In 1795 appeared Southey’s heroic play on Joan of Arc.  That drama is more a glorification of the principles of the French Revolution than of Joan of Arc.  There is no attempt made to follow out her history.  The play contains a love episode due entirely to the youthful poet’s imagination, but it contains fine passages as well, and seems to us to have merited more praise from posterity than it has received.

Schiller’s play, like Southey’s, sins grievously as far as historical truth is concerned.  The German poet wishes, it seems, to remove the bad impression made by Voltaire’s poem.  The play was first performed on the stage at Weimar in 1801; and the Jungfrau von Orleans met with considerable success.  It contains noble lines, but is historically a mere travesty of the life and death of the heroine.

In 1815 Casimir Delavigne wrote, as a counterblast to the double invasion that France had just undergone, his well known Messeniennes to the honour of the French heroine.  These poems had a great success, the second being the most admired; but they are now forgotten.  Two other dramatic poets followed in Delavigne’s steps:  these were d’Avrigni and Soumet.  By the former appeared, in 1819, a tragedy in five acts and in verse; it was performed at the Theatre Francais.  Soumet’s play was also acted; it almost equals d’Avrigni’s in length and tediousness.

Besides the above tragedies which had, as the French term it, the honour of seeing the light of the footlights, Desnoyers wrote a play on Joan of Arc in 1841, and was followed by a series of other writers in verse and in prose—­Caze, Dumolard, Maurin, Cramar, Hedouville, Millot, Lequesme, Crepot, Puymaigre, Porchat, Haldy, Renard, Jouve, Cozic, Daniel Stern, Bousson de Maviet, Constant Materne.  All the above wrote plays and tragedies on the subject of Joan of Arc between the years 1805 and 1862.  Daniel Stern was the only authoress who composed a drama in honour of the heroine.

While all this galimatias of dramas has sunk into the limbo which waits for all such work, Villon’s two lines remain as bright as the day on which, four centuries ago, he wrote them:—­

        ’Jeanne la bonne Lorraine,
    Qu’ Anglais brulerent a Rouen.’

Some plays on the subject of the Maid of Orleans also appeared in Italy and in England, but none is likely to retain a long hold of the stage.  The drama of Joan of Arc’s life has inspired two of the greatest masters of music of our day.  Verdi set a tragedy by Solera to music in 1845, and in 1869 Gounod wrote some music for a piece by Jules Barbier, which was performed with some success at the Gaite Theatre in Paris in 1873.

What will always remain an unfortunate fact in the history of modern literature is that the two greatest minds of England and France have written on the subject of the Maid of Orleans lines which—­for their fame—­it were well they had never written.  Whether Shakespeare composed the First Part of King Henry VI. may for long remain a disputed point, but he is responsible for that play, and consequently for the manner in which Joan of Arc is treated in it.  No genius can pardon or excuse the abuse and filth with which Voltaire bespatters the immortal memory of the glorious Maid of Orleans.