as Act IV, Act V consisting only of the short last scene (V. v), and being marked at all probably merely in order to secure the conventional total of five acts. The six scenes dealing with Talbot's death (IV. ii-vii) are undivided and carelessly tacked on to IV. i, with which they have only a remote organic connection. From this Fleay argues that the Talbot scenes are a patch of new material, not corresponding to anything in the old play: 'It is plain that they were written subsequently to the rest of the play and inserted at a revival. They had to be inserted in such a manner as not to break the connection between this play and 2 Henry VI; and were put in the most convenient place, regardless of historic sequence.' I think the reverse is true: that it was the necessity of creating a spurious connection with 2 Henry VI which produced the disorder. Originally the Talbot scenes probably came nearer the end of the play and stood in closer relationship to their natural complement, the retributive overthrow of Joan (V. ii, iii. 1-44, iv. 1-93) and the final submission of the Dauphin (V. iv. 116-175). On this unhistorical, but very dramatic note of national vindication the old play may be supposed to have concluded. To change this note to that of pessimism and foreboding with which Part II opens was the reviser's problem.[1] It required a complete volte-face, which has been executed with dexterity but probably at a cost to the effectiveness of this play (considered individually and not as the introduction to a great tetralogy) for which Shakespeare's improvement of the poetry in the Talbot scenes does not compensate. The patchwork is most painfully evident where the otherwise admirable Suffolk—Margaret—Reignier scene (V. iii. 45-195) is pasted in between two sections of the Joan story.
- ↑ The clearest indication of an effort to prepare the audience for this new gloom in the close appears in the croaking speeches of Exeter, affixed to III. i and IV. i.
