47A "distributed" structure

We have seen that King John has scenes of great power as characters evince strong emotion, and stages debates that destabilize more conventional attitudes to power and the limited effectiveness of human agency. Nonetheless, it remains an uneven play. In genre, while it fits well enough within the general category of "history," it is rather like Falstaff's unkind description of the Hostess: "neither fish nor flesh, a man knows not where to have her" (TLN 2135). In 1819, William Oxberry concisely summarized a concern about the play's structure that has often been echoed since:

King John, though certainly not the best, is amongst the best, of Shakespeare's Tragic Dramas. . . 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. (William Oxberry 62)

48Whatever the precise sequence in which Shakespeare wrote King John, Richard II, and Henry IV, Part One, the structures of the three plays are strikingly different. Richard II gives the lion's share of attention, and speeches, to Richard, as befits its original title in the quarto, the "Tragedy of King Richard the Second"(102 speeches, with Bolingbrook getting 67). It is also possible to see in the play a classical structure for tragedy, with Richard suffering from hubris, and more than enough hamartia (dependence on flattery, excessive contemplation and poeticizing) to cause his fall. In contrast, Henry IV, Part One distributes stage time on a wide variety of characters, a characteristic found more frequently in the comedies. In Richard II, Richard falls while Bolingbrook rises, but Bolingbrook is given far fewer lines, so distracts less attention from Richard. In contrast, there are three major figures in Henry IV, Part One--Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff, each of whom is given a significant presence. Hotspur's fate is tragic, and his thread in the plot closely follows the traditional tragic arc, including his (at times attractive) hubris and consequent fall; Falstaff rises, ironically achieving a kind of victory at the end of the play; Hal rises somewhat in his father's eyes, but generally remains on an even keel, moving from commentator in the early scenes to an active agent in events later in the play. His refusal to take advantage of his defeat of Hotspur at the end means that he remains something of an absent prince, and clearly has a further journey to travel. One way of interpreting the plot of Henry IV, Part One is to see in it the psychomachia of the morality plays, with Prince Hal as the Everyman figure tempted by Hotspur as "Ill-weaved Ambition" (TLN 3053) and Falstaff as Vanity (see TLN 3071).

49The overall structure of King John is more like that of Henry IV, Part One than of Richard II. It also picks up from the morality plays (no doubt via its predecessor, TRKJ) the unifying device of debate, and it follows more a "distributed" model where several characters have roles of some significance, with King John, the Bastard, and Constance having most lines. Like Henry IV also it exploits the stage-worthiness of a historically fictional character (the Bastard, Falstaff) who hogs stage time to the delight of the audience. Constance disappears half way through, leaving King John and the Bastard with similar stage presence. William Watkiss Lloyd (1856) was the first to comment on the parallel rise and fall of the remaining two characters: "when the heart and health of John decline together [the Bastard] rises at once in consistency, dignity and force" (see selection 20); later critics have also discussed what is often described as the chiastic (x-shaped) relationship between King John and the Bastard (Bonjour 270, Braunmuller 72, for example). Shakespeare uses a similar structure in Richard II, where Richard's fall and Bolingbroke's rise are explicitly figured in Richard's image:

Here, cousin,
Seize the crown. Here, Cousin.
On this side my hand, on that side thine.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well,
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs whilst you mount up on high.
(R2 TLN 2102-11)

50The Bastard's rise to a large extent is forced by John's increasing weakness, both physical and mental, which begins from the moment he appears to gain ascendency after the second battle. It is potentially a neat structure, but history rather gets in the way. The final scene shows John dying with a whimper far removed from Richard II's dynamic end, and a Bastard who is triumphant (thanks in significant measure to the sudden withdrawal of the Dauphin's forces), but who voluntarily cedes his ascendency to the young and previously absent Prince Henry. If the final scene dramatizes the contingency and unpredictability of human actions, it does so at the cost of some structural effectiveness. King John is fascinating in its experimentation, and frustrating in the awkwardness of its ending, where it almost seems as if it is being forced against its will to conform to its historical origins. Yet the play succeeds on stage despite its structural uncertainties; it depends more on a fascination with its portrayal of political double-dealing, and on the emotional appeal of its central scenes, driven in large measure by the strength and variety of its characters.