BOOKS.

JOAN THE MAID.*

Mn. SHRINE has produced a very fine poem, which perhaps he was well advised in calling a dramatic romance rather than a pure drama. Yet it is full of striking dramatic touches, though the whole affects the reader rather as con- taining, than as constituting, a drama. It would not be true to deny that Joan of Arc is the centre and focus of interest through the whole play. This she is undoubtedly ; and all that is great in it is centred round her greatness and her wrongs. But there is a little too much crowding of characters that have little significance. There is no need, for instance, for such a figure as Gay de Laval, who, like some of the other characters, distracts attention from the drama instead of heightening its interest. Three subordinate characters, —Manchon, Colles, Taquel,—who are forgotten even in the enumeration of the dramatis persona, are introduced to heighten the effect of the treachery of the Bishop of Compiegne and the Archbishop of Rheims in the trial,—not we think, with any great success. With all the singular beauty of the poem and its fine flashes of dramatic power, it would need, we think, a good deal of pruning before it could become a great acting drama. Still it might surely be made even that. The strong and simple character of Joan of Arc, with her wonderful history, is so powerfully presented to ui that it needs only a little clearing away of the brushwood which Mr. Skrine has allowed to impede the reader's view of her story, to give us a drama that would be one of the finest, as well as the most spiritual, of all the religious dramas of the world's history, with the exception of coarse of that m ijestic and engrossing drama which only such groups of faithful and single-hearted believers as the peasants of Ammergau have ventured to present to men's shrinking and yet eager eyes. There never was, since the Christian Church was founded, so wonderful an illustration of St. Paul's saying that ‘• God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to cmfound the wise, and the weak things of the world to con- found the things which are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, bath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are," as Joan of Arc's history. There has been no paradox of humility since the Crucifixion which has had anything like the startling effect of a great battle between faith and reason, as the victory of this peasant girl's faith over the triumphant and veteran troops of the English conquerors of France under one of the ablest Generals of the Middle Ages.

Mr. Skrine has introduced his play with a very fine prologue, in which Joan converses with a nobleman in her own country who is supposed to have been drawn into personal devotion to herself by his devotion to the cause of which she is the ap- pointed instrument. In this scene her simple nature is seen

• Joan the Maid : a Dramatic Romance. By John Huntley Ekrine. Warden of

Glenalmond, Auttwr of Columba.," 'A Memory of Edward Thring." dtc. Loudon: Macmillan and Co.

straggling vainly with the sense of her strange and lonely destiny :—

"RAIMOND. Maiden, what is this ?

What was there in my saying to shako you so ? I would not jest at you, God knows, not I; But if I touched unwitting— JOAN. Nay, not that. Something came o'er—a fear—I cannot tell it, Of days to be- RAIMOND. Fear ! There be fears enough This bitter time; France is a world of fears. But wherefore words of mine— 0, if you have Some trouble of your home, and help of mine Or comfort might— JOAN. Ah ! gentle sir, not now; I know not if some other day.

RAIMOND. Why then, For sake of France and of our Domremy, Yea, and for something, maiden, dearer yet,

Bid Raimond —there, your hand upon it. . . . ! Joe. Why did you start ?

RAIMOND. Why ? Let the clap make answer.

I had not thought the storm so near us. There !

Stand wide. You chestnut over us had the bolt.

And there again! We are in the heart of it, girl ;

I saw the balled flame shiver adown an elm To the earth, that swallowed it. Dost thou not fear ?

JOAN. The fire of God ? Why should we fear it ?

RAIMOND. Ay, But the touch death. I fear it. Wide, I say,

Stand wide of the wood. This drowning thunder-rain Is kinder lodging than the covert. Hark ! Why, said I not ? there's the big limb of oak I dragged you from beneath conies hurtling down To brain us, were we under it. Heavens ! and you —What ails you, maiden ? for you dread no more This torment of the storm than if it were Innocent sunshine, and you lift a fiont Glad as a swordsman's when it peals to fight.

How can I choose but love you, being so brave ?

Dear maiden, nay, 'tis truth. . . . Ah! what is this ?

Merciful God!

JOAN. It strikes but whom He will.

RAIMOND. The miracle that you live to speak of it ! I saw you set on fire, the falling flame

Wrapping you like a robe. And you no hurt ! Joew. Indeed I thought the bolt had slain me.

Yea,

RAIISIOND.

You thought so ? Yet your eyes shone out of it

In joy as at a vision. Girl, you seemed

Like those who trod that furnace with the Lord.

The fire of God ? But 0! it came between.

I would it had not sundered you and me.

Joew. 0 peace ! I know not what you say. Fain would I Walk with my God, though He should come in fire.

But let us part ; the storm is less, the bolt

Has broke the cloud that bore. And peril's here

More than the bolt. Heaven keep you, sir . . . . and all

The lovers of our France. (Goes.)"

That presage of Joan's marvellous and tragic fate, to which the fire of God first separated and then doomed her, as a fiery vision similarly sudden and more blinding had separated and doomed St. Paul for a work still greater and far more fruitful, gives us the first glimpse of the maid's strange mission, the mission which, of all the workings of God in secular history, is to the eye of the historian the most unique and the most indubit- able. It is the profound and childlike obedience which Joan pays to the voices "which send her on her strange career and mould her for the great task of inspiring her countrymen to their great uprising, that makes Mr. Shrine's story at once so vivid and so dramatic. When she exclaims at the moment of the great deliverance of Orleans from the English invaders, "My God is all around me like a host, and where is the oppressor ? " the reader is made to thrill with the great joy of the redemption :—

"My God is all around me like a host. And where is the oppressor ?

PASQUEREL. Maiden, turn : Dunois would greet you.

DUNOIS (entering). Nay, no words have I. My heart is liker fall in tears than words,

So charged with joy and wonder. France is saved, And all the deed a woman's.

JOAN. Say not so.

God saves by whom He will; give glory there. Now must we homeward, sir, across the bridge. DuNois. Why, Maid, 'tis gone.

JOAN. Yet by the bridge will I.

I promised and I'll do. The nimble wrights That spanned an arch for battle, shall they not Span it for triumph ? And I think, Dunois,

A bridge of gossamer were enough to prop

The weight of marching France this happy night : So light our heart is we could tread the air.

(They march of) That surely is a more dramatic close to the first act of the triumphant tragedy than even Schiller himself ever gives us.

Nor does Mr. Skrine fall short in picturing the hypocrites through whose plots Joan is destroyed. The smooth and sub- dued villainy of the Archbishop of Rheims is painted in some strong and vivid touches which make him live before us. Louis, who is Joan's page, describes his mode of egging-on the bold, bad Captain Flavy to the destruction of Joan, in a few powerful words of confidential communication to Marguerite, the one loyal woman who is devoted to Joan :—

" Louis (rising and coming close). Marguerite, the man— I'll tell it you ; we are such friends—I say,

He is a devil in lawn and velvet : there !

Maseuzarre (rising too, and taking his hand).

What is it, Louis, what is it ?

Louts. Judge yourself. I waited as he supped ; the captain sat ' Beside him (know you what this Flavy is ?) : The people clamoured in the street : a voice Rang thro' the casement, • Send for Joan : the folk Will have their Joan to lead them.' 0 to see Grow purple on Flavy's cheek the scar he got In killing of young Thibault in the wood, When-

Mattorearra. What is that of Thibault ?

Louts. Ay, who knows ? Men whisper Thilaault's sister was too fair And good, howe'er that made it. But he flushed With envy ! Beast ! What cares he for the town Except as Flavy's harvest-field that grows A marshal-staff for Flavy.

MAB,GITEHITE. Well, and then ?

Lotus. He cursed her thro' the bristles on his lip, Softly. The Archbishop (him I hate the worst) Waved his embroideries, eyed his ruby, said, 'Humour your honest people ; let her come.

Always you are captain of our forces here :

They'll do or not do by your order, and she—

She is so headlong in the field.' And there, Altho' I stood behind him, yet I knew, His lashes lifted, and the captain's fell, As if he thought on something. When he thinks, Marguerite, 'tie always of a villainy."

And the scene between Regnault and Flavy when the latter obtains the former's promise to back up his villainy, is equally terse and effective. It was, as Joan herself perceived, what her sacerdotal enemies called ‘! The Church Militant,"—meaning the Church that first used and then sold and betrayed and judged and murdered her,—that fought against her through- out her brief and bright career of victory. Perhaps there is no finer passage in this noble poem than that in which Joan prays that the cup may pass from her ; and then again bows her head to the final martyrdom with a sense that even in the fire the angel of the Lord would be with her

How say'st? It must be by the fire ? Not that !

Ah, no, no, no, not that ! 'Twere easier die Seven times by steel in battle than by 6re.

This virgin and untainted flesh of mine, What hath it done that it must burn to ash ?

0 seraph of the tenderness of God, Pity me, pray the kind God ask not that. (Lies prostrate: then rises to her knees.) Ah, what is this ? Over me went his wing, Flame, and it slew not. 0, it wrapped me round With the embrace of God : it leaves my heart

Flaming ; it slays in it the fear. Behold

The handmaid of the Lord. I'll come to thee, Yea, thro' the fire, great brother, thro' the fire."

There the reader takes his last glance at the heroine of this

pure tragedy. The close is seen only through the eyes of

those who beheld the martyrdom, and saw in it the euthanasia of a saint. Perhaps it would be difficult to sum up the effect of that martyrdom better than in one or two of the lovely lyrics of the Minstrel who watches this tragedy from afar.

Here is his prelude to the great martyrdom :—

" MINSTREL (sings).

Flutter and beat on thy bars, 0 dove, Child of the field and the sky !

Beat, or brood in the dark thereof, Listing if Death draw nigh. Wings to hover and bless were thine But where is the wing to flee ?

0 White Dove of the Pity divine,' And who hath pity of thee.?"

That is pure poetry; purer, we think, than those beautiful but somewhat too self-conscious verses prefixed to the drama. Exquisite, too, is the Minstrel's account of the closing scene:—

" SCOT. What gayest, man, what gayest? Hast thou seen? Muereraim. I saw hell open and her fires a-roar, And one white angel dumb them.

SCOT. Sober thee ; Speak a plain tale. Mtivirrast.. I cannot sober me ; I have drunk the wines of terror and the wines Of transport in one cup.

SCOT. Then, as thou caust.

Mzeirrsen. Thousand by thousand on the mortal field, And she but one. 0 ho! to war she rides, Fenceless she rides and single to that war, Yet shall they not o'erthrow her, a host to one.

They bend their weapons on her and their brows ; They birk like dogs, they gape like dogs to snatch The soul's betrayal from the shaken lip. The truth sits in the bosom of the girl, And who shall storm it thence ?

A flood of faces billowing to the wall, And roofs alive with men. I saw the light Flit from her lonely eyes to range the flood, And back return unrested. And a moan Came trembling down—the dove's note on the bough When stolen her brood is—crying, • Rouen, Rouen, My death be not thy doom !'

The founts of hell upbrake from underneath And spouted flame to swallow her ; the red surge Roared up her to the lips. I heard the hiss Of monsters in the fiery drift, the bruit Of devil laughter-claps, and hurtling wings That ploughed the reek about her.

Then from the furnace heart a cry went out, Scarce louder than a sob, but shook the ranks With mastery like a trumpet,' God, my life, The voice was thine, the voice was thine, the voice Bath not betrayed me.' And the cry went out, And beats on all the walls of all the world, And none will silence it for evermore."

Could any touch be more dramatic than the words,- ' I cannot sober me;

I have drunk the wines of terror and the wines Of transport in one cup."

Also the still more prophetic close,—

" And the cry went out, And beats on all the walls of all the world, And none will silence it for evermore," has in it the fall rapture of that victory of the spirit which alone can lift tragedy into triumph. Hardly has any finer note ever been struck in showing how some of the greatest tragedies of the world have proved the only divine signs after which the generation of those who are neither " wicked " nor "adulterous" seek and do not seek in vain.