Talbot

Play

Henry VI, Part 1

Summary

Lord Talbot is the great English military hero who struggles heroically to hold England's French territories against Joan la Pucelle and the French. His death on the battlefield alongside his son John, each refusing to flee to save the other, becomes the emblem of England's tragic loss of France.

Notable Quotations

"Coward of France! how much he wrongs his fame, / Despairing of his own arm's fortitude, / To join with witches and the help of hell!" *(2.1)*

"Is this the scourge of France? / Is this the Talbot, so much fear'd abroad / That with his name the mothers still their babes?" *(2.3)*

"Thou antic death, which laugh'st us here to scorn, / Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, / Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, / Two Talbots winged through the lither sky, / In thy despite shall 'scape mortality." *(4.7)*

Cross-references