Marlovian Joan la Pucelle

Abstract

The Joan episodes in 1 Henry VI  have struck Shakespeareans as Marlovian from the era of the dual Victorian Fredericks, Fleay (1831-1909) and Furnivall (1825-1910), though Marlowe scholars have not reciprocated the attention with quite the same ardor. To this end, a careful reading of the scenes that the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016) attributed to the poet-playwright seems entirely in order. No matter who actually made Joan, or whether we view her as la Pucelle or de Arc, her lineage was Marlovian, even to his Ovidian core as descended from his speaker in his translation of the Amores, All Ovids Elegies, that book whose earlier edition, Certaine of Ovids Elegies, was burned at the order of Bishops Bancroft and Whitgift in 1599.