Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.
What, I that kill’d her husband and his father:
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by,
Having God, her conscience, and those bars against me –
(1.2.232–9f.)
Spotlight
Shakespeare creates this character’s outrageous impudence through his direct interaction with the audience, which draws us into the character’s confidence, relishing with him the arrogance of his self-proclaimed enjoyment and pride in his evil – ‘I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.’ The audience recognizes this as a disgraceful statement and yet unfailingly laughs at it. We appreciate and enjoy Richard’s outrageous manipulation, but we are also being manipulated by Shakespeare. This is not Richard’s art but the art of the dramatist.
There is little sympathy for Lady Anne at this point, in contrast to Katherine of Aragon’s predicament in the later collaborative play Henry VIII (1613), because here Shakespeare’s focus is on the dexterity of the evil villain. Some critics, for example Bernard Spivak, see Richard in this respect as a secularized adaptation of the medieval Vice figure from the medieval morality plays. Other critical perspectives have challenged this view, but the old Vice figure was comic in his audacious declaration and sought to establish a close bond with audiences, all of which Richard, Duke of Gloucester does.
‘His weeping and laughter do not by themselves establish the archaic source of Richard’s performance, but they confirm it, alongside his other unmistakable tricks of language and behavior. The dominant trait in his descent appears in the unnaturalistic dimension of his role, in the repetitious and gratuitous deceit surviving out of the old Christian metaphor, in the homiletic method of the timeless personification. It is the inspirational force of the method itself that gives birth to Richard’s wooing of Lady Anne, for which there is no hint in the chronicles (Shakespeare’s sources). That scene has its origin in theatrical convention, not in history, and its dramatic caliber sufficiently explains the playwright’s recourse to the old dramaturgy. His caliber explains the great energy and brilliance we discover in this flashing version of the transformed Vice.’
Spivak, B. (1958: 406–7), Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil. New York and London: Columbia University Press
DE CASIBUS TRAGEDY
Richard III is not just a history play in the sense of the chronicle history plays that preceded it. Some might argue that it is part of Tudor propaganda, reinforcing the Tudors’ legitimacy and authority. There is little doubt that Shakespeare was influenced by Sir Thomas More’s historical account of Richard III, written during the reign of Henry VIII. The play, however, although it has historically determined the perception of Richard III for generations, also provides an opportunity for the actor playing the protagonist. Within the context of what is termed de casibus tragedy (see Chapter 16), Richard III demonstrates the rise and fall of the protagonist.
Through the course of the play, Richard moves from the role of manipulative, intimidating and insinuating villain assisted by Buckingham, into that of the King practised in the art of counterfeit. Indeed, he is the consummate actor, who inadvertently exposes the ways in which power invests heavily in theatrical performance. He encourages Buckingham to do likewise, saying:
Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change thy colour,
Murder thy breath in middle of a word,
And then again begin, and stop again,
As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?
To which Buckingham replies:
Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion.
(3.5.1–8)
But once he gains the crown, Richard loses control of the narrative and the wheel of fortune turns. The play now takes a different course until, haunted by the ghosts of those he’s murdered (including Buckingham), Richard is brought to despair on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, where he ends on the battlefield famously crying out, ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ (5.4.7).
King John
Whether King John was written before or after Richard III is not entirely certain but it, too, has a comic side that comes through in performance. There is, however, a difference in that Shakespeare’s focus in King John is not mainly on the King, to create a virtuoso acting role, as in Richard III, but on the surrounding events. Here it is the bastard Falconbridge who takes on the role of the protagonist, as the King had in Richard III, and in addition to the decrying of ‘commodity’ Falconbridge is tolerated because he is part of the opposition to the power of the Pope.
King John appears to have been a successful play in Elizabethan England and certainly it proved popular in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, however, it did not greatly appeal. For mid-twentieth-century production it had neither the heroism of Henry V nor the comic villainy of Richard III. ‘What a bad play this is! All about a war in which it is not possible to take the slightest interest’, wrote the theatre critic James Agate in 1941. In 1924 he had written, ‘One does not pretend that the play has no good bits. There are one or two exquisite bits.’
‘King John is a character at once odious and weak…Shakespeare…had little taste for the spineless, and therefore wrote this play, not about, but round King John, whom he leaves mum in the middle of the stage whilst everybody else, including that old bore, Pandalph, talks his head off. And when John does talk it is all wind…One of the reasons why this play is so seldom acted is the difficulty of doing much with the title role.’
Agate, J. (1943: 89, 86), Brief Chronicles: A Survey of the Plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans in Actual Performance. London: Cape
INFIGHTING
Historically, and particularly since the nineteenth century, the reign of King John is known in the Western world for the signing of the Magna Carta. Although historically it was an agreement between the King and his barons, it has become indicative of the start of an evolution towards democratic governance, which extends centuries later to include the creation of the USA. Ironically, however, the Magna Carta does not figure in the play, although some modern productions insert some reference to it.
King John’s reign, historically, stands apart from the English history plays. To some extent, Shakespeare emphasizes the theatrical element rather than the political polemics, but does not, as in Richard III, exploit this in the context of de casibus tragedy. Rather he explores, as in the Henry VI plays, the infighting over power and questions of ‘truth’ and ‘authority’.
Whereas in 2 Henry VI, Jack Cade absurdly claims his royal heritage, in King John the issue of claims and reality becomes a major focus. Where in the history of King John is the truth behind the claims to the English throne? John’s proclamation of his right is that he is the one who occupies the throne. His nephew Arthur’s claim is that he is really the first in line. So whom do the people follow? The character of Hubert stands on the walls of the French town of Angiers, being besieged by the forces of the rival claimants, and he proclaims ‘…we are the king of England’s subjects:/For him, and in his right, we hold this town.’ John replies: ‘Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.’ But in reply Hubert demands proof of authority:
That can we not; but he that proves the king,
To him will we prove loyal: till that time
Have we ramm’d up our gates against the world.
(2.1.269–72)
So the town of Angiers watches as men fight and die to prove legitimacy and, again, they are similarly asked ‘…who’s your king?’ to receive the reply ‘The King of England, when we know the King’ (2.1.362–3).
LEGITIMACY AN
D AUTHORITY; TRUTH AND THE LAW
The issue is over the legitimacy and authority of the rival claims; John’s coronation hasn’t persuaded them that he is king; nor has France’s argument in favour of Arthur. So where is the proof of legitimate authority? It is then that the bastard son of Richard Coeur de Lion, who sees through the various claims and what motivates them, pragmatically advises the rival forces to unite and take the town. Arguments of legitimacy can be put to one side and authority is demonstrated by force when townspeople quibble.
The Bastard’s authority is like the Alexandrian order to cut the Gordian knot. Truth is irrelevant in the face of brute force or pragmatic politics. In the opening scene, the Bastard claims possession of his father’s lands that have been given to the second son, Robert, on the basis of a deathbed revelation that the elder boy ‘was none of his’ (1.1.111), but that is challenged by King John telling Robert ‘…your brother is legitimate;/ Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him…’ (116–17), but the Bastard, on being recognized to have the features of a possible illegitimate son of Coeur de Lion, gives up his inheritance to follow John. Opportunism, pragmatism and ambition win the day, no matter whose son he is.
Spotlight
When is the truth law? Is it with the word of the king? Is it with the word of God? John is excommunicated by the Pope, through the words of Cardinal Pandulph. Who has the greater authority, the reigning King or the Pope? John proclaims himself to be supreme head of the Church in defiance of Rome and orders that the monasteries should give up their wealth. So John’s history presages Henry VIII’s revolt against Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries and his declaration of ecclesiastical independence.
RELEVANCE TO TUDOR ENGLAND
Although more historically distant from Shakespeare in time than either the subject of Henry VI or Richard III, King John is nevertheless concerned with issues close to the Tudor England in which Shakespeare lived, and he constructs a series of parallels with which his Queen would no doubt have concurred.
‘Nineteenth-century readers first noticed the plot’s correspondence to events in the 1580s; the problem is whether the Elizabethans noticed it. Elizabeth I’s right to the throne was challenged, as John’s is in the play. She inherited from a sister, he from a brother. Her legitimacy was questioned, and she was under papal excommunication, so that the Armada of 1588 was under the same sanction as the Dauphin’s forces in the play. Mary, Queen of Scots, like Arthur, was a legitimate claimant to the throne, supported by France and the Church. Like John, Elizabeth issued a kind of indirect death warrant, and she disowned the state servant who carried it out as John disowns Hubert. Shortly after Mary’s death, the Catholic powers tried to invade England and depose Elizabeth; as in the play, the attack was beaten off by English valour, and finally scattered by violent storms.’
Brownlow, F. W. (1977: 93), Two Shakespearean Sequences. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan
Critical debates, however, continue about how much weight to place on the historical parallels found in the play with the Elizabethan political situation immediately prior to and contemporaneous with its composition, but to my mind these connections are quite evident. Shakespeare may have diluted the overt Protestant polemic of his source play but the conflict with papal authority is manifest. Interestingly, in 2015 the Shakespeare’s Globe production of the play began with incense and ritual.
ENGAGING THE MODERN AUDIENCE
King John is not a tragedy but an exploration of chronicle history with much humour, even farce, some terror and diplomacy. It is an entertainment and, remarkably, one that in its historicity still has the power of narrative to engage with modern audiences, who also enjoy modern works such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall both as a novel and as a television adaptation. Over the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the play has had number of contemporary revivals, often emphasizing its comic elements. It is a play that comes in and out of fashion as the appetite for social humour lessens or heightens, in contrast with the virtuoso acting tradition of a play such as Richard III, but it is a play that deserves more attention than it usually receives.
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The English history plays 2: Richard II (1595–6)
Drama depends on conflict. In Richard II we have a conflict of the transition from one culture enshrined in ritual and ceremony to a new one of political expediency and opportunism.
To understand what is happening in Richard II, it is useful to know about the institution of monarchy as it was understood by many at the time of Shakespeare. Whether that is exactly the same as at the time of Richard II himself (King of England 1377–99) is a matter for historians to debate, though certain common elements may well have been present.
The anointed king
In Act 3 of Richard II the discomforted king states:
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.
(3.2.54–7)
An anointed king, at his coronation, shares an affinity with the identity of a priest, who is similarly anointed at his ordination. The relationship between the two can be traced back to the Old Testament of the Bible, and particularly to the account of the Jewish Priest-King Melchisideck. In Christianity a priest, once ordained with holy oils, is regarded as a member of the order of Melchisideck ‘for ever’. The oils used at a king’s coronation, like those at a priest’s ordination, cannot be removed. Such anointing cannot be reversed for a priest of God or for the king, who is ‘the deputy elected by the Lord’, that is, God’s deputy on earth.
In 1957 E. H. Kantorowicz published The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, which was reissued in 1998. It is a book that has been harshly contested by new historicists such as Richard Wilson, who, in his consideration of Julius Caesar (2002: 11), discusses it as ‘manufactured medievalism’ of ‘mystic kingship’, which ‘infiltrated English Studies…to become an ersatz reference for spiritualizing critics’ (see Chapter 23). Ironically for one of the new historicists, who have themselves been criticized for the tangential nature of some of their evidence, Wilson adds that there is ‘no proof that, except for a few lawyers, Elizabethans had ever heard of the fantasy of “the king’s two bodies”’ (Wilson, R. N. [2002: 11]).
The theory of the king’s two bodies, ‘a Body natural, and a Body politic’ comes from Plowden’s Elizabethan Commentaries and Reports quoted by Kantorowicz as ‘collected and written under Queen Elizabeth’. Within this, Kantorowicz holds, is ‘the first clear elaboration of that mystical talk with which the English crown jurists enveloped and trimmed their definitions of kingship and royal capacities’. The theory is that the king’s natural body is mortal, as with other people, and just as subject to illness, imbecility, old age and death. But the king’s ‘Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and the Management of the public weal’. This body is ‘utterly void’ of the ‘defects and Imbecilities’ of the body natural, and it passes from one ruler to the next in what should be orderly succession (Kantorowicz, E. H. [1957, p/b 1981: 7]).
It may well be that the general populace was not acquainted with the detailed legalistic argument of the jurists, but kingship then and until the present day has been based on at least one of three aspects: victory in arms; justification through sacramental anointing as God’s deputy; and the stability of a nation through heritage and custom. When the monarch dies, the phrase ‘the King/Queen is dead, long live the King/Queen’ is invoked. Whether it is fantasy, mysticism or ersatz reference, the concept of the God’s anointed was – and in some quarters still is – a basis of belief for which some Elizabethan jurists appear to have given an explanation. This is part of the ‘discourse’ of kingship, and while it can be criticized as an ideology in the way that cultural materialists like Alan Si
nfield and Jonathan Dollimore do, its effects in the sense that it shaped people’s thinking were material. It is clear that kingship was promoted by the Tudors and Stuarts as being an eternal living entity. At the anointing of the king at his coronation the abstract body of the institution of kingship and the actual mortal body of the king become one and could not be separated except through death.
Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare’s Richard II
Shakespeare wrote Richard II at the time when there was no king, but a queen. Elizabeth, however, modelled herself on Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, who in the New Testament is reported to have conceived her son, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Holy Trinity accepted by Catholic and most Protestant Christianity. In one sense, the Virgin Mary had served a priest-like function. The Virgin Mary intercedes on behalf of sinners in the way that saints were supposed to act as intermediaries.
Elizabeth fabricated a similar identity, suggesting that she saw herself as interceding between her subjects and God. The doctrine of the Virgin Mary holds that she had been miraculously conceived by the Holy Ghost and thereby remained the ‘Virgin Mother of God’, and the ‘Virgin Queen of Heaven’ to whom people prayed for protection. This was exactly the identification that Elizabeth encouraged. She was anointed at her coronation just as a king would have been, and she regarded and promoted herself as the ‘Virgin Queen’, while at the same time images of the Virgin Mary were being burned by the radical Protestant converts.
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