English nation. Upon her first appearance at Orleans she was denounced by Bedford in his letter to the king of France as "a devilish witch and satanical enchantress." After the cruel revenge which the English took upon their captive, a letter was written in the name of Henry to the Duke of Burgundy, setting forth and defending the proceedings which had taken place at Rouen. The conclusion of this letter marks the spirit of the age; and Hall, writing more than a century afterwards, affirms that the letter is quite sufficient evidence that Joan was an organ of the devil: "And because she still was obstinate in her trespasses and villainous offences," says the letter of Henry, "she was delivered to the secular power, the which condemned her to be burnt and consumed her in the fire. And when she saw that the fatal day of her obstinacy was come, she openly confessed that the spirits which to her often did appear were evil and false, and apparent liars; and that their promise which they had made to deliver her out of captivity was false and untrue, affirming herself by those spirits to be often beguiled, blinded, and mocked. And so, being in good mind, she was by the justices carried to the old market within the city of Roan, and there by the fire consumed to ashes in the sight of all the people." The confession in the fourth scene, which is so revolting to us, is built upon an assertion which the dramatist found in Holinshed. Taken altogether, the character of Joan of Arc, as represented in this play, appears to us to be founded upon juster views than those of the chroniclers; and the poet, without any didactic expression of his opinion, has dramatically made us feel that the conduct of her persecutors was atrocious. That in a popular play, written two hundred and fifty years ago, we should find those tolerant, and therefore profound, views of the character of such an enthusiast as Joan of Arc by which she is estimated in our own day, was hardly to be expected. From her own countrymen Joan tof Arc had an equally scanty measure of justice. Monstrelet, the French chronicler, does not hesitate to affirm that the whole affair was a got-up imposture. The same views prevailed in France in the next century; and it is scarcely necessary to observe that Voltaire converted the story of the Maid into a vehicle for the most profligate ribaldry. Long after France had erected monuments to Joan of Arc her memory was ridiculed by those who claimed to be in advance of public opinion. The narrative of the wooing of Margaret of Anjou by Suffolk is thus given by Holinshed:— "In the treating of this truce, the Earl of Suffolk, extending his commission to the uttermost, without the assent of his associates, imagined in his fantasy that the next way to come to a perfect peace was to move some marriage between the French king's kinswoman, the Lady Margaret, daughter to Regner Duke of Anjou, and his sovereign lord King Henry. This Regner, Duke of Anjou, named himself King of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, having only the name and style of those realms, without any penny profit, or foot of possession. This marriage was made strange to the earl at first, and one thing seemed to be a great hindrance to it, which was, because the King of England occupied a great part of the duchy of Anjou, and the whole county of Maine, appertaining (as was alledged) to King Regner. The Earl of Suffolk (I can not say) either corrupted with bribes, or too much affection to this unprofitable marriage, condescended and agreed that the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine should be delivered to the king, the bride's father, demanding for her marriage neither penny nor far thing, as who would say that this new affinity passed all riches, and excelled both gold and precious stone. But although this marriage pleased the king and others of his counsel, yet Humfrey Duke of Gloucester, protector of the realm, was much against it, alledging that it should be both contrary to the laws of God and dishonourable to the prince if he should break that promise and contract of marriage made by ambassadors, sufficiently thereto instructed, with the daughter of the Earl of Arminack, upon conditions, both to him and his realm, as much profitable as honourable. But the duke's words could not be heard, for the earl's doings Iwere only liked and allowed. ** * which marquis, with his wife and many honourable personages of men and women, sailed into France for the conveyance of the nominated queen into the realm of England. For King Regner, her father, for all his long style, had too short a purse to send his daughter honourably to the king her spouse." In the fourth scene we find "That peaceful truce shall be proclaim'd in France." By this was probably intended the truce of 1444, which lasted till 1449. It was in that year that Charles VII. poured his troops into Normandy, and that Rouen, "that rich city," as Holiushed calls it, the scene of the English glory and the The Earl of Suffolk was made Marquis of Suffolk, English shame,-was delivered to the French. THE drama which we now publish appears in the original folio edition of Shakspere's plays under the title of The Second part of Henry the Sixt, with the Death of the Good Duke Humfrey. In the form in which it has been transmitted to us by the editors of that first collected edition of our author, it had not been previously printed. But in 1594 there appeared a separate play, in quarto, under the following title: The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the Death of the Good Duke Humphrey, and the Banishment and Death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragical End of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Jack Cade, and the Duke of Yorkes first Claime unto the Croune. Printed by Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington.' This play, in the entire conduct of the scenes, and in a great measure in the dialogue, is 'The Second Part of Henry the Sixt.' But the alterations and additions are so considerable that it has been held, of late years, that The First Part of the Contention,' as published by Millington in 1594, reprinted by him in 1600, and subsequently republished about 1619 as written by Shakspere, was the entire work of some other dramatist; and that Shakspere only added certain lines to this original, and altered others. This is the question which, in connexion with the more general question of the literary history of the Three Parts of Henry VI. and of Richard III., we propose to examine in a separate Dissertation. It has appeared to us, however, that it would be desirable on many accounts if we were to reprint The First Part of the Contention' as a Supplement to this Second Part of Henry VI., and The Second Part of the Contention' as a Supplement to the Third Part of Henry VI. To enable the reader fairly to compare the original and the revised dramas, we have modernised the orthography of the elder performances, as well as corrected the punctuation, and printed some lines metrically, which, although appearing as prose, were obviously intended to be read as verse; and the contrary. We have also, for the convenience of reference, divided each of these plays into Acts and Scenes. In every other respect we strictly follow the original copies. 6 |