By
thrusting out a torch from yonder tower; Which, once discern'd, shows that her
meaning is,
No way to that, for weakness, which she enter'd.
Enter JOAN LA PUCELLE on the top, thrusting out a torch burning
Reigner
King Henry The Sixth Part One Act III, Scene ii Line 23
I added the stage direction that immediately follows today’s Totally Random
line. We’ve been to this scene before, in fact I think more than once. You’ll recall from an earlier post that JoanLa Pucelle snuck into the walled town with a few accomplices and now the rest
of the French are waiting to be let into the town. The Bastard of Orleans (what
a great name!) is talking to Reigner and has just asked him how Joan is gonna
let them know where is the safe passage into the town and Reigner’s answer is
today’s Totally Random line. Now I have to admit that the syntax in the latter
part of this line is confusing. Reigner is saying ‘When we see
her throw a torch out of that yonder tower it will show that her umm… um, that
her meaning is, umm… What?’ So there’s no words in that part, or in
the whole sentence, that are difficult to understand on their own. But still, this is one of those lines that I
look at and I wonder if it’s just a big misprint. Maybe what’s his name, the
publisher of The First Folio, Jaggard (okay, yes, I Googled it), maybe he just
completely screwed up this line. He moved some words around, or left some out?
Who knows?
If you do any reading on that whole First Folio thing you’ll
find that it’s really kind of a black hole. No one knows exactly what Heming
and Condell used for a source document for the First Folio. There are guesses
as to what they may have used, but no one really knows. These guys were in
Will’s acting company, so did they have copies of the plays that Will had
written and that the company had used to produce the plays? And if they did, whatever happened to
those documents? Or did they come up with it some other way? For sure, nothing
of what they used remains in existence today (that we know of). If you manage
to find some of the original stuff written in Will’s hand, well then sir you
can quit your job today because it would be worth millions. I find it fun to
think about sometimes. Can you imagine finding some four hundred year old
manuscripts that turned out to be in Will’s handwriting? You could write a
really good story around this (if someone hasn’t already).
In the meantime, I guess Reignier was saying, um… Oh heck, I
don’t know what he was saying but whatever he said the Frenchies figured out what it was because do manage to get in to the town. Okay? Or as Snape would say,
‘They
justtt……………………………………. doooo.’
These are probably my two oldest books. Wanna know what they're worth? Maybe a dollar or two. Maybe a little more, but not much. Unfortunately they are not First Folios. Oh well.
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