Some of our old English historians write of Jeanne d'Arc, the Pucelle, as 'the Puzel.' The author of the 'First Part of Henry VI.,' whether he was Shakespeare or not, has a pun on the word:
'Pucelle or puzzel, dolphin or dogfish,' the word 'Puzzel' carrying an unsavoury sense. (Act I. Scene 4.) A puzzle, in the usual meaning of the word, the Maid was to the dramatist. I shall not enter into the dispute as to whether Shakespeare was the author, or part author, of this perplexed drama.
But certainly the role of the Pucelle is either by two different hands, or the one author was 'in two minds' about the heroine. Now she appears as la ribaulde of Glasdale's taunt, which made her weep, as the 'bold strumpet' of Talbot's insult in the play. The author adopts or even exaggerates the falsehoods of Anglo-Burgundian legend. The personal purity of Jeanne was not denied by her judges.
On the other hand the dramatist makes his 'bold strumpet' a paladin of courage and a perfect patriot, reconciling Burgundy to the national cause by a moving speech on 'the great pity that was in France.' How could a ribaulde, a leaguer-lass, a witch, a sacrificer of blood to devils, display the valour, the absolute self-sacrifice, the eloquent and tender love of native land attributed to the Pucelle of the play? Are there two authors, and is Shakespeare one of them, with his understanding of the human heart? Or is there one puzzled author producing an impossible and contradictory character?
The dramatist has a curious knowledge of minute points in Jeanne's career: he knows and mocks at the sword with five crosses which she found, apparently by clairvoyance, at Fierbois, but his history is distorted and dislocated almost beyond recognition. Jeanne proclaims herself to the Dauphin as the daughter of a shepherd, and as a pure maid. Later she disclaims both her father and her maidenhood. She avers that she was first inspired by a vision of the Virgin (which she never did in fact), and she is haunted by 'fiends,' who represent her St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St.
Margaret. After the relief of Orleans the Dauphin exclaims:
'No longer on Saint Denis will we cry, But Joan la Pucelle shall be France's saint,' a prophecy which may yet be accomplished. Already accomplished is d'Alencon's promise:
'We'll set thy statue in some holy place.'
To the Duke of Burgundy, the Pucelle of the play speaks as the Maid might have spoken:
'Look on thy country, look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced By wasting ruin of the cruel foe!
As looks the mother on her lowly babe, When death doth close his tender dying eyes, See, see, the pining malady of France;
Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, Which thou thyself hast given her woful breast!
O turn thy edged sword another way;
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help!
One drop of blood drawn from thy country's bosom Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore;
Return thee, therefore, with a flood of tears, And wash away thy country's stained spots.'
Patriotism could find no better words, and how can the dramatist represent the speaker as a 'strumpet' inspired by 'fiends'? To her fiends when they desert her, the Pucelle of the play cries:
'Cannot my body, nor blood sacrifice, Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all, Before that England give the French the foil.'
She is willing to give body and soul for France, and this, in the eyes of the dramatist, appears to be her crime. For a French girl to bear a French heart is to stamp her as the tool of devils. It is an odd theology, and not in the spirit of Shakespeare. Indeed the Pucelle, while disowning her father and her maidenhood, again speaks to the English as Jeanne might have spoken:
'I never had to do with wicked spirits:
But you, that are polluted with your lusts, Stained with the guiltless blood of innocents, Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices, Because you want the grace that others have, You judge it straight a thing impossible To compass wonders but by help of devils.
No, misconceiv'd! Joan of Arc hath been A virgin from her tender infancy, Chaste and immaculate in very thought;
Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effus'd, Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.'
The vengeance was not long delayed. 'The French and my countrymen,' writes Patrick Abercromby, 'drove the English from province to province, and from town to town' of France, while on England fell the Wars of the Roses. But how can the dramatist make the dealer with fiends speak as the Maid, in effect, did speak at her trial?
He adds the most ribald of insults; the Pucelle exclaiming:
'It was Alencon that enjoyed my love!'
The author of the play thus speaks with two voices: in one Jeanne acts and talks as she might have done (had she been given to oratory); in the other she is the termagant of Anglo-Burgundian legend or myth.
Much of this perplexity still haunts the histories of the Maid. Her courage, purity, patriotism, and clear-sighted military and political common-sense; the marvellous wisdom of her replies to her judges--as of her own St. Catherine before the fifty philosophers of her legend--are universally acknowledged. This girl of seventeen, in fact, alone of the French folk, understood the political and military situation. To restore the confidence of France it was necessary that the Dauphin should penetrate the English lines to Rheims, and there be crowned. She broke the lines, she led him to Rheims, and crowned him. England was besieging his last hold in the north and centre, Orleans, on a military policy of pure 'bluff.'