20Debates

After almost a century of sporadic interest in the play, the late twentieth century and early twenty-first have brought more critical attention to the play's overt exploration of politics. Andrew Rawnsley in the program notes to the Royal Shakespeare Company production of King John, 2012, comments on parallels between the play and contemporary current and past Prime Ministers of Great Britain:

21Here is a man without a popular mandate trying to impose himself on a riven kingdom at a time of austerity. This may remind us somewhat of David Cameron. Here is a man who lives resentfully in the shadow of a charismatic, crusading predecessor who spent much of his time on foreign adventures. This may remind us quite a lot of Gordon Brown. . . . The occupational hazards of power in 13th century England are not so very different to those now. Modern leaders must contend with formidable forces shaking the throne. Today's barons are international financial markets, media moguls, multinational corporations and other vested interests.

22Where there is politics there is argument. Ernst Honigmann observed that "In a sense, [King] John develops into one continuous debate, broken up into separate issues" (lxv).The opening scene of King John begins with a debate fierce enough to be called a confrontation when Chatillon attacks John's legitimacy as king of England. The scene ends with a genial echo of the same issue as Philip Faulconbridge accepts his illegitimacy as the bastard son of Richard Coeur-de-lion. In the dispute between Philip and his younger--but true-born--brother, the decision that King John reaches is somewhat unexpected; in the eyes of the law the question of legitimacy is irrelevant in deciding issues concerning property. All that matters is whether the child was born before or after the mother was married. Thus the Bastard freely chooses to give up his rightful inheritance and to follow the King and Queen Eleanor:

A foot of honor better than I was,
But many a many foot of land the worse.
(TLN 191-2)

23The importance of legitimacy in claims to the throne was very much in the air at the time King John was written. Walter Cohen (1016) and Ernst Honigmann (xxix) discuss the resonance within the play with the fact that Queen Elizabeth had been declared both illegitimate and legitimate by acts of Parliament. But in comparison with TRKJ it is striking that Shakespeare chooses not to focus the debate on the legal validity of John's claim to the throne; historically, and in TRKJ, John had a justifiable claim to the throne through his older brother's will, but in Shakespeare's play Eleanor makes very clear that John is a usurper:

KING JOHN
Our strong possession and our right for us.
QUEEN ELEANOR
[Aside to John] Your strong possession much more than your right,
(TLN 45-7)

24As a result, once again the debate is less on the question of legitimacy--since in Shakespeare's configuration of John's claim he has none--than on the value accorded legitimacy in the political maneuverings he faces. Shakespeare creates this debate in sharp distinction from his sources: in making King John a kind of proto-Henry VIII in his defiance of the pope, TRKJ does not suggest that King John is a usurper; and as long ago as 1874, Richard Simpson observed the degree to which Shakespeare reshaped the historical record to suit his exploration of King John as power-seeker:

The grounds of the doubt [about King John's fitness to rule] 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.
Richard Simpson (207).

25Shakespeare makes clear that John's claim to England rests on possession--on power--alone, and in the process he moves the debate from the conventionally ordered world of TRKJ to what we might see as a more modern, shifting world of politics and power. Ideologically, the play is closer to the uncertainties that lie behind the struggles in the three plays on Henry IV/V than either TRKJ or even perhaps to Shakespeare's own Richard II.

26In the second act of the play the two kings dispute rival claims before the city of Angiers, with the Citizen acting as a kind of adjudicator. King John flatly bases his claim on possession ("Doth not the crown of England, prove the king?" [TLN 580]), while King Philip takes the high road of principle, arguing the moral imperative of primogeniture. His righteous rhetoric, however, is proven to be hollow as soon as he sees a way of profiting more easily from the political solution offered by the Citizen. It is after this betrayal of principle that the Bastard realizes the naivety of his earlier cocky belief in his understanding of the world of the court, in his justly-famed soliloquy on political self-interest and the eclipse of honor and chivalry. He has just watched as Lewis invoked idealistic Petrarchan language in flattering Blanche, at the same time agreeing to a hastily-arranged marriage of great profitability; and he has just witnessed King John trade most of his provinces in France for peace. In the same spirit, King Philip, "Whom zeal and charity brought to the field / As God's own soldier" (TLN 885-6), rapidly made friends with his erstwhile enemy. Having failed in his earlier attempt to become involved directly in the action by persuading the kings to act as temporary allies on the field in order to bend their "sharpest deeds of malice" (TLN 694) on Angiers together, the Bastard resumes his role as chorus as he watches King Philip yield to

. . . that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,
That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith,
That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,
Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids--
Who having no external thing to lose
But the word "maid"--cheats the poor maid of that;
That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity.
(TLN 889-94)

27Commodity, "the bias of the world" (TLN 895), is usually glossed as "political expediency" (see OED 2.b), but it is clear that it also includes the more modern concept of commerce (OED 2.c, d), especially since the Bastard concludes his soliloquy with the cynical determination to seek his own selfish profit: "Gain be my lord, for I will worship thee" (TLN 919). Some commentators have found this vaunt inconsistent, since the Bastard does not in fact pursue self-interest later in the play and ultimately yields his power to the rightful heir to the throne, but, as I shall explore later in my discussion of the Bastard as a character, this is to ignore the overall process of learning that the Bastard undertakes in the play. Instead, largely through the Bastard, the debate concerning the value of legitimacy in power politics is broadened to explore wider questions of the complexity of determining genuinely moral action in a world of conflicting loyalties. The Bastard internalizes the debate, as he begins by choosing honor over land, is then disillusioned by the craven bargaining of the two kings, and later follows unquestioningly John's command to raid the monasteries--a command that is not shown to be driven by any kind of principle, even for an audience that would have been predominantly anti-Catholic:

KING JOHN
[To the Bastard] Cousin, away for England, haste before,
And ere our coming see thou shake the bags
Of hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels
Set at liberty. The fat ribs of peace
Must by the hungry now be fed upon.
Use our commission in his utmost force.
BASTARD
Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
(TLN 1305-11)

28At this point the Bastard has moved from the position of choric commentator to an active agent in the grubby affairs of state he earlier mocked. It is not until he is confronted with Arthur's body that he returns to his role as commentator, in the passage (quoted above) where he describes graphically the destructive effects of the "dogged war" foisted on peace by "proud-swelling state" (TLN 2147-55). The Bastard's rather eager response to John's commission to raid the monasteries may be motivated in part by the fact that he has so recently watched the legate, Pandulph, join the ranks of those who use power in the service of Commodity. In a muted echo of the strident anti-Catholicism of TRKJ, King John has specifically accused the Pope of seeking to "tithe or toll in [his] dominions" (TLN 1081), making clear his belief that the quarrel over Stephen Langton's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury is more about money--commodity--than spiritual matters.

29John's defiance at this moment in King John is the one place where some of the virulent anti-Catholic rhetoric of The Troublesome Reign surfaces. In the meta-debate between the two plays, it is clear that Shakespeare substantially tones down anti-Catholic satire. Shakespeare's play preserves intact something of the re-imagining of King John as a proto-protestant martyr that is suggested in the Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion and in Foxe's Book of Martyrs; at the same time, the subtle and menacing character he creates in Pandulph is profoundly unflattering to the Catholic church and its focus on politics and material gain. Pandulph's presence in the play is limited to his political manipulation of those he interacts with; there is no reference to his spiritual office, other than the means it gives him to force obedience through the threat of excommunication. In the recent discussion about the nature of Shakespeare's religious beliefs, John Cox provides a cogent summary: "It is simpler . . . to assume that the writing in the plays and poems is consistent with the layered faith that was characteristic of the mainstream of Elizabethan religious life than to assume that the playwright was formed by one extreme, which he then gave up" (555). King John provides strong support for this position.

30Pandulph's political use of religion introduces a related debate, on the value of oaths. Although King Philip has made a solemn oath of alliance with King John, apparently cemented by marriage, Pandulph argues that his prior, general oath to uphold the Church takes precedence. The language Shakespeare gives Pandulph is intricate and legalistic, and the audience (including the Bastard) will be very much aware of the irony that lies behind his argument: he is using Philip as a means to force John to surrender power, and profit, from the English church. Philip's prior oath is being used as a lever in the service of commodity. The staging of the scene, where it is made clear that the kings are holding hands as a symbol of their alliance, gives a strong visual signal, especially at the time when Philip lets go John's hand:

PANDULPH
I will denounce a curse upon his head.
KING PHILIP
Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.
(TLN 1252-3)

31In staging the scene, it is less obvious when the kings should initially take hands. Philip's earlier appeal to Pandulph makes clear that already the two kings are visually, as well as figuratively, demonstrating their alliance. The visual image is reminiscent of a bridal pair--like Lewis and Blanche--taking hands as they leave the altar after sharing their vows, a parallel that Philip makes explicit:

This royal hand and mine are newly knit,
And the conjunction of our inward souls
Married in league, coupled, and linked together
With all religious strength of sacred vows.
. . . . .
And shall these hands, so lately purged of blood,
So newly joined in love, so strong in both,
Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?
Play fast and loose with faith?

Of smiling peace to march a bloody host,

And make a riot on the gentle brow
Of true sincerity?
(TLN 1158-79)

32Philip does his best to dodge the issue when he tries to separate the symbol from its underlying meaning: "I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith" (TLN 1193), but Pandulph is too seasoned a casuist to be deflected, and his response to Philip is both relentlessly logical and threatening as he forces him to renounce his vow to John.

33Oaths trump oaths, vows supersede vows. Constance justifiably claims that King Philip has "beguiled" her with a "counterfeit / Resembling majesty" (TLN 1025-6). When King John suborns Hubert to kill Arthur, Hubert at first swears to do John's bidding by putting out the eyes of the young prince, but later recants and also breaks his vow--though this time the audience will be relieved rather than disappointed:

Well, see to live. I will not touch thine eye
For all the treasure that thine uncle owes.
Yet am I sworn, and I did purpose, boy,
With this same very iron to burn them out.
(TLN 1701-4)

34And there is a series of interconnected and broken vows by the English and French lords: the English break their vows of allegiance to John to join the French forces; Lewis, in a remarkable display of ingenious duplicity, vows first to support them, then to slaughter them after the battle. In the words of the repentant Melun,

Thus hath he sworn,
And I with him, and many more with me,
Upon the Altar at Saint Edmondsbury,
Even on that altar, where we swore to you
Dear amity and everlasting love.
(TLN 2478-82)

Finally, the English lords, thus warned, break their oaths to Lewis in order to "untread the steps of damnèd flight" (TLN 2513) and return to King John.

35The trajectories of the debates on the significance of legitimacy and oaths seems to converge on a pessimistic assessment that these virtues are for sale, and will be used as a convenient cover to justify actions after the event. In his passionate defense of his actions to Lewis, Salisbury explicitly justifies the disloyalty of the lords to King John by claiming that only by doing wrong can one heal the disease within the land:

such is the infection of the time
That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice, and confusèd wrong.
(TLN 2271-4)

36Much the same can be said of the lessons Lewis earlier learns from Pandulph, who educates him in the art of rationalization as he shows how to claim the English throne in the name of virtue. Telling Lewis that he is "youthful," "green," and "fresh in this old world" (TLN 1510, 1531), Pandulph "speak[s] with a prophetic spirit" (TLN 1511), foreseeing the fears of King John and the superstitions of his subjects. Much of what he foretells is perceptive and turns out to be accurate; what he does not anticipate, however, is that Lewis will learn so rapidly to marshal argument in favor of breaking faith with the Church in the interest of his own gain, refusing to call off his successful invasion of England (TLN 2342-8). Pandulph is confident in his power:

. . . even the breath of what I mean to speak
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub
Out of the path which shall directly lead
Thy foot to England's throne.
(TLN 1512-15)

But it is soon shown by Lewis to be limited and temporary, easily overcome by others wielding the same image, and a real army of men as well:

Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars
Between this chastised kingdom and myself,
And brought in matter that should feed this fire,
And now 'tis far too huge to be blown out
With that same weak wind which enkindled it.
(TLN 2337-41)

37Lewis's defiance creates an interestingly ambivalent moment for the audience; there is some satisfaction as Pandulph finds his own machiavellian arguments turned against him--even the Bastard applauds his defiance ("By all the blood that ever fury breathed, / The youth says well" [TLN 2381-2])--but at the same time Lewis has become a profound threat to the English cause, especially since the audience will be aware that the Bastard presents King John in a far more positive light than he deserves. Lewis clearly sees through the Bastard's bravado, and increasingly gains the power to overwhelm the English forces; as a result, John's capitulation to the Church is both weak and ineffective. In this instance, Pandulph's strategy is thwarted by further strategy, and any claim the Church may have to moral standards is shown to be insincere.

38There do appear to be some less morally ambiguous moments in the play when political manipulation is circumvented by actions that are driven by conscience. Hubert chooses not to blind Arthur, and Melun confesses the treachery of the French to the English lords. In each case, however, these actions, seemingly providing a moral frame of reference for the wider debate about the validity of oaths sworn to a questionable cause, are also found ultimately to be fruitless: Arthur dies anyway, and, while the English lords do indeed "Unthread the rude eye of rebellion" (TLN 2472), their actions are not shown to be the crucial event that decides the fate of the war between the French and English; the messenger that brings Lewis the news that the English lords have "fall'n off" (TLN 2537) adds in his next breath news of a further decisive disaster, that the vital "supply"(TLN 2438) Lewis needed is wrecked on Goodwin Sands in the Channel.

39In each case, happenstance rather than any moral choice is the trigger for the plot. Shakespeare underlines the effects of sheer misfortune in the similarly bad weather that the Bastard suffers, losing "half his power" (TLN 2597) in the Lincolnshire Washes (tidal flats). According to Holinshed, and in TRKJ, it is King John who loses his train--his followers and his baggage, including the crown. The overall effect of these accidents is to reduce the level of human agency in deciding the outcomes of the various debates and political manipulations we have witnessed through the play. It is something of a paradox that a play so intensely political suggests in the end that human attempts to manipulate events--however skillful--are ultimately without effect. As I have earlier suggested, in some measure King John remains firmly within the de casibus tradition where Fortune is the ultimate arbiter of human events; but the play's emphasis both on the ineffectiveness of political manipulation and of morally-driven action (notably Hubert's refusal to blind Arthur) suggests a world where human action takes place in a moral vacuum. Phyllis Rackin remarks that in this play "every source of authority fails and legitimacy is reduced to a legal fiction" (Stages 184), and Judith Weil describes King John as a "decentered and indeterminate play" (46). There is perhaps something of a foretaste of the end of King Lear, where sheer chance means that Cordelia is killed just before help arrives.

40Given that the English army is rescued by the weather rather than by its army, it is surprising that the play has so often been read as something of an exercise in patriotism. No doubt the Bastard's final rousing words have much to do with this response, and the English do, after all survive the invasion, but the method of their success may have been of little comfort to an original audience, still very much aware of the dangers of Spanish ambitions to subdue the English as enemies of the Catholic church. There have been many attempts to find specific topical references in the play, mostly in an attempt to date it in quite widely varying years (see the Textual Introduction); whatever the specific year of composition or original production of the play, the threat lingered throughout the period, as hostilities were periodically renewed; it is perhaps notable that bad weather played a major part in the English success in the Armada of 1588.

41The emphasis on chance in the resolution of King John's plot has been one of reasons why the play has been criticized as poorly constructed; the more detailed scenes at the conclusion of TRKJ rely less on coincidence, offer much more explanation, and provide a more clearly triumphant conclusion. Shakespeare's suppression of any mention of the heir apparent, Prince Henry, until just before the end of the penultimate scene is a further means by which the plot emphasizes the fragility and tenuousness of the English position. When he does appear, Prince Henry is given surprisingly passive, meditative language, in sharp contrast to the Bastard's continuing push to action. Henry speaks of himself as the "cygnet" to his father's "pale faint swan" (TLN 2627), and wishes that his tears could relieve his father's fever--to which the fretful king replies unkindly, "The salt in them is hot" (TLN 2654). On his father's death, Henry speaks piously of the omnipresence of death in the passage quoted above, "Even so must I run on, and even so stop" (TLN 2777), and his final words stress the pathos of the moment rather than the imperatives of the future:

I have a kind soul that would give thanks,
And knows not how to do it but with tears.
(TLN 2719-20)

42The dramatic focus falls again on emotion rather than on the issues that have been so extensively debated earlier in the play. Dramatically, the choice a director makes in casting Henry is important, especially in the apparent age of the actor. The Henry Shakespeare found in the chronicles was only nine years old, significantly younger than the historical Arthur, who was fourteen. Shakespeare has made his Arthur quite clearly younger than fourteen, but Henry's age is not readily determined from his characterization; some directors have cast the same actor in the parts of Arthur and Henry, a doubling that hints that the future of the kingdom is no more secure than it would have been if Arthur had succeeded to the crown. The costume designs for Herbert Beerbohm Tree's extravagant production of 1899 suggest that Arthur and Henry, played by different actors, were cast in such a way that they appeared to be about the same age.

© University of Bristol Theatre CollectionArthur © University of Bristol Theatre CollectionPrince Henry

In any case, Henry's passive language interestingly undercuts, or underplays, the importance of his legitimacy--which is certainly greater than his father's, or than the claim that Lewis made through Blanche, daughter of John's elder sister (see the family tree).

43One potential point of tension in the final scene that Shakespeare seems not to focus on is the surrender of the Bastard to the authority of the young king. Royal blood does, after all, beat in the Bastard's veins, and Shakespeare has created for him a character that is dynamic and willing to take on authority. In his meeting with Hubert in the previous scene, there is a passage that has been interpreted as signaling a crucial renunciation by the Bastard of any claim on the throne he might have:

Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power!
(TLN 2695-6)

44His use of the plural in, "tempt us," however, suggests that he is not thinking of himself alone, and may be planning a more cautious strategy than has hitherto been his style (it would require an odd linguistic paradox for him to use the royal plural while forswearing ambition to royalty). Instead, the Bastard leads the way in acknowledging the new king, and continues the cheerleading now made largely unnecessary by the retreat of the French army, with his final rallying cry:

This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror
But when it first did help to wound itself.
(TLN 2723-5)

45It has to be said that this is a somewhat conditional statement. England will do well when, and if, it stops internecine warfare. Both Shakespeare and his audience would have been aware of the destructive effect of continuous war, as his earlier plays on Henry VI and Richard III amply demonstrated--as also Richard II, if it was written before King John. Even the Bastard's final declaration, taken so often in earlier centuries as unabashed patriotism, ends, as does the play, with a conditional clause that contains a warning within its triumphal imagery:

Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them: naught shall make us rue,
If England to itself, do rest but true.
(TLN 2726-9)

46Shakespeare condensed and made ambiguous the straightforward storytelling of TRKJ, and in the process created a kind of meta-debate between the worlds of the two plays. The collective effect of Shakespeare's changes to TRKJ is that he creates greater ambiguity, and gives external events greater influence on the result of the struggles between the human agents. TRKJ, like Richard II, presents debates at some length about divine right and the responsibility of the subject to leave justice to god. In contrast, the debates in King John are more worldly, as they examine ethical issues of legitimacy and the breaking of oaths, but in the end the plot shows virtuous action to be of disconcertingly little account. Shakespeare intensifies both the political scheming by almost all characters, and at the same time highlights the deeply ironic ineffectiveness of all the scheming. If the result of this pessimism is that the play leaves uncomfortable questions unanswered, it is because there is no easy resolution. In the meta-debate between TRKJ and King John, Shakespeare dismisses the cheerful conventionality of the earlier play, and creates something of a problem play (in the Ibsenian sense) with "commodity," political expedience, and self-interest the focus both of the debates between characters and the motivations that drive them.