Joan of Arc is dead, and another very different apparition of
womankind looms out of the mists of history. Whilst Joan of Arc is
hymned and numbered among the happy company of saints triumphant, Jane
Shore is roared in drinking-songs and ballads of a disreputable order,
and is held up as an awful example. She has for years been represented
upon the boards of West End and Surrey-side theatres--in her prime as
the mistress of Edward IV., in her penance before the church door, and
in her poverty and starvation, hounded from house to house in a
Christian country where bread was denied to her. I myself have seen
her through the person of a stout, melancholy, and h-less lady, who,
dressed in a sort of burlesque fish-wife costume, has lain dying on
the prompt-side of the stage, in a whirl of paper snow, while, to the
edification of the twopenny gallery, she has bewailed her evil life,
and has been allowed, by a munificent management, to die in the arms
of white-clad angels. There is a gleam of truth in the representation,
and you may see the real Jane Shore in a high steeple head-dress, with
a thin veil thrown over it, with a frontlet or little loop of black
velvet over her forehead; in a high-waisted dress, open in a V shape
from shoulder to waist, the opening laced over the square-cut
under-gown, the upper gown having a collar of fur or silk, a long
train, broad cuffs, perhaps 7 inches long from the base of her
fingers, with a broad, coloured band about her waist, a broader
trimming of the same colour round the hem of her shirt, and in long
peaked shoes. In person of mean stature, her hair dark yellow, her
face round and full, her eyes gray, and her countenance as cheerful as
herself. The second real picture of her shows you a haggard woman,
with her hair unbound and falling about her shoulders, shivering in a
shift, which she clutches about her with one hand, while the other
holds a dripping candle; and the third picture shows an old woman in
dirty wimple and untidy rags.
[Illustration: {Six types of head-dress for women}]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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