Dusty:

As with Hamlet (and 1 Henry IV) we have a king whose right to rule is doubtful, or at least doubted. And a foreign (and domestic) power that wants  to interfere. As with Lear, we have a lively bastard. It’s odd, don’t you think, that the dramatis personae do not include either of John’s two historical wives or his sons, one of whom, Henry III, succeeded him in 1216? Since young Arthur is alive, but is not in the dramatis personae, the action of the play must be prior to Arthur’s murder in 1203.

The first act is probably the shortest first act in the canon, consisting of only one scene of about 250 lines, at least in my act/scene division. John is immediately presented with two problems, one foreign and one domestic. Both concern succession: the first, whether the true successor to John’s brother, Richard I, was Arthur, the son of the next oldest brother (as Arthur’s mother claims, with the support of France), or John  himself. He first deals quickly and decisively with the threat from France, sending the envoy packing, ignoring the envoy’s slur, in the opening lines, about John’s “borrowed majesty.” (That seems to be an amusing — or diplomatic — euphemism for usurped throne — and the envoy makes clear later that he regards John as usurper and Arthur as “right royal sovereign.”)

John ignores “borrowed majesty” but his mother notices it, and seems to acknowledge that John rules not by “right” but by “strong possession” — i.e., he claimed the throne and now possesses it (and maybe possession is nine tenths of the law). She also suggests that John could solve his foreign problem by “arguments of love” (i.e., negotiations), but it’s not clear to me what could be negotiated.

A second problem also concerns succession: should the true successor (and heir) to Sir Robert Faulconbridge be one who claims to be his older son or his younger son. This problem takes up more of John’s time, and the rest of the scene, seeming to send a signal that the play is going to deal primarily with the bastard and his legitimate younger  brother. The Bastard is initially appealing, both to the King and his mother and to the audience: he is “blunt” but something of a “mapcap,” “lusty” and apparently much better looking than his half-brother. The Bastard looks like it’s going to be a good part for an actor; by contrast, Faulconbridge looks to be a rather pale straight man.

I was surprised when the Bastard initially insisted that he was the legitimate son and  heir of Sir Robert Faulconbridge and then, when offered a deal, including service with Queen Elinor, conceded that his father was in fact King Richard I. (And it seems odd that the Bastard doesn’t say anything about the unfairness of being excluded from the succession to the throne.) So he came to court to sue for land and left it with a title but landless. (Is it just a coincidence that John is called in history “Lackland”?)

The Bastard dominates the scene with his language, his bravado (“I am I”), and his soliloquy (lines 182-219). He presents himself as a self-consciously immoral man, intending to rise by fair means or foul. Like John, the Bastard seems to rest his case on results, not rights: his mother did not commit a sin in bearing him. Indeed, given the outcome, it would have been a “sin” if she had refused Richard’s persuasive advances.

The meeting with his mother also surprised me. Initially she insists that she is guiltless, and that Faulconbridge is the Bastard’s father, but then quickly concedes that his father was in fact Richard I. (I suppose a good actress could make her concession seems plausible.)

Michael:

I’m always cursed to remember, irrelevantly, A.A. Milne’s “King John’s Christmas”: “King John was not a good man, He had his little ways, And sometimes no one spoke to him, For days and days, and days.” Shakespeare’s King John isn’t much better, but he doesn’t seem to want a big red india-rubber ball.

Yes, King John’s right to the throne is doubtful. I do have Arthur in my dramatis personae, and presumably something will come out about his right to the throne from his father, Geoffrey, who was ahead of John in the succession; Geoffrey’s son would then precede John in the succession. I initially found this a bit murky in the opening of the play, but I guess Elizabethan audiences would know of Geoffrey, Arthur, and Constance. Why France was involved in the dispute isn’t at first clear either. But the main question in the first act is the Bastard’s parentage and status. He promises to be central presence in the play, and like all Sh’s bastards he’s amusing and plain-spoken. I don’t think he would in any case have a claim to the throne, being a bastard, and here he doesn’t seem to have a claim to anything but his new name from his now revealed father.

I don’t know if the Bastard is self-consciously immoral. He might be, given what Sh. does elsewhere with bastards, but he might prove somewhat different. His soliloquy would require some good acting, and perhaps a good deal of gesturing, to be entirely open and understandable to an audience. What he seems to promise is clarity and satire, and we must find ourselves on his side. He does get off some good lines, like “Sir Robert might have eat his part in me Upon Good Friday, and ne’er broke his fast.” In any case his identity is established by the end of the act, and he absolves his mother from any blame in King Richard’s begetting.

Michael:

In act 2 we get two quarrels, that between Eleanor and Constance over whose sons have the strongest claim on the throne and between John and Philip over Angers. (During a driving tour of the Loire a couple of years ago, our GPS amused us by constantly pronouncing Angers, “angers” as if it were English.) In any case Constance’s insistence on Arthur’s claim is now made clear in her back and forth with Eleanor. A note in my text says Sh. confused Angers with Anjou — or maybe the confusion came of his sources. Each of the kings gives long speeches about claims on Angers, which becomes, maybe amusingly, futile as the city itself says it will wait until it’s clear which king is really king. It’s the Bastard who eventually comes up with the idea of the kings and their armies uniting to raze the town itself that they’re fighting over. When Austria and France say they’ll fire their anachronistic cannons from opposite sides, the Bastard laughs at this, as they’ll be firing at each other.

It’s finally the citizen of Angers who comes up with the idea of a marriage solution to the problem of possession. If John’s niece, the Spanish Blanche marries the French king’s son Louis, they can unite in their possession of the city. The Bastard is the amusing commentator on the arrangement, “I was never so bethumped with words Since I first called my brother’s father Dad.” In fact there’s a good deal of bethumping with words in this act, maybe all the royal rhetoric, certainly the language of Louis the Dauphin when he speaks of Blanche. Louis is very suddenly in love with her.

The Bastard’s soliloquy “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition” is one of the clear gems of the play, and its insistence on “commodity” is wonderful. It seems to hover between its modern meaning and an Elizabeth meaning that may be something like “interest” or profit-seeking or self-serving. One expects it will prove thematically central in the play. It certainly pulls the rug out from under both kings and their royal dignity.

The next and last scene of the act brings Constance forward. She’s not at all happy with the peace accord in the marriage and bitterly denounces it before Arthur. At the end of the scene, she sits on the ground, like King Richard?

Who needs the Magna Carta when we have the Bastard as our guide?

Dusty:

Yes, both Arthur (son of Geoffrey) and Henry (son of John) are in my dramatic personae. I overlooked them, and neither appears in the first act. So this will be very much a play about who is the legitimate king of England — John or Arthur — and presumably who will succeed John. (It will turn out to be Henry.)

Act 2 is one long scene, nearly 600 lines. And it’s got long declamatory speeches by the rival kings, but also the rival “queens,” John’s mother Elinor and Arthur’s mother Constance. Sometimes the long speeches seemed rather full of “rhetoric” — maybe more appealing to Elizabethan audiences than today. I had the sense that the speakers could make their points without such elaboration. The verse seems to be more regular and even, rolling out in marching pentameters, than in Shakespeare’s later plays, especially the tragedies.

As you say, each side claims to be supporting the legitimate king. Linking with The Bastard, each of the two sides charges the other with giving birth to a bastard, and The Bastard himself, vaunting, assumes that there are other bastards to boot on each side.  We have a short off-stage battle, with both sides claiming victory. So Shakespeare seems to be suggesting that the two sides are in various ways equal. That’s the way the citizens of Angiers look at it. They plan to go with whoever proves to be the winnere.

The Bastard is a satiric commentator and also turns out to provide an off-the-wall (“wild counsel”) and cynical solution to the stand-off: both sides should join forces and destroy the town. This prompts Angiers to propose a completely political marriage between the French Dauphin (I smile when I think of him as a “Dolphin”) and the Spanish Blanche, who turns out to be John’s niece. (I could not work out whose daughter she is.) The marriage would provide each side with some influence and maybe a future claim. As a sop, Henry makes Arthur Duke of Brittany. My footnote says Elinor promised Blanche to the Bastard, and it’s not clear why Shakespeare suppressed that. Maybe it would have made things too complicated.

The Bastard’s soliloquy about “commodity” is  maybe the best speech yet. It seems to make clear that the Bastard himself is going to follow everybody else is pursuing his own interests by hook or by crook: “Gain be my lord.”

Dusty:

Act 3, by contrast, has four scenes, of which the first is nearly 350 lines. We get the predictable outrage of Constance (who was conveniently off stage when the marriage deal was struck), on behalf of her son. But then, surprisingly, we get wholly new plot material: Pandulph, the papal legate, now declares Stephen Langton to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. John denounces the deal, and the papal interference. (I gather from notes that some Elizabethans regarded John as a proto-Protestant.) It’s not clear that the play is going to deal seriously with this event. Its main function in the play seems to be to throw a monkey wrench into the France-England alliance, and to set the two sides at odds once again. The Bastard continues to provide sniping commentary from the sidelines. But he’s not just a Thersitical commentator: he’s closely linked to Elinor, and John makes use of him, even though his initial but abandoned claim to be heir to Faulconbridge seems to be ignored. (Is the deal whereby the Bastard gives up his claim but gets to be a knight yet another political “deal,” like the deals made between the French and the English?)

I was struck with the presence in this act (and play) of several strong and outspoken women, who do not hesitate to speak up and to challenge the men, not just the two protective mothers (Elinor and Constance) but also young Blanche, whose loyalties are now divided. Is there another Shakespeare play with such women? It’s striking that, by contrast, young Arthur is not a commanding figure.

In the remainder of the act, John takes Arthur prisoner and then plots to have Arthur killed. It’s not clear to me why Shakespeare, in having Arthur taken to England, departs from Holinshed. Maybe it’s to make the murder seem uglier, because it takes place on English soil. Meanwhile the French side loses a battle, and Constance laments (and vents). Pandulph now cynically proposes that it’s OK to sacrifice Arthur, because it may mean an ultimate victory for the French, under the Dauphin. This makes the papacy looks amoral at best, but it also contributes to the vein of realpolitik in the play. At one point it is noted that appealing to “law” is useless since whoever controls the crown controls the law. And at another (3.4.135-36) that “A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand/ Must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d.” I was reminded of Marvell’s lines at the end of the “Horatian Ode”: The same arts that did gain/ A pow’r, must it maintain.” (Maybe Marvell alludes to Shakespeare’s version of a political commonplace.)

Michael:

I think the rather excessive (to my mind too) rhetoric is met head on by the Bastard’s comment, “Zounds, I was never so bethumped with words Since I first called by brother’s father Dad.” The momentary strategy, suggested by the Bastard, of uniting forces to overcome Anger meets what seems an almost comic contradiction in John’s suggestion to knit their powers and raze Angers to the ground, then fight to see who will be king of it. As I noted, the Bastard says if they have the mettle of kings, they should direct their artillery to the town, then after it’s been leveled, turn on one another to see who will be king over the ruins.  Lots of ironic business.

Yes, Constance especially and Eleanor certainly are formidable women, but they both seem shrill and little positive seems to come of their quarrel. What Constance cries up is “War, war, no peace! Peace to me is war.” And this just before Pandolf enters and curses John. The upshot is the return of hostilities between England and France. Blanche expresses the futility of it all to her (3.1.252ff.)

Another use of that head prop, to reappear in Macbeth and Cymbeline? here for Austria.

After a couple of battle scenes (alarum, excursions, retreat), John engages Hubert to kill Arthur. In the final scene of the act, Pandolf emerges as the spokesman for realpolitik over against the Dauphin’s naivete.

Michael:

Act 4 begins with the emotionally wrought scene between Hubert, charged with execution by John, and Arthur. Hubert’s threat and attempt to blind Arthur may remind us of the blinding of Gloucester, but here Hubert finally pities Arthur. Arthur is one of Sh’s precocious wise children and able to talk Hubert out of his purpose.

In 4.2 we have John’s second coronation, which seems curious, but I guess its purpose was to require John’s barons to swear allegiance a second time. Salisbury and Pembroke argue for its superfluity before John, which seems bold. Apparently this was historically based, or was thought to be so. Hubert comes to the king with the false news of Arthur’s death, and on hearing of it, Salisbury and Pembroke walk out in disgust. John says he repents. Now France invades, and John learns his mother and Constance are both dead. (Constance had seemed in an earlier scene to be eligible for death in her near madness.)

When Hubert comes to John, John at first denies he ordered Arthur’s death, then when confronted with the warrant itself, he blames Hubert for not trying to talk him out of it. But then Hubert discloses that he did not kill Arthur. John orders him to go to the peers with this news. But immediately Arthur does die in his leap from the walls of the castle. John seems guilty of the death, even though he was factually not its cause.

The ambiguity surrounding Arthur’s death seems to express the historical question about its cause. But the Bastard first blames Hubert, but then the latter’s adamant denial seems to baffle the Bastard, who nevertheless identifies Arthur as the true king of England and laments the state of the kingdom. In this the Bastard seems to achieve a kind of nobility, even as he refers to John as king. With Arthur’s death, John’s right to the throne seems confirmed, if clouded by his previous desire for his nephew’s death. But now there seems only one way for John to go, so compromised as he is.

Dusty:

You make a good point that the two strong women, Constance and Elinor, are shrill and quarrelsome. And the fact that Shakespeare killed them both off in a couple of lines in 4.2 suggests that he had taken their measure and found them wanting. I thought the announcement of their deaths was sudden and surprising.

You’re right that in 4.1 Arthur “talks Hubert out” of killing him. Arthur in this scene is more loquacious than he ever was before. What, by the way, is Hubert (more or less the “mayor” of Angers) doing in England? He has to be there to do John’s bidding, but it’s not otherwise accounted for.

In 4.3 why does Shakespeare not follow the tradition that John deliberately had Arthur killed? Maybe he wants all the political participants look bad, not just John.

Everybody unfairly blames Hubert for the death, John, the English lords, and the Bastard too. I think that makes the Bastard look bad. But the act ends with the Bastard pronouncing on the perilous state of England. Shakespeare seems to be setting him up for the moral center of the play.

Dusty:

Act 5 apparently begins in on Ascension Day in 1213, when John is crowned for the second time. But Act 4 ended in 1203, with the death of Arthur. Shakespeare is playing fast and loose with dates and chronology. As is his practice, Shakespeare varies the structure of his acts. Act 4 had only three scenes. Act 5 has 7, several of them short, as his battle scenes often are.

In 5.1 Pandolph promotes peace but the Bastard wants to fight the French. Maybe Shakespeare thought his audiences, remembering the Armada, wanted to hear patriotic rhetoric about England defeating foreign foes. But England doesn’t actually have to be the warmonger. In 5.2 the Dolphin also refuses Pandolph’s advice that the French withdraw, so the French are just as bent on war as the English, and now the English nobles are reluctant to fight against their own countrymen: we’re circling the wagons and getting prepared for a straightforward England vs. France match. Again the Bastard urges war. In this scene both the Dolphin and the Bastard get long speeches — longer than they need. Three quick scenes then follow. The English camp gets mixed news, and John is burning with a fever. The English nobles are advised by the French Melune that the French are false friends. (Even though he is dying, Melune gets a long speech of nearly 40 lines, interrupted only briefly.) And then the French get bad news of the loss of their supplies.

In 5.6 things look bad for the English too, when John has apparently been poisoned. But when the English nobles rejoin John his prospects improve. In comes John’s son, Prince Henry. Isn’t this the first time we have seen him or even heard anything about him? In 5.7 John dies and he is succeeded by Henry, so it must be 1216, when the historical Henry was nine years old.

I gather that the Elizabethans knew of two traditions about John — that he was a tyrant, and that he was a  proto-Protestant martyr. Holinshed mostly takes the first view and Foxe the second. It would appear that Shakespeare is following both, making clear that John was a bad king but also that he stood up to the Pope and the French.

Just what we are supposed to think of John gets complicated by the fact that the Bastard is loyal to John to the end. It’s hard to get a fix on the Bastard. He’s a freebooter, linked but not tied by lineage to anybody. He’s a satirical commentator who punctures bombastic balloons of rhetoric. He pursues his own “gain.” He unfairly blames Hubert. He is bellicose when it turns out that peace is the better solution. Although he thinks Arthur is the rightful king, he sticks by John. He’s a sort of Henry 5 type. It’s surprising that we hear nothing in Act 5 about the Bastard’s abandoned claims to Faulconbridge land.

And we hear nothing about Magna Charta, which is what, since the 18th century, everybody remembers about John’s reign. Maybe it was for Elizabethan reasons that Shakespeare did not want to “go there,” did not want to suggest that the power of the monarch should in any way be restricted.

Michael:

The last act of the play seems to me to wander and miss any sense of a single direction. Yes, those speeches of the Dauphin, Salisbury, and the Bastard are too long and don’t appear to lead to a clear conclusion. Melun in his death seeks to reassure the English and push the rebelled Salisbury back to John. The wreck of the Dauphin’s reinforcement contributes to the security of the English forces. But then news of John’s poisoning throws things into another disarray. It’s very hard, I think, to determine the play’s sympathies from one scene to another. John was been morally discredited by his apparent ordering of Arthur’s death, then by his denial that this is what he had in mind, which is patently false. The Bastard’s loyalty may help, but not enough to solidify the narrative. Prince Henry’s entry seems too late to be of much consequence to our sense of John. Salisbury’s lines that declare that Henry’s birth was to set a form on the “indigest,” or chaos,”which he [John] hath left so shapeless and so rude.” But that appears the narrative problem of the play. And it doesn’t help that Henry was a boy of nine or ten at the time of John’s death, so it’s hard to assign him much of a role. John’s reputation as a Protestant hero and martyr and also a villain in his capitulation to Pandulf and the pope contribute to the problem.

Interestingly, it’s the Bastard who gets the last word. He wouldn’t seem the most senior or important figure, but he does seem to achieve a commanding position in the play.

Scenes and speeches seem quite potent and mature, some characters too, but they’re woven into a play that seems problematic in its plotting and narrative direction. I wonder if a good part of the problem may be the complexity of the historical material and the difficulty of finding a straightforward narrative. John’s reign seems so full of indirections and complexity.

But I was glad for the rereading because of the character of the Bastard, even though he seems to diminish in interest toward the end of the play. And the scene between Hubert and Arthur is quite wonderful.