always in my mind when I walk over the little market-place of Rouen, where the Maid was burned, and where a bad statue immortalises the bad deed. To put to death by torture! That was your fashion then towards fallen foes ! Next after the rock of St. Helena, the market-place of Rouen gives the most revolting proof of the magnanimity of Englishmen.
Yes, even Shakespeare sinned against the Maid, and if he does not manifest decided enmity, he treats the noble virgin who freed her fatherland in a manner which is both unfriendly and unamiable. And, had she done it with the help of hell, she would have deserved for it honour and admiration.
Or are the critics in the right when they deny that the play in which the Maid is introduced, as well as the second and third parts of Henry VI., were not written by the great poet? They declare that this trilogy belongs to the older dramas, which he only worked over. I would gladly, if it were only for the sake of the Maid of Orleans, assent to this. But the arguments adduced are not tenable. These disputed dramas manifest in many places far too decidedly the perfect stamp of the genius of Shakespeare.[1]
- ↑ Heine in this paper assumes as a settled thing that all the details and truths as regards Joan of Arc are perfectly known, and that they are fully set forth by Schiller. In fact it is a
