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KING JOH N.

"KING JOHN," which is the only uncontested play of Shakespeare's not entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, was first printed in the folio collection of 1623. Though enumerated in the list of our author's works by Meres, 1598, commentators have not succeeded in determining the time when it was written. Malone seems to have been of opinion that the maternal lamentations of Lady Constance, for the loss of Arthur, are an expression of the poet's own grief at the death of his son Hammet in 1596; and if this theory were admissible, we should, of course, be bound to conclude that "King John" was not written until after that date. But conjectures of this nature are very fanciful. There are undoubtedly high authorities in literature to justify a poet in availing himself of such an occasion to celebrate an event not strictly connected with his theme; but in those cases the writers worked on great historical subjects. It can scarcely be believed that a man of Shakespeare's incomparable sagacity would have interwoven a merely personal sentiment into a drama intended to interest the public at large. It savours of a reproach to the poet's memory to represent him giving utterance to his own sorrow for the loss of an obscure lad, twelve years old, when depicting the anguish of such a character as Constance for the loss of her princely Arthur. The language and ideas which would be appropriate in the one case would be out of keeping in the other; and those who are best acquainted with Shakespeare's habitual self-negation, will not suspect him of perpetrating this act of bathos.

Johnson has observed, that the description of the English army which Chatillon, the French Ambassador, gives to King Philip, in the first scene of the second act, beginning,

"And all the unsettled humours of the land,”—

may have been suggested by the dramatist's acquaintance with the details of the grand fleet despatched against Spain in 1596. But here again we must be cautious in attaching particular meaning to descriptions which would apply with equal truth to almost any expedition. The fleet which the Earls of Nottingham and Essex led against Cadiz was not the only one which had been partly manned by gentlemen. History furnishes too many instances where men

"Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,

Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,"

that they might participate in adventures of a similar kind; and Shakespeare may have derived the materials of Chatillon's description from the chronicles of different periods and various countries. As if to show, indeed, how fallacious such guess-work often is, Johnson has attempted to make a similar deduction from another passage in this play. He conceived that Pandulph's denunciation of King John,

"And meritorious shall that hand be call'd,
Canonized, and worshipp'd as a saint,
That takes away by any secret course
Thy hateful life,'

might either refer to the bull published against Queen Elizabeth, or to the canonization of Garnet, Fawkes, and their accomplices, who, in a Spanish book which he had seen, are registered as saints. The latter theory would fix the writing of the play after 1605, and is at once demolished by a reference to the corresponding scene of the old piece of "King John," printed in 1591, upon which this is based, where the Legate denounces John :

:

"Then I Pandulph of Padua, legate from the apostolike sea doe in the name of Saint Peter and his successor our holy father Pope Innocent, pronounce thee accursed, discharging every of thy subjects of all dutie and fealtie that they doe owe te thee, and pardon and forgiveness of sinne to those or them whatsoever, which shall carrie armes against thee, or murder thee: this I pronounce, and charge all good men to abhorre thee as an excommunicate person."

Such hypotheses as these, however, if they do little towards establishing the chronology of Shakespeare's writings, are forcible confirmations of the fact that he wrote "not for an age, but for all time." His representations are so truthful and life-like that it is the easiest of all undertakings to find a model whence he may be presumed to have drawn them. He describes the ruinous extravagance into which noblemen and gentlemen are seduced in equipping themselves for a foreign enterprise, and the arrogant pretensions of the Catholic Church in dealing with a rebellious monarch, with such fidelity, that we seem to be reading a particular relation of whichever individual occurrence of the kind our memory first brings to notice.

The play of "King John" stands precisely in the same relation to the old drama called "The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England," &c., that "The Taming of the Shrew " does to its predecessor, "The Taming of a Shrew." In both cases the elder productions were probably current favourites on the stage when Shakespeare first joined it; and in obedience to the customs of the time, and perhaps to the dictates of his employers, he took them up as good dramatic subjects, and availing himself of the general plot and leading incidents of each, transfused a new vitality into the crude materials furnished by some other workman.

At the present day it can hardly be necessary to vindicate Shakespeare from the charge of having falsified history in those of his performances which are founded on historical subjects. The marvel, indeed, is, how he has contrived to combine the highest dramatic effect with so close an adherence to historic truth. It must be remembered that he wrote without any of the advantages we derive from the researches which modern investigation has brought to bear upon the characters of particular personages and the secrets of peculiar transactions. He has left us, notwithstanding, so many masterly and instructive pictures of historic characters and events, that it may be safely said, the youth of England would be far less acquainted with and interested in the veritable annals of their country, if Shakespeare had never written his series of Historical Plays.

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Of thy deceased brother Geffrey's son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island, and the territories;

To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine :
Desiring thee to lay aside the sword
Which sways usurpingly these several titles,
And put the same into young Arthur's hand,
Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.

K. JOHN. What follows, if we disallow of this?
CHAT. The proud control of fierce and bloody

war,

To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.

K. JOHN. Here have we war for war, and blood for blood,

Controlment for controlment: so answer France. CHAT. Then take my king's defiance from my mouth,

The farthest limit of my embassy.

K. JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace.

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;
For ere thou canst report I will be there,
The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.
So hence! be thou the trumpet of our wrath,
And sullen presage of your own decay.—
An honourable conduct let him have:
Pembroke, look to't.-Farewell, Chatillon.

[Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE.
ELI. What now, my son? have I not ever said,
How that ambitious Constance would not cease,
Till she had kindled France, and all the world,
Upon the right and party of her son?
This might have been prevented, and made whole,
With very easy arguments of love;

Which now the manage of two kingdoms must With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.

K. JOHN. Our strong possession, and our right,

for us.

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Re-enter Sheriff, with ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, and PHILIP, his bastard Brother. What men are you?

BAST. Your faithful subject, I; a gentleman, Born in Northamptonshire; and eldest son, As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge, A soldier, by the honour-giving hand Of Coeur-de-lion, knighted in the field. K. JOHN. What art thou?

ROB. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

K. JOHN. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?

You came not of one mother, then, it seems.

BAST. Most certain of one mother, mighty king, That is well known; and, as I think, one father: But, for the certain knowledge of that truth, I put you o'er to Heaven, and to my mother; Of that I doubt, as all men's children may.

ELI. Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother,

And wound her honour, with this diffidence.

BAST. I, madam? no, I have no reason for it; That is my brother's plea, and none of mine; The which if he can prove, 'a pops me out At least from fair five hundred pound a-year: Heaven guard my mother's honour, and my land! K. JOHN. A good blunt fellow.-Why, being younger born,

Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

BAST. I know not why, except to get the land. But once he slander'd me with bastardy: But whe'r I be as true begot, or no, That still I lay upon my mother's head; But, that I am as well begot, my liege, (Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!) Compare our faces, and be judge yourself. If old sir Robert did beget us both, And were our father, and this son like him, O, old sir Robert father, on my knee

I give Heaven thanks I was not like to thee! K. JOHN. Why, what a madcap hath Heaven lent us here!

ELI. He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion's face; The accent of his tongue affecteth him :

and to him put

The manage of my state."

The Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

But whe'r I be as true begot,-] This contraction of whether

is frequent both in Shakespeare and his contemporaries; but they seem usually to have written it where.

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Do you not read some tokens of my son
In the large composition of this man?

K. JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts, And finds them perfect Richard.-Sirrah, speak, What doth move you to claim your brother's land? BAST. Because he hath a half-face, like my father;

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With that half-face would he have all my land: A half-fac'd groat, five hundred pound a-year! (1) ROB. My gracious liege, when that my father liv'd,

Your brother did employ my father much,

BAST. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land; Your tale must be, how he employ'd my mother. ROB. And once dispatch'd him in an embassy To Germany, there, with the emperor, To treat of high affairs touching that time. The advantage of his absence took the king, And in the mean time sojourn'd at my father's;

a With that half-face-] This is a correction of Theobald's; the folio, 1623, reading, "with half that face."

b And took it, on his death,-] Steevens is the only one of the commentators who notices this expression; and he interprets it to mean, "entertained it as his fixed opinion, when he was dying." We believe it was a common form of speech, and signified that he swore, or took oath, upon his death, of the truth of his belief. Thus Falstaff, "Merry Wives of Windsor," Act II. Sc. 2, says, and when mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,

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Where how he did prevail, I shame to speak;
But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores
Between my father and my mother lay,-
As I have heard my father speak himself,-
When this same lusty gentleman was got.
Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd
His lands to me; and took it, on his death,"
That this, my mother's son, was none of his;
And, if he were, he came into the world
Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,
My father's land, as was my father's will.

K. JOHN. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him: And, if she did play false, the fault was hers; Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother, Who, as you say, took pains to get this son, Had of your father claim'd this son for his?

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