Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

by Various

SOME REMARKS ON SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS.

Perhaps there is no play of Schiller's which is read with more general pleasure than the Maid of Orleans, nor one against which so many critical objections have been raised. Some of these we wish to examine, in order either to remove, or with greater accuracy to re-state them. It will be seen at once that we have no intention of entering into any general review or estimate of this great dramatic poet. Too much has been written, and especially in this place, on Schiller, to permit us to be tempted into any such design. We shall not wander from the single play we have selected for our criticism.

On recalling to mind the story of Joan d'Arc, what is the point of view in which that singular person presents herself to us? Joan d'Arc—whom we shall call, after her title in the play, Johanna—a village maiden, and a fugitive from her home, turned the tide of victory in the great war which, in her time, was raging in France. As she effected this through the influence which a belief in her supernatural power and celestial inspiration exerted upon the army of Charles; and as, on the other hand, the cruel fate she herself personally encountered from her enemies, was the consequence of an opposite belief in her witchcraft, or possession by the devil; the unhappy maiden presents herself to us, in a strictly historical point of view, as one of those wild visionaries whom solitude occasionally rears, become suddenly the sport of the tumultuous feelings of two rival hosts, elevated by the one to a saint and the companion of angels, and by the other blackened into a witch and the associate of demons. History has relieved her moral character from the aspersions thrown upon it, and philosophy has quite denuded her of the least claims to supernatural power, whether derived from above or from below: nothing remains but the enthusiast and the visionary, and the strange position into which circumstances conducted her. And this position of the thought-bewildered maid is rendered the more striking, when we consider that it was her own countrymen who judged of her in so contradictory a manner; for the war which raged around her was rather a civil war, in which one of the parties had formed an alliance with England, than a national war between France and England. It was by Frenchmen that she was extolled and reverenced, and by Frenchmen that she was condemned and executed: it was under the auspices, and with the blessings, of the church that she conquered; it was the church that execrated her, and sent her as an abomination to the stake.

This point of view is not only historically true, but replete, we think, with poetic interest. The maiden is not, indeed, invested with any supernatural attributes; we see her here neither more nor less than the pious and day-dreaming enthusiast; but an enthusiast for her country—an enthusiast for a young prince whom she has been taught to honour, and whose reverse of fortune has deeply affected her. We see this young enthusiast—her imagination swarming with visions, her heart beating with generous aspirations—thrown out from her village retirement upon the tumult of war; we see her snatched up, as by a whirlwind, by the fanaticism of the multitude, who bear her, as she bears her banner, onwards in their career, and conquer under this new standard they have reared. We see her arriving at a success which, notwithstanding her own prophecies, must have astonished herself. When the king has been crowned at Rheims, something whispers to her that she ought now to retreat into her native village, or, what was the only fitting termination for her course, into some religious house, and find there a harbour from the tempest on which she is tossing. But the selfish men around her will not let her go. She may guide them a little yet. They bear the torch while there is an ember left. Then comes the changeful fortune of war, defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a perpetual devotion, but a perpetual blasphemy.

But although it appears to us that this, which is the true historical point of view, is also the most replete with poetic interest, it may not be an interest so well adapted to the drama as to other species of poetry. The heroine is here made the prey of the two rival factions, who appear to contend, not only for the possession of her person, but for the domination over her mind; not enough is attributed to her individual will and character; the action of the piece does not immediately flow from her; and the people, with its strange faiths and monstrous caprices, becomes the veritable hero. It was for this reason, we presume, that Schiller rejected what, in our days, is the simple and natural manner of considering his subject, and adopted a different point of view. Designating his play as a romantic tragedy, he resolved to represent the maid as really inspired by Heaven—as veritably commissioned by the Virgin—as endowed, bonâ fide, with miraculous powers. She is thus the living centre of the action. Whatever is effected by the appearance of the Maid of Orleans, is effected by her individual prowess, or the aid of heaven administered through her.

This was a bold attempt, and very boldly has Schiller executed it. He has stopped at no middle point. He has not scrupled to represent the fabulous miracles of a superstitious age as actually taking place before us. Johanna gives proofs of her faculty of second-sight; she sees, while at the camp of the Dauphin, the death of Salisbury before Orleans; she performs in our presence those miracles by which she is said to have first established her reputation at the court—recognising the Dauphin at once, although he had purposely resigned his post of dignity to another, and reciting to him the secret prayer which he had, the night before, offered up to God in the solitude of his own chamber. And not only are the fables, which the chronicles of the times have handed down to us, enacted as veritable facts, but the poet has added miracles and prodigies of his own invention; and in particular, a certain spectre of a black knight—who appears to us to have been introduced as much for the sake of supporting the supernatural character of the piece as for any other purpose.

This hardihood of the poet has by some critics been censured. For ourselves, we have a lingering and obstinate regret that Schiller ever thought it necessary to forsake the true for the fabulous; that he did not restrict himself to representing the faith of the age in the dialogue of his personages; that he did not content himself with marvels related only in the imitated conversation of superstitious persons. The most sceptical of men admit the reality and fervour of superstitious beliefs; and in depicting them in all their vitality, the poet is still adhering rigidly to truth: it is for the reader to sympathize with them or not at his pleasure. But Schiller having resolved to represent as fact the superstitious faith of the times, instead of building upon that faith as his fact; having determined that Johanna should be verily inspired, and see visions, and be the champion of the Holy Virgin for the salvation of France—we think he was quite right in casting aside all timidity, all remaining scruples of reason, and freely giving up his scene to prodigies and marvels. If you must lie, lie boldly—is a good maxim for poets as well as rogues. Above all, do we dislike that dubious and pitiful position which a narrator of supernatural events sometimes falls into, where the reader is perpetually asking himself whether the author seriously intends to task his credulity or not.

We must here, however, remark that, even when the poet represents the supernatural as the faith only of others, he must still, in order to do this effectively, awaken some degree of superstitious feeling in ourselves. To understand the belief or delusion of another without more or less participating in it, is a state of mind in which the philosopher might be very well content to place us, but which by no means suits the purposes of the poet. We must be made to partake for the moment, to some slight degree, in the superstitious feelings of the past age which is brought before us, or we can no longer feel that sympathetic interest which the poet seeks to create. The spectacle presented to us becomes one of mere curiosity. As well might we look through a microscope, and watch the world of animalculae it reveals. Very curious that little world; but we take no part in any of its proceedings, violent as they evidently are. And here lies the reason, we apprehend, why dramatic representations of insanity are so generally unsuccessful. We cannot participate in the capricious delusions of the maniac, who becomes, therefore, a mere object of wonder or curiosity. The moment when the lunatic affects us most deeply is, when he approaches nearest to the ordinary current of human thought—it is the moment when he comes back to reason, and its too frequent companion, the sense of pain.

We make this observation, because it probably had its weight in determining the poet in the course he pursued. Schiller probably reflected that, whether he related his marvels in the dialogue of his personages, or represented them as facts in his drama, he must in both cases depend, for the impression he should produce, on a successful appeal to the superstitious feelings of his contemporaries. In whatever era a poet may find his materials, his authority for using them must lie in the age he writes for—in the interest they are capable of exciting in that age. His success as a dramatic poet required that he should kindle the love of the marvellous; and he may have thought that, in an artistical point of view, the question resolved itself into one of policy, of means to an end—whether it were better to assail our credulity by open force, and so take it by storm, or to content himself with a less advantage, gained by more insidious but surer approaches.

With all his boldness, and all his genius, has Schiller succeeded in his treatment of the miraculous? We hesitate to reply. There is a peculiar difficulty in deciding how far a poet has been successful in an appeal to superstitious feelings; it is this, that in such cases every intelligent reader feels that he must be aidant and assistant in the subjection of his own rebellious reason, prompt at every moment to turn with impatience and derision from the utterly incredible. This necessity to be a party concerned in the business, leaves him in doubt how far he has been compelled by the poet, and how far he has, or ought to have, voluntarily surrendered. After all, the use of the marvellous in poetry is not so much itself to impress us with awe and astonishment, as to supply novel and striking situations for the display of human feelings. When Johanna, for instance, describes the visitation by the Virgin, and declares her sacred mission, we listen unmoved. Not so, when, having felt the touch of human passion, she sighs to re-enter into the common rank of mortals, and laments the dreadful honour that has been imposed upon her. Yet this latter sentiment, so natural and so affecting, could not be separated from the previous fable. In this lies the difference between the poetry of a rude and a cultivated age. In the first, the supernatural is for itself sought for and admired; in the second, it is admitted for the sake of the singular opportunities it affords for the display of natural and powerful emotions.

There is another point in the tragedy of The Maid of Orleans, on which we feel no hesitation whatever in expressing a decisive opinion— namely, the violent departure from history in the catastrophe. But in order to make our remarks on this and some other points intelligible, we must enter a little further into the plot of the drama. Our detail shall be as brief as possible.[1]

[1] In the few extracts we shall have occasion to make, we would have willingly had recourse at once to an English translation, if such had been within our reach. That not being the case, the reader must accept our own attempts at translation.

The drama opens with a scenic prologue. The scene is the village of Dom Remi; on the left is the Druid oak—on the right, the image of the Virgin in a small chapel. Thibaut d'Arc enters with his three daughters, Margaret, Louison, and Johanna, together with their three suitors, Etienne, Claude Marie, and Raimond. Thibaut deplores the state of his fatherland. Young Henry VI. of England has just been crowned at Paris, and Charles, the hereditary prince, is wandering a fugitive through his own kingdom. They themselves are in danger every day of seeing the enemy pour down into their own quiet valleys. Nevertheless, partly from this very cause, he determines upon giving his daughters in marriage without further delay. He bestows Margaret upon Etienne. Then, turning to the second daughter, Louison, and to her suitor, who, it seems, can lay little claim to worldly possessions, he says—

"Shall I, because ye proffer me no wealth,
Sunder two hearts that seem so well attuned?
Who has wealth now? Home and homestead now
Are booty for the robber and the flames:
The strong heart of a brave and constant man
Is the sole roof-tree which these stormy times
Must pass unshaken."

Hitherto father Thibaut seems an amiable personage, but he turns out to be one of the most disagreeable atrabilious parents that ever made his appearance on the stage. He next addresses and reproaches his daughter Johanna, who is beloved by Raimond, but who rejects the ties of earthly affection. He has taken an exceedingly morose view of the character of his daughter; a circumstance which becomes of great importance in the progress of the piece; for Johanna's reverse of fortune is brought about by the strange intervention of this dark and sinister parent. He believes his child more prone to ally herself with evil spirits, through a vain and sinful ambition, than, inspired by piety, to emulate the lives of saints. Raimond combats this gloomy notion. He thinks that the love of Johanna, like the most costly fruits, is only late in ripening.

"Raimond.—As yet she loves to dwell upon the hills,
And trembles to descend from the free heath
To man's low roof, beset with narrow cares.
Thibaut.—Ay, that it is displeases me. She flies
Her sisters' frolicsome companionship
For the bare hills—deserts her sleepless couch
Before the cock-crow—in that fearful hour
When man so willingly his shelter seeks,
Housed with his kind, within familiar walls,
She, like a solitary bird, hies forth
Into the gloomy, spirit-haunted, night,
Stands on the cross-way, holding with the air
Mysterious intercourse. Why will she choose
Perpetually this place? Why will she drive
Her flocks for ever here? I've seen her sit
Musing whole hours together underneath
This Druid oak, which all good Christians shun;
There's nothing blest beneath it; a foul spirit
Has made his refuge in it ever since
The old and sinful times of Paganism.
The old men of the village can relate
Horrible tales of this same tree: one hears
Oft, in its thick dark branches, whisperings
Of strange unearthly voices. I, myself,
As once my way led past the tree at night,
Saw sitting at its trunk a spectral woman,
Who slowly, from her wide enfolding robe,
Stretch'd a thin hand and beckon'd me."

Raimond points to the sacred image of the Virgin, which stands opposite the oak, and replies that it is the attraction which brings Johanna to this spot. But the old man persists in his own interpretation. Because his daughter is more beautiful than any other maiden in the valley, she is proud, and disdains her humble condition. He has had, moreover, ominous dreams. The entrance of Bertrand, a countryman just arrived from the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs, interrupts the conversation. He carries a helmet in his hand, which has been forced upon him, in the marketplace, by a strange woman. Johanna, who has all this while remained quite silent, not answering a word to the rebuke of her parent, comes suddenly forward, and claims the helmet as having been sent for her. Through the interposition of her lover, it is granted to her. Bertrand, being asked what news of the war he has heard at Vaucouleurs, gives a desponding account of the king's cause, and brings the report that Orleans, pressed by the besiegers, is on the point of surrendering. Johanna now breaks forth:—

"Of treaty, of surrender not a word!
A saviour comes and arms her for the fight.
At Orleans wrecks the fortune of the foe!
His measure full, he is for harvest ripe,
And with her sickle shall the virgin come,
And reap the rank luxuriance of his pride.
Down from the heavens she tears that blazon'd fame
These English knights have hung about the stars.
Fly not! droop not!
Before the corn is yellow in the fields,
Before this moon has fill'd her globe of light,
There shall not drink an English horse
Of the sweet-flowing waters of the Loire.
Bertrand.—Alas! the age of miracles is past.
Johanna.—Not past! ye shall behold a miracle.
Lo! a white dove with eagle courage flies
Down on the vulture that still rends his prey,
Our mangled country. The traitor Burgundy,
The haughty Talbot that would storm the skies,
This Salisbury, scandal of the Temple's order,
And all these insolent proud islanders
Shall fly before her like a herd of lambs."

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 Staël, 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 Staël, 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.

We were still more surprised to find Schlegel describing the Maid of Orlean of Henry VI. as more historical than the portraiture of Schiller. There is the same amount of fable in both. In Henry VI., we have an echo of the coarse superstition and vulgar scandal of the English camp—in Schiller, the fable is beautiful, and assists to develop a character of exquisite purity.