The eighteenth century

[There is no recorded criticism on King John earlier than the eighteenth century. For many of the selections that follow, I am deeply indebted to Joseph Candido's fine anthology of early criticism on King John.]

1Gildon, Charles, 1710

Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare London, 1710 (Vickers, 2:246-47).

Topics: character, Bastard, Constance, Eleanor, maternal love, language

He begins with King John, whose History you will find not only in the common English Chronicles, but also in Mr. Daniel, in Mr. Tyrel, Mr. Echard; especially in Mr. Tyrel, in all its Extent and Particularities. But it must be remark'd that he begins not the History with the Birth of King John or the Manner of his obtaining the Crown, but of the Breach betwixt him and France on the Behalf of Arthur the Son of Geffry Plantagenet the true Heir.

. . .

As for the Characters of this History I think there are none of any Figure but the Bastard and Constance; they indeed engage your Attention when ever they enter. There is Boldness, Courage, self-Assurance, Haughtiness, and Fidelity in what ever he says or does. But here is the Misfortune of all the Characters of Plays of this Nature, that they are directed to no End and therefore are of little Use, for the Manners cannot be necessary and by Consequence must lose more than half their Beauty. The Violence, Grief, Rage, and Motherly Love, and Despair of Constance produce not one Incident and are no Manner of Use, whereas if there had been a just Design, a tragic Imitation of some one grave Action of just Extent, both these Characters being form'd by the Poet must have had their Manners directed to that certain End and the Production of those Incidents which must beget that End.

There are too many good Lines in this Play for me to take Notice or point to them all . . . .

The Scolding betwixt Elinor and Constance is quite out of Character, and indeed 'tis a difficult Matter to represent a Quarrel betwixt two Women without falling into something indecent for their Degree to speak, as most of what is said in this Scene is. For what ever the Ladies of Stocks Market might do, Queens and Princesses can never be suppos'd to talk to one another at that rate. The Accounts which the French and English Heralds give of the Battle to the Town of Angiers is very well worded, and it had been better he had heard more of the Battles and seen less of those ridiculous Representations. The Citizens Proposal of the Lady Blanch, &c. to the King's contains many Lines worth reading and remarking from this Line—

If lusty Love shou'd go in Quest of Beauty, &c. [TLN 741]

There is a considerable Part of the second Act lost of this Piece, it containing only two Pages, which are so well adorn'd with the well-drawn Passion of Constance that we are oblig'd to Fortune that it is not lost with the rest. Her Passion in the first Scene of the third Act is likewise just as masterly, and well worthy our perusing with Care.

. . .

Whatever Pandulph might really have urg'd to make a Breach betwixt the Kings, what Shakespeare makes him speak is perfectly the natural Result of the Notions and biggotted Opinions of those Times: see [TLN 1063 ff]. The Passion of Constance in the third Scene of Act 3 is extreamly touching; among the rest, this one Line is admirable,

He talks to me, that never had a Son. [TLN 1476]

The pleading of Prince Arthur with Hubert is very natural and moving, allowing for the two or three Playing on Words which seems not so proper for that place (see Scene 1st Act 4). Hubert's Description of the Peoples Confusion on the Prodigies is very well . . . and King John's Anger with Hubert in the next page is well drawn, as the King's Madness is. The Hearty Englishman appears to well in the last Speech of the Play that I must point it out for some of the Gentlemen of this Age to Study.

[Note: Charles Gildon, the first critic to seriously examine the play, identifies Constance and the Bastard as being the only characters of any "Figure" in King John. Despite his admiration for these characters, Gildon finds them wasted since neither has any power to change the outcome of the play. Gildon condemns the scene between Eleanor and Constance as out of character and indecent, although he finds Constance's "Passion . . . extreamly touching." Gildon also admires the scene between Arthur and Hubert, and as well as King John's anger with Hubert and later madness, though Gildon discusses these much more briefly than he discusses Constance.]

2The Occasional Prompter, 1737

"Number XXI" from The Daily Journal, London, 1737 (Vickers, 3:76)

Topics: structure, dramatic unities.

King John then being principally deficient in the three grand Unitieswhich, it has been before observed, Shakespeare did not regard, to attempt to bring this Play into Rule must be absurd, since the Time (viz. 17 Years), the Place (viz. sometimes in England, sometimes in France), and the Action (which contains some chosen Events which happened to that Prince during a Course of 17 Years) can never be reconciled to Dramatick Laws without losing almost every Incident in the Play and the Beauties which arise from those Incidents, where our Poet is always strongest. It has been before observed That there is not one low or burlesque Character in the Play: so that a Reformation must be very little necessary to cure that Defect our Author falls into.

[Note: The Occasional Prompter admits that King John does not follow the dramatic laws of unity of time, place, and action but concludes that it would be impossible for the play to conform to these, and that, indeed, the beauty of Shakespeare's text comes from ignoring those laws of unity.]

3Cibber, Colley, 1745

Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John, 1745. Peter Wilson: Dublin, 1745, iii-vi.

Topics: religion, adaptation, Catholicism

In all the historical Plays of Shakespear there is scarce any Fact, that might better have employed his Genius, than the flaming Contest between his insolent Holiness and King John. This is so remarkable a Passage in our Histories, that it seems surprising our Shakespear should have taken no more Fire at it. . . . How then shall we account for his being so cold upon so much higher Provocation? Shall we suppose, that in those Days, almost in the Infancy of the Reformation, when Shakespear wrote, when the Influence of the Papal Power had a stronger Party left, than we have reason to believe is now subsisting among us; that is, I say, might make him cautious of offending? Or shall we go so far for an Excuse, as to conclude that Shakespear was himself a Catholic? . . . Had Shakespear been a Romanist, he would scarce have let his King John have taken the following Liberty with his Holiness, where he contemns the Credulity of Philip the French King that can submit to----

Purchase corrupted Pardon of a Man,
Who, in that Sale, fells Pardon from himself. [TLN 1093-94]

This is too sharp a Truth to come from the Pen of a Roman Catholic. If then he was under no Restraint from his Religion, it will require a nicer Criticism than I am master of to excuse his being so cold upon so warm an Occasion.

It was this Coldness then, my Lord, that first incited me to inspirit his King John with a Resentment that justly might become an English Monarch, and to paint the intoxicated Tyranny of Rome in its proper Colours. . . . I have endeavour'd to make it more like a Play than what I found it in Shakespear. . .

. . .

The hardy Wretch, that gives the Stage a Play,
Sails in a Cockboat, on a tumbling Sea!
Shakespear, whose Works no Play-wright could excel,
Has launch'd us Fleets of Plays, and built them well:
Strength, Beauty, Greatness were his constant Care;
And all his Tragedies were Men of War! . . .
Yet Fame, nor Favour ever deign'd to say,
King John was station'd as a first rate Play;
Though strong and sound the Hulk, yet ev'ry Part
Reach'd not the Merit of his usual Art!

[Note: In his dedication to the Earl of Chesterfield and his prologue to the play, Cibber justifies his wholesale adaptation of King John by arguing that the play, which presents the first instance of an English monarch resisting the authority of the Pope, fails to depict this crucial moment in English history with enough Protestant enthusiasm. For Cibber, the play lacks "Fire" in its attack against Rome and this default must be rectified.]

4Johnson, Samuel, 1765

Notes on Shakespeare, 1765. London, 1765. In Arthur Sherbo, The Yale Editions of the Works of Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Shakespeare (Yale U P; New Haven, 1968) 7:428

Topics: Bastard, Constance, TRKJ

[Annotation to TLN 992: Constance.To me and to the state of my great grief/ Let kings assemble.] In Much Ado about Nothing,the father of Hero, depressed by her dis- grace, declares himself so subdued by grief that a thread may lead him.How is it that grief in Leonato and Lady Constance produces effects directly opposite, and yet both agreeable to nature? Sorrow softens the mind while it is yet warmed by hope, but hardens it when it is congealed by despair. Distress, while there remains any prospect of relief, is weak and flexible, but when no succor remains, is fearless and stubborn; angry alike at those that injure and at those that do not help; careless to please where nothing can be gained and fearless to offend when there is nothing further to be dreaded. Such was this writer's knowledge of the passions.

[Concluding Remarks on the play]

The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakespeare, is varied with a very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The Lady's grief is very affecting, and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit.

There is extant another play of King John, published with Shakespeare's name, so different from this, and I think from all his other works, that there is reason to think his name was prefixed only to recommend it to sale. No man writes upon the same subject twice, without concurring in many places with himself.

[Note: In his annotation on the grief of Constance, Johnson compares her to Hero's father in Much Ado. Johnson arrives at a fairly neutral conclusion regarding King John, only casually mentioning his admiration for Constance and the Bastard. He also dismisses the idea that Shakespeare wrote TRKJ.]

5Gentleman, Francis, 1770.

The Dramatic Censor; or, Critical Companion (J. Bell: London, 1770) 2:160-73.

Topics: structure, character, Bastard, John, Constance

We do not know any passage, in any piece, that can boast merit superior to the method King John takes of working Hubert to the destruction of Arthur. His diffidence, his soothing, his breaks, pauses, and distant hints are most descriptive lines of nature in such a depraved state of agitation. What follows we think so rich a regale for poetical taste, that we should deem ourselves very blameable not to offer it to the reader's palate [Quotes TLN 1333-1352].

. . .

After King John has wrought up Hubert to his murderous purpose, and goes for England, the audience still remain in France, to hear Philip lament the effects of his late defeat; and Constance breathe deep lamentation for the captivity of her son. The unhappy mother's plaints are extremely forceable and tender; yet, amongst the beauties, we must object to that speech wherein she speaks of the courtship of death, in such figurative extravagance.

. . .

At the beginning of the fourth act, humanity encounters the painful circumstances of Hubert's commission to burn out Arthur's eyes, to prevent, by the Ottoman method, his succession or advancement to the throne; this scene, with respect to the young prince's part of it, does our author great credit; he has most happily traced nature, and has touched the tender feelings in a powerful manner, without straining them too much. Hubert's reluctance and pity are well described, the two characters impress an audience with compassion and esteem, insomuch, that tears of concern and fascination alternately flow.

. . .

At the beginning of the fifth act, we meet an incident utterly disgraceful to English annals, King John's resignation of his crown, and receiving it from Pandulph, as a mean dependency on to the Pope. His situation might politically require such a concession, but any man of even tolerable spirit would have rather died than shame an exalted station so basely . . .

. . .

We have now brought royalty to the last thread of life, and are sorry to be under the necessity of observing, that our author has not displayed his usual force of genius in what the expiring monarch says; his speeches are too figurative for one in great pain, and are otherwise far short of the circumstances; he resigns his breath too in a manner very unfavouring for stage action; though a most abandoned politician, not one pang of guilty conscience is mentioned, which even in the midst of distraction, seldom fails to show itself.

. . .

In writing this play, Shakespeare disclaimed every idea of regularity, and has huddled such a series of historical events on the back of one another, as shame the utmost stretch of probability; his muse travels lightning winged, being here, there, and every where, in the space of a few minutes. We are by no means advocates for that pinching limitation which so disadvantageously fetters modern composition; imagination will indulge several trespasses of liberty, but must be offended when all the bounds of conception are arbitrarily trodden under foot.

In the point of characters King John is a very disagreeable picture of royalty; ambitious and cruel; not void of spirit in the field, yet irresolute and mean in adversity; covetous, overbearing and impolitic; from what we can observe, totally unprincipled; strongly tainted with the opposite appellations which often meet, fool and knave; during his life we have nothing to admire, at his fall nothing to pity.

There is no capital character within our knowledge of more inequality; the greater part of what he has to say is a heavy yoke upon the shoulders of an actor. His two scenes with Hubert are indeed masterly, and do the author credit; like charity they may serve to cover a multitude of sins; the dying scene is not favourable to action.

. . .

The Bastard is a character of great peculiarity, bold, spirited, free—indeed too free spoken; he utters many noble sentiments, and performs brave actions; but in several places descends to keep attention from drowsing, at the expence of all due decorum; and what is very disgraceful to serious composition, causes the weaker part of an audience to laugh at some very weak, punning conceits.

. . .

Every one of the female characters are too contemptible for notice except Constance; she indeed seems to have been an object of great concern with the author, and very seldom fails to make a deep impression upon the audience; her circumstances are peculiarly calculated to strike the feeling heart; dull, very dull must that sensation be which is not affected with the distress of a tender parent, expressed in such pathetic, forceable terms.

6Gentleman, Francis, 1774

Bell's Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (J. Bell: London, 1774) 4:16-19.

Topics: Bastard, Cibber

[17] [On TLN 435-440:the dispute between King Philip and King John. The second edition reads:]

The scene, as here offered to view, is considerably, and we think very justifiably, curtailed for representation; the behaviour of the Bastard is sometimes too licentious in the presence of monarchs;

but it is probable some of his speeches were meant to be spoken aside; the others should be somewhat corrected by a nicety of manner in the deliverance.

. . .

[19] [End note to King John]

Much the greater part of this Tragedy is unworthy its author; a rumble jumble of martial incidents, improbably and confusedly introduced; the character of Constanceintire, four scenes, and several speeches of Faulconbridge's,are truly Shakespearean. Colley Cibberaltered this piece, but as we think for the worse; it is more regular, but more phlegmatic than the original.

7Davies, Thomas, 1784

Dramatic Miscellanies (S. Price: Dublin, 1784) 1:23-35.

Topics: Eleanor, character, Constance, Cibber

[Quotes TLN 426-28]

To understand the propriety of Lady Constance's speech, which contains so heavy a charge, it is necessary that the reader of this tragedy should be previously acquainted with Queen Eleanor's character.

This lady was daughter of the duke of Guinne, and wife to Louis VII of France, to whom she brought in dowry some of the richest provinces of that kingdom. Her reputation for chastity was far from being clear, when Louis took her with him on a crusade into the holy land. The French historians . . . tells us strange stories of her inordinate and unsatisfied lust.

. . .

Notwithstanding Eleanor's ill fame, and her being divorced from her husband for lewdness, in reality, though pretendedly, on account of too near consanguinity, our King Henry II was not so squeamish as to neglect the opportunity of adding several noble and rich provinces to his dominions by accepting her hand. They were both in the prime and vigour of life, and their eagerness to come together was evident by the quick journeys they took to meet each other. No couple of ardent lovers seemed more willing to be united in the nuptial bond than Henry and Eleanor. Their happiness did not last long; she was as jealous of Henry as her first husband had been of her, and with reason: but Henry was not so mild as Louis; he confined her to in prison during the greatest part of his reign.

. . .

Hitherto the character of Constance has been seen to little advantage. Her speeches were rather more conformable to the scold or virago than the injured princess and afflicted mother. In the first scene of the third act she appears with all the dignity of just resentment and majesty of maternal grief. To suppose that the art of acting was not amply, if not perfectly, understood and practised, in the days of our author, would be an injury to the discernment of every intelligent reader. How many variations of action and passion are in the first speech of this scene, consisting of only twenty-six lines, all naturally resulting from the agitations of a mind anxiously inquiring into the truth of what it dreads to know! Even the under character, Salisbury, is called upon, by the words of Constance, to express the different passions of his mind by variety as well as justness of action; as in the following lines: [Quotes TLN 940-45]

Lady Constance's passionate effusion of rage, grief, and indignation, from which scarce a line or thought can be expunged, to his eternal disgrace, Cibber has either entirely suppressed, or wretchedly spoiled, by vile and degrading interpolations: nay, the whole scene is so deformed and mutilated, that little of the creative power of Shakspeare is to be seen in it.

8Malone, Edmond, 1790

The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare London, 1790 (Candido, 32)

Topics: Constance, date of play, biographical reading

King John is the only one of our poet's uncontested plays that is not entered in the books of the Stationers' company. It was not printed till 1623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598, unless he mistook the old play in two parts [TRKJ], printed in 1591, for the composition of Shakespeare.

It is observable that our author's son, Hamnet, died in August, 1596. That a man of such sensibility, and of so amiable a disposition, should have lost his only son, who had attained the age of twelve years, without being greatly affected by it, will not be easily credited. The pathetick lamentations which he has written for Lady Constance on the death of Arthur, may perhaps add some probability to the supposition that this tragedy was written at or soon after that period.

9Chalmers, George, 1799

A Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare-Papers: Being a Reply to Mr. Malone's Answer London, 1799 (Candido, 50-51).

Topics: date of play, biographical reading, historical reading, Malone, Johnson

This tragedy [King John] exhibits, to the discerning eye, another example of Shakespeare's custom, of borrowing, continually, from preceding writers, plots, sentiments, speeches, and language. As early as 1591, there had been a play, entitled, The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England. Shakespeare's tragedy was known to Meres, in 1598; as he named it in his Wit's Treasury, among our poet's other tragedies . . .

Such are the proofs, which show pretty certainly, that Shakespeare's King John, was written, between 1591, and 1598. In order to draw these extreme points closer together, Mr. Malone says, that Shakespeare having lost his only son, in 1596, was brought, by this misfortune, into a proper temper, for writing the pathetic lamentations of Constance, on her Arthur's death. But, at what time of his life, was Shakespeare unfit for drawing similar scenes of deeper distress? [Samuel] Johnson has observed, in a note, on this play, what applies more pertinently to the purpose, 'that many passages, in our poet's works, evidently show, how often he took advantage of the facts, then recent, and passions, then in motion.' The fact is, that there are many allusions, in Shakespeare's King John, to the events of 1596, and to some, in 1597; though the commentators have not been very diligent, to collect them. The Pope published a Bull, against Elizabeth, in 1596; and the Pope's Nuntio made some offers to Henry IV, against Queen Elizabeth. The scene with Pandulph, the papal legate, which alludes to those offers, must, as Johnson remarks, have been at the time it was written, during our struggles with popery, a very captivating scene. The contradictory, shifting policy of England, and France, as represented in King John, forms an admirable parody on the adverse, friendly, conduct of Elizabeth, and Henry the IV. Let the siege of Angiers, in King John, be compared with the loss, and recapture of Amiens, in 1597, chiefly by the velour of the English reinforcements, under the gallant Baskerville. The altercations between the bastard, Faulconbridge, and Austria, while the conduct of the Archduke Albert was so unpopular in England, must have afforded a rich repast to an English audience. There is a strong allusion, particularly, in the last act, to the quarrel between Essex, and Raleigh, which began at Calais, in 1596, and rose to a more remarkable height, in 1597. Owing to the many piques among the great, occasioned by the selfish ambition of Essex, the concluding remark of Faulconbridge must have been felt, and applauded, by the auditory:

---------Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true. [TLN 2728-29 ff.]

If to all those intimations, we add the remark of Johnson, how much advantage Shakespeare, constantly, derived from facts then recent, and the passions then in motion, there can no doubt remain, but that our poet's King John must be fixed to the print time of 1598; as the true epoch of its original production.

The nineteenth century

[See also

King John: A Burlesque

by Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett (1837), which indirectly provides some fascinating insight into early responses to the play, and my discussion of this work in the

Performance History

.]

10Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 1815

A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature London, 1815 (Candido, 55).

Topics: Bastard, human nature, realism

In King John the political and warlike events are dressed out with solemn pomp, for the very reason that they possess but little of true grandeur. The falsehood and selfishness of the monarch speak in the style of a manifesto. Conventional dignity is most indispensable where personal dignity is wanting. The bastard Faulconbridge is the witty interpreter of this language: he ridicules the secret springs of politics, without disapproving of them, for he owns that he is endeavouring to make his fortune by similar means, and wishes rather to belong to the deceivers than the deceived, for in his view of the world there is no other choice. His litigation with his brother respecting the succession of his pretended father, by which he effects his acknowledgement at court as natural son of the most chivalrous king of England, Richard Coeur de Lion, forms a very entertaining and original prelude in the play itself. When, amidst so many disguises of real sentiments, and so much insincerity of expression, the poet shows us human nature without a veil, and allows us to take deep views of the inmost recesses of the mind, the impression produced is only the more deep and powerful The short scene in which John urges Hubert to put out of way Arthurt, his young rival for the possession of the throne, is superlatively masterful . . . the last moments of John—an unjust and feeble prince, whom we can neither respect and admire—are yet so portrayed as to extinguish our displeasure with him, and fill us with serious considerations on the arbitrary deeds and the inevitable fate of mortals.

11Drake, Nathan, 1817

Shakespeare and his Times London, 1817 (Candido, 57).

Topics: Constance, character, maternal grief

In the person of Lady Constance, Maternal Grief, the most interesting passion of the play, is developed in all its strength; the picture penetrates to the inmost heart, and seared must those feelings be, which can withstand so powerful an appeal; for all the emotions of the fondest affection, and the wildest despair, all the rapid transitions of anguish, and approximating phrenzy, are wrought up into the scene with a truth of conception which rivals that of nature itself.

The innocent and beauteous Arthur, rendered doubly attractive by the sweetness of his disposition and the severity of his fate, is thus described by his doating mother: -

But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!
Nature and fortune join'd to make thee great;
Of Nature's gifts thou may'st with lillies boast,
And with the half-blown rose. [TLN 972-75 ff.]

When he is captured, therefore, and imprisoned by John, and, consequently, sealed for destruction, who but Shakespeare could have done justice to the agonising sorrows of the parent? Her invocation to death, and her address to Pandulph, paint maternal despair with a force which no imagination can augment, and of which the tenderness and pathos have never been exceeded

12Hazlitt, William, 1817

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays London, 1817 (Candido, 59-60)

Topics: history, character, realism

King John is the last of the historical plays we shall have to speak of and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to indulge our imaginations, we had rather do it upon an imaginary theme; if we are to find subjects for the exercise of our pity and terror, we prefer seeking them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a soreness to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes, we are treading upon real ground, and recollect that the poet's 'dream' denoted a foregone conclusion — irrevocable ills, not conjured up by fancy, but placed beyond the reach of poetical justice. That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, the grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and play thing of our fancies. 'To consider thus' may be 'to consider too curiously' [Hamlet TLN 3393 ff.]; but still we think that the actual truth of the particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy.

13Oxberry, William, 1819

King John. A Historical Play; by William Shakespeare. With Prefatory Remarks. The Only Edition Existing Which is Faithfully Marked with the Stage Business, and Stage Directions, as it is Performed at the Theatres Royal London, 1819 (Candido, 62).

Topics: structure, character

King John, though certainly not the best, is amongst the best, of Shakespeare's Tragic Dramas; there is in it, a great variety of characters and all distinguished with most wonderful precision. The great defect is, that the interest does not sufficiently centre in any one individual of the play, and the death of King John, the ultimate object, is not obviously connected with the minor incidents; yet, even this last censure must be admitted within certain limits, for a connexion does exist between the general events and the catastrophe, though not perhaps very strongly marked; the quarrel with France, respecting Arthur, leads to the invasion of that country, the invasion to a treaty; and from the breaking of this treaty, by the papal ban, arises the violent seizure of the property of the Church, and this again induces the poisoning of the monarch, by a revengeful monk. In all this, there seems to be no want of context; not a link in the chain is broken; the fact seems to be, that the beginning and the end are too remote from each other; there are too many connecting links between the first and the last object, that when we have attained the one, we lose sight of the other.

The character of John, though drawn with great accuracy and vigour is not precisely one of those which affect our sympathy or excite our admiration; vice, when accompanied by any splendid quality, whether it be wit, or mind, or courage, is sure to obtain our reluctant approbation; in the scale of depravity, Richard [III] is infinitely above King John, yet the giant iniquities of the former always delight; while the cold, weak, suspicious John lives without our pleasure and dies without our regret.

14Daniel, George, 1826

King John: A Tragedy in Five Acts London, 1826 (Candido, 70).

Topics: character, Constance, Bastard

There is no character in the writings of Shakespeare that bears stronger evidence of his peculiar manner than the Bastard Faulconbridge. He is a singular compound of heroism, levity, and — if his accommodating himself to the spirit of the times deserve so harsh a term — servility. He is, in truth, a soldier of fortune; acknowledging no law but that of honour, which, in a military sense, has somewhat of an equivocal signification. He compromises his own interest, and his mother's fame, for the proud distinction of being esteemed the base born son of the Lion hearted Richard; and enlists himself under the banners of a tyrannical usurper, for the vaunted display of personal prowess against the injured and unprotected. Yet, with all these blemishes, Shakespeare has painted him in such bewitching colours — he has given him such nobleness of spirit — so much candour and frankness — such exquisite powers of wit and raillery — that his very errors are turned to good account, and, like the irregularities of Falstaff, form the most seductive parts of his character. To reconcile such seeming incongruities, is one of the many triumphs of Shakespeare. He knew that character consists not of one, but of various humours; and to blend them skillfully, without violating nature or probability, was an art that he left for the study and emulation of all future dramatists.

But the great charm of this play, is the Lady Constance: a character conceived with Shakespeare's profoundest art, and finished with his utmost skill. Every feeling of her bosom — every emotion of joy or sorrow — have their origin in maternal tenderness. In that all-powerful passion every thing is centered: her anxious solicitude — her bitter reproaches - her phrenzy — her despair. Can indignation and contempt borrow stronger terms than her reply to Austria: [Quotes TLN 1040-1055: 'O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame / That bloody spoil . . . . '] Where is sorrow depicted with greater pathos, than her distraction for the death of Arthur; and grief unutterable and past consolation, never produced an image more solemn and majestic than the following:

To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble ————————
———————— Here I and sorrow sit
Here is my throne — bid kings come bow to it. [TLN 992-96 ff.]

15Jameson, Anna Brownell, 1832

Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical. With Fifty Vignette Etchings London, 1832 (Candido, 75-81).

Topics: character, Constance, maternal

We have seen that in [Volumnia] the mother of Coriolanus, the principal qualities are exceeding pride, self will, strong maternal affection, great power of imagination, and energy of temper. Precisely the same qualities enter into the mind of Constance of Bretagne: but in her these qualities are so differently modified by circumstances and education, that not even in fancy do we think of instituting a comparison between the gothic grandeur of Constance, and the more severe and classical dignity of the Roman matron.

The scenes and circumstances with which Shakespeare has surrounded Constance are strictly faithful to the old chronicles, and are as vividly as they are accurately represented. On the other hand, the hints on which the character has been constructed are few and vague; but the portrait harmonizes so wonderfully with its historic background, and with all that later researches have discovered relative to the personal adventures of Constance, that I have not the slightest doubt of its individual truth. The result of a life of strange vicissitude; the picture of a tameless will, and high passions, for ever struggling in vain against a superior power: and the real situation of women in those chivalrous times, are placed before us in a few noble scenes.

[On Constance]

The energy of Constance not being based upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion. Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy by sorrow and disappointment; while neither from her towering pride, nor her strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature, that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace. [Quotes TLN 337-42: 'Stay for an answer to your embassy, / Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood . . . .'].

And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense of injury, should afterwards exclaim,

War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war! [TLN 1039]

That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and royal rights, and violent in defending them, is most natural; but I cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance, ambition — that is, the love of dominion for its own sake — is either a strong motive or a strong feeling: it could hardly be so where the natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree. The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her son is that of a fond mother and a proud spirited woman, stung with the sense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign, — by birth and right, if not in fact: yet when bereaved of her son, grief not only 'fills the room up of her absent child' [TLN 1478], but seems to absorb every other faculty and feeling — even pride and anger. It is true that she exults over be great, but in her distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her 'Pretty Arthur.' [Quotes TLN 1488-90: 'O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! . . . ']

No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene: it is grief only, a mother's heart rending, soul-absorbing grief, and nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have thus addressed the cold, wily Cardinal: [Quotes TLN 1461-74: 'And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say. . . ']

The bewildered pathos and poetry of this address could be natural in no woman, who did not unite, like Constance, the most passionate sensibility with the most vivid imagination.

It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one occasion, 'ambitious Constance' [TLN 38]; but the epithet is rather the natural expression of Elinor's own fear and hatred than really applicable. Elinor, in whom age had subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her rival in power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son: but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a passion.

In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole character: it is the predominance of imagination. I do not mean in the conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the excessof the ideal power, tinging all her affections, exalting all her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both, Constance can only be compared to Juliet.

16Thomas Campbell, 1838

The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare London, 1838 (Candido, 86-87).

Topics: Magna Charta, Constance, Arthur

It is remarkable that the Poet of England, and the most eloquent Poet who ever summed up the virtues of Brutus, should have dramatised the reign of King John without the most distant allusion to the Magna Charta. Was he afraid of offending Elizabeth? I think not; for he brought out Julius Caesar in the reign of King James, whose petty mind was more jealous of popular principles than that of Elizabeth. His main object was probably to recast, with all dispatch, an old piece into a new one for the stage.

. . .

But let us be thankful for our Poet's King John, such as it is. No doubt it sets the seal as to that question about the probability of good historical tragedies proceeding from the pen of the best poets, and the negative seal; for after Constance leaves the stage, Shakespeare's King John is rather the execution of a criminal than an interesting tragedy.

There are scenes and passages, however, in our Poet's King John which may never be forgotten. The pathos of Arthur's conference with Hubert is entirely Shakespeare's, and so is the whole part of Constance, his mother, as well as that most appallingly interesting of dialogues between King John and Hubert, touching the murder of young Arthur. In the old play, Constance has a good deal of the virago in her portraiture; in Shakespeare she is the most interesting character in nature - a doating and bereaved mother. Those who find themselves, as I do, older than they could wish to be, may derive some consolation for their age, in recollecting that they were born early enough to have seen Mrs. Siddons perform the part of Constance.

17Knight, Charles, 1838

The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare London, 1838 (Candido, 105).

Topics: structure, Arthur, Bastard, ambition

The great connecting link that binds together all the series of actions in the King John of Shakespeare, — which refuses to hold any actions, or series of actions, which arise out of other causes, — is the fate of Arthur. From the first to the last scene, the hard struggles, and the cruel end of the young Duke of Brittany, either lead to the action, or form a portion of it, or are the direct causes of an ulterior consequence. We must entreat the indulgence of our readers whilst we endeavour to establish this principle somewhat in detail.

In the whole range of the Shakespearian drama there is no opening scene which more perfectly exhibits the effect which is produced by coming at once, and without the slightest preparation, to the main business of the piece:—'Now say, Chatillion, what would France with us?' [TLN 51, 1.1].

In three more lines the phrase 'borrowed majesty,' at once explains the position of John; and immediately afterwards we come to the formal assertion by France of the 'most lawful claim' of 'Arthur Plantagenet,' —'To this fair island, and the territories; / To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine' [TLN 4, 14, 15 ff.]. As rapid as the lightning of which John speaks is a defiance given and returned. The ambassador is commanded to 'depart in peace;' the king's mother makes an important reference to the 'ambitious;' and John takes up the position for which he struggles to the end, —'Our strong possession, and our right, for us' [TLN 28, 38, 46]. The scene of the Bastard is not an episode entirely cut off from the main action of the piece; his loss of 'lands,' and his 'new made honour' [TLN 197], were necessary to attach him to the cause of John. The Bastard is the one partisan who never deserts him.

The second act brings us into the very heart of the conflict on the claim of Arthur. What a Gothic grandeur runs through the whole of these scenes! We see the men of six centuries ago, as they played the game of their personal ambition — now swearing hollow friendships, now breathing stern denunciations; — now affecting compassion for the weak and suffering, now breaking faith with the orphan and the mother; now 'Gone to be married, gone to swear a peace' [TLN 922], now keeping the feast 'with slaughtered men' [TLN 1235]; — now trembling at, and now braving the denunciations of spiritual power; — and agreeing in nothing, but to bend 'their sharpest deeds of malice' [TLN 694] on unoffending and peaceful citizens, unless the citizens have some 'commodity' to offer which shall draw them 'To a most base and vile concluded peace' [TLN 907]. With what skill has Shakespeare, whilst he thus painted the spirit of the chivalrous times, — lofty in words, but sordid in acts, — given us a running commentary which interprets the whole, in the sarcasms of the Bastard! But amidst all the clatter of conventional dignity which we find in the speeches of John, and Philip, and Lewis, and Austria, the real dignity of strong natural affections rises over the pomp and circumstance of regal ambition, with a force of contrast which is little less than sublime.

18Fletcher, George, 1843

Studies in the Plays of King John, Cymbeline, Macbeth, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet: With Observations on the Criticism and the Acting of those Plays. London, 1843 (Candido, 111-19).

Topics: Arthur, ambition, character, Constance, female characters

Th[e] clearness of Arthur's title cannot be overlooked for a moment, without essentially perverting and weakening the interest which the poet has attached to the position as well as character of the widowed mother, Constance of Bretagne. Nor is it Shakespeare's fault if the reader or spectator fail to be forcibly reminded of this fact, at numerous intervals throughout the play. Among the most remarkable of these instances are the passages to that effect in those ruminating speeches of Faulconbridge (the most intelligent as well as devoted and spirited of John's adherents) which form, as it were, the chorus of the tragedy. Thus, when moralising on the peace patched up between the two kings by the marriage of Blanch to the Dauphin, he speaks of the French monarch as one 'whose armour conscience buckled on, / Whom zeal and charity brought to the field, / As God's own soldier' [TLN 885]; and adds that this 'commodity,' this self interest, against which the speaker is railing, 'Hath drawn him from his own determin'd aid, / From a resolv'd and honourable war, / To a most base and vile concluded peace' [TLN 905ff.]. Again, at the close of the fourth act, over the dead body of Arthur, addressing Hubert, he says— [Quotes TLN 2145: 'Go, bear him in thine arms . . . ']. It is in tracing the course of the retribution upon John, political and personal, as a usurper and a murderer, brought upon him by those unscrupulous means which he had taken to prevent it, that the interest of the concluding act resides, and the satisfaction which it affords to the feelings of the auditor.

So far, then, from representing either Arthur or his mother as ambitious, the poet, in legitimate pursuit of his dramatic object, has studiously excluded from view every historical circumstance that could countenance the smallest impression of that nature. He has not only reduced the prince's age to such tender years as would hardly admit of his harbouring a political sentiment; but, in direct opposition to the recorded facts, represents the boy as one of a peculiarly mild and quiet temper, devoid of all princely airs and all appetite for command — simple hearted, meek, and affectionate . . . Is it not plain that this very inoffensiveness is designed by the dramatist to place in the stronger light the clearness of Arthur's title, as the exclusive reason for his uncle's hostility, at the same time that it deepens so wonderfully the pathos of the scene wherein he pleads for the preservation of his eyes? Another element of this pathos is, the exceeding beauty which the poet has ascribed to the princely boy, which is made to affect the hearts of all who approach him, even the rudest of his uncle's creatures, and gives to this only orphan child the crowning endearment to his widowed mother's heart.

That mother herself, it is most important to observe and to bear in mind, whatever she was in history, is not represented by the poet as courting power for its own sake. Had he so represented her, it would have defeated one of those fine contrasts of character in which Shakespeare so much delighted — that between Constance and Elinor, which is perfect in every way. The whole conduct and language of Constance in the piece, shew that her excessive fondness for her son, and that alone, makes her so eagerly desire the restitution of his lawful inheritance. She longs to see this one sole, and beautiful, and gracious object of her maternal idolatry, placed on the pedestal of grandeur which is his birthright, that she may idolize it more fondly still — 'Thou and thine usurp / The domination, royalties and rights / Of this oppressed boy' [TLN 477ff..]. Such is her defiance to Elinor. Still more strikingly unfolded is the entire subordination, in the breast of Constance, of all ambitious view, to the concentrated feelings of the doting mother, in the well known address to Arthur, when her sworn friends have betrayed her: — [Quotes TLN 964: 'If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim. . . '].

. . .

If we could still doubt the absolute and all absorbing predominance of the maternal affection, it is disclosed to us in all its awful and beautiful depth, in those bursts of sublimest poetry that gush from her heart when informed of Arthur's capture. In all these she never once thinks of him as a prince, who ought to be a king — far less of the station to which she is herself entitled. It is the thought of never more beholding her 'absent child,' her 'pretty Arthur,' her 'fair son,' that is driving her to distraction — [Quotes TLN 1484-88].

We come now to consider the most important point of all that should guide us in judging of the histrionic expression of this character — namely, the indications afforded by the whole tenour of the incident and dialogue, as to the individuality of Constance's person and disposition as a woman — independently even of that maternal relation in which the drama constantly places her before us.

That Constance, in the poet's conception, is of graceful as well as noble person, we are not left to infer merely from the graces of her vigorous mind, nor from the rare loveliness of her child, and her extreme sensibility to it. We hear of her beauty more explicitly from the impression which it makes upon those around her especially from the exclamations of King Philip on beholding her distress for Arthur's loss, the greater part of which we regret to find omitted in the present acting of the play — [Quotes TLN 1420; and 1446-47: where the adjective 'fair' is twice applied to Constance].

But it is the moral and intellectual beauty, the logic and the poetry of the character, that it is most essential to consider. And here we are called upon to dissent materially from the view of this matter which Mrs. Jameson has exhibited at some length. In commencing her essay on this character, she numbers among the qualities which the Lady Constance of Shakespeare has in common with the mother of Coriolanus, 'self will and exceeding pride.' In a following page, she speaks again of 'her haughty spirit' and 'her towering pride.' Again, of 'her proud spirit' and 'her energetic self will;' and her impetuous temper conflicting with her pride.' Once more—'On the whole it may be said, that pride and maternal affection form the basis of the character of Constance;' and 'in all the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and passion.' But the contrary of all this inherent pride and self will which the critic alleges, appears in the poet's delineation. It is the mild language of gratitude and patience that we first hear from Constance, in the scene where she thanks the French king and the Austrian duke for their espousal of her dear son's cause, but entreats them to wait for John's answer to the French ambassador before they proceed to bloodshed.

. . .

[Responding from Mrs. Siddons on Constance's ambition] The same mistaken impression leads the great performer to speak repeatedly of 'disappointed ambition,'

'baffled ambition,' as among the indignant feelings of Constance at the treachery of her allies. To the same source it must surely be attributed, that this interesting critic tells us at the very outset of her observations — 'My idea of Constance is that of a lofty and proud spirit, associated with the most exquisite feelings of maternal tenderness.'

This mistake, on which we have already had occasion to descant, of regarding her in the grand scene with her treacherous protectors as possessed by a pride inherent and personal, instead of seeing that her sublime scorn and indignation spring exclusively from her deep, keen sense of violated friendship, now added with lightning suddenness to outraged right and feeling and affection, lent, we suspect, a colouring not quite appropriate, a too predominant bitterness and asperity of tone, to Mrs. Siddons's acting of this scene, majestic and wonderful as it must have been. The sarcasms, we fear, were uttered too much in the manner of a woman habitually sarcastic; and she seems to have fallen somewhat into the same error which we have pointed out in Mrs. Jameson's criticism, of confounding with mere frenzy the awful poetry that bursts from the tortured heart of the heroine. 'Goaded and stung,' she says, 'by the treachery of her faithless friends, and almost maddened by the injuries they have heaped upon her, she becomes desperate and ferocious as a hunted tigress in defence of her young, and it seems that existence itself must surely issue forth with the utterance of that frantic and appalling exclamation, "A wicked day, and not a holy day!" [TLN 1008] &c.' Yet Constance might more justly be likened to a hunted hind than a hunted tigress; nor should her exclamations on this occasion, however appalling, be termed frantic. In all this, the poet, ever true to nature, has observed a due gradation. Here, indeed, is grief in its utmost, its proudest intensity; but here is no despair — she is not even on the way to frenzy, as we find her to be in the scene which follows the capture of her son [3.4].

Mr. Campbell, who, in speaking of Mrs. Siddons's performance of this character, professes to have 'almost as many circumstantial recollections of her as there are speeches in the part,' and who saw her enact it when ten years of practice and improvement in it must have brought her performance to its greatest perfection, relates one particular of it which seems to us to exemplify very strikingly the erroneous bias which we have indicated as warping her judgment respecting the essential qualities of the character. 'When,' says her biographer, 'she patted Lewis on the breast with the words, "Thine honour! oh, thine honour!" [TLN 1249] there was a sublimity in the laugh of her sarcasm.' Now, we must affirm, that anything like sarcastic expression of this passage is quite inconsistent with the essential character of Constance, and most inappropriate to the occasion upon which it is delivered. Here we must again insist upon the strict consequentiality and the sterling policy of the heroine's behaviour throughout this agitated scene. Her expressions of indignation and her appeals to heaven, are not only natural in themselves, but the inspiring instinct of maternal solicitude teaches her, that friendless and powerless as she is otherwise left, they are the only instruments, the only weapons, remaining to her. Her one sole chance of redress now lies in the effect which her indignant logic may yet work upon the sensibility to shame and guilt that lingers in the breasts of some at least of her selfish allies, and which, it is barely possible, may move them to recede from their last disgraceful compact. Her invocation, in itself so sublimely fervent and impressive [Quotes TLN 1032: 'Arm, arm, you heavens . . . .'] — takes the awful character of prophecy from the almost immediate appearance of the legate, in whose mission there comes to her aid an accidental indeed, and indifferent, but a most powerful ally. She is now encouraged to strain every nerve of her intellect and her eloquence in enforcing the cardinal's denunciation against her principal oppressor, and his menace to the most potent of her treacherous friends. The dauphin, whose sense of honour, throughout the piece, is represented as more susceptible than his father's, is the first to shew signs of retracting their late political engagements. Upon this relenting emotion she eagerly lays hold; and in opposition to the entreaty of his bride, the Lady Blanch, who kneels to beg that he will not turn his arms against her uncle, makes the fervant religious adjuration—

Oh, upon my knee,
Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,
Thou virtuous dauphin, alter not the doom
Forethought by heaven! [TLN 1243-45.]

And to Blanch's last appeal — 'Now shall I see thy love. What motive may / Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?' [TLN 1246-47ff.] — she rejoins by urging triumphantly the noble moral sentiment — 'That which upholdeth him that thee upholds, / His honour: oh, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!' [TLN 1248-49]. And on Philip's consenting to break the treaty, she concludes with the grateful exclamation — 'Oh, fair return of banish'd majesty!' [TLN 1254].

Where, we would ask, is the tone of sarcasm in all this? The slightest touch of it might have defeated the very object, dearest to her on earth, for which she was pleading, by checking and offending those 'compunctious visitings' [Macbeth TLN 396] the first symptoms of which she was alert to observe and to nourish in the breasts of her unfaithful friends. Sarcasm from her lips, at such a moment! No, indeed Constance, and Shakespeare, know too well what they are about.

2. Acting of the Lady Constance, Queen Elinor, the Lady Blanch, and Lady Faulconbridge; by Miss Helen Faucit, Miss Ellis, Miss Fairbrother, and Mrs. Selby. February 18th, 1843 141

[The production alluded to in Fletcher's essay is William Charles Macready's King John at Drury Lane Theatre, performed twenty six times from October 1842 to May 1843.]

... What strikes us first of all in Miss Helen Faucit's personation [of Constance], is, her clear and perfect conception that feeling, not pride, is the mainspring of the character; that the dignity of bearing natural to and inseparable from it, and which the advantage of a tall, graceful figure enables this actress to maintain with little effort, is at the same time an easy, unconscious dignity, quite different from that air of self importance, that acting of majesty, which has been mistakenly ascribed to it by those who have attributed to the heroine an ambitious nature. She makes us feel throughout, not only the depth, the tenderness, and the poetry of the maternal affection, dwelling in a vivid fancy and a glowing heart; but is ever true to that 'constant, loving, noble nature'[Othello TLN 1072], which is not more sensitive to insult from her foes and falsehood from her friends, than it is ever ready to welcome with fresh gratitude and confidence the return of better feelings in any who have injured her.

That intimate association, in short, of gracefulness with force, and of tenderness with dignity, which this lady has so happily displayed in other leading characters of Shakespeare, is her especial qualification for this arduous part — the most arduous, we believe, of all the Shakespearian female characters — for this plain reason, that while it is one of those exhibiting the highest order of powers, the range of emotions included in it is the widest, and the alternations, the fluctuations, between the height of virtuous indignation and contempt, and the softest depth of tenderness, are the most sudden and the most extreme. The principle of contrast, in fact — that great element of the romantic drama, as of all romantic art which Shakespeare delighted to employ, not only in opposing one character to another, but in developing each character individually, is carried to the highest pitch by the trials to which the course of the dramatic incident subjects the sensitive, passionate, and poetic — the noble and vigorous nature of Constance.

Here, again, we turn, for an illustration, to Mrs. Siddons's performance of the part. It seems well established, by the concurring testimony of all who preserve distinct recollections of her acting, that on a general estimate of her tragic powers, it was in gracefully commanding force that she so wonderfully excelled, and in the expression of tenderness that she was often felt to be deficient, — a defect which must have been especially apparent in her personation of those Shakespearian characters wherein exquisite feeling is combined with extraordinary vigour. It has not surprised us, therefore, in conversing with persons on whose judgment and candour we can rely, and who have repeatedly witnessed the great actress's representation of the Lady Constance, to find that in the passages of melting tenderness which abound in the part, a want of adequate expression was very sensibly felt. Majestic and terrible, then, as her performance of the indignant scenes undoubtedly was, yet it must have failed, for want of sufficient contrast, to derive all that startling boldness of relief which the dramatist himself has given to those electric passages.

Labouring, too, under the misconception already pointed out, as to the essential qualities of the character, it would be but natural that, in the scenes where Constance and her son stand alone, deserted and betrayed, amid their treacherous friends and their triumphant enemies, Mrs. Siddons, properly making the impulse of resentful scorn the immediate spring of her vituperation, should have failed to clear its expression wholly from her brow in those passages wherein the action requires her to turn it upon her child. We think it one of the most notable merits in the representation of the part by the lady who now personates it, that so far from letting

19Coleridge, Hartley, 1851

Essays and Marginalia London, 1851 (Candido, 140-41).

Topics: Constance, Eleanor, use of sources

[Act 2, scene 1; referring to the argument between Elinor and Constance]

I should be glad to find that this altercation was transferred from the old 'troublesome reign' [TRKJ] for it is very troublesom to think it Shakespeare. I do not exactly know how great ladies scold, and there are reasons for supposed that Queen Elizabeth herself was not always queenlike in her wrath; but there is so little humour, propriety, or seemliness in the discourse of the two princesses, and Constance is at last so confused and unintelligible, if not corrupt, the whole might well have been spared.

20Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume, 1851

Shakespeare and His Times London (Candido, 143).

Topics: Arthur, Constance, maternal love, John, historicism, structure, character

In the rest of the drama, the action itself, and the indication of facts which it was impossible to dissemble, are sufficient to give u a glimpse of character, into the inmost recesses of which the poet did not venture to penetrate and into which could not have penetrated without disgust. But such a personage, and so constrained a manner of description, were not capable of producing a great dramatic effect; and Shakespeare has therefore concentrated the interest of his drama upon the fate of young Arthur, and has devolved upon Faulconbridge that original and brilliant part in which we feels he takes delight, and which he never refuses to introduce into any of his works.

Shakespeare presented the young Duke of Bretagne to us at that age at which it first became necessary to assert his rights after the death of King Richard – that is, at about twelve years old We know that at the period to which Shakespeare's tragedy refers, Arthur was about twenty-five or twenty-six, and that he was already married, and an object of interest from his amiable and brilliant qualities, when he was taken prisoner by his uncle; but the poet felt how much more interesting the exhibition of weakness in conflict with cruelty became when exemplified in a child. And besides, if Arthur had not been a child, it would not have been allowable to put forward his mother in his place; and by suppressing Constance, Shakespeare would, perhaps, have deprived us of the most pathetic picture that he ever drew of maternal love – one of the feelings of which he evinced the profoundest appreciation.

But, at the same time that he rendered the fact more touching, he lessened the horror which it inspires by diminishing the atrocity of the crime. The most generally received opinion is, that Hubert de Bourg, who had promised to put Arthur to death only that he might save him, had, in fact, deceived the cruelty of his uncle by false reports and a pretended burial; but that John, on being informed of the truth, first withdrew Arthur from the Castle of Falaise, in which he was confined under Hubert's guardianship, and transferred him to the Castle of Rouen, whither he proceeded at night, and by water, had his nephew conveyed into his boat, stabbed him with his own hand, tied a stone to the body, and threw him into the river. Such an image would naturally be rejected by a true poet. Independently of the necessity of absolving his principal personage of so odious a crime, Shakespeare perceived how much more dramatic and conformable to the general nature of man, the cowardly remorse of John, when he perceived the danger in which he was plunged by the report of his nephew's death, would be, thank this excess of brutal ferocity; and certainly, the fine scene between John and Hubert, after the withdrawal of the lords [4.2], is amply sufficient to justify his choice.

21Lloyd, William Watkiss, 1856

The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare London (Candido,162).

Topics: Bastard, nationalism

What we call in compliment to ourselves an English spirit, - a spirit of independence, of fair play in hard fighting and of directness in negotiation, hatred of cruelty and meanness, and disgust at the pursuit of secular purposes under a religious pretext, especially in a foreign interest, - this is the spirit that animates the other English barons, but especially the Bastard, expressed casually and intermittently at first, but when the heart and health of John decline together he rises at once in consistency, dignity and force. He gains in elevation and composure, without relaxing one whit in energy; and sparing no exertion to keep the country together and place the quarrel on an open and healthy footing, he entertains the shrewd and only safe conviction that preparation for hard knocks will best support negotiation if unhappily too late to supersede it. He presents a prototype of the loyalty of which our history furnishes so many examples, loyalty to the ideal qualities that would best become the throne . . .

22Bucknill, John Charles, 1859

The Psychology of Shakespeare London (Candido, 168-74)

Topics: Constance, character, psychology, maternal love, ambition

Constance is delineated with Greek simplicity. The grandeur of one great passion is weakened by no subordinate parts of character on which the mind can rest and feel relief. All is simple and clear, like the one thrilling note of a trumpet, rising higher or falling lower, but never altering its tone. The wondrous eloquence in which the passion clothes itself does but display its force. Its unity and direction of purpose remain unchanging and unchangeable. Passion is not seen except when transformed into action. Like a great wind, it would be voiceless except for opposition; it would be viewless except for its effects . . .

This fierce desire of power and place, which is but coldly expressed in the word ambition, is as undeniable in Constance as her mother's love. Had she no child she would be ambitious for herself. Having one, she is more vehemently ambitious for him, and indirectly for herself. The tenderness of love alone would have led her to shun contention and to withdraw her child from danger; as Andromache sought to withhold her husband from the field of honour with unalloyed womanly apprehension. But love influenced by ambition, and ambition stimulated by love, produced that compound passion which incurred all risks, braved all dangers. Combined passions are weak or strong, according to their perfection of union, and singleness of purpose. If concurrent desires are but half of one mind, they pull diverse ways, and give rise to the weakness of inconsistency; but if they are thoroughly of one accord, chemically combined as it were, the product acquires new and irresistible strength. This force of compound emotion is finely developed in Constance, in contrast with the other female characters of the drama. Ambitious without love, she would have possessed the hard vigour of Elinor; loving without ambition, she would have been tenderly devoted like Blanch. Under the lash of the combined passion she is a fury, whom her boundless love and her deep woe barely suffice to redeem from our horror . . .

[Bucknill describes 2.1, the scene in which Constance faces off with Elinor]

Her very tenderness to her child is fierce, like that of some she-beast of prey. Had there been no motive in the mother's heart but that of love, this appeal might well have checked not only with the unbridled use of speech, but the dangerous course of action into which Constance throws herself. But at this period, ambition is stronger than love, and it would be hard to say to what extent ambition for herself was not mixed up with that for her son. The scene affords clear insight into the natural character of Constance, as a proud ambitious woman, of irritable and ungoverned temper . . .

Constance even more than Lear establishes the fact that Shakespeare held the origin and nature of insanity to be emotional.

23Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, 1863

Shakespeare Commentaries London, 1863 (Candido, 192-93).

Topics: character, Arthur, Constance, Richard II

In contrast to the entirely political relation between the usurper and his mother, is the entirely maternal relation of Constance to her son Arthur, on whose side is the legitimate claim. The suspicious Elinor sees in him a bloom which may ripen into mighty fruit; Shakespeare too has given a profound mental capacity to the pure and spotless mind of the tender boy; in that scene with Hubert which affects the soul of the spectator with such agitating emotions of fear and pity, it is not alone his loving nature which disarms cruelty, it is also a persuasive spirit full of wise, even of cunning precaution, which terror at once ripens into a saving power. Yet at the time no pretender would have been less to be feared than he. He would that he were low laid in his grave, when he hears the contention over his right. He would gladly be a shepherd, so that he might be merry, and be free from the unmerited fault of being his father's son and heir. But all the more firmly does his ambitious mother cling to the legitimate claim of the child, who knows of no ambition. She has called France to arms for her fair son, whom she loves with all the intensity of maternal pride; she would be less ambitious for herself and him, if nature had not made him so worthy of command. She herself is yet beautiful as a matron, she pleases herself, it appears, not a little in the beauty of her child, and to argue from the impression, which she makes on the bystanders, her charms must even in her extreme and utterly unfeigned sorrow enhance the spectacle of her grief. Ambition spurred by maternal love, maternal love goaded by ambition and womanly vanity, these form the distinguishing features of this character, features out of which from the adversity of fate, that raging passion is developed, which at last shatters the soul and body of the frail woman. She is a woman, not to say the woman, whose weakness amounts to grandeur, and whose virtues sink into weakness; she is, like John in his masculine sphere, without those mental and moral resources, which could make her moderate in prosperity or calm in adversity. To the daring man, misfortune is the stone against which he stumbles, to the passionate woman, it would have been success. From the transporting violence of her love and of her grief we may conclude, how violent she could have been in hatred and arrogance. Her coarse outbursts against Elinor, her contemptuous and sarcastic outbreaks against the Duke of Austria, when she stands on the doubtful ground between success and misfortune, testify to the sanguine, womanly, even womanish, want of self command, which makes her irritable at fear, and would make her irritable at haughtiness. Her biting speech is even too bitter for her child, and too immoderate for her friends. Shakespeare has depicted in her the female counterpart to Richard II, who imperious in prosperity, was speedily lost in adversity. Powerless to forward their own cause, the one from early self abandonment, the other from the outward grounds of her position and sex, both alike powerless in active defence and revenge, they both sink into the exaggeration of a passion, which rages within the man in smouldering heat, within the woman in a brightly blazing fire, an exaggeration of the mind and the fancy, which manifests itself in the most brilliant outpourings of eloquence and reflection, in the invectives of rage as well as in the outbursts of sorrow. Just as in Richard, there gushes forth in Constance a deeply poetic vein in all her misery, and like him her imagination revels in her grief, which she calls so great, that 'no supporter but the huge firm earth can hold it up' [TLN 994-95]. Like Richard, she delights in picturing to herself dark images of death and its desired horrors, like him she plays with her sorrow in witty words and similes. Like him, her pride and majesty rise with misfortune. On the throne and state of her grief, she feels herself more exalted than her false royal friends; and in the extreme of hopelessness she is seized with the frenzy, which only threatened Richard. As the end, the ruin, the agony of King John has ever been regarded as one of the most satisfactory themes for English actors, such as Garrick, so from Mrs. Cibber to Mrs. Siddons and later, the part of Constance has been esteemed as one of the most acceptable tasks. The change of mood and the oscillations from the highest pitch of excited bitterness to the softest depth of maternal tenderness, offer infinite scope to the artist. In the third act we must compare the Shakespearian play with the similar scenes in the older King John [i.e., The Troublesome Raigne], to estimate thoroughly, what he has here accomplished. How the whole frail, trembling frame of the woman is agitated at the first tidings of her forlorn condition! What variety of feeling is expressed and felt in those twenty lines, in which she enquires anxiously after the truth of that which shocks her to hear! [TLN 922-942]. How her grief as long as she is alone, restrains itself in calmer anguish, in the vestibule of despair! How her sorrow first bursts forth in the presence of others in powerless revenge, rising even to a curse which brings no blessing to herself, and how atoningly behind all this unwomanly rage lies the foil of maternal love! How justly measured throughout is the light and the shade! We should be moved with too violent a pity for this love, leaning as it does on the one dear object, which is snatched away from it, if it did not weaken our interest by its want of moderation; we should turn away from the violence of the woman, if the strength of her maternal affection did not irresistibly enchain us.

These two opponents, unstable and unprincipled as we find them, the one without judgment, dependent on doubtful allies, the other on the wisdom of his relatives, entangle themselves in conformity with this their nature amid the alternations of fortune in a series of unnatural confederacies, where weakness and mistrust in a cause not wholly pure, seek support, and interest strives to counteract interest.

24Simpson, Richard, 1874

"The Politics of Shakespeare's Historical Plays" from The New Shakespeare Society's Transactions London (Candido, 207-209).

Topics: historicism, use of sources, Holinshed, The Troublesome Reign of King John

The clearly expressed design of the old play is to show the precursorship of John to the reforming Messiahship of Henry VIII. John was like David, unworthy to build the temple because his 'hands with murder ware attaint' [1 Chronicles 22.8] But a Solomon should succeed who should put down monks and their cells.

[quotes TRKJ 3037-13].

This leading idea of the old play is utterly excluded from the new, where the points brought out are those connected with the tenure of the crown; whether it is held by hereditary right of the eldest branch, or the eldest male of the family, or by the accident of possession, fortified by the utility of the state; whether it is forfeited by crimes civil and ecclesiastical, whether such forfeiture is to be adjudged and executed by neighbouring sovereigns, or by the State itself, its peers or its people, or by the Pope. For Shakespeare's play is practically a discussion whether John shall remain King. The grounds of the doubt are not, as in the Chronicles, the general villainy of the King, his cruelty, debauchery effeminacy, falsehood, extravagance, exactions, and general insufficiency, but two points which do not seem to have weighed a scruple in the minds of John's barons -- the defect of his title as against the son of his elder brother, and his supposed murder of that son. The historical quarrel against John as a tyrant is changed into a mythical one against him as a usurper, aggravated by his murder of the right heir.

I will select eight points where Shakespeare deserts the Chronicles, without precisely following the old play, which in some particulars he corrects by the Chronicles; showing that his departures from history were retained with full knowledge and intention.

1. In Shakespeare, John is told by his own mother that he must rely on his 'strong possession' [TLN 46] not on his right, and the suggestion of the old play that Arthur, being 'but young and yet unmeet to reign' TRKJ 12.3391, was therefore to be passed over, is thrown out.
2. Elinor tells Constance that she can 'produce a will that bars the title' of Arthur [TLN 494-95].
3. History is altered to heighten and refine the characters of Arthur and Constance.
4. ohn's loss of his French possessions is accentuated by the exaggeration of the dowry given to Blanch.
5. The scenes where John first persuades Hubert to murder Arthur, and then reproaches him for it, are inventions of Shakespeare.
6. The compression of John's four wars into two, though absolutely necessary for dramatic arrangement, is so managed as to have an Elizabethan bearing. Of these two wars the poet makes the first to concern Arthur's title, without any religious or ecclesiastical motive. The second he makes to be in revenge for Arthur's death, with an ecclesiastical motive added in John's excommunication. This is wholly unhistorical. No English lord interfered in behalf of Arthur, whose death raised no commotion in England, and was long passed and forgotten before the controversy with the Pope about Langton began. The confederacy between the barons and Lewis was ten years after Arthur's death, with which it had nothing to do. The Shakespearian representation of the troubles of John is that he had first to defend the legitimacy of his title; then that he had to fight his own barons, who revolted from him because he had murdered the heir they acknowledged, and allied themselves with Lewis the Dauphin, who, now Arthur was dead, could claim, in right of his wife, the Spanish Blanch, the throne which John had forfeited by excommunication. The facts of this excommunication are misrepresented in the play. Really, John's kingdom was first put under interdict; a year afterwards he was excommunicated; but he prevented the document entering the realm, and his theologians maintained that it was void. After four years, Innocent absolved John's vassals from their oath of fealty, and exhorted all Christian knights to assist in dethroning him, and substituting a more worthy successor. John was not proclaimed a heretic, neither was secret assassination of him publicly recommended.
7. Pandulph insinuates to Lewis that it is his interest to abstain from interference till John's murder of his nephew should make interference profitable to himself.
8. Melun's confession of Lewis's intended treachery to the barons is the occasion of their return to allegiance.

25Dowden, Edward, 1875

Shakespeare: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art London, 1875 (Candido, 212).

Topics: John, character, Richard III

In King John the hour of utmost ebb in the national life of England is investigated by the imagination of the poet. The king reigns neither by warrant of a just title, nor, like Bolingbroke, by warrant of the right of the strongest. He knows hat his house is founded upon the sand; he knows that he has no justice of God and no virtue of man on which to rely. Therefore he assumes an air of authority and regal grandeur. But within all is rottenness and shame. Unlike the bold usurper Richard, John endeavours to urn away his eyes from facts of which he is yet aware; he dare not gaze into his own wretched and cowardly soul. [compares Richard's command that the princes be killed with John's hints that Hubert kill Arthur, and John's cowardly regret when he realizes that Arthur's death will negatively impact him.]

. . .

There is little in the play of King John which strengthens or gladdens the heart. In the tug of selfish pride, hither and thither, amid the struggle of kingly greeds, and priestly pride, amid the sales of cities, the loveless marriage of princes, the rumours and confusion of the people, a pathetic beauty illumines the boyish figure of Arthur, so gracious, so passive, untouched by the adult rapacities and crimes of the others [Quotes TLN 465-67: 'Good my mother peace . . .].

The voice of maternal passion, a woman's voice impotent and shrill, among the unheeding male forces, goes up also from the play. There is the pity of stern, armed men for the men for the ruin of a child's life. These, and the boisterous but genuine and hearty patriotism of Faulconbridge, are the only presence of human virtue or beauty which are to be perceived in the degenerate world depicted by Shakespeare.

26Furnivall, Frederick James, 1877

The Leopold Shakespeare London, 1877 (Candido, 223-24).

Topics: John, Richard III, character

But the whole work of Shakespeare is continuous. King John is very closely linkt with Richard III. In both plays we have cruel uncles planning their nephews' murder, because the boys stand between them and the Crown. In both we have distracted mothers overwhlemd with grief. In both we have prophecies of ruin and curses on the murderers, and in both the fulfilment of these. In both we have the kingdom divided against itself, and the horrors of civil war. In both we have the same lesson of the danger of division taught to the discontented English parties of Shakespeare's own day. Richard III. Is an example of the misgovernment of a cruel tyrant; King John of the misgovernment of a selfish coward. But in John we have the mother's pathetic lament for her child far developed above that of Queen Elizabeth's for her murdered innocents, and far more touching than the laments of Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York, while the pathos of the stifled children's death is heightened in that of Arthur. The temptation scene of John and Hubert, repeats that of Richard and Tyrrel. The Bastard's statement of his motives, 'Gain be my lord,' &c [TLN 919], is like that of Richard the Third's about his villainy. (The Bastard's speech on commodity may be compared with Lucrece's reproaches to opportunity.) Besides the boy's pleading for his life, besides his piteous death and the mother's cry for him, which comes home to every parent who has lost a child, we have in the play the spirit of Elizabethan England's defiance to the foreigner and the Pope . . .

So long as John is the impersonator of England, of defiance to the foreigner, and opposition to the Pope, so long is he a hero. But he is bold outside only, only politically; inside, morally, he is a coward, sneak, and skunk. See how his nature comes out in the hints for the murder of Arthur, his turning on Hubert when he thinks the murder will bring evil to himself, and his imploring Faulconbridge to deny it. His death ought, of course, dramatically to have followed some act of his in or opposing the Pope. The author of The Troublesome Raigne, with a true instinct, made a monk murder John out of revenge for his anti-Papal patriotism. But Shakespeare, unfortunately, set this story aside, though there was some warrant for it in Holinshed, and thus left a serious blot on his drama which is impossible to remove. The character which to me stands foremost in John is Constance, with that most touching expression of grief for the son she had lost. Beside her cry, the tender pleading of Arthur for his life is heard, and both are backed by the rough voice of Faulconbridge, who, Englishman-like, depreciates his own motives at first, but is lifted by patriotism into a gallant soldier, while his deep moral nature shows itself in his heartfelt indignation at Arthur's supposed murder. The rhetoric of earlier historical plays is kept up in King John, and also Shakespeare's power of creating situations, which he had possessed from the first . . .

27Snider, Denton Jacques, 1877

System of Shakespeare's Dramas. St. Louis, 1877 (Candido, 225-32).

Topics: nationalism, Bastard, character

There is in [King John] the intense consciousness of English greatness , English freedom, English manhood. The style, though varied, is always an exalted reflection of its thought and feeling; the poetic fervour rises at times to a sort of national ecstasy. Other strong passions of the human soul are portrayed in the play, but they are all subordinated to supreme devotion to country. Such is the atmosphere which we here breathe, and which nerves the spirit with a new inspiration. Indeed, there is a special character introduced as the representative of nationalist – a character which gives tone to the entire drama. It is Faulconbridge, whose story is the golden thread which both illumines and holds together the other parts of the action. Following his career, we are perpetually reminded of the theme which furnishes life and unity to the work.

In reading King John the chief disappointment seems to arise from the fact that nothing is said of the Great Charter

. . .

The drama has two well-marked movements – the one portraying the external struggle of the nation, and the other portraying its internal struggle. Each movement has also two threads – the English and the foreign – and upon these threads the action takes its course. The first movement shows the king in conflict with the two extraneous powers – France and the Church – the political and the religious enemy. Both unite against England – the one supporting the right of Arthur as the legal heir to the throne, the other asserting the claim of Papal domination. King John steps forth as the defender of imperilled nationality; the people support him; he wins a complete victory over his combined enemies. This victory is brought about chiefly by Faulconbridge, the type of the English national hero. Such is the first movement; the nation supports the king against the heir and against the Pope. The second movement now begins; it will show the change of character in the monarch, and the consequent disruption of the country internally. As long as John maintained the honour of England abroad, and took nationality as his guiding principle, he retained the unswerving allegiance of the English people. But he has the misfortune to capture the true heir, and at once he plots the young prince's murder to secure his throne. Thus, by his own act, he makes title of supreme importance; and as he has not the legal title in himself, he logically destroys his own cause. He abandons his national principle for the principle of inheritance, which he had himself previously nullified. His title is now questioned, since it is his own deed which calls attention to its defect. Revolt of the nobles follows; disaffection of the people shows itself in dark forebodings. Then comes foreign invasion added to domestic strife, and, finally, an ignoble submission to the Church – that is, the victory which ended the first movement is completely reversed. John is no longer the true ruler, though he may now be the true heir after the death of Arthur; the nation is assailed from within and from without, and seems on the point of succumbing to the foreign political and to the foreign religious power – to France and to Rome. Nothing now remains to the king – who has sacrificed his most glorious national attribute, namely, the maintenance of the independence of England against all foes, internal and external – but death. Still, the nation cannot perish with him; the national hero, Faulconbridge, again comes to the rescue of the drooping country; the enemy is worsted and retires, the nobles return to loyalty, a new king is crowned, and England is once more free from dissension and war. The very last speech of the play echoes the spirit of the whole; it is the exultant declaration of this same Faulconbridge, the embodiment of English nationality, wherein he utters a parting shout of triumph and defiance: [Quotes TLN 2723-29: "This England never did, etc."].

28Fleay, Frederick G, 1878

'The Life and Death of King John'. By William Shakespeare. Together with the 'Troublesom Raigne of King John' London, 1878 (Candido, 238-39).

Topics: TRKJ, Holinshed, sources

The plot is taken with scarcely any important deviations from the older play [TRKJ]. I also give below the main parts of Holinshed which bear on the events introduced by Shakespeare. I do this chiefly because the incomplete and unsatisfactory way in which it has been done by former editors misleading to the reader. It should be noticed, however, that editors always speak of Shakespeare's having appropriated the plot of the older play as a sort of plagiarism, but they never give any ground for supposing that it is not Shakespeare's own. They admit that Peele, Greene, and Lodge are the most likely claimants to the authorship of the older drama; they put forward their arguments that Shakespeare joined these very men in writing Henry VI, yet they give no shadows of reason for supposing that in this case, to which there is no parallel, Shakespeare took anything but what he had originally given – the platform or plot of the play. Having in view the very different manner in which he treated plays, as to which we know that he had no share whatever in their earlier form . . . I shall, until some reason is advanced to the contrary, hold that in his King John the original plot was laid down for the early play by Shakespeare himself. What he did take from the old John, which was not originally his own, is its version of facts. Shakespeare was no historical investigator. In making his early plot he probably used Holinshed, as he did in his later plays.

29Rose, Edward, 1878

"Shakespeare as an Adapter" from Macmillan's Magazine Cambridge, 1878 (Candido, 242-48).

Topics: TRKJ, structure

If we take for consideration this anonymous play [TRKJ] and compare it with Shakespeare's, we shall find how perfectly he understood his art; and we may learn by his example not only what dramatic material to choose, and how to shape it, but—which is by no means so usual with our poet—what to avoid; for King John, as it now stands, though it is in many ways a model of construction, and contains at least two of his finest characters and some of his noblest poetry, can hardly be called a successful stage play . . .

Lastly—and this is a good deal more important—Shakespeare does not at all explain why the monk poisoned King John. Has not one been rather startled, on seeing the play acted, by its sudden termination? Just when his fortunes are at their most critical point, the hero without rhyme or reason dies: some one comes in casually and says that the king is dying, murdered by an anonymous monk, who is indeed described as a "resolved villain"[TLN 2586]. but who is not shown to have had any motive whatever for his deed. It is as if the Gravedigger should suddenly brain Hamlet with his pickaxe, in the midst of their conversation, and decline to give any reason for his conduct.

30Boas, Frederick S., 1896

Shakespeare and His Predecessors London, 1896 (Candido, 290-92).

Topics: structure, Richard III, Richard II, Constance

... In its main subject [King John]recalls Richard III,while the character of Constance anticipates that of Richard II. It resembles Richard IIIalso in the prominence given to rivalries of women, but the grouping is less studiously monumental, and the curious strophic balance of lamentation has disappeared. The blank verse is still overloaded with rhetoric, which has however lost the peculiar lurid tinge of the earlier play. Rhyme is almost entirely confined to the pithy rejoinders and epigrams of the Bastard, in whose person the element of popular humour enters for the first time an entirely Shakespearian historical play. There is as yet, however, no hint of the use of prose as the fittest vehicle for this humour. Thus the internal evidence stamps King Johnas a link between the earlier and later Histories, and it may be assigned to about the year 1595. . . .

[Boas briefly treats Shakespeare's adaptation of The Troublesome Raigne,then turns to the dramatist's conception of John, which unlike that of Richard III, 'is designed on no similar scale of lonely grandeur in crime' (Boas 239).]

For a time, indeed, John plays the part of a vigorous and able soldier. He crosses to France with a speed that disconcerts his enemies, and the fact that he is followed by a brave 'choice of dauntless spirits' [TLN 366] shows that he can attract supporters to his cause. Shakespeare himself, fully alive to the national dangers involved in the succession of a minor, is inclined to weigh in equal balance the claims of uncle and nephew. If John has an evil angel in his mother, so has Arthur, for the hysterical

. . .

passion of Constance is as dangerous as Elinor's unscrupulous ambition, and her appeal to foreign aid in support of her son's rights estranges from her all national sympathies. . . .

... But the portraiture of John in the earlier scenes of the play, where in spite of duplicity and self seeking he shows a certain soldierly dignity, scarcely prepares us for the revelation of craven cruelty in his dealings with his captive nephew. This partial inconsistency, however, overlooked, John's attitude in his interview with Hubert is portrayed with wonderful subtlety. In a similar situation Richard III had blurted out his purposes to Tyrrel with almost cheery frankness. John stealthily approaches the theme of Arthur's murder by torturous paths, advancing and retreating by turns; he pauses just long enough at his goal to drop monosyllabic hints of 'death' and 'a grave' [TLN 1367-1369], and then, as if terrified at the sound of his own voice, slinks hurriedly away. Thus, when the report of Arthur's death by violence is noised abroad, alienating the nobles and stirring the populace to disaffection; when the conscience stricken king realizes that 'there is no sure foundation set on blood' [TLN 1822], he can turn upon his agent with base reproaches for having translated a momentary hint into a fixed warrant for the fatal deed. The discovery that the child's life has been spared lights tip his terrified soul with a ray of hope, but the disastrous consequences of his purpose are beyond recall....

But it has attracted universal notice that Shakespeare passes very lightly over those misdeeds of the king which have given him so sinister a prominence in history. His extortions from clergy and laity are merely touched upon incidentally, and not the faintest allusion is made to the constitutional struggle which ended in the grant of the Great Charter. Startling as it sounds to modern ears, it is almost certain that Shakespeare had small knowledge of that document, and a very inadequate sense of its importance. A strong monarchical rule was the ideal of the Tudor period, and the power of the Crown was limited not by strictly defined clauses, but by hearty popular sympathies in the sovereign. It was only under the Stuarts, when this communion of feeling between ruler and ruled ceased to exist, that the champions of national liberty were forced to entrench themselves behind their traditional rights, and drag again into prominence the parchment scrolls wherein these were embodied. Thus the significance of John's reign for Shakespeare lay far less in constitutional struggles than in foreign relations, and its supreme event was not the signing of the Charter, but the surrender of the English crown, when the recreant king, eating all his brave words of an earlier date, resigned the symbol of royalty into the hands of Pandulph, to receive it back again as a vassal of the Pope....

[After a short passage of plot summary, Boas turns to the death of John.]

. . . Poisoned by a monk, he dies at Swinstead Abbey, in torturing pain which wrings from him agonized cries unworthy of a soldier and a king. But the scene would make a deeper impression were it in more organic connexion with what has gone before. In the old play, where so much prominence had been given to the attack upon the religious houses, the death of John at the hands of a monk was a dramatically fitting Nemesis. But one of the very few mistakes made by Shakespeare in working up older materials was that he here retained the original version of John's murder, while omitting all that had led up to it.

31Brandes, Georg M. C., 1898

William Shakespeare: A Critical Study New York, 1898 (Candido, 299).

Topics: language, rhetoric

and, among the rest, the first scene of the second act, which seems to dispose of Fleay's conjecture [No. 42 above] that the first two hundred lines of the act were hastily inserted after Shakespeare had lost his son. Nevertheless almost all that is gracious and touching in the figure is due to the great reviser. The old text is at its best in the scene where Arthur meets his death by jumping from the walls of the castle. Shakespeare has here confined himself for the most part to free curtailment; in the old King John,his fatal fall does not prevent Arthur from pouring forth copious lamentations to his absent mother and prayers to 'sweete Iesu' [TRKJ 9.20]. Shakespeare gives him only two lines to speak after his fall.

In this play, as in almost all the works of Shakespeare's younger years, the reader is perpetually amazed to find the finest poetical and rhetorical passages side by side with the most intolerable euphuistic affectations. And we cannot allege the excuse that these are legacies from the older play. On the contrary, there is nothing of the kind to be found in it; they are added by Shakespeare, evidently with the express purpose of displaying delicacy and profundity of thought. In the scenes before the walls of Angiers, he has on the whole kept close to the old drama, and has even followed faithfully the sense of all the more important speeches. For example, it is a citizen on the ramparts, who, in the old play, suggests the marriage between Blanch and the Dauphin; Shakespeare merely re writes his speech, introducing into it these beautiful lines: [Quotes TLN 741-46: 'If lusty love should go in quest of beauty. . . .']. The surprising thing is that the same hand which has just written these verses should forthwith lose itself in a tasteless tangle of affectations like this:

Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young Dauphin every way complete:
If not complete of, say, he is not she;
And she again wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not, that she is not he. [TLN 747-51]

and this profound thought is further spun out with a profusion of images. Can we wonder that Voltaire and the French critics of the eighteenth century were offended by a style like this, even to the point of letting it blind them to the wealth of genius elsewhere manifested?

Even the touching scene between Arthur and Hubert is disfigured by false cleverness of this sort. The little boy, kneeling to the man who threatens to sear out his eyes, introduces, in the midst of the most moving appeals, such far fetched and contorted phrases as this:

The iron of itself, though heat red hot,
Approaching near these eyes, would drink my tears,
And quench this fiery indignation
Even in the manner of mine innocence;
Nay, after that, consume away in rust,
But for containing fire to harm mine eye. [TLN 1639-43]

And again, when Hubert proposes to reheat the iron:

An if you do, you will but make it blush,
And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert. [TLN 1692-93]

The taste of the age must indeed have presses strongly upon Shakespeare's spirit to prevent him from feeling the impossibility of these quibbles upon the lips of a child imploring in deadly fear that his eyes may be spared to him.

32Bowden, Henry Sebastian, 1899

The Religion of Shakespeare London, 1899 (Candido, 302-306).

Topics: Catholicism, historical context, Pandulph

[King John's] bold defiance [against Pandulph] proves mere bombast; he ends by eating his words. He humbles himself to the dust before the Legate, and as a penitent who receives the crown again at his hands, and his kingdom in fief from the Pope. John's anti-Catholic speeches, then, no more prove Shakespeare a Protestant than the fool's saying in his heart "There is no God," makes David a sceptic [Psalms 14:1].

. . .

In [Shakespeare's] hands the play becomes a moral and political essay on the events and questions of his time. The slaying of Arthur is closely parallel to that of Mary, Queen of Scots; John, like Elizabeth, first suggests, then commands the deed, afterwards feigns horror at its accomplishment and repudiates the perpetrators. John disowned Hubert, as Elizabeth did Davison, though in both cases the order for the murder was given under the royal hand and seal . . . Again, Philip's disinclination after the loss of Angiers, to prosecute the war till the prospect of Arthur's death opens his son's claim to the English crown, resembles the delay of Philip II. of Spain to make any serious attack on England till Mary Stuart's death made the Infanta or Duke of Parma possible claimants for the English throne. Lewis' intended slaughter of his allies, the English rebel nobles, finds a parallel in the reported intention of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Commander of the Armada, who declared that, once landed in England, all Catholics and heretics should be one to him, his sword would not discern them! so that he might make way for his master.

. . .

We know that Pandulph is regarded generally as being also a slave to commodity, and of changing sides merely as suited the interests of the Church. No doubt those interests were first with him, but with them were bound up the claims of justice and right and the liberties of the people. He is allied with France to enforce John to submit, but on John's submission he orders, as he was bound, the Dauphin to withdraw his invading force. His mission is completely successful. England is reconciled to the Church, France and England are friends again, the rebel nobles are pardoned, the rightful heir ascends the English throne, and all this is effected by the offices of the Legate and the action of Faulconbridge, the typical Englishman, of whom the poet is so fond.

The twentieth century"

33Etty, J. Lytelton, 1901

"Studies on Shakespeare's History. V.—King John" from Macmillan's Magazine Cambridge, 1901 (Candido, 320).

Topics: character, John

[Commenting on TLN 1800-1965, in which John tries to convince the lords that he innocent of Arthur's murder and to shift the blame entirely onto Hubert]

The tragic episode is complete here, the real tragedy of John's life. It matters little now if Arthur be alive or dead, though the news that he yet lives at once restores Hubert to favour. It matters little if John succeed or fail. For morally his failure is now achieved. Hitherto he has been a villain certainly, but he has not lacked a certain grand consistency in his wickedness together with traces of intellectual power. But now in the revelation of his feebleness, of his absolute inability to abide by the result of his actions, John ceases to be in any sense respectable. The attitude in which Shakespeare draws him here tallies with his abject submission to the Pope after defying him for years; neither his submission in the one instance nor his repentance in the other would make him more contemptible, were it not for the violence which came first. Audacity can scarcely be reckoned a virtue, but persistent courage even in crime ennobles what it cannot excuse.

34Brooke, Stopford Augustus, 1913

Ten More Plays of Shakespeare London, 1913 (Candido, 359)

Topics: character, Constance, performance

And now for Constance. Amid all this hurly-burly of wars, contending kings, selfish interests, walks like a spirit the awful figure of Constance—worn and wasted motherhood maddened by loss and grief; primeval motherhood isolated from everything else in its own passion:[TLN 1400-1402]. When she is present, all the others recede into the background—are only scenery for her wild figure, with disordered garments and hair unbound, and the sound of death in her voice. The actress who should undertake her part is scarcely born in a century. It needs a majestic woman whose soul has lived in the depths; it needs a man's strength to keep up so continuous a frenzy of passion. It needs a self-control, most rarely found in any artist, to prevent the fury of the part, its total abandonment, from carrying away the actress beyond the self-mastery she must hold over her emotion, lest her execution of the part should break down into feebleness, into mere rant and shouting. Moreover, she must have a noble intellect as well as a pitiful heart to act the part adequately; and added to that—a spirit of imagination to feel the poetic passion in the speech of Constance. All she says, in her grief, is steeped in the waters of poetry; the penetrating pity of imagination pierces through her words into the secret recesses of sorrow.

35E. K. Chambers, 1925

Shakespeare: A Survey (Penguin: Middlesex, 1925) 79.

Topics: biographical reading, Constance

For the sake of the wild and whirling words of Constance and the boyish pathos of Arthur's struggle against death, it is possible that King John may always continue to have its share of devotion from readers of Shakespeare. The sentimentalism of commentators is apt to find in the play a reflection of the natural sorrow of the poet at the death of his own son Hamnet. But the sentimentalist is a dangerous leader in the slippery ways of literary biography. King John may well have been already written when Hamnet died in August 1596. Moreover, the psychological theory implied is a fantastic one. The grief of Constance rings true enough; but, after all, her hint of woe is common, and it must certainly not be assumed that a dramatist can only convince by reproducing just those emotions which he has seen at play in his own household. It is safest to regard the tragic figure of the weeping mother as based rather upon broad human sympathies than upon personal experience; but whatever its origin, the part of Constance, like that, almost contemporary, of the unkinged Richard the Second, affords an ideal mouthpiece for the flood of splendid emotional declamation, which is one of the finest and most enduring qualities of the Elizabethan stage.

. . .

But what is the intellectual bearing of King John? Plainly it is conceived as a tragedy, but wherein does the tragedy consist? Is John himself the villain or the hero? Are we, as in Richard the Third, face to face with the Nemesis that waits upon wickedness in high places? And if so, why are so many scenes, and in particular the closing lines, with their emphasis upon England's dissensions as the cause of England's woes, seem to strike another note, and to point out not John, but those who plot against John, as the workers of the tragic evil? One fears the answer is that no answer can be given, and that the infirmity of double purpose here suggested is indeed inherent in the backboneless structure of the play.

. . .

It is perhaps from a consciousness of the ambiguous place which John must necessarily fill in the play, that Shakespeare throws a large share of the burden of his nationalism upon the Bastard. This tall man of his hands, with his blusterous humours and his shrewd mother-wit, is clearly intended to be typical of the stout Anglo-Saxon race. He has the blood of her kings, even though it came to him a little o'er the hatch, and the very spirit of Plantagenet; and in his large composition there are tokens of the greatest of her heroes, Richard Coeur de Lion himself. So he stands for England throughout. . . . But in a drama faults of structure are irreparable, even by a Shakespeare; and neither Constance nor the Bastard can really redeem the incoherent patchwork from ineffectiveness.

36Wilson, John Dover, 1936

Introduction to King John (Cambridge U P: Cambridge, 1936) vii-lxi.

Topics: John, Bastard, TRKJ, nationalism, Henry V

John is the hero of The Troublesome Reign, an Englishman, chosen by the barons of England in preference to the foreign Arthur, and fighting against foreigners and the Church of Rome. In King John, he is a usurper with no rights in the crown at all . . . Shakespeare's John is no hero.

. . .

the great conclusion [Quotes TLN 2723-29] is the theme of the whole play; and the character who speaks it is the mouthpiece of the author. In his bluff and half-cynical humour the Bastrard . . . probably reflects the personality of the actor Burbage who first played him. But his patriotism is all Shakespeare's. . . . The illegitimate son of Cordelion is an early Henry V, called by fate to prop the falling fortunes of a kingdom ruled by an earlier and meaner Macbeth.

37Bonjour, Adrien, 1951

"The Road to Swinsead Abbey: A Study of the Sense and Structure of King John" (ELH 18.4 (1951) 253-74.

Topics: King John, Bastard, structure, dramatic unity

The main reason, we think, that accounts for the change [Shakespeare depicts John as a usurper, whereas in TRKJ he is not] is that it allows Shakespeare to make a dramatically much more effective use of Arthur's death. If John is a usurper "with no rights in the crown at all," it is obvious that Arthur, as the legitimate heir, is much more dangerous for him and, consequently, the temptation to do away with the boy-much stronger. And the motive of the crime is of paramount importance for an understanding of the whole drama.

. . .

[In the first half of the play], though a usurper, [John] proved a competent ruler. But then he succumbs to the temptation of a criminal deed to ensure his position. And this marks the beginning of the end.

. . .

"I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way IAmong the thorns and dangers of this world" [TLN 1245-46]. We almost have a glimpse of an early Hamlet. The Bastard here attains, on the spiritual and moral plane, the dignity of a great character. This point can scarcely be overestimated. The Bastard is now the man in whom centers the interest and sympathy of the audience.

. . .

John's career represents a falling curve, the Bastard's career a rising curve; and both curves, perfectly contrasted, are linked into a single pattern. The structure of the play is thus remarkably balanced; its pattern can be defined in very simple terms: decline of a hero-rise of a hero.

…

And just because the Bastard never lost sight of the higher interest of the nation, while preserving his loyalty and personal integrity intact, he is now able to prevent a total collapse of the English forces, and succeeds in restoring national unity: " rise of a hero."

Rise and fall are thus determined by a dynamic evolution of two closely connected characters, and what is more, the course of this twofold evolution illustrates the very leading idea of the whole drama. Structurally, this is perhaps the highest achievement. The Coghillian notion of a governing idea has, of course, preoccupied critics. Some embodied it in Commodity, others in the doctrine of national unity. But they failed to clearly establish the unmistakable link between Commodity and the great lesson of national unity.

38Honigmann, E. A. J., 1954

Introduction to King John (Arden: London, 1954) xi-lxxv.

Topics: sources, TRKJ, date

Newly discovered facts, moreover, suggest that, quite apart from the T. R.[TRKJ], John must probably be dated back to the winter of 1590/1 . . . it must be said here that we finally side with Prof. Alexander against the commoner view that the T.R. came before John [For the complete evidence that Honigmann uses to support his theory, see the Date section of his introduction.]

39van de Water, Julia C., 1960

"The Bastard in King John" (Shakespeare Quarterly 11.2 (1960) 137-46.

Topics: King John, Bastard

Critics and editors have conceded, almost unanimously, that King John in Shakespeare's play of that name is a failure as either a hero or a villain-hero, since he is in no sense a true protagonist. In casting about for a substitute hero, critical attention has focused on Philip Faulconbridge, the Bastard, a major and ubiquitous figure in the play, and the only character in it who is in the least likeable. The result of this attention has been an increasing tendency on the part of commentators to exaggerate both his function and his merits, so that he has been interpreted progressively as protagonist, hero, and finally as Shakespeare's ideal, both as man and king. The result has also been an increasingly unwarranted distortion of the evidence of the play itself.

. . .

How much closer to the truth it would be to say that Faulconbridge is really only a slightly concealed "vice." He bubbles over with wit and merriment; he is prone to tease and scoff; he is the medium of the comic aside; and he provides cynical commentary on the action. Yet with it all, he is basically a "good blunt fellow" out to make his fortune. These are the very attributes of the vice as he had developed and mellowed in English comedy.

It is only in the fourth act that we begin to find any of the elements of character that could even remotely be said to be "regal."

. . .

Actually, in the last two acts the Bastard comes much closer to epitomizing the loyal follower than he does the regal leader.

40Reese, M. M., 1961

The Cease of Majesty: A Study of Shakespeare's History Plays (Edward Arnold: London, 1961) 261, 280, 285.

Topics: character, politics, Richard III, Bastard Constance

In the present century, King John has never been very popular. It is not a satisfactory play, since it lacks a focal point. Shakespeare's customary insistence on the themes of patriotism, obedience and unity is here entangles in his stern exploration of Commodity.

. . .

King Johnis the most cynical and disillusioned of the histories. By comparison Richard III is just a cautionary tale about a wicked magician, and in the political jungle of King John Richard himself would early lose his way in its thorns and dangers. Among its characters we may make an exception of Constance, whose mother-love, although she carries it in excess, is a decent human instinct, and she revolts from the treacheries and impersonal opportunism of the politicians. We may also except Arthur . . . and Blanch . . . But no one else in the play is a person of integrity, not even Faulconbridge [the Bastard], who cheerfully admits that he is tarred with the same brush as the people he condemns.

. . .

Faulconbridge [the Bastard] is a link with the Prince Hal of plays to come. . . . the appearance here of this concept of a political man, suggested only vaguely, if at all, in the earlier histories, means that King John is not a play to be ignored.

41Gupta, S. C. Sen, 1964

Shakespeare's Historical Plays (Oxford U P: Oxford, 1964) 112.

Topics: Bastard, structure, drama of ideas, patriotism

That is why, as Reese points out, the play seems to lack a focal point, for the man whose interests are at stake plays second fiddle to the man who protects those interests. Although this criticism is largely true, the defect complained of is a part of Shakespeare's basic conception of the play as the evolution of an idea. . . . his theme is not popular (or baronial) liberty against royal tyranny, but the evolution of patriotism out of concrete, living experience, and for this the man who protects John's interests without being directly involved in them is obviously a better hero than John who fights to defend his own 'usurp'd authority'. Thus the principal limitation of this play as a personal tragedy is a part of its strength as a drama of ideas.

42Tillyard, E. M. W., 1964

Shakespeare's Historical Plays (Barnes and Noble: New York, 1964) 216-17.

Topics: TRKJ, date of composition

The common opinion is that Shakespeare took the disposition of his material from the old play [TRKJ] and rewrote it in his own language, with a different intention, and with transformed characters. Alexander sought to put the debt the other way round, but Dover Wilson has quite disposed of this endeavour. . . . Courthope . . . may be nearer the truth when he made Shakespeare the author of both plays. . . . the Troublesome Reign [may] turn out to be a bad quarto. . . not of King John as we have it but of an early play by Shakespeare on the same theme. This play would then be the original both of the Troublesome Reign and of King John: the former keeping on the whole the fine construction of the original but garbling the execution and inserting an alien scene; the latter following but impairing the construction and altering the intention and some of the characterisation of its original.

That Shakespeare wrote and revised an early John cannot be proved; but I find the supposition best able to explain the facts.

43Matchett, William H., 1966

Introduction to King John (Signet: New York, 1966) 3-22

Topics: Bastard, Constance

Insofar as the play has a hero, then, it is the Bastard, and, indeed, a large part of the first act is devoted to introducing him to us. He repeats the national situation on a domestic scale. He also is in possession of an estate to which another, his half brother Robert, is the rightful heir.

. . .

[Referring to the sympathy earlier generations found for Constance and the view of her as the most attractive character in the play]

This is a view I cannot share, though she is indeed forceful in her claims for sympathy. I find it noteworthy that many actresses, in creating their conception of her suffering motherhood, found it necessary to omit some of her more violent speeches, especially her screeching exchanges with Elinor. Constance is a suffering mother, there is no doubt, but she is also an ambitious one, a strident domineering tigress.

. . .

the Bastard has shown us (as, in his lesser role, has Hubert) the self-denying acceptance of a higher duty which true loyalty demands from the man of honor.

44Richmond, H. M., 1967

Shakespeare's Political Plays (Random House: London, 1967) 100-119

Topics: character, John, Bastard, English identity

Shakespeare's play is not popular; it is not often performed, probably because of the emotional problem presented to an audience by the character of its central figure, John himself. Yet it is just this ambivalence of response (a minor-key version of what we feel for Richard III) that constitutes the central political and theatrical interest of the play. This lies in the creative tension of two incompatible sets of values: dislike of John as a man, and recognition of the substantial fact of his kingship.

. . .

Philip [the Bastard] conserves a kind of integrity by this honesty [free from hypocrisy], and with it the power of moral growth, which is denied to such unstable personalities as John himself. Philip's [the Bastard] personality therefore serves in many ways to reflect the relatively detached consciousness of the audience: both have been matured and refined by observation of the events that impinge on his meteoric career. Carrying the audience along with him, Philip [the Bastard] evolves out of the crude cynicism that is youth's first alternative to idealism into a resigned, even world-weary maturity that nevertheless proves compatible with an underlying vital impetus that survives from his youth. This still remaining idealism increasingly develops into a dauntless patriotism, with the result that Philip [the Bastard] is the figure whose perspective governs an English audience's response to the play. By studying its action through his eyes, we shall therefore probably come closest to Shakespeare's own perspective, and to a sense of the political values that he is concerned to dramatize.

. . .

However, as a kind of catalyst of the diplomatic ferment before the gates of Angiers, the Bastard proposes that the opposed kings teach the aloof citizens a lesson, by ravaging their town before proceeding to a further mutual decimation. Again the proposal is laden with Swiftian irony, utterly unperceived by its crudely bellicose hearers. . . . After it has been razed, why fight over its ruins? The Bastard, by contrast, proves likely to have subtler purposes in breaking the deadlock, since it turns out, to being with, that John's two enemies are thus disadvantaged by the subsequent disposition of their two armies facing sides of the town [Quotes TLN 728-29].

Secondly, by shifting the onus of responsibility from the headstrong monarchs, the Bastard forces the now directly engaged but still prudent citizens to intervene, and to achieve a compromise between the greedy but essentially cowardly kings.

. . .

the Bastard has emerged as the symbolic pivot of the play. . . . What turns the balance in favor of England is thus simply the steady political and military energy of the Bastard, which is rooted in a sense of true English identity.

45Smallwood, R. L., 1974

Introduction to King John (Penguin: Middlesex, 1974) 1-46.

Topics: Arthur, Bastard, Hubert

John's two most loyal supporters [Eleanor and the Bastard] leave us in no doubt of their opinions of the legitimacy of his rule. These deliberate modifications of his source material are part of Shakespeare's careful establishment of a complex and testing political situation.

. . .

With [Arthur's] constant courtesy, his persuasive power in the prison scene, and the courage of his attempted escape, we are left in no doubt of his potential regality.

. . .

Even the things that make [Arthur] pathetic and touching disqualify him has a possible ruler: his childishness, his weakness, his anxiety to avoid trouble. Above all is the fact that his hopes for power depend entirely on foreign support: the removal of John will mean that England is ruled by the puppet of King Richard's principal enemies. Perhaps a usurper who acts with strength and speed when his country is threatened is preferable to this rightful ruler who brings the inevitability of foreign domination. Shakespeare presents us with the impossible choice between a man in possession and the claimant with legal right, between the vigorous man of action and the helpless child.

. . .

The alliance of Hubert and the Bastard is inevitable, for they are the only two characters in the play who respond with honesty to the political situation.

46Berry, Edward I., 1975

Patterns of Decay: Shakespeare's Early Histories (U P of Virginia: Charlottesville, 1975) 118.

Topics: Bastard, character,

In the Bastard Faulconbridge, then, Shakespeare creates a character whose development weds the "political" insights and energies of Richard III and the lesser machiavels of the Henry IV plays—Suffolk, Winchester, York—to the moral commitment of a Talbot or a Gloucester.

47Muir, Kenneth, 1977

The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays (Methuen: London, 1977) 78-85.

Topics: sources, TRKJ, date

What makes the Honigmann theory [that Shakespeare's King John was written before TRKJ] impossible, however, is that there are some obscurities in Shakespeare's play which can be elucidated by reference to The Troublesome Raigne. This is not because the anonymous author made plain what Shakespeare had left obscure, but because Shakespeare cut out some connecting links.

. . .

Shakespeare's main sources, we may conclude, consisted of The Troublesome Raigne and Holinshed's Chronicles. He begins his play at line 23 of The Troublesome Raigne, and thereafter follows it scene by scene, although he makes many alterations in the process. He reduces the first scene from 421 lines to 276, but enlarges the next four scnees from 618 to 945. He does not allow Faulconbridge's mother to be present during the establishment of his parentage. Although the outlines of the Bastard's character are in The Troublesome Raigne, Shakespeare makes it much more interesting by giving him the superb speech on commodity (in which a Kent-figure poses as an Edmund) and by the addition of the scene where Hubert is made to prove his innocence by carrying Arthur's body in his arms.

Shakespeare also amplifies Constance's part.

. . .

A last example of Shakespeare's alterations may be given—John's temptation of Hubert.

48Manheim, Michael, 1989

"The Four Voices of the Bastard". In Curren-Aquino.

Topics: Bastard

The Bastard speaks successively in four distinct voices in King John, roughly representing stages of what might today be called his political coming-of-age. . . . The first three of these voices indicate the increasing degree of knowledge of the world and of himself that Shakespeare intends this young man to acquire; the fourth, that of the new Machiavel.

. . .

The Bastard's discovery of a new diction by means of which the king's weakness may be disguised and the state renewed, outwardly at least, is our discovery of the nature of the transition between Shakespeare's two historical tetralogies. Richard III of the first tetralogy was the stage Machiavel, the super-villain who provided a vent for all varieties of audience hostility toward ruthless government. . . . But the new politics was becoming deeply ingrained in Elizabethan public life, and the same audience that hooted the old stage-Machiavel would cheer the real Machiavel on stage as long as he was properly gifted and adorned. The Bastard possesses the necessary gifts from the start, and the adornment is his seemingly spontaneous, highly energetic new language, the legacy he passes on to Henry V. By means of linguistic artifice, Machiavellian tactics, so despised in the earlier plays, are made attractive in both theatrical and political terms.

49Rackin, Phyllis, 1989

"Patriarchal History and Female Subversion in King John" from (Associated U P: London, 1989) 76-88. In Curren-Aquino.

Topics: feminist reading

[Feminine voices in King John] imply that before the masculine voices of history can be accepted as valid, it must come to terms with women and the subversive forces they represent.

. . .

Rending the fabric of patriarchal history, Shakespeare opens a space where women can speak and act. In King John the roles of women are more various and prominent than in any of his other English histories, their subversive power to undermined the masculine historical project most fully reveals. Instead of playing subsidiary parts in a script written by men, the women in King John play crucial roles in determining the course of events. Driven by their own ambitions and by hatred and envy of each other, Elinor and Constance incite the war between England and France.

. . .

[Referring to Act 1 and the issue of the Bastard's legitimacy] According to the laws of patriarchy as expounded by John . . . the woman, like a cow, is mere chattel, possession of the man. All her actions, even an act so radical as betrayal of the marriage bond, are totally irrelevant, powerless to affect her son's name, possession, legal status, or identity. Only the man's entitlement has significance under law. She is his possession, and any child she bears is his, even if he is not the biological father. Thus, the very absoluteness of patriarchal right provides for its own subversion.

By admitting that the relationship between father and son is finally no more than a legal fiction, John attacks the very basis of patriarchal history, as he does throughout the play.

50Dusinberre, Juliet, 1990

"King John and Embarrassing Women" Shakespeare Survey 42 (1990) 37-52.

Topics: Constance, Eleanor

Constance becomes in this speech [TLN 993-96] the locus for the conflict of power and powerlessness which shapes the whole play.

The play of King Johnthus became for the mid-nineteenth-century actress and audience the play of Constance and Arthur.

. . .

Her very impotence seems to cry out against her, and throughout the play alienation might seem more likely to accompany the sallies of the main women characters, Eleanor and Constance, than any great sympathy with their wrongs. They are, for the modern feminist, too palpably acquiescent in the values which have created these wrongs. Indeed some kind of male directorial embarrassment has often accompanied productions of King John,resulting in the cutting of the scolding between Eleanor and Constance.

. . .

In Shakespeare's version John himself is forced into the role of mere child ('good mother') by his mother's manifestly unseemly assertion of power: that is, unseemly within the prevailing discourse, which belongs not to her, as in The

Troublesome Raigne,but to her son (despite the fact that she has done all the work establishing that power).

. . .

With Lady Falconbridge and the Bastard, Shakespeare completed the triad of mothers and sons in King John:Eleanor with the legitimate John whose claim to the throne is illegitimate, as she herself knows; Constance whose son Arthur's claim is the best in terms of lineage but who had been disinherited by Richard Coeur-de-lion on his death-bed; and now the unknown Lady Falconbridge.

51Beaurline, L. A., 1990

Introduction to King John (Cambridge U P: Cambridge) 1-59.

Topics: language, Bastard, authenticity, Constance

The declamatory style in its most blustering form has a special place in King John. Nearly every character uses it from time to time, except for Melun, who is heard at the moment of death, when all men should speak the plain truth.

. . .

In contrast with his fifth-act bluster, the Bastard's more authentic personal voice carries conviction when he whole-heartedly thanks his mother for giving him a great father [Quotes TLN 284-289]. . . .Although the six lines are rhymed, they seem unpremeditated—in natural word order, mostly monosyllabic. In his high spirit the Bastard talks as he feels, so we believe that he is willing to back up his words with action.

[Describing the temptation scene 3.2]

. . . vagueness characterises [John's] talk, as he circles the subject insinuatingly to create what government officials now call deniability and Francis Bacon says was called 'The turning of the cat in the pan—to speak so obscurely about what one wants done until one's subordinates advocates it.

. . .

Constance too suffers from disordered perceptions which govern her rage and enhance her declamatory style when she feels utterly impotent. In Act 2 she and Eleanor sound like a pair of brawling women, hurling imprecations in their 'ill-tunèd repetitions' (2.1.197), but the splendour of her baffled outrage in Act 3 has an energy that surpasses anything of the kind in the play. Her articulate power, which modern audiences may find tiresome, seldom failed to affect eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theatre audiences.

. . .

The signs of Constance's incipient madness are clearest in her increased use of repetition. . . .The most telling speech is her repeated denial that she is mad: 'I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine . . .I am not mad. I would to God I were . . . Preach some philosophy to make me mad . . . being not mad . . . If I were mad . . . I am not mad . . .' (TLN 1429-44).

. . .

Unlike Constance and John, the Bastard keeps his sanity and remains more or less a whole man in a mad world, perhaps because he manages to be both in and out of every complex situation. He can throw himself into action one moment and in the next he can contemplate the moral and political constraints of his position. His sense of humour and his light touch alternate with his earnestness and practicality. In these various modes he is still primarily a social animal, conscious of himself in relation to other people.

. . .

I think the difficulty with these soliloquies [1.1 and 2.1] has been increased by twentieth-century critics who have an exaggerated estimate of the Bastard's integrity. His moral and patriotic grandeur have been elevated so far above the shabbiness of others that some critics wish to turn him into the very hero of the drama. However, if we conceive of the Bastard in a somewhat lower register—as an ebullient, loyal soldier with this head screwed on right and with wonderful perceptions in a crisis, a person with uncanny resources for a public man, as we shall see—he fits the early soliloquies reasonably well.

52Neill, Michael, 1993

"'In Everything Illegitimate': Imagining the Bastard in Renaissance Drama." The Yearbook of English Studies (1993) 23:287-8.

Topics: Bastard, illegitimacy

[Neill discusses the origins of the concept of illegitimacy and its association with deformity and dirt.] This sense of the bastard's inherent deformity may attach itself even to those like Faulconbridge in King John whose character is in many respects attractive, even admirable. An invention of Shakespeare's principal source, The Troublesome Raigne, the bastard had already established himself as the effective hero of that play: but there his bastardy figured merely as a factor in the dramatized debate as to who should properly inherit the patriotic mantle (or lionskin) of Richard Coeur-de-lion. Shakespeare's adaptation, however, makes the issue of his illegitimacy symbolically central to a play in which (in Phyllis Rackin's words) 'every source of authority fails and legitimacy is reduced to a legal fiction';[footnote: Phyllis Rackin, Stages of History: Shakespeare's English Chronicles (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. I84.] and where, as a result, 'All form is formless, order orderless' [TLN 1184]. In King John the legitimacy of all claimants to the throne is under challenge: not only is bastardy polemically alleged against both Prince Arthur and his father in Act II, scene i, but the king himself is denounced in the opening exchange for the illegitimate usurpation of his 'borrowed majesty' - a usurpation which the French king figures as an act of violent adultery, by which John has

Cut off the sequence of posterity,
Outfaced infant state, and done a rape
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown. [TLN 393-95]

As 'the presiding spirit' of this play, ' the human embodiment of every kind of illegitimacy',[footnote: Rackin, p.186. For Joseph Candido, the Bastard's 'personal defilement' represents the impossibility of untainted action in 'an adulterate world'. Candido discovers in the play 'a Hamletesque obsession with sullied purity and [...] adultery' ('Blots, Stains', p. I 4).] the Bastard incarnates the deformity in the body politic which is the consequence of John's adulterous usurpation of the crown, and which Salisbury insists that Prince Henry is born to reform:

for you are born
To set a form upon that indigest
Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude' [TLN 2631-33]

The expressive vehicles of this deformity are the 'rude' speech [TLN 72] and 'wild counsel' [TLN 709], with which he persistently subverts the shaping authority of official language - as, for example, in the confrontation between the rival kings at Angers, where his subversive asides disrupt the very form and syntax of the verse itself-

KING JOHN [.. .] I bring you witnesses,
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed -
BASTARD Bastards, and else.
KING JOHN To verify our title with their lives.
KING PHILIP As many and as well-born bloods as those
BASTARD Some bastards too.
KING PHILIP Stand in his face to contradict his claim. [TLN 581-87]

From the Bastard's perspective, however, the authorized language of chivalric heroism is merely another version of the rhetoric of patriarchal reproof that first pronounced his own illegitimacy:

Here's a large mouth indeed [...]
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?
He speaks plain cannon-fire [...]
Zounds, I was never so bethumped with words
Since I first call'd my brother's father dad. [TLN 773-83]

It is this iconoclastic licence which, in a world tainted with illegitimacy, makes Faulconbridge, as Joseph Candido observes, 'a sort of moral oxymoron [...] a true bastard to the time', endowing him with a paradoxical quality of' authenticity'. [footnote: Candido, 'Blots, Stains', 123.]

53Baker, Herschel, 1997

Introduction (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1997) 805-808. In Riverside Edition.

Topics: Bastard

As John, initially so brisk and bold and callous, sinks through moral torpor to defeat, Faulconbridge grows strong in self-awareness. In a world of knaves and fools that is governed by "Commodity" he alone cuts through fraud and privileged error to assert the claims of valor, truth, and loyalty. With neither John's "possession" of the throne nor Arthur's "right" to it, he exemplifies the true regality of character, for in him there shines "the very spirit of Plantagenet." He is therefore one of Shakespeare's grand creations.

54Cohen, Walter, 1997

Introduction to King John (W. W. Norton: New York, 1997) 1015-1021. In The Norton Shakespeare.

Topics: Bastard, illegitimacy, mothers and sons, TRKJ

In King John, the gods stand up for bastards . . . Constance and Eleanor question each other's sexual honour—an issue that is broached earlier when the Bastard's mother acknowledges her adulterous affair with King Richard. This recurrent concern underscores the uncertainty of biologically legitimate patriarchal succession. Hereditary descent from father to son tacitly accords a central role to women, whose sexual fidelity is felt to be necessary but unreliable. . . . Perhaps as a result of the mothers' deaths, the sons become increasingly inept. . . . Arthur leaps to his accidental, meaningless death . . . John's stunned response to his mother's death helps explain the radical transformation in his behavior—from confident leadership to helpless passivity. By the last part of the play, he is neither tragic nor villainous but simply beside the point, his fall having coincided with the Bastard's rise.

That rise makes possible a defense of illegitimacy. . . [but] despite his crucial role in recognizing John's legitimate heir and in articulating a vision of national unity, the Bastard too is partly undermined. . . . Ineptitude is soon replaced by irrelevance: the Bastard opts for war after others have already negotiated peace.

. . .

[Textual note]

a direct link between the wording of two stage directions in The Troublesome Reign and their analogues in King John is easily explained only on the assumption that the anonymous play came first and that Shakespeare was familiar with it. Shakespeare could have read the relevant stage directions of The Troublesome Reign in the 1591 edition of that play, but it is not clear how the author of The Troublesome Reign could have known of Shakespeare's unpublished stage directions. Stylistic and metrical tests, which date King John to roughly 1596, strongly support this hypothesis.

The twenty-first century"

55Curren-Aquino, Deborah T., 2000

"King John: A Modern Prospective" (Washington Square P: New York, 2000) 237-72. In Folger Edition.

Topics: Bastard

King John's most liminal figure is the Bastard, who functions in a series of transitional stages on his way from country madcap to spokesman for England, a trajectory that anticipates Prince Hal's in the Henry IV plays.

. . .

King John . . . does not conclude with a coronation . . . that the Bastard and nobles kneel to Henry points in the direction of incorporation, as does the Bastard's plural inclusive voice. But his elegiac exhortation with its recalcitrantly loaded "if," delivered in the presence of a fragile boy-king surrounded by peripatetic nobles (not an image to instill confidence) and further qualified by the nonhistorical status of the speaker who emerges as the national conscience, maintains the sense of liminality to the very end.

56McEachern, Claire, 2000

Introduction from King John (Penguin: New York, 2000) xxxvi-xxxvii.

Topics: historical context, political actors

The powerful way in which the church operates in this world, making and suspending treaties, instigating and quelling rebellions, excommunication and crowning kings, would have seemed to Shakespeare's audience a lurid and also salient portrait of papal dominion. Given that the pope had issued in 1570 a papal bull (or decree) excommunicating Queen Elizabeth and pardoning anyone who would resist her authority, the role of Cardinal Pandulph in this play would have seemed an especially sinister one.

. . .

the weak power of kings makes space for a new kind of political actor. The play is populated by figures who claim to legitimate authority, and even to historical veracity, may be scant, but who nonetheless impact heavily and decisively on the events in question. The actions of characters such as Hubert and the Bastard are pivotal in terms of political events; so too the presence of Arthur, Eleanor, Constance and Blanche packs an untoward affective and political punch.

57Roe, John, 2002

Shakespeare and Machiavelli (D. S. Brewer: Cambridge, 2002) 105-107.

Topics: Bastard, Pandulph, religious, Machiavel

[The Bastard's] commitment towards John, or at least to the welfare of England which John's kingship embodies, brings him from the marginal role of commentator or chorus, which he tends to occupy in the earlier stages, and propels him into a more central one of protector. It must be emphasized, however, that Falconbridge does not attempt to cover up John's ill deeds, or represent the king in a better light than he deserves. He in no way resembles the Buckingham of Richard III. The Bastard does not adopt the Machiavel person of schemer, nor does he indeed cultivate that of potential usurper, though some critics have felt that—but for the obstacle of historical records—the natural trajectory of the play would be for him to emulate Bullingbrook in his relationship with Richard and displace John as king.

. . .

The substance of Pandulph's exhortation is made clear in his opening words to Philip: [Quotes TLN 1184-85] One cannot get closer to what Il Principe urges than this: morality is to be suspended until the desired aim is achieved.

58Weil, Judith, 2005

Service and Dependency in Shakespeare's Plays (Cambridge U P: Cambridge, 2005) 44-49.

Topics: Bastard, servant

Like Imogen [in Cymbeline], the Bastard in King John has recently figured in post-modern readings which emphasize the construction of national subjects. But the play also shows, as Graham Holderness has argued for the second tetralogy, how thoroughly Shakespeare understood the feudal customs and mentalities. I would emphasize that the play is very much the work of the 1590's in revealing how treacherous for young people service within their own families and households might become. . . . It is difficult to judge where kinship ends and service begins . . .

Having chosen a vaguer service placing over a legitimate kinship role, the Bastard enjoys the kind of protection which licenses a degree of free speech. He is sheltered by his retainer's position when he brashly advises the Kings of France and England to attack Angiers. . . . Like Hubert, who soon becomes another of John's servants, the Bastard seems to be closely associated with the term "hand." Regarded by Emrys Jones as elements of Senecan style, the many "hands" referred to in King John also invoke the agency of retainers in a world of manual work, warfare, and communication. To expound The Householders Philosophie, Torquato Tasso idealizes the good servant as a "hand" that responds immediately to the master's "mind" (obeying him "at a winck of the eye, or bent of the brow"), and he praises this animate ensouled "instrument of instruments" as a "lively and several instrument of action." The Bastard boasts of his role when he threatens the invading French by referring to

That hand which had the strength . . . [continues quoting TLN 2391-97]

59Slights, Camille, 2008

"When Is a Bastard Not a Bastard? Character and Conscience in King John") 214-231. In Yachnin and Slights.

Topics: Bastard, moral conscience, commodity

Variously identified by critics as a folk hero, a Vice figure, and a Machiavel, [the Bastard] is, according to Walter Cohen, "less a coherent fictional figure than a series of discontinuous theatrical functions." A better argument, I suggest, is that his very inconsistencies constitute a continuous consciousness, a self-reflective moral awareness that develops in response to the moral confusions of his world and that adumbrates a significant change in the concept of conscience in early modern England.

. . .

Unlike the other characters in King John who exhibit conscience by judging themselves on the basis of moral standards articulated in religious and political traditions, the Bastard judges and condemns society on the basis of a personal sense of right and wrong that develops as he self-consciously constructs an identity.

. . .

King John explores a strand in the transition from a universal to an individualized conscience and the transformation of subjects into citizens. Most characters in the play judge themselves and others on the basis of a shared traditional moral code. In contrast, the Bastard judges good and evil in a confusing world without relying on external authority. Looking at the Bastard from this perspective shows his inconsistencies to be the material of a continuous consciousness, a self-reflective internal dialogue through which he constitutes a moral self. As he becomes his own moral authority, he simultaneously transforms his social identity from eldest son in a patriarchal family, to feudal retainer, and then to responsible citizen.

. . .

In the sixteenth century, traditional understanding of conscience as the voice of God within each person implied universal understanding of moral truth. Since divine law was held to be everywhere and always the same, consciences theoretically ensured obedience and uniformity— docile subjects and social cohesion. In practice, of course, consciences disagreed. By the 1640s, the word "conscience" in a pamphlet title indicated politically controversial material rather than widely acceptable Christian piety. During the Civil War, many conscientious Englishmen thought of themselves as responsible citizens rather than as dutiful subjects and killed and died for conscience's sake. I have tried to show here that King Johnexplores a strand in the transition from a universal to an individualized conscience and the transformation of subjects into citizens. Most characters in the play judge themselves and others on the basis of a shared traditional moral code.

. . .

As an exemplar of an independent conscience, the Bastard is both attractive and disturbing. He loyally serves England and England's king despite clear-eyed recognition of John's questionable title and personal faithlessness, but his efforts are largely futile. The announcement of his rescue of Elinor in Act 3 is followed shortly by the announcement of her death in Act 4. The rebel lords defect to France despite the Bastard's efforts to command their loyalty. He fights to defend England, but the French invasion is averted by the political maneuvering of the papal legate rather than by the Bastard's courage and patriotism. The play suggests that a single moral voice may have little effect in a time when Commodity is the world's bias. Perhaps more troubling, while the play invites us to admire the Bastard's independent conscience, through the scornful malice of the "wild counsel" he offers at Angiers and the despairing nihilism of his soliloquy on Commodity, it also warns us that the subjectivism of the individual conscience is unstable and potentially dangerous.

60Works cited

1. 61Candido, Joseph. "Blots, Stains, and Adulteries: The Impurities in King John." King John: New Perspectives. Ed. D. T. Curren-Aquino. Newark; London: U of Delaware P; Associated UPs, 1989. 114-25.
2. 62-----. "King John": The Critical Tradition. Shakespeare, the critical tradition. London; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1996.
3. 63Cohen, Walter. Introduction to King John from The Norton Shakespeare Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
4. 64Findlay, Alison. "The Bastard in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama," (Master's thesis, University of Liverpool, 1964).
5. 65Yachnin, Paul and Jessica. Slights, eds. Shakespeare and Character: Theory, History, Performance and Theatrical Persons. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
6. 66Vickers, Brian Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage. 2 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.