Page 298 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes words. De Baudricourt eventually begins to feel the same sense of inspiration, and gives his consent
to Joan. The servant enters at the end of the scene to exclaim that the hens have begun to lay eggs
again. De Baudricourt interprets this as a sign from God of Joan’s divine inspiration.
In Scene 2 (8 March 1429), Joan talks her way into being received at the court of the weak and vain
Dauphin. There, she tells him that her voices have commanded her to help him become a true king
by rallying his troops to drive out the English occupiers and restore France to greatness. Joan succeeds
in doing this through her excellent powers of flattery, negotiation, leadership, and skill on the
battlefield.
In Scene 3 (29 April 1429), Dunois and his page are waiting for the wind to turn so that he and his
forces can lay siege to Orléans. Joan and Dunois commiserate, and Dunois attempts to explain to
her more pragmatic realities of an attack, without the wind at their back. Her replies eventually
inspire Dunois to rally the forces, and at the scene’s end, the wind turns in their favour.

Joan and Dunois commiserate, and Dunois attempts to explain to her more pragmatic
realities of an attack, illustrate this statement in context of scene 3.
Ultimately she is betrayed, and captured by the English at the siege of Compiègne. Scene 6 (30 May
1431) deals with her trial. John de Stogumber is adamant that she be executed at once. The Inquisitor,
the Bishop of Beauvais, and the Church officials on both sides of the trial have a long discussion on
the nature of her heresy. Joan is brought to the court, and continues to assert that her voices speak to
her directly from God and that she has no need of the Church’s officials. This outrages de Stogumber.
She acquiesces to the pressure of torture at the hands of her oppressors, and agrees to sign a confession
relinquishing the truth behind her voices, so that she can live a life in permanent confinement
without hope of parole. Upon hearing this, Joan changes her mind:
Joan: “You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live
on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. But to shut me from the light of the
sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again climb the hills.
To make me breathe foul damp darkness, without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting
to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil.”

Joan accepts the ultimate punishment of death at the stake as preferable to such an
imprisoned existence. De Stogumber vehemently demands that Joan then be taken to the
stake for immediate execution.
The Inquisitor and the Bishop of Beauvais excommunicate her and deliver her into the hands of the
English. The Inquisitor asserts that Joan was fundamentally innocent, in the sense that she was
sincere and had no understanding of the church and the law. De Stogumber re-enters, screaming
and severely shaken emotionally after seeing Joan die in the flames, the first time that he has witnessed
such a death, and realising that he has not understood what it means to burn a person at the stake
until he has actually seen it happen. A soldier had given Joan two sticks tied together in a cross
before the moment of her death. Bishop Martin Ladvenu also reports that when he approached
with a cross to let her see the cross before she died, and he approached too close to the flames, she
had warned him of the danger from the stake, which convinced him that she could not have been
under the inspiration of the devil.

In the Epilogue, 25 years after Joan’s execution, a new trial has cleared her of
heresy.

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