Renaissance Studies Vol. 9 No. 4

Fronton du Duck Histoire tragique de la Pucelle (1580)

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

At first glance it all seems innocent enough, with the Histoire tragique de la Pucelle fitting comfortably into a number of familiar patterns.’ Born in 1559, Fronton du DUC, though he came from Bordeaux, joined the Jesuits at Verdun eighteen years later. On gaining his muitrise i s arts and taking holy orders, he embarked on a teaching career which would, in the fullness of time, take him back to Bordeaux and then on to the Colkge de Clermont (subsequently called Louis-le-Grand) at Paris before he devoted his energies to controversy, primarily with Duplessis-Mornay, and to patristic studies. Remaining, however, in north-east France for his first post, he became a ‘pro- fesseur de rhktorique et philosophie’, at the University of Pont-5-Mousson. Duke Charles I11 of Lorraine - generally called Charles le Grand - had founded this institution only in 1572 because he was anxious to stem the tide of Protestantism in his territories, even though there are suggestions that the threat to Catholicism was not really very grave? It may be regarded as a mark of the ruler’s business-like attitude to the matter that he entrusted the running of the new university to the thrusting Society of Jesus. In May 1580 the King of France, Henri 111, and Queen Louise planned to call at Pont-5-Mousson on their way to take the waters at Plombicres-les-Eaux. What could be more natural than that a royal entertainment should be mounted in their honour, and that it should include the performance of a drama in the approved style? Nine years later, when Ferdinand de Medicis married Christine de Lorraine in Florence, there would be something artistically far more impressive.’

Two strands clearly came together, perhaps even, as we shall see presently, a third. In his De Ihrt & la trugidie, published only about eight years before L’histoire t r a g i p , Jean de la Taille had voiced the ambitions of all the French

‘ Fronton du Duc, L’histoire tragipe de la Pucelk d’Odians, ed D. de L. (1859 Geneva, 1970). The introduction contains a useful summary of background information. See too the notice on Fronton du Duc by R. Limouzin-Lamothe in the Dictionnuire de biographiefiawaise. E. and C. Parfaict, in their Histoire du thiciirefiawais (15 vols., 1745; New York. 1968). It], 446-52. provide a brief account of the first performance of the play and a summary of its action.

* J. Schneider. in his Hisloire & Lomaine, Que Saisje no. 452 (Paris, 1967), of which the sixth and seventh chapters provide valuable background information on the dukedom in between 1477 and 1624, comments that ‘en Lorraine, la Reforme protestante trouvait un terrain peu favorable’ (p. 63). It is nonetheless easy to appreciate Charles III’s apprehensions, given the problems caused in France by the religious situation.

See ks j2 tes de mariagc & Ferdinand de Midicis ei de Christine de Lorraine. Rorence, 1589: Muique des inlmnides de ‘La Pellcgnnu’, ed. D. P. Walker (Paris, 1962).

0 1995 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxford University Press

Fronton du DucS Histoire tragique de la Pucelle 375

humanist dramatists when he declared that what he longed for were perfor- mances of his tragedies and comedies before monarchs and gentlemen, not the ignorant ‘vallets et menu p~pulaire’ .~ In other words, his hope was for a continuation of that emulation of Italian fashions which appeared to have been inaugurated when Henri I1 had attended the Cardinal de Guise’s palace in Paris to witness the first performance of a regular drama in French, Etienne Jodelle’s tragedy Cliopktre captive in February 1553.5 In fact, things rarely worked out quite so grandly, and we find, for instance, La Pkruse’s Midke being performed in the most modest circumstances in the provinces, at Par- thenay in fact, in June 1572.6 There was, however, another milieu in which the classical tradition in drama continued, even if it is a little optimistic to claim it always flourished there. That was the colleges, where Terence had always had a footing and where, more significantly for present purposes, two neo-Latinists, Marc-Antoine Muret, with his influential Julius Caesar,’ and George Buchanan’ had prepared the way for future developments in the vernacular. The second performance of Jodelle’s first tragedy, at the Col- lege de Boncourt, can in fact be regarded as far more normal than the first. On the quality of the productions it is possible to have some hesitations. Jean de la Taille, no doubt in the light of painful, if not even embarrassing experience, had little patience with the style of the oral delivery of the speeches and gestures in college drama. He roundly states that he has had enough of acting styles that smack of students and schoolmasters. But when he goes on to speak of what he thinks might be achieved if only plays were ‘naifvement jouees par des personnes propres’ with ‘gestes honnestes’ and ‘brave et hardie prononciation’, he is using the language of oratorical train- ing that was widely understood in educational spheres in his time. At court, as an ambassadorg or counsellor, and in the courts, as an advocate, in Catholic pulpits, where the excesses of the Friars and Dominicans and the rude vernacular vigour of the Protestants had to be countered with something more humanistically prepossessing, and on every occasion in the municipal and academic public life, speeches were called for, often in the learned tongues, but increasingly in the vernacular too. Schools and colleges sought to provide the necessary training, and the Jesuits, with their ambition to pro- vide an education that would be useful in practical terms as well as correct

‘ Jean de la Taille, Dramafic Works, ed. Kathleen M. Hall and C. N. Smith, Athlone Renaissance

’ Etienne Jodelle, Cliophtre captive, ed. Kathleen M. Hall, Textes littiraires no. 35 (Exeter, 1979).

‘ Jean de La PPruse, Midie, ed. John A. Coleman, Textes littiraires no. 56 (Exeter, 1985). p. xv. ’ See Jacques de la Taille, Aleurndre, ed. C. N. Smith, Textes littiraires no. 18 (Exeter, 1975). for

evidence of the influence of Muret’sJuliw Caesar. ’ Montaigne pays tribute to both Buchanan and Muret and points up the importance of college

drama in Essais, I, 26. ’ Attention is drawn to the importance of oratory in diplomacy by Garrett Mattingly, Renuisance

Diplomacy (London, 1955). 38-9; perhaps realpolitik counted for more than rhetoric, but the conven- tion persisted of admiring eloquence, no less in delivery than in composition.

Library (London, 1972). 19-24.

p. v.

376 Christopher Smith

in doctrinal ones, were conspicuous in following the trend of using drama as a means of rehearsing the skills of oratorical delivery no less than as a way of inculcating worthwhile religious lessons.”

So there was nothing very surprising in the fact that the newly arrived Jesuit ‘professeur de rhbtorique’ should have tried his hand at dramatic com- position when the royal visit was announced. Circumstantial details are lack- ing, yet we may note that generally such tasks were entrusted to the younger college teachers. The length of his play, and the fact that he appears to have collected material quite conscientiously, suggest that he took the assignment seriously, as well he might, given that as a beginner he would have had motives for trying to impress his superiors at the university, who in turn were naturally concerned to keep in the duke’s good books. As so often hap pens with theatricals, there were, however, problems. Plague broke out in the region, causing Henri I11 to decide to cancel his visit. It was not until 7 September 1580 that the Histoire tragique was first played. Though the King of France was not there, the occasion was graced by the presence of Charles 111, Duke of Lorraine, who rewarded Fronton with a substantial sum in cash and promised future support to the Jesuits. This not inconsiderable success did not lead to the immediate publication of the text, and it was left to Jean Barnet, a lawyer from Tarbes, to arrange for it to be printed in Nancy in 1581. He neglected to mention Fronton du Duc’s name, though it is unlikely that he did not know it, or if he did not, could not easily have found it out, given that he had connections with the ducal court. Perhaps Fronton du Duc would have set more store by the play if it had not been in the vernacular. At all events, he did not, it appears, take steps to reclaim the work.

L’hktoire tragiqw de lu Pucelle is, as its very name suggests, a work of ques- tionable dramaturgical parentage. By 1580 the word ‘trag6die’ was familiar enough in French, but the late medieval formulation of ‘histoire tragique’ is preferred as the designation for the portrayal, not of a mythical character or figure from classical history, but a late medieval heroine.” The dramatic form is mixed too. Fronton du Duc offers us a Horatian five-act division, but cannot resist the attractions of a Terentian prologue, followed by a Senecan protatic monologue, which he puts into the mouth of Louis de Bour- bon, and the acts are split into scenes with a lack of concern for the liaison des sc&s that is unusual even by sixteenth-century standards. At the end of each of the five acts there is a chorus, performed by ‘des enfants et filles de France’. All take the form of an octosyllabic ode, divided up into ‘strophe’, ‘epistrophe’ and ‘epode’, the last section being marked ‘chantbe en musique’, which suggests, by its very modest demands, that something had been learned from the sort of unfortunate experience that had turned Jacques Grivin

lo See W. H. McCabe, An Introduction to theJesuit Thwtre, ed. L J. Oldani (St Louis, Miss., 1983). I’ For information about the historical Joan of Arc I have turned to two rather different modern

sources: Sven Stople, The Maid of Orhns, ed. Eric Lewenhaput (London, 1956) and V. Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1955).

Fronton du Duck Histoire tragique de la Pucelle 377

against ill-rehearsed singing in the choruses of tragedies.’* Fronton du DUC’S choruses, though less ambitious in their lyric development than many other written in French at the time, are also orthodox in the way they comment on the action. The Jesuit did not venture to follow, for instance, the example of Robert Garnier in La Troadel3 in a more adventurous use of choruses in the middle of acts or in a more integrated way with the protagonists.

Setting the action variously in Domrkmy, Chinon, Orleans and Rouen, the playwright reveals no concern with the unity of place. That of time, rather more surprisingly, he also disregards. Classical values are, however, often quite firmly asserted. Act I scene 2 offers us Jeanne discussing with St Michel what course of action she should take, but it concludes with one of the more graphic descriptive passages as she sees what the mission means:

Dieul Quoi? j’entends deja les soldatz fremissantz. I1 me semble que j’oy les chevaulx hennyssants, Et le son esclatant des Francoyses trompettes, Mettant le coeur au ventre aux hommes et aux bestes. (p. 10)

Think, Fronton du Duc is really saying, when we speak of horses that you see them, and the same Horatian policy applies again most strikingly in the fifth act. There a gentilhomme de Rouen, whom we have not met before, first laments Jeanne’s imprisonment and then, after a scene in which the duc de Sommerset, taking the role more commonly associated with the Earl of Warwick, has explained to the abbe de Fkcamp’* that his compatriots regard incarceration as a soft option and that English opinion will be satisfied only by an execution, he listens, with suitable expressions of horror and sym- pathy, to an anonymous messenger who delivers a detailed account of Jeanne’s death at the stake in a style which any of Fronton du Duc’s pupils could well take as a copybook example of the classical way of arranging these things. But, almost as if to warn us against thinking that, on this aspect of hiding away in the wings actions which cannot be fittingly staged, Fronton du Duc is embracing orthodoxy, he inserts, in the middle of Act 11, a scene before the walls of Orleans with English and French troops roundly abusing one another’s faint-heartedness with a fair range of traditional insults. The debt to farce traditions is clear enough, and the relief, if not particularly comic, was no doubt welcome in 1580, as indeed it is now.

For Fronton du Duc deals particularly in the monologue, and even when two characters meet it is, in the French sixteenth-century tradition, not so much to exchange views or try to alter opinions as to state them in lengthy speeches. The medium is the alexandrine couplet with the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes; this is clearly in accord with regular prac-

’* Jacques Grdvin’s ‘Brief discours pour I’intelligence de cette traghdie’ serves as a preface to his

’’ Robert Garnier, La W, Anfigune, ed. Raymond Leb&gue, Textes frangais (Paris, 1952). ” Though the personage is historical, Fronton du Duc has softened the character of the historical

Cisar, ed. Ellen S. Ginsberg, TLF no. 179 (Geneva, 1971), 81-95.

Gilles de Duremort, who was violently opposed to Joan of Arc (Sackville.West, 318).

378 Christopher Smith

tice as it had settled down with Jodelle’s successors. The style too follows what had become orthodoxy in tragedy. The interminable speeches are sententious and freighted with a fair amount of erudition, diligently culled from classical sources as well as from scripture. Alliteration is not infrequently invoked in an effort to add emphasis, as in ‘Je meurs, sans mourir, et mille et mille fois’ (p. 66), with indeterminate numbers also being employed for the umpteenth time, and on occasion Fronton du Duc even rises to a com- pound adjective, as in ‘l’ange salue-vierge’. Overall, as in not a few of the tragedies by the Jesuit’s contemporaries, the effect is perhaps not so much grand as gloomy with only limping sesquipedality, but the ambition to employ the high style for the solemn theme is plain.

And was the subject well chosen? In the rosy glow of more than four cen- turies of hindsight and in consideration of the impressive number of literary works based on it that are listed by Ingvald Raknem inJoan of Arc in History, Legend and Liter~ture’~ it is perhaps all too easy to suppose that it was. One corrective to any idea that Joan of Arc offered particular attractions to Jesuit dramatists is to peruse Louis Desgraves’s finding list of the programmes of college plays performed in France in the seventeenth century.16 Joan of Arc is conspicuous by her absence, though quite extraordinary lengths were gone to in the search for suitable subjects. Talking simply of French patriotism is not plainly going far enough, nor is invoking local pride in Lorraine either, unless we add some dimensions to that. In fact, the story of Joan of Arc - or rather Jeanne Darc as until 1576 she was more properly called, without an apostrophe laying claim to a noble purticuk” - was not only prob- lematical in more than one way, but also offered Fronton du Duc what might be regarded as an unexpected opportunity in the circumstances of a com- mand performance before the Duke of Lorraine and his guest, the King of France. As Bernard Shaw pithily puts it, she is the ‘queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages’,’’ and though she was indeed a most notable warrior, she had certainly not yet been admitted to the Christian calendar by 1580.

The religious problem of Jeanne’s wearing men’s clothing was one which evidently exercised Fronton du DUC, though, pace McCabe,lg the fact that she did so, except in Act I scene 2 before she accepts her military mission, may have offered a way round Jesuit suspicions about the propriety of dress. ing boys in skirts for dramatic performances, rather in the way that Shakespeare put Viola and Jessica into breeches. Likewise, to justify Jeanne’s upsetting the proper order of things by departing from female norms and taking on what were seen as essentially male duties in venturing out into

I’ Ingvald Raknem,Jwn of Arc in Histmy, Lcgcnd and Literature (Oslo, 1971). Louis Desgraves, Ripertoire des progrmnma des pilccs & thicitre jo&s dam 1 s colliges en France

(Geneva, 1986). ” Stolpe, 20. I n George Bernard Shaw, Sain: Joan (Harmondsworth, 1952). 7.

McCabe, 182.

Fronton du Duc’s Histoire tragique de la Pucelle 379

the world and fighting the enemies of the state, Fronton du Duc labours with rather ostentatious erudition to pile up scriptural exemph, giving us, in fact, a foretaste of what would be found in the Galleries & fmms fortes during the regency of Anne of Austria.20

But these were difficulties for a Jesuit dramatist aiming at writing an im- proving play. Politically the issue was more difficult still. At the end of L’ulouette Charles may well be expressing what has come to be the popular appreciation of the saga when he cries that ‘Jeanne d’Arc, c’est une histoire qui finit bien!’ but Jean Anouilh, with his sudden and transparently cynical reversal of the action, is right to invite us to heed the ambiguities of such interpretations.” If we make the imaginative effort of seeing it from the viewpoint of Henri I11 in 1580, the story is not one in which it would, to put it mildly, be possible to take unalloyed satisfaction. The opening of L’histoire tragique reveals, with historical accuracy, a France that is in despair as the foreign invaders score their triumphs, and Charles, in Act I scene 3, can do little more than impotently bewail his country’s fate as he wonders whether he will ever be crowned king. The little episode in which the Dauphin swaps roles with the comte de Clermont in order to test whether Jeanne has special insight is a somewhat ignominious piece of play acting. If it is plausible, it suggests that the divinity has not shaped the cut of his jib very impressively; if it is not, it is rather puerile; and the entire business, though - or arguably because - it is historical, hints at personality problems.

The saga of the liberation of France, though stirring, has the unfortunate consequence of side-lining Charles. Even at the coronation, which Fronton du Duc makes relatively little of, it is Joan of Arc who takes the limelight, and what is true for Rheims holds even more for the battles. Charles may have been given a sign, but he, unlike Constantine, could never say that in that sign he had personally conquered. In the sixteenth century, which set great store by at least the conventions of chivalry for its monarchs, thirsty as they were for military glory, no less than in the fifteenth, which had not forgotten that the Black Prince had led by conspicuous example and that, more recently, Henry V had been in the thick of the fight, the passivity of Charles could not but be something of an embarrassment. To make matters worse, it was not simply a question of entrusting the conduct of military affairs to such acknowledged specialists among the higher nobility as the conm’table. Unlike some twentieth-century dramatists, Fronton du Duc does not trouble to soften the psychological blow by much in the way of suggestion that, if the aristocracy was effete, there was a reserve of sense and vigour in the com- mon soldiery. Whether a monarch like Henri I11 would really have taken much satisfaction in such consolations must be regarded as most doubtful, but the play does not offer the possibility in any case. The salvation of France comes patently, as we are regularly reminded, under God, from Jeanne.

See Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphunf: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-1652 (Oxford, 1977). *’ Jean Anouilh, L’alouctfc, ed. Merlin Thomas and Simon Lee (London, 1960), 137.

380 Christopher Smith

Things, as they typically do in the second half of Joan of Arc plays, look even worse for King Charles and for France generally when it comes to the capture, trial and execution of the heroine. Pity for Jeanne in her plight is inevitably linked with irritation that those who have so much to thank her for lift not a hand to help her, and the more successful Fronton du Duc is in evoking our sympathy for his heroine’s grievous misfortunes, the more annoyed we are likely to become that she has been left to her plight. The English authorities, following a divide and rule policy that was to become second nature in the imperial period, implicate the French in every stage of proceedings against Jeanne. In the play, as in history, she is tried in a French city by French prosecutors - most notably personified here by the blustering Canon Jean Destivet of Rouen Cathedral= - who use the French language, and by 1580 it would have been clear that the religious spirit which informed the trial was Catholic, whereas by then England was rather associated in many minds, not least that of the French monarch, with Protes- tantism. In general terms it is hard to argue that France comes well out of the trial, and Jeanne, like Joan, will not let the matter rest here. In her distress one element at least is that she has been deserted by those she had been sent to help. In Act IV she laments, as well she might, that:

. . . ji ce m’est trop sur que cette grosse chaine Me convoit aux douleurs du supplice pr~chaine:‘~ Et que tous les secours de mes meilleurs amys Ne m’osteront des mains de mes fiers ennemys: Et que tous les tresors des finances Franqoises Ne me delivreront des furies Angloises. (p. 66)

The failure of the French monarch to intervene is expressed powerfully by the simple but expressive dramatic device of excluding him - vere, rex absconditus - from the final two acts of the play. Where he does last appear Charles once again fails to cut an impressive figure. At court he asks La Hire anxiously for news of the army, to be told first of the Duke of Burgundy’s defection and next of the capture of Jeanne, who has been to some degree a victim of her own valour in combat. Charles shows nothing of similar qualities: ‘0 mon cas est perdu’ is all he can think of saying. It is left to RenC, the Duke of Lorraine, to give him the somewhat chilly consolations of Christian stoicism:

nostre vie mortelle N’a point felicitk en ce monde eternelle. (p. 62)

The king’s somewhat unworthy response is to launch into a short-winded tirade. Flavy“ and his companions should have done more to protect Jeanne, he protests, demanding military virtues he himself lacks. As for

Stolpe, 206. *’ The text is copied from the 1859 edition; the rhyme satisfies only the ear, not the eye. ’‘ Sackville.Wert. 289-91.

Fronton du Duck Histoire tragique de la Pucelle 38 1

Jeanne, he takes only an instant to conclude that ‘c’est faict de sa pauvrette vie’, for he is sure that there is no possibility of getting her back out of the clutches ‘des cruelz Bourgignons et Anglois inhumains’ (p. 63). Realism is doubtless a virtue in a politician, but surely this is writing off the Maid of France with indecent haste. The Duke of Lorraine makes the suggestion that perhaps money will do the trick:

peult estre l’avarice Des Anglois la pourra garantir du supplice. (p. 63)

No doubt offering the insult provided some satisfaction, but it would not be hard to imagine a more heroic way out of the difficulty. Charles, however, grasps at this solution, declaring, perhaps a little meanly, that he will go as far as to order others to pay out 5,000 gold crowns and, in only a second thought, saying he will even go beyond that limit, if need be. It is perhaps a mark of his lack of confidence in this policy that he turns next to a prayer on the theme of God’s dissatisfaction with the realm. The subsequent action of the play, as all at the first performance would have known in advance, would be to show that the Maid was not for ransoming, and the Act IV chorus, though full of sage comments on envy and treachery, holds out no hope. So again Charles is shown in a bad light.

Speculating on Henri III’s possible response to this unflattering portrayal of a French monarch is no doubt bootless, but we do know that Charles 111, Duke of Lorraine, was very pleased with the delayed first performance in autumn 1580. Already we have seen one little gesture in his direction. When Charles heard of Jeanne’s capture, he was, it will be recalled, talking with Renk, who became Duke of Lorraine in 1431, only just before the execution of Jeanne, and not so early during her captivity as Fronton du Duc implies. What the Jesuit playwright has omitted is the historically accredited rebuke which Jeanne delivered to the ailing Duke Charles II, whom she bade in 1429 to put aside his mistress, the beautiful Alison Dumay, if he wished to be restored to health.25

Fronton du Duc went further than displaying tact over this particular mat- ter, and the entire play can, in fact, be seen as a compliment to the ducal house by presenting Jeanne as a saviour come from Lorraine. The ‘Avant- Jeu’ roundly proclaims that the play is written ‘2 l’honneur du Pays de Lorraine’, and later on it insists on proprietorial rights when it states:

On a donques choisy les faicts d’une Pucelle Qu’en France, plus souvent d‘Orleans on appelle: De Dom-Remy plustost nous la dirons icy: (Aux terres de Lorraine elle nasquit aussy.)26

I’ Sackville.West, 117-18.

dedicatee, the comte de Salm. Jean Barnet inserts at this point two more couplets praising the village, in order to flatter his

382 Christopher Smith

The point is hammered home at the very end of the last chorus when Jeanne is commemorated, in rather poor verse, as

Vierge tres chaste et tres forte, De la France le bonheur, Et de Lorraine l'honneur.

As Vita Sackville-West points out in her biography of Saint Joan of Arc:' DomrCmy was in the early fifteenth century a border village, half in France and half in the duchy of Bar, which came under the suzerainty of the duchy of Lorraine, and it certainly was not technically in Lorraine. Jeanne, however, commonly referred to herself as 'La Lorraine', and Fronton du Duc followed her example. What is important for our purposes is that neither Fronton du Duc nor Charles 111, both of whom would have been well placed to check details about boundaries that were taken very seriously at the time, chose to do so. In fact we witness here a double takeover, for not only is Jeanne claimed unambiguously for Lorraine as against Bar, but she is reclaimed from France too.*'

In a period when Ronsard asserted that the French monarchy originated in Troy, it was perhaps not too ambitious to accept the popular view about Jeanne's origins. But was it just a matter of local pride? Perhaps, but there may well be more to it than that.

Charles I11 had succeeded to the dukedom as a minor in 1545, his mother, Christine of Denmark, and his uncle Nicholas serving as regents. King Henri 11, however, was worried about imperial influence on the north-eastem fron- tier of France, and in 1552, as one of a number of steps taken to secure those parts, he insisted on taking Charles to the French court. There, on attaining the age of sixteen, he was married to the twelve-year-old Claude de France, third daughter of Henri I1 and Catherine de Medicis, who died after a suc- cession of pregnancies in 1575. Returning to his dukedom, Charles followed a policy which had three major aspects: he remained loyal to France, but without neglecting either his rights and dignities as Duke of Lorraine or that allegiance to Catholicism which, as we have already seen, led him to found the university at Pont-P-Mousson. The spectacle before him when Henri I11 planned to visit Lorraine in 1580 was displeasing and yet for him to some degree, promising.

Even at its mid-term, in 1580, a few months before the Peace of Fleix ended the Seventh War of Religion, the reign of Henri HI, though longer than those of his two elder brothers, did not appear markedly more successful in bring ing about a resolution of the religio-political problems that had beset the realm since the time of Francois 1". Matters were not helped by the failure of the king and his queen to produce a child, and his younger brother, Fran-

'' Sackville.West, 95-6. See too Stolpe, 20, who suggests that though Jeanne customarily called herself 'La Lorraine', it might be more accurate to call her 'La Champenoise'.

One C. ValEe, mistakenly supposing that Barnet is the author of the play, praises him because, tjaloux qu'un estranger seul emportast la gloire', he has recovered this subject from the French (p. 103).

Fronton du Dux’s Histoire tragique de la Pucelle 383

sois, Duke of Anjou, was a doubtful heir presumptive, and not only on grounds of ill health. This left the problem of the succession open for dispute, and subsequent events were to show that Duke Charles was not unwise to be keeping an eye open for possible future developments. L’histoire tragique de la Pzccelk is, to be sure, the story of the expulsion of a foreign invader from French soil. All the same as King Charles VII speaks, on the one hand of the loss of famous cities, and, on the other, of the treachery of French. speaking nobles, his lamentations might often be taken as those of a monarch faced with civil war. This impression is strengthened all the more since the English are so weakly characterized and are generally seen, not grouped together, but working with Frenchmen who are the enemies of the monarch presented as their rightful king. Furthermore, Jeanne’s mission, which does, of course, involve ejecting the invaders, is in fact seen quite largely in terms of re-establishing Charles’s authority. That authority is based upon dynastic claims, and it is notable how much stress is placed on the legitimacy of his right to the throne.

Du hault Dieu la Sainte Ordonnance Veult que le seul sang des Valois Leur commande. (p. 48)

Raising the issue, and linking it so explicitly with the House of Valois, in connection with what is largely envisaged as a civil war in a play to be per- formed before Henri 111, could not fail to take on urgent topicality in 1580. This is all the more the case since Fronton du DUC, no doubt partly inspired by the historical Joan’s professed desire to crusade against the Hussites, makes his Jeanne profess particular hatred for the heresies of the Vaudois (p. 85), who may readily be seen as forerunners of the supporters of the Reformation.

The sixteenth century was an age that favoured covert messages, no less in drama than in emblems and devices. L’histoire tragique may plainly be in- terpreted as just an improving portrayal of Joan of Arc’s extraordinary and moving career as presented by a Jesuit whose moralizing urges were com- bined with more than a smattering of a classical dramatic technique. But for anyone who cared to look below the surface, this account of the emergence from Lorraine of a heaven-sent warrior who could deliver France from the shackles of internal strife may also be received as a statement of what might be taken to be Charles 111’s ambitions. What he may be seen as seeking was not merely the re-establishment of royal power in France and with it the restoration of Catholic hegemony within the realm. There is too an assertion, whether by him or on his behalf, of his serious claim to the throne, not merely because of his religious orthodoxy, but also on account of his connections in the royal family by blood and marriage. Had not his duchess been a daugher of Henri I1 and Catherine de Medicis? Was not his brother-in-law Henri III’s queen, Louise de Lorraine, the daughter of his uncle Nicolas? Under Charles I11 the duchy is commonly seen as enjoying a last flowering of prestige before being absorbed into France. The suggestion of

384 Christopher Smith

L’histoire tragique de la Pucelle is, however, that it would be fitting if the next king of France should come, not from the border kingdom of Navarre, but from the border duchy of Lorraine. History is there to show that, despite the formidable difficulties, dynastic no less than doctrinal and military, which the Bourbon Henri IV had to overcome before displacing the Valois, this was a vain hope. Nonetheless the use of college drama to carry a political message that would, of course, be to the great glory of the Catholic Church suggests, as is characteristic of the Jesuits, a practical ulterior motive in classicizing culture and religious education. N o wonder Charles I11 was gratified. Whether the play would have caught the conscience of Henri I11 remains a speculation, but we should recall that until the death of the Duke of Anjou in 1584 it was no foregone conclusion on whom the election would light.

University of East Anglia