongst their enemies. Shouts are heard from without, and
Johanna enters. Here the course of history is followed in the account
the maid gives of herself, and the proofs she affords of her divine
mission.

At the opening of the second act, we find that Orleans has been relieved
by the inspired Johanna. Talbot and Lionel, the English leaders,
attribute the late defeat to the Burgundians; the Duke of Burgundy
retorts. These angry chiefs are on the point of separating, and
terminating their alliance, when the queen-mother Isabeau enters, and
reconciles them. But when Isabeau, who, from her unnatural hatred to her
son Charles, and a certain coarseness of temper, is altogether a very
disagreeable personage, offers, woman against woman, to lead her own
party against Johanna, they all unite in bidding her return forthwith to
Paris. The army, they say, is dispirited when it thinks it fights for
_her_ cause--the cause of the mother against the son. Isabeau says:--

"Ye know not, weak souls, that ye are the rights
Of a wrong'd mother. I, for my part, love
Who honours me; who injures me, I hate;
And should this be my own begotten son,
He is for this more hateful. I gave life,
And I will take--if he, with shameless rage,
Scandal the womb that bore him. Ye proud nobles
Who war against my son, ye have no right
To pillage him. What injury has he done
To you? what duty violated?
Ambition and low envy spur ye on:
I, who begot him, have a right to hate."

While the English are still in their camp, little dreaming of surprise,
the maiden rushes on them, conquers and disperses them. Here passes a
scene between Johanna and Montgomery, a young Welsh knight, who begs for
his life in a truly Homeric manner--pleading his youth, the anguish of
his mother, and the sweet bride he had left upon the Severn. It is quite
Homeric, professedly and successfully so, and therefore quite out of
place. The Welsh knight speaks in a most unknightly strain. And the
change of metre that is adopted assists in giving to the whole the air
of a mere poetical exercise. The scene is not, however, without its
purpose in the development of the character of the maid, because it
shows how utterly she is at this time engrossed in her warlike mission;
she is not a moment affected by the entreaties of Montgomery, and dooms
him to death without pity.

The war still continues fatal to the English. Talbot is slain. In the
next scene, the ghost of this warrior appears to Johanna, under the form
of a black knight with the visor closed. The apparition lures her away
from the heat of the contest, and then addresses to her this solemn
warning:--

"Johanna d'Arc!
Up to the gates of Rheims hast thou been borne
Upon the wings of victory. Now pause.
Content thee with the fame that thou hast won.
Let fortune go, whom thou hast held in bonds,
Ere it in anger shall break loose from thee;
For never is it constant to the end."

Johanna, however, who can hear of nothing, and think of nothing, but of
fighting for her country, and who has a particular detestation for this
black knight, strikes at it with her sword. It vanishes with the
appropriate accompaniments of thunder and lightning.

The apparition of the black knight has occasioned some embarrassment and
discussion among the critics. It was at first quite plain that it was
the ghost of Talbot; and when there was no longer any doubt on this
head, it was not easy to decide what brought the ghost of Talbot there,
and why he should give what, knowing as we do the history of Johanna,
has the appearance of very sound advice. But in that lay the very snare
of Satan. It was wise counsel that the devil, through this ghost, gave
to Johanna; but it was _worldly_ wise. It was well suited to some
ambitious person engaged in a career of conquest. Had such a black
knight appeared, for example, to Napoleon, on the eve of entering on his
war with Russia, and warned him to furl his banner of conquest, it would
have been a friendly and intelligent ghost, though we do not believe it
would have been listened to for a moment. A human passion is stronger
than a whole regiment of ghosts. But such advice addressed to Johanna,
the missionary of heaven, who fought from duty, not ambition, could have
no other effect than to infuse into her mind ideas of vain-glory and
love of fame, a selfish regard to personal consequences, and a distrust
of the protection of her divine mistress. The ghost of Talbot,
therefore, was evidently in league with her enemies, the devils, in the
insidious counsel it gave. But the counsel was rejected with disdain,
and Johanna went on still victorious over all.

But the maiden next encounters a more pernicious apparition than the
black knight. She contends with the gallant Lionel. Here, as elsewhere,
she is the victor; she raises her sword to strike, but, fatally for her
peace, she looks twice before she deals the blow. She cannot strike.

Now follows--but in vain for Johanna--the full accomplishment of her
glorious enterprise, in the coronation of the king at Rheims. Contrary
to the obligation of her high mission, she has received into her heart a
human passion. Her peace is gone. Here the poet, in order to express the
rapid alternations of feeling to which she is a prey, breaks from the
even tenor of blank verse into a lyrical effusion of remarkable beauty
and pathos. She is sought for to take her part in the ceremony of the
coronation; it is now with a feeling of horror that she receives into
her hands the sacred banner, which she had borne triumphantly to so many
victories.

Amongst the crowd who have flocked from all parts to witness the
ceremony, are the family of Johanna, and her old lover Raimond. Her
father Thibaut is also there. He has come to save, if yet possible, his
child from perdition, whom he still persists in thinking under the
influence of wicked spirits, and to have wrought all her wonders by the
aid of diabolic enchantments. Now, therefore, when the king, after his
coronation, turns towards Johanna, and, in the presence of all his
nobility, addresses her as the deliverer of France, this melancholy
father rushes forward to reproach and to blaspheme his child. She,
heartstricken, and conscious of a secret error, though of a quite
different kind from what is laid to her charge, receives in submissive
silence, as the chastisement of heaven, the strange inculpations of her
parent:--

"_Thibaut, to the King_. Thou deem'st thyself deliver'd by
God's power. Thou art abused--this people of France are
blinded! Thou art deliver'd by the devil's craft!

_Dunois_. Does this man rave?

_Thibaut_. Not I, but thou art raving; All these, the wise
archbishop at their head, Rave, in believing that the voice
of heaven Speaks in this wicked girl. Mark, if she dare
Maintain, before her father's face, the juggle With which
she cheats the people and her king. In the name of the Holy
Trinity! Speak! I conjure thee! Dost thou serve with saints,
And with the pure in heart?

[_A universal silence. Every eye
is strained towards Johanna, who stands motionless._

_Sorel_. God! she is mute!

_Thibaut_. So must she be before that awful name Which, in
the depth of hell itself, is fear'd. She--she a saint! she
sent from God! No, in a cursed spot--our magic tree Where
devils from of yore their Sabbath keep--Has all this been
contrived; there did she sell Her soul to the eternal Fiend,
to be With brief vain-glory honour'd in this world. Bid her
stretch forth her arm, and ye will see The punctures by
which hell has mark'd its own.

_Burgundy_. Horrible! Yet must the father be believed Who
thus against his own child testifies.

_Dunois_. No, no, the madman shall not be believed Who in
his own child vilifies himself.

_Sorel to Johanna_. O speak! break this disastrous
silence! we Believe in _thee_. We have firm trust in thee.
One word from thy own mouth, one only word, Shall be enough.
But speak! Denounce, confound This hideous accusation. Do
but say That thou art innocent, and we believe it.

[_Johanna remains motionless. Agnes
Sorel steps back with horror._

_La Hire_. She is amazed! Astonishment and terror Have
closed her mouth. Before such hellish charge Must purity
itself recoil with fright.

[_Approaches her._

Take courage! Be thyself! The innocent Have their own proper
language, and their look Is lightning to consume foul
calumny. In noble scorn, arouse thyself--look up--Confound
with shame this most unworthy doubt, Which wrongs thy sacred
virtue.

[_Johanna remains motionless. La Hire steps
back. The general horror increases._

_Dunois_. What scares the people? What dismays the king?
Oh, she is innocent! I pledge myself, I pledge for her my
honour as a prince. Here do I throw my gauntlet down. Who
dares To slander her with guilt?

[_A violent peal of thunder is heard. All
start back terrified._

_Thibaut_. God answers! God, Who thunders from above.
Pronounce thyself, Child of perdition, guiltless, if thou
dar'st--

[_A second peal of thunder is heard. The
people fly on all sides._

_Burgundy_. God shield us! What an awful signal!

_Du Chatel_. Come, come, my sovereign, let us fly this
place!

_Archbishop to Johanna_. In the name of God, I speak to
thee. Art silent From pride of innocence, or shame of guilt?
If now this voice of thunder testify _For_ thee,--in sign
thereof embrace this cross.

[_Johanna remains motionless. Repeated
peals of thunder. All leave the church
except Dunois._

_Dunois._ Thou art my own bride, Johanna! I
Have from the first believed, and still believe.
Thee will I rather trust than all these signs,
Than even this thunder speaking from above.
'Tis noble pride withholds thee, thou disdain'st
Wrapt in thy sacred innocence, these mad
Outrageous charges to refute.
Disdain so still; confide alone in me,
Who of thy purity have doubted never,
I ask no word; place but thy hand in mine,
In token that thou wilt confide in me,
In this arm and thy own good cause.

[_He extends his hand. She turns away with
convulsive start._

(_Du Chatel re-enters, and afterwards Raimond._)

_Du Chatel_. Johanna d'Arc! The king permits
That undisturb'd you quit the town of Rheims.
The gates stand open; no man shall molest you.
Count Dumois, follow me--you gain no honour in lingering here.

[_Du Chatel and Dunois leave_

_Raimond_. Seize on this moment! The streets are empty--give me
your hand.

[_Johanna looks upwards to heaven, then
hastily taking his hand, goes out_.

Under the guidance of Raimond, the prophetess and champion, deserted it
seems by man and heaven, enters a wood, where she is taken prisoner by a
party of English. She is sent a captive to _Lionel_. But adversity has
now reinstated her in all the primitive austerity of her heart; the
weakness she has so severely expiated, has left her; she has no heart
now but for her country. In vain Lionel promises all--for Lionel, as
well as Dunois, loves her; she answers only by denouncing the enemies of
France.

A battle is joined under the walls of the tower in which she is
imprisoned; she has been bound in fetters of threefold strength; Lionel
has gone forth to lead his army, and the fierce Isabeau is her jailer.
She holds a drawn dagger over her head. If the king of France conquers,
Johanna dies. Nevertheless, she ceases not to pray for his success; and
when she hears that the king is so closely beset by his enemies that he
is in danger of his life, she implores heaven with such fervour, that
power is given her to rend asunder her chains. Snatching a sword from
one of her guards, she makes from the tower, and appears on the field of
battle in time to rescue her monarch. But she herself has received a
mortal wound; she sinks on the ground, and expires in the moment of
victory. They cover her with the banners of the victorious army. The
curtain falls.

Now, this violent departure from history, in the latter part of the
play, is what we chiefly regret in the tragedy of Schiller. The
melancholy fate of Joan d'Arc is so inseparably connected with her
memory, that we cease to identify the portrait of Schiller with the
personage of history. As the tragedy proceeds, we feel that it is no
longer our Joan d'Arc that it concerns--so impossible is it for us to
forget, that the village maiden of Dom Remi expiated her pious and
visionary patriotism in the flames at Rouen. Only half her tragedy has
been written; the other half remains for some future Schiller. Nor can
we conceive of a better opportunity for the display of the peculiar
powers of this poet, than would have been afforded by that catastrophe
he has chosen to alter. Was the opportunity felt to be _too great_? Had
the poet become wearied and exhausted with his theme, and did he feel
indisposed to nerve himself afresh for scenes which called for the
strenuous efforts of his genius? We know that it was not his original
intention to make this violent departure from history, and that he came
to the determination with regret.

We wish to state distinctly on what grounds we make our objection;
because there is current among a class of critics a censure for the mere
departure from historical truth--made, it would seem, out of a sensitive
regard for history--in which we by no means acquiesce. We have no desire
to bind a poet to history, merely because it is history. He has his own
ends to accomplish, and by those shall he be judged. As, assuredly, we
should not accept it as the least excuse for the least measure of
dulness, on the part of the poet, that he had followed faithfully the
historical narrative, so neither do we impose upon him a very close
adherence to it. We censure the course which Schiller has here pursued,
not because he has marred history, but because he has marred his own
poem. The objection lies entirely within the boundary of his own art. He
has selected a personage for his drama with whom a certain fate is so
indissolubly associated, that it is impossible to think of her without
recalling it to mind; and this ineffaceable trait in her history he has
attempted, for the time, to obliterate from our memory. By this
procedure, the imagination of the reader is divided and distracted. The
picture presented by the poet _is and is not_ a portrait of the
historical figure which lives in our recollection. There are many points
of resemblance; but the chief is omitted. And we always feel that it is
omitted; for history here is too strong for the poet: he cannot expel
her from the territory he wishes to enclose for himself. As well might
one describe a Socrates who did not drink the hemlock--as well a
Napoleon who did not die at St Helena, as a Joan d'Arc who did not
suffer in the flames of Rouen.

_Von Hinrich_, in his critical work upon Schiller, gives a curious
defence of this departure from history:--"The martyrdom," he says, "of
the forlorn maiden could hardly satisfy us on the stage. In history it
is different; we see these events in their connexion with the past and
the future, and we do not abstract some single fact, and judge of it
apart from all others. The history of the world is the tribunal of the
world. It has justified Johanna; posterity has restored to her the fame
and honour of which a malicious fate had for a season deprived her. The
poet was obliged to change his catastrophe, in order to introduce, in
his own epoch, that finger of justice which, in reality, revealed itself
only at a subsequent period."[1]

[1] Part II., p. 183.

But who sees not that, in all such cases, the poet sufficiently and
completely reverses the unjust sentence of contemporaries, by
representing the sufferer as undeserving of it?--that, by depicting her
as innocent, he anticipates and introduces the equitable judgment of
posterity? When Schiller had described the Maid of Orleans as pious in
heart--as the chosen of Heaven, he had at once reversed the sentence of
the court of Rouen. It was assuredly not necessary that he should
conceal the fact of any such sentence having been passed, in order to
exculpate Johanna: and to exculpate, or to spare, the august judges, was
no part of the business of the poet. Socrates dies in prison, denounced
as a corrupter of youth. He himself is sufficiently vindicated when he
is shown to be no corrupter of youth. Is there any sentiment of equity
that would prompt us to suppress the fact, that he died by the public
executioner of Athens? Or would it be doing honour to history--to this
great tribunal of appeal--to stifle our indignation against the unjust
and criminal sentences which she has had to repeal?

No doubt the poet would have had difficulties to contend with, in
following the course of history. In particular, as he had chosen to
represent Johanna as veritably inspired, he would have been tasked to
reconcile this severity of her fate, on the one hand, with the justice
of Heaven towards its own missionary; or on the other, with the
unblemished character of his heroine. Either Heaven must appear
forgetful of Johanna, or Johanna must be represented as having forfeited
a right to its protection. But this difficulty Schiller has not entirely
escaped in his own plot, and he has shown how it may be encountered.
Johanna might well yield to the tenderness of a human passion without
forfeiting our sympathy, or incurring a stain upon her moral character;
and yet this aberration of heart--this dereliction from the austere
purity required by her sacred mission--might, in a theological point of
view, be supposed to have forfeited her claim to the miraculous
interposition of Heaven in her behalf. So that, in the closing scenes,
though Johanna might have no claim on the miraculous favours of Heaven,
she would still be a saint at heart, and entitled to our deepest
sympathy; and Heaven would receive back, if not its prophetess and
champion, yet a noble child of earth, still further purified by more
than expiatory sufferings.

This species of difficulty meets us, in one instance, in the tragedy of
Schiller, in an unexpected and unnecessary manner. How are we to
understand the thunder which is heard in apparent confirmation of the
cruel accusation of Thibaut? As a mere coincidence, as a mere natural
phenomenon, we can hardly view it; appearing as it does in this
atmosphere of wonders. The archbishop seems to think that possibly the
thunder might testify _for_ Johanna. But as the effect is to produce her
condemnation, it is impossible it could have been _intended_ by Heaven
for her acquittal. And yet, if we are to look upon it as corroborating
the accusation of the father, it not only passes a very severe sentence
upon Johanna, but it sanctions the gross falsehood of this atrabilious
parent.

Amongst the continental critics, Schiller's _Maid of Orleans_ has been
especially commended as a vindication of the character of Johanna from
the vile representation it had endured from the hands of Voltaire. But
here, in England, _La Pucelle_ was never more popular than it deserved
to be--was never popular at all; no one had taken his impression of Joan
d'Arc from this tawdry performance; and we find a difficulty in
understanding how Schiller, writing to Wieland, could represent the poem
of Voltaire as a great obstacle in his way. As little had we received
our impression of Joan d'Arc from Shakspeare's tragedy of the _First
Part of Henry VI_., where she is represented as a mere witch and
courtesan, represented, in fact, in the vulgar aspect in which she still
probably appeared to an English populace. The subject was with us, when
Schiller wrote, new and open; we had received our impression only from
history, and history had spoken well of Johanna.[1]

[1] It is thus that Hume concludes his account of her:--"This admirable
heroine, to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients would
have erected altars, was, on pretence of heresy and magic, delivered
over alive to the flames, and expiated by that dreadful punishment the
signal services she had rendered to her prince and her native country."

Madame de Stael, after applauding Schiller's tragedy for the restoration
it effected of the character of the French heroine, adds:--"The French
alone have consented to this degradation of the character of the maiden;
even an Englishman, Shakspeare, represents her in the beginning as
inspired by Heaven, and afterwards led astray by the demons of
ambition." The delineation of the Maid of Orleans, in the _first Part of
Henry VI_., is associated with the greatest name in our literature, and
therefore, we presume, must be treated with respect; but it is the only
title to respect we can discover in it. We cannot, with Madame de Stael,
trace the inspired maid in any part of the play. La Pucelle gives us, it
is true, in the commencement, a very good account of herself; as she was
playing the part of an impostor, it was not probable she would do
otherwise: but her own manner very soon betrays the courtesan; and, when
alone, we find her in the Company of no other spirits than such as
witches are accustomed to raise.

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