Where I Liked Joan Best

Henry VI, Part 1 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with other of Shakespeare's history plays (none of which did I read until recently) I found this an entertaining read. I'm not sure what it'd look like on stage, but there's lots of drama and movement and strangeness. I liked it.

This is the one with Joan of Arc, and although we're supposed to hate her, I thought she was a cool character. The most memorable, for sure. And the scene where her personal demon friend blows her off and refuses to help her anymore would probably be the most fun to watch in the whole play. It's a shame she had to be a villain for the English to be heroes; I would have rather seen her be awesome as well as entirely heroic, but I don't think Elizabethan audiences were ready for seeing their enemies as people like themselves...

The battle stuff is pretty fun, and the heroic death of Talbot and his son is very affecting. To some degree, he was the hero of the story, and Joan was the antihero. We could have had a whole play about either one of them. Young Henry VI wasn't all that central. As a result, with the Talbots dead and Joan martyred at the stake, we're left looking for an ending with someone else. The story kind of peters out, though it at least concludes with wedding plans, which feels like an ending.

None of the histories, IMO, have a really strong or straightforward story arc, owing to the reluctance of nature to provide us with neatly planned rising action and major crisis and falling action and denouement the way we'd like it to, the way my 10th grade teacher laid it out--but the story is sorta told that way, and I think it works. I have read that some consider this Shakespeare's weakest play, and all I can say is that there's a bunch I liked less, so go figure.

On to part 2.

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