51Character

While King John--principally via The Troublesome Reign--inherits some of its structural characteristics from the morality plays, its characters are no more capable of being reduced to abstractions than those of plays like Henry IV, similarly indebted. Shakespeare's characterization leaves room for the actor to develop roles of richness and complexity. It is no accident that early critical approaches to King John focused on character as portrayed on stage, with particular emphasis on the parts of Constance and the Bastard (see the essay on the critical reception of King John, and the extracts from early critics of the play). Character criticism has recently been the subject of some thoughtful reappraisals. As Anthony Dawson points out in his discussion of Timon, the word refers to two separate concepts:

It's easy enough to identify Hamlet or Macbeth as characters, but figures such as Timon are harder to place. On one level, of course, Timon is a "character" in a play, an "actor's name" as the list appended at the end of the 1623 folio text has it. But if we mean a person,one who projects a feeling of depth and inscrutability . . . , does Timon fit? (197)

52Character refers both to the stage presence, one of the dramatis personae required by the dramatist, and to a critical concept that leads to discussion about the character's motivation for the actions the dramatist requires. The two functions merge, of course, since the stage presence will be brought to "life" by an actor, and in the process will acquire resonance from the actor's own training and skill. Earlier traditions of acting tended to focus on scenes and speeches in a fashion that we might think more operatic than realistic, though each age (including Shakespeare's own, if Hamlet's speech to the actors is taken as an index of the time) thought of itself as creating action that was less formal, more lifelike than earlier styles. In search of authenticity, modern actors try to find a consistent psychological thread within a character, creating a kind of adopted interiority that they can use to find the most effective inflection and emotive impact of a scene or passage. Character criticism seeks to find a similar kind of interiority by bringing textual evidence to support conclusions about the character that contribute to the overall structure, meaning, and genre of the play. We are accustomed to speaking somewhat dismissively of earlier character criticism as naïvely treating literary constructs as though they were real people, but actors continue to interpret their parts through reference to their own experiences in life, and audiences continue to react to the stage constructs with an expectation that they will be moved by responses that they can recognize as identifiably human.

53I have already pointed out that speeches given to characters within King John are more evenly divided than in the tragedies. Of necessity, the less significant roles are relatively one-dimensional, though even such small parts as the prophet Peter of Pomfret provide moments of interest. The three lords who attend King John (four are listed--Essex, Salisbury, Pembroke, and Bigot--but no more than three ever appear on stage at one time) are not clearly differentiated, though Salisbury has more of a stage presence, and has the opportunity to declaim two significant passages. He offers some rather conventional hyperbole on the discovery of Arthur's body, and speaks at length of his grief as he deserts King John to support the French. There is ample opportunity for the actor to suggest either deep emotion or hypocrisy masquerading as emotion on each occasion. A similarly one- or two-note character is Lady Faulconbridge, whose reasonable indignation at the treatment afforded her reputation by her son Robert modulates to the voice of confession as she is pressed by Philip/Richard/the Bastard for the truth of his fatherhood. King Philip of France is complex enough to be sympathetic to Constance both before and after his betrayal of her, but there are few signs of any interiority to provide motivation other than the Bastard's diagnosis: a simple pursuit of "commodity."

54One relatively minor character, Hubert, does have a surprising number of speeches (52), coming third in the play after King John (95) and the Bastard (89). That he has less impact on the play than Constance (36) or even perhaps Arthur (23) may be explained by his role. He is the loyal servant of King John, who is forced to do a deed he abhors, and ultimately gives in to his better nature in shielding Arthur. A decent man, he shares with the audience his struggle in asides:

55If I talk to him, with his innocent prate
He will awake my mercy, which lies dead.
(TLN 1598-9)
His words do take possession of my bosom.
(TLN 1605)

56And we have reason to believe him, more than any character on stage, when he swears he has had nothing to do with Arthur's death. If his part in the play attracts less attention than the number of his speeches might suggest, it is because in the pivotal scene with Arthur, and in the earlier intense interchange with King John (discussed below), he acts as the straight man, responding to the urgings of other figures rather than developing his own stage presence. Hubert is a consistent, generally sympathetic character, but he does not excite a great deal of interest.

57Camille Slights has recently agued that one of the ways of testing a character is through the sense of interiority that comes with conscience--a term contemporary with Shakespeare's theater, as our more recent vocabulary of psychology is not. In all, Shakespeare uses the word "conscience" six times in King John, and only Richard III (13), Henry V (13), Cymbeline (9), and Hamlet (8) use it more often. It is striking that two history plays, written soon before and after King John, use the term with even greater frequency. Richard III brings an almost morality-play structure to the subject of conscience, in its portrayal of a protagonist apparently devoid of any. Two Executioners, carrying out their commission to murder Richard's brother, the Duke of Clarence, debate the effect and importance of conscience:

1 EXECUTIONER
How dost thou feel thyself now?
2 EXECUTIONER
Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.
1 EXECUTIONER
Remember our reward when the deed is done.
2 EXECUTIONER
Zounds, he dies! I had forgot the reward.
1 EXECUTIONER
Where is thy conscience now?
2 EXECUTIONER
In the Duke of Gloucester's purse.
1 EXECUTIONER
So when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.
2 EXECUTIONER
Let it go, there's few or none will entertain it.
(R3 TLN 957-64)

58As he is tested further by the First Executioner, the Second Executioner resolves not to allow conscience to influence him, in a comic anticipation of Hamlet's more famous dictum that "conscience does make cowards of us all" (Ham TLN 1737):

1 EXECUTIONER
How if [conscience] come to thee again?
2 EXECUTIONER
I'll not meddle with it, it is a dangerous thing. It makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal but it accuses him; he cannot swear but it checks him; he cannot lie with his neighbor's wife but it detects him. It is a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom: it fills one full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that I found. It beggars any man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself, and to live without it.
(R3 TLN 965-79)

59That Shakespeare is specifically thinking of the morality plays is strongly suggested by the First Executioner's response that, like a good angel, conscience "is even now at my elbow persuading me not to kill the Duke" (R3 TLN 979-80). At the end of the play, in the extended scene where ghosts come to visit Richard and Richmond, the ghosts fulfill Queen Margaret's earlier curse that "The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul" (R3 TLN 691)--only to have Richard echo the Executioner's (and Hamlet's) judgment: "soft, I did but dream. / O coward Conscience, how dost thou afflict me?" (R3 TLN 3641-2). Especially interesting in relation to King John are several usages in the context of rights of succession: whether King Henry's right of succession to the throne of France can be made legitimately. Henry sums up the debate in his question: "May I with right and conscience make this claim?" (H5 TLN 243). In King John it is Queen Eleanor who uses the term early in the play in a similar debate about the legitimacy of a claim to the throne, as she comments on her son's confident response to Chatillon's embassy:

KING JOHN
Our strong possession and our right for us.
QUEEN ELEANOR
[Aside to John] Your strong possession much more than your right,
Or else it must go wrong with you and me;
So much my conscience whispers in your ear,
Which none but heaven, and you, and I, shall hear.
(TLN 45-9)

60Though at this point Eleanor might seem to be standing at King John's elbow in order to function as John's conscience, it is more likely that she is prompting him for political reasons, since her later influence on him is exclusively directed towards practical ends.

61King John

With the help of his mother's prompting, King John begins the play as a forceful and decisive leader when he responds crisply to the messenger from King Philip of France, Chatillon:

Here have we war for war and blood for blood,
Controlment for controlment. So answer France.
(TLN 24-5)

62And he arrives in France with an army of "fiery voluntaries" (TLN 361) hot on Chatillon's heels. But after the first indecisive battle before Angiers he becomes a follower rather than a leader, quick to follow the Bastard's ingenious but reckless advice to join forces against the town, then to follow the no less ingenious solution provided by the Citizen of Angiers--forging an alliance with France through marriage--by cheerfully bargaining away most of the provinces he came to France to protect. In this decision he is also following the advice of his mother, the formidable Queen Eleanor. He becomes fiercely independent again, as he defies the legate of the Pope, and challenges the French in the second, successful battle.

63At this point, rather like Richard III before him, he finds that success leads to a deep sense of insecurity. His actions from this point on seem to be neither leading nor following. They become those of a temporizing politician, trying one stratagem after another as they cumulatively fail: he suborns Hubert to murder Arthur (though this order becomes one limited to blinding the child); he has himself re-crowned, for reasons Shakespeare leaves unexplained; he attempts to pacify his nobles, both before and after he learns from Hubert that Arthur (supposedly) still lives; he abruptly gives up his opposition to the Pope, yielding his crown to Pandulph in a desperate attempt to retain his kingdom; threatened by the assault led by French forces led by Lewis, he hands the "ordering" (TLN 2246) of the kingdom to the Bastard as he dwindles into illness and death.

64King John's tendency to vacillate, together with an ending that provides no obvious connection between his death and his earlier actions, gives less sense of him as a tragic figure than an actor (or critic) might like, for there is little in the text that is likely to inspire sympathy. He is not given the vigor of dying fighting (Richard III, Macbeth--even Richard II dies with some valor); nor is he permitted any great self-awareness or generosity of spirit at the end.

65Actors have variously responded to this challenge. Commenting on a well-received production (1953) starring Michael Hordern as King John and Richard Burton as the Bastard, Edwin Birch astutely summed up the difficulties the role presents an actor:

King John is the politician, a chameleonic apostle of expedience. He can assume the wrath of injured majesty, become the patriot king leading his nobles against an insolent enemy; he will sell his niece to the Dauphin with a good conscience in profitable compromise; he can mock the Pope, oust his prelates, pillage the churches and scorn the horrors of excommunication; just as easily he will surrender his crown to papal authority and kiss a cardinal's ring--when the end is the security of his throne.

The review also highlighted the difficulty of making the role resonate with the audience:

[King John is] unscrupulous, treacherous, bloody-handed, the evil worshipper of Power. Yet, with only slight aid from the text, Michael Hordern makes him partially sympathetic, likeable enough for us to believe in the Bastard's faithful love for him.
(Truth, November 6, 1953)

66In his spectacular production of 1899, Herbert Beerbohm Tree added stage business at a number of places to provide extra color to the character, or actively to read against the text. In King John's interchange with Arthur after his capture, Tree emphasized the character's ruthlessness as he swung a sword to snap off on-stage flowers that Arthur had just been picking (see the discussion of this production in the performance history). More radically, Tree also made King John more consistent in his rejection of Pandulph. The prompt book details the scene. At the opening, the corruption of the Church is made eminently clear:

Two knights enter . . . and [cross] to coffer below Pandulph--and empty bags of money in them. Enter John with crown in both hands and cowl on--He kneels to Pand. throwing back cowl with toss of head. He gives Pand. crown. Pand. takes him, makes sign of cross and puts crown on John's head.

Then, when Pandulph exits, John reveals, non-textually, his real response:

Pand[ulph]. [crosse]s John in front. John makes threatening gesture behind his back. Pand[ulph]. turns to bless him. John bows head meekly.

67The performances of actors like Hordern make clear, however, the possibility of creating a consistent character from the role Shakespeare created, even if it is difficult to find enough in the part to lift it to tragedy. Unlike those other kings who scheme and use violence to attain their ends--notably Richard III and Macbeth--there are few hints of the King John's interior life. He is given no soliloquy, and the closest he comes to a confessional mode is when he hears the news of Queen Eleanor's death from a messenger: "What? Mother dead?" (TLN 1846). This brief phrase offers one of the moments when an actor can elicit some sympathy, especially given the powerful part Eleanor played in the earlier political negotiations; it is nonetheless true that John's next thought is on the practical implications of her death in weakening his position yet further: "How wildly then walks my estate in France!" (TLN 1847).

68If there is a moment in the play where King John may show signs of conscience it is in the centrally brutal act when he persuades Hubert to murder Arthur. He hesitates and hints his desire in a justly celebrated exchange. He clearly finds it difficult to bring himself to announce his real intent, never quite saying what he wants, and leaving it to Hubert to join the dots.

KING JOHN
Death.
HUBERT
My lord?
KING JOHN
A grave.
HUBERT
He shall not live.
KING JOHN
Enough.
I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee.
(TLN 1366-72)

69Three scenes later, as King John confronts the restive nobles, conscience becomes a major concern of all characters on stage. Salisbury watches the king and Hubert confer, and presciently remarks in images that combine internal battle with disease:

The color of the King doth come and go
Between his purpose and his conscience,
Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set.
His passion is so ripe it needs must break.
(TLN 1795-8)

70After his nobles stalk off the stage in indignation, when the king realizes that Arthur's (supposed) death has had the effect of weakening his position, he does seem to have stirrings of conscience:

O, when the last account 'twixt heaven and earth
Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal
Witness against us to damnation.
(TLN 1941-3)

He specifically speaks of conscience twice in the scene, first cravenly accusing Hubert of tempting him--blaming his "abhorred aspect" (TLN 1949) for his lapse--then grudgingly admitting his own complicity in a passage that draws the familiar parallel between the king's physical body and the body politic:

Nay, in the body of this fleshly land,
This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hostility and civil tumult reigns
Between my conscience and my cousin's death.
(TLN 1970-4)

The parallel suggests that John's concern is political rather than moral: it is the "civil tumult" that matters.

71There is no clear moment in the king's final scene where he seems either to accept responsibility for his failures, or to express regret for his excesses. In stressing the heat of his fever, he does speak in terms that might suggest awareness of the wrongs he has committed and the punishment he dreads:

Within me is a hell, and there the poison
Is, as a fiend, confined to tyrannize
On unreprievable condemnèd blood.
(TLN 2655-7)

But the emphasis in the scene is on the pathos of his final moments rather than on any sense of self-discovery. He dies in the middle of a speech in which the Bastard summarizes what turns out to be inaccurate and dated news. King John's death is muted, as his young heir apparent and the Bastard take center stage.

72I have earlier suggested that the structure of King John is chiastic: as John falters and fades, the Bastard rises and gains in confidence. The tipping point for King John comes as Fortune's wheel turns abruptly at the moment he is at his greatest success, with his victory in battle and the capture of Arthur. His immediate response is to feel that his triumph is insecure, as he plots Arthur's death in the passage quoted above. King John fades rapidly after the scene where he is confronted by his nobles, and gives the "ordering of this present time" (TLN 2246) to the Bastard.

73The Bastard

Shakespeare took the non-historical character of the Bastard from a hint in Holinshed, which had earlier been developed into a fuller though rather humorless character in TRKJ. It is one of the many surprises in the play that Shakespeare contructs a bastard as a positive character; Michael Neill has shown how consistently the figure of the bastard was associated with disruption, deceit, and lechery in the drama of the period ("'In Everything Illegitimate'"; see also Alison Findlay). But though the Bastard's origin is quickly revealed to be the result of the persistent lechery of Richard Coeur-de-lion, the play highlights the Bastard's royal descent rather than his adulterous origins. The Bastard's role has always been seen to be eminently stage-worthy, even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when his manners and language at times required some careful cutting. Shakespeare gives him two major soliloquies, a series of irreverent asides in the presence of kings, an active and successful part in the military actions of the play, and finally something close to the leadership of the entire kingdom--before he willingly yields to the young Prince Henry.

74So varied are the roles the Bastard plays that some critics have found him to be inconsistent as a character, shaped more to provide necessary movement in the plot than to create the sense of a coherent personality. The Bastard's journey from the opening scenes to the last speech of the play certainly involves considerable change; Michael Manheim writes of the "Four Voices of the Bastard," distinguishing four stages in the Bastard's self-fashioning and "political coming-of-age" (127). It is fair to say that if King John has any claim to unity of vision, it will have to be the Bastard who provides it, as his is the only voice (however much it changes) that is heard consistently through the play.

75The Bastard creates a fine stage presence when he first appears. He differentiates himself both from his rather stuffy and formal brother, and from the world of the court. His language is jovial and colloquial. King John immediately finds him "a good blunt man," and even a "mad-cap" (TLN 79, 92). His initial impulse is to take his chances (TLN 159), and to seek honor rather than to hold on to his inheritance. In his first soliloquy, he comments ironically on the world he imagines he will be joining, satirizing the courtly life he has heard of, but at the same time giving a clear signal that he means to join it wholeheartedly; the soliloquy is both a comment from the point of view of an outsider and an indication that he plans to become an active agent within the world he had hitherto been excluded from. He plans to change not only in dress and manners--"Exterior form, outward accoutrement"--but to transform his way of thinking and feeling, and "from the inward motion--to deliver / Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth" (TLN 220-3). Flattery's "sweet poison" is most clearly what he is thinking of at this point, though the trifold repetition of "sweet" is hyperbolic enough to suggest that he is deeply aware of the insincerity behind it. Most interestingly, the Bastard claims that he will nonetheless avoid deceiving others:

. . . though I will not practice to deceive,
Yet to avoid deceit I mean to learn . . .
(TLN 224-5)

76It is this last aim, to learn, that in many ways provides the key to the Bastard's importance in the overall structure of the play. If he is felt to have multiple voices, and to change as the play progresses, it is principally because he chooses to learn and consequently to fashion himself to suit the times and circumstances. Many of Shakespeare's characters remain splendidly or defiantly unchanged in their mutable worlds--Falstaff, Coriolanus, Richard III, and so on. But others consistently change by learning more about themselves and the world around them. In the tragedies, Lear changes radically from an autocratic, self-obsessed tyrant to a self-aware man, one who has painfully learned the need for humility as he kneels to his daughter to ask forgiveness; Hamlet, surely even more multifaceted than the Bastard, mutates several times in the play as he takes on roles from grieving son to tormentor of Polonius, Ophelia, and his mother, to unrepentant murderer, to (offstage) pirate-challenger, and finally to one who has learned resignation and the need to let events resolve the issues he faces. Some of the tragic impact of both Lear and Hamlet comes from our awareness that the learning curve of their protagonists comes too late.

77Two comedies written at much the same time as King John provide an illuminating contrast in the way characters develop. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the changes in characters that the plot demands are driven conveniently by Puck's magic juice, with the result that it is difficult to interpret the actions and words, especially of the male lovers, as representative of any kind of consistent interiority; but in Love's Labor's Lost, part of the energy of the comedy in an otherwise almost plotless play comes from the life-lessons the young lords progressively learn in their artificial academy: that love matters more than books, and that language can conceal rather than reveal the heart. In an ending that violates all rules of comedy, the play makes clear that learning must continue well after the space of the play's two hours. Perhaps it is more a requirement of comedy than tragedy that the protagonists learn from their adventures and misadventures. In Much Ado, Beatrice and Benedick are both taught to understand themselves better, with a reversal that in lesser hands than Shakespeare's would have seemed inconsistent or in need of more magic juice. In As You Like It, Rosalind spends much of the play educating Orlando in the demands of a love that reaches deeper than cliché.

78The Bastard has no equivalent of Rosalind to teach him the ways of the court. He has to learn from observation as he moves from being a comic chorus--or everyman-figure--in the initial scenes, commenting on the world around him. As he ascends in status he discovers the realities of political machination, and becomes an active participant, deeply involved in shaping the action rather than simply observing it. The early scenes of King John establish the Bastard as a kind of comic distraction from the main event, though Shakespeare makes clear that for all his scornful mockery of his thin brother he has a genuine kindness towards his mother. Unlike his counterpart in TRKJ, who physically threatens his mother in order to bully the name of his father from her, he tactfully dismisses the servant James Gurney before cajoling her into confessing the truth. In the initial scene before Angiers he baits Austria, and generally fits well into Chatillon's scornful association between him and "all th'unsettled humors of the land" (TLN 360) that make up King John's army. His first attempt to become actively involved in the military and political world seems at first to be surprisingly successful, as the kings agree to his "wild counsel" (TLN 709) to join forces against the city. But it is never clear what real advantage this temporary alliance might have, and it is immediately forestalled by the superior ingenuity of the Citizen of Angiers.

79As he watches the kings bargain and break faith the Bastard learns for the first time something of the nature of the unforgiving political world he has joined, and responds in his most famous soliloquy (TLN 882-919). The first part of his speech looks at the lack of honor in all parties, and suggests very early in the play that he is aware of John's uncertain claim to the crown. As he speaks of the king of France's betrayal of Arthur, he acknowledges that King Philip's inital impluse was initially that of one "whose armor Conscience buckled on, / Whom zeal and charity brought to the field / As God's own soldier" (TLN 885-7). But Pilip too has been seduced by "tickling Commodity" (TLN 894). The homely image of Commodity as "tickling"--with its almost playful connotation of teasing--makes the Bastard's further image of "the bias of the world" (TLN 895) the more striking: it suggests that he sees Commodity as something akin to original sin, causing "fickle France" to renege on "a resolved and honorable war" in favor of "a most base and vile-concluded peace" (TLN 906-7). Despite his awareness of Commodity's potential to corrupt, the same urge that led the Bastard initially to decide to become an actor within the world of the court leads him to use this new-found knowledge by planning to embrace the same pragmatic self-interest. He ironically mocks his own mockery, recognizing that he comments so freely because he has had no opportunity to grasp the advantages of making Commodity his own aim in life:

And why rail I on this Commodity?
But for because he hath not wooed me yet. . . .
Since kings break faith upon Commodity,
Gain be my lord, for I will worship thee.
(TLN 908-9; 918-9)

80Earlier in the scene, while the Bastard is busy providing the audience with some comic distraction bas he taunts Austria's for his boastful wearing of Richard I's lion-skin, he is also watching Pandulph's skillful performance as he successfully bullies King Philip into breaking the recently-sworn alliance with England--an oath that was itself made by breaking an earlier vow made to Constance and Arthur. It is no surprise, then, that he later undertakes with enthusiasm the sacking of the monasteries as part of King John's energetic fundraising drive. He remains a cheerfully disruptive force on stage with his initial taunting of Austria, and his final triumph in avenging the death of his father at Austria's hands. It is not until he is faced with the rebellion of the nobles, and confronted by the body of Arthur, that hw learns once again the incompleteness of his world view. I have already commented on the Bastard's carefully agnostic view of the cause of Arthur's death ("if that it be the work of any hand" [TLN 2058]); Shakespeare may have found the germ of his character's skepticism in Holinshed, where the chronicles report a whole list of rumors about the way Arthur died. The scene is arresting on stage, with its accumulating and multiple ironies: the audience understands more fully than any character what has actually happened, and watches the misunderstandings multiply as the participants are progressively shown Arthur's body.

81The Bastard may have avoided the self-serving hyperbole of the lords in his reaction to Arthur's death, but his language reaches a high level of intensity when he questions Hubert's possible complicity:

If thou didst but consent
To this most cruel act, do but despair,
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
That ever spider twisted from her womb
Will serve to strangle thee. A rush will be a beam
To hang thee on. Or wouldst thou drown thyself,
Put but a little water in a spoon
And it shall be as all the ocean,
Enough to stifle such a villain up.
(TLN 2130-7)

82And he makes clear that he regards Hubert (and hence King John) with deep suspicion: "I do suspect thee very grievously" (TLN 2138). None of his experience, none of his hitherto self-confident self-fashioning has prepared him for the level of possible cruelty, and deep uncertainty, that he is facing:

I am amazed methinks, and lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.
(TLN 2145-6)

83At this point the Bastard becomes the conscience of the play; his earlier cheerful embrace of the excitement of war, and his desire for revenge on Austria and the French, have evaporated, and his language reveals a new awareness of the collateral damage incurred through the politics of violence.

England now is left
To tug and scamble, and to part by th'teeth
The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.
Now for the bare-picked bone of majesty
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace.
(TLN 2150-5)

The surprise, then, given his suspicions about Arthur's death, is that he decides to return to the king. After his extensive rumination on the boy's death, the only reason he gives is that it is the "land" itself that requires his attention:

A thousand businesses are brief in hand,
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.
(TLN 2163-4)

84Once the Bastard has indeed taken on the "ordering of [the] times" (TLN 2246), he adopts what Manheim calls his fourth voice, the striking rhetoric he uses before Lewis and the rebellious lords, boasting of King John's preparedness for battle. The audience is well aware of the truth, that the king is crumbling and fearful, but the Bastard's language combines exaggeration with his typically earthy and rustic images: Lewis's army is "apish and unmannerly," the troops "boyish," "dwarfish," and "pigmy"; King John's army will "cudgel" them, forcing them to leap over half-open doors ("take the hatch"), try to hide in wells, or in the litter that covers the floors of stables, hugging the pigs that share the litter (TLN 2385-96). In contrast, King John is described in a conventional figure of royalty, the eagle (TLN 2403). The Bastard's speeches have been compared, appropriately, with those of Henry V as he rouses his troops.

85Whatever the effect of the Bastard's defiance on behalf of the king (or perhaps more generically of the "land" of England), the following action, as I have discussed above, is driven by events beyond any human control. The penultimate scene of the play, between the Bastard and Hubert, is appropriately set in darkness, as they challenge each other and grope towards understanding; the scene is mainly taken up with news, but there is a teasing moment towards the end. For the first time in the play, Shakespeare introduces the fact that there is a legitimate heir to the throne, Prince Henry:

BASTARD
Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?
HUBERT
Why, know you not? The lords are all come back
And brought Prince Henry in their company . . .
(TLN 2589-91)

86It is here that the Bastard responds with the ambiguous line discussed above, "tempt us not to bear above our power!" (TLN 2596); I have earlier suggested that the plural "us" makes it unlikely that the Bastard contemplates a kind of Marlovian overreaching, but the actor can readily choose to make the comment an aside to himself as he struggles with temptation, or speak directly to Hubert about the general condition of the remains of his forces.

87In the final scene of the play, the Bastard, arriving late, is all action and urgency, skeptical of the peace negotiated by Pandulph until he is certain of its reality. He is the first to acknowledge Prince Henry as king, followed by the other lords. His, rather than those of the young prince, are the last words of the play, as he speaks the lines, quoted above, so often cited as Shakespeare's most passionate statement of English patriotism. The Bastard has the last word, but it is difficult to extract from the lines a clear sense of his interiority at this final moment of the play. Earlier scenes offered him the luxury of soliloquy and near-soliloquy as he responds to Arthur's death in the company of Hubert. But as a man of action in the last scenes, responding to England's urgent dilemmas, he is given no opportunity for an examination of the final stage of his journey. He has learned of the limitations and shortcomings of politics and warfare, but he is not the next king, and there is no sense of a further history for either him or the young prince who takes on the throne.

88The Dauphin, Lewis

The Bastard's journey is one of learning, from a naive young adventurer to a man of state. As I have suggested above, Shakespeare gives some hints of King John's interiority as he plots and squirms to keep power, but there is no sense that he learns from his errors. Only one other character in the play shows signs of a development similar to the Bastard's: Lewis, the Dauphin. He too begins as an untutored youth, keen to fight and to love, familiar with the vocabulary of both. But his are some of the most striking words of disillusionment in the play, when after the battle he laments his ill fortune:

There's nothing in this world can make me joy.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man
(TLN 1492-4)

89Under the tutelage of Pandulph, however, he quickly recovers, and by the end of the scene he is ready to invade England to claim the throne on the basis of his wife's blood-line (see the family tree). He learns rapidly that moral scruples need play no part in the pursuit of power, and in due course Pandulph discovers what a good pupil Lewis is as he refuses to back down when he has the upper hand in the power game. Shakespeare gives Lewis what is perhaps a surprisingly positive final scene: he takes the news of a double disaster well, as he learns of the lords returning to King John and the loss of his provisions, and initially appears to be determined to continue the campaign:

The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of tomorrow.
(TLN 2547-8)

His capitulation comes offstage, in negotiations with Pandulph; it seems that he has learned enough to accept defeat when it is inevitable, but the focus of the play has shifted to the English as they take advantage of the good fortune that has brought them a scarcely-earned victory.