ure and ambition, the truth of history and the truth of nature, justice and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character nobly, but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious error in judgement and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de Staël's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her exploits (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood-another point in which Schiller has wronged her), this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a dramatic character.

MRS. JAMESON: Characteristics of Women.

Ah, yes! Even Shakespeare is guilty of injustice towards this noble maiden who saved her country, and he treats her in an unfriendly and unloving manner, even if he does not proclaim himself her decided enemy. And even if she saved her country with the aid of hell, she still deserves respect and admiration. Or are the critics right, who hold that those passages in which the maid makes her appearance, as also Parts II. and III. of Henry VI. are not by Shakespeare? They maintain that he only revised this trilogy which he took from older plays. I would gladly be of their opinion for the sake of the Maid of Orleans, but their arguments are untenable. In many parts these doubtful plays bear the full impress of Shakespeare's genius.

HEINE: Notes on Shakespeare Heroines.

IV.

Lord Talbot.

"This is that terrible Talbot, so famous for his sword, or rather whose sword was so famous for his arm that used it; a sword with bad Latin upon it, but good steel within it; which constantly conquered where it came, in so much that the bare fame of his approach frighted the French from the siege of Burdeaux.'

Such is the quaint notice which old Fuller, in his Worthies, gives of Talbot. He is the hero of the play before us; and it is easy to see how his bold, chivalrous bearing, and, above all, the manner of his death, should have made him the favourite of the poet as well as of the chroniclers. His name appears to have been a traditionary household word up to the time of Shakspere; and other writers besides the chroniclers, rejoiced in allusions to his warlike deeds. Edward Kerke, the commentator on Spenser's Pastorals, thus speaks of him in 1579: "His nobleness bred such a terror in the hearts of the French, that ofttimes great armies were defeated and put to flight at the only hearing of his name: in so much that the French women, to affray their children, would tell them that the Talbot cometh." By a poetical license, Talbot, in this act, is made to retake Orleans; whereas in truth his defeat at the battle of Patay soon followed upon the raising of the siege after the appearance of Joan of Arc.

KNIGHT: Pictorial Shakspere.

Lord Talbot is obviously the noblest character in the whole play, a rough and vigorous knight; battle and war, self-devoted patriotism, knightly honour and bravery, these have constituted his entire life; all higher ideas seem beyond him; he knows how to win a battle, but not how to carry on a war; he is an excellent mili

tary captain, but no general, no chief, because, although valiant and even discreet and prudent (as is proved by his interview with the Countess of Auvergne), he does not possess either presence of mind, creative power, or a clear insight into matters. This, together with the harshness and roughness of his virtue, which has in it something of the rage of the lion, is his weak point, and proves the cause of his death. His power was not equal to the complicated circumstances and the depravity of the age; under the iron rod of chastisement, he became equally unbending and iron; he is the representative of the rage and ferocity of the war, to which he falls a victim because he is wholly absorbed in it and therefore unable to become the master in directing it. In such days, however, the honourable death of a noble character proves a blessing; victory and pleasure are found in death when life succumbs to the superior power of evil, to the weight and misery of a decline which affects both the nation and the state.

ULRICI: Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.

ง.

Shakespeare's Early Hand.

Shakspeare's choice fell first on this period of English history, so full of misery and horrors of every kind, because the pathetic is naturally more suitable than the characteristic to a young poet's mind. We do not yet find here the whole maturity of his genius, yet certainly its whole strength. Careless as to the apparent unconnectedness of contemporary events, he bestows little attention on preparation and development: all the figures follow in rapid succession, and announce themselves emphatically for what we ought to take them; from scenes where the effect is sufficiently agitating to form the catastrophe of a less extensive plan, the poet perpetually hurries us on to catastrophes still more

dreadful. The First Part contains only the first forming of the parties of the White and Red Rose, under which blooming ensigns such bloody deeds were afterwards perpetrated; the varying results of the war in France principally fill the stage. The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of Arc, is portrayed by Shakspere with an Englishman's prejudices: yet he at first leaves it doubtful whether she has not in reality a heavenly mission; she appears in the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence (and this circumstance is of the poet's invention) she wins over the Duke of Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury, she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end. To her is opposed Talbot, a rough iron warrior, who moves us the more powerfully, as, in the moment when he is threatened with inevitable death, all his care is tenderly directed to save his son, who performs his first deeds of arms under his eye. After Talbot has in vain sacrificed himself, and the Maid of Orleans has fallen into the hands of the English, the French provinces are completely lost by an impolitic marriage; and with this the piece ends.

, SCHLEGEL: Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature.

If we separate all the scenes between York and Somerset, Mortimer and York, Margaret and Suffolk, and read them by themselves, we feel that we are looking upon a series of scenes which exhibit Shakespeare's style in his historical plays just in the manner in which we should have expected him to have written at the commencement of his career. We see the skilful and witty turn of speech and the germ of his figurative language; we perceive already the fine clever repartees and the more choice form of expression; in Mortimer's deathscene and in the lessons of his deeply dissembled silent policy, which while dying he transmits to York, we see. with Hallam, all the genuine feeling and knowledge of

human nature which belongs to Shakespeare in similar pathetic or political scenes in his other dramas; all certainly in the germ which prefigures future perfection. These scenes contrast decidedly with the trivial, tedious war scenes and the alternate bombastic and dull disputes between Gloucester and Winchester; they adhere to the common highway of historical poetry, though they have sufficient of the freshness of youthful art to furnish Schiller in his Maid of Orleans with many beautiful traits, and indeed with the principal idea of his drama.

GERVINUS: Shakespeare Commentaries.