 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Table of Contents Act IV, Scene VII Summary Talbot is wounded and dying and grieves over the body of his dead son. While the French are standing over the bodies of the dead Sir William Lucy comes to inquire about those who have lost their lives. He asks for the bodies of the two Talbot and Joan let his have them. Notes Talbot’s final words, spoken over the body of his dead son, accept and transcend the dilemma of death and extinction by returning to the classical consolation of fame and formulating it in an enlarged context. "Thou antic death... two Talbot’s, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall ’scape mortality. Here the reward of earthly fame is combined with the consolation of resurrection after death. Their "name" is not cut off by death but they become immortal beings. From this last oration Talbot moves to the clear-eyed acceptance of his fate that concludes the speech, "Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have, / Now my old arms are young Talbot’s grave." The death of Talbot is a crucial moment in the play. He and his son, the soul of English honesty and valor, are overcome by the French only because they are let down by the petty rivalries of noblemen competing for power in an England rapidly sinking into anarchy. The death of Talbot is a both celebration of English courage and a warning against those political tendencies, which time and again had brought England into chaos and misery. The unresolved problem of fame and the consolation that it provides remains the single problem posed by the life of Talbot. Does an "honorable" death justify a life that has proved futile in the unforeseeable calculus of human history? Or does the final word remain with Joan as she insult’s Talbot’s body? "Him that thou manifest with... at our feet." Joan has the peasant’s dislike of fancy talk and high-flown titles. She turns this scorn on English nobility. Lucy’s speech, with its enumeration of titles, is the perfect caricature of the stiff formality associated with an English nobleman. Joan’s mockery of it underlines its absurdity. Talbot’s simple heroism, which is certainly presented non-ironically, is disfigured rather than adorned by these trappings. Table of Contents | |
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