Whether the unfortunate audience had to sit all through this performance one does not know.  One hopes, for their sake, that, like a Chinese play or a Bayreuth performance of Wagner’s operas, the performance was extended over a number of days.

Joan is naturally the heroine throughout; she first appears as the bearer of the Divine mandate to drive the enemy from off the sacred soil of France.  The play closes with her triumphant return to Orleans after the victory of Patay.  As far as the mission is concerned the play is historically correct, and it is in this respect an improvement on Shakespeare and Schiller.  There is a point of great interest concerning this piece which, so far as we know, has never been noticed—­namely, the fact of one of its acts being almost identical with one in the First Part of King Henry VI.  In the mystery play the scene of this act is laid before Orleans.  The French are determined to defend their city to the last; the English are determined on taking it.  We are in front of the besieged and the besiegers.  Salisbury has entered the Tournelles, and he looks out over the city from a window in the tower.  Glansdale (’Glassidas’) stands beside him, and says to Salisbury, ’Look to your right, and to your left—­it looks like a terrestrial paradise, all this country flowing with milk and honey; you will soon be its master.’  Salisbury expresses his satisfaction at the sight of all the plunder at his feet, and gives vent to some very sanguinary sentiments about the French; he will slay every one in the place—­all the men, ’et leurs femmes et leurs enfants.  Personne je n’epargnerai.’  But scarcely has he been able to give vent to this terrible threat when his head is carried off by a cannon ball fired from the town.  The English cry out ‘Ha!  Hay! maudite journee!’

Earl Salisbury is carried out stiff and stark.  Talbot and the other English officers now vow vengeance on the French in these words:—­

    ’Ha, Sallebery, noble coraige! 
    Ta mort nous sera vendue chere,
    Jamais un tel de ton paraige,
    Ne se trouvera en frontiere.’

If we turn to Scene 4 of the first act of Shakespeare’s First Part of King Henry VI., we shall find almost the same scene enacted.

Enter on the turrets, Lord Salisbury, Talbot, etc.  Salisbury, after welcoming Talbot, calls on Sir William Glansdale to look down into the town, and while conversing the shot is fired which kills Salisbury.  After the death of Salisbury, Talbot vows vengeance on the French, and says he will

                                  ’Nero-like
    Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.’

There can be little doubt that whoever wrote the First Part of King Henry VI. had seen the mystery play of the Siege of Orleans acted in that town.  This brings one to the much debated question, ’Who wrote the First Part of King Henry VI.?’