Earl of Salisbury, Sir Thomas Gargrave, and William Glasdale, with divers other, went into the said tower, and so into the high chamber, and looked out at the grate, and, within a short space, the son of the mastergunner, perceiving men looking out at the window, took his match (as his father had taught him, who was gone down to dinner), and fired the gun; the shot whereof broke and shivered the iron bars of the grate, so that one of the same bars struck the earl so violently on the head, that it struck away one of his eyes and the side of his cheek. Sir Thomas Gargrave was likewise stricken, and died within two days. The earl was conveyed to Meun on Loire, where, after eight days, he likewise departed this world. A. 2, Sc. 1. Was Sh. hier nach Orleans verlegt, erzählt Holinshed von der Einnahme der Stadt Mans. A. 2, Sc. 2 und 3. Die Geschichte mit der Gräfin von Auvergne findet sich nicht in den Chroniken und ist wahrscheinlich vom Dichter anderswoher entlehnt und auf Talbot übertragen. A. 2, Sc. 4. Die Scene im Tempelgarten scheint eine freie Erfindung des Dichters zu sein, entworfen im Hinblick auf die in den folgenden Dramen erst vorgeführten Ereignisse. A. 3, Sc. 3. Von einer Einwirkung der Pucelle auf den Herzog von Burgund erwähnen Sh.'s Chronisten Nichts, und der Dichter muss auf einem andern Wege Kunde erlangt haben von einem Briefe der Pucelle an den Herzog, der allerdings ähnlichen Inhalts ist, wie ihre Rede bei Shakspere. A. 4, Sc. 5-7. Der von Holinshed an dieser Stelle nur auszugsweise benutzte Chronist Hall erzählt von dem Ende Talbot's Folgendes: This conflict continued in doubtful judgement of victory two long hours; during which fight the lords of Montamban and Humadayre, with a great company of Frenchmen, entered the battle, and began a new field; and suddenly the gunners, perceiving the Englishmen to approach near, discharged their ordinance, and slew three hundred persons near to the earl, who, perceiving the imminent jeopardy and subtile labyrinth in the which he and his people were inclosed and illaqueate, despising his own safeguard, and desiring the life of his entirely and well beloved son the Lord Lisle, willed, advertised, and counselled him to depart out of the field, and to save himself. But when the son had answered that it was neither honest nor natural for him to leave his father in the extreme jeopardy of his life, and that he would taste of that draught which his father and parent should assay and begin, the noble earl and comfortable captain said to him, Oh, son, son! I, thy father, which only hath been the terror and scourge of the French people so many years, - which hath subverted so many towns, and profligate and discomfited so many of them in open battle and martial conflict, - neither can here die, for the honour of my country, without great laud and perpetual fame, nor fly or depart without perpetual shame and continual infamy. But because this is thy first journey and enterprise, neither thy flying shall redound to thy shame, nor thy death to thy glory: for as hardy a man wisely flieth as a temerarious person foolishly abideth, therefore the fleeing of me shall be the dishonor, not only of me and my progeny, but also a discomfiture of all my company: thy departure shall save thy life, and make thee able another time, if I be slain, to revenge my death, and to do honor to thy prince and profit to his realm. But nature so wrought in the son, that neither desire of life, nor thought of security, could withdraw or pluck him from his natural father; who, considering the constancy of his child, and the great danger that they stood in, comforted his soldiers, cheered his captains, and valiantly set on his enemies, and slew of them more in number than he had in his company. But his enemies, having a greater company of men, and more abundance of ordinance than before had been seen in a battle, first shot him through the thigh with a handgun, and slew his horse, and cowardly killed him, lying on the ground, whom they never durst look in the face while he stood on his feet: and with him there died manfully his son the Lord Lisle, his bastard son Henry Talbot, • and Sir Edward Hull, elect to the noble Order of the Garter, and thirty valiant personages of the English nation: and the Lord Molyns was there taken prisoner with sixty other. The residue of the English people fled to Burdeaux and other places; whereof in the flight were slain above a thousand persons. At this battle of Chastillon, fought the 13th day of July, in this year, ended his life, John Lord Talbot, and of his progeny the first Earl of Shrewsbury, after that he with much fame, more glory, and most victory, had for his prince and country, by the space of twenty-four years and more, valiantly made war and served the king in the parts beyond the sea, whose corps was left on the ground, and after was found by his friends, and conveyed to Whitchurch in Shropshire, where it is intumulate. A. 5, Sc. 3 u. 4. Von den abweichenden Versionen, welche Holinshed nach verschiedenen Französischen und Englischen Berichten über das Ende der Pucelle giebt, scheint Sh. folgende besonders im Auge gehabt zu haben, obgleich er auch dieser nur theilweise gefolgt ist. Nachdem erzählt ist, wie die Pucelle in Englische Gefangenschaft verkauft wurde, heisst es weiter: In which for her pranks so uncouth and suspicious the lord regent by Peter Chauchon bishop of Beauvais, in whose diocese she was taken, caused her life and belief after order of law to be enquired upon and examined. Wherein found though a virgin, yet first shamefully rejecting her sex abominably in acts and apparel to have counterfeit mankind, and then all damnably faithless to be a pernicious instrument to hostility and bloodshed in devilish witchcraft and sorcery, sentence accordingly was pronounced against her. Howbeit upon humble confession of her iniquities, with a counterfeit contrition, pretending a careful sorrow for the same, execution spared, and all mollified into this that from henceforth she should cast off her unnatural wearing of man's habiliments, and keeping her to garments of her own kind, abjure her pernicious practices of sorcery and witchery, and have life and leasure in perpetual prison to bewail her misdeeds. Which to perform, according to the manner of abjuration, a solemn oath very gladly she took. But herein (God help us) she fully afore possest of the fiend, not able to hold her in any towardness of grace, falling straightway into her former abominations, and yet seeking to eech out life as long as she might, stake not, though the shift were shameful, to confess herself a strumpet, and (unmarried as she was) to be with child. For trial the lord regent's lenity gave her nine mouths' stay at the end whereof she, found therein as wicked as the rest, and eight days after upon a further definitive sentence declared against her to be relapse and renouncer of her oath and repentance was she thereupon delivered over to secular power and so executed by consumption of fire in the old market-place at Rone, her ashes afterwards without the town walls shaken into the wind. Now recounting all together, her pastoral bringing up, rude without any virtuous instruction, her campestral conversation with wicked spirits, whom in her first salutation to Charles the Dauphin, she uttered to be our Lady, St. Katharine and St. Anne, that in this behalf came and gave her commandments from God her maker, as she kept her father's lambs in the fields (where saints in wars amongst christen men were (be we sure) never so partial patrons or partners to maintenance of horrible slaughters, rapine and bloodshed, - her relapse at last and falling again into her abjured iniquities, by her virginity (if it were any) her fasting and prayers what they might be, sith Satan can change himself into an angel of light the deeplier to deceive. A. 5, Sc. 5. Ueber die Verlobung Heinrich's mit Margarethe sagt Holinshed Folgendes: 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 farthing, 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 were only liked and allowed. The Earl of Suffolk was made Marquis of Suffolk, 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. |