Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/119

King Henry the Sixth crowned at Poitiers in 1422. The Bastard of Orleans, mentioned in the next line, was Jean, Count Dunois (1402-1468), illegitimate son of the Duke of Orleans and first cousin of Charles VII. He was one of the finest soldiers of his age, and is introduced in a conspicuous rôle in Schiller's play, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, as well as in Voltaire's earlier mock-heroic, La Pucelle d'Orléans.

 The tenth of August last the siege of Orleans. These lines and those which follow describe the Battle of Patay (June 18, 1429), of which another account is introduced in IV. i. 19-26. The general issue of the battle is correctly given and it is rightly said to have followed the British retirement from the siege of Orleans (May 8, 1429); but the allusion to Patay in the present lines is out of place, since the raising of the siege of Orleans is portrayed in a later part of the play (I. v and vi).

 wanted pikes to set before his archers. The military tactics of the day directed that the archers, often stationed on the flanks of the army, should be protected from charges of cavalry by rows of pikes fixed in the ground, points outward. Holinshed's statement is that the English set their pikes (stakes) before the archers in the usual way, but had no time afterwards to arrange their line of battle.

 flew. The Folios have the easy misprint 'slew' (with long s), which a very few editors are quixotic enough to champion.

 Sir John Fastolfe. This episode of Fastolfe's cowardice is four times employed in the play. Cf. I. iv. 35-37; III. ii. 104-109; IV. i. 9-47. Modern historians represent Fastolfe as a general of distinction and of unblemished valor, but the chroniclers of Shakespeare's day accepted the libel incorporated in the play. The chief interest of the figure here is his connection with the great Falstaff of the Henry IV plays. It is to be noted that the early