‘She and the Dolphin have been ingling’:
the ambiguous gender of Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI Part 1
The dramatists who wrote Henry VI Part 1 constructed Joan la Pucelle as
a French Catholic, cross-dressing witch.1 In other words, she was the
ultimate ‘other’ to English Protestants who no longer believed in the
magic of transubstantiation, and who lived their lives according to rigid
gender definition. It is my intention to focus on the ambiguity of Joan’s
gender, and the resonance of that ambiguity, when 1 Henry VI is viewed
as a play belonging specifically to the early 1590s, the decade in which it
was first performed.2
It is useful to examine how Joan was treated in writings prior to the
first performances of 1Henry VI. By doing so, we can begin to gain a
sense of where her characterisation in the play began.3 Edward Hall offers
a vivid account of her involvement in the wars between England and
France in the early fifteenth century. She is introduced as ‘a mayd of the
age of xx.yeres’4 and, drawing attention in this way to her youth and
virginity, it appears that Hall will treat her sympathetically and with
sensitivity. However, after having described her as dressed ‘in mans
apparell’ and listing her masculine qualities–‘thynges, that other maidens,
bothe abhorred & wer ashamed to do’—he proceeds to mock her by
pointing out the true reason for her chastity: her ‘foule face [that] no man
would desire’.5 She is then called ‘a monster’ and exposed as a
fraudulent trickster. Hall views her beliefs as ridiculous, and cannot
understand how previous scholars have been able to believe what she
maintained she stood for.6 It is significant that Hall only begins to
demonise Joan once he refers to her transvestitism. Unlike Hall’s
account, 1 Henry VI rarely makes reference to Joan’s cross-dressing as
the visual signification of her costuming on stage is enough to make the
point. The dramatists draw more attention to her Catholicism and witch-
As authorship of Henry VI Part 1 is contentious, I employ the term ‘the dramatists’ as opposed to
‘Shakespeare’. Hereafter, Henry VI Part 1 shall be referred to as 1 Henry VI.
2
See R. B. Wernham, After the Armada (OUP: Oxford, 1984) and Robert J Knecht, The French Civil
Wars (Longman: Essex, 2000) for detailed discussion of the English and French historical contexts of
the play. This paper is a shortened version of Ben Spiller, ‘Cultural Resonances of Joan la Pucelle in
Henry VI Part 1’ (unpublished MA essay, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of
Warwick, 2001).
3
For a more in-depth discussion of probable sources of I Henry VI, see Emrys Jones, The Origins of
Shakespeare (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1977).
4
Hall quoted in Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (Routledge:
London, 1960), p56.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid, p57.
1
like qualities than to her cross-dressing as a means of scape-goating her to
purge English Protestant fears.7
Raphael Holinshed’s account of Joan begins with a less
misogynistic tone and seems to be more objective. He does not vilify her
for her masculine qualities. Rather, he describes her ‘favour’ as
‘liksome’ and ‘of person stronglie made and manlie, of courage great,
hardie, and stout withall’.8 The dramatists of 1 Henry VI seem to have
appropriated Holinshed’s description when Joan first enters the stage and
declares:
My courage try to combat, if thou dar’st,
And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex.
Resolve on this: thou shalt be fortunate,
If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.9
Once Holinshed claims that Joan caused ‘bloudshed in divelish witchcraft
and sorcerie’, he describes her execution as pronounced ‘accordinglie’. It
is neither transvestitism nor ambiguity of gender that turns Joan into
Holinshed’s enemy; it is the destruction she caused through demonic art.
A different misogyny to that of Hall is evident in Holinshed’s account,
that of fear or hatred of witches. Until he claims that Joan is a witch,
Holinshed seems to uphold a very modern view of leading women, that
they are champions when compared to their male counterparts.
The homoerotic aspect of boys playing girls and women in early
modern drama is discussed at length by Steve Brown.10 He points out
that the Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ‘ingle’ (1591) as ‘a
boy kept for unnatural purposes’11 and puts forward the notion that
Shakespeare never uses the term in his works. However, if Shakespeare
did indeed write 1 Henry VI, then Talbot’s claim that Joan and the
Dauphin have been ‘ingling’ disproves Brown’s point and makes the
relationship between these two figures somewhat more complex:
She [Joan] and the Dolphin have been ingling.
I did imagine what would be her refuge.12
For a detailed discussion of England’s fear and paranoia of neighbouring Catholic countries when 1
Henry VI was first performed, see Carol Z. Wiener, ‘The Beleaguered Isle. A study of Elizabeth and
Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism’, Past and Present 51 (May, 1971).
8
Holinshed quoted in Bullough, p75.
9
1 Henry VI, I.2.89-92. ‘Receive’ and ‘mate’ have clear sexual connotations, thus establishing an
ambiguous relationship between the Dauphin and Joan. This relationship is discussed at more length
below. Both quotations from the play in this paper are referenced using the most recent edition of the
play available, ed. Robert Burns (Routledge: London, 2000).
10
Steve Brown, ‘The Boyhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines: Notes on Gender Ambiguity in the
Sixteenth Century’, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 Vol 30 (Spring, 1990) No 2, pp243-262.
11
Brown, p250.
12
1 Henry VI, V.3.68-9.
7
Not only is Joan dressed as a man to lead her army against the English,
but the actor playing Joan on the Elizabethan stage would have been a
boy or young man. As the Dauphin is clearly sexually attracted to Joan,
the dramatists of the play imply that he harbours homoerotic tendencies.
The homoeroticism of the relationship between Joan and the Dauphin, the
Catholicism and witchcraft of Joan, and the transvestitism of the Maid of
Orleans, are vivid examples of the anti-popery of post-Armada England.
It is not difficult to imagine the cheering and jeering of the first audiences
of 1 Henry VI as Joan was dragged off the stage to be burnt at the stake.
Although a dramatic creation presented on a playhouse stage, she was one
less French Catholic cross-dressing witch to threaten the clear definitions
that underpinned English identity in the early 1590s.
Ben Spiller
University of Warwick