King John

The Life and Death of King John

Summary:

King John’s hold on the crown of England is disputed by his young nephew Arthur, who is backed by France. At the same time, he has been excommunicated by the Catholic Church - he finds himself alone facing the powers of Europe, and with growing dissension at home due to increased tax levies. With the Bastard (the unimaginatively named illegitimate son of his older brother Richard the Lionheart), he fights off these claims to his authority and ultimately captures Arthur, who dies as John’s prisoner. As the war with France rages, John ultimately succumbs to fever and dies, leading to his son taking the throne as Henry III.

Some Historical Context:

This is, chronologically, the first of Shakespeare’s plays concerning the history of his native England. As we start to review these histories, I’ll be adding a short section which provides some historical context for the work. Now, two things should be established at the start; I am not a historian, and neither was Shakespeare. These plays should not be read as a textbook historical account of English history, nor will my short summaries here accurately represent what was a massively tumultuous time in English history (Shakespeare’s history plays cover approximately 1100 - 1500). Think of these plays in the same sense you do modern media that covers events like the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars - they are national epics telling stories we all know, more concerned with saying something about who we are as a people than with accurately recounting the facts and figures of a time.

The historical John, King of England, ruled from 1199 - 1216. He is quite possibly the least popular English monarch in English history, at least by reputation - you’ll note that unlike every other King, no numbers follow his name. That’s because his reign was considered so disastrous none of his successors ever wanted to draw comparisons to it. You’ll most likely know John for the Magna Carta - he so incensed the lords of England with his high taxes that he was forced to sign the document giving explicit powers to bishops and barons, and established the foundations for what would become the English constitution, the American constitution, and, hyperbolically, democratic government.

In popular culture, John lives in the shadow of Richard I, aka Richard the Lionheart, the folk hero and King of England best known for leading the Third Crusade. Going by media, John was everything Richard was not - cowardly, weak, petty, and dependent on others to do his fighting for him. Besides this play, you’ll probably know John best as the villain in the Robin Hood stories alongside the Sheriff of Nottingham. Remember the cowardly, thumb-sucking lion in the Disney animated film? That’s this guy. Whether this portrayal is accurate is hotly debated by historians, but it was certainly the context King John was seen in during Shakespeare’s time.

What It’s About:

History is chaos

This is one of Shakespeare’s least popular plays - it’s certainly the odd duck of the histories, and is also the first of these plays that I had not read before starting this exercise. All of that is likely for a reason; the play, while by no means terrible, is certainly a tier below what we’ve read so far. Beyond that fact that it’s about a historically unpopular ruler, as mentioned above, the play also lacks a truly cohesive narrative that drives everything forward; rather, it comes across as a series of related episodes, each sort of moving and resolving at their own pace without much determination or momentum. King John himself provides little structure to build off of, as he hardly drives any of the action, and is more often than not on the sidelines for the major action of the play. The closest thing we have to a protagonist, The Bastard, disappears for a good chunk of the third act and gets little development beyond stirring the pot and antagonizing other characters. And nearly every conflict in the play ends in anticlimax. Arthur, John’s main rival for the throne, is captured midway through the play and dies by falling off a castle wall. The lords of England betray John for France, but reverse their course within two scenes. And even John’s death comes as the result of an off-screen positioning based on a conflict (the heavy taxation of the church) that is not dramatized at all in the preceding acts. Everything feels disjointed, disconnected, and overall meaningless. In other words, it feels like real, non-fictional life.

The critical consensus seems to be that this is intentional - that Shakespeare is deliberately portraying the movements of history as arbitrary and dependent on capricious circumstances. It’s an interesting transition from his previous work - despite being the first history chronologically, it’s generally accepted that the first tetralogy, Henry VI 1-3 and Richard III, were written first. These plays hew more closely to a vision of history guided by God and Providence, with the rulers of England moving gloriously albeit fitfully forward to a grand destiny under the rule of a divinely ordained King. No such Providence exists for King John, and in fact his reign seems dangerously human, marred by petty jealousies and cruelty. Of course, it’s also possible that Shakespeare was merely limited by his source material - that there was no grand narrative to be found within John’s life. I certainly like the interpretation that the play’s disjointed nature is meant to capture the chaos of history - it’s full of intrigues, allies changing sides on a whim, and random happenstance shattering even the best laid plans. In other words, it feels like a distinctly modern interpretation.

If This Were A Movie:

This one’s a bit tricky, but I’m going to stretch a little here and say that King John’s closest analogue is probably something along the lines of the HBO series Deadwood - a historical, big-cast drama that was trying to capture the feel of a specific moment in American history. While my initial instinct was to suggest the historical biopic, the fact of the matter is the play is not all that concerned with John’s life and the events of his reign. Rather, it is all about capturing the mood of this particular criss point in English history, and portraying that through a series of vaguely interconnected incidents. John’s life and death are ultimately secondary - it is the history and well-being of England that take center stage in this play, moved by a true ensemble of characters working to their own ends.

The Line From The Play That You Know:

Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,

To guard a title that was rich before,

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice or add another hue 

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. - 4.2.9-16

One of my favorite examples of just how influential Shakespeare’s writing has been on the English language - even this relatively obscure play has given us the idiom ‘gilding the lily.’ In this scene, King John is being dressed down by his lords for holding a second coronation following the capture of his nephew Arthur, the would-be usurper to his throne. Here, Lord Salisbury claims that lavishing on so much to an already esteemed title is not only excessive, but calls into question the legitimacy that was just established. 

The Line You Should Know:

This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror

But when it first did help to wound itself. - 5.7.112-114

Part of the final speech of the play, delivered by the Bastard, this passage underscores the strong sense of English nationalism that runs through the play. He claims, essentially, that England will not fall unless it is weakened by internal strife - that as long as the country stands together, united as one people, it cannot be beaten. Now, there is a lot to unpack in that sentiment, but the main reason I’ve chosen this line is because it was echoed some 200 years after its writing by the American President Abraham Lincoln in his Lyceum Address. It’s not explicitly known if Abe was paraphrasing Shakespeare here, but given his own well-established habit of reading the bard, I have my suspicions.

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide. - Abraham Lincoln

Notable Adaptation:

So for the most part I’ve come up empty on this one. I wasn’t lying when I said this was one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays, especially for American audiences. There has not been a Broadway revival since 1915, and there have been essentially no major Hollywood film adaptations either. The play was hugely popular in Victorian England (ie, the 1800s) - generally this is attributed to the pomp and spectacle of the various royal characters within the play. When done well, King John can be lushly beautiful, depicting a court dripping in excess as one of the signs of John’s incompetent rule. 

One fun piece of trivia however - while there may not be any modern adaptations, King John holds the title of the earliest surviving film adaptation of Shakespeare’s work. In 1899, a recording was made of director Herbert Beerboh, Tree’s upcoming adaptation of the play. A silent film was created using scene 5.7 of the play; John’s death scene. As you can tell from the shot below, it’s hardly the lush quality we’ve come to expect from Shakespearean adaptations, but it’s a fun bit of trivia.

General Notes:

As mentioned above, the primary candidate for a protagonist in this play would seem to be the Bastard - he is introduced as Philip Falconbirdge, and later knight as Sir Richard Plantagenet, legitimizing him in the service of King John. However throughout the play he’s referred to in stage directions as ‘Bastard’ so that name has stuck. He undertakes the majority of the action in the play, leading John’s forces against the French and chastising the English lords for their abandonment of their true king. However, despite all this he is hardly a hero - in fact, the character is widely known for his frequent, often biting asides, speaking directly to the audience and casually mocking almost everyone else onstage, including his so-called allies. While this makes his role in the action hard to place, it also makes him into the most interesting character in the piece, and the starring role alongside King John.

While the Bastard feels distinctly modern - a character breaking the fourth wall and snarking about ongoing events in a vaguely meta-textual fashion would be right at home in most 2000s media - the character actually has his roots in much older form of entertainment; the Vice archetype from medieval morality plays. The morality play was in many ways the precursor to the theater of Shakespeare’s time - short productions staged by actors primarily constructed to deliver a very heavy-handed theme or moral (hence the name). Frequently, they featured a protagonist meant to portray humanity and named something like Everyman or Mankind. Everyman would encounter characters like Vice, Virtue, Death, and the Devil, all of whom would fulfill exactly the roles you would expect based on their names - either tempting him down a dark path or attempting to bring him towards salvation. At the end of the play, he would either be saved or damned, and all present would have learned a valuable lesson.

As heavy-handed as all that sounds, there was apparently a great deal of fun to be had for the players in some of these performances, and Vice in particular ended up being one of the chief elements of comic relief in these works - even medieval audiences didn’t like being lectured to, apparently. Vice, therefore, would wreak all kinds of havoc onstage, playing pranks, speaking directly to the audience, and generally turning characters against each other in keeping with his name. Vice, in fact, is likely where we get the trope of an evil villain monologuing his plans to the audience from - the character was extremely fond of doing so in these old morality plays. Shakespeare would take elements of this archetype in a number of his history plays, and the Bastard is just such an example. He constantly stirs the pot, taunting and teasing other characters in the play, and stirring on action and conflict just when things seem to be resolved. 

A Monologue For the Road

Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!

John, to stop Arthur's title in the whole,

Hath willingly departed with a part,

And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,

Whom zeal and charity brought to the field

As God's own soldier, rounded in the ear

With 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,

Commodity, the bias of the world,

The world, who of itself is peised well,

Made to run even upon even ground,

Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,

This sway of motion, this Commodity,

Makes it take head from all indifferency,

From all direction, purpose, course, intent:

And this same bias, this Commodity,

This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,

Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France,

Hath drawn him from his own determined aid,

From a resolved and honourable war,

To a most base and vile-concluded peace.

And why rail I on this Commodity?

But for because he hath not woo'd me yet:

Not that I have the power to clutch my hand,

When his fair angels would salute my palm;

But for my hand, as unattempted yet,

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich. - 2.1.561-592