Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/125

King Henry the Sixth  dolphin or dogfish. Dogfish, a small shark, was commonly used as an opprobrious epithet. Dolphin is the invariable form of the French title Dauphin in the early editions of the play. Modern editors substitute the present spelling in all cases except this, where the pun requires retention of the older form. It should be remarked that the Dauphin of the play was from the legitimist French point of view King of France (Charles VII) through the entire course of the action, since the death of his father, Charles VI, occurred only two months after that of Henry V. The English, however, ignored Charles VII's pretensions to the throne and continued to employ his old title.

 Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch. Johnson asserted the existence of a superstition that 'he that could draw the witch's blood was free from her power'; but no confirmation of this has apparently been found in Elizabethan literature.

 Joan here goes from the lower to the upper stage of the Elizabethan theatre, lines 15–18 being spoken from the upper or balcony stage.

 like Hannibal. The allusion is perhaps to the stratagem recorded by Livy (bk. xxii. c. 16, 17); Hannibal extricated his forces from an unfavorable position by driving against Fabius's army during the night two thousand oxen with blazing fagots tied to their horns.

 tear the lions out of England's coat. The armorial dress of the kings of England was embroidered with three lions (or leopards).

 Astræa's daughter. That is, daughter of Justice, in allusion to the myth that Astræa forsook the world when it became corrupt, and carried her divine scales to the constellation of Libra. Spenser develops the legend elaborately at the opening of the fifth book of the Fairy Queen; and Peele's Descensus Astrææ turns it into a pageant in honor